Search Engine Marketing Spot

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I had this brought to my attention the other day and I just can’t believe this statement to be true. When you use your favorite rank checking software to hit the search engines to see where you rank for your keywords, it can hurt your rankings. With all the request’s to the search engine to check each one of your keywords and its position is abuse on there system. The search engines in return will penalize your site for the automated checking process and not actually “clicking” on the link. I thought for a few seconds, and then said to myself what a load of crap! The only thing I can see happening is the search engine banning your IP after excessive queries in a short period of time. I am not sure if this is true and if so how long they would ban your IP for or how many queries it would take in XXXX amount of time to get a ban.

Seriously though, if using rank checking software actually did hurt your website and it’s results don’t you think for a split second the competition would be hitting the top sites on a daily basis? There are companies over sea’s who sit on dial up accounts all day long, logging on and off while clicking on sponsored listings to waste there money (click fraud). I would think then those same companies would offer a similar service using a rank checker to slam the top ranked sites and get paid for it. That is just to easy to do and that is why I believe checking your rank on the search engines for your keywords will not hurt your listing results and is just down right bogus.

In the past month I have become fond of the digitalpoint forum, it is a good place for information. Yes I know there are plenty of other places, just a post there made me write this here. To this day I still people asking and referring to and using the overture keyword tool. It has not been updated since January, making it 6 months old now. Why are you still using data results that are 6 months old? When it was being updated on a monthly basis, it was a very accurate and great tool to use. Now though it is a complete waste, so people please move on to other tools and quit referring still to the overture tool. The following are still free to use:

Wordtracker (they have a free version)

SEOBook Keyword Suggestion

Keyword Discovery

Digital Point Tools

There are other websites out there that you will see list overture results. Write that number down, then go to the overture tool that you used swear up and down by and you will see the numbers match up. So don’t get to excited when you see websites listing overture results, they are just pulling the data from the old keyword tool.

There are other ones out there

Yes using flash technology on a website can look great. However if used in the wrong manner it actually does more harm then good. For instance, you have a an awesome flash header created for your website. Roll over effects, clean animation, sound effects (mute button please don’t forget!), all the bells and whistles to make it look nice. Yet you have your entire website navigation built into it as well. The buttons may look nice and have the roll over effects you were looking for. However it is a terrible idea for any SEO you plan on doing for your website. First of all what if the viewer does not have flash installed on there computer? I hate to say it, but it happens still to this day. Secondly, even though the search engines have come a long way they still cannot read the links embedded in your flash. So when they go to crawl your website, they will not spider the rest of your website. Another thing to keep in mind is people who use IE will have to click on the flash first to just activate it, then click on it again to go anywhere. If you insist on using flash though for your navigation, please make sure you include a footer that has links to the rest of your site so the search engines can crawl your site properly. Another alternative is to create a CSS menu, you can still make some nice roll over effects, incorporate images for the roll over, drop down menu’s etc. and still be search engine friendly. Making your website easy for the viewer to navigate through is very important, don’t forget that.

Should you buy links from other sites to boost your PR or traffic? This has been going on for a while now, sites with higher PR have been selling spots on there website just like selling banner advertisements. It is a great way to boost your PR really, I wouldn’t expect a ton of traffic from doing this. There have been cases though of getting on a high profile website that can generate sales for you. However do not expect this with all of the links. Google say’s they will be cracking down on the bought links as they do not pertain to what the viewer really wants to see. If you are purchasing links for the purpose of increasing your PR, then buy from sites that are in the same niche as you and that do not advertise that these are the “paid links section”. I have seen websites that sell links, but the heading reads “Paid advertisers” or “Paid links” which will not look good to the Googlebot.

So what about buying all these directory listings? Will those be punishable now since it really doesn’t pertain to my website and really is nothing more then a link farm? How about paying for a site review from a well known blog? That link will not only help your PR but probably give you a nice boost in traffic and a few more subscribers to your RSS feed. It is a bought link though, so is that punishable by Google to? They are currently the giants on the internet so they can flex there muscles and do this unfortunately.

Ok so I see Mahalo.com is the creation of Jason Calacanis, who is well known in the industry. He has come up with the concept of having a human edited search engine. I understand it is still in a very early development stage “Alpha”, but please tell me how this will be better then other search engines? It is uses people to edit the listings and who the results in order. It isn’t a search engine, it’s a mix between a directory and search engine. Lets call it a SEARECTORY! I personally do not see this going very far at all. The DMOZ project was a human edited directory that turned out to be one big load of crap. Submit your website, and wait an eternity for an editor to review it. Well now we have this so called search engine that is human edited for better results. Currently there are no advanced search features, you can only see what the editors put into the system and the results can be manipulated by the editors at any time.

Mahalo will have to hire a lot of employee’s to keep this site running and up to date on the latest search trends. Which will cost a good amount of money to keep going. I don’t think Jason is looking to take over as the new Google or Yahoo but give viewers another means of finding quick answer to there question. Good luck on the endeavor Jason, I support the effort and hope the service is a success for you.