Not too long ago a document was making the rounds of the Internet that appeared to be the newest official Google Quality Guidelines document.  This document, most people hoped, would hold the secrets to ranking well within Google.

Now, you might wonder how this can happen.  After all, Google is especially secretive about what it takes to rank well within their site so how could it possibly be that the document used by Google Raters made it’s way online?  Was it a fake?  A distraction?  Something conjured up by a savvy online marketer to gain exposure?  Sounds very conspiracy-theorist doesn’t it?

Well, it’s actually not as exciting as one might think.  The fact is, Google hires folks from all around the world to do work for them and help them detect whether or not a particular web site should be ranked where it is based upon a variety of factors.  These people that Google hires, receive a document that tells them what specifically to look for and how to determine the merits of a site.  Due to the vast numbers of people who do this work, it’s not unheard of for one of these documents to make its way online.

The document (which has since been taken down online at the request of Google), contained an area that talked about spam; and how to determine what should be flagged as spam and what should not.

Whenever one of Quality Raters took a look at a website, it is their job to mark a site as:

• Spam
• Not Spam
• Maybe Spam

Pretty basic right?

The criteria for marking a web page as spam should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been in the industry for even as little as a few months.  It’s really very basic knowledge, but just to clear up any confusion, here are the definite “no-no’s” when it comes to your own site (and which you can also read here:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3).

• Don’t use cloaking;
• Don’t use hidden text;
• Don’t use framed pages;
• Don’t keyword-stuff your URL’s;
• Don’t use JavaScript Redirects
• Etc.

Again, pretty common sense stuff.

But, what you don’t see here is that according to this document, Google Raters are to mark pages without any useful content and designed only to make money, as spam.

There’s no doubt that you’ve come across these pages yourself.  These are the ones that have domains parked on them and where there is nothing more than a listing of ads; pages that are chock full of ads that have very little unique content on them, etc.

And yes, it should be noted that even if a site is attempting to generate income using AdSense ads (Google’s own product), that this will likely be marked as spam as well.

As a matter of fact, the blatant abuse of this has likely prompted Google to recently announce at PubCon that they (Google) will be taking a look at content that is immediately above the fold on a web page.  The assumptions are that Google will begin to penalize those sites that show ad-related content above the fold; above the fold meaning the content you can see on a web page without needing to scroll down.

Which brings me back to the whole point of the title of this post.  Does it make a difference in where you rank if you aren’t trying to sell anything?

Well, yes, and no.  We don’t know how sites are going to be affected by this new rule of having ads above the fold, but it is unlikely that major retailers who say, show products at the top of their pages in response to a specific product query, will not be penalized.

On the other hand, if a site is nothing more than a few bits and pieces of content yet chock-full of ads, especially ads above the fold, then it can be assumed that you would be penalized.   We’ll all just have to wait and see how it plays out but for now, if you’re one of the ones who has advertising listed above the useful content on your site, it would be advised to move those ads to a different location.

I cannot say enough good things about SEOmoz.  Click here using this special link to get 30 days for free.

The video focuses on ways to get links and mentions for your own site.  Here are some of the tips that Rand offers:

• Give away your writing!  Guest post for others by doing a search in Google for “guest author or guest writer or guest blogger or guest contributor” – it’s also helpful to include your keywords as well to find sources you can write for.  ”Guest Blogger + Dog Training” for example.  Also, Rand suggests using Google blog search and Google discussion search.  Both great resources for places to promote your writing.
• Give away your videos.  In this video Rand recommends Wistia which actually gives you details on what your viewing audience is doing (a must have when you want to know if someone is bored to tears or if they have to keep going back and forth to re-watch something).   What Rand doesn’t mention in the video is that you must be certain your videos are branded.  Whether you use Wistia or another service such as YouTube, your brand must be somewhere on that video so that others can recognize you.
• Give away your product.  If you give something of yours away you can ask others to cover it or talk about it.  Be wary of saying “Hey, here’s my product, could you link to it?”
• Similar to giving away your product is giving away your time.  Offer to do something pro-bono and you could have not only a very happy client but someone who will sing your praises, link to you, and mention you quite often.
• Give away your contact details.  So often you’ll see folks post helpful information, whether in forums, blog posts, on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and yet, if the person is interested in what you have to say, there’s no way for them to contact you.  Make this as public as possible!
• Be sure you allow your images to be used.  You can add a creative commons license to them, etc.  But just be sure you’re getting the credit.  (This is really paraphrased – the video will give you more details).
• Within your RSS feed, you have the ability to publish only partial feeds or full ones.  Choose the full feed.    Contents of feeds get used quite often and it’s best to have the full feed available for someone.  Also, when you do link within your own feed, use the full url including the http:// portion – otherwise that republished content won’t link back to you.
• It’s likely you’ve collected data on your site visitors, etc.  This data may be extremely valuable to others.  But, you won’t know until you ask.  Refer to the end of the video for more details on this but suffice it to say, you can reach out to others whom you think may find your data valuable and then see if they’d be interested in receiving it.

They’ve also released a video that was recorded in May of 2009 at the Google I/O conference (the same conference that first introduced Google Wave).

Now, the video below is an hour long so if you feel up to it and have the time, feel free to watch it yourself.

If not however, you’ll be happy to know that I in face HAVE watched the video and have made the important notes about Google Search Engine Optimization below.

The focus of the presentation was based on organic search or natural search results.

“It’s not enough to make a site and stick on the web because there’s so much out there.  You actually need to make it crawlable so that it appears within the search results [of Google].  And there’s steps that you can take along the way to be sure that your site appears within the search results.”

If you take a look at your site within Google’s Webmaster Tools area you might notice that the total URLs that Google found is larger than what the Indexed URLs are within your site.

“We can’t index everything because a lot of it’s boilerplate duplicate content information.”

It’s important to verify your website using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Planning for a New Site

• A compelling product or service.
• I have unique content that I want to create.

“If you have a great service or you have great content you want to look to make a site.”

Selecting Your Domain Name

You want to look at what you want your site to target.

To target international vendors from all over the world, look to get a .com, a .net or a .info. (gTLDs)

If you want to get a ccTLD (country specific domains) then you can only target people in that region (at least through Google.)  For example, if you get a domain such as www.SomeSite.fr then it’s only going to target customers in France not in the United States.

“If you want to get the most authority, then you’ll want to self-host [your site].”

It’s important to choose a non-www or a www version of your site because of PageRank dilution.  It will disperse your links between two sites.

If you want to target users who only speak a certain language then you don’t want to use the Geographic target tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Determine Where to Host

If you don’t give Google an indication of who you are serving (country specific domain or Geographic location setting in Google Webmaster tools), then you’ll want to choose a webhost that is in the same location as the location you’re trying to target.

“Shared hosting with “bad neighborhoods” does NOT affect your rankings.”

There’s new Google Webmaster Tools API data available.

Designing Your Site

Site Architecture:  Navigation

• Important that users are able to navigate your site.  For example, breadcrumbs.
• A Search Box
• Logical category navigation
• If they come to a child page, how can they get back to that home page?
• Know that they’ve already visited.
• Modify color for visited links or “Items you also looked at”
• Site Architecture for Users:  URL Structure

“Shareable URLs are always good.”

• The URL takes a user to the exact item they clicked on, not a menu or a homepage where they would have to search for the item.
• “Descriptive file names also help users as well as search engines.”
• Keywords separated by hyphens.
• Lowercase URLs for “safest implementation”.  For example, users might manually type it in and they’ll use lowercase.
• Keep in mind that robots.txt is case sensitive so mixed-case URLs can be a “hassle”.

Site Architecture for Search Engines

First think about what’s going to be private vs. public and secure the private data.

If you have a site that has adult content – separate the adult content from family-friendly content.  Especially for safe search.  It’s easier for the search engines if they see a directory structure that’s logical.

For example:

www.SomeSite.com/adult-images/

www.SomeSite.com/family-friendly-images/

“For search engines, static links are always best.  Because we can follow those and they have good anchor text.”

• Keep important pages well-linked from the home page.  Don’t hide it in a child node, link it from the home page.
• Submit an XML sitemap with Yahoo!, Ask, and Microsoft as well.  Often these are from sitemaps.org.

Disallow Throwaway Content:  Shopping Carts

Since Googlebot will never actually “purchase” a product from your site, there’s no need for shopping cart code.

Disallow Login pages as well.

Create and test the Robots.txt file within Webmaster Tools.

Dynamic URLs

Often recognized by name/value pairs. Eg:  page.foo?category=1&answer=10

Create easily understood name/value pairs:

http://www.SomeSite.com/product.php?item=g1-phone

http://SomeSite.com/product.php?item=g1-phone&category=mobile

http://www.SomeSite.com/product.php?item=g1-phone&category=mobile&affiliateid=1234

http://www.SomeSite.com/product.php?item=g1-phone&category=mobile&affiliateid=5678

Each of these lead to the one product page for the g1 phone.  But they differ from one another because of all of the different parameters.

You might have 1,000 products on your site and you might have 10 URLs that could actually link to each product so now you’ve created a site with 10,000 URLs and actually you only have 1,000 good product pages.

Google can’t crawl all the web.  ”We’re trying to limit our resources and crawl what’s useful.”

Since each category is the same, and the affiliate ID’s differ only slightly they’re able to throw those out as not being a single, different URL and makes it much easier for Google to process.

They’re going to find out ways to crawl the most important of those [URLs].

“One reason why people might not have done this in the past is they thought “ranking reasons”…they thought “oh, I need to put keywords in my path because that’s better for ranking.  Which isn’t the case.”  We’ll actually interpret keywords whether they’re in the page or in the name/value pair.”

Remove Session IDs from Paths or Position

Creates undesirable infinite crawl possibilities.

If you put your session ID in the middle of a path, it looks infinite to Google.

“Our search engine wants to crawl every category and every leaf node page. ”

If you have a lot of navigation, expand one category at a time.  Keep it standard.

Google’s Message Center in Google Webmaster Tools

They’ll give you a notification if they’re found an infinite URLs.

Indexing and URL Structure

• “You want to have pretty sweet anchor text.”
• Create descriptive anchor text that names or labels your link.
• You don’t want “click here”.

Choosing Technologies

Design initially with static HTML content and navigation to reach the largest audience.

Add Flash & AJAX later.

JavaScript

Google now processes many onclick events to discover new URLs.

This functionality is continuously updated.

Can also call an onclick if the onclick calls a function but ONLY if the function is on the page itself and not dependent on external files.

Examples of what Google can now process on your site:

div onclick=”document.location.href=’http://somesite.com/’”

if myfunction(x) is defined within the page:

onclick=”myfunction(‘index.html’)” <a href=”#” onclick=”myfunction()”> New Page</a>

<a href=”javascript:void(0) onclick=”window.open(‘welcome.html’)”> open new window</a>

They’re not yet there with AJAX.  Consider Hijax for AJAX.

For Flash

Google can find all of the user-visible text in a Flash file.

Avoid text in graphic files if you desire content indexed

They associate text with the embedding page (if one exists)

For embedded Flash, use well-known JavaScript methods to do the embedding:

• SWFObject
• SWFObject2
• UFO
• AC_RunActiveContent

New functionality added by Google:

If your Flash file loads an external resource (e.g. HTML page, XML file, another SWF file), they’ll capture that content and associate it with the Flash file.

Frames & iFrames Current Behavior with Google

Crawl

• Frame/iframe URLs discovered at crawl time within the parent page.
• URLs do not require a separate link on the web

Index

• Frames often indexed with parent page.
• iFrames often indexed as an independent URL.

Historically we’ve seen a lot of ads within iFrames and so there was no use to bring that into the parent page.

Making the Web Page

Anatomy of a search result.

There’s a title which corresponds to the title of your page.

A Snippet  which can either be found within the context of your page or used from your meta description.

URL and sitelinks.

Sitelinks are calculated algorithmically done especially if you have a site that’s very accessible to search engines (and it’s going to be the high result.)

You want to create unique titles for EACH URL.

As well as a unique meta descriptions.

Use rel=”canonical” to specify one URL from others with duplicate (or near duplicate content).

Minimize Duplicate Content

If you have multiple URLs that go to the same page this means you could be losing PageRank.

Specify your preferred version in the header of each duplicate page (Yahoo and Microsoft accept this standard).

For example:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://SomeSite.com/product.php?item=g1phone” />

Properties such as link popularity will be consolidated to one version.  The canonical URL will also likely appear in search results.

Specifying canonicals only work within the same domain.

Google Webmaster tools can help with titles and meta descriptions.  It will point out to you if you have duplicate titles or duplicate meta descriptions or titles that don’t exist.

Adding Content

Make sure you’re keywords are included in the text.

“Keywords are important.  If you want to rank for a certain word, you should use it in your text naturally.”

Adopt the language of your users.

“Keyword stuffing is spam.”

Images

For image search here are some of the signals:

• Google looks at the text surrounding the image.  The paragraph text and the heading.
• The quality of the image matters.  The higher the better.
• Image attributes are very important.  Often, the alt text is used as the images anchor text.
• Image file names.  Use file names that are hyphen-separated rather than a default.
• “Hyphens will be seen as word separators whereas underscores are not seen as a full-strength word separator.”

Image Replacement:  Hiding Text Can Be Risky

Developers (or some site owners) will often think that “Oh, I’ve got this image with some text in it so to let search engines know about my text, I will actually use “text-indent:-999″.

What this does is push the text off the screen so no one can see it.

This is a bad idea because this is a long-running spam technique and will generate a penalty.

If you’re using images, use alt text if possible.

If Google believes that you are a legitimate site trying to use something like the text-indent, they’ll send you a message in Google Webmaster Tools.

For Videos

“YouTube does a lot of good things.  They have static HTML navigation, text descriptions, good titles, you can visibly see the popularity of a video so you can see the views, the ratings, they have comments that help the user become engaged; comments can also be a turnoff but it also keeps some people there.  They have related videos that keep it sticky on the site so you keep looking at more…and of course the best thing about video optimization is to create a compelling video, right?  One that people do want to share.  And if you’re hosting on your own, uptime is important.”

Video Site Maps

You can submit a video sitemap to Google.

Responding Appropriately (Response Codes)

200 – For when the URL exists; No “soft 404s” that redirect to your homepage.

301:  Signals the content has moved permanently; Use when existing content has new URL; Transfers URL and linking properties from source to target URL.  Search results will show the target URL not the source URL.

404:  File not Found; Google treats 410 similarly

Webmaster Tools allows you to copy and paste code that will give a nice looking 404 with the closest match to the URL they were trying to get to.

503: For temporary site maintenance, signals to crawler to revisit later.  Don’t noindex everything and don’t 404 it.

Review Crawl Errors

Google Webmaster Tools will give you response codes for errors.

Fix Broken Links!

Webmaster Tools provides the source (within your site or external to your site) for 404s.

They’ll tell you where that 404 is from.  Can reach out to people linking to you who are coming to a 404 and let them know that they’ve mistyped something, etc.

It is up to you as the site owner to attempt to correct this.  You can redirect the page they’re linking to using a 404.

301s don’t tend to get visited and crawled quickly.

Sitemaps

There’s lower-case sitemaps.  The HTML type of sitemaps.  SE’s can follow that but what Google likes and wants is an XML sitemap.

You can put the link to the XML sitemap in the robots.txt file.  This is a list of URLs that you WANT crawled.  They’ll use this to feed the URL to their crawler.  It maximizes the pages being crawled by Google.

“It’s best to have strong link architecture in your site.”

Engaging the Community

Blogs

• Become an authority in your field.  Don’t just “put something out there.”
• Use categories that are also good keywords.
• Keep your blog secure; Hackable software warnings in Webmaster Tools Message Center
• Review http://www.MattCutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/; or just Google [matt cutts seo blogging tips]

P.S.  On this site there is a link to a video where Matt Cutts talks about White Hat SEO Tips for Bloggers from Wordcamp in 2009.  And yep, I’ve added the finer points to that 45 minute video as well.

Blog FAQs

• Publish full content or a snippet?  Only mildly better for Google if full content is published.  Your preference.  ”Most users prefer to see the full content.”
• Robots.txt disallow duplicate content categories/labels like “archives”?; Sure, if you’d like Google to only crawl unique sections that’s just fine.
• What about tweets?; Not currently in ping service, crawled if linked to on the web, can appear in web search results.
• Twitter has no ping service.  It has to be linked to on the web.

Engaging the Community:  Comments/Reviews

Benefits

• Informed purchasing decision for consumers
• Communication with/between readers.

Host comments and reviews on your own site for stickiness (need to moderate for spam).

Place reviews on same URL as product to consolidate content (all related links go to the same URL).  Keep the reviews on the same page as your product so that they don’t go to a separate URL to read a review.

Microformats and RDFa Reviews in Snippets

Initial focus is on sites whose primary intent is to provide

• Reviews
• Descriptions of people (e.g. social networking sites)

If they’re marked up in RDFa or in an hCard we can actually show that on Google.

Check Backlinks in Webmaster Tools

Find out who is linking to you in Google Webmaster Tools.

Maximize Traffic

Google shows you up to 100 queries now of how people are finding your site.

Final Question to end the session:

“Do you think it’s better to create a good website or to start a social media campaign?”

Google’s answer:  A good website.

“A lot of people make conversions when they feel they’re well-informed and comfortable.”

I’ve got big changes coming to Bonehead SEO and I hope that they’ll surprise you in a very good way.

Over the 13+ years I’ve worked online, I’ve always done so pretty silently, working on websites, either for myself or others, marketing, optimizing and more.

But if there’s one thing that has always stood out to me it’s that there’s A) a lot of misinformation out there about online marketing, SEO, and affiliate marketing in general and B) that a lot of people get really fed up with all of that misinformation so that they’ve begun to mis-trust many people.

And it’s no wonder.

If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt noticed quite a few of the “well-known” names online all of a sudden “leaving” the industry to focus on something else.

Ironically this comes shortly after the FTC announced that they’ll be cracking down on websites that they believe are using fake testimonials and under-handed tactics in order to make a sale.

I don’t know about you but I for one have wondered “WHY?”

If everything was so legitimate and worked so well for everyone why the need to suddenly shut down everything?  You can’t help but have a myriad of questions run through your mind as to what they’re trying to “escape” from.

And quite frankly, in some cases, it’s very disheartening.

That said, I want to let you know that the changes coming to BoneheadSEO will be very enlightening for you (at least I hope so).

I’m not changing businesses by any means but do want to make real, honest-to-goodness information available to those who really need it.

I’ll be flat honest with you and let you know that a vast majority of my income personally does NOT come from this website.  It comes from other sites and businesses that I own.

I know a lot of things.  And I mean a LOT.  You don’t simply work online for over 13 years and not pick up a little bit of something here and there.

And it’s this knowledge that I want to pass along to you so that hopefully your new year will be the one that you look back at and say to yourself  ”I DID IT!” and not have to look at your bank account and wonder where all that money went that you spent online buying product after product; idea after idea.

I’m not trying to be secretive or leave you in some kind of “marketing suspense”.    I actually haven’t made my final decisions yet as to exactly what it is I’m going to do quite yet. I’ve got plenty of ideas…and one of them will be the winner. But for now, I hope that you’ll simply just hang tight with me until the beginning of the new year when I’ll announce the final decision.

That said, I’d like to leave you today with a very inspirational video from Jim Rohn.  For anyone who isn’t aware, Jim passed away recently and is one of the foremost inspirational speakers of our time and someone that I certainly looked up to.  Although his talks almost always consisted of being involved in the MLM or Network Marketing business, his ideas can apply to any business.

Enjoy.

So stay tuned…subscribe to the RSS feed to make it easy for you to keep up to date and I’ll be in touch very, very soon.

A New ONLINE SEO Report:
From One Gutsy Internet Home Business Owner to Another

During a recession like this, learning about how to increase profits is often the most rewarding experience for experienced business leader.

How does this happen? Amazingly, it is no surprise that the absolute top way that is manifested for the corporate executive improve the bottom line is to publish and market a book and become a bestselling author.

Wonderful, you’ve made the decision to publish and market a book. Congratulations, success is in your future! A book can give you recognition and help you to attract more clients to your business. If such things are your only reasons, then it would be important to learn to market your book fast. But you might miss one of the best reasons for having a book if you just concentrate on getting it done fast. That reason is to make money

Getting an eternal bestseller credential and attracting more clients can actually be achieved quicker and easier says book business expert DrProactive Randy Gilbert, if you “slow down and take some time to create a bestselling business around your book”. He says that you will be rewarded with an outstandingbook, higher profits, and a passive income that far exceeds what you would have otherwise made with just a book.

It can make you a bestselling author, and a millionaire at the same time, which is why DrProactive named “bestselling business”. Learning how to write and market a book and building a business around it at the same time is crucial.

No matter what subject your book is about, there are several ingredients that are helpful when marketing your book. If you want to sell lots of copies and make it a bestseller, then some features are essential. Everyone knows that in order for your book to be sold in retail stores, it must have an EAN barcode, an ISBN number, and certain bindings and features.

However, if you add certain less well known features to your book, you will hugely expand your book’s marketability. Did you know that there are a few common features in almost every New York Times bestseller? You can take advantage of the marketing research of the giant publishing houses to help your own book sell more copies.

Listed below are the top 7 features that will make it much easier to promote and market your book into becoming a bestseller. When you design these features into your book (right from the beginning), you will market your book faster and better than other authors who fail to do so.

Feature 1 – Begin with a powerful theme and grow it. Give your book a zesty title that grabs attention. Write your book outline to be specific about what will attract the right people to your book. Don’t just grab a bunch of your best ideas and slap a cover on it. That will get you a book, but it won’t be a bestseller. You want something that you (and others) will be proud to promote.

Feature 2 – Become known as the top expert by collecting stories from others. Ask people in your field to share a personal story with a self-help element relating to something in your outline. You’ll reach a bigger audience if each story provides benefits and helps the reader to see how they could apply the lesson to their own situation. Important resources, specific examples, strategies, tips, and insider secrets are things you should add to every story, whether it be yours or others.

Feature 3 – You can build in marketing value by quoting the top people in your field. Choose the quotes wisely so that they match the theme of each of your sections. Consider using quotes from “live” people who might be flattered enough so that they tell others to buy it and help with promoting your book to their customer list. And, they might even buy some for themselves to give away to colleagues and special clients.

Feature 4 – Proactively seek out interviews and testimonials, and find the right person to do the Foreword. Interview other experts if you can and use the opportunity to get relevant examples for your section of the book and audio clips for promotion. Your book will have greater credibility by including interviews and endorsements from experts.

Feature 5 – Give credit to the individuals and groups who helped create the book. You can also try to find a company to cover the costs in return for notable attention in your book. And it is often very helpful to seek out a sponsor to partner with in your promotion.

Feature 6 – Add an index so that your book is easier to read and use. This feature will make your book much easier to sell to libraries which will enlarge your readership and help you draw more customers to your website. Yet this feature is often ignored in the book writing process.

Feature 7 – Make a list of associations, organizations, services, agencies, and other professionsals in fields around the subject of your book, and include it in your book as a topical rolodex in the resource section of your book. This feature will help increase your audience, and give those listed in the rolodex a reason to help you distribute and promote the book.

Bonus Feature – Have a bibliography in your book. Many people want to buy copies of books that reference their own book in a bibliography. Also, it makes your book more attractive those doing research. Be sure to include the books from any experts who contributed stories, interviews, or examples.

SUMMARY:

Add in as many of the above features as possible to your book. Put emphasis on the features that cause other people to want to help promote the book for their own sake. This makes the Law of Reciprocity work for your benefit because as they are helping themselves, they are also helping you, and vice versa.

If you need help to know more about write and market a book that makes money and becomes a bestseller, then you must use the recipe that the top 1% use to reach that goal. Make a decision to use the Key Factors outlined above and keep your eye on the ball, and you’ll hit a home run every time.

In today’s fast-paced internet marketing world more and more businesses are aware of the need for quality SEO. The concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a simple one really: get the attention of the search engine spiders that ‘crawl’ the web constantly in search of relevant information for each subject.

In practice it is not nearly as simple as many quickly learn. However, even when these companies seek out help in the area of internet commerce development they often overlook one vital aspect: not everybody speaks the same language. Many people are unaware of the fact that search engines have divisions for languages.  So just because you are on the top of the list for English speaking websites with your information, for instance, does not mean you are anywhere on the list at all for Spanish, or other languages. That can have a significant impact on your business even if you operate solely in a particular area as many times there are huge communities that speak a different language, and use their computers in those languages rather than in English.

This is where a multilingual SEO company can help tremendously. What a multilingual SEO company can offer goes far beyond the typical aspects of search engine optimization. They can help you to create a presence in the entire global community by speaking to them in their own language, and getting the attention of search engines in each language to pick up on your information in order to broaden your market.

The benefits to your company on the grander global scale are obvious and amazing. A quality multilingual SEO company can increase your traffic in astounding amounts. You will begin to see hits from areas of the world never before reached with typical SEO methods of operation. You will also see your local world expand and open as the area residents that speak other languages become aware of your presence.

If you want to learn more about search engine optimization, read through the following articles:

SEO Complete Information,

The Difference Between SEO Writers and Content Providers,

The Things That You Should Be Expecting From Your Search Engine Optimization Copywriter.

But alas, since no SEOs control the search engines, we cannot guarantee to any client or to our boss who’s demanding that we give some hard factual numbers that he can pump at his next big-important-guy meeting where your site will end up in the search engines and even if you’ll make a return on your investment.

However, all that aside (as invigorating as it was), we CAN determine a close-as-accurately possible number using a method of approach explained by SEOROI.com.

The author of the site, Gab Goldenberg also made a very useful and relevant guest post at Wolf-Howl.com, the website ran by Michael Gray.

What Gab offers within the guest post and his outline on how to forecast SEO ROI, are both must reads if you’re tasked with the job of forecasting SEO for your company or for your clients.

Enjoy!

Bing recently released their SEO Toolkit (currently still in beta) and I took some time to run through the toolkit to see what kinds of information it gave me.

The first thing you should know is installing it is less than a breeze.

First, you need to be using a PC – no surprise there.

In order to install the toolkit, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops first.

1. You need a PC running Vista, Windows Server, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. It won’t work on XP (which is a shame).  Most of you reading this (if you’re not using a Mac) will have Windows Vista on your computer.
2. If you do have Windows Vista, you need to be sure that youalso have installed Windows Vista SP1 (service pack 1) or higher. Most of you will also already have this if your computer updates itself regularly.
3. You also need IIS 7 running on your computer. Unless you’ve worked on a server team, the typical webmaster probably won’t understand what this means (huge problem!). Click here to view the Microsoft installation guide and get IIS 7.
   UPDATE: Note that on the Microsoft site – this link points to a topic that is “No Longer Available”.  After checking Microsoft’s own post about this installation guide, I receive the same message.  Hopefully they’ll have it fixed soon.
4. Next, you need to enable IIS 7 before you can install the SEO Toolkit. To do this…
   1. Click Start.
   2. Click Control Panel.
   3. Click Programs.
   4. Select “Turn Windows features on or off”.
   5. When the window opens, select the “Internet Information Services” check box.
   6. Click the plus sign (+) to expand the directory (they call them nodes), expand “world wide web services” and then expand “Application Development Features”.  Finally, check the box next to .net Extensibility.
   7. Click “OK” and then wait…a long time…while your computer updates.

Now, you next have to determine if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

(By now, I’ll bet that a vast majority of people have already said “This is WAY too much trouble – forget it!).  And I wouldn’t blame you.  As much as Microsoft search has evolved, it seems that the rest of the company has not.

To do this…

1. Click Start
2. Right click “Computer” and then choose “Properties”
3. In the “system group” the System Type will tell you what kind you’re running; 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. FINALLY, install the right version.  (Note that these links will download the SEO Toolkit to your computer – they’re directly from Microsoft. If you’d rather view the Microsoft page itself, click here.):
   1. IIS SEO Toolkit for 32-bit Windows
   2. IIS SEO Toolkit for 64-bit Windows
5. NOW, you’re ready to install and use the SEO Toolkit (and it’s probably time for a quick break).  I don’t know about you but my head hurts!

Once you have the SEO Toolkit installed, you’ll need to open the program.  But like most programs that you install, where you expect to see them in your Start menu, this one’s a little tricky.

1. Click the Start icon on your Windows Vista computer.
2. In the Start Search box, type “IIS”.
3. IIS manager should pop up in the window. I suggest that you move this to your desktop in an easier-to-find location.
4. Double click the program.
5. Once it loads in the main menu section scroll down to “Search Engine Optimization” and double click on “Site Analysis”.
6. Next, on the right, click “New Analysis”.
7. Give it a name.
8. Enter in the URL of your website and make your additional choices from here (which aren’t many).
9. Finally click “OK”.

Now the program will traverse your website and find issues (if any) that relate to SEO (as Bing sees it).

There’s various categories that Bing looks at such as SEO, Content, Standards and Performance.

Now, while this was a hassle to install it does give you a great deal of on-page SEO information.

For instance it found multiple spots where I had missed giving an image an alt tag attribute.

It also found a few spots where my description was too long and where I had a few broken hyperlinks – many of these attributed to a bookmarking service that I had included on my web pages.

If you double-click on any of the pages that had issues within the SEO Toolkit, you’ll get a very detailed analysis of that web page (this is definitely a plus).  Things like:

• A Word Analysis which shows you…
  • The counts for any specific word or phrase up to three word phrases.
  • The character count on the page.
  • The links referenced on the page along with their anchor text.
  • The links pointing TO the page.
  • The links coming FROM the page.
    • As well as what the linking status is, is it OK or not found, the linking title, the linked URL the type of link and the anchor text.  All invaluable information to have.

Now, all this being said, I will tell you of one very large (and frustrating) issue that I had.  After I ran through the steps and set up everything exactly as explained, I could NOT get to any of my websites that I had set up in the SEO Toolkit.

I could get anywhere else (so I knew it wasn’t my internet connection) but just not to my own sites.  Obviously very frustrating.

Now, my husband who is a VoIP engineer and who works with this kind of thing on a daily basis couldn’t even figure out what the issue was.  And we together tried multiple things…all to no avail.

Until…for the heck of it, I unplugged my DSL modem, plugged it back in and all was fine (Occam’s Razor).  So in the event you follow through this process, and have the same issues, just try rebooting your modem.  I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it worked for me.  (You’ve just received a 5-hour-time-saving tip).

All in all, I think that the SEO Toolkit provides great information, so long as you’re willing to put up with the installation of it.  And best of all it’s free!

View this walkthrough at Bing (complete with screenshots) by clicking here.

So the business owner asks around and eventually finds a website designer (usually a friend or a friend of a friend) that can make their site “look like that awesomely cool site”.  It gets done, the designer gets paid, and quicker than you can say “awesomely cool” their site rankings start a free fall in the search engines that seems to have no end in sight.

Unfortunately, this is a scenario that is repeated over and over again online multiple times a day.

Typically these “awesomely cool” sites are created in Flash or have dynamically generated scripts that run the entire website without an ounce of text to be found.  While it might look great, there’s no doubt about that, the search engines have no idea what to do with it.

The bottom line is, if there isn’t text to be found, the search engines will pass you over.

This does not mean that you should nuke every last one of your images, videos, JavaScript or Flash items on your website…it just means that you need to separate the important stuff; the stuff you want the search engines to find, from the stuff that looks “neat”.

An easy way to do this is to ask yourself  ”Do I want the search engines to find X?” with “X” being a web page, a description, a price, a product, etc.

If the answer is yes, and X is located within an image, within a video, Flash or JavaScript, then you need to be sure it’s also in text somewhere on your page.

Now, this is not to say that you can’t use things like images, videos, or even Flash – as a matter of fact, they do make your web page more appealing; but it should not be the sole item on the page.  Even if you have details about your business for example within an image and “real” people can read it, the search engines cannot…which means that you’re web site will struggle.

Here’s some tips to follow:

• Whenever you use an image on your page, give it a description using the images <alt> attribute.
• Don’t use script to generate navigational links.  Stick to basic text-based navigation and you’ll be just fine.

If you’re concerned that your site might not be friendly to the search engines, you can use a free online tool called a Lynx emulator.

Just visit http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php and enter in the URL of the web page you want to check.  Ideally you want to see keywords, lots of text, relevant topical information, etc.

You DO NOT want to see something like “This page requires the use of Flash…get the latest version at…” or something along those lines.  You want to be able to look at the results of the Lynx viewer and know, without a doubt, what that web page is talking about as well as see important keywords for that page.

So the bottom line is, as “awesomely cool” that website is that you stumbled across, you can rest assured that they’re probably not getting the rankings they want in the search engines.  You can keep things pretty and play it smart at the same time.

In case you don’t follow me on Twitter or you don’t keep up on the “current events” surrounding SEO, you might have missed this story:

http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/google-profiles-seo-as-criminals/

To summarize the story here’s what happened:

Last week at SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts took the stage and openly stated that Google profiles SEOs like common criminals.

Now, I’ve been in this business for a very long time and was even around before Google themselves were even created.

When Google first started their business nearly everyone in web development or online marketing felt like they were “on our side”; someone to finally take on the “big corporate guys like Yahoo!”.) But…no longer.

Since that time, and as Google has grown to the corporate giant that they are, they have changed…a lot.

Where I used to feel as if they were on “our side” I now feel like it’s a group of parents telling their kids what not to do “or else”. I remember growing up being told “Do as I say, not as I do.” (DAISNAID) and quite frankly, it’s pissing a lot of people off.

Here’s why:

During Google’s I/O session (see the blog post I made on I/O), they handed out 500 free Android phones to the developers at the conference (by the way this is also referred to as “Oprahing”).

Evidently many of these made their way to eBay but that’s a story for another day.

Because Google handed out these phones for free, they received “tens of thousands” of free links to help Android in the “competitive telecom market”.

Now, in SEO, one of the “bad” things that you’re not supposed to do is pay for links to your website. This will get you penalized in Google if they find out that you’re doing so.

But when you think about it, the act of handing out gifts to attendees and then getting those attendees to blog about, tweet about and link to things about the Android phone, are in fact, paid links.

Or maybe better yet, bribed links.

Now consider this. Another well-known SEO, Michael Gray has a review website called Viral Conversations which hooks up bloggers with free products. Matt Cutts “recommended” to Michael that he made sure all the links that bloggers used for these free gifts were “nofollowed”.

In essence, Matt was telling Michael that each time one of these links pointed back to his site they should not pass along any link love. In other words, Matt told Michael that because his website gave away these free gifts to bloggers, it was considered a “paid” link. So for Michael’s site to not receive any penalties, Michael had to place a statement on his site telling people that when they linked back to him, to “not follow” that link.

Myself, along with many, many others are wondering how this is different from Google handing out Android phones and getting thousands of links. Are these not paid links as well?

The whole basis of the post was to point out how Google profiles SEOs or at least anyone with any knowledge whatsoever as to the power of linking.

As Lisa put it:

“1. Rae Hoffman, marketer and owner of BBGeeks.com, decides to loan 50 BlackBerries to some of her site’s most engaged users to build content and get unique customer reviews.

And the handout works.

She gets tons of reviews and free content for her site. And because BB users are tech savvy, they also have blogs and write about the experience, linking to BBGeek.com in droves.

Rae doesn’t ask users to nofollow their links.

2. A new bakery in town ships out 500 cupcakes to residents of a small suburb encouraging them to come into the store and try them out. There’s even a coupon for a few bucks off when they come in.

The promotion spreads like wildfire when a few of the lucky cupcake recipients use their Twitter accounts to tell others about the bakery, it gets picked up by blogs and suddenly, they’re on TechCrunch. It doesn’t even have to be cupcakes. It could have been, I don’t know, pizza.”

In the examples above #1 would be considered a “paid” link whereas #2 would not.

The bottom line is, Google without a doubt has a “Do as I say, not as I do” policy. It’s important that if you’re in the SEO business or even remotely touch on website marketing that you know and are educated on how Google may view you.

There are thousands upon thousands of us SEOs out there and granted, the higher profile you are, the more likely you are to get scrutinized.

Now, does this mean that Google is the “bad guy” in all of this?  Well, it depends upon your situation.  Google’s overall policy is to provide useful and relevant content to users.  Ok, we all get that and most SEOs play “by the rules”.

But when you read these posts, you’ll see that there is a very large disconnect between what Google deems as “ok” for themselves but not for others.  In other words, if you want to increase your bottom line and you know that one way to do so is through getting other people to link to you regardless of how you go about doing it, naturally, giving a gift away, creating a viral piece of content, you’re going to use that method.  It’s just business.

However, Google can view this as something underhanded if your intention is to draw links to your site.

But, when Google uses this same method of gathering links themselves, it’s “OK”.  Because they state that the intention of giving out the phones was not to gather links but rather to encourage developers to create apps for those phones.

IF and it’s a big if, you believe that.

I highly suggest that you not only read Lisa’s post but GrayWolf’s as well.  This is stirring up a LOT of controversy as you might imagine but, as an SEO myself, and as you, the reader who is someone interested in SEO it’s something you need to be aware of.

- Kristine