Back to the Future SEO

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007
Recently I took on a new SEO client who had a major problem. They had a very popular portal site in a competitive industry but for 3 months running, their Top 10 search engine rankings for major keywords had taken a consistent dive. The position drops ranged from 1 or 2 places up to 20 places. They hired me to try and address the issue quickly because their advertising revenue relied on the top 10 visibility of their brand in the SERPs.

I looked for the usual suspects, a Google penalty, dodgy code, hidden text, new competitors, 404 errors, keyword stuffing, fast acquisition of links, domain issues, major hostíng outages, over-optimization and code bloat. Nothing - the site checked out clean. There had been a major Google algorithm update in the past 6 months, but that had occurred weeks earlier to the downward trend. So then I asked about the design history and if any major changes had been made a week or so prior to the sudden ranking drop. The client couldn't recall any major changes so I went about the business of improving the site as best I could and integrating a link building campaign to obtain links from high quality sites in the same industry.

But I couldn't shake the idea that there must have been some major change to the site that impacted its previously ideal search engine compatibility. So I asked for the site's log files for the past 6 months and imported them into ClickTracks for a closer look. I discovered that the site showed a solid growth in traffíc starting in February and continuing until April. It was attracting the most traffíc on April 5 and then it suddenly plummeted. The logs didn't reveal much else, except record keyword referrals for the period, followed by record lows.

It was then that the little light bulb above my head switched on. I could use the Internet Archive to see what the site looked like on those dates! If you aren't already familiar with the Internet Archive (affectionately known as the Wayback Machine), it's an online repository of web sites in historical timeline format so you can see what web sites looked like on different dates in their history. Take a look at Wikipedia's front page design from 2001. It's fun, and a little embarrassing, to see what certain web sites looked like many years ago.

So I pulled copies of the client's home page from the archive for the date range that coincided with the major spike and fall and studied the HTML code of each carefully. When I compared them, I saw one glaring difference. The older version contained keyword-rich link titles for the main navigation area while the later version didn't. The links were still there, but the link title attributes were not and a quick check of the client's current home page HTML showed they were still missing. It turns out that the web designer had inadvertently removed them during an update without realizing and failed to replace them.

Because the navigation area consisted of a large number of untitled links, the result was a drop in the home page keyword density for the client's major target keywords, allowing their competitors with higher density to push them down the SERPs. I presented my discovery to the client and they were somewhat relieved to have an explanation at last. The link titles were reinstated and the client's rankings have been climbing back ever since.

The whole experience got me thinking: the Wayback Machine is really the SEOs secrët weapon. It's Back to the Future SEO! Here are just some ways SEOs could use it:

1) To spot major HTML coding changes on your own sites or client sites that may have impacted rankings (as per my case study).

2) To study the design and HTML history of your client's sites and their competitors.

3) To spot if a web site has been optimized in the past.

4) To study the design and HTML history of the web sites belonging to your major SEO competitors.

5) To spot if a web site has used dodgy optimization tactics in the past.

6) To see what keywords your competitors targeted in the past versus the ones they now target.

7) To compare design and usability changes made over the years by big brand sites (and imitate them).

8) To rescue HTML code and images for sites that have been hacked or wiped without back-ups in place.

9) To track content duplication or copyright violations where the site owner has already removed the offending material.

10) To check the true age of a web site and see if it has been used for a different purpose or company in the past.

These are just uses I came up with from the top of my head, but I'm sure there are plenty more. Some of these uses are not SEO specific, but useful to webmasters in general and particularly to persons looking to buy an existing domain.

Then there are the fun uses – embarrassing your mates by emailing them a copy of their old site complete with frames and blinking graphics. Having a laugh at the first designs rolled out by some of the major search engines. This is what Yahoo looked like in 1996. Here's Google in 1998. The possibilities are endless.

So what are you waitíng for? Use the Wayback Machine and Get Back to the Future!

The 120 Second Solution

Like it or not, the Web is turning into an environment that will be dominated by audio and video presentations. And as we have already seen, the democratic nature of the Web has allowed the best and worst to stand side-by-side.

On one side, you have the whacky viral videos that serve little commercial purpose other than to enhance the reputations of their creators; and on the other side, you have deadly boring corporate videos that lack any of the qualities that make Web-video the best sales tool a business will ever have.

In the middle are a few innovative companies that know how to deliver a marketing message by telling a business story with style and panache so that an audience will remember the message and act upon it. And yes, even a few know how, and are willing, to do it with a reasonable budget.

Pay for Content-Production Not Airtime

The non-time sensitive nature of the Web differs from the corporate world of broadcast television where the cost of airtime has seen commercial formats gradually decrease from sixty, to thirty, to fifteen seconds.

I imagine the day is not too far off when we will have a new five-second commercial format all while the broadcast regulators are allowing more commercials per half hour of programming. According to Answers.com, "a typical 30-minute block of time includes 22 minutes of programming with 6 minutes of national advertising and 2 minutes of local (although some half-hour blocks may have as much as 12 minutes of advertisements)."

We've all had the distinct displeasure of having to sit through the same mind-numbing commercial as many as three times in the same commercial break. At that rate even good commercials we want to watch become exercises in Guantonamo-style torture tactics.

It's unlikely that the independent mentality that governs the Web will ever accept a uniform presentation standard to take hold; the idea is just too conventional for an environment that thrives on breaking the rules.

That said an argument could be made for the discipline of a Web-based video presentation format that tells an effective marketing story in the most efficient and memorable manner.

Form, Function, and Discipline

Effective marketing communication is about telling your story, whether it's a fifteen-second television commercial or a thirty-minute infomercial. If you don't tell a story you aren't communicating your message effectively.

Because the Web doesn't require you to purchase airtime, your video presentation once uploaded, is available 24/7 for all to see, anytime they wish, as often as they want.

Since you have this freedom of expression, you need to ask yourself, what is the best way to implement this independence? Do you follow the standard television format based on a cost-per-second basis, when in fact the length of the presentation is mostly irrelevant, or do you drone on for half-an-hour boring your viewers to tears?

There must be a standard format for Web video that makes sense both technically from a time-to-download perspective, and from an effectiveness standpoint, delivering the message in an unforgettable way.

Like with most things in life, discipline is very important, video production requires the producer to be focused; it helps keep budgets in line; and it delivers results because there just isn't any room for extraneous self-indulgence. In addition, following a standard format provides viewers with an expectation, a promise that you will say what needs to be said, and what they want to hear, in a reasonable and efficient amount of time.

The 120 Second Solution: The 3 Act Web Presentation

Unlike cost-per-time formats, you have the freedom to fudge the timing to meet your needs. On the Web, there is no sense in cutting a presentation because it runs fifteen seconds long, or adding superfluous material because it runs fifteen seconds short. That said, it is a good idea to start with a structure that allows you to build a presentation that works; a presentation that has a beginning, middle, and end; a presentation that tells a story viewers will sit through and pay attention to. What we have come up with is "The 120 Second Solution: The 3 Act Web Presentation."

We arrived at this format by analyzing how the best storytellers spin their yarns, the Hollywood moviemakers. Your standard Hollywood movie contains forty scenes, three acts, and runs approximately 120 minutes; yes, some movies run only ninety minutes, and others run as much as three hours, but 120 minutes is the optimum.

If you accept the premise that commercial Web videos are all about telling your story, then perhaps the best solution is to take the standard, three act, one hundred and twenty minute movie, and scale it down to a three act, one hundred and twenty second movie.

A Web Marketing Campaign

Our recent thought-piece the "18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make A Difference" was introduced by six entertaining videos comprising 'The Lost Brad Tapes,' that loosely follow the 120 Second, 3 Act Web-Presentation Solution.

Act One: The Setup

Your first act is the setup:
(1) A proper setup needs to introduce your hero (every story, even commercials, need a hero);
(2) It must contain an Inciting Incident that triggers action on the part of the hero, and;
(3) It must also create an object of desire and define the nature of success.

By incorporating these elements in your first act, you attract viewer interest, hold viewer attention, create viewer expectation, and provide vicarious, virtual-viewer participation through the actions of the surrogate hero.

In the case of The Lost Brad Tapes, the inciting incident is our hero, Brad's, failure to find the answer to the question, "How do you become a website success?" Our hero searches the world and endures countless hardships just to find 'The Man' with 'The Answer.' And who in business hasn't searched high and low for some expert who could provide a simple solution to a complex problem.

Act one also establishes the object of desire, the knowledge needed to become a website success, and it defines the nature of success, finding the answer.

Act Two: The Conflict

Act two is about establishing conflict and building tension by creating an obstacle that provides the motivational impetus to act to resolve the problem.

With each successive chapter (video) of The Lost Brad Tapes, our hero runs into a roadblock in the guise of a supposed authority who has other things on his mind, and who is ultimately of no help, but who builds the dramatic tension that holds the viewer's interest. Will our boy Brad, find the answer and will he share it with you, the viewer?

Act Three: The Payoff

Act three provides the resolution: the object of desire is secured and the need is gratified. The audience is satisfied with the knowledge gained and the ínvestment in time.

Act three of the Lost Brad videos presents an attractive host who interrupts the video and talks directly to the audience, providing a teaser of one of the '18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make A Difference,' and points the viewer to the complete article with the entire líst of eighteen things to think about along with a complete explanation of each.

Conclusion

The Lost Brad Tapes initiative is an example of how to produce a marketing campaign that delivers a business message by telling a story by following an organizational and development structure, proven to be effective. It is not a sales pitch; it asks for nothing from the viewer other their time; and it delivers sound business advice that establishes expertise.

If Web video is on your 'to do' líst, but you're not sure how to go about telling your story, then the 120 Second, 3 Act Web-Video Solution is a good place to start.

Web Accessibility: What You Should Know

Overview

There is a lot of talk these days with regard to proper development practices and accessible web design. If you don't think any of this applies to you or your website, you probably don't understand exactly what this is all about. Web Accessibility refers to the practice of creating websites that will be useable for people of any ability or disability. Many things come into play when accounting for a person's eye sight, mobility, auditory and logic skills.

Too many web development companies overlook the importance of coding a website in meaningful HTML. Utilities for blind users, such as text-to-speech software, make use of alternate text for images and properly named links. Another downside to overlooking proper HTML lies with the robots search engines send out to read your website. These computers that browse the internet by themselves can learn a lot more about your website, and get a lot deeper into your site when they aren't confused by poor coding practices.

Many people have difficulty controlling a mouse with precision, and can become frustrated while attempting to select a small link. Web designers need to allow for enlargeable text sizes and create larger clickable areas whenever possible. Links should always be styled and colored different than body text so that even color blind users can quickly locate the links on any web page. Pages can even be coded in a fashion that allows them to be navigated without a mouse or keyboard should your audience be likely to require this.

No website should ever rely solely on a video or audio component to convey information. Problems here extend farther than those who are hard of hearing or have poor eyesight. You are relying on certain hardware and or software to be installed on the visitor's computer. If a user has no speakers, or if they are turned off, they could miss your important message or even be annoyed if they were listening to something else. Visitors are valuable and you should never do anything to encourage them to leave your site quickly.

Aside from looking tacky, flashing effects are to be avoided to ensure those sensitive to seizures are not at risk. Content is both more effective and better understood by those with developmental and learning disabilities when it is written in plain text.

The Web Accessibility Initiative

The WAI started in 1999 by the World Wide Web Consortium and is viewed as the standard set of guidelines for creating accessible websites. Although there has been some criticism of their guidelines they have been working since 2003 to release the second edition of accessibility standards which will be much more technology-neutral. This will leave more room for interpretation and adaptability.

The guide goes into great depth on how to create accessible web content and includes a checkpoint summary by topic and priority. They discuss important issues and provide design solutions for a number of scenarios that cause conflicts.

The Future of Accessibility

We are at a point now where there is no doubt accessibility is important, in fact it is already a legal requirement in certain countries. Try searching Google for anything along the lines of 'web accessibility' and you'll see the vast amounts of information available. There's still a lot of work to be done, but we've come a long way over the last few years.

With more and more websites being populated with user generated content, a simple set of guidelines for web designers is becoming less useful. It is impossible to monitor this content for accessibility as it is being created at such a rapid rate. We are also seeing new assistive technologies that support elements like JavaScript, PDF's and Flash which will create many new options for websites that remain fully accessible.

Using Google Reader to Stop Information Overload and Improve Your Efficiency

By Miles Galliford (c) 2007
The Internet is the single greatest research resource that has ever existed. However, whilst it has solved many of the issues of getting access to information, it has created new issues that have to be addressed. Probably the biggest of these is information overload.

In order to keep up to date with my many areas of interest so I can run my business efficiently, understand what is happening in the online content sector and still have time for leisure activities, I have to be extremely good at filtering information.

Over the years I have tried many tools to help me aggregate online information so that it is easy to scan, read, save and filter.

The tool that I have finally settled on is the free 'Google Reader'.

Google Reader enables me, on one page, to get updates from all the sites that I regularly visit. I can scan each headline and first paragraph very quickly. Any articles of interest can be displayed in full and then saved or discarded as required.

On an average morning I can get through 100-plus articles in about an hour.

Who Should Use Google Reader?

Everyone who regularly visits multiple websites to keep up to date with news, business and leisure, which I guess means just about every Internet user!

If you are a blogger or run a specialist information website, then Google Reader is an essential tool to help you source material for your articles and enable you to stay abreast of what is happening in your sector.

Setting Up a Google Reader Account

Setting up a Google Reader account so information is automatically added from many of the sites you regularly visit should take about 15 minutes if you follow these instructions.

Step 1

Open your browser, go to www.google.com/reader and click on the link on the right-hand side that says 'Open an Account Now'.

Step 2

The screen should display the following simple fields to fill in:

• Enter Your Current Email Address – Google will send the verification email to this address, so make sure that you provide a real and active address.
• Choose a Password.
• Confirm the Password.
• Location.
• Word Verification – This makes sure that you are a real person and not a bit of Internet software!

The screen will then display the 'I accept. Create my account' button.

Step 3

You will be sent an email to verify that your email address is live and working, so go and find this in your inbox to enable your account. It will have been sent from accounts-noreply@google.com and will have the subject line 'Google Email Verification' .

You verify the email by clicking on the link in the email. This will open your Google Reader page.

Step 4

When the Google Reader page opens for the first time, you will have the opportuníty to watch a 30-second video by clicking on the 'Play' button at the bottom of the video window. This is worth doing.

Once the video is finished, click the 'Get started by adding subscription' button. This takes you to a screen where you can start adding some websites chosen by Google.

Step 5

Google has bundled some sites into groups – News, Sports, Fun and many more. I wouldn't bother choosing a bundle. I prefer to choose individual feeds in which I'm really interested.

To do this, click on the 'Add Subscription' link in the left-hand column. This opens a search field with which you can find feeds to add to your Reader page.

You can make the search either very specific to find the feed on a particular website (for example, 'BBC UK sports news') or much broader to find feeds about a particular subject area (for example, 'gardening') .

Step 6

Once you have identified a feed you want to add, you simply click the `Subscribe' button. The button immediately changes to a yellow tick and the text 'Subscribed' .

At this point it is very useful to assign the feed to a folder. As you add lots of feeds it is much easier to manage your Reader site if they are bundled into folders. To do this click on 'Add to a folder', which appears under the feed once you have subscribed.

Click 'New folder...' and type in a relevant category name – news, sports, small business, etc.

Repeat this process to add more feeds.

Congratulatíons! You have now taken a big step towards making your information consumption much more effective.

Using Your Google Reader Page Day to Day

Once you have your Reader page set up with multiple feeds, spend some time familiarising yourself with how you can access the information you need.

Here is a quick overview.

Links in the Left-Hand Column

• Click 'Home' to get a view of the three latest articles from each of your feeds.
• Click 'All items' to see all new articles as they come in, in chronological order.
• 'Starred items' is the way to save articles in which you are interested. When you read an individual item, a row of options appears at the foot of the summary. If you click 'Add star', the article is then saved to the `Starred items' folder.
• 'Shared items' allows you to set up your own feed so that other people can read the articles you choose to share. When you select an article, you get the option to 'Share' it by clicking the link at the foot of the article summary.
• 'Trends' summarises your reading habits from the feeds you have listed. I use this to remove feeds that I'm not regularly reading.
• 'Add subscription' is covered above. It allows you to search for new feeds so they can be added to your Reader page.
• Under the 'Add subscription' link is a líst of all your feeds. You can select a certain folder to read all the feeds in that category, or you can select an individual feed to read the latest articles from that website.

Other Useful Functions

• 'Email' allows you to instantly send the article header and summary to a friend. This is a very useful and convenient option found at the foot of each article summary.
• 'Edit tags' enables you to add words that will help you search and find a particular article. For example, if you were researching for a book you could tag all relevant articles 'book1' so that you could easily find them again.
• 'Líst view' is a useful feature that allows you to líst articles like email in an inbox, so you can very quickly scan the headings to find items of interest. You'll find the 'líst view' tab in the top right corner of each page.

Enjoy using Google Reader. I hope that it not only makes you much more efficient, but also revolutionises the way that you consume information on the Web.

18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make A Difference

1. Think Audiences Not Markets

What's your market? Hire a consultant to help you with your Web-business problems and one of the first questions he or she will ask is, what's your market? How about eighteen to thirty-four year old, single male college graduates with a dog named Spot; or maybe forty-five to fifty-nine year old married women, who hate their husbands and can't get their adult children to move out of the house. Maybe, just maybe, they're asking the wrong question.

The Web isn't about markets, it's about audiences. Audiences need to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged, and if your website doesn't, you're never going to achieve what you want.

Time to rethink how you're delivering your marketing message. Start treating Web-visitors like an audience not a market, and you might just find what it takes to be successful on the Web.

2. Think People Not Customers

You know all those visitors you attract to your website with your brilliant search engine optimization schemes, how many actually purchase anything? Stop treating visitors as if they are already customers and start treating them like what they are - people. That's right, people. You know the two-legged funny creatures with wants, needs, desires, and maybe even a few bucks to spend.

Customers are always looking for a deal and they're leery of websites that only want to take their hard earned cash. Treat your Web-visitors like people who can satisfy their wants, needs, and desires with your assistance and guess what? Maybe it will make a difference: one small step for Web-credibility, one giant leap for Web-success.

3. Think Experiences Not Features

Bought any good features lately? Didn't think so. You would think the way business pushes the whole feature-frenzy thing that features are exactly what people are looking for, but nobody buys features, they don't even buy solutions - boy doesn't that whole solution provider nonsense really get to you after a while.

What people really buy are experiences, hopefully positive ones. Whether it's soft ice cream or a new accounting program, what people are paying for is the experience your product or service provides.

Does your website offer an experience? Does it explain the experience your product or service delivers? If it doesn't, then you really haven't got anything anybody wants.

4. Think Emotion Not Logic

Think you're a logical person, always making rational decisions based on practical criteria, and bottom line results. So tell me what was the functional thinking that went into the purchase of those leather pants you bought last year, or that sixty inch plasma television you bought just to watch the big game?

Let's get real. You make purchasing decisions based on what you want, and then justify them with seemingly sensible rationalizations, just like everybody else. So stop trying to appeal only to the practical, logical, aspects of bean-counter sales, and start pushing the feel good aspects of emotional marketing.

If you're trying to appeal to an audience that gets its only satisfaction out of acquiring the most features for the least cost, then your marketing to the wrong audience.

5. Think Memories Not Promotions

Most animals live in the moment, whereas human beings live in the past. Our here and now and our plans for the future are based on our experiences, our histories, and our memories.

We take pictures of our kids, holidays, and special events; we commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, and milestones of all kinds. Even the significance of our prized possessions is centered on the fact that those mere objects represent memories of the people, places, and events that shaped our lives.

Real marketing, the kind that creates long-term clients and customer relationships, is not about coupons, sale promotions, or deep discounts; it's about delivering memories.

6. Think Marketing Not S.E.O.

Okay, here's one you've heard from us before: think marketing not search engine optimization. Sure you've got to drive as many people to your website as possible, but if your marketing message is so confused, unfocused, and hard to comprehend because of all the keyword density and S.E.O. tricks, then what have you really accomplished other than wasting people's time? And people really get upset when you waste their time.

7. Think Stickiness Not Hits

It's not about how many hits you get on your website, it's about how long people stay. If visitors remain on your site long enough to get your marketing message then you must have said something worth listening to, and if visitors get the message, your site has done its job.

If your website delivers the message, then you can expect the email inquiries and phone calls to start flowing, but it's still up to you and your sales staff to close the sale: people close sales not websites.

8. Think Stories Not Pitches

Did you hear the one about the farmer's daughter and the search engine optimizer ... Stories, everyone loves stories. In fact before the invention of the Gutenberg press, oral story telling was the way knowledge got passed down from one generation to the next, and how news was sent from one region to another.

Now that we have this multimedia Web-environment, we can continue the tradition of real people delivering creative audio and video presentations that capture the imagination and drive home the marketing message so your audience won't forget who you are. Nothing informs, engages, and entertains, like a good story: sounds to me like one heck of a way to sell to an audience desperate for meaningful communication.

9. Think Focus Not Confusion

There you go again, telling everyone who will listen all the wonderful things you and your company can do. Trouble is, telling them all those things just confuses them.

What is the product or service that is most important to your company, the one you are determined to sell to your audience? That's the one you want to talk about. That's the one you want to devote your marketing effort to promoting. That's the one you want people to think about when they hear your name or see your logo. Focus your communication or your message will just be a forgettable, incomprehensible blur.

10. Think Campaigns Not Ads

Isolated one-time advertisements are like one-night-stands: exciting for a while but ultimately unfulfilling and devoid of meaning. Your audience is looking to get married, not a short-term fling. Your marketing has to woo your visitors with long-term campaigns that tell your story and deliver your focused message; audiences expect to be courted and counseled with meaningful communication. And that takes time and commitment.

If you're spending money on just ads, you might as well be throwing that money down the drain. There is a better way. So if you're looking for a long-term relationship with your audience, think campaigns not ads.

11. Think Message Not Hype

What message are you delivering to your online visitors? Are you telling them you've got the best product, at the best price, with the best staff, and world-class customer service? Is that what you saying? Guess what? Nobody cares, because nobody believes you.

There is only one way to show people you're the best and that is to prove it, but here's the catch, you can't prove it until they become customers. Whoops. Okay, so what's the solution? How about a real marketing message that speaks to what your audience really wants. It's not about you it's about them.

12. Think Personality Not Banality

Does your website just lie there like a lox; you know that cold, dead fish that often comes with a bagel? No personality, just more of the same tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, tiresome, lackluster, monotonous, stuff everybody else has. Boring! This is the new Web, so if you can't get with it, you'd better get out because you're wasting your time and everybody else's.

You're so worried about downloading times that you forgot to put anything on your site worth seeing or hearing. Check your logs. If people are jumping ship faster than rats on a burning ship, it's time to try something new; like, maybe some compelling content.

13. Think Branding Not Copyrights

Hay, I love the Beatles. I grew up with them, and I have all their records - ya records, like vinyl dude, not CDs. And guess what, I've also got a Mac, in fact I've got a bunch of them, not to mention iPods and other assorted Apple gizmos and gadgets. And you know something, I've never once got John, Paul, George, or Ringo confused with Steve Jobs. Amazing!

Worry just a little less about all that small print stuff and more on building a memorable brand that people will remember, and that nobody will mistake for some johnny-come-lately imposter.

14. Think Positioning Not Slogan

It's funny how people have a position on almost everything: you name the issue and people will have a definite opinion on what they think, except when it comes to their businesses. Just because you have a cute slogan that you print under your logo, doesn't mean you own a position in your audience's minds.

It seems businesses can't stand to make a definitive statement about who they are and what they do. Why is that? Afraid they'll lose a customer I guess, but if people don't understand exactly what you do, and why they should be doing business with you, then they're never going to be customers anyway.

No company can be all things to all people and companies that try, never go anywhere. Tell people who you are and what you do and forget about all the other stuff, it just gets in the way.

15. Think Sensory Appeal Not Cents Appeal

Do you want people to sit-up and take notice of what you have to say? Do you want people to actually remember what you're telling them? While if that's the case, you better appeal to their senses, and we're talking about sights and sounds.

Deliver all your juicy, got-to-have content in an audio and video presentation that will stick in people's heads.

If all you're doing is appealing to their desire to spend less, then maybe they aren't the customers you're looking for anyway. Nobody can afford to sell for less all the time, every time.

16. Think Identity Not Logos

Is your company the equivalent of the invisible man? You're on the Web, but nobody cares because you're not saying anything worth listening to, and if they do see you, you are instantly forgettable.

You've got to have an identity, a personality, an image, and there is no better way to create that identity than with a video of a real person delivering your marketing message in an entertaining, memorable manner.

17. Think Entertainment Not Biz-speak

Speaking of entertaining, you cannot engage, enlighten, or entertain if everything you present sounds and looks like it came from some b-school text book, or from one of those self-help courses on direct marketing guaranteed to make you a millionaire in only three weeks.

Every business has a story to tell and they can all be presented in a compelling way with a little imagination and creativity. And yes, even b-to-b businesses can rise above the mundane and deadly boring, if only they take the time and make the effort.

18. Think Communication Not Copy

Last but not least, let's all remember, that websites are about communication. If you've got nothing to say, nothing to offer, or are afraid to say what you can do for your audience, then how do you expect to be successful.

Filling your Web pages with keyword density prose and instantly forgettable sale's copy is not going to win the day.

Whether you are presenting your case in text, audio, or video, it better be interesting and enlightening - even text can be entertaining if written with style and attitude.

When websites fail, they fail because they do not communicate a realistic, believable, convincing marketing message.

Backlinks - How To Get High Quality One Way Links To Your Websites

By Matt Garrett (c) 2007
There are basically two aspects to SEO, "on page" & "off page" optimization.

"On Page" SEO is easy because it's totally under your control. It's simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.

OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it's most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to clíck through from the SERP's etc.

But essentially, once you know how to do all that, it's not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites.

It's also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites.

Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors, and without visitors all the time, effort and money invested in getting your site up and running, and looking "nice", is irrelevant.

No Visitors = No Point!

So links are essential to the health of your site, and indeed your business, but all links are not equal in value to your site.

Reciprocal links will help, but they are far less effective than one way backlinks, i.e. links from another site where you don't have to link back to them. These "One Way" backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traffíc, providing of course that you have chosen good (relevant) keywords for your links.

There are many ways of getting these powerful one way backlinks, but most you will have no control over the anchor text used (i.e. keywords) in the link, which means their "power" is unfocused and therefore of less use to you in achieving the targeted keyword results you are looking for.

For example, submitting your site to website directories can be a very effective way of picking up some high quality one way links from high PR sites, but you will seldom be able to choose the keywords/anchor text used for the link, often ending up with the site name as the link.

This is not a waste of time, as the Pagerank passed to your site will, with the correct internal linking structure, be passed on to your sites internal pages, helping them to rank better for their targeted keywords.

So how can you get highly targeted one way links?

It's fairly common for webmasters to now buy or "rent" links to their sites through services like Text-Link-Ads.com, and these services will allow you to choose the anchor text, but they are far from cheap. A link from a PR 8 site can easily cost $150+ per month. In fact there is now a business model emerging based on building sites simply to sell these kind of links (see LazyGitMarketing.com).

Google has also publicly stated that they disapprove of this practice and are actively seeking to downgrade the value of such "paid links", although personally it seems like a valid form of advertising to me, but maybe I just don't have Google's wisdom in these matters. ;)

As always in business, there are entrepreneurs who have identified this need in the market and a whole new branch of linking services are popping up offering new solutions for one way backlinks.

I've been testing some of them out over the last few months and have found a couple that have had a significant positive effect on the sites I used them for.

The Backlink Solution

This first solution is a monthly subscription that provides a network of high quality blog sites for you to post comments on, including a link to your site(s) using your chosen anchor text.

Note: As you make the link yourself, you can also link to internal pages on your site to improve their rankings as well, which you can't do with directory submissions.

It is a manual process, but is easy enough that it can be outsourced fairly cheaply.

The Pagerank of these blogs varies, but the links provided are very "natural" in appearance to the search engines, and as you can post unique relevant content on market related blogs, the links are highly relevant. You are also limited as to how many blogs you can post to each month, to ensure that the links grow naturally over time, rather than all in one go.

Three Way Links

The internet marketing market is highly competitive, so it's hardly surprising that another service with a different twist has popped up from this market.

This is an automated "three way links" system, where you link to site A, which then links to site B, which then links back to you. Whilst this is arguably not as powerful as true "one way backlinks", it's still a significant step above one way "reciprocal" linking that is the more traditional method used by the majority of webmasters.

The process is also automated for you, making it very hands off. You can submit up to 20 sites with just one account and you can specify three different anchor texts to be used as the links for each site's, making sure you don't incur any penalties for over use of just one text link keyword or phrase.

It is also set up to gradually build up the links over time to make it all appear very natural to the search engines.

Your Own Authority Blog

There is one final service that I've found to be very useful, although it is more ideal for people with multiple sites to promote.

The service gives you your own blog on an existing high PR authority site. The site has 833,039 backlinks listed in Yahoo and gets spidered several times a day by all of the major search engines. For example in June 2007 Googlebot visited it 14,470 times and Yahoo Slurp 52,436 times, so you can see why it's regarded as an "authority" site.

I have used this to link to brand new sites and had them indexed by Google within 24 hours, so it's a great way of getting a new site in to the SE's quickly, and the link weíght will obviously also help any site linked to.

As a side note, I've also found that my blog on this site can get fairly significant traffíc itself when I take the time to keyword optimize the posts, which is always a nice added benefit. I haven't traded reciprocal links for any of my sites in almost two years, and you can probably see why I don't need to. Using powerful new linking tools and services like these means I am able to take total control over the "off page" SEO linking strategies for my sites in the same way as I do for the "on page" SEO factors.

Wouldn't you like to do have the same level of control over your sites search engine rankings?

How To Make Web-Advertising Worth Watching

By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
It has become an article of faith that the Web is all about content; content is King on the Web as opposed to television where commercials are king. It seems that television networks just can't wrap their heads around the Internet and fit it into their standard commercial box. The traditional media's tactic of last resort, buying-up the competition and imposing its commercial will, just won't work with the Internet.

Businesses that want to succeed on the Web must learn how to turn their commercial message into content as a seamless entertaining presentation.

After years of website visitors first ignoring, then getting increasingly irritated with banner ads that blink, burp, and blast across their screens, there finally is a better way; advertising in the form of Web-videos that not only deliver a marketing message but are worth the time invested in watching.

There is a lot of hype surrounding so-called viral videos. Many companies have tried to create this kind of marketing vehicle but the sheer lack of commercial purpose fails to attract viable prospects and instead generates a lot of attention from the maturity-challenged segments of society. As a business you want your video to be passed on to as many additional viewers as possible, but if it doesn't attract new leads or at least deliver your message, what good is it?

There is an absolute qualitative difference between a video that is engaging, entertaining, humorous and clever that delivers a strong marketing message and a video that is just plain stupid or at best pointless.

Bold is Beautiful and Effective

We know from experience that clients are attracted when we create entertaining offbeat video campaigns that send a clear message. But as soon as we start to create the equivalent type of campaign for them, they start to get nervous.

The Web demands a bold, frontal attack that delivers an uncompromising creative presentation of what you offer; not a defensive, compromised, don't-make-a-mistake approach that tries to cover everything and anything you might do.

The average business is incredibly timid when it comes to advertising. Boring, monotonous presentations that drone on are as helpful in attracting new business as viral video food-fights or female mud-wrestling clips. There is as much difference between bizarre and bold, as there is between salacious curiosity and entertainingly effective.

The challenge for business is to take this new form of advertising and use it so that it rises above the lowly realm of boring corporate PowerPoint presentations and silly homemade video antics to the lofty, and ultimately profitable dominion of content.

Why Web-Videos Aren't Like Television Commercials

Web-commercials are not television commercials. I know big advertisers are double-dipping their ad placements by flooding the Web with their TV spots, but who really cares? If you can see it on NBC or CBS twelve times every night why would you go out of your way to watch it on the Web?

The most significant difference between television and Web-commercials is cost. According to MediaPost's Gregory Wilson in his VideoInsider newsletter, the average 30-second TV commercial costs $12,000 per second to produce. That's per second, far beyond the budgets of most businesses. You can get an entire Web-video campaign for the cost of one second of TV-level production. Of course, you're not going to have a cast and crew of hundreds working on your spot, but then the quality of scrípt, simplicity of concept, and creativity of presentation count for more than wasted exotic sets and setups.

There are lots of things people just hate about television commercials and the best of the Web-commercials avoid these irritants.

Television commercials distract viewers from the content. Nobody likes interruptions. There is not much difference on the irritation scale between a telemarketing telephone call selling aluminum siding at dinner time and a commercial that interrupts the latest adventures of 24's Jack Bauer.

About the only good thing you can say about these program-interruptions is that they provide you a bathroom and beverage break, which of course doesn't help the advertiser who just spent $12,000 per second to get to you.

Web-commercials are different. They are sought-out by people as long as they provide something more than a mundane sales pitch. If you are clever, bold, and interesting, people will not only watch, they'll remember.

Think back to when you were in school and the teacher told you to look up the answer yourself and not just rely on her to give it to you? That's because the effort of searching out the answer created a more memorable experience. Commercials are no different. Sure fewer people are going to come in contact with your Web-commercial than they would a television commercial, but then the Web-commercial is more targeted, more memorable, and far more cost effective.

Even worse than the continuous interruptions is the repetitiveness of television commercials. Sometimes you have to sit through the same obnoxious commercial multiple times in the same commercial break. Give Apple computer and Geico Insurance credít for their commitment to developing creative, entertaining campaigns that are continually evolving with new segments that build a following for the characters, product and message. These commercials actually do rise above the level of sale's pitch and achieve the status of content. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for ninety-nine percent of all the other television ads.

Because people choose to watch a Web-commercial, they don't become upset with the advertiser for inflicting repetitive psychological torture. In fact Web-commercials that are entertaining and informative will be watched over and over, and passed on to friends and colleagues.

The Bottom Line

1 Web-users choose to watch Web-videos and therefore are more receptive to the message.

2 Web-videos need to be entertaining so they are more likely to be watched repeatedly and passed on to friends.

3 Web-videos are less costly to produce so advertisers can create campaigns consisting of multiple videos on the same theme so that viewers don't get bored or irritated.

How To Turn A Pitch Into Content

If you are going to bore people to death, then Web-advertising is not for you. If all you have to say is buy my stuff, nobody is going to listen. If you are afraid to be different, you are just going to blend into the woodwork. If you think search engine optimization is going to solve all your marketing problems, well think again.

If you want to turn your advertising into content then create your next campaign on the following principles:

• Be Clear.
• Be Bold.
• Be Uncompromising.
• Be Entertaining.
• Be Engaging.
• Be Clever.
• Be Humorous.
• Create Character(s).
• And Tell a Story.

Adding A Regional Component To You Web Site

What is a regional web site?

A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.

Building a regional web site.

Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don't just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.

The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.

Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.

This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better: To have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day, who average looking at 2 pages, or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.

After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.

http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm

As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.

Adding a regional section to your web site.

This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.

This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.

This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.

So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.

This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.

Suicide in Cyberspace - Your Outward Links Can Kill Your Rankings

By Ben Kemp (c) 2007
Link building strategies have, for most people for a long time, revolved around reciprocal link exchanges. Whilst most people understand that links are important, they generally don't understand why this is so. In a nutshell, a link to your site has traditionally been accepted by Search Engines as a vote for your site. A link from a topic or theme-related site to yours is better than a link from a site having a completely different topic. An important site's link to yours carries more weight - for example from The Open Directory, or Yahoo Directory. All pretty straightforward...

BUT... the rules have changed... significantly! All the thinking webmasters worked diligently to build links - willy-nilly - in order to subvert the search engine rankings and gain an advantage to themselves at the expense of everyone else. For a long time, there have been mutterings about this, and comments from Google staffers about possible penalties from linking to "bad neighbourhoods'" and - heaven forbid it - buying links! Google et al simply don't approve of willy-nilly link-building schemes, and have recently tightened the screws a bit more, in two notable ways...

Bad Links

Some links are bad... for example, if you are a car sales company and you've got dozens of completely irrelevant links to international hotel sites... yeah, YOU know the ones! in Prague, Munich, Shanghai etc! That's a BAD neighbourhood over there! That IS going to put a world of hurt on you! And as for the Free-For-All link sites, web rings, and 3 way link schemes... that's just suicide in cyberspace! Why? Coz its a blatant and completely indefensible attempt at cheating the system!

Reciprocal Links - Almost a Waste of Effort

Reciprocal links are still of some value, providing the link titles are explicit, and if the page they link to you from has a higher Page Rank than the page from which you link to them. The concept of a link to you being a vote for you, and being added to your site's Total Vote Count has a flip side. A link from you to someone else essentially deducts one vote from your total vote count... meaning its value is minimal when compared to a 1-way incoming back-link!

1-Way Outward Links Are Toxic

Ok, lets assume you are a service provider, maybe a health clinic, and you deal with hospitals, other doctors, specialists, nurses, laboratories. So, as a benefit to your visitors, you place direct links to their web resources on your links page. Is that clever?

Most certainly it is NOT! Transfusion time, because you'll be haemorrhaging Page Rank with nothing in return! Do it, but be smart about it, because there is NOTHING to be gained (by you) from linking to any site that does not link back. So make sure your links include the "nofollow" attribute that tells SE's that the link is NOT a vote by your site for that site!

Link Content Is Mission Critical

This is mission critical because Google and others have decided that they can't trust you to be honest about your site! Basically, it seems like there are two web tribes - those who know not so much about how things work, and those who know more than they should. There should also be a flourishing third tribe, who just build great sites with lots of terrific content that automatically ranks highly - but nobody's seen nuthin' from those guys for ages!

The tribe who know more than they should ruthlessly manipulate every available loophole to dominate search engine rankings, at the expense of those who have yet to read SEO For Dummies. Therefore, Google decided that its essential that there is some external correlation between what YOU say your site is about, and what OTHER people say your site is about... This is done by analysing the words in the Link Title on all links pointing to your site. Bottom line here is - if a keyword phrase does NOT appear on links to your site, you ain't gonna rank for that phrase!

For many established sites, this is the main reason they might have experienced a noticeable decline in rankings in the last few months. Most older sites will have a majority of incoming links based on their business name, and NOT on their activities / products / services / location etc. To use the common "widgets" analogy - if you are selling "widgets" and all your incoming link Titles have only your business name e.g. Smiths Manufacturing Co Ltd, it's now very difficult for you to rank for "widgets"!

Backlink analysis reveals this shortcoming rather quickly and, lucky for you, it is possible to remedy this by building 1-way incoming back-links using multiple Title / Description combinations that contain a good spread of relevant keywords. It does require some keyword research, and it is tedious - but if you don't do it, you are certainly not going forwards! But your competitors might be...

How To Please Your Website Visitors

So which is more important, to please the visitors or the search engine spiders? The unequivocal answer is to please the visitors. What good is a site that attracts spiders but not actual people? And what good is a site that only attracts some visitors but not search engine spiders?

In this article, we will go over writing content that interests and pleases both your readers and the spiders.

So how do you write content that pleases a visitor?

First, stick to writing content that is relevant to your site. That means that if your site is about Rock music, you should not have any content about dogs, as that only makes your site look bad and repels visitors.

Second, write content in an easy to understand, conversational format. Do not use big, fancy words just for the sake of looking smart or pleasing search engine bots. I can't count the number of times I've visited a site with content that is so hard to comprehend that I do not wish to ever come back to that site again. You want to make a good first impression on anyone who takes the time to look at your site, so make sure your content is easy to understand.

Third, never ever write content that is long, dull, and boring. If the point you are trying to get across can be said more concisely in 500 words, than why waste another 300 words droning on and on about the topic? This is a huge turnoff to potential visitors.

Fourth, make sure that all of your content is grammatically correct. I know, this is hard because we live in the instant messenger world, where sentences like "how r u?", are thought to be acceptable. However, anyone who is well-educated will appreciate good grammar. Make your site shine in this department.

Fifth, don't overuse keywords and keyword phrases. In other words, don't make it blatantly obvious to the reader that you are trying to attract search engine spiders to your site. Make an effort to make sure that your keywords and keyword phrases flow into the content of the article. This is easier said than done, but can be accomplished with a little fine tuning.

But what about search engine spiders? How do I please them?

Search engine spiders are actually very easy to please, much easier than actual human beings. This is because search engine spiders aren't subjective--they don't care what the subject is about; they just care about the number keywords and keyword phrases.

The only way you can possibly displease a search engine spider is by overusing a keyword/keyword phrase and making your site smell like spam. Search engine spiders are now more advanced than ever, and so they are better able to ignore sites that are full of spam. Too many keywords or keyword phrases that are blatantly there will hinder your site from being crawled by spiders.

Keyword density of 1-3% is generally considered to be good. Any less than 1% is bad and will make it harder for your site to get listed on search engines; any more than 4% makes your site look like spam. Keyword density is basically the number of keywords or keyword phrases in a piece of content divided by the total number of words.

Before you write your article, take some time to make up a short list of keywords that are relevant to the topic at hand. Then try to naturally sprinkle them into your content, so that your content will please both the search engine bots and your readers. If you are able to do that, you will have a successful site in no time. Not only will the search bots love you, but actual people will, too!

Writing content that is good for both people and search engines is an absolute essential to making your site a powerhouse. So follow the rules above and you will be able to write excellent, pleasing content!

How to Defend your Website from the Google Duplicate Proxy Exploit

By Sophie White (c) 2007
There is a current and active way to knock a website out of Google's search engine results. It's simple and effective. This information is already in the public domain and the more people that know about it, the more likelihood there is that Google will do something about it. This article will tell you how it works, how to get a website knocked out of the search engine rankings, but most importantly, how to defend your own website from having it happen to you.

To understand this exploit, you must first understand about Google's Duplicate Content filter. It's simply described thus: Google doesn't want you to search for "blue widget" and have the top 10 search terms returned copies of the same article on how great blue widgets are. They want to give you ONE copy of the Great Blue Widget article, and 9 other different results, just on the off chance that you've already read that article and the other results are actually what you wanted.

To handle this, every time Google spiders and indexes a page, it checks it to see if it's already got a page that is predominantly the same, a duplicate page if you will. Exactly how Google works this out, nobody knows exactly, but it is going to be a combination of some or all of: page text length, page title, headings, keyword densities, checking exactly copy sentence fragments etc. As a result of this duplicate content filter, a whole industry has grown up around trying to get round the filter. Just search for "spin article".

Getting back to the story here, Google indexes a page and lets say it fails it's duplicate content check, what does Google do? These days, it dumps that duplicate page in Google's Supplemental Index. What, you didn't know that Google has 2 indexes? Well they do: the main one, and a supplemental one. Two things are important here: Google will always return results from their Main index if they can; and they will only go to the Supplemental index if they don't get enough joy from their main index. What this means is that if your page is in the supplemental index, it's almost certain that you will never show up in the Search Engine Ranking Pages, unless there is next to no competition for the phrase that was searched for.

This all seems pretty reasonable to me, so what's the problem? Well there's another little step I haven't mentioned yet. What happens if someone copies your page, let's say your homepage of your business website, and when Google indexes that copy, it correctly determines that it's a duplicate. Now Google knows about 2 pages that it knows are duplicates, it has to decide which to dump in the supplemental index, and which to keep in the main one. That's pretty obvious right? But how does Google know which is the original and which is the copy? They don't. Sure they have some clever algorithms to work it out, but even if they are 99% accurate, that leaves a lot of problems for that 1% of times they can get it wrong!

And this is the heart of the exploit, if someone copies your website's homepage say, and manages to convince Google that *their* page is the original, your homepage will get tossed into the supplemental index, never to see the light of day in the Search Engine Ranking Pages again. In case I'm not being clear enough, that's bad! But wait, it gets worse:

It's fair to say that in the case of a person physically copying your page and hostíng it, you can often get them to take it down through the use of copyright lawyers, and cease and desist letters to ISP's and the like, with a quick "Reinclusion Request" to Google. But recently there's a new threat that's a whole lot harder to stop: the use of publicly accessible Proxy websites. (If you don't know what a Proxy is, it's basically a way of making the web run faster by caching content more local to your internet destination. In principle, they are generally a good thing.)

There are many such web proxies out there, and I won't líst any here, however I will describe the process: they send out spiders (much like Google's) and they spider your page, take your content, then they host a copy of your website on their proxy site, nominally so that when their users request your page, they can serve up their local copy quickly rather than having to retrieve if off your server. The big issue is that Google can sometimes decide that the proxy copy of your web page is the original, and yours is not.

Worse again, there's some evidence that people are deliberately and maliciously using proxy servers to cache copies of web pages, then using normal (white and black hat) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to make those proxy pages rank in the search engine, increasing the likelihood that your legitímate page will be the one dumped by the search engines' duplicate content filters. Danger Will Robinson!

Even worse still, some of the proxy spiders actively spoof their origins so that you don't realise that it's a spider from a proxy, as they pretend to be a Googlebot for example, or from Yahoo. This is why the major search engines actively publish guidelines on how to identify and validate their own spiders.

Now for the big question, how can you defend against this? There are several possible solutions, depending on your web hostíng technology and technical competence:

Option 1 - If you are running Apache and PHP on your server, you can set the webhost up to check for search engine spiders that purport to be from the main search engines, and using php and the .htaccess file, you can block proxies from other sources. However this only works for proxies that are playing by the rules and identifying themselves correctly.

Option 2 - If you are using MS Windows and IIS on your server, or if you are on a shared hostíng solution that doesn't give you the ability to do anything clever, it's an awful lot harder and you should take the advice of a professional on how to defend yourself from this kind of attack.

Option 3 - This is currently the best solution available, and applies if you are running a PHP or ASP based website: you set ALL pages robot meta tags to noindex and nofollow, then you implement a PHP or ASP scrípt on each page that checks for valid spiders from the major search engines, and if so, resets the robot meta tags to index and follow. The important distinction here is that it's easier to validate a real spider, and to discount a spider that's trying to spoof you, because the major search engines publish processes and procedures to do this, including IP lookups and the like.

So, stay aware, stay knowledgeable, and stay protected. And if you see that you've suddenly been dumped from the Search Engine Rankings Pages, now you might know why, how and what to do about it.