Everyone in the SEO world knows (or if you don’t your not an SEO) Google is going through its Big Daddy update, but something that involves the update happened that I think SEO people did not see coming! A little tool we all found out about called Live-PR (Page Rank) was killed by Google!  Some clever SEO toolbuilding people created a tool that shows you your live-pr (page rank) as oppose to the toolbar pr.  (We will talk about the difference in a sec) The tool that was very useful to SEO and Marketers alike is no longer working.  What happened?  Well here is my thoughts:  This tool was giving out information that Google was not wanting to get out there, for example:  Lets say you have  a site you have been working hard on SEO and you have no Page Rank, but its been several months of working on it.  You can use this tool to see if you have any kind of PR at all.  So you can have a toolbar PR of 0 but a LIVE PR of 4.  Also if you have been working hard on building up links and trying to improve your PR it was useful to see what you could be the next time Google does a Page Rank update.

Why is this information useful?  If you are and SEO it lets you know the work you are putting into certain sites is not in vain.  if you are a client you also figure that same thing out..  (Especially if you are paying money to have this done–this helps keeps em honest)  Why does Google want to hide this?  Well its not clear if they want to hide this but it has been disable for the time being.. MC has Blogged about this and we are looking forward to his answers!  Interesting topics to say the least!  It will be neat to see what unfolds.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Anyone in the SEO community is very familiar with the little tool called Live PR (Page Rank), well lets just say it was fun while it lasted. As you probably know with the launch of Big Daddy Google has relesaed a new way to calculate page rank (Matt Cutts talks about this on his blog). This tells you this is on his mind right now – Examples questions Matt Cutts has on his plate: This was just on his blog today (3/27/06)
- Is Bigdaddy fully deployed?
- What’s the story on the Mozilla Googlebot? Is that what Bigdaddy sends out?
- Any new word on sites that were showing more supplemental results?
- Is the RK parameter turned off, or should we expect to see it again?
- What’s an RK parameter?

Also on all the major SEO Forums this is the topic right now people are wondering about!

Here is what I think. In doing thier latest update they must have figured out that SEO people, and tool building SEO people alike had figured out a way to find out what the page rank of your site is projected to be during the next page rank update. So you could have a toolbar page rank of 1, but a live page rank of 4. (this would be good news for any SEO working hard on a site–not to mention good info) Right now there is not many answers as to when the Live PR (if it ever will) will get turned back on, but its interesting to say the least!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

I finally had some time to integrate my blog into my website.  Please take some time to update your links.  I will be resuming my question and answer on this Blog starting tomarrow probably.  Please feel free to email me with any of your SEO questions.  You never know, your question just may show up on my blog.. I also am allowing comments now so feel free to add your two cents.  Thanks,  Mat

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question: Can you please provide us a list of some of the useful websites and tools you use when doing your own Search Engine Optimization?

I was sitting here finishing up some other blogs that I do on some other places and was thinking about what I was going to say today here. I was going over several website that I use often, as well as good tools that as an SEO I use all the time. I just want to share them for todays blog: Here is a list of the Blogs, websites and tools that I have been using recently.

BLOGS:
www.mattcutts.com/blog
www.seobook.com
www.seoroundtable.com
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/

WEBSITES:
www.ericward.com
www.w3.org
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.isnare.com
www.articlecity.com
www.goarticles.com
www.digg.com
http://del.icio.us/
www.wikipedia.org
www.prweb.com

TOOLS:
http://tools.seobook.com/
http://validator.w3.org
http://inventory.overture.com
www.wordtracker.com
www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Call it a case study if you will, but I was having problems with my internet directory pages not all being cached on all Googles data-servers a couple months back. I had a feeling it might be affecting my standing and rankings with Google. I attended the SES New York 2006 a couple weeks ago, and heard Matt Cutts talk about the importance of the 301 re-direct in a “lunch with Google”. He was talking about all kind of things related to problems when not using the 301 re-direct properly, but a couple of the things he talked about caught my attention. One was how it could effect your standings and rankings in Google indexing you properly (well here was my caching problem) on all the data-servers. Another thing he mentioned was the importance of not dumping any old pages. If you have old pages (or have done a complete site re-design) with old content just make them 301’s. (there is enough with this topic to blog about another day) So in getting back to my problem with the all of the data-servers not caching my site–Once I change my 301 re-direct in the .htaccess file in my root domain, all the data centers started caching me again and I have seen an increase in traffic from Google according to my analytics.

Take a host for example like Ipowerweb and here is the easy .htaccess fix to get all your non www’s always pointing the the www’s no matter what people type in: (example of how it works: click on this link with no www’s and see what happens http://eplanit.biz )

Here’s the code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(Make sure your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled.)

As long as your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled then you should be able to use this fix on almost any host.

So in summary, I learned from Matt Cutts the importance of using the 301 re-direct on websites. I have already seen what it can do for traffic and standing with Google so I highly recommend any SEO to make sure this is high up on thier priority list. Make sure this “little thing” is done properly so it does not effect your rankings in a negative way down the road.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question: I have a retail ecommerce site and its not easy to come up with good “unique” content I always hear you “SEO” people talk about; Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

This is one of the biggest area of hardships most retail ecommerce websites face. You have product you want to sell and the product will probably sell itself if you can just get people to the site. You want to keep your site clean, and user friendly and then there is the “SEO” guy telling you that you need more unique content.

Here are some ideas:

1. Re-Write Product Descriptions: One thing that anyone can do with little effort is re-write descriptions that you get from a manufacturer or dropshipper. Most companies use someone that provides them their product and images/catalog online. If this is the case don’t do a copy and paste of the product descriptions make sure you change it up. Think about it…you are probably not the only one using this supplier and anyone who is using them has the chance of using the exact same content as you in describing the product. This is where you can get into duplicate content issues as well if you are trying to have as perfect of an SEO friendly site as possible. Most companies that are using an SEO firm probably are familiar with what their keywords are (if not then drop your SEO Company and RUN) So my suggestion is this: with those keywords make sure the product descriptions are full of these good keywords that your website is going after. Even something this simple could mean all the difference in the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) world..
2. Product Review–Lets say that you have a site selling DVD Players. One of the first thing that most people looking to buy electronics looks for is a review of that product compared to others like it. You can create a “price comparison page or a product review page. You can find this information anywhere and just make it your own and provide that as content on your site. Again remember to use those keywords as well on these type of pages.
3. Create a Frequently Asked Question Page. This is a great area to add multiple pages to your website as well as use really good keywords and create unique never before read content.
4. Create a Blog and let others create your content for you! You can post questions, talk about products, ask for feedback…its limitless if you really think about it.
5. Create a testimonials page In doing this you can maybe sway a would-be buyer into taking a closer look at a product that he/she is thinking about buying based on someone else’s experience with it. This is also a great way to keep adding content to your site as well as providing a service for your customers.

As you can see there are many ways to create good unique content, but the biggest key is to be creative. Think about what you like to see on websites and the content that you read. If you can master this area of “content” you are well on your way to achieving better SEO on your site!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question: What is the basic idea and concept behind Tagging and Social Bookmarking, and sites like Digg and Del.icio.us ?

Although you may just be hearing about “tagging” or “social bookmarking” they have actually been around since 2003. The idea created by Del.icio.us is where you share your favorite sites with other people and tag them with certain keywords. As creatin tags become more popular and more people tag the things you have tagged your sites become more popular and you can actually increase your traffic. Think about your computer favorite bookmarks. Think about a big community of people doing this on specific sites and this is the best way to describe social bookmarking. According to Wikipedia “A tag is a keyword which acts like a subject or category. A keyword is used to organize webpages and objects on the Internet. Each user “tags” a webpage or image using his/her own unique tag. An image or webpage may have multiple tags that identify it. Webpages and images with identical tags are then linked together and users may use the tag to search for similar webpages and images. ”

With more and more people using the internet for good solid information and content to read social bookmarking is just going to continue to get more popular. Especially when people start to rely less on search results for good content. Communities like Del.icio.us and digg rely on the people inside those communities to find the most popular stuff. SO what does this mean to you? In order for you to really make use of sites like this you need to come up with useful information for the community related to what you do. Just like in the search engines, you will not be able to move up the rankings without good unique content (the cry of every SEO)

The best way to get started and trying to figure out this relatively new concept is just going and doing. Go sign up for an account, look at what other people are doing. See what other people are blogging about in your industry, see what other people are tagging in your industry. See what other people are writing articles about and find the ones that community members really like. Doing this should help you get a better understanding of this idea and already puts you above most people you may be up against since this idea is, like I said fairly new….

Good luck and happy tagging!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question? Can registering my domain name for only 1 year at a time hurt me with getting rankings on Google?

Quick Answer: YES, most people when registering a domain name make an “SEO” mistake before they even start designing their site. When registering a domain name make sure you pick a company that will allow you to register your domain name for multiple years such as GO DADDY. A lot of new internet business owners make the mistake of only registering their domain names for a year. Why does this matter? In wanting to create a site that is Google friendly you need to register a domain name for multiple years to show Google that you are doing this business for real, and are in it for the long haul. They do not give as much respect to domains that have only been registered for a year. When you are registering a brand new domain, you already got enough stacked against you in trying to get good rankings so make sure you do two things when registering your new domain name:

1. Register for atleast 5 years (preferalbly 10)
2. Do not make your domain name private. (Let Google and people out there know who you are and that you have nothing to hide)

How does Google know this information? Well anyone can find out how long a website is registered for by looking up their “who is”

In summary its hard enough to get rankings on a new website so make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you even begin by only registering your domain name for a year. If you register for multiple years you will be better off when starting your SEM campaigns.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question: Do you have any good multi-link directories that you use and recommend?

There are many ways to start gaining better rankings in the search engines, but I really want to focus on one in this post–Multi-link Directories.

What is a multi-link directory, and what can it do for me? A multi-link directory is a directory that will give you multiple text link ads to your website including sub-pages. Most of these listings also place your ad on pages that have a good Page Rank. When you have other subpages listed besides your homepage on a site, it helps your link popularity and your visibility in the search engines, which in turn can help your rankings on all of the engines.

Some of my favorite multi-link directories to start submitting to (under $50) are the following:

• www.eplanit.biz ( 6 text links to multiple subpages )
• www.abilogic.com( 5 text links to multiple subpages )
• www.greenstalk.com ( 5 text links to multiple subpages with option for 10 other directories)
• www.octopedia.com ( 8 text links to multiple subpages, plus credit for another site)
• http://sbd.bcentral.com (22 total text links to multiple pages)

This gives you almost 50 text links to your site for under $100 total and puts you on pages with good standing in the search engines and good page ranks. One thing to keep in mind is your marketing budget. Only pay for the directories that will do the most for you. Most paid directories will not even allow you to chose the words you want to be linked to you.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.

Question: Can you please show us some example sites that have good content. (The kind of content that we keep hearing that Google wants?)

There are many strategies in gaining top rankings on the search engines and content writing is probably one of the most important areas search engine marketers need to focus on. As I have been in the world of SEO for over 5 years one thing that has helped me more then anything is my ability to provide unique content that is fresh and worth reading. Alot of the clients I work with struggle in thier ability to write good content, and when they do — we go back to the basics–keyword research and analysis. Chosing the correct keywords to target can really help making content writing for your webpages much easier! Here is a couple of websites to look over and see what they are doing for content. Can you pick out the words they are going after?

Example of really good content sites:

• www.rockymountainmattress.com ( A ecommerce site focusing on words like: memory foam mattress , air beds , latex memory foam , and air mattress )
• www.joomlastyle.com ( A site for the open source community loving (CMS) Content Management Systems focusing on keywords like: free joomla templates , joomla admin templates )

When you go through these sites its very apparent what they are about, and its also clear who and what keywords they are going after. The content is also very well written and uniuque to the competition, and they use the words clients are using to search in order to write the Content. Optimized content writting is one of the many puzzle pieces in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) . If you are finding your site without very much love from Google, then this may be one of the areas you are lacking in.

Some tools I use ( along with MANY OTHERS) to do keyword research and analysis are built right into Google, and I also use this handy website http://inventory.overture.com (Keyword Selector Tool) This tool helps you find the keywords that people are actually searching for. There is so much more that actually goes into keyword research and analysis, but just knowing what your potential clients are searching for will give you a good start in finding the words you want to be found for!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter or follow Matt Siltala on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status.