I last made an entry on this page:  01/13/2005 11:16 PM

SERP University SEO Blog

 Our Climb up the SERP's (Search Engine Result Pages)
 or
 Search Engine Optimization as close to real time as it gets

Website Design Basics

From our resource library, A comprehensive list of website do's and don'ts:

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Don't build a "canned" website. Don't be tempted by those offers from a hosting company or other source to build a website in a few minutes.  These "canned" websites allow little flexibility and most only allow you to enter text into a field. Likewise, don't be tempted to use the templates included with Microsoft FrontPage. Either one of these websites will adversely impact your credibility. They look like just what they are -- a minimal effort! Would you send a flyer out to a business prospect written in crayon by a six year old? Why build a website that is the equivalent of a crayon flyer? A tacky website will lose you prospects!

Don't have a one page website that looks like a flyer. You have seen those type pages with flashing banners, scrolling marquees, mission statements, flashy resumes, animated "click here" buttons and repeated exclamation points.  What better way to tell the prospect you are offering nothing but hype? Your opportunity to make a great first impression is limitless on the internet, why destroy that opportunity with one tacky page? Is this the image you really want to project?"

Read the entire article Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility

Blog Influence

If you click this LINK you will see 724 Leads now has 19 pages  listed on Inktomi/Hotbot/MSN. That is because the regular spider called Slurp finally got around to visiting us on 8/17/03 -- 6 weeks after the site went live which is about par for the course. I checked this and found out about it several days ago and it wasn't till this evening that I noticed something unusual. The home page or index page is crawled every 48 hours by the PFI ( Pay for Inclusion) spider. It doesn't follow ANY links and will ONLY index the page you paid for. Those folks that do a PFI on their sitemap thinking the spider will then follow links to each and every one of their pages are in for a surprise because it ain't happening. You just threw your money away. By the way, Marketleap has several neat tools, one of which is Search Engine Saturation. My Search Engine Saturation report shows the above mentioned 18 pages in Inktomi, 1 page in AlltheWeb, none in Alta Vista and 81 pages in Google.

Now for the part I missed originally.  Everyone talks about how BLOGS can improve your serach engine rankings and increase the frequency that the spiders come to visit. All the pages show a date of 8/17 except for THIS page and the raw blog. These 2 pages were updated on 8/24 and 8/22 respectively. I don't check my web logs for the individual spider visits but it certainly looks like these 2 blog pages are being updated in the SERP's on a more frequent basis.

Homegrown, 100% Organic Success Story

Website Design Enhances Search Engine Results - A Real Life Example from my Portfolio

How many websites have you been on lately that just piled one hyped up statement on top pf the previous one? I get sick to death of those visits which just completely waste my time! I will guarantee you this visit is not a waste of time because I will show you the results my customers are attaining.

On August 4, 2003, I completed consulting work on a real estate lead generation website which had been started only seven days earlier called Doe Run Properties located in Paris, TX.  It was a fairly simple site of only 5 pages.  The Doe Run Owners had purchased my Sales Leads For Pennies e-book and had requested a minimal amount of additional help. They chose to target the real estate keyword phrases "north texas property" and "paris texas property".  You folks in the real estate business will appreciate how tough the competition is on those two keyword phrases. The two thumbnails below show a Number One and Number Five listing for our Top Two Keyword Phrases on Google as of August 25, 2003. "Paris texas property" is number one out of 271,000 results and "north texas property" is number 5 out of 1,390,000 results.  3 weeks and they have 2 Top Listings and all five pages are indexed! Click on the thumbnail images to see a larger picture of the exact Google Search Engine results for these two searches.

I spoke to the owners a few days ago and they told me their previous advertising had focused on newspaper ads. A small commercial ad in the Dallas Morning News ran over $200 for five days.  Their Total Cost for their website was less than $400 - including my nominal consulting fee! Monthly recurring website fees are less than $10. I have never had a huge advertising budget and Sales Leads For Pennies focuses on saving money wherever possible. This is a perfect example of a real estate lead generation website which is going to be a huge asset for Doe Run Properties in the months and years to come.

08/21/03

MSN Search Engine Manipulation - The Whole Truth

All the search engine experts are speculating about how the major search engines are going to align. Yahoo bought this second tier engine and Google is doing this  and that and Microsoft doesn't have its' own search engine to display results from, So where will it all end? One thing is for certain, for the Inktomi/MSN/Hotbot results to be viable and relevant, they are going to have to change their algorithms so their search engine results are not so easily manipulated. I told you in my last entry that I had left the term "'sales lead generation" out on purpose to show how easily the results could be changed. Here are the latest results. 

sales lead generation                         36 Up 35 Positions
mortgage lead                                     Not in top 30   No Change
insurance sales lead                           3  No Change
health insurance sales lead               1  Up 1
life insurance sales lead                     2   Up 4 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead                       18 Up 3 Positions
life insurance lead                             20 No Change
mortgage insurance lead                 21 No Change

08/16/03

How easy is it to manipulate MSN/Inktomi/Hotbot??

I added 3 words back into my title and you can see the results:

sales lead generation                         71 Down 23 Positions
mortgage lead                                     Not in top 30   No Change
insurance sales lead                           3  No Change
health insurance sales lead               1  Up 1
life insurance sales lead                     2   Up 4 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead                       21 Up 42 Positions
life insurance lead                             20 Up 31 Positions
mortgage insurance lead                 21 Up 6

The MSN/Inktomi/Hotbot listings are driven by the META tags as this illustrates.  Adding just 3 words - health, life and mortgage BACK to the Title tag resulted in these huge SERP gains.  It really is simple and I explain it in even more detail in my e-book Sales Leads for Pennies. Notice the big drop in the 'sales lead generation' search term?  I purposely left it out of the Title tag to see what would happen.  It is prominently listed in both the keyword and description listing.  For the next index, I have added it back into the title to see what will happen to the results. Manipulating the Inktomi Search Engine Results this easily is actually a bad thing. People have taken advantage of the algorithm because it is so easy to figure out and manipulate to their advantage. The result? Databases filled with spam and useless search engine results.  This is THE reason Google is the most popular search engine. It is much harder to manipulate results.

Advice with a Grain of Salt

If you read the the thread on IHelpYou, you will see that the respondents recommended I shorten my Meta Title, Description and Keywords. They actually told me the META Tags as they stood might even cause me to be penalized.  I figured what the heck and abbreviated the entries to meet their criteria. here are the latest results:

sales lead generation                         48 Down 23 Positions
mortgage lead                                     Not in top 30   No Change
insurance sales lead                           3  No Change
health insurance sales lead               2  Down 1
life insurance sales lead                     6   Down 4 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead                       62 Down 47 Positions
life insurance lead                             51 Down 34 Positions
mortgage insurance lead                 27 Up 5

Time to Make Some Changes

The MSN SERP's have stabilized quite a bit and 7/24 leads has 20 pages listed in Google  -- all of this progress in less than 40 days.  I was analyzing my tracking information from HitsLink, I found a good portion of my visitors are not making it off my home page.  I did some research and the re-wrote the entire page. It has been the subject of a lively discussion on the IHelpYou forums.  I guess we will see what the effects of a re-write are in short order as MSN is due for a re-index this evening. I reduced the keyword density quite a bit to make the ad copy more user friendly so I am quite apprehensive about the results.  We shall see.

BAD SEO is Thievery

I am afraid I got off on a bit of a rant. Taking advantage of naive web site owners is NOT an ethical way to make a living as far as I am concerned.

Here is a link to just how bad it can get: Google Spyware Warning

One of the first challenges anyone faces when deciding to develop a web site is wading through all the BAD Search Engine Optimization advice to arrive at the truth.  It is even worse when you pay good money for BAD advice -- and even worse yet when this BAD advice may get you banned from the search engines. I was checking through my Google listings today and ran across a web site that has such BAD advice, it just plain pissed me off. These folks are passing themselves off as search engine optimization experts and charging $1000 dollars per month and you have to sign up for a six month subscription!! ALL of their advice is BAD news -- so much so that refuting their claims one by one in this article will serve as a tremendous educational article. "  Read my entire article HERE

Google still King of the Hill

The latest MSN update is in and the results are listed below. Once you figure out what Inktomi is looking for it is comparatively easy to manipulate the listings at will:

sales lead generation                         25  Up 1 Position
mortgage lead                                     Not in top 30   No Change
insurance sales lead                           3  No Change
health insurance sales lead               1  No Change
life insurance sales lead                     2  Up 3 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead                       15 No Change
life insurance lead                             17 Up 27 Positions
mortgage insurance lead                32 Up 2