Q and A: How do I improve my site's visibility?

Dear Kalena...

Have had my site up for at least a month now and have had ~50 unique hits from a link posted on a forum, it still does not show on any search engines. Any ideas how to improve my visibility?

Cheers
Sean

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sean

Easy: Get. Your. Own. Domain. Honestly, how can you expect search engines to take you seriously if you use a free site provided by your ISP?

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Q and A: Why has my blog PageRank dropped to zero?

Dear Kalena...

I have several blogs and sites. All of them do pretty well with all search engines. Lately I have noticed that my page rank on a particular blog dropped from 4 to 0. Also no backlinks show up in Google, although they do show up on other search engines. I tried adding keywords to help. It hasn't. What is Google doing?

Michelle

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Michelle

Google's not doing anything. You shouldn't take any notice of the little green PageRank bar in your Google Toolbar. It is a very inaccurate approximation of your true PageRank score, which is only known to Google. The little green bar is also anywhere from three to nine months out of date, because it only gets updated sporadically to reflect Google's current algorithm. Quite often, the toolbar gets a glitch in it and shows a zero PageRank score for every site, even Google! So just ignore it, or better still, switch it off.

A more accurate measure of how your blog is performing on Google is to check your search rankings for your target keywords. Have these changed recently? If so, that could indicate a problem. Google will never show you all your site's backlinks. Yahoo does a much better job of showing those if you're interested. If you still suspect a problem with your blog in Google, use their Webmaster Tools to verify your site and investigate potential indexing problems.

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Q and A: What are RSS feeds and why should I use them?

Dear Kalena...

I am working with web project using jsp. I came to know about the RSS Feeds. In my search for RSS Feeds I got your mail id. I think you can help me in this. Can you explain to me when and where we should use this RSS Feeds? What is the importance for this in a web project? Please explain to me briefly.

Majo

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Majo

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. According to Wikipedia's definition, RSS is a format used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link to the feed into the reader program. These programs allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and read them or display them on your own site. RSS feeds are usually delivered in XML format.

RSS feeds are useful because they allow you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. They are beneficial to a web site owner because they provide instant, free content for your site that is automatically updated without you having to lift a finger. You can subscribe to feeds in any topic of interest to you or of relevance to your site.

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Food for Thought

It's not often we web workers think about what would happen if we died unexpectedly or became seriously ill. I mean, it's not a pleasant thing to dwell on is it? But if the unthinkable were to happen, have you thought about whether you would be missed online?

In her article Will We Know it When You Leave?, Kim Krause-Berg poses this very question. Do you have a community of friends online that would miss you if you disappeared? Are you so active in forums or chat rooms that people would wonder where you were? Would they become concerned enough to try and contact your friends and family?

I recall an incident about 3 years ago when I was a moderator at the ihelpyou forums, when one of the more active moderators stopped posting for over a week and didn't answer any emails or private messages we sent him. It was such unusual behavior for this particular person that we all became worried and began posting in other forums in search of him.

One moderator took it upon herself to track down his private details and phone his family. Turned out that the missing moderator had had some personal issues to deal with and had deliberately taken himself off on a private holiday with no phone, no laptop and no Internet access. He returned a week later to a warm reception at the forums, feeling overwhelmed by the concern expressed and sheepish for not telling his online friends of his plans.

It just goes to show that your online influence may extend further than you think. Those virtual friendships you make might just prove to be solid real-life relationships that last for years, so don't under-estimate them. More importantly, think about your online footprints. As Kim says in her article: if something happens to you or you choose to spend less time on the Internet, what sort of legacy will you leave behind? Food for thought.

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Q and A: How do we stop our domains from competing with each other for search rankings?

Dear Kalena...

We recently constructed an optimised e-commerce site for a customer which initially had some great ranking results on the primary domain name (a .com) which we wanted to promote for a global market as a brand name. In the process we also picked up several keyword related domain names and pointed these in via A-record changes.

Unfortunately we now seem to have a pendulum effect going on between the non-primary domains and the primary ... one swings up Google the rankings, then the next, whilst the primary domain name raises its head occasionally but generally isn't ranking where it should be. We're obviously want to remove the secondary domain names from the index so that we score simply on the primary and are concerned that this activity could penalise us for duplicate site content ... am sure the answer is pretty simple, would appreciate a point in the right direction rather than us poke about in a 'try it and see' fashion!

Many thanks in anticipation
Rob

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Rob

It sounds to me like your question is actually : "How do we stop our domains from competing with each other for search rankings?"

It all comes down to the way you've set up your secondary domains. For starters, I don't know why you needed keyword-related domains unless it is for advertising reasons. You haven't sent me the domain info so I can only guess, but it sounds as though you have the same site content duplicated on multiple domain names and each of them is being indexed by Google. Effectively, this means your domains are competing with each other for rankings on the same search queries!

What you should have done (and should do immediately) is to park your secondary domains on the same IP as your primary domain so that search engines see the domains as a single site, index a single site and all your rankings and link popularity get attributed to your primary domain.

If you've got this set up correctly, when you view the Google cache of any of the domains, it will show your primary domain in the cached results page e.g."This is Google's cache of [primary url appears here]" or any parked domain entered in the browser URL field will automatically switch to your primary domain. Instructions for setting up multiple domain parking correctly can be found in this back issue of HighRankings Advisor.

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Q and A: Is my site in the Google Sandbox?

Dear Kalena...

I have owned a site of more than 70 pages for 1 month. Even Google indexed a part of them and I submitted to other directories, but I have no visitors (health.com.md). Where is my mistake? Does this mean that I am in Google sandbox? Thank you all for your time.

Oleg

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Oleg

Google last indexed your site on 18 April so at least some pages of the site are being indexed. If the site is only a month old, then it is highly likely that you are experiencing Google's "sandbox", more accurately known as the Aging Delay, which can effectively make new sites invisible in Google for up to 9 months.

I see that you have a Google verification meta tag in the site, so you have likely uploaded an XML sitemap and verified your site in Google's Webmaster Tools. You should check your site's statistics here regularly to ensure it is being fully indexed and also track the Google search queries the site is being found for.

Once your site is released from the aging delay, you will start to see the number of search queries increase and your traffic will soon follow.

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Two business tools I use every day

Ever take for granted the software or online services that you use every day? It's sometimes easy to overlook the impact such tools can have on your business. There are a couple of software tools that consistently impress me, every time I use them, despite the fact that I use them every single day.

The first of these is ProposalKit, which takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client proposals. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information ProposalKit will get you on your way to writing your proposal immediately. ProposalKit provide the structure, layout, design, instructions and examples to get you well on your way before you even get started. What I like best about ProposalKit is the range of ProposalPack templates you can buy as add-ons to suit certain industries, such as Real Estate, Web Design, Consulting, SEO, Hosting etc. I just love this product.

The second one is Freshbooks. This little gem is an online invoicing, project management and time tracking service that saves you bundles of time and gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. We use it to invoice all our clients online and it can even be set up to automatically invoice recurring clients every month. It also has built in timesheets and project management tools so that all your staff can use the stop-watch to time the various tasks they do for certain clients and then bill those clients automatically at the end of the month based on the hours logged in the timesheet. I've raved about this product so much that they put my testimonial on their home page!

Anyway, just thought I'd share these with you and acknowledge the developers of these tools again to say thank you for making my life easier!

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Q and A: Why won't Google index my web page?

Dear Kalena...

Hi, I ran across your blog while searching for help, and I'm wondering if you could answer a question. I made a web page for my wife's photography biz (http://polkaphotos.com). Google last crawled the index page on Oct 29, 2006. I've done some major overhauling to help with search terms, aesthetics, etc.

The site has Flash, but I've run it through a text browser (Lynx) and everything seems to display okay. I've submitted a sitemap, verified through Google. What do I have to do to get Google to go back and re-index the index page?

Michael

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Michael

I've had a look today and the site was last indexed by Googlebot on 13 March so it is being indexed. But I doubt it will rank very well for target keywords. Why? Because apparently your "overhaul" included retro spam tactics that go directly against Google's Webmaster Guidelines!

What on earth made you think that stuffing a web page full of keywords would make it more attractive to search engines or users? Those paragraphs of meaningless keywords at the bottom of the page will do absolutely nothing except attract red flags and ranking penalties from Google, not to mention distracting visitors from your wife's lovely photography.

If you want the site to be taken seriously by both search engines and visitors, I strongly suggest ditching those out-dated spam tactics. Replace them with a paragraph or two of appealing, descriptive text about your wife's photography. You'll find that many of your target keywords will be integrated into the copy naturally, without becoming meaningless, repetitive drivel.
Meanwhile, thanks for providing our Retro Spam Tactic of the Week!

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Q and A: What can I do if I think my AdSense account was cancelled unfairly?

Dear Kalena...

I was recently banned from AdSense for 'invalid clicks' however I have never clicked my own ads, I have emailed AdSense however I seem to get the same generic response each time. It was a great way for me to make some extra cash each month and they have just snatched that from me with no explanation. Is there anything I can do? Also do I still get a check for clicks that were not 'invalid'?

Thank you for your help

Ross

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ross

From what I understand, you generally receive a warning email from Google long before your AdSense account is cancelled. Did you receive this? That is your opportunity to contact the AdSense team, claim innocence and ask them to review their data. If you failed to do that, then you could try contacting them now but you should gather information (from your log files etc.) to support your case for unfair account cancellation.

The invalid click data Google collects from AdSense is pretty accurate - my guess is they would probably have witnessed at least 2 clicks on your ads from your own IP address or one in the same direct vicinity. Either that or they have discovered your use of pop-ups or perhaps your site was taking part in a traffic exchange program where people are awarded points or cash for clicking on sites or ads. Review the AdSense Program Policies relating to invalid clicks to see if your site was breaking any of the rules.

If none of the above applies to your site, or you didn't receive the warning email, I suggest contacting Google directly to appeal their decision. Google actually encourages AdSense account holders who believe their accounts have been unfairly cancelled to contact them.

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Q and A: How do I ensure the same pages on two different domains are indexed?

Dear Kalena...

I am starting out with two domains of the same name so I get international and local visitors sent by search engines. Quite often people look for local sites and local engines only list domains within that country's regional domain. So I have mydomain.com and mydomain.co.uk.

My problem is how to ensure that all pages are indexed. If I simply forward from .co.uk to .com then only .com is indexed. I could mirror both sites, but I'm not sure that works because I read on your blog that Google skips identical content sites?

Many Thanks,
Henri

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Henri

You're right that regional search engines and directories often only list country-specific domains and you have the right idea registering the local domain as well as the .com version. But there is no need to have both domains indexed if they contain identical content.

Best solution is to park the .co.uk site on the same IP as the .com so that you have a single site with two domains pointing to it. You should stick to promoting the .com of the site in all your online submission efforts, except for regional marketing/advertising and the regional engines that require a country-specific TLD. In those cases, you should submit your .co.uk domain which points or forwards to the .com content. You can set it up so that the .co.uk domain actually switches to the .com domain in the browser bar if anyone types it in or clicks on a link from the .co.uk site.

The reason you should only promote one domain to be indexed is to avoid any duplicate content issues and to ensure your site's link popularity isn't divided between two sites (which can happen if you are promoting multiple domains and other sites start to link to both). If you use domain forwarding as described above and anyone links to your .co.uk domain, it's my understanding that the link popularity gets passed on to your .com domain.

If you decide to continue hosting two separate sites containing the same content, it is likely that search engines will try to determine which domain is more important, index it and ignore the other completely. Why let the search engines determine which domain you want promoted?

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Q and A: Can you give advice to an SEO Beginner?

Dear Kalena...

I am glad to know you as one of the SEO Consultants, I am SEO beginner and want to learn more tips on seo.

I want you to suggest, comment or whatever advice to improve my learnings in SEO, please see my website www.webdesignervisayas.tk and please comment and suggest.

Cartujano

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Cartujano

In terms of learning SEO, there are almost unlimited resources. You can read articles, blogs, forums, e-books and sites about the subject and here is a good starting point for those. You should also practise and tweak your skills as much as possible on as many web sites as you can.

If you are interested in training options, you can take a course such as those we offer at Search Engine College. David Temple has authored a very detailed article about the various Search Marketing Training options available which will be appearing in the next issue of Search Marketing Standard magazine, so make sure you catch that.

With regards to your site, I'm sorry but I don't provide free site assessments. These are available via my hourly consulting rates (contact me for more details). What I will say is that any site that has a META refresh embedded in the home page and a pop-up ad on the redirect page is more than likely going to send a big red flag to search engines.

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Blog Break

Heading down South to a family funeral today and not back till the weekend so there'll be no blog posts until Sunday. Make sure you miss me.

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Q and A: How do I push offensive content about me off the front page of Google?

Dear Kalena...

On my personal Google page I have noticed some defamatory posts about me from an obscure chat room I was involved in 5 years ago. I'm being accused of posting there now as someone else. I have contacted the webmaster of the relevant site but he refuses to delete the offending posts. Any idea how to adjust my 1st page Google index to push these ugly things out of the way?

Thanks David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

That's not too difficult. If the information is offensive and/or defamatory, you can always threaten the Webmaster with legal action unless they remove it from their site.

If the Webmaster does not believe the information warrants removing and you have no legal options (e.g. the information is protected by freedom of speech or similar), you will just have to optimize some pages on your site for your own name and/or build some links from popular sites to your site using your name in the link text to ensure you rank higher than the offensive content. If you have an unusual surname, this should be easily achieved.

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New Improved Search Engine College Affiliate Program Launched

Finally, after months of searching for the perfect Affiliate software that did everything we wanted it to, we have launched the brand spanking new Search Engine College Affiliate Program.

We finally chose JROX Affiliate Manager software (JAM) for the job after hearing good things about it and reading reviews on Tucows etc. We've spent the past two weeks integrating it into our site, testing, tweaking and testing some more and it's finally ready!

Why JAM? Well mainly because it's a super powerful affiliate program that includes follow up marketing tools and because it integrates with both PayPal and our 3rd party payment gateway 2Checkout. The features of JAM are pretty impressive, as are their groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying affiliate referrals and commissions.

So what's on offer in our affiliate program? For starters, Search Engine College affiliates earn up to $179 per conversion. That's right! You earn 15% commission from every course registration that results from your referral and you get a $2 bonus just for signing up.

You don't need to be a student at SEC to become an affiliate. Becoming an affiliate is FREE. All you need to do is promote our search engine marketing courses on your site and watch the dollars roll in! No excuses - you can sign up here.

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New profile pic

I've uploaded a new photo for my profile. Yes, I know the previous one was nicer but it was taken about 10 years ago. I got a new haircut today (and lost about 4 inches!) so I thought it was a good a time as any for an updated pic.

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Q and A: Which is the better domain to promote via search engines?

Dear Kalena...

I have a favor to ask you. I hope to launch the revised version of my site shortly and I'm re-considering the URL to submit to the Search Engines. Would my site be better served under the name of:

WorldTradeDirectory.com (Google Search Results for keywords: "world trade directory": 101,000,000 )

or

WWWorldTrade.com (Google Search Results for keywords: "world trade": 701,000,000 )

I'm just not sure if the "WW" before "World" will either help or hurt its spiderability if someone just types "world trade" in searching.

Thanks !
Jorge

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Jorge

When it comes to promoting your domain name, you should always choose the one that is most logical from a user perspective. I'm not sure if you've bought either or both of these domains but to me, the first one is the only choice. It's much easier to remember and to type. The second one is just silly.

Here's a heads up: there is very little search engine advantage to having your keywords in your domain name these days. If you insist on using them, they should be separated via hyphens e.g. world-trade-directory.com because search engines can only distinguish individual keywords if they are separated by hyphens.

But that causes usability issues, so what some people do is buy both hyphenated and un-hyphenated versions of a domain and park the unhyphenated one on the same IP address as the hyphenated version, while only promoting the hyphen one via search engines. I personally wouldn't bother with any of it. If any search algorithm advantage of having keywords in your domain still exists, it's miniscule. Choose the first domain option above and keep it simple.

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Q and A: Why does my site rank in MSN and Yahoo but not Google?

Dear Kalena...

My web site www.narenmunna.com appears for some keywords in MSN and Yahoo in the first page itself, but not for the same in Google. What is the reason?

Webmaster Naren

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Naren

Simple. Your site has no link popularity and zero PageRank right now. Is it less than 9 months old? If so, then the site is probably still suffering from the Google Aging Delay. Even if it isn't, then you'd better work on your link popularity pronto.

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Q and A: Should I pause my AdWords campaign on weekends?

Dear Kalena...

I have another question. I get quite lot of clicks on my Adwords campaign during the weekend but I've never made a sale during this time or even Mondays. Do you think it would be a good idea to time adwords by pausing the campaign during the weekends?

I am looking for the best way to save, my cost is sky rocketing ;-)

many thanks
Damien

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Damien

Yes, if you've tracked your sales for a long period and your campaign never converts on a weekend, it seems logical to pause it during that time. Many of my clients pause their campaigns over the weekend.

Regarding your low conversion rate, if you are using the Google Content Network, often the quality of clicks and conversion rate is much lower than the search network. Try switching the content network off and see if that improves things. Also, make sure you use targeted landing pages for your destination URLs. These pages should be super-targeted to the keyword/phrase that triggered the ad. This usually boosts conversions.

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Q and A: Should I use an affiliate program instead of PPC to generate sales?

Dear Kalena...

I am fed up spending hundreds ($350!!!) per week in Google/Yahoo PPC for only 2 sales per week, week after week. My Adwords are getting more expensive, it is ridiculous.

My task for this week is to develop an affiliate program. I have installed software to manage the affiliates and I will contact as many relevant blogs and websites I can to offer them $100 per sales. Which strategy do you reckon? Using an affiliate network? Which one? is $100 (25%) ok? Do I have to give a bonus at the registration ($10 ok?). Do you have some advice to attract affiliates? What can I write in the letter I will email to them that will motivate them to register? If you already have received some interesting letters asking you to be affiliate, would it be possible to forward them to me?

Damien

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Damien

That's a lot of questions for a single cup of coffee! Here are my suggestions:

a) Try bidding on less-competitive keywords/phrases in your PPC campaigns. Research and focus on the laser-targeted 2, 3 and even 4 word phrases. These are cheaper and generally convert better.

b) Review all your ads and your keyword matching options to see if you can improve their quality score and performance. Your ad headings and copy should be laser-focused on the keywords you are bidding on.

c) Are you sending all PPC visitors to a single destination URL? Try developing targeted landing pages for each keyword theme or product and send ad clickers to these instead. Landing pages should include your keyword phrase in the heading and copy of the page and lead visitors directly to your conversion goal without any competing navigation or distractions.

Regarding your affiliate program:

a) I don't use an affiliate network as such, so I can't recommend any in particular. We have just upgraded to JROX Affiliate Manager software for our Search Engine College affiliate program and it seems to be extremely powerful and effective so far. It does involve a lot of setting up and customization, but it pretty much runs itself after that.

b) Regarding your affiliate commission - you could either have a percentage of sales (somewhere between 5 and 25% is common) or a flat fee per sale. Depending on the affiliate program you use, you could even set it up as a pay per click commission where affiliates receive a small fee for every visitor they send your way. Whatever makes the most sense for your product and market.

c) It's up to you whether you you offer a sign-up bonus. It's not that common. We offer a $2 bonus just to get people started, but again, it depends on your market.

d) Regarding attracting new affiliates, you really need to convince them they will make money by promoting your product/service. Ideally, you should have a product that sells well online and is of high quality. Make sure you have a lot of marketing tools for affiliates to choose from (banners, links, buttons etc.) and a very detailed list of features and benefits they can refer to in their own marketing efforts.

In your pitch email, you should give potential affiliates a dollar figure they will make from selling just one of your products so they can get an idea of the potential income they could expect. I personally wouldn't cold-call to find affiliates, unless the product is unbelievably tailored to their site content. Instead you should create banners and promotional pages about your affiliate program and try to attract people to them. A PPC campaign to attract affiliates or leads generally converts better than one to attract sales.

Once you've got some affiliates in place, make sure you give them a very easy way of tracking referrals and commissions and keep in regular contact with them with ideas for how to promote your product/service.

Good luck!

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Q and A: Why are my Google searches defaulting to German?

Dear Kalena...

Sometime ago, my google searches have been returning results as if my geographical location is in a German(?) speaking country. I don't know what happened or how to correct it. Pls. advise.

Thank you,
Ruben

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ruben

Google tries to customize search results to a searcher's personal preferences or regional location. You don't say where you are located, but I assume it is NOT in a German speaking country. When you enter a search query, Google will try to determine your location by IP address, search query content and/or search URL used e.g. google.com.au or google.com etc.

It might be that your ISP is assigning you an IP address that suggests to Google you are based in Germany. Make sure you go to www.google.com to conduct your searches and if it redirects you to another version of Google, click on the small link on the bottom right that says "Go to Google.com".

Have you (or someone using your computer) used Google Advanced search or Toolbar search recently? This may have changed your default search preferences. Try re-setting those by going to the Advanced Search page. Try dumping your browser's cache and temporary Internet files too. It might be a caching issue.

If none of this works, it might be some type of spyware that has invaded your system. Best get a reliable spyware removal tool such as AdAware or Spyware Doctor.

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Gmail Paper Fools Some

Google launched a brand new service yesterday. Or did they? Gmail Paper was pitched as Google's new service for net-phobic individuals who prefer to keep hard copy versions of all their emails. The service offered to print hard copies of any and all emails stored in your Gmail account and deliver them via post to your door, all for free. Here's some blurbs from the promotional page:

"The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica..."

"Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier."

The April Fool's gag cleverly played on the current high profile of global warming and environmental issues by promoting a service that was obviously detrimental to both.

When I first read about Gmail Paper from within my Gmail account, I was quite alarmed and it took about 30 seconds for the joke to kick in. But judging by this Google search for "Gmail Paper", a lot of people were fooled into thinking it was a real service.

Cute Google, very cute. In other April Fools news, Matt Cutts' blog may have been hacked.

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