Residual Victory Blog

Tagging and the Power of Social Bookmarking is evident to over 35 Million monthly visitors that visited the largest 30 Social Bookmarking Sites, statistics which can be found in the July 2007 report in eBizMBA’s “30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites.”  eBizMBA also reported a couple hundred million inbound links within these sites, 25% of the largest social bookmarking sites had a page rank of an 8 or 9, and 20% had a page rank of 7.  There’s a lot of tags and a lot of power in those numbers. 

Digg.com came in as number one, and Technorati.com came in third, below Netscape.com.  Del.icio.us. followed Technorati and settled in at the fourth largest social bookmarking site.  Their rankings, according to eBizMBA.com included “a combination of inbound links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast.”  Del.icio.us had the highest amount of inbound links, at 172,291,472, with Digg coming in second with 117,796,083 inbound links.  Digg was king of the monthly visits, topping the rest with 22,541,770 Compete Monthly Visitors.  How many visitors do you get in a month?

If you are not tagging, if you are not engrossed in a social bookmarking website, then you are simply not as powerful as you could be.  What are you missing besides perhaps a portion of the 35 million visitors?  For one thing, Google and other search engines also search social bookmarking sites for new contributions.  You’re missing out on new content being crawled by the Google tarantulas and the chance to escape the handcuffs of keyword phrases.  Break out and start building tags and unleashing the power.

Blogs are the most popular way to go according to several SEO experts.  “Tag and Ping” is the game.  Write a great blog about a hot topic, give it popular tags and branch out into subtopics that you couldn’t otherwise do with keyword restrictions - and (GASP) you can give it a tag without even using the word in the content!  (I hear Google fainting now…)  You have the opportunity to find niches you might never have been able to find if you were restricted to keywords.  Moreover, with a well-planned tag strategy, more visitors are likely to stumble on your site.

Send your nobel prize winning blog to social bookmarking sites using “Ping” software or online program at www.pingomatic.com.  Pinging is fast and easy and worth it.  Social bookmarking sites also give you the power to easily view what visitors are actually linking to and you can get RSS feeds keep current.  Social communities share links, and your link can get passed around.

The only people who are worried about Tagging and the Power of Social Networking are the librarians debating taxonomy versus folksonomies.  (Ask your local librarian for further information.) Tagging and the Power of Social Networking have already demonstrated a rise in visibility for millions of websites.  Don’t sit back waiting for the search engines to find you - get out there and tag your community.  The Power is there - just Tag it and use it!  Your personalized communities are waiting for you!

SEO Tools of the Trade make search engine optimization easier by providing the tools needed to create a well-constructed website built with the finest craftsmanship.  As with any tools, quality counts, and tools are useless if you don’t know how to use them.  A few of the SEO Tools of the Trade that your toolbox shouldn’t be without can assist you with keyword analysis, content evaluation, provide spider simulators, domain name checking, link analysis, statistics, Page Ranking, and competition evaluation.  SEO Tools also include generators that simplify activities such as file conversion, robot generators and Meta Tag generators.  You can provide the finishing touches of any SEO strategy with SEO calculators that determine advertising, pay-per-click values, and return on investment.
 
A toolbox with too many tools will weigh you down and defeat the purpose of the tools.  Research SEO tools and consider whether you need all the options it has available.  Keep in mind that more powerful tools are not always better, and you can always upgrade later.  Make sure you understand the data that the SEO tools provide, and can apply it to your SEO strategies.  SEO Tools are supposed to save time and make money, not take your time and money.  (Of course, if you’re really into tools, you could get a Return on Investment (ROI) tool to determine if tools are profitable to use in the first place.)

Many SEO experts agree that it’s a good idea to start with free tools.  Links to free SEO tools are at www.seopen.com and thousands of other sites.  Yahoo, Google and MSN all have toolbars available with SEO tools of the trade.  Firefox has many plugins available for SEO. The Rankquest toolbar (www.rankquest.com) and the Alexa website (www.Alexa.com) offers a multitude of SEO tools including Keyword Finder, Validation Tools, Content Tools, Meta Tools, Popularity Tools, Search Engine Tools, Traffic Tools and SEM Tools.  Domain registration history (taken into consideration by Google) is available at www.archive.org in their search results.  You can find free online keyword search tools at www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.htm, and www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com.  These also offer upgrades to a more comprehensive SEO toolkit.  A free online keyword search tool is also available at www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ and www.inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.  If you need keyword suggestions, free keyword list builders are free at www.tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/generator.php and http://www.lexfn.com/. 

Trends for keywords can be researched at www.google.com/trends, and www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/ is a free online tool that checks rankings and links, and provides links to other free tools used for competitive analysis and spidered page views.  Do a search for “SEO Tools of the Trade” from any search engine or search downloads at www.Pcworld.com or www.download.com to find what you need.  Begin filling up your toolbox, but don’t weigh yourself down no matter how fun the tools look.  Find SEO tools of the trade that can be skillfully used to give your website the quality craftsmanship it deserves.  The best tools can produce the best results, and results are what search engine optimization is all about.

Picking a Domain Name that will have the greatest effect on your visibility to users should be a carefully thought out process.  Domain names are part of the Google ranking system, and taken into consideration in most search engine algorithms.  They are also the name that your customers remember you by.  A domain name should be included in your branding and keyword strategies.  The history of your domain name is also an element in Google’s information retrieval system, so it is important not to change domain names frequently.  Google’s patent number 20050071741 specifically states it considers the expiration date of the domain, the domain server record, and the name server associated with the domain when analyzing domains that are associated with your site.  SEO bloggers tend to agree that a five-year residence is beneficial to Google results.  Hence, think of deciding on a domain name like buying a house that you are going to settle down in.  Not only are you going to be there for a while, but your neighbors might have something to say about you.

The primary objective of a domain name is for customers to find you.  Customers are either going to find you by directly typing in your domain name, clicking on your site from search engine results, or clicking on your site from a link associated with another site. The name should be friendly and relevant.  Users do not want to type in numbers, look for strange characters on their keyboard, or type long names.  They don’t want to remember if you are a .com, .net, or .biz. The majority of users are only aware of .com as an extension, so use this knowledge to your advantage.  Visitors should not need a map or a tour guide to get to your site.

Any name that starts with all letter “A”s or has “top” or “best” will receive less attention from Google and the user.  Give your target market the credit they deserve, and acknowledge that they know what they’re looking for.  Have your domain name tell your target market that you are what they’re looking for.  Putting well thought-out keywords in your domain name will not only increase your rankings in search engine results, but will also increase the chances of visitors remembering your website.  Make sure the keywords in your domain name are relevant to your web content.  If you do not have keywords in your domain name, then you better have a heck of a branding strategy like Amazon.com or Monster.com. 

One more thing to remember, you can’t just move into a house where somebody else is living unless they invite you.  Check the copyright availability at www.copyright.gov.  Research the availability of your domain name, make sure it’s not overused or underused, make sure it’s relevant, keep it user friendly and keyword friendly, and stay in one place - then let the visitors in!

It is Important to get Ideas for Maximizing Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping to keep your website in the mainstream.  Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is one of the largest social bookmarking sites on the web.  eBizMBA reports in their July 2007 report “30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites” that Del.icio.us has over 172,291,472 inbound links and a Page Rank of 8.  To not maximize Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping would be to let your website fizzle out under your competition that takes advantage of maximizing Del.icio.us.  Not only does your traffic increase when you maximize Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping, but there’s opportunity for publicity with trackbacks, comments, social book marks,
link sharing and RSS directories.

Content is the secret to any good recipe for success, and even more with Tag and Ping.  Google is keyword restricted and penalizes you during the algorithm battles for placement if your content focuses on more than one keyword phrase.  With Tag and Ping, your content counts, and every ingredient of your content can be listed to users that might not have otherwise seen you on a search engine results page.  You can use Tags to promote different ideas, perspectives, products or services to reach a wider audience.  To use Tag and Ping to maximize yourself with Del.icio.us, make what’s relevant to the community relevant to your website.  Post frequently and request comments.  Make your content interesting.  Review Tags from other users, evaluate where their interests are and create and tag accordingly.  People will subscribe to an RSS feed tag and you’ll be at their desktops.

Include resourceful links and updated sources so people will be encouraged to link to your blog.  Some SEO evaluations have found that over 40% of top Del.icio.us blogs included lists, and many recommend creating “How to” articles to gain interest.  Make sure your blog is easy to link to.  Gaining links is important because Del.icio.us offers “Tagrolls” which allows you to display your Del.icio.us content on your website.  Using your blogging and tagging strategy wisely you can develop reputable lists of links within your content that increases your rankings in search engines.

Make sure you blend your search engine keyword strategy with your tagging and Del.icio.us strategies.  “Tag and Ping” refers to tagging content and letting popular websites know that you have new content to be posted.  This new content gets crawled by spiders because it is “new.”  Don’t be overzealous.  The search engines and the social bookmarking sites both discourage spamming, and you’ll end up starting from scratch.

It’s Important to get Ideas for Maximizing Del.icio.us with Tag and Ping so your potential visitors can greet you, and your website isn’t subjected to the process of elimination that the major search engines use.  Without Tag and Ping, you’re left to fend for yourself in the eliminating rounds of Google algorithms.
Using Tag and Ping in Del.icio.us and other social bookmarking websites will maximize your website visibility.  Maximize Del.icio.us.  Introduce yourself to the Del.icio.us community with Tag and Ping, and they might just welcome you with open arms.

How to write good keywords is an important lesson to learn, primarily since keyword optimization is at the heart of developing high visibility and page rankings in search engine results.  One of the most important lessons to learn when learning how to write good keywords is to make sure the keywords are going to be key phrases that users type into search engines.  Business 101 - Know Your Customer.  Business 102 - Know your Competition.  Make sure that your keywords are in a strategically competitive place in the marketing mix.  An overused keyword is likely to get lost in mass-similarities, and an underused keyword won’t have any user requests.  The lesson is balance and relevancy. Business 103 - Know your business.

Brainstorming is a good way to start.  Consider what you want people to associate your business with, what your business is, what customers are thinking when looking for you, and if they might look for something similar to you.  Determine your niche and how to use the most relevant keyword phrases that will bring visitors to your website.  Start writing words describing your business and the highlights of your business.  Write as many good keywords as you can think of, and expand your list to include phrases.  If you need more ideas, use a good SEO consultant or a good keyword suggestion software tool.  There are thousands available; ranging from the highly evaluative to the free online and free downloads.  Take advantage of their analyzing capabilities.

The next step is to learn how other websites use your keywords.  Do an advanced search with “allintitle” and type in your keyword phrase.  This will locate websites that are optimized for the same keyword as yours.  These websites are your primary competitors.  Check out your competition with one of the many keyword suggestion tools or keyword ranking tools.  These tools can tell you what words users have searched for, how often the searches were made, and give you a list of competitors.  Since keywords are critical to your website success, it’s worthwhile to invest the time and money to find the good keywords most relevant to your strategy.  If you don’t have a keyword strategy, develop one.  Keywords are scanned by the spiderbots in domain names, titles, tags, links, RSS feeds and content, and are the signs on the road that bring your customer to you.  Beware though, too many keywords and the search engines will take you for a spam artist.  There must be balance.
 
Learning how to write good keywords is one of the most important lessons you can learn to optimize your website.  It’s a continual process. The more users learn how to use keywords, the more the rankings change.  Don’t develop a keyword and forget about.  Learn how to monitor your keyword and keep writing good keywords relevant to your target market.  By keeping in touch with your competition, your customers, and knowing what your business stands for, you are sure to have the knowledge to build a good, if not excellent, keyword strategy and keep your website results right where you want them to be.

How search engines work is a mystery to many.  Search engine secrets are often
cloaked behind complicated algorithms that undergo constant changing.  The website www.google.com/technology gives an overview of Google’s page ranking system and software, however is void of the mathematics that are underlying in the formulas that determine how search engines work. Fortunately, through articles, forums and blogs, professional search engine optimizers (SEOs) and web developers have analyzed processes and are willing to share their knowledge of how search engines work and the grinding gears that churn out search engine results.
 
To the dismay of these experts, however, the gears are always changing which direction they’re headed - Google has a reputation for changing how their search engine works, often without notice. Moreover, other search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN, continuously change to keep up with Google.  But despite the aggravation of frequent changes, staying updated on how search engines work is imperative to success.  Users use search engines more than typing in direct URLs, and the search engine developers are focused on bringing the most relevant results to users.  

Search engines work by first indexing a website.  Each page in the website is indexed separately.  A website can be submitted directly to search engines or indexed from “spiderbots” crawling through webpages, searching for content and analyzing pages with formulas to determine if the results are relevant to the user.  The spider that Google uses is called “Googlebot.”  If you need help learning how search engines work; visit Google’s webmaster site at www.google.com/support/webmasters/ for free advice on how Google’s search engine works.  Google also has an option to submit a “sitemap” to keep them updated on the details of your website.  This tool also makes your website accessible to other search engines.

“Spiders” will take into consideration domain names, meta tags, html tags, headings and subheadings, keywords, geography, RSS feeds, history of the website, how much time users have spent on the website, how many times the website has been clicked through (referred to as “click through rate”), how relevant the text content is to the user request, the links included on the website, and the reputation and ranking of the links of each individual connecting website.  These are all elements you must consider when developing your strategy to get the search engines working for you.  You can see why there are so many mathematical formulas to ascertain relevancy! 

Search engines keep much of their algorithms secret so they have an edge on their competition, but it is necessary to give general information on how search engines work so that web developers can develop their websites to show up in the results of a search engine request.  Fortunately, the comradery of the Internet and the importance of linking has made a great deal of research available on how search engines work to the general public.  Search engines are the vehicles that bring customers to websites.  Learning how search engines work is a critical area of study for every website developer or anyone wanting to start a website.

How Search Engine Spiders Work is worthy of critical analysis if you seek to optimize your visibility in search engine results.  Spiders are the messengers that carry your website information back to the search engine master, who then determines whether you are worthy enough to be shown in their search engine results page (SERP).  And inside the search engine results are exactly where you want to be.  Making your website spider-friendly guarantees that you will be indexed and taken into consideration to appear in search engine results.

Spiderbots, as they are often called, are given specific commands to search websites according to how the search engine master dictates.  Different “bots” can search using varied formulas within different search engines.  For instance, Google uses Googlebot and Yahoo uses SLURP.  Googlebot and SLURP scan and save whole pages, while MSN generally just crawls over the beginning and the important tags.  Knowing how these search engine spiders work before you design your website will help you make more knowledgeable decisions for your web page creation, including layout, content, text and html tags. 

Streamlining your website for efficiency and fast loading pages will help guarantee spider crawling. Spiders will stop indexing a page if it takes too long to load.  If your information is not indexed, your website will not show up in the search engine results.  Flash based content and large graphics slow down loading so try and avoid them.  Spiderbots easily pick up text, so replace the graphics and flash with text relevant to your website. If you have links that you want the spider to consider in search engine results, don’t use images or JavaScript because the spiders won’t recognize it.  Take advantage of the spider’s gripping effect on text, and put a text description between the <a> tags of a link.  Double check that there aren’t any broken links.

Spiders love title pages.  Using a relevant name in your title tags on each webpage will get the title on the search engine’s listing page.  Spiders tend to put more emphasis on capital letters in title pages and on bold formatting. Empty alt attributes and excessive punctuation in title and description pages are known to cause complications with recognition from the spiders.  If you don’t want the spider to recognize links use JavaScript or robots.txt file so the robots will overlook the information.  The robot.txt file can also be used to personalize different webpages for different search engine bots.  For instance, you can insert commands for Googlebot to read one page and not another, or Yahoo’s SLURP to do the same. 

There are software programs and free online spider analyzing tools to help you get an idea of what the spiders are viewing as they’re crawling over the web analyzing and indexing billions of webpages. Learning how Search Engine Spiders Work is a required task if you truly want to optimize your website for the top of search engine results pages.  Give the spiders web pages worth crawling, and they’ll bring you exactly where you want to be.

How Alexa Ranking Affects Your Traffic should be duly noted in your website search engine optimization strategies.  Alexa (www.alexa.com), is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, and is a popular website and toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox users that includes SEO tools.  Users are part of the “Alexa Community” that is the source of the data acquired by Alexa.  The toolbar offers tools to users that include links to related sites, website traffic, and detailed product and webpage information.  Alexa users are the ones you can reach when they click on a website similar to yours, and your website appears in Alexa’s “Related Links Results.” 

According to the Alexa, their users have visited 11.2 million unique websites.  By learning how Alexa Ranking affects your traffic, you can build your search engine optimization applications to not only end up in the users search engine results page, but also connect with other webmasters to build successful link-building relationships.  Many of the Alexa users are webmasters monitoring or manipulating their own traffic statistics with Alexa tools.  Traffic counts are reputed to be easily manipulated by downloading the Alexa toolbar and visiting your website. However, traffic counts are determined by “Reach” and “Page” views.  Reach measures the number of users, and page measures the number of visits, but multiple visits from the same user on the same day are only counted as one.  Alexa values consistency, and higher value is given to steady traffic than traffic with sudden upswings.

Another factor Alexa takes into consideration is their “Sites Pointing” statistic.  This is an area that you can develop to see how Alexa Ranking can affect traffic to your website.  Four to six times a year, Alexa crawls the web looking for links.  For every website that has a link to your website, you receive one point for “Site Pointing In.”  The Alexa Ranking system counts webpages with links to your site, not the number of links.  This means if there are multiple links to your site on one page, these will only count as one point.  Keep links relevant.  Alexa keeps track of user trends, behavior and preferences.  A link that is never clicked on will end up void.

Other search engines take notice of Alexa, especially Google.  And what Google looks at, everyone looks at - and you want your website looked at.  So, pay attention to how Alexa Ranking affects your traffic.  Your competitors are using Alexa to monitor you with Alexa’s useful SEO tools to compare traffic.  However, If your ranking is below 100,000, your data will most likely not be included in results. Alexa’s rankings are based on far a website is from number one, and it also only ranks domain names and not subpages.
 
By association with Alexa, you also get a big boost in publicity by their parent company, Amazon.com.  When an Alexa viewer visits your site, it gets linked to their Amazon.com profile where other viewers can visit and see your site.  It pays to learn how Alexa Ranking can affect your traffic - so get your wheels rolling and get your website profiled in Alexa’s information highway.

RSS Feeds, otherwise known as Really Simple Syndications, are a simple way for users to have the news coming to their weary fingertips instead of performing multiple searches.  RSS feeds are also a relatively simple way for website developers to promote their website and develop long-term relationships with valuable customers.  All of the major search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Google) and browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera) enable personalized RSS Feeds for the user through multiple methods, including toolbars, addons, homepages, favorites, desktops, Visa, Outlook, email and even Microsoft Office.  RSS Feeds can link your favorite visitors with your daily news, updates to your websites, new product offerings, newsletters, blogs, podcasts, lists, and other sources.  Google Adsense offers text advertising inside select RSS Feeds for your site (for a price of course).

RSS Feeds use a code called XML, and the hard-working spiders crawling easily recognize the content in the codes.  This means that RSS Feeds contribute to the visibility and ranking of web search results.  Which also means your website has a leg up on any website that does not take advantage of a RSS Feed, if you use relevant keywords.  However, keep in mind that in order for the spiderbots to read the RSS Feed, the scripting language must be in PHP and not Java.  The PHP scripting enables the search-engine spiders to read the RSS and the PHP the same as HTML - which sounds like a job for a programmer. A Yahoo RSS study found that the majority of users are uncomfortable with the XML RSS feed button, so be sure to make your RSS links very user friendly if you have a non-technical website. 

RSS Feeds are simple for the user, but a bit more difficult for non-programmers.  Non-techies can, however, create RSS Feeds with software programs.  Many sites offer to add RSS Feeds to your website for free, but watch for adware.  Google has acquired “Feedware,” which is a “media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds.”  According to Google, the Nielsen/NetRatings claim Feedware’s growth rate is faster than MySpace and Digg. Dreamweaver is another program that can be used for developing RSS feeds. The extra effort put into RSS Feed could be well-spent, considering Yahoo’s findings that RSS users have an average income of $15,000 more than RSS non-users.

Anything that provides information has the potential to explode into “information overload.”  An RSS Aggregator is a dedicated software or online program that allows you to read RSS files and combine them to create your own layout, similar to creating your own newspaper. So, keep the RSS feeds interesting enough for customer’s to add to their layouts, and make sure you organize yours in an easily readable format.

RSS Feeds are a useful tool for marketing and business.  The soaring popularity of RSS Feeds requires that your website have an RSS Feed available.  The RSS Feed keeps you in the search engine results and in the customer’s eyes.  Correctly managed with relevant information, smart programming and optimal keywords; RSS Feeds will develop a following for your website.  And where people follow, sales and advertising flow.

An Introduction to Tag and Ping is like an introduction to free speech in an oppressed society.  Although Google claims to use democratic methods, the search engine results pages are still authoritarian in nature.  SEOs have to follow Google’s keyword logic or risk being ostracized.  The search engine results pages provided to the user are based on Google’s weighted analysis of keywords.  Only by manipulating our websites according to Google, or paying our way up the ranks, can we reach our customers. But with one small introduction to Tag and Ping, the people have started a social bookmarking revolution, armed with the techniques of tagging.

Tagging has brought free speech to web results for webmasters and users alike.  Content is no longer left to one or two primary keywords as determined by Google.  The people writing and reading the content being tagged have the ability to define the content meaning.  And free speech is the ability to use your own words for your own meaning, and that’s what tagging does.  Ping is the tool that gets the free speech out to blogs and social bookmarking sites so everyone can search for personalized relevancy rather than authoritative weighted decisions.

Tagging is a very simple concept and is the basis for social bookmarking sites.  Tagging simply means your label, your content, with words of your choice.  You can list words that are obvious, such as “Tag” for this article, or not obvious, such as “SEO.”  Google might display this article in a search result for “Tag” but not “Ping.”  With Tags, people viewing the article could see “Tag,” “Ping,” and “SEO.”  You can have many Tag words, but each word is a separate entry, separated by a space.  In Tag Clouds, Tag words are separated for clicking, but are condensed, with the more popular words larger, and the less popular words smaller, so you can easily identify popular Tag words.

Once the Tag is created, you can usually make it private or public.  If it is made public, which is preferred so your content can benefit others, anyone looking at your content can click on a link (Tag Word) and get related content from other links with similar Tags.  So just by listing Tags common to users, your website will be linked with several Tag words, reaching millions of social bookmarking site users.  You can cross-reference Tags, look for popular Tags, and subscribe to RSS feeds on tags. As an added benefit, the search engines will be searching the social bookmarking websites and you’ll get more exposure.

Ping gets the word out.  When you “ping” content, such as a blog, a Ping program will send your content to interested websites, such as social bookmarking sites.  There are several software programs available, but the free service at  www.pingomatic.com is a good place to start pinging while researching Ping software.

Create a Tag and Ping strategy.  Listen to the tagging community and their preferences for Tag words.  Use your freedom of speech and become unlimited in defining your content.  Introduce yourself to the art of Tag and Ping and revolutionize your website.