eBizGuru's 2006 SEO/SEM Process Checklist and Reference

ii. Goals related to behavioral model for type of product or service (what they use the site for) used on the website and off in the lifecycle – and multiple goals thru cycle to measure – some online, and offline, or all online: Samples:

1. Software Download: Learn- Shop- Buy- Use-

2. Ebook Store: Learn- Shop- Buy-

3. Book Store: Learn- Shop- Buy- Get-

4. Auto Mfg: Learn- Shop- Buy/Lease- Get- Use-

5. SwimmingPoolDealer: Learn- Shop- Buy- Install- Use-

6. Consulting Firm: Learn- Engage- Select- Collaborate-

----------------Market Awareness

7. Children’s Cereal: Discover, Engage- Enroll-

----------------Informational

8. SubscriptionInfoSite: Discover- Shop- Sample- Subscribe-

----------------Persuasion

9. Political Campaign: Recognize- Learn- Select- Influence-

iii. Types of traffic counts

1. Page Views

2. Visits (sessions)

3. Visitors

A. KEYWORD set(s) RESEARCH: - is primarily based on provisioning each website page's:

- For Search Engine Optimization:

- Best highly queried keyword set(s) to be associated with the target main page (index) (typically for company keywords) and a number of specific landing pages for different keysets (one primary set per page)

- And / OR

- Best highly queried keyword set(s) to ‘associate’ (rank) with the target main page (index) and a number of specific landing pages,WITH BACKLINKS (inbound links from other indexed search engine material – all types of web sites, as well as rss feeds, blogs, online forums, newsletters)

- For Search Engine Marketing / pay per response:

- Determine highly queried keyword set(s), each associated with a unique short title and description, and one or more landing page URLs (Savvy PPC marketers target multiple landing pages)

- More Focus on finding highly queried keyword set(s) ‘niches’ with less than the related trend of responding competitive websites and competitive PPC/SEM advertisers

- To Determine the best Keyword Set(s): Know how people search, how search engines respond with indexed competitive websites and competitive sponsored advertising

- - Determine what terms (behavior) searchers are using from services that monitor what terms searchers type into the search engine:

o Googspy - updated list of most popular queries & responses – free - Adwords Competitor Research by Velocityscape - by major sites or by main market keywords - reasonably extensive but only localized for major cities

o **RankPulse - top 1000 Keyword searches daily at Google

o WordTracker (service) - the oldest site monitoring extensive searcher behavior (terms and assoc. terms), website & ppc traffic – This pay-per-use service or subscription model has a top 1000 keywords list as well as provided ‘related’ keyword terms (searched keyword terms commonly associated with the target keyword set – see more below)

o Search.com’s - top 1000 recent keywords

o Top-Keywords.com’s - top 500 keyphrases in last 24 hr or 90 days from metacrawler & Dogpile

o Analog's Keyword Live - Selects top 100 keyphrases realtime

- Expand Keyword Spread with tools to extract keyword sets from major ‘industry category level authorities/hubs – for new, related keyword sets (vs. keyword sets for stemming or extending) using a tool like Keyword Spider (www.scamfreezone.com/keywordspider/)

- GENERAL COMPETITION: Keyword set ‘extensions’ & ‘related / associated ‘ keyword sets and industry competitive analysis / assessment: Use search engine’s PPC support services to provide searcher, competitive websites and competing advertisers statistics

o Basic competitiveness of a keyword can be judged with Google suggest or (labs.google.com/suggest - any site referenced to the query) or via search engine command "intitle:"keywords..." (strong keyword use in title)

o WordTracker: keyword search popularity counts, related search keyword set counts, keyword extensions & counts, responding websites by search engine, responding ppc per search engine and KEI keyword analysis

o Seobook.com’ s Free Overture and Google suggestion tool (helpful for SEO also)*** - probably the ‘coolest’ tool but overwhelming!! - Check it out below:

o Google Suggestion tool - extended keyword query counts

o Google Adwords related keyword suggestion tool

o Google keyword traffic estimator

o Yahoo Search Marketing, former Overture keyword suggestion tool

o 7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool: Previous month’s searches from 7Search DB – also gives ppc bids

================================================

- YOUR SPECIFIC TOP COMPETITORS: Determine top competitor’s Keyword profiled usage (see how search engines algorithms weigh indexed keywords in ON-PAGE web optimization - leverage competitive intelligence)

o Zippy is a special search engine for SEO marketers, that combines information from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and Alexa. The top 10 competitors for any keyword set (including localization) as well as statistics on on-page SEO optimization, Backlink and indexed pages from each search engine, the top 100 keywords from each targeted site.

o Search Engine universal command "intitle:"Keyword1 keyword2" shows all URLs with those keywords in title - see response in top right of search display – denotes top competitors

o Abilogic.com’s Keyword (primary) and Analyzer – assesses best 2-3 keyword sets from URL

o Freewebsubmission.com’s web page analyzer - quick meta tags SECTION and 2-3 keyword

o Articleunderground.com’s keyword density tool - improved version of above

o Gorank.com’s keywords density/section analysis complements abilogic)

o Backfaces.com’s Keyword Master - Rank vs. URl and keywords

o Analogx.com’s Keyword Extractor - Accesses specific competitor URLs that rank higher than you - keyword weighting adjustable for factor to each work for each different search engine - see higher keys and distribution

- Tools for Keyword to Traffic counts, competitive websites query and responding competitor site & ppc stats and competitor names/ads)

- Checkrankings’s keyword suggestion tool - Yahoo Traffic counts & competitive website to Google Adwords PPC advertiser's counts, names and ads

- Google's own traffic count to sites and ads (counts only)

- Overture/Yahoo's keyword and related term counts

- ***Aboriginemundi.com’s Keyword Traffic Estimator: Uses Overture PLUS adjusts 4 traffic, competit, primary/tertiary focus, webmastership, visits/search base.

- rankalert.net’s keyword popularity tool - same data as Overture, dif. front-end

- Many notable number of others who front-end overture

- Wordtracker - from metacrawler - also displays 'related (extended) terms and their popularity

- Freewebsubmission’s keyword popularity tool - online freebee powered by WordTracker, previous month counts

- Digitalpoint’s suggestion tool – an online free mix of Overture and WordTracker data

- 7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool: Prev. month, searches from 7Search DB – also gives ppc bids

- Submitexpress's previous month’s searches from their search engine

B. LOCALIZATION: Affects both SEO and SEM:

- For SEO queries applied on the search terms ('computers portland' vs 'computers') or search subdomain (e.g. local.google.com, local.yahoo.com), insure at least secondary prominence of 'town or county or state' keywords in titles, description, etc.

- ex: computer service portland vs. computer service (allow for natural search engine localization to 1st general listing after sponsored, or automatically if search is localized (ex: local.google.com)

- For SEM, the influence is significant, automatically available to be applied and access to view the PPC ad is based on the searchers' location. This truly makes searching for localized services, a practical reality for small business that operate very geographically local.

- Sponsored ads on pages are based on the viewer's location relative to IP address or WiFi location.

- Only users with Internet connections in specific market area (town, zip) will ever see the sponsored ads…. I.e.location will highlight on ad, but based on viewer location

C. SEO STRATEGY:

- 1^st Page Listing in the Search Engine Results Pages for a keyword set is based on two major influence:

1. On-Page Optimization: Indexed reference to the target keyword set in multiple tags types in header and in the body of document, ‘weighted’ differently be each search engine as to ‘prominence’, count by type, etc. (e.g. title, headers may be more influential than alt descriptors)

2. Influence of Backlinks: A combination of Quality and Quantity

- Once the major keyword terms have been established, use the new Zippy / SEO search engine to do a competitive assessment on the top (10) competitors for each keyword set. …. (‘Compare top 10 results’), feeling free to add location as in ‘computer services portland’ for highly popular base keyword terms.

- The display denotes for each top 10 keyword competitor, (a) the search engine on-page density analysis for that keyword set (in terms of counts and density in each page category section), as well as (b) the number of backlinks for each site, the lesser number of indexed pages and pagerank from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Alexa

- For Each of the top 10 search competitors – selecting any one will provide you with (a) that website’s top 100 keywords, (b) internal to external link ratios, and (c) count and density for that site’s top 2, 3, and 4 word keyphrases

- The most valuable feature is to see the overall weight or value of the links (as their associated anchor text) in influencing the search engine page results. This can distinguish at any level (national or local), the industry by industry influence of links over on-page optimization for top search engine results

- This is a real EYE-OPENER!!

D. ON-PAGE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION:

- KEYWORD tool to:

Compare keyword counts and density with top ten (10) keyword competitors – This shows you the running keyword counts & densities per keyword category type (assuming proximity in any type, weighted closest to the beginning of the document). Using different assumed weighting factors for each search engine, also provides insight into the subtle affects of positioning with different search engines.

- zippy - ‘Compare top 10’ density & counts by tag type, plus top 100 single keywords, and top 2,3, and 4 word keyword sets

- Analogx's KeyWord Extractor - Access specific competitor URLs that rank higher than you - keyword weighting adjustable for factor to each work for each different search engine - see key density/ct. & distribution

- If targeting to optimize listing placement with different search engines, one consideration would be to have alternate pages in keyword-name URL for each subdirectory off root

- To determine which pages are indexed in any engine, type 'site:websiteURL' on the command line of any major SE, replacing websiteURL with your URL or your competitors.

- Tools - to get general SEO site health scoping (SEO Explorer) - PAGE BY PAGE, prior and post

- SEO Explorer - allows interactive page by page assessment - links, alt tags

- Spannerworks’s spider-simulator/ - similar to SEO Explorer

- sitereportcard.com - broken links, SEO warnings, keywords, inclusion, popularity, html syntax, spelling

- SEO Copywriting:

- SEO Copywriting is about changes that affect search engines to classify (1) specific landing pages to specific (2a) keyword searches OR (2b) website / (2c) target branded advertising networks. The most important changes affect all these needs and are primarily changes to visible textual content on web pages

- Search Engine Marketing/PPC: SEO Copywriting now has a big place with SEM / PPC :

- Whereas in the past, SEM Copywriting was more about ‘copywriting’ in the sense of creating keyword rich ad titles and very short keyword rich ads that sounded appealing, for Adwords, it’s now about providing a consistent (starting out identical in title and/or short ad) experience, where the landing page establishes the next step – namely, some sort of conversion – action step – call, email needs, download something (with email catch of course), other links…

- Special “Index” pages for each PPC ad: Many search engines accept, at least for direct submission, specific URLs as opposed to ‘domains’, although they all do seem to accept subdirectories off a domain. Thus by creating SEM matching index landing pages under special keyword-named subdirectories off a root domain, it is more easily indexed, but more importantly, it adds ‘relevancy’ in both listing placement, lowers initial bidding costs, and has a better chance of driving higher click-thru, also potentially lowering costs and thus cost effectiveness.

- General principles – SEO or SEM :

- URL renaming for Keywords: Providing significant benefit to both SEO and SEM ‘relevancy’ as well as affecting potential top SEM display and pricing.

- Title and Description meta tags : Because they are used in (1) any search engine display, although they may also cut the description short if it’s too long and/or add snippets from the body text. In matching up ‘relevancy’, Adwords may not take PageRank into consideration, but rather more consistency of the message, and relevancy of the keyword sets and the landing page assessment. That ‘on-page’ seo analysis will view in preference title, description, possible keywords (most likely though not with Google), and the most obvious body content descriptors.

- Headers & Body Content: Universally, all search engines apply the greatest weighting or factoring of keywords to the header tags and body content (with only the title being a contender). On the other hand, this is where the greatest ‘copywriting’ skills come to play… namely :

o SEO: Writing new or (harder), re-writing copy to make it keyword rich after the fact, promoting the keywords as early as possible on each targeted landing page (normally they are existing core pages of the website).

o SEM / PPC: ‘Copywriting’ a much larger, but fully consistent message – to complete the user experience from the short ad to a richer ad, to final conversion…. Some type of next action

- Web Page Markup to support SEO (OnPage):

- TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta-tags (including the keywords tag that Google ignores)

- HEADER tags and keywords or sets in BODY content (bold may count more)

- ALT tags for images (and 'areas')

- HREF urls and anchor text (text associated w/the link)

- Size (target 200 words)

- Some limited support for link 'TITLE's, image 'LONGDESC', and 'COMMENT' tags (Altavista, Intomi)

- 'DENSITY' for each type by PROXIMITY, COUNT and BALANCE for each type, within the tag , with decreasing prominence from top to bottom & no obvious stuffing

- REDIRECTS - SEs often consider short-timed HTML meta-tag redirects as spam, and may not index them correctly. The CURRENT accepted method is to use a 301 (permanent), or 302 (temporary) redirects as specified in a '.htaccess' (unix) file, OR server-side, for example server-side in a php script or via the administration of IIS

- www.internetofficer.com/redirect-check.html (definition & sample)

- support.microsoft.com/kb/324064 - migrate .htaccess in a windows environment

- W/.htaccess file: Redirect file.html http://your.url/file2.html

Redirecting folders

I added the following two lines to my .htaccess file in my root directory

1. Redirect /safe https://www.sample.com

2. Redirect /shop https://www.sample.com/shop

Pretty straight forward, this simply redirects in the above example http://www.sample.com/safe/ to https://www.sample.com. Easy!

Redirecting files

This can also easily be done for individual files. Instead of having to use the dated meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=map.html" method in the head tag we can use a .htaccess redirect that removes the need for the file in the first place, the code would look like the following:

1. Redirect /map.html http://site.com/map/ [or]

2. Redirect /download.html http://site.com/files/download.html

Removing [or] from the above example of course.

Creating a .htacccess file

Creating a htaccess file couldn’t be any easier. Simply open up TextEdit or Notepad for example type in your Redirect, or copy one from above and save the file as a htaccess.txt (plain text) file, no RTF. Upload the file to the root directory on your server and then rename the file to .htaccess that’s it!

- IIS Redirect:

· In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect

· Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".

· Enter the redirection page

· Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"

· Click on 'Apply'

- Redirect in Cold Fusion

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

- Redirect in PHP

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

- Redirect in ASP

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", " http://www.new-url.com"
>

- Redirect in ASP.NET

- Redirect OldDomain to New Domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name. In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

- Redirect to WWW (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

- New link parameter ‘rel’ as in ‘ rel=”nofollow” to denote not to give PageRank to link (as in unvalidated – should be applied with all links to low PageRank)

- KEYWORD Tools to analyze proper densities of keywords across each page: seotool, webxact, Internet Business Promoter (Axandra), Web Position (WebTrends)

- developers.evrsoft.com’s seotool - Meta tag density SUGGESTIONS & 2-4 NEW word SUGGESTIONS w/stats

- Watchfire.com’s WebXact: measure web page 'quality'

- Internet Business Promoter

- Web Position 4 by WebTrends

- KEYWORD tool to compare keyword counts, density, backlinks, and keyword set(s) with top ten (10) keyword competitors:

- Zippy (uk)- ‘Compare top 10’ density & counts by tag type, plus banklinks, plus top 100 single keywords, and top 2,3, and 4 word keyword sets

- QUALITY: READABILITY BY SEARCH ENGINES

- Search engines aren't supposed to read or index javascript, script sections, font or table tags but they often get confused with small search algorithm changes to the spiders

- The "FONT" tag recently became 'deprecated' (out of standard, 'grandfathered', to be dropped from support) in ww Internet standards for web pages in general

- This Promoted mass cleanup to markup code in general so that search engines could index and rank sites more easily and accurately

- Requires the application of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet format) inline (but preferred as external css files) format to replace all font-tags and tables formatting asap - Good Tools for CSS cleanup and conversion/migration include:

- Newsgator.com’s TopStyle3 (CSS editor and Wizards)

- Highdots.com’s Style Studio (similar though only font wizard)

- Provide a robots.txt file

- www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/robotstxtgenerator.php (free robots.txt generator)

- Externalize Javascript and CSS where possible - except for menus (as tags for links get ignored and not followed)

Javascript externally:  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" SRC="myscript.js"> or
<script src="myjs.js"></script>, where SRC=../js_files/myjs.js denotes relative placement

- Note:  HTML buried within Javascript (to be recalled) to be used inline requires all HTML to be enclosed
in javascript ‘document.writeln’ statements.  Use online generator at http://www.stevenolte.com/docwriter.html
to make this easier.

CSS:  <link rel=stylesheet type="text/css" href="MainStyle.css"> or inline externalized reference as in
<style type="text/css"> @import url(advanced.css) </style>

- Apply where possible to Quality and Latest Standards:

- validator.w3.org/, WC3 HTML Markup Validation analysis

- Watchfire.com’s WebXact - free quality, accessibility & privacy testing

- Internally well linked (scannable internal links, not javascript menus)

E. OFF-PAGE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): INBOUND LINKS: BACKLINKS:

i. FOR (1) QUALIFICATION, (2) COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND (3) RANK / INDEXED PLACEMENT

ii. ***Although direct submissions take time to get in the 'queue', often a critical 'gating' factor to get spidered AND ranked, is to be the recipient of an inbound link from another high ranking website (that's obviously indexed as it is ranked)

iii. **The Proven importance of influentially related 'anchor text' alone was best demonstrated when 20 influential bloggers created the search engine association between their anchor text of 'miserable failure' to their associated link that pointed to George Bush's resume at the white house (e.g. from blogs links to the search box, ALL by the 'implied relevancy' of their links

iv. **The largest and most 'influential' engine, Google, today continues to apply very significant influence from the relevancy and ranking of inbound links to a site's ranking. It's not the popularity, as 50 ranked relevant links can be more influential than thousands of none-low ranking ones.

v. **Because of dynamic websites and limitations like the depth of a scan, many website links buried deep or accessed 'dynamically' (db), never get indexed and ranked, although they have been scanned and indexed (Google is one of the best examples). Backlink and generic domain queries show more inbound listings and domains than the search query 'link:' commands

vi. **Unless those 'buried' are the target of a link that goes directly to that unique URL: When your site gets re-indexed, any your reference to inbound link's URL that contains the page on their system with your link back (and often content and/or ranking factor), may get only page indexed

vii. Tools for link promotion and management include:

- Arelis Link Management

- www.scamfreezone.com/spider/ - Desktop spider

- Search engine 'link:site' commands (who links to that site) - backlinks that search engines report (not all)

- Other backlink software (see below)

- Universal (almost) for all SE 'inbound links":

1. Linkdomain:url.com

This command will show you all the pages that link to any page hosted at the domain url.com.

2. Link:http://www.url.com/page.html

This command will show only those pages which link directly to the specified page.

3. Linkdomain:url.com word

This search will show all pages with the term "word" that link to pages hosted at the URL. You can use this to find topical linking pages that may be providing benefit for specific areas.

4. Linkdomain:url.com -term

Use the - sign to indicate that pages which include a particular term should be excluded from the search; for example, searching for all links that point to a site that don't contain your company name on the page (i.e. linkdomain:seobook.com - seomoz). Note that searches can contain multiple - signs and terms if you require very specific information (or wish to exclude lots of noisy data).

5. Linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com

In addition to the - sign as a term remover, you can remove sites from the results as well. This can be especially valuable if one large site links to the target site on every page, and you wish to see the links that don't include that site. It can also be valuable to remove the site itself, (i.e. linkdomain:seomoz.org -site:seomoz.org), so as not to see results from internal pages.

6. Add URL/Submit Link Trick: from within any browser/SE – syntax: “add url keyword” to see many reciprocal sites related to the targeted keyword

- INDEXED-PAGES-USED: Aggregate 'Backlink' (Inbound links) tools (aggregating search engine queries using 'link:sitename') can now show INDEXED inbound links used per engine

- Marketleap.com - Link Popularity, Saturation (indexed pages) and keyword ranking

- Linkvendor.com’s site analysis tool

- RANKING and unranked BACKLINKS AND ANCHOR TEXT ANALYSIS: The newest backlink tools search for (1) 'BACKLINK ANCHOR TEXT' (backlink-master, webuildpages), (2) BACKLINKS TO PAGERANK (iwebtool) - finding most relevant inbound links, (3) INDEXED (primary for RANKing-linkvendor) vs. (4) POPULARITY (ALL inbound links); To EXPOSE more inbound links as well, as well as relevant RANK for the most influential inbound links:

- Cleverstat’s Backlinks software - backlinks w/anchor text - extensive

- webuildpages.com’s ‘neat-o’ tool - backlinks w/anchor text - extensive

- Online-utility.org’s Backlink Anchor Analyzer - Anchor Text Backlink checker

- Iwebtool’s Backlink Checker shows PageRank of each backlink

- Iconinteractivegroup’s popularity tool - largest popularity - backlink search

- Webmaster-toolkit.com’s link popularity checker - alternate popularity checker

- *** Seobook’s keyword tool - Backlinks w/whois, webarchive.org, Google cache, text cache of page, text cache of domain, dmoz listing, Yahoo listing, Yahoo pages with outbound link to client, MSN pages with outbound link to client

F. SITE MAPS AND SPIDER MAPS (generic linked and Google-Yahoo-non linked)

- Site maps improve readability for users and search engines. Linked into the active web site is the:

- site map for humans - linked into the main website - also for most search engines

- site map for some search engines - not linked (orphan), a special XML version for specific SEs like Google.

- Good site mapping software can help support redirects, frames, etc.

- Creating special SPIDER maps for submission to google is easy - (Google site maps, xml-sitemaps)

- auditmypc.com’s free sitemap generator (Google only)

- Freesitemapgenerator.com/ (for Google only)

- Xml-sitemaps.com/ (Google only)

- www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com’s spider map creator

- Xtreeme.com’s Sitexpert - creates XML or HTML site maps - Yahoo, vs. Hotbot, Altavista

- Apply a site map referenced from every page (human version); Packages include: (freesitemapgenerator)

- auditmypc.com’s site maps - general human html or also for Yahoo site map submissions

- Likno’s sitemap – produces in html format

- eXactMapper Lite 1.1 (ExactTrend)

- Special Site maps are promoted for submission to search engines today just like submitting suggest URLs (Google uses a different URL while Yahoo is all-in-one as it's site map is the old style)

- Submit to Yahoo as other feed (vs. Website URL)

- Submit to Google Webmaster Account - google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview

G. RSS feeds, Blogs, newsletters, ezines, forums, content (article) providers – more SPIDER FOOD !

- Business Blogs, RSS feeds, event, job openings, press releases, special marketing and seasonal, monthly, weekly, or specialty catalogs/announcements and newsletters/ezines/forums news are all XML-based content that has successfully been well adopted locally (b2b), and represent also potential links to your site, that search engines now actively index, providing additional inbound links, visitors and ranking influence for you.

- RSS is again the hot vs ‘new’ media, because it’s the new effective way for local businesses to broadcast and exchange company news, events, job openings, press releases and blogs. It’s further potential could be branded around a lifestyle, popular idol, specialty tool lines, etc. where specias could be announced, as well as ads could be served for the company as well as from outside advertisers.

- (1) It supports SEO, …can be coordinated with

- (2) SEM (ex: as a conversion action on the landing page – to at least take an always updated ‘electronic business list of stuff – whenever something new comes out, you’ll know about it – anonymously…that’s why it’s become so popular, so fast!!),

- (3) New Advertising/Revenue Generating Channel: It represents both an ‘opt-in’ channel where advertising can be placed for the benefit of the publisher or ‘Adsense-like’ revenues from external advertisers. Viewed in this sense, RSS is like a cross between ‘opt-in’ newsletter mailings (automatically received) that’s always accepted – anonymous, but all the same, an open channel with much broader acceptance.

- Pheedo is an advertising network that targets audiences, and/or monetize and analyze content feeds. Their network, advanced analytics, innovative thinking, and doting customer service ranks high in their industry niche.

- RSS Feed publishers make money by providing the audience so within their feeds, ads are inserted. When a reader selects one, it's the same as a clickthru, . They can also control what types of ads are shown... sort of like Google's Adsense.

- RSS Feed advertisers see targeted markets related to the publisher's industry and extensions thereof. They feel control in vertical market selection and are willing to pay accordingly for clickthru's in those markets. They see their market as the bloggers and online publishers, and RSS-supported Windows/Linux/program/browser clients

- ***RSS Feeds are now promoted for submission at Google and Yahoo along with XML site maps. RSS feeds are simple XML-based files that represent 'lists' of information that you put on your site with a simple RSS link. Each indexed feed RSS URL (hosted at main RSS directories on the search engines or specialized mass RSS directories, adds ranking, associating the feed description (anchor text) to your URL.

- ***New RSS readers (and reader management tools like we have for favorites or bookmarks) have been recently added to all major browsers. By creating the feed under a specific content type, your site becomes associated with that feeds' description also for the reader.

- **RSS 'Content' for XML-based RSS Feeds can be 'hosted' as (1) an RSS XML file on your site or (2) published as a URL 3rd party or (3) listing your RSS URL at a RSS directory service; These can be (a) self generated, using online tools on any of your web pages, blogs or simple lists, (b) repackaged from public feed directories (Google, Yahoo, most large companies), or (c) acquired through online re-packaging services like RssFeedGenerator.

- www.hitrss.com - hosted RSS publication - free

- dir.yahoo.com/rss/dir/index.php - Yahoo directory of RSS feeds by category

- rss.msn.com - MSN directory of RSS feeds

- news.google.com - Google news w/RSS feeds

- www.Feedster.com - Search for competitor RSS feeds and blogs

- www.feedadvisor.com/ - one example of a RSS feed search engine

- The benefit lost with remote 3rd party hosting (like FeedBurner, see below) is that any link influence, such as PageRank will be shared by the 3rd party hoster vs. your site. The prominent companies that offer these services include

- RSS Monitoring: While RSS is an anonymous opt-in like relationship, it is very popular, and furthermore, represents a potential source for much valuable consumer information or monitoring (though you need to be careful to maintain anonymous until the reader is willing to further ‘register’ (make not anonymous) in their desire to do business with you.

- Services: Aside from Pheebo, who is most interested in focusing on serving ads to RSS publishers, other leading RSS monitoring ‘services’ and on-site monitoring of RSS analytics, include:

(1) FeedBurner:

- FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s). It does this by tracking the (a) number of feed accesses and/or (b) individuals accessing a feed. The downside is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank/popularity associated with it, benefits feedBurner vs. your website. No distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.

- FeedBurner offers a free, no frills service to host RSS feeds, and they proactively circumvent user concerns. Recently adding a service to ease users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner, there;s now a 3 step process to support users migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding. More info on that is at http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html

(2) SyndicateIQ:

- SyndicateIQ, for the content distribution chain, provides clients w/stronger analytics.

- SyndicateIQ offers complex tracking solutions generating unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits are that Individual user habits are monitored and users abusing access by inappropriately syndicating feed content can have that feed turned off. The downside is that the success of RSS has been in large part due its' anonymity - Users don't want personal habits tracked.

- Their value is in the data that they collect. Publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. The value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.

(3) 4Syndication

- A service that ‘enables’ (prof. Services) companies convert their documents to RSS based XML feeds. 4Syndication further integrates this feed strategy with SEO (search engine optimization) and local business directory support/integration.

- The main benefit of using 4Syndication is that it is unique in it’s ability to track, and provide readership data.

- ***Like site maps, RSS feed URL's are promoted for direct Search Engine submissions, similar submitting URLs for indexing. There are also many RSS directories that accept submissions of URLs of RSS feeds:

- Brainbliss.com’s Feedshark - generic feed to ~38 Blog, RSS and Podcast Services that can list them

- Dummysoftware’s RSSSubmit - software to submit unlimited RSS feed notices to 72 top RSS services to list

- RSS Tools include RSS 'generators' (creators/editors/aggregators/repackaging/converts) like Feedspring, RSSFeedgenerator and other RSS editor-wizards:

- www.hitrss.com - hosted RSS publication - free

- Usablelabs’s FeedSpring - offline free RSS editor - generator

- Mysitefeed.com/, or feedpublish.com/, or - create and list a feed online - free

- Extralabs’s RSS Wizard and Hotlib’s XML feed generator create RSS feeds from HTML documents

- Extralabs’s Feed Editor - upgrade from RSS Wizard - generic RSS editor tha also imports HTML & CSV files

- Justinpfister’s gnewsfeed - produces RSS feed of any Google query for any country in English

- www.rssfeedsgenerator.com/ - generates a fee based on a query one source from a) main search engines, b) news, c) blogs, d) Images, e) media, f) shopping, g) article libraries and more : Generated feeds are emailed to you

- Using RssFeedGenerator (free), you can make new feeds of any of these types at RssFeedGenerator and package them for publishing under your URL and description (that will become the anchor text to accentuate your ranking): RSS types here include creating 'feeds' from Search result, news, blog posts, images, media, tag, shopping or articles feeds...(Ex: Bills feed: 'All about grasshoppers' or 'The latest neworking news from Compaq'... packaged as Bill's RSS feed on Bills site - essentially a reprint of a search w/o approval required)

- There are a wide range of speciality programs that convert other list or sub-lists of text and graphics into RSS feeds, as well as a large variety of programs to convert RSS feeds to other formats like HTML (many for free)

- **ARTICLEs - SYNDICATED CONTENT: 'Information' (vs. direct sales) articles with an author/contributor 'sales-like' bylines, re-published within online newsletters, forum or blog entries, all that get regularly indexed today by search engines as content. This is similar to how search engines index electronic distribution of press releases.

- ***While some online newsletters, ezines, and forums represent small, very targeted 'communities', others can represents hundreds of thousands of viewers. Articles as free or paid insertion can be promoted directly with each publication source or through free or paid content distribution services. The benefit to SEO ranking is from each article reprinted with your URL per publication indexed.

- www.ducttapemarketing.com/Instant-Press-Release.htm - good press release online builder

- www.pertinent.com/tools/index.asp - Simple online PR or letter builder

- Article content distribution references:

========================================

- www.bellaonline.com/articles/art12838.asp

- www.articlewritingtips.com/submit-articles.htm

- www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html

- www.thejunglemarketer.com/blog/2005/08/26/free-website-promotion-with-ezine-articles/

- Distribution services and programs to consider

==============================================

- www.isnare.com/distribution.php

- www.article-submitter.com/

- www.submityourarticle.com/main.php

H. SEO Submissions

- Being linked by an already indexed site is still key for Google, and the fastest way:

- Does not include submissions or XML sitemaps, RSS feeds or others

- www.google.com/addurl/ - Google Search Engine

- help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html - Yahoo Directory - Regular

- dir.yahoo.com - main yahoo directory to find topic

- http://www.itoolpad.com/products/catfind/ (now part of Good Keywords)

- www.xxx - Yahoo Directory - backdoor

- rds.yahoo.com/search/submit/free/* OR submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request - Yahoo Search Engine (not directory)

- Submit also HTML site maps there; requires yahoo id and password (general account is fine)

- submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm - Intomi MSN submission

- beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx - LiveSearch - MSNbot

- www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters#crawl_site - Alexa submission

- www.nationaldirectory.com/addurl/ - National Directory

- www.dmoz.org - DMOZ - like Yahoo directory - find directory and like posting

- www.itoolpad.com/products/catfind/ (now part of Good Keywords)

I. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: SEM/PPC - NICHES: (primary Search engine marketing-SEM activity) added Knowledge of:

- The objective is to target multiple PPC campaigns, each with many keywords sets (2-3 words typically per set) and respective relevant ads and re-directed relevant landing pages. Savvy PPC marketers target different landing pages for most ads. Unlike SEO it is possible to target more than one keyset to a single landing page, provided it is relevant to both sets of terms and each ad reflects the different keywords respectively.

- what KEYWORD (KEY-SETS) to focus on for both SEO and SEM activities, getting search engine feedback on:

- Primative search intelligence - based on popularity of queried key terms to the number of indexed sites and numbers of ppc ads responding

- How many users searched specific terms (keyword sets) in last 24 hrs, months, yrs? - popularity

- How many other sites are optimized via natural SEO to respond (w/rank) to specific terms (keyword sets)?

- How many other PPC bidders have those words in campaigns, and what are the bid prices?

- Keyword pricing is directly affected by the direct relevancy of the ad (title-anchor text and ad description), the target landing page URL and the landing page content relevancy (keyword relevancy bw. URL and Ad, vs. rank & inbound links)

- Aggregated tools for keyword analysis - searchers behavior and general competitive ppc bidding include (wordtracker, rapid keyword - combines all major SE search & analysis, specific SE keyword suggeton tools)

- RankPulse - top 1000 Keyword searches daily at Google

- Top-1000-google-keywords.com - top 1000 Google Adwords

- Wordtracker

- Rapidkeyword - combo of all major keyword suggestion tools and WordTracker-like (counts, no $$)

- Google Suggestion tool - extended keyword query counts

- SE command "intitle:"Keyword1 keyword2" shows all URLs with those keywords in title - see response in top right

- Google Adwords related keyword suggestion tool

- Google keyword traffic estimator

- Yahoo Search Marketing, former Overture keyword suggestion tool

- SE bid PRICING tools and COMPETITOR analysis include Overture View Bids, PPC Bid Reporter Pro,

- Overture 'view bid' tool

- Accurate monitor for Search Engines - competitor websites and ppc - see specific competitors

- PPC Bid Reporter Pro - PPC competitors, bids, URLs and activity tracking

- See also 'keycomplete' in main Competitive profiles section below

- Consider Keyword Tumbling: produces very low cost 2nd re-pairing that have very low value except for the large percentage of new queries each month that are produced naturally by people.

- Keywordtumbler.com/

J. COMPETITIVE PROFILING IN SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING:

- Who are your main competitors in your SEO space? : Do Keyword requests at each search engine, with a thorough SERPs analysis - Extracting their leading site's keys and profile (abilogic/gorank), searching for consistent trends across the leading sites; Alexa their domain name: 'title:' search their realname; See what competitor pages are indexed with the site:website' command (google, yahoo, msn) search commands, and do a backlink analysis w/pagerank to see their inbound link sources; Use their general formula, enhanced with niche placements and better general coverage of SEO techniques.

- Yahoosearchrankings.com/ - Yahoo and Google Ranking for your website

- **Who are your specific SEM competition?; - National and local; Using (Accurate monitor, GoogSpy, McDar) is similar to passive ppc intelligence (putting in ppc keywords in searches and then right-clicking on competitve sponsored PPC ads to see URLs); This shows you specific competitive website and PPC ads that compete with your SEO organic and/or your specific SEM/PPC Keyword (sets)

- Accurate monitor for Search Engines - competitor websites and ppc - see specific competitors

- PPC Bid Reporter Pro - PPC competitors, bids, URLs and activity

- GoogSpy - Adwords Competitor Research by Velocityscape - by major sites or by main market keywords - reasonably extensive but only localized for major cities

- Mcdar’s KeywordTool - compares your URL with others Google - your main competitors, their indexed pages, inbound linking sites to your competitors, and inbound links from Yahoo also - in the same keyword space

- **What are your main competitors for any keyword AND/OR what is the full range of words specific competitors are bidding on?

- Keycompete

- Trellian Competitve Intelligence, complementing WordTracker - additionally, what links and terms drive traffic behavior & competitive benchmarking

- Complete keyword driven PPC management tracking and responding to the traffic behavior, competition success and top ranking (AdGooRoo, Hitwise)

- Adgooroo - focused on traffic relative to keyword/ad response and landing sites system

- Hitwise - focused on additionally pre & post traffic behavior (where search visitors came from and where they go after visiting your or your competitors' site) based on analytics of millions of users to thousands of websites relative to keywords and targeted buyer behavior to your site vs. your competitive

- Archive.org’s Wayback machine is an excellent source of competitive intelligence for checking out competitor’s product pricing over the years, SEO techniques, and designs.

- www.archive.org/index.php

K. Search Engine Marketing: Tracking and Bid Management Software

- Tracking/Analytic: referrer, landing, followup action (free, software, service(s))

ClickTracks: www.clicktracks.com/ - Log file analyzer, shows click ratio for each of the links, and allows you to set up custom tracking tags to view traffic through different visitor paths. ~$500

- Analyzer/HOSTED: Entry-level visual analytics - Need to know how visitors are interacting with your web site? Running online ads? Try hosted or log file edition 14 days free.

- Optimizer/HOSTED: Mid-range analytics, high value Fast web analytics with e-mail campaign and robot tracking. ClickTracks Optimizer is perfect for search marketing and consultants

- Pro/HOSTED: Robust analytics, ROI tracking Revenue, conversion and marketing campaign performance all in one professional web analytics package. Try a free demo with your data.

- jdc: High volume, high security - All the power of page-tagged data collection, first party cookies from your own secure servers. One-time investment. No recurring fees!

KeywordMax: www.keywordmax.com - Tools include Keyword Research, keyword tracking, bid management and fraud protection.

- ROI Tracker, Click Auditor & Keyword Builder - $125/mo. - Merchant Standard

- add Bid Direct @ $245/mo - Merchant Pro

- add Client Report Center - $625mo - Agency Standard

- add Private branded tracking - $1250/mo. - Agency Premium

IndexTools: www.indextools.com -

- Web Analytics 9.0: Real Marketing Workflow Management! IndexTools provides accurate, insightful and timely data to help you make informed business decisions about the performance of your website and online marketing campaigns

o Executive Dashboards, Custom reporting, Marketing Workflow Management, Advanced Live Cost Analysis, Advanced Campaign Management, Real-time Segmentation, Advanced Merchandise Reporting, Scenario Analysis, Comparative Reporting, AskIT™- The IndexTools Tutor

- Bid Management 1.0:

- Automated tracking setup and correction of setup problems in Google, Yahoo! (Overture), Miva

- Fully integrated reporting and CPC management

- Easy charting and trending functionality for quick decision making

- Professional services:

WebSiteStory: www.websidestory.com - WebSideStory Publish 4.0 Enables Marketers to Automatically Drive Web Site Content Placement Based on Web Metrics from HBX Analytics

Also Efficient Frontier, Omniture

- Bid Management Services:

- Bidrank (download): www.bidrank.com

- Keyword Max (hosted software): www.keywordmax.com

- Atlas OnePointe (hosted softw. app): www.atlasonepoint.com

- Yahoo Search Optimizer (searchmarketing.yahoo.com/mt/so.php):

- Fraud Protection Software:

- Who'sClickWho: www.whosclickingwho.com

- Click Auditor: www.keywordmax.com/click_auditor.html

- Vericlix: www.vericlix.com - free

L. Search Engine Marketing: Mechanics for Adwords (including search, AdSense, 2^nd content networks) and Overture/YSM

- General Issue for both:

o Calculating real cost/click, revenue/click

o **Negative keywords

o SEM Startup: Monday vs. Friday/Weekend

o SEM Conversion Rate by type of product or Service

§ Lead generation – often as much as 10-20% conversion vs.

§ Affiliate product sales – often 1-2%

§ Speed to market and conversio

- Overture / YSM (Yahoo Search Marketing)

o Exact and Advanced matching

§ Extremely important with YSM, as for example your competitor bids $3 for ‘computer service’ and you bid $0.10 for “computer service portland”, and the searcher types the latter, your ad shows up first and costs much less.

o Write ads for qualification vs, click-thru

o Dynamic pricing adjustments

o Bid Jamming / Trapping

- Broad vs. Exact Match : (what is your competition using as Adwords support all three search formats ? )

§ Try 'keyword1 dfdkfjdkf keyword2': competitive ads are using "Broad match"

§ Try 'keyword1 keyword2 kdjfkdfjkd': Competitors are using "phrase match"

§ Try 'keyword1 keyword2': competitors are using exact match

- Adwords

o Exact, Grouped, Broad matching

o Pricing and actual placement:

§ Top ads, above search results by:

§ Ad relevancy

§ Click-thru rate (high rate lowers applied cost)

§ They associate relevancy with Click-thru rate

§ Side Ads by

§ Max. bid X Clickthru rate:

o Focus on average click cost

o Title:

o “{KeyWord: default ad title}” – where group of different keywords to same body text

§ Under 25 char – uses keywords

§ >25 characters – show default ad title

§ “Buy cheap {KeyWord: default keyword}.”

o Using KeywordURLs can be a BIG advantage

§ Consider using a cheap domain name with keyword rich URL (GoDaddy)

§ Keyword rich URLs can change click-thru rates by 50-200%

o Lower Bid pricing after activity is shown

§ To take advantage of Adwords ‘Click-thru’ rating:

§ Start off bidding 20-30% below from suggested price, or start for position #1 or #2, then lower, re-adjust in small increments to target final bidding price at ½ to 2/3 of going bid price

§ Consider re-balancing ad positioning to get to positions 3 – 7

o Using competitors trademark names as keywords to bid on (YSM does not allow)

§ Trademark violation if keyword of this nature appears in the ad title or body

§ Often very cheap to buy

§ Use with ads on content (see below)

o Filtering Junk AdSense Clicks

o Note: On Int'l, consider removing India as high number from there

o Remove ongoing AdSense referers that send traffic that does not convert

o Remove competitive sites

o www.apogee-web-consulting.com/tools/track_google_content_ads.html :

§ Tracks which sites your AdSense Ads are appearing on

o AdWords Content Markets: Delivering your Ads to more than “Search”, rather to include:

§ ‘Search’ in the larger sense, means Google is selling ad services to Google searches, as well as for searches at AOL, Earthlink and others

§ Costs/Pricing for delivery in this media is less as it has lower click-thru rates and it is sold per impression (number of times it is shown vs. clicked on), expressed in CPM.

§ For Branding @ $1k/5-10M or $0.05 - 0.10 / 1000, it might make sense

§ Provided as two different channels:

1. Content (AdSense Partners – Google’s) and

2. Targeted Branded Content

o Examples to include RSS advertising – Pheebo

o Pay-per-CAll: Recently added, this has unusual potential for local high-end businesses (legal, loans, real-estate, etc.)

§ www.google.com/help/faq_clicktocall.html

- Testing & Refinements:

o Most applicable for Google that allows you to test multiple ads at the same time…testing two ads against one another, as well as testing the same ad to multiple landing pages.

§ www.splittester.com/ - tool to help you determine if you have collected enough data for evaluation

o Other types of testing:

- Split Testing: You can keep doing split testing over and over again, creating smarter and smarter ads

- A/B/C testing: Make two identical copies of one of the ads and compare it to another. Run until the CTR of the same ads are nearly identical and then compare that rate to the other ad.

- Quadrents: Use two title sets and two description sets which make 4 ads. Leave them un-optimized and run the AdWords account until a clear leading ad is found.

- Taguchi Method: The Taguchi Method allows you to set up a large matrix of variables and determine what the best combinations are using advanced mathematics and minimal testing.

- Microsoft AD Center:

o Similar to AdWords, but to also support:

- day parting ads (turning bidding on or off at different times)

- search bidding based on demographics details

- offers dynamic keyword insertion like Google, but Microsoft also allows you to use one dynamic insertion to drive other ad copy offers. For example, with MS you can have this setup:

Keyword Dynamic text parameters

"sedans" 5% off

"SUVs" 7% off

- When you are ready to build your ad, you will enter “All {keyword} {param2} as the ad title. When a user queries “sedans,” the ad that appears will be

All sedans 5% off.”

- You can also use {param1} to drive ad URLs.

o Microsoft also announced the purchase of DeepMetrix, an analytics company. They stated that eventually that software will be upgraded and integrated into the Microsoft AdCenter platform.

o While MSN Search has roughly a 10% of the US search market you can expect that number to increase in the coming year, largely because:

- In the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser search will be integrated into the browser

- They may also integrate web search into the operating system

- Some companies like Amazon have dumped Google in favor of Microsoft

- https://adcenter.msn.com - MS adcenter

- http://advertising.msn.com/microsoft-adcenter/faqs

M. Blogs for Marketing

1. What are blogs and what is their importance in your search strategy?

The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago. New blog creation continues to grow. Technorati currently tracks over 75,000 new weblogs created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day - and 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created. That's an increase both absolute and relative terms over just 3 months ago, when only 50.5% or 13.7 million blogs were active. In other words, even though there's a reasonable amount of tire-kicking going on, blogging continues to grow as a habitual activity.

Blogging (or weblogs) evolved from the personal online diaries, where people would keep a running account on either their personal lives. Today they more often serve to support news or interactive discussion on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Ala Wiki... "A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media."

Essentially, a few authors of diaries realized that web-based web page editors coupled with guestbooks could create very nice tools for letting non-tech users add new content to their Web pages. This morphed into creating a system that time-stamped entries and showed them most commonly in a most-recent-first format - the weblog.

As they became more popular, however, blogging tools also evolved at a breakneck pace, to where new entries (articles) would automatically be placed on their own standalone Web pages and also featured on the main page of the site until supplanted by newer material. This was an important evolution because it meant that Weblog tools had morphed, perhaps without anyone noticing, from diaries into true content-management systems.

Imagine blogs as very dynamic websites, where the focus is always on the ‘here and now’, and that require less support in terms of automatically archiving (rollover) content. However, as they are simple ‘web sites’, they require addressing similar SEO and SEM issues. And linked with Opt-in RSS or Atom feeds – they can even potentially replace web sites in many cases today.

However, the real value of blogging isn't the capability of the tool, but the ability for each and every page on the site, each and every article, to invite and display feedback from readers--comments, as they're called in the blogging world. This is a dramatic difference because it changes a monologue, a "brochure," into a dialogue with readers or customers.

Most blogs allow comments, timestamp their articles, show them in newest-to-oldest order, and have an RSS feed--a rudimentary way for people to subscribe to the content of a Weblog in a specifically designed RSS aggregator, rather than forcing them to revisit the site with any sort of frequency.

There's an even better reason why blogs are compelling replacements for Web sites: Search engines positively love Weblogs because they're content-centric and because they're typically updated with great frequency. Put those together and it's true that organizations with Weblogs are far more findable than those with just a Web site.

In Fact….when you start blogger.com, you get a sense of where Google is going with blogs. It defines “A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more. All for FREE.

Blogs are important to Internet marketing and search engines in multiple ways:

Blogs are more than just recent, and a popular fad.... they also starting to influence national politics, with the Federal Elections Commission expected to rule on guidelines for blog use by political parties and their partisans. This has all been rather recent, and I am a bit skeptical of Technordi full claim... but then again there were just two recent reports - one stating that by year end 2006, China would have 60,000,000 blogger by themselves, and another that Podcasts are predicted to top 60,000,000 in five (5) years.

Search engines are always looking to provide relevant, contemporary content, and the categorized, highly interactive nature of blogs (plus their sudden unprecedented adoption in mainstream media as well as in the news media) lends itself perfectly to this calling. Unlike web sites, blogs can republish, often many times a day. The 'style' of writing is more 'interpersonal' (honest and direct) - talking to a 'closer' audience, concentrating on a topic, rather than "selling" to a broad audience. Search engines like Google have stepped up to attempt to keep up with this valuable source of constantly changing published information (as well as being one of the larger online hosters themselves - blogger.com), so links from these sites are indexed by the related big blog search engines.

Any blogs at a central hosting site or those you submit for inclusion with listing services are candidates for search engines... there a hundreds of blog search sites you can submit to that each have a link to your site (if you publish the link and 'host' the URL) -àblog search engines

2. Searching for information in blogs

Blogging, or weblogs, are online sites that keep a running commentary with associated links, updated daily, or sometimes much more often. Over the evolution of search engines, with better technology and methodologies, combined with the need to present more contemporary information, especially that which changes radically (churn), search engines like Google have now gone after blogs as key spider food.

Today there are both major software packages (like www.movabletype.org or radio.useland.com), as well as major hosted and online services (like www.blogger.com or blogspot.com), which you can leverage the names of to help with a Google search for those blogs, using special search commands.

For finding companies that use a package like movabletype, (rather than are hosted by) it's obviously better to search for some label like "powered by movable type" vs. limit the search to items on that site.

By contrast, with the hosted weblogs, you need simply use the 'site:' command to limit to the weblog's URL or domain.

A list of some of the more popular weblogs and the commands you add to your other keywords to restrict the search to that weblog are listed below:

Greymatter blog - Search for "powered by greymatter"

Blogger - Search for "powered by blogger" or add 'site:blogspot.com' to your other keywords

Geeklog - Search for "powered by geeklog"

LiveJournal - Search for 'site:livejournal.com'

Radio Userland - Search for 'site:radio.weblogs.com' OR 'intitle:"radio weblog"

uJournal - Search for 'site:ujournal.org'

Blosxum - Search for "powered by blosxum"

pMachine - Search for "powered by pmachine"

Pitas - Search for 'site:pitas.com'

3. Blogger SEO

In Templates:

· Blog Meta Tags : Put these code above that BlogMetaData code :

To add the Meta Keywords :

To add the Meta Description :

<ArchivePage><meta name=”description” content=”<$BlogPageTitle$> Archive, <$BlogDescription$>” /></ArchivePage>

To add a dynamic Title for your Blogger website, put these code right below the <head> code :

<ArchivePage><title><$BlogPageTitle$> Archive</title></ArchivePage>

· Links (ex: via blogrolling)

In Individual Posts:

· Content

· Header Tags

· Archor Text on Links

· Alt descriptions on image tags

· Technorati tags

· Links back to your web site URLs

In submissions:

· Pinging technorati

· Pinging blog hosts

· Submitting blog to the blog search engines

· Submitting RSS feeds to main search engines

· Pinging link support (ex: blogrolling)

On your web site:

· Links to the blog

· Links to the RSS/Atom Opt-in feeds

4. Technorati Tags - How can Tagging help me with Internet marketing of my blog or web site ?

The most important reason is that Technorati provides the best blog search results, using their blog search engine. Because they specialize in blogs and index roughly 50 million blogs, Technorati is your best bet to find the blog posts you are looking for. Just like any search engine, they index and rank the blogs individually, with the more popular blogs being towards the top.

Major blog-only search companies like Technordi are based on keywords that are 'highlighted' (or rather tagged) on a blogs' page and associated with a 'search index' of links at Technordi, to other registed blog documents that have marked the same word (keyword, with implied shared relevancy). And, similar in ways to Google, they apply some weigh and measure for popularity and number of inbound links and the weight they carry.

Essentially, it provides links and the experience for the user of jumping hopefully to either similar blogs references or in some case to different true associations for the same word (thus music by the 'cars' might be associated with cars (automobiles). On the other hand, Tag spam can be you banned, so only make variants if they are relevant. The result is similar in ways to a self-governing slang dictionary. Words and the nature of meaning or relevancy in our society are based on similar principles.

(a) In most accounts of blogs measuring traffic from the largest referrers, the balance of new traffic shifted to similar blog search engines and traffic measures increased significantly. Blogs that are popular and properly promoted get lots of traffic, some of which will hopefully convert and they receive updates of changes to your blogs (new change notices) regularly (as often as you produce them) ---> i.e. conversion and some flavor of opt-in.

(b) By resubmitting (and at each server engine notification - 'ping'), this essentially registers a request to be re-indexed (or indexes updated) for at each 'notification' that information has changed in your weblog. Blog search engines respond quickly. More links back to your site get registered. --> refresh blog search engine

A Technorati tag link can look something like this:

Creating technorati tags in your blog:

To let Technorati know that you have created a new post with tags in it, in short, you must “ping” the Technorati service. Many blog applications can be configured to do this automatically every time you post a new article. You can also ping Technorati manually (http://www.technorati.com/ping.html) or with a service such as Ping-o-matic (http://pingomatic.com/).

Technorati Bookmarklets by Blog Type: (see about ‘bookmarklets’ in the next section)

- Bookmarklet to create Technorati tags for Blogspot: http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2005/07/technorati-tag-creator-for-multiple.html

- Bookmarklet to create Technorati tags for WordPress blog post: http://freehogg.wordpress.com/2005/12/01/technorati-tags-bookmarklet/ or a Technorati tag button at: http://loucypher.wordpress.com/2005/12/27/technorati-tags-button/

- Bookmarklet to create Technorati tags for Typepad: http://freehogg.wordpress.com/2005/12/01/technorati-tags-bookmarklet/

- Bookmarklet to create Technorati tags for Magical Sheep: http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2005/12/updated-multiple-word-technorati-tag.html

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in Movable Type: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in pMachine: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=%%weblog_permalink%%" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in Greymatter: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url={{pagelink}}" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

Generic Technorati and other blog-index tags:

- Technorati themselves: http://www.aylwardfamily.com/content/200307archive001.asp#1057843126001

- Technorati Tag Generator & Social Bookmarklet: http://www.evilgeniusmarketing.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm

- Oddiophile's Technorati Tags Bookmarklet: http://lifehacker.com/software/technorati/?format=rss

- KeoTag - http://www.keotag.com/tagger.php

- Tag4Writer (for Windows Live Writer) - http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=tag4writer

- Also tag generators for Greasemonkey firefox extensions: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

Technorati tags to create linkage to “Technorati Cosmos”:

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in Movable Type: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in pMachine: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=%%weblog_permalink%%" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

- Bookmarklet code to create Technorati tags in Greymatter: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url={{pagelink}}" target="blank">Link Cosmos</a>

While Technorati maintains a list of all RSS-supporting websites linking to a particular blog URL, it considers inbound links for only the last six months while calculating the Blog Rank.

Some marketers might worry about using Technorati tags on their posts because they link to pages that might be filled with links to their competition. This is very short-sighted and narrow-minded. You have to look at this like Progressive Insurance looks at giving insurance quotes. You are helping your audience find relevant material. This can only build esteem for your brand in their eyes. And it also makes you focus on what you are offering. If a user can be lured away by a mere link, then what you are offering must not be all that remarkable. If what you have to offer is truly valuable, the users will come. Focus on that instead of trying to artificially “trap” users within your site. It is a hard thing for most marketers to do. But as the old saying goes, “If you love something, set it free…

5. Blogs, Technorati Tags, RSS and SEO for Search Engineering

The way all these technologies work together for search engineering may not be directly obvious, but it goes like this:

Blogs :

- Bring new prospects either directly (they find your blog in a blog search)

- Get indexed on hosted blog sites, and those on your site submitted to a blog search engine

- Can normally or with minimal additional effort be one RSS resource you can publish regularly

- Should contain technorati tags to get associated with many other similar reference

Technorati tags:

- Embedded in the blog, get re-submitted for re-indexing at the blog search engine

- By nature of association, drive significant traffic to the blog from other linking with the same word

RSS:

- Produced by Blogs as well as other sources of valuable data

- Well endorsed anonymous "opt-in" to receive ongoing updates - direct prospect relationship and channel

- Influence to RSS search engines that map the link for each feed to your site

- Podcast, a minor variation of standard RSS, with a MP3 (audio) file attached per item in the feed

6. Install notes for a remotely hosted blog, managed by Google’s blogger… beta.blogger.com

Blogger.com is one of the most popular sites that offers free hosting OR allows you to host it on an web server of your choice (for example in a directory accessible via your web address…. And provides very reasonable service and support for NO charge, although premium paid services exist. As a measure of helping you gain a good understanding of the basic information required of you, as well as a get-started quicker personal guide to avoiding some of the little ‘gotcha’s’ in the file-to-path names, I provided this short outline of a full install, including reference to setting up secondary services … all tolled, about a few hours to setup and be publishing:

1) First…. BLOGGER.COM

- ftp server: No 'ftp://' required and do not add trailing '/' sign

- blog url: start with 'http://', but do not end domain name (and opt. subdirectory) with a trailing '/' sign

- ftp path: Do not start with a leading '/' sign, but it's ok to end with one

- blog filename: blogger.html or index.html

- days or posts to display on main page: suggest 7?

- multiple time formats, zones and languages supported

- comments by anyone, only registered users, only members of this blog

- comment moderation available by email notification and control panel approval; comment notification email

- archiving now outdated as it's built into the architecture

- site feed url: start with 'http://', but do not end domain name (and opt. subdirectory) with a trailing '/' sign

- site feed url: sugg. atom.xml

- site feed path: Do not start with a leading '/' sign, but it's ok to end with one

- Blog Posts, Comment and Per-Post Feeds to be either full, short or none

- Custom feed item footer

- BlogSend Address: email where blog is mailed whenever you publish

- mail-to-blogger address: realname.secretname%blogger.com

Used to post by email,

o A VARIETY OF TEMPLATES: All with multi-post dated displays, indiv. pages, header, and sidebar (description, aboutme, links, previous posts, archiving, Atom Opt-in subscribe

- Customizable template with blogxml that looks like html but is case sensitive

- Insert customizations in their server side publishing template

==============

- Added:

- SEO updating to support

- meta dynamic title,

- meta description (from page),

- meta keywords

- Tags to support blogrolling (inter-linking of links sidebar)

- applied with div tag attributed class='blogrollmain'

- Tags to footer to support Technorati functions:

- Search this blog, blogs that link here, view profile

- Add this blog to my Techorati favorites

2) Then onto Technorati.com (note: some activities had to go in sequence… create web site basics w/o template modification….. then go to technorati first and then blogrolling second… then back to blogger to add the stuff from Technorati and blogrolling, plus other SEO updates… and lastly back to the associated web site to put in links to the blog, and also RSS/Atom feeds…. Then begin… train build, respond, create, manage…traffic

- Signup free denoting:

-- first, last, username, email, password

-- Need to create ~ 20 startup keyword sets (most 1-2 words)

-- Code to insert on web page for lookup and favorites

-- Primarily code for technorati support added per-posting by any blog authors…. Or those cleaning up afterwards

3) Blogrolling.com

- name, email, blogroll name and URL of your blog

- add a script, enclosed with a div tag of with parameter class='blogrollmain' and the CSS supporting scripts for a number of nice styles

4) Web site links to blog and feeds

- Simple text link to blog web site

- Simple File links to reference Atom feed vs. RSS feed

with/proper RSS icons

- Changes to web page header to support feed autodiscovery by major browsers:

- For Atom Autodiscovery

- For RSS Autodiscovery

5) Create new postings – compose, tage - publish to web site – Ping all search engines to pickup (avg. 5 min) Submit all feeds to feed, blog and other search engines and advertising services.

N. Support: Bookmarklets

This technology was originally developed as part of the Javascript project at Netscape and it was called 'Javascript: URL". Quietly brewing in small development corners, its grown significantly since Steve Kangas of www.bookmarklets.com coined the term after an idea he got from the Netscape Javascript Guide. What can it do for you? - first the dry definition ala Wiki....

"A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.

Bookmarklets can be saved and used like normal web page bookmarks. Therefore, they are simple "one-click" tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. For example, they can:

· Modify the way a web page is displayed within the browser (e.g., change the font size, background color, etc.).

· Extract data from a web page (e.g., hyperlinks, images, text, etc.).

· Jump directly to a search engine, with the search term(s) input either from a new dialog box, or from a selection already made on a web page.

· Submit the page to a validation service. "

Steve referenced it similarly to start, with a slight variation to the last two items:

· Search more quickly, and in ways not possible with a search engine.

· Navigate in new ways....and more. Over 150 bookmarklets are available (free on his site)

In actuality, both the technology and it's applications are pretty amazing.

· Google Browser Button - IE Only - (www.google.com/options/buttons.html) allow you to hightlight a word on a webpage and with one click go to another Google page with the search results

· Google Search Extensions - IE & Firefox: www.imilly.com/bm.htm - one hot collection - similar functionality as above but with different buttons that do more than lookup in Google search.... one for directory search, one for news search... etc. etc.

· Google Translate - One button language translation of the current web page (calls Google Language functions) at www.microcontentnews.com/resources/translator.htm .... This one worked great but did not install in my IE7 - workaround: right-click their link and save it - then add a favorite named 'Google Translate' and save it to the 'links' folder - then go to edit the properties of that favorite - and paste back in the javascript for the url... it works perfect ....it figures out which language to translate for you .. one other note --> although not mentioned on their site, to install this feature for firefox, right-click on their link and put the 'Google Translate' link under "Bookmark Toolbar"

· Google Blog Search: Firefox and IE - http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2005/09/15/google-blog-search-bookmarklet/ - once installed, from any web page, click on the link or bookmark named 'Google Blog Search' and you will see all the blogs that have links pointing to the web page you are on.... neat !

Regarding Security of running bookmarklets:

· This is normally simple code, a few lines in length, where it's hard to make an error than isn't immediately obvious

· Bookmarklets don't actually install any software code, but rather work entirely within the brower, and do not normally conflict with other programs

· Your hard disk is protected by Javascript security protocols - as no code or files are actually deposited there

· The worse that can happen is some Javascript error

What amazed me further were the possibilites..... only IE seemed to fall short for now.... how's that you say? Essentially, what is going on here is that javascript is being fed into the URL line for favorites or bookmarks, so one apparent main limit would be the size of the maximum url string. And what I found at boutell.com filled in the rest.

Microsoft states the maximum size for a URL in a client, is 2,083 characters, with no more than 2048 characters for the path of the url....testing seems to validate that. So far so good. With Firefox, they claim the location bar can no longer show urls longer than 65,536 characters, but tests were stopped after 100,000 characters had been entered... who knows what the real limits are ! .... Safari was tested up to 80,000 characters..... Opera was tested up to a whopping 190,000 characters with the display of the url still fine !...... Apache topped out at ~4,000 characters..... Microsoft IIS Server states their web server accepts urls up to 16,384 characters (much more than their browser...note)...... and lastly Perl HTTP:Daemon took up to 8,000 characters

With what I've seen to date of the 'minimalist' type of coding..... it amazing to think of the possibilities..... WOW !

O. Support: Call-Me Buttons

Call me - Questions: Let us call you... on our dime.... a graphical button that brings up a very short phone message contact form, primarily to collect the prospect's name, phone number and a very short message (that allows the respondee to at least focus on the prime category (or need) of the to-be-returned phone call.

I became aware of the value of this type of offering after seeing how well IBM has done with it in the recent past. Whereas I've tried many unique forms of followup (including short messages passed to my 2-way Skytel pager), this implementation was easy - anyone can do it. All it took was a a little fiddling between:

1. My cell phone (mine is under Cingular),

2. An existing Hotmail account (or other MSN email account),

3. My Microsoft Messenger client (now updated as "Live Messenger"),

4. A simple formmail-cgi form, and

5. A small "Call Me" graphic

Here is what you do:

Go to your Live Messenger, that should also work with your hotmail or MSN email account, and go to the live Mobile setting area where you can setup most cellular phones to create an alert for email

Live Messenger should already be set up with an email account

You'll have to validate the relationship between Live Messenger and your phone's SMS (short messaging) by sending a short message to the cell phone with a code you enter in LM to validate

You can be sure to filter out only certain messages to be forwarded to the cell phone - within LM's mobile setting, you can specify with exactness to receive message only from certain parties, and only with the message's subject line to be specific - I named my acceptable subject line to only accept message that say "PriorityCallBack-Requested"

Create the Formmail-CGI form with the following characteristics:

The 'recipient' value should be the email address of your special Live Messenger email account

The 'subject' value should be the special subject line that insures the message forwards to your cell phone - as shown above mine was "PriorityCallBack-Requested"

On your website, email form, whatever, insert the small "Call me" graphic (possibly with the line below to say something like "Questions - Let us call you - Responses typically in 3-5 minutes", and associate it (link) to the web URL where your "call me" formmail is located.

P. Support: Linkbait

Need a few new good ways to attract inbound linking to your website? Here's some great 'linkbait' ideas:

· Build a "101" (one hundred and one") ideas list for just about anything - these are always a bit hit and sometimes becomes referenced to the search engines as an Internet 'authority' site - people love linking to these

· Create a "10 Easy Tips to Help You....." document

· Create extensive resource lists for a topic

· Create a list of the Top 10 Myths for a category

· Create a list of Guides - to the top gurus for those areas of interest

· Submit an article to leading Industry news service

· Syndicate a press release

· Create and publish RSS feeds for the hottest related topics to your site

· Start and blog

· Developing product reviews

· Growing List of case studies

· The latest industry news summary from your company's point of view...

· Create a catalog of related articles... on any 'related' topic

· The Latest specials

· Hot related topics

Q. Google – Do you Speak it and understand its’ value ?

The world today is all about information, and often power is in the hands of those who can get it,,, quickest...most relevant. In my daily searches, clients are always amazed by my ability to find almost anything very quickly. That's because I use a key subset of extended commands along with Google's simple interface, typically reducing my search a minimum of 10 to 1 (often more like 50 to 1).

Google seems so simple, that one doesn't normally think about how, as a search engine (vs. a searchable subject index like Yahoo), Google associates (categorizes/indexes) search terms to the most relevant web pages, competitive ads, forums, news feeds, newsletters, blogs, feeds, etc. on its' search results pages.

Without knowing a few special Google commands, the subset of pages that Google displays in response to any query is very limited, due to the sheer volume of sites that respond to a broad query. In addition, Google as well as other search engines, don't also index and rank all the pages they scan.

Ok, Here are the "NEED TO KNOW' Google language commands:

THE BASICS: EVERYONE SHOULD ALREADY KNOW:

1. The " * " symbol represents ONLY SINGLE whole word wildcards, where 'stemming' (branching) is not supported

2. All Syntax is case insensitive

3. There is an Implicit logical 'AND' when using multiple keywords,

4. Multiple Keyword statement require quotes around the terms, to filter responses in the specific order,

5. There is a 10 keyword limit

6. Google is Boolean based: '(', ')', '|', or, '-keyword' {=not}, '+keyword' {required words in the result set}... are all supported command parameters

WHAT GOOGLE POWERSEARCHERS AND STUDENTS KNOW: (on the search engine command line)

· "site:WebSite" --> Selects at 'com' or 'domain.com' level, filtering inclusive or exclusive results (using the '-' prefix).

Note: because of Google's implicit 'AND', site:com OR site:edu filters for either vs. searching for sites that are both edu AND com)... used in combination with other query keywords

· "intitle:keyword" --> finds keyword in title or page heading of documents

· "inurl:keyword" --> Best used for a 'theme' search often expressed at the organization filing level; Alternately used for filtering domain acceptance

· "related:WebSite" --> Returns 'Category' of related responses

· ("May * 2002" | "May 2002" | 05/02 | "05/*/02") --> Sample of simple data range for all in May 2002

· "filetype:ppt" --> Sample showing Filters for only Powerpoint file weblinks; Alternately interesting is 'pdf' and 'torrent'

· "intext:KeyWord" --> Search only body text (no links or title)

· "Cache:WebSiteURL" --> Non permanent records - sometimes current - like memory

WHAT ALL GOOD SEO/SEMs KNOW - MORE COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

· "link:WebSite-2Dir-Level" --> Shows inbound links to domain or directory level files: NOTE: This is a solitary command

· "inanchor:KeyWord" --> Descriptive text of text links (URL references), alt text for graphical links

· "inanchor:oreilly -inurl:oreilly -site:edu" --> Sample to find sites linking to oreilly.com, that are not themselves on oreilly.com, and no edu sites. Thus in addition to finding valuable anchor text, it can be used to filter normal 'link:' results

· "info:WebSiteURL" --> Full disclosure of Search Engine cache, URL specific backlinks, Pages 'related' to the URL and ALL KNOWN pages that contain the URL

· "daterange:startdate-endate" --> startdate as well as endate are all numeric, as Julian date days

§ Note1: these dates may not be accurate as they are not orig. pub dates but when Google recognized the page

§ Note2: this is not the alternate "Julian" data format of YYDDD

§ Converters between Gregorian and Julian date (note: Julian days start at noon, vs. midnight) include:

§ http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html and

§ http://www.tesre.bo.cnr.it/~mauro/JD/ ... or use the

§ FaganFinder Google Interface (www.faganfinder.com/engines/google.shtml

· Advanced search offer more, but with some restrictions: examples include safe search, occurances, exclusive site not, preset dateranges, complex and/or groupings, URL-specific backlinks & related

· stocks: rphonebook: bphonebook: phonebook:name --> (phonebook: John Doe CA) return references to stocks owned, residential phonebook lookup... all semi-known commands

Ok, you are now a good search expert if you can take full advantage of these commands. Now you'll know how

1. Using multiple instance of 'intitle:' and 'inanchor:' to find relevant 'tight' matches (in the document title or in the words linking to the target), combined with or without

2. Using 'inurl:' that often relates to 'theme' and/or

3. Using 'related:' is a good thing to see Google's categorizing related websites/URLs

4. Using simple date 'templates' limits display to year, month, week, day (and must be 'or'ed 4 ways)

5. Using 'filetype' would be great for find powerpoint, pdf, xls, xml related files

6. Using 'site:' or '-site:' is very helpful to limit out broad (ex: edu) or be specific to domain level (i.e. domain category or domain)

7. Betcha didn't know that the search engine had a built in residential and business phone lookup command ?

That's just too powerful !!

Think this stuff was interesting ? - It should have been... so simple, yet so powerful... these few commands

R. Support – Toolbars for Search Engineering (consumers) and SEO – SEM – Web e-Business

During my investigation, I uncovered two toolbar add-ons, as well as a direct way you can do this. But more importantly for everyone sake, one of the toolbars has GREAT functionality with a host of problems that plague ALL INTERNET USERS as well as SEO/SEMs.

· How many times would you like to temporarily increase the size of screen fonts? - a Biggie !

· How many times does a page have bad fonts that make it hard to read ?

· The same goes for BAD colors, how about clearing it out for a moment ?

· How about turning the images off for just a page to see the text ?

· Turning on/off Javascript, Java and Flash as needed can reveal a lot !

· Especially in web design, immediate clearing of all caches !

· On the fly, masquerading as Googlebot, or switching bw. multi-versions of IE, fox. etc.

Overall, a very HELPFUL tool, especially with the font sizing and ability to flip to default fonts and remove colors - from poor designers... For more on this tool, continue reading...

Back to just masquerading for a while in this thread...

· Method 1: In firefox window, type "about:config", and scroll or type in the filter-find "general.useragent.extra.firefox", and double-click that entry. Type in "Googlebot 2.1". Now queries from that browser identify themselves as coming from Googlebot. To change back, follow the same procedures, but right click on the "general.useragent.extra.firefox" entry and select "reset".

· Method 2: Firefox has their own 'user agent switcher' add-on (former project was uabar). Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/59/ and install the firefox add-in. Restart the browser (not machine) to start it.

§ Firefox- Tools- Add-ons to administer

§ Firefox- Tools- UserAgentSwitcher- Chooose bw. different user-agents

§ Firefox- Tools- UserAgentSwitcher- Options-Options Option to Add/Delete

· Method 3: Download PrefBar at prefbar.mozdev.org/. This was another spinoff of the firefox project 'uabar'

§ Firefox- Tools- Add-ons to administer

§ Firefox- PrefBar OR F8 or Firefox- View- to turn on the toolbar (most helpful)

§ From the toolbar, you can toggle the web INTERFACE on/off for fonts, colors, images, java, flash, clear all caches, save page, or change user-agents.

§ To Add Font+ and Font- and/or to add Googlebot as a user-agent, select the 'customize' feature from the PrefBar toolbar or drop-down menu:

§ To add Font+ and Font-, select them from the left column and move to the right

§ To add Googlebot, select 'user-agent' in the right column and the edit button, then add the following entry::

§ Label: Googlebot is fine

§ Value: one of the following:

Googlebot/1.0 (googlebot@googlebot.com http://googlebot.com/)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Googlebot/2.1
Googlebot 2.1

BOTTOM LINE: For general users and SEO/SEM specialists, "PrefBar" is a toolbar with real user functionality... just one click away for:

· The Font+ and Font- : What a relief for screen with small print

· Font : Flips back and forth between designer and standard system fonts for characters

· Color: Toggles on/off ; Refresh screen or move to next (ever had fonts unreadable against a background ?)

· Images: Toggles on/off ; Refresh screen or move to next - researchers, seo's

· Javascript, Java, Flash : Toggles on/off : much faster page loading, interesting to see the world without it<