Chicago & Milwaukee SEO Internet Marketing» General SEO Strategy

Yellow Pages List

Mert — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:33:17 +0000

There are quite a few national yellow pages out there. I just thought it might be useful to make a list of them.

Beyond the national ones there are also local yellow listings (in this case, Chicago).

Let me know if you know of any other yellow pages that are not affiliated links.

Tracking URL Parameter & Duplicate Content

Mert — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:47:24 +0000

While creating URL parameters for any tracking programs to measure any referrals you measure; there is only one solid method to prevent duplicate content issues. For many, the issue of placing tracking parameters in the URL string is critical to one process or another, be it external traffic or internal referrals. There’s one solid methodology on this that always works and never creates a duplicate content issue – simply use the hash (#) as your delimiter. Unlike ? or / , usage of the hash (#)Â symbol as a delimiter does not get referenced by the engines as producing different URLs that are indexed by the search engines. Any other symbols/letters/numbers, etc. after the hash (#) symbol in the URL get ignored by the search engines. Thus, a URL like:

example: http://www.metroseo.com/internetmarketing#sdfsdf121w

would be treated the same as the URL

http://www.metroseo.com/internetmarketing#dfger234234

and the URL

http://www.metroseo.com/internetmarketing

without any duplicate indexing issues.

Further reading on duplicate content & URL Cannonicalization:

The truth about the private SEO forums/tips

Mert — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:18:58 +0000

I do not believe in private SEO forum/tips etc. anymore as a professional SEO. There are no tips that can be kept private for long. Knowing something first does not mean you are ahead of the others. There are hundreds, even thousands of people in these forums paying the same fees, and these people are more than likely your competitors; the value is nothing in the long run. Especially if you are the one contributing to the private sections of the sites in any shape or form than your precious info is precious no more. And just the fact that you are hidden behind the money/password barrier of a private forum does not mean that tip is hidden from the search engines. The beautiful tips about getting a link from a weakness is not worth anything any more when search engines hear about it. If you know something; keep it to yourself; because no one is a God that needs to be praised and shared information with. Most of the SEOs out there (including myself) scream from the rooftops that SEO is marketing and marketing is SEO but at the end of the day, all SEOs know that SEO is also about an algorithm with strengths and weaknesses that we probe to discover every single day. Marketers have always talked and bragged about accomplishments and tricks (even in the pre-internet days) but they never had a morality police AKA Google watching every single day to kill the beauty of marketing other than the one done its own way.

When Netpost.com becomes EricWard.com

Mert — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:24:27 +0000

I love Eric Ward. Coolest link builder out there. I have read every article by him. Any guy who gets to email a Yahoo founder in his student account about opening the Web Promotion section of Yahoo Directory is a Godfather of Internet marketing in my book. Having said that, and knowing his busy schedule, I just wanted to give him an SEO tip through my blog.

Please 301 redirect netpost.com to www.ericward.com to prevent duplicate content and get your website power up. It really is SEO 101 and I know you dont care about your site as much (as you probably get more referrals than any of us in SEO business but I just had to say it). I guess after you do this business for a while small things bother you a lot (and this is one of the pet peeves for me). Anyhow let’s count this as a lesson to people who want to learn SEO. To prevent any duplicate content issues and to maximize your link power to a website you should 301 redirect all domain names pointing to the webpages of the website that they want the domains to be redirected to. Have a wonderful day from your big fan, Eric.

Attention all SEMPO members!!!

Mert — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:23:40 +0000

I know you are all proud to be a member of SEMPO. You show your pride by putting a logo link to the SEMPO.com homepage. If people consider themselves Search Engine Marketing Proffesionals; why do 99% of you link to the home page rather than the company member page (example of the 1%) with a link(s) back to your site and actually is more relevant than the home page. It makes a perfect SEO sense does not it??

SEO Proper linking from a Yahoo Ambassador logo.

Mert — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:56:49 +0000

As a Chicago SEO consultant, I actually pay attention to detail to the local market websites. Here is the tale of two Chicago Yahoo ambassador companies. They put a link to their Yahoo ambassador pages; but the pages they link to are completely different. One is the right page and one is the wrong page strictly from an SEO point of view

There is the wrong page and the right page to link to. If you have not guessed why yet. The wrong page does not give a link back to your site. The right page does.

Power of internal linking

Mert — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:46:34 +0000

In a humorful way, I had written about how to make a wikipedia article #1 in Google for its title as a keyword. Well I decided to test it a few months ago. Wikipedia has a boring article called real estate with minimal external links pointing to it. By the way I refuse to give a link that does not have nofollow tags to wikipedia (full supporter of Andy Beal’s Nofollow me to Wikipedia Campaign). Either way, I spent a few boring nights of (ok call me a nurde) wikilinking (internal linking from other wikipedia pages) the word “real estate” (believe it or not without spamming wikipedia) from a few hundred other wiki articles to the real estate page. The results have come back and Wikipedia’s real estate article jumped from the #18 spot to #10 spot for “real estate” a VERY competitive keyword in Google in a few months of time.

Lessons to be learned???

This is a clear indication of what people can do with proper anchor text internal linking (either through their sidebar or through content linking). Anchor text still rules no matter where the link comes from. And, of course, Wikipedia will rule the SERPs for a long time to come as the nofollow tags seems to make Wikipedia nothing but a PR cookie monster.

“Real” directories vs “Seo” directories.

Mert — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:38:41 +0000

I had a chance to pick the brains of the great Greg Boser on the issue of directories and decided to write an article on directories based around the discussion. The quotation marked words used are mainly Greg’s definitions to best define the topics and directories. Of course I expanded on the subject a little bit more. This should make a great reading for any beginner SEO student.

In the eyes of Google there are mainly two types of directories:

“Real” directories vs “Seo” spam directories.

So how does a search engine define as criterias to seperate the good apples from the bad apples and devalue the links coming from these “SEO” directories.? Based on past actions and experiences, we can identify some (not all) of the criterias.

Reciprocal links: A “real” directory would never ask for a reciprocal link back to be published in the directory. That clearly is a flag to google that says, the directory owner is only doing this directory to increase the website PR. By also giving link to this kind of a directory, the published website also decreases its trust rank in the eyes of Google.

Also if you are looking at it only from a PR point like most other beginner SEOs, most directories demand a home page link from their directory in return for a link back from a page two or three clicks away from their website which is mingled in with probably 50 other links. Do you really think it is a fair trade? It is simply a math calculation of losing PR rather than gaining it. Your internal webpages will thank you for avoiding the action.

Anchor text titles: “Real” Directories do not have tables that allow you to submit “generic search phrases” as the anchor text or within the description. The description in a real directory should be accurate and defining (not an optimized meaningless sentence) and the link to your side will have an anchor text that includes either your name and/or your company’s name.

“Common Footprints”:

a) website designed by “insert-company-name-here” seems to be shared by many sites in a directory

b) Same C-block IP adresses: Do many of the listed sites share the same C-Block IP numbers

c) Do you recognize the names listed in your geographical area or industry?

The existence of authority sites as a part of the directory seems to be a good indication of the legitimacy of the directory.

d) Does the directory have structural similarities and the same websites listed as many other directory sites on the web?

Google looks upon structural and content similarities in recognizing an seo directory. Open Directory Project clone sites or off the shelf directory scripts that look like many other directories seem to hit a trigger with google.

e) Does the site have many empty category pages standing??

A directory should not simply create 100s of categories with an empty page or with duplicate content. That is a clear flag for Google.

The above criterias should give a good insight to any webmaster who wants to invest time and money on directories.