We came across this fun website and wanted to let you know about it. You know those kind of nerdy-looking hats with the ear flaps? Someone has turned those into a fun idea for a website. You should check out Sylacauga Phlaphappies and if you have any photos, send them in!
maruschka | 
Miscellaneous |
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A method of telling browsers that the location of a web address (a specific page) has been moved. Permanently. This is the best way to redirect from one web address to another without taking a hit from the search engines. There are multiple ways of creating a 301 redirect that depend upon the type of web server your site is on or the type of code it uses. Changes can be made in your actual website pages or in the server’s administrative services.
Like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory or online yellow pages like Superpages.com, a directory is a database of websites that are arranged by category. You can search for a listing by drilling down from general to more specific categories. Directories are put together by humans and usually require you to register your site with them, sometimes for a fee. Not a Search Engine.
The registered name of a website. It’s the part of the web address that follows www.
A system of converting human-friendly website names like 404group.com (also known as a hostname) to a unique numerical address called an IP address. Also controls email delivery. The IP address of your website is the unique address of the actual computer server that your website files reside on.
The official lessors of domain names. They manage all of the administrative details related to the leasing of your domain name. Because you don’t actually “own” it, you rent it.
The most common method of making a connection from your computer to the web server where your website files reside.
The company that connects your physical location - home, office, mobile device - to the Internet.
A numerical address assigned to every computer, server, router, switch, hub, printer or other resource that connects to the Internet or any network. Like a telephone number is to the telephone network, an IP address is to a computer or data network.
Forget what you’ve been told about just adding “keywords” to the code in your website to make it show up well in the search engines. This is a myth. It has been years since the search engines cared about what was contained in the Meta Keyword part of your website. In reality, a keyword can be a word or a phrase, and it is the “topic” if you will, that the search engines believe your website is about. Each page of your site can have a different keyword, or may actually have a couple of related keywords. And it doesn’t matter what you think your website’s keywords are, it’s all about what the search engines find. The good news is that there are lots of ways to show them exactly what each page’s keywords are rather than letting them decide.
A neighborhood you want to avoid. This is a huge collection of web pages, often created by software programs, that contain no real content, and are not about relevant topics, and their sole purpose is to artificially increase the number of inbound links to each other.
Not all links are created equal. A link from a page that has a higher Google PageRank carries more weight than a link from a page with low or no PageRank. It contains a certain amount of authority and reputation. And quality is definitely more important than quantity. The amount of PageRank conferred on the target page is called Link juice.
The gracious act of linking for free from your own site to someone else’s, particularly if your site has a good PageRank and the link would carry link juice. That’s true love.
A raw count of the number of inbound links to a website.
A website, web page, or piece of content on a web page that deserves to be linked to.
A measurement devised by Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to reflect the Link Popularity of a website. It seems that the PageRank criteria have been evolving from being a reflection of the sheer number of links to reflecting the number of links adjusted by the quality of the links. Not every site with 500 inbound links has the same PageRank.
As opposed to a free or “natural” link, this is one that is paid for. Not useful for passing any Link Juice, paid links do help deliver traffic. Apparently these are ok to buy, but are tricky to sell if you want to maintain your website’s PageRank, authority and good reputation. You have to ‘fess up and declare which links are paid for to be safe.
I’ll link to your website if you’ll link to mine. These are helpful in small quantities, especially if the reciprocating sites are about relevant topics and can convey some Link Juice.
The automated software programs or scripts that search engines use to crawl the web, gather data and bring it back to the mother ship.
A database of websites that have been gathered by computers that constantly search the Internet to read or “crawl” through the pages and follow the links. Using proprietary algorithms, search engines discover content and categorize it. You don’t have to submit your site to a search engine to be included, and there is no charge for being included. Not a Directory.
In a nutshell, everything you do to promote your website, which promotes your business. Many professionals differentiate this from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by classifying SEM as all of the external, and often paid, efforts you engage in to promote your website.
Usually understood to mean the efforts you undertake to improve your website’s performance and visibility in the organic (not paid for) search engine results. This typically refers to things you can do TO your website to make it perform better. Like tuning up your car. Best results come when your SEO and SEM efforts are coordinated.
The list of web pages that result when you type in a search term at one of the search engines. For example, if you go to google.com and type in SEO, the listings that Google presents you with are the SERPs. Page one of the SERPs is where all websites want to be but since that page usually only shows 10 results, there is mad competition to show up well. That’s why I have a job.
See Search Bots
Only helpful if your website has more than 10 or 15 pages and perhaps some additional files like videos, PDFs, etc. If your site has 4 or 5 pages, well, you need more pages, but you don’t need a sitemap. The best thing about the sitemap is that it give both search bots and human visitors a nice list of text links to all the pages on your site, proving that we really do prefer a simple list to a flashy dropdown video display.
The company you pay to physically house the pages of your website on their web servers and serve them up to any computer that asks for them.
Grouping of sites that are similar in subject matter and all link to one another. This can be helpful for hobbyists, but don’t get your business website involved in a web ring. They are often considered “spammy” at worst and unprofessional at best.
The computer servers where your website pages are physically located. These servers belong to your web hosting company.
See Search Bots
Like with cowboys, the white hats are the good guys and the black hats are… not. In the world of SEO, white hat refers to people who use generally accepted and approved-of methods to help a website perform better in the SERPs (rank well) as opposed to using questionable tactics like hidden or cloaked text, link farms, keyword stuffing and more. Search engines are very motivated to find sites that use black hat techniques and remove them from their listings, otherwise known as blacklisting a website.
For a comprehensive glossary of hundreds of SEO/SEM terms, look here.
maruschka | Search Engine Optimization for Small Business |
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Small business owners often ask me “how can you get my site to show up in the top 10 in Google?” Well, that’s the million dollar question, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve (all white hat, of course) but what I like to do is turn the question around and ask, “what can YOU do to get your site to show up better?”
Google, Yahoo!, MSN and all the search engines have a secret recipe that they call their “algorithm” for deciding how to rank websites in the natural search results. It’s a pinch of this and a dash of that. A cup of popularity and a pound of good content.
Take a look at Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. The very first thing they mention in their advice to you upon launching your website is “Have other relevant sites link to yours.”
Let me give you some advice on how YOU can help your website be more “popular” and attract those all-important inbound links.
Make your website an interesting destination. Yep. That’s the secret. Here’s how:
Be original. Don’t copy content from someone else’s website! Content should be unique and interesting, factual, educational, entertaining, enlightening and inspiring, or controversial and fresh. Find out what people in your industry are looking for online and provide it.
Want other sites to link to yours? Include a tool or a service that people are looking for. For example, if it fits your industry, you might want to have a mortgage calculator, or a calorie counter, or a currency converter. That type of thing. Include product reviews, Top Ten Lists, interviews of some of the newsmakers in your industry, surveys, film clips or demos, expert advice, contests, coupons, humor… Do you have any websites bookmarked? Which sites are in your “Favorites” and why? Thinking about this can help you come up with ideas for making your own site linkworthy.
You can host a blog or a discussion forum on your site that will attract readers and commenters. Make sure it is full of accurate, helpful information for your industry and target audience. And it needs to be current. Readers will abandon a site whose last posting was a month ago, let alone a site that hasn’t been updated since 2004. Participate in other blogs and forums by adding your own unique, helpful comments and you will entice other bloggers and readers to link to your site.
Free links are often there just for the asking. Here are some suggestions:
Look at the PageRank of the sites you want links from and make sure they aren’t part of link farms or web rings as those links won’t help you in your quest for “link juice”. If a site has a pretty good PageRank (4 or higher) and they are willing to link to your site, make sure it’s from the page with the juice and not from some other page on their site that has no PageRank, like a “Links” page.
A Reciprocal Link is where you ask another website to link to yours, and you agree to add a link on your website pointing to theirs. I’ll point to you if you’ll point to me. Like most things, this is best done in moderation. And if what you want is link juice and not just traffic, see the point above.
As a tool to drive traffic to your site, paid links are like advertising. They won’t pass any PageRank, but they will send traffic. And that’s a good thing. It’s okay to buy links. It’s a little trickier for you to sell links, and that could end up hurting your site.
Register your site on The Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org. It’s free. Add your company’s website to any directory of legitimate businesses in your business niche. Even if these don’t pass any PageRank, they will send traffic.
It’s like everything else about your business… if you don’t expend any effort, you won’t see any results.
maruschka | Owning and Managing your Website - Search Engine Optimization for Small Business |
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Named after Google co-founder Larry Page, PageRank is a value assigned to every site indexed by Google. Each page is ranked on a scale of 1-10 (or truthfully, 0-10, with 10 being the highest score, and some sites have no score). This PageRank number is essentially an indication of the “popularity” of a web page, as indicated by how many other web pages link to it.
It’s not strictly based on volume, as Google also considers the quality and authority of the sites that are linking to your website. So 50 inbound links from authoritative websites that have a good PageRank themselves will weigh more than 1,000 inbound links from a link farm or web ring and will result in a higher PageRank. Incidentally, very few websites have achieved a PageRank of 10 and yes, Google’s own home page is one of them. Most small businesses would be doing very well to have a 3 or 4.
METHOD 1
It’s a little work to set up, but this method gives you a tool that will show you the PageRank of every web page you go to. Download and install the Google toolbar in your browser. Trust me, you’ll love it.
For Firefox:
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html
For Internet Explorer:
http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index.html
Once the toolbar is installed, it will include a bunch of buttons you may not want, and you can customize it to remove them. On the right side of the Google toolbar, click on “Settings”, “Options” and you can customize it from there.
The PageRank indicator will now automatically show you the Google PageRank of every single web page you visit. It shows a sliding green bar but if you hover your mouse cursor over it, it will tell you the PageRank in numbers.
METHOD 2
Click on the following link and type in the web address of the site or page you want to check.
http://www.googlepagerankchecker.com/
So, you know the PageRank of your web page. Now what?
Your PageRank is only ONE of the factors that Google considers when deciding where to place your site in the search results. The higher it is, the more it can help you, theoretically. I’ve worked with many small businesses who have no PageRank, or a PR of 1, and we can still get their site to show up well in the search results!
To increase your site’s PageRank, you need to make a concerted effort to draw links to your site. That will be the subject of my next post, Life is still a popularity contest.
maruschka | Search Engine Optimization for Small Business |
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There are more than 98 million domain names currently registered and that makes it tough to come up with a name you will like that no one has registered yet. Here are some things to consider:
There are a lot of Top Level Domains (TLDs) you can choose from including com, net, org, info, biz and us but if this is for a business website, go with .com. It’s the standard and if you want to have even a hope that people will remember your web address, it needs to be a .com.
Make a list of at least a dozen possible choices before you start checking on availability. Include your company name but don’t be surprised if someone else already has it, unless it’s a unique name. Let’s say your business name is Smith Brothers Plumbing. And you’re located in Fort Worth, Texas. Let’s come up with some possibilities.
You’ll notice that there are no hyphens or underscores in the names. Again, if you want the address to be memorable, leave out punctuation. No one will remember it and it’s harder to type. Here are some additional tips for what to avoid when choosing a domain name.
Now, how do you find out if any of these domain names are available? Don’t check with Network Solutions until they fix this questionable practice. You can try godaddy.com or dotster.com and find instant feedback on whether or not your domain names are available and you can either register them right on the spot or come back later and do it.
Which domain name do you go with? Chances are that more than one of your choices will be available. Let’s see how our selections fared.
As of this writing, these four are available:
smithbrothersplumbing.com
sbplumbingfortworth.com
sbplumbersfortworth.com
tarrantcountyplumber.com
Which one to go with? The obvious choice is the company name, smithbrothersplumbing.com. If that one weren’t available, I’d go with sbplumbingfortworth.com since it’s close to the company name and includes the city name as well. But any one of these four choices would work.
From an SEO perspective, it’s not clear how much of an advantage it is to have a keyword like plumbing or plumbers in your domain name. But it definitely can’t hurt you and has the advantage of telling people what your company is about before they even see the website. So if your company name was Smith Brothers Residential Services, but most of what you do is plumbing repair, add plumbing or plumbers to your domain name.
Once you decide, register it for 10 years. Unless you think your company will be out of business sooner than that, it is actually an indicator that the search engines take into account when ranking a website. If you have a brand-new website and the domain name is registered for one year, it could send the wrong message.
Once you register the domain name, get it hosted right away even if it will be months till your website is ready to launch. Put up a “business card” home page in the meantime. Include your company logo, name, and all contact info plus a paragraph of text describing your business. You can include a mention of the fact that the website is under development, but don’t put up a generic “under construction” page or a cute graphic.
Already have a domain name you’re not thrilled with? Think you should change domain names? Read this first!
maruschka | Owning and Managing your Website - Search Engine Optimization for Small Business |
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