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Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Houses on Sand

by: Mike Adams

Copyright 2005 Mike Adams

Do you depend on free search engine traffic for your livelihood?

I admit it. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keyword density, keyword relevance, KEI, incoming links and link text, and where my web site and web pages rank in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for my targeted keyword phrases.

This afternoon I had a shock. I discovered my main web site was dropped from Yahoo! Not one page could be found in Yahoo, out of hundreds! This was after months of working to completely revamp the site, rebuilding it with a nice content management system and lots of pertinent on-topic content, building links, writing and publishing articles, creating RSS news feeds and publicizing them...

I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It's a clean site - no black-hat SEO techniques, nothing that should get me banned, just good information, the heart and soul of the Web.

I checked my logs, and thought, "Oh my God, it doesn't look like Yahoo has crawled my web site in over a month." This was after getting used to Yahoo's spider crawling my web site daily because of all of the new, pertinent information (and especially because of the RSS news feeds and pinging). But I hadn't noticed because traffic was still high, even increasing.

Frantically I searched the Web for information about Yahoo making changes. Sure enough, I discovered that Yahoo apparently changed their search algorithm around the time Yahoo stopped crawling my web site. What could I do? What if the other Search Engines dropped my web site, after all those months of long nights and long weekends really working to create a quality web site?

In the midst of this chaos, my wife looked me in the eyes and said, "Don't worry about it, you still have traffic. The web site is doing well!"

I replied, "Well, yeah! In fact the web site traffic has doubled since Yahoo apparently dropped the site a month ago!"

Then it struck me. Traffic really had doubled, despite the fact that none of the traffic was coming from Yahoo any more. And I wasn't doing any pay-per-click advertising or any sort of advertising. All of the work I was doing really was paying off - in ways I hadn't really imagined. I just lost all incoming traffic from one of the two or three biggest search engines and yet my traffic doubled!

Have you ever heard the expression, "Don't build your house on sand?"

Or how about, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket?"

There are only about three important search engines at any one time. As I write this, I would say those three are currently Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The more dependent you are on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and placing high on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) in these few search engines, the more you have built your house on sand or put all of your eggs in one basket. You know that search engines regularly change their algorithms, right? One big change and your web site can disappear or all but disappear from a major search engine. And you won't know if it's temporary or permanent. If you're in this position, you are at the mercy of the search engines.

So what can you do to change this, to ensure that one single algorithm change won't wipe out your business?

One way, perhaps the best way, is to build alternate traffic streams to your web site.

1. First things first: Make sure you have a web site that people would want to visit. Ever visit a web site that was so bad you wondered how they make any money? Guess what, I'll bet they don't. Unless your web site is just a sales page and you direct traffic to it from other web sites or from affiliates, now is a good time to start building some quality content - lots of it, if you don't already have it.

2. Get lots of incoming links... but change the way you look at links. It used to be that links drove the Web. That was how people found your web site - by surfing in from other people's pages. Then something strange happened: search engines. But as the search engines evolved, they started measuring the quality of web sites - and determining your site's position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) - by how many incoming links you have, and what keywords are in the link text. Then people began to link just for Search Engine Optimization, not for actual traffic from those links. Do you really think people are going to find your web site and surf in from a page of 200 uncategorized links hidden behind a link at the bottom of a page and called "Partners" - in an 8 point font? If you want to get traffic from links again, regardless of what the search engines do, you have to change your links pages and you have to change the type of link partners you link to. There's a very nice free service, Honest Links, that is a grassroots effort by Webmasters to get back to linking for traffic, not SEO. You can learn more at: http://www.honestlinks.net/

3. Write and publish articles related to the theme of your web site. Publish them in the many article directories on the Web, as well as the many mailing lists for authors and publishers. Webmasters and Ezine publishers will pick them up and publish them if they are good. You can get hundreds, even thousands of links into your web site by just including a little "Resource Box" at the end of your article with a link to your web site. (Look at the end of this article for an example of a Resource Box.)

4. Publish a newsletter and start building a list of subscribers. It's one of the best ways to get people returning to your web site, along with the next one...

5. Start a blog on your web site. Post interesting and useful information related to your web site's theme and ping the various blog and news directories after each post. You'll get links from these directories AND you'll build up readers syndicating your posts on their web sites and reading them in news feed readers. Recently people have been gaming this, too. People post and ping just to get noticed by the search engines and get spidered more often. It will do that, but if you don't have quality posts, you will still be at the mercy of the search engines. Create quality content and you will build loyal subscribers as well.

I can't say it doesn't bother me that my web site was dropped from Yahoo. It feels like I must have done something wrong. But I know I have a good site, with great, useful content that is on topic. I know that my site could be back in Yahoo tomorrow, or it could take months. In the meantime, I'll keep building a quality site that people want to visit and doing everything I know I should. Traffic has doubled every month for the last two months. I'll bet it will again next month - with or without Yahoo!

Here's another old saying for you, "Dig your well before you are thirsty." If you're too dependent on search engine traffic now, maybe it's time to start digging that well. The five steps above should get you started.

About the author:
Mike Adams has been building web sites and playing with Internet marketing since 1996. Looking for an Internet marketing solution? Visit

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Tracking and Measuring RSS Feeds
by: S. Housley

Measuring and tracking RSS while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy.

It is not unrealistic for marketers to want to know how many subscribers they have, which items in their feeds attract the most interest, or how many click-throughs are generated as a result of an RSS feed.

There are a number of 3rd party providers who focus on tracking the consumption of RSS feeds. Some solutions are rudimentary but likely sufficient for a small business testing the waters with RSS. Other RSS tracking solutions are more complex and while they can come close to being accurate, with syndication there is no solution that tracks with 100% accuracy.

Techniques Used to track RSS Consumption

Small businesses can view web logs to provide information on how many times a specific file (RSS feed) is requested. The logs and information is rudimentary but will give a basic sense of a feeds success. Many 3rd party tracking options have additional tracking information available.

Hosting

The most common method to track the number of feed accesses or individuals accessing a feed is to use a 3rd party feed host. Companies like FeedBurner essentially track feeds based on accesses. The downside to using a 3rd party like Feedburner, is that the url is a FeedBurner url and any PageRank or popularity associated with the url will benefit the feed host rather than the feed creator. Additionally, no distinction is made between unique views or syndicate feeds.

FeedBurner provides a free no frills service to host RSS feeds and they have been proactive in circumventing user concerns. Recently implementing a service that eases users concerns about migrating from FeedBurner. There is a 3 step process for users interested in migrating from FeedBurner's free service, implementing a permanent redirect, and url forwarding.

Details can be found at: http://www.burningdoorc.om/feedburner/archives/001251.html

Some publishers, who were concerned about lock-in or wanted to retain control of the domain and feed urls often resist a hosting service. The new program FeedBurner Partner Pro is not free, but allows for users to point to their own domain, retaining complete control of their feeds without sacrificing statistical tracking.

The downside to using a service like FeedBurner is that some filtering applications used on corporate proxy servers block feeds residing on FeedBurner or other free hosts.

Redirects

Companies like SyndicateIQ have more complex tracking solutions that generate unique urls for each subscriber. The tracking benefits to such a customized solution is obvious. Individual user habits can be monitored and any users abusing their access and inappropriately syndicating a feeds content can have their feed turned off. The downside of course is that the success of RSS is in a large part due to the anonymity. Users don't want their personal habits tracked.

Considering the venture capital interest in these 3rd party hosting services. It is important to note that their value is in the data that they collect. As with any 3rd party service, it goes without saying that publishers should read the privacy policy carefully, be aware of who owns the rights to the collected information, and how that information might be used. It goes without saying that the value in many of the free services currently available lies in their aggregate data.

Uniquely Named Transparent Images

Uniquely named transparent 1x1 graphics can be added to the description field of an RSS feed. Users can use standard web logs to see the number of times the image is viewed and determine the number of times the feed was accessed.

Companies Specializing in Tracking and RSS Metrics

Pheedo - Pheedo creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content.

http://www.pheedo.com

SyndicateIQ - SyndicateIQ's position in the content distribution chain provides clients a set of analytics.

http://www.syndicateiq.com/

FeedBurner - FeedBurner offers a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s).

http://www.feedburner.com

Each individual using RSS needs to make a decision of the extent and importance of the analytics they require. Realizing that any system they employ is not going to be perfect.

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