SEO Blog

This week I setup a hosting account at GoDaddy and download and install Wordpress. It’s a straight forward process and it went smoothly. Check it out.

 

 setupHosting.mp3 [23:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blog Titles — While there are many reasons to have a blog, two of the main reasons I have one is to produce content and to target key phrases.

The search engines love original content and the more the better. Having a blog, or a number of blogs, enables you to easily produce lots of content.

I use my blog to target the long tail key phrases that prospective customers search that need the products I sell. That brings us to the subject of this post, how to set up your titles and meta description.

Titles are the most important items when it comes to on-page optimization. Your title tag of each page should be the key phrase you are targeting with that page and that key phrase by itself. Don’t dilute it by adding your blog name or company name on the end of your title.

One of the next important items in on-page optimization is the Meta Description tag. Your Meta Description text needs to be different on each page. If the Meta Description of each page is not differnet Google can tag your pages as similar pages and in some cases put them in the supplemental index.

I have been working this month applying my list of 50 blog optimization tips I have completed over the last 6 months to my 4 blogs. I have had my coders develop a simple Title Optimization plugin that I am now using. In the process I also optimized the titles and Meta description for each type of page on my blog. The following is my results.

With the Title Optimization plugin installed this is the code I used to optimize my title and Meta description tags.

Code to Produce the Title Tag:

< ?php $sPageTitle = the_generated_title($company);
if($sPageTitle){
$sTitle = $sPageTitle;}
elseif(is_tag()){
$sTitle = showCurrentTag();}
else
$sTitle = get_bloginfo('name');?>
<title>< ?php print $sTitle;?></title>

Code to Produce the Meta Description:

< ?php $sSubTitle = theSubtitle();
if (is_archive() AND !is_category()){
$sDesc = $sTitle.' -- '.'The blog post(s) on this page are from '.$sTitle;
}elseif(is_single() AND $sSubTitle){
$sDesc = $sSubTitle.' -- '.head_meta_desc();
}else{
$sDesc = $sTitle.' -- '.head_meta_desc();}?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php print $sDesc;?>" />

The functions the_generated_title() and head_meta_desc() are located in the functions.php file that comes with WordPress 2.1. The functions have been modified so if you are having problems getting the Page Optimization plugin to work post in the comments and I will post the function code. The function theSubtitle() is in the Title Optimization plugin file (title-optimization.php).

The above code produces the following results in each of the differnet type of pages on this blog.

Blog Post Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/blog-titles/
<title>Blog Titles</title>
<meta name="description" content="Code to Setup Titles & Meta Descriptions -- How I Use the WordPress Page Optimization plugin to optimize my blog." />

Home Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/
<title>SEO Blog</title>
<meta name="description" content="SEO Blog -- Provides search engine marketing news, research, and tips that will increasing website traffic, conversions, and income." />

Category Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/category/blogging/
<title>Blogging</title>
<meta name="description" content="Blogging -- News, WordPress plugins, and how to optmiztion your blog for higher rankings. " />

Archive Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/2007/07/
<title>2007 July</title>
<meta name="description" content="2007 July -- The blog post(s) on this page are from 2007 July" />

Tag Cloud Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/tag-cloud/
<title>Tag Cloud</title>
<meta name="description" content="Tag Cloud -- The tag cloud page allows you to view pages of posts grouped by tag subjects." />

Tag Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/tag-cloud/matt-cutts-video/
<title>Matt Cutts Video</title>
<meta name="description" content="Matt Cutts Video -- Matt Cutts the head of Google spam department has made a number of informitive videos and posted them on YouTube." />

Blog Titles

Google is the most trusted and popular Search Engine of the world and not surprisingly, it likes the money to remain in the family. Recently there has been wobbly news that it invested money in Sergy’s Wife’s company. According to Ecommerce Times, Anne Wojcicki, the new wife of Sergey Brin, co-founded a company named Biotech Start up, which received a $3.9 million funding from the search giant, Google.

Previously, Anne Wojcicki was a biotech investor herself. Last year, she co-founded 23andMe with a veteran of biopharmaceutical industry named Linda Avey. The startup was located near Google’s Mountain View, Calif, Headquarters. According to Ecommerce Times, Anne Wojcicki said the startup is striving for enabling persons to have unfathomable insights into their origin, inherited traits and genealogy.

This biotech industry, 23andMe officially plans to launch by the end of the year. The name of the company, 23andMe refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes present in a human body. 23andMe is a private company which tries to develop new and unique ways of helping a person to know his own genetic information. Even though his body contains trillions of his genome, he has probably never read of it. The company’s aim is to link him to the 23 paired volumes of his own genetic blueprint. It brings him the personal insight of his ancestry, genealogy and inherited traits. By connecting him to others, the company can also help to put his genome into the larger circumstance of human diversity and commonality.

If your site has been flagged by Google for Badware you want to check your site to see why. There are three categories that your site can fall into. Either it has software for download that has Malware or Badware included or embedded in that software, there is scripts embedded into the HTML of your site that can infect visitors with Badware, or your site is linking to sites that have badware embedded software for download or badware scripts in their HTML code.

The best way to check this is to use SpyBye’s Proxy site to check your pages. Manually set up your browser to use a HTTP proxy. The HTTP poxy setting is you need to use is www.spybye.org and the port is 8080.

When you go to http://spybye.org/ you will see the following site.

Add the URL of the site that has been flagged for badware and start checking the pages.

This news came to me quite as a surprise. The domain SEO.com was sold for $5M to Mike Mann.

He previously sold BuyDomains few years back for $65+ Million but he didn’t go quietly into retirement. He started WashingtonVC, a Venture Capital firm in Washington DC. Mike has always known the value of good domain names. Most of his startups have excellent Generic Domain Names and he tries to build solid companies on top of those domain names. That is a great formula for success.

Just to give you an idea, here are all the recent $1M+ sales, from dnprice

SEO com $5,000,000 Jun 07
Porn com $9,500,000 May 07
Scores com $1,180,000 May 07
Tandberg com $1,500,000 Feb 07
Vodka com $3,000,000 Dec 06
Cameras com $1,500,000 Oct 06
Branson com $1,600,000 Jun 06
Diamond com $7,500,000 May 06
Software com $3,200,000 Dec 05
Fish com $1,020,000 Nov 05
Sex com $14,000,000 Jan 05
Business com $7,500,000 Jan 05
Beer com $7,000,000 Jan 05
Casino com $5,500,000 Jan 05
Shop com $3,500,000 Jan 05
CreditCards com $2,750,000 Jan 05
Men com $1,300,000 Jan 05
VIP com $1,200,000 Jan 05

I just had Rafi, an associate that is a Wedding Photographer in Toronto, contact me wanting some help with his site. Some hacker got into his hosting account and either installed malicious software on his site or added links on his site to malicious software.

I am making a case study out of this incident and will be adding information and resources as I work to get the Google flag and redirect lifted from Rafi’s site.

All the VideoBabylon.ca pages in the Google SERP now have “This Site May Harm Your Computer” right below the title and when you go to click through to the site you are taken to a Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer! page. This means no traffic from Google until this flag gets lifted.

The following screen shot shows the warning which I have highlighted in yellow. Here is the results live on a search of Wedding Photographer Toronto.

When you click on the warning for any of the VideoBabylon.ca pages it takes you to a Concerns About Content in our Index page.

When a site gets flagged by Google for badware, Google also sends the data they have gathered to StopBadWare.org which in turn posts this information on their Badware Website Clearinghouse. Here is the Badware Website Clearinghouse record for videobabylon.ca.

In the Google Webmaster Guidelines there is a seperate page for the specific guideline of Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware which gives you Googles position on badware.

For those that are concerned that someone may wrongly or falsely report your site and cause Google to place a warning in the search engine results StopBadWare has posted the following information on their FAQ page.

Google independently identifies sites that host or distribute badware. If it finds a site that contains or links to badware, it puts up a warning page in the search results for that site (discussed in the FAQ above). Google also informs StopBadware, after the fact, of its findings. If a search for your site leads to a Google warning page, it means that Google’s testing process has found your site to be hosting or distributing badware, and thus potentially harmful. Google does not post warning pages merely in response to reports from the public but only after, and as a result of, its own testing of the site.

Steps to Getting this Flag Removed

1. Get the Badware off Your Site
Read through the StopBadWare Tips for Cleaning and Securing Your Website and read the their FAQ about Google Warnings.

Completing the following can significantly shorten the time for StopBadWare to process your review.

Remove all badware and links to badware from your website, and fix any security vulnerabilities that are present on your site… In addition, fixing security vulnerabilities will help prevent badware from being injected onto your site in the future, and thus reduce the probability that your site will be submitted to the Badware Website Clearinghouse again.

VideoBabylon.ca is on a shared hosting account so all files were restored to an older version and all passwords were changed.

2. Request a Site Review
The 2nd step is to do a request for review. On this page you add your site into the field that is in front of the “Search Clearinghouse” button and click the button. This will do a search for your domain.

If you have a warning page from Google your site should come up. Click on link to the site after you search and fill out the Review Request. If you site doesn’t come up you can request a review of your site on the Review Request for Website not in Clearinghouse page.

StopBadWare will forward your request information to Google.

Here is the request for videobabylon.ca.

3. Verify That you Have Requested a Review.
After you have done a request for review you want to double check to make sure StopBadWare.org shows that you have in fact done this. Go to the Search Badware Website Clearinghouse page and search for your domain. You domain should show in the results of the search and will have either a Red A in a circle or a Black A in a circle to the left of the domain.

A shows that you have made a review request and the shows you having not made a request for review.

Here is the status of the request from videobabylon.ca.

4. Monitor the Status of Your Request for Review
After you have verified that you have requested a review you want to monitor that request and wait for the decision that StopBadWare gives.

I am currently monitoring videobabylon.ca.

According to Danny Sullivan the process is still an up to 2 week processing time.

Time Line:
Jun 20 1400hr: Rafi viewed site SERP and there was no flag.
Jun 20 1200hr: Rafi is informated they have been flagged.
Jun 21 1200hr: Rafi replaces all files with backup and changes all passwords.
Jun 21 1200hr: Rafi made a request for review to stopbadware.
Jun 21 1300hr: Rafi contacted SEO Company.
Jun 21 1400hr: SEO Company goes over site. Submits request to stopbadware to review URL www.videobabylon.ca/ which is the URL Google flagged. (The client made request for review for URL www.videobabylon.ca but Google flagged www.videobabylon.ca/ which stopbadware showed as different).
Jun 25 1900hr: stopbadware shows a review request has been made for www.videobabylon.ca/.
Jul 05 1835hr: stopbadware sends client an email noting the site has obfuscated code that injects an iframe with a link to an infected site. Requests code removable and to do another request for review.

Related Links:
Matt Cutts Blog — How Google handles malware: a historical overview
Matt Cutts Blog — Info about malware warnings and how to appeal them
Matt Cutts Blog — Got malware? Google will help you find it
Google Group — stopbadware
Google Webmaster Central Blog — Better badware notifications for webmasters
Niels Provos & other Googlers — The Ghost In The Browser Analysis of Web-based Malware

Notes:
The Virus Graphics is from Geeks.com tech-tips and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Did you ever get what you thought was a good idea on ranking higher and then there was a little nagging voice in your head that said “you better not do that”. You didn’t listen to it and a few days later all your website rankings when poof.

Well what was talking to you was your conscience. That is the faculity or sense that has the ability to tell you that you should or shouldn’t do some thing on your website.

Your need to mold and shape and educate your conscience so it can keep you in the straight and narrow as far as search engine guidelines are concerned. The following are a number of things you can do that will help you with this job.

1. Read the following seach engine guidelines monthly.
–Google Webmaster Guidelines
–Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
–Items and techniques discouraged by MSN Search

2. Read Matt Cutts blog daily. Matt is the head of the Webspam Team in Google. He reports from time to time on sites that get banned and why that happened.

3. Visit a number of SEO forums and the Google Webmaster Help forum and read about websites that have gotten banned and what they have experienced.
Here are a few search examples.
–Google Webmaster Help search on website banned
–Search Engine Watch search on banned (click on the Search Now button).

4. Sit down for 30 minutes and mediate on what would happen to your business and website if you were banned. Make on it has just happened and think of the impack it is now going to happen. The stress, the lost of revenue, and all the extra working. In your mediations I suggest you think that your site will not get back in the Google index for 2 months and the rankings will not recover for another 3 months.

Related Links:
–Google Reinclusion Request
–Matt Cutts Video Reinclusion Requests
–Search Engine Penalty Consulting — We Will Get You Back In!

The Godaddy 10 Step Program

Godaddy is my registrar of choice and I have over 100 domains there. Here is an easy 10 step post to move domains into Godaddy from other registrars.

1. Obtain Authorization Code from owner of domain (he will get this from the current registrar).

2. Have owner change Admin email to your email or forward the Transaction ID and Security code that Godaddy will send them (If you change the admin email check the Whois to make sure the new email address has propagated).

3. Log into your Godaddy account and hover Domains and click on Transfer Domain To Godaddy. Enter in the domain name you are transfering and pay for the one year. As part of this process Godaddy will send the Transaction ID and Security Code to the domains admin email.

4. When you get the Godaddy email with Transaction ID and Security Code go to Godaddy and login and in go to My Account and click on Pending Domain Transfers. Select the domain and click on the Authorization button on the right and click Begin Transfer Authorization in the drop down menu.
Screen Shot 1

5. Add the Transaction ID, Security Code and click Continue.
Screen Shot 2

6. The next screen you will check Authorize and click Continue.
Screen Shot 3

7. The next screen you will add the Authorization Code you received from the original owner and click on Continue.
Screen Shot 4

8. You should then get a screen that states “Selected items have been submitted. Please allow a few minutes for processing.”
Screen Shot 5

9. You will get an email informing you the process has started. It will take 5 to 7 days.

10. You will get an email informing you when the transfer has been completed.

Here are links from a number of Web analytics experts and other bloggers that I added to my Google Analytics Upgrade post from last week.

What Web Analytics Experts Are Saying:

New Google Analytics Visualizations — Clinton Ivy is a WAA board member and a consultant at WebSideStory just unifed with Visual Sciences. His post offers comments and recommendations on the new visualizations in V2.

Google Analytics V2 - Jeffrey Veen Podcast — Craig Danuloff founder of Commerce360 has podcasted (12:18) his post-V2 intervew with Jeffrey Veen. The interview covers design and usability goals, presentation of related data in report screens, new segmentation abilities, report distribution features and new date selection and data-range features.

E-metrics San Francisco 2007: Busy, busy, busy — Ian Thomas marketing director at Web Abacus makes a short comment what most impressed him was “that Google had the discipline to fix what was broken about GA - its interface…”

What Others Experts Are Saying:
27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed — Adam Ostrow from Mashable has a post for Web analytics newbies on 27 different features that V2 GA offers.

First Look - Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting — Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim discusses the new interface and the new features.

Tuesday at EMetrics Brett Crosby and Jeff Veen announced Version 2 of Google Analytics (GA). There is a post both on the Official Google Blog and on the Google Analytics Blog.

The list below has some of the main improvements in Version 2 of Google analytics as reported by Google and the Web analytics experts.

Main Improvements of Version 2 GA:

1. Scheduled email of reports or dashboards
2. Customizable dashboard
3. Site overlay enhancements
4. Improved visitor segmentation
5. Geo-targeting enhancements
6. PDF extracts
7. Trend and over-time graphics
8. Contextual help tips

What Web Analytics Experts Are Saying:

New Training Material for New Version of GA — Andrew Miles from GA Experts feels like users of the new V2 product will “soon realise how effective the enhancements will be to both users and businesses.” He posts on some of the features they found useful during their two months of beta testing the product on their Websites.

Google Analytics Is Re-Launched: Do These Five Things First In V2 — Avinash Kaushik an analytics evangelist for Google says V2 is “radically different and provides such a compelling value proposition to users of web analytics”. His blog post discusses new data interaction model, the enhanced data discoverability, features that help you get relevant context, improved segmentation, and number of other “upgraded goodies”.

New: New Google Analytics Visualizations — Clinton Ivy is a WAA board member and a consultant at WebSideStory just unifed with Visual Sciences. His post offers comments and recommendations on the new visualizations in V2.

New: Google Analytics V2 - Jeffrey Veen Podcast — Craig Danuloff founder of Commerce360 has podcasted (12:18) his post-V2 intervew with Jeffrey Veen. The interview covers design and usability goals, presentation of related data in report screens, new segmentation abilities, report distribution features and new date selection and data-range features.

All the news that is fit to Blog — Gary Angel the President of Semphonic take a poke at GA in his post on what is big news out of eMetrics. His low opinion of GA before the update is “I really wouldn’t have recommended GA to any company that actually wanted web analytics.” Perhaps after he gets “a chance to work with it a bit I’ll have a better opinion,” and hopefully he will blog that.

New: E-metrics San Francisco 2007: Busy, busy, busy — Ian Thomas marketing director at Web Abacus makes a short comment what most impressed him was “that Google had the discipline to fix what was broken about GA - its interface…”

New Version of Google Analytics! — Jeff Gills from the Google Analytics Team comments on V2 that “the new version presents data more clearly and in context, so you can look at a single report to gain insights rather than having to pull up several reports to understand what action to take.” In his post at the Official Google Analytics blog there are links to the product tour, report finder tool, a FAQ and the new version of the features tour page.

Who’s laughing at Google Analytics now? — Julien Coquet from OX2 claims that with the new V2 of Google analytics “the bar been kicked several steps higher…” He has put up two posts on V2 and has promising to post more details soon.

Welcome to the New Google Analytics — Justin Cutroni a GA authorized consultant at EpikOne notes that V2 is so “radically different than the old reporting interface” that “You may even be lost the first time you log in”. Justin has put up six shorter posts that deal with the new reporting interface, the new data range selector, custom dashboards, email reports, sticky URLs and PDF report export.

New Google Analytics Plus Insight from Brett Crosby — Manoj Jasra director of technology at Enquiro Search Solutions has posted his post-V2 interview with Brett Crosby the senior manger of Google analytics (audio 7:44).

Google Analytics: Extreme Makeover Edition — Michael Harrison a GA support tech over at ROI Revolution assures us that “this redesign is a very good thing. We’ve been using the new interface for over two months now, and it’s made day-to-day analysis a breeze.” Michael also also posted View Entire Referring URL in Google Analytics on V2.

Update to Google Analytics — Pat McCarthy director of business development at Right Media notes in his blog post that he had been “wondering for a while what the status of MeasureMap was with Google, and if Veen and team were working on it or Google Analytics.” He feels that the MeasureMap team had a hand in the redesign.

New Google Analytics Interface and New t-shirts — Robbin Steif from LunaMetrics feels that the ability to “now segment by landing page” is “much more important to me than any other enhancement.” Her comment “GA is still free, with the new interface” got me wondering if Google would ever start charging for this product.

What Others Experts Are Saying:

New: 27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed — Adam Ostrow from Mashable has a post for Web analytics newbies on 27 different features that V2 GA offers.

New: First Look - Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting — Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim discusses the new interface and the new features.