One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questíons:

1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffíc, more publicity etc.

2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questíons will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site’s search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questíons answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScrípt, Flat HTML etc)

2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?” symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScrípt drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps ?

What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?

16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffíc logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questíons above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questíons BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questíons are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job.

Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I decided to come up with my own list of don’ts.

There is no shortage of don’ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.

1. Don’t shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible.

It’s not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher’s query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience.

2. Don’t lose site of balance.

If SEO copywriting isn’t about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn’t come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first.

However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won’t see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you’ll start to lose your target audience. Balance… always balance.

3. Don’t let someone else choose the keywords.

If keyword research isn’t a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don’t just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy.

4. Don’t sacrifice flow for numbers.

This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don’t work in a normal sentence. An example? “Candies samples free.” Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, “If you’re looking for candies samples free, you’ve come to the right place!” Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well.

5. Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page.

If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don’t try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won’t be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It’s a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.

6. Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page.

I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you’ve got a bunch of typos in the content. It’s just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, “We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town.” I don’t care for that approach. It’s just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not.

7. Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time.

This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don’t pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: “Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be…” See? “Real estate” is at the end of the first sentence and “Hawaii” is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there’s no problem.

8. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation.

There are many ways in which this “don’t” applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn’t be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don’t understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you’re likely to have lackluster results.

9. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes.

These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.

10. Don’t forget the chain of protocol.

There’s a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic.

Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn’t likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.

When you avoid making common mistakes, you’ll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.

Author: Karon Thackston

1. Write and submit articles. It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you.

2. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days. ..

3. Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.

4. Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have them all link back to one main site.

5. Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/. .

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.

7. If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.

8. Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.

9. Review some related products on epinion.

10. If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.

11. Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

12. Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.

13. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at http://del.icio.us/. .

14. Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.

15. Tag blog photos at Flickr.

16. Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.

17. Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.

18. Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.

19. Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.

20. Do not be boring; write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.

21. Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what I m doing).

22. Comment on other related blogs.

23. Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

24. Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed.

25. Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.

26. Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.

27. Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM.

28. Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.

29. Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.

30. Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.

31. Become friends with editors of an offline publication.

32. Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.

33. Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.

34. Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?

35. Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?

36. Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?

37. Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.

38. Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.

39. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

40. Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.

41. Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”

42. Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.

43. Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.

44. Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.

45. Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.

46. Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.

47. Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.

48. Use keywords in your image alt tags. For example, keywords go head

49. Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.

50. Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.

51. If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.

52. Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way its all free targeted traffic to remind you. ..

53. Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.

54. Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example. .

55. After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic ebook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.

56. Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one. ..

57. Do your research and find expensive niches to tap into. A good way to do this is to find how expensive someone is paying for a keyword on a PPC search engine. If you can sell items that are more expensive more often then it is a quicker way to get rich.

58. Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. Hint, it is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality. Remember, quality or quantity. Many useless or negative posts will have people looking at you funny. .

59. Test, test, test. Your flushing money down the toilet if your not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are costing you money. When you test, you can eliminate the campaigns that are costing you dollars so that you can properly maximize your marketing efforts. Without proper testing, you are pretty much lost and can’t improve. You can only guess to what has or what is working. With proper testing, you do not guess, you know.

60. Stay up to date on what is going on in the world, you can monetize off hot topic trends.

61. Network, when you know more people you can find people that can help you get what you need.

62. Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.

63. Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be long as long as its quality information neatly formatted and put together. You can also make a brand able ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to brand their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next individual. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories. ..

64. Add viral components to your blog such as social book marking options, and a refer a friend option.

65. Be funny, people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it is a genius idea.

66. Syndicate your content by using an RSS feeds on your website.

67. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the sources area.

68. Put a link in the “about me” section of your eBay profile.

69. Make and upload a viral video to you tube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.

70. Record an informative podcast and submit them to poplar podcast directories.

71. Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out: http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help

72. Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content, no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.

73. If you cannot get JVs, then try to bribe webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.

74. Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what your company is doing.

75. Try to teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get in the public, the more credibility you will receive.

76. Make a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.

77. Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. It can be something as idiotic as the Da Vinci code, but as long people talk about it, its a successful campaign. A few hints, something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.

78. Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.

79. Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it.

80. Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo! or Google groups.

81. Volunteer. Donate your time to a good clause…you can always network with people and form connections at the same time.

82. Get involved in your community and try to run some type of outreach program.

83. Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just be having a reliable one.

84. Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing ****nal.

85. Put an ad in your local yellow pages to get some local customers. Yellow pages tend to be more successful then newspaper ads because individuals are looking for a particular service when they are browsing through the yellow pages as opposed to newspapers.

86. Post bulletins in your local supermarket. However, since not everyone may carry a pen or pencil, place your contact information and url on strips on the bottom so that individuals can rip it off and take it with them.

87. Host your own commercial so you can put “as seen on TV” on your products.

88. Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you appear as an expert in your field of study.

89. Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.

90. Make a sitemap for your website.

91. Use a favicon for your site.

92. Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can help accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.

93. Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers.

94. Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.

95. Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.

96. Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.

97. Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.

98. Try to avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.

99. Do not use frames on your website.

100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server. The longer you site is down equals the more lost visitors you will have

101. Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read and rank your pages.

102. Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.

103. Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.

104. While search engines won’t deliberately discriminate against a site that is down, if they can’t get to your URL because it’s down, they can’t index it. And if your site is down several times when the spider tries to access it, it could be flagged as gone, and then the spider won’t come at all. Find out from your hosting provider what their uptime rates are and what they guarantee. Less than 97-98% uptime is bad.

105. The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn’t try to optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase – instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.

100 Hundred SEO tips and tricks you should and should not be doing on your Web pages to make them rank higher in search engines. This list looks at more than just meta tags and the basics of SEO, so even if you’ve got some of the factors, you may not have everything. Scroll to the end of the list to look at the things you should never be doing, as well as the things you should always do at the beginning.

Last year I wrote how to write an SEO plan and mentioned the SEO Strategy Document without going into very much detail. Shimon Sandler actually shared an example of an SEO Strategy Document in late 2007.

His document is structured as a client campaign proposal, serving multiple purposes. A simpler SEO Strategy Document would serve many people’s interests better, in my opinion. So here is an alternative format that you may find helpful.

1. Needs Assessment
2. Strategy Goals
3. Strategic Resources
4. Strategic Tasks
5. Dependencies
6. Order of Execution
7. Metrics

I disagree with the inclusion of timelines in strategic documents. You use timelines in project management, not in search engine strategies. A good strategist can guestimate — based on historical performance — what lag times may be expected, but you cannot hold a strategy to timelines because the search engines don’t care about your timelines.

Aside:When pressed for timelines I look at what is happening in the search indexes and what I think will happen in the search indexes over the next 3 to 6 weeks. Based on historical trends (and/or other information I have acquired) I estimate how much lag time may be required for results to take place. There are certain times of the year when people just want to shoot me because I won’t commit to 2 week timelines. But I’ve never regretted factoring lag times into my estimates. The bottom line is: You cannot plot search engine strategies against timelines. That just doesn’t work.

Now let’s get down to brass tacks. First, let me state that an SEO strategy should NOT attempt to be comprehensive. It’s a strategy, not a campaign plan. The difference between a campaign plan and a strategy is that the campaign plan DOES have to meet a timeline. You can implement multiple strategies and change strategies in the midst of a campaign but if you try to run two or more campaigns for the same sites you’re just competing against yourself. In the military that’s called a CLUSTERF***. The “cluster” part means some officer who didn’t know what he was doing overrode what the trained/experienced NCOs knew had to be done — in the business world we call this “Executive Fiat” — aka “formula for disaster” and “guaranteed failure”.

You cannot successfully execute an efficient SEO campaign through Executive Fiat, and you tend to burn out people when you draw upon it. That was a hard lesson I learned from both sides in the IT industry, but it applies just as well in the SEO industry.

Needs Assessment – You have to explain what the strategy is addressing. What need is being handled? What problem is being resolved? For example, “The site example.com has lost rankings in 15 keywords and search traffic has declined by 15%. We need to recover that 15% traffic.” BANG! That’s it! That’s your needs assessment. You can expand with details but you cannot add need upon need upon need. If you have multiple needs you need multiple strategies.

Strategy Goals (Objectives) – What will executing the strategy (hopefully) accomplish toward meeting the need? Will it rebuild 5 of the 15 lost rankings? All of them? Will it simply reposition the site to do something else (to offset the lost search traffic)? If you include any dates or time references in this part of your document, you’re doing it wrong. If someone wants a timeline, write it separately from the strategy document. In most cases, people really want to know when the magic will be complete. They could care less about what day and hour you execute any part of the strategy.

Strategic Resources – This can include money if you’re going to pay for resources but it needs to include intangible resources as well. Do you have other Web sites you’re going to incorporate in the strategy? How many man-hours can you commit to the strategy? What tools will you use? What expertise or special elements will be incorporated? It’s best to know up front what tools you intend to work with rather than wait until you get into the thick of the strategy execution to figure out all that stuff.

Strategic Tasks – Here are a few examples of strategic tasks:

• Redesign meta tags
• Write new copy that emphasizes (topic)
• Place links on (specific list of Web sites)

Strategic task lists don’t include specifications for anchor text, link placement, font sizes, keywords, etc. If a task requires that kind of detailed planning, write a detailed plan for the task. This part of your strategy document is just a TASK LIST.

Dependencies – No SEO strategy completely survives contact with the search engines. In the military they say, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. Knowing what your dependencies are helps you build a flexible strategy. What do you do if one of your dependencies fails? This list of dependencies is where you include annotations suggesting plan B options and (if you need that much redundancy) plan C options. Don’t flesh out the plan B and C options — just mention them. Later on you can give them more thought if you need to. Otherwise, don’t waste your time figuring out solutions you don’t need.

Order of Execution – What needs to be done first? What can wait until last? This is as close as you get to actual project management. Again, DO NOT INCLUDE A TIMELINE. If you need a timeline, that is a SEPARATE DOCUMENT. The order of execution has to take into consideration when resources will be available, lag times (such as build-to-crawl, crawl-to-index, index-to-confirmed-value, etc.), communication requirements, etc. Just organize your task list in such a way that you can annotate it with comments like “This needs to be done AFTER such-and-such” or “This should be completed before so-and-so” or “Can be implemented on an ongoing basis”, etc. Think of the Order of Execution section as that part of the strategy that describes the nature of each strategic task and how it relates to other tasks. It is NOT a timeline. You can create a timeline after you have the Order of Execution laid out.

Metrics – How do you measure stages of completion, success, and failure? You should easily be able to list or describe what you’ll do to gauge the strategy’s progress. At some point you may have to conclude that this strategy won’t work (it won’t accomplish the stated goals). The sooner you can figure that out, the better. Ideally, you want to only choose a strategy that has a high probability of working, but no strategy works every time.

And you’re done….

Search engine optimization can be executed as a mechanical process. Spammers do that every day. But real search engine optimization has to look at so many different parts of the picture that you need to break it down into manageable functions and tasks. An SEO strategy is not a campaign plan. You can write a campaign plan but you probably will find yourself diverging from it a hundred different ways.

The simpler the goals, the less competitive the queries, the easier the tasks, the more predictable and mechanical everything becomes. Some people do this stuff off the top of their heads. They have basic routines they fall into and they only change what they are doing when it doesn’t work. That’s a very pragmatic approach to any job. It gets easier with experience.

If you’re not yet in that position then you would probably benefit from writing down your strategies. You can analyze their effectiveness much, much better by holding each strategy accountable for its results. Organizing your thoughts this way will help you learn some of the more advanced aspects of SEO much, much faster than trying to do it all in your head.

Written by Michael Martinez

via [best-seo-blog]

With all the link-building advice we find scattered across the SEO community, you’d think every possible idea has been tried, shared, and burned out. Truth be told, I see new link building opportunities every day that have not been exploited by the SEO community.

Of course, search engine optimization and link building are two different things. It’s a very sad statement about this industry that most people who claim to be search engine optimization specialists actually spend a large part of their time trying to obtain links. If your job just requires you to obtain links, there is no shame in that, but you should hope and pray that someone is attending to the actual search engine optimization while you’re out getting the links.

The first thing any SEO should be taught to do is keyword research. Unfortunately, most of us don’t get much education past a couple of tips like “Use Google Adwords” and “Use Wordtracker”. I use them both, but if that is the extent of your keyword research resources, then you have much to learn about the ways of keyword research, my young Padawans.

You can combine link building with keyword research. In fact, you can combine link building, keyword research, and query building pretty easily. After all, if the only useful keywords you find are already highly optimized and competitive, it doesn’t do you much good to know that people search with those highly optimized and competitive keywords. Your chances of breaking into a competitive query space are very slim if you’re still a Keyword Padawan.

The Semantic Technique

The best thing you can do is take your keyword research offline. Stop using the Internet to do your Internet research. Instead, turn to the offline world and flex your old-fashioned promotional muscles to do some semantic testing.

Here is a basic semantic test that anyone can do with very little effort. It helps you with your keyword research, it helps you build links, and it helps you build a new query space. The basic method has always worked for me, but it’s not magic. This is a very flexible recipe, so you can make some substitutions if you want to be creative.

Step 1: Think of something newsworthy or funny that is connected with your Web site or business. Newsworthy and funny together are great, but you’re most likely stumped to think of anything that qualifies as either. You’re more likely to think of something cute, light-hearted, or maybe just very slightly twisted in a harmless, politically correct way.

Step 2: Write it down in very nice, grammatically correct, spell-checked language. Rewrite it. Set it aside for 2 days and then rewrite it again. Be concise, informative, and entertaining.

Step 3: Find a picture or graphic that goes well with your entertaining anecdote about your business or Web site.

Step 4: Print up a little flyer, postcard, menu insert, or other piece of paper that includes your entertaining anecdote, picture or graphic, the URL of your Web site, and the clear and explicit instruction to “search for X Y and Z to find URL”. If it looks goofy, fiddle with the layout until it looks nice and semi-professional (for an amateur).

Step 5: Now print 25-50 copies and distribute them to community bulletin boards, supermarket bulletin boards, church bulletin boards, restaurant “Free take one” tables, etc.

Step 6: Search for blogs that refer to your little giveaway.

How likely is this technique to help you build links? As presented, it has about as much chance of success as you have of walking on water. But practice makes perfect (and any film industry stunt person will tell you that walking on water is the easy part — making it look miraculous is the hard part).

What you’re doing is drawing people’s attention to your creativity. You have, theoretically, expressed that creativity on your Web site. You share some of that creativity in offline venues where people are not distracted by other Web site promoters vying for everyone’s attention. Offline venues include television, radio, packaging, brochures, business cards, handouts on the street, sandwich board signs, placards you hold on a stick, napkins you distribute at picnics, etc.

You show people that you can be both informative and interesting. You MUST be informative and you HAVE to be entertaining. Otherwise they won’t care about your message.

You tell people they can learn more by searching for your keywords (that you dominate) or by going to your Web site.

Repeating the exercise 100 times is more effective than doing it once. It gives you opportunities to change out the keywords you’re promoting. People respond to different choices of words in different ways. That’s the whole point of this type of test: to find out which marketing message evokes the best reactions.

It takes less time to promote a site offline than it does to obtain links. You can pay for the offline promotion or not. If you leave out any one critical piece of information you may still get some traffic but you do diminish the quality of the message.

Self-Sponsorsed Off-web links

Have you ever seen a car moving down the road that tells you to visit some Web site? It’s cheesy but it works. Again, you’re promoting yourself in a venue where there is little competition.

But self-promotion doesn’t have to consist of spray-painting your truck with a sales pitch and a URL. You can sponsor yourself in ways that most SEOs don’t think about.

For example, do you participate in friendly neighborhood (or school) sports events? Do you wear t-shirts or other brandable clothing? Have you ever put your Web site’s name, tagline, and URL on your clothing? Try it. It makes a great conversation piece.

Do you put stickers on your luggage, computer, or lunch box? Have you considered using stickers that include your Web site name, tagline, and URL? Yeah, that creepy guy across the aisle may be checking them out, but maybe he’s only doing so because you gave him something to read on the long commute.

Do you have a local community center that is in need of books, videos, and/or DvDs? Maybe they’ll accept some donations that just happen to have those informative stickers on them (don’t be greedy or gauche — the stickers should be discretely placed on the inside of the jacket, etc.). You never know.

Do you have a local community clinic that has the rattiest magazines in town? Donate some recent magazines to them with those stickers on the cover or table of contents page (remember that magazine covers tend to fall off). People may visit your site.

Be sure you rank first for your tagline.

Self-sponsored on-web links

You know, as much time as people spend writing emails asking for links, they could just as easily be writing blog posts that create their own links. If you write 10 link emails a week, you could instead be creating a pretty interesting blog that draws in traffic. And you don’t have to use every post to link to your own site (but you could if you wanted to).

If you can create a blog, you can create a forum. If you can create a forum, you can use it to link to your own site.

Blogs and forums produce RSS feeds and ping blog search services. People do visit new blogs and forums every day. You can write some pretty inarticulate stuff and someone is still likely to read it. More importantly, if you can discipline yourself to write in patient, informative terms then you can help people learn to search for your content in any way they are likely to find it.

It can be as simple as embedding a link to SEO theory in a query on Live.com.

RSS feeds can be powerful things, if you know how to use them. They will distribute your links in ways you never could have imagined. You can reach a lot of readers quickly with the right RSS feed. And it can be a self-sponsoring feed.

As with other techniques I’ve discussed, you can use your RSS feeds to promote your Web site name, tagline, URL, and queries for which you rank well. You don’t have to worry about paying people money, whether links pass value, or what your rankings are.

Generally speaking, if you successfully promote the queries for which your sites rank first, you don’t really need to build links at all.

And that is in many cases better link building advice than you’ll find on most SEO blogs and forums.

But like I said: Walking on water is the easy part. Making it look miraculous is the hard part. You don’t need a miracle if you’re stuck for link building ideas. You just need to stop thinking about links and start thinking about promoting your site.

Who benefits from free SEO services?

Through the years I have found a number of Web sites offering free SEO services in a variety of ways. The most common offer seems to be extended to non-profit organizations. Charitable work for a non-profit group is certainly a commendable thing, but unless you’re just doing SEO on the side and don’t plan to make a living from it, I don’t think you should just give it away willy-nilly.

Some people trying to break into the SEO field offer free services to small businesses in the hope of building a portfolio they can leverage in building their business.

And then there are those of us who provide free SEO services to our friends, family, and associates. Sometimes we end up looking like shmucks.

Search engine optimization, when done right, is a valuable resource. You’re increasing someone else’s profit line. You’re helping someone else make money. You’re building someone else’s business.

You should somehow be compensated for that, even if they cannot afford to pay you. I have, actually, exchanged SEO service for equal value on more than one occasion. While that doesn’t pay my bills — well, actually, I guess it does pay some bills.

The first lesson in providing free SEO service comes hard: there is NO such thing as free SEO service. It costs you time, effort, and potential linking and Web copy resources you might be able to use for yourself or in a paid contract. If you treat your SEO knowledge as a worthless skill people will expect it to be worth less than they have to pay for.

The second lesson in providing free SEO service comes equally hard: no good deed goes unpunished. When you undervalue your service, people become more demanding. Why is that? I’m sure some economist figured it out somewhere but a lot of people in this industry have shared horror stories where they did someone a favor and found themselves saddled with endless expectations.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt too.

I think there are good reasons why people should consider offering free SEO services. You may have very close friends and relatives who are struggling to make a living and you can help them out. If you would walk three miles into the deep woods to help that friend or relative build a log cabin to live in, it’s probably someone for whom you should consider doing free SEO.

You may be taking an SEO class in school (a few schools now offer them). I think a good curriculum should include live SEO projects, provided the school can make appropriate arrangements with the local business community or other departments on campus.

And you may be volunteering at an organization like a church, a charity, or a community group and you see a need for some search engine optimization that will benefit many people.

In all these and similar cases, before you throw your value out the window, set some rules and guidelines for yourself. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Write a proposal that describes why you feel the recipient of your services would benefit from them.

2. Create a concise but thorough Statement of Work that outlines exactly what you will do.

3. Create an agreement which both you and the recipient sign so that you have a contract. Do this especially if you give free SEO service to a charitable organization where you may be able to deduct all or part of the value of your work from your taxes (consult a tax professional to understand when you can do this).

4. Include a statement of value in both your proposal and your Statement of Work. Assign a realistic market-supported cost to the work you are doing. Show the recipient the value you are providing.

5. Create invoices on a regular basis. The invoices should reiterate the agreed-upon value for work performed and provide a running tally against the total contribution.

6. Set a firm deadline for when the work will be completed. If you think that ongoing work will be required beyond three months, write the contract so that there are quarterly renewals and semi-annual reviews of the Statement of Work.

7. Include a Termination of Services clause. Explain when and how the relationship will be terminated, including use of a formal notification process.

Contracts provide you with some legal protections and obligations. Be sure you understand how to set up a contract, or work with someone who can do this for you. You should ask for a variety of non-monetary compensations, such as (but not necessarily limited to):

1. Exchange of services
2. Receipt for work performed
3. Testimonial if key performance indicators are set and met
4. Right of publicity — that is, the right to say “I performed SEO services for so-and-so” publicly in promoting yourself or your business
5. Credit against an outstanding bill
6. Free non-endorsing advertisement — this could be as simple as placing promotional flyers in the recipient’s office
7. An endorsement

There are some things it would be tacky to ask for, and just because you ask for something doesn’t mean the other party will agree to your request. Be professional, even if you’re only helping your mother. Think about how the campaign would reflect upon you in a business environment.

Friends and relatives won’t necessarily respect the deadlines you set. You have to decide for yourself how to manage their relaxed attitude toward your priorities. But don’t let them walk all over you. The last thing you need in your relationship is an argument over why you couldn’t promote their Web site to number 1 for “candy”. Set achievable objectives that you both can meet. Generally speaking, the more time you schedule together outside of normal recreational environments, the better.

In other words, if you say, “Mom, I’ll be dropping by this weekend; let’s go over your SEO campaign when I’m there”, you’re all but dooming yourself to failure. Try to meet Mom on neutral territory where there are no distractions and you can talk in a business-like environment. Make Mom proud of your professionalism.

Free SEO services should not be free. You should get something in return for the SEO services you provide — recognition, exchange of value, and a list of achieved objectives that you can use as a case study. When you’re pitching a prospect who may pay you for SEO services, being able to discuss what you’ve done in the past in a professional tone eliminates the question of “should I disclose that I did the work for free?”.

After all, if you deliver a professional service at all times to everyone, you don’t have to pretend there is no difference between the work you did for Mom and the work you propose to do for the company down the street. It’s all work being performed at a consistent level of quality, and that will shine through in your proposals and presentations.

In other words, people will only take you seriously about the value you provide if you take yourself seriously.

Contested Name Space – Noun phrase. A name sapce (q.v.) for which opposing points of view are being promoted.

Cross Pollinization – Noun phrase. The practice of promoting one or more Web documents as relevant, favorable content in two or more search results (q.v.).

Flip – Verb. The process of pointing links at a secondary page on a Web site in the hope that it will replace a primary page in a targeted search result (q.v.).

Hostile entity – Noun phrase. A Web site, individual, or group of individuals systematically creating and/or promoting unfavorable content about a brand or personal name. Example: A Web site is a hostile entity if it produces or promotes more than one unfavorable article in a name space.

Hostile Environment – Noun phrase. A search result populated by multiple unfavorable articles from numerous sources, usually all being hostile entities.

Name Space – Noun phrase. Also spelled “namespace”. A name space is that portion of the search results (on one more or more search services) that is determined by an arbitrary standard to be relevant to a brand or personal name.

Online Reputation Management – Noun phrase. The practice of identifying and responding to content concerning a topic such as a brand or a personal name. Favorable content is promoted or otherwise rewarded; unfavorable content is passed over for promotion or reported for abuse. Online reputation management may include direct consumer engagement or the creation of Web content for consumer viewing.

ORM – Acronym. Online Reputation Management.

Protected Name Space – Noun phrase. A name space (q.v.) for which search reputation management (q.v.) is being performed.

Protected Query – Noun phrase. “Protected Name Space”.

Search Engine Reputation Management – Noun phrase. The art of managing search results page contents to show only neutral or favorable content for a brand or personal name.

SERM – Acronym. Search Engine Results Management or Search Engine Reputation Management.

Shared name space – Noun phrase. A name space (q.v.) in which multiple brands or individuals may have a legitimate promotional interest.

SRM – Acronym. Search Reputation Management.

About the SEO Theory SEO Glossary

There is no standardized or universally accepted SEO glossary. This Seo glossary was prepared for the readers of the SEO Theory blog as a quick reference to explain terms used on SEO Theory. Other SEO glossary sites may provide alternative definitions for some or all of the expressions defined in this SEO glossary.

Bow-to-Stern Latency – Noun phrase. The amount of time that elapses from when a search engine caches the deepest reachable page after the last time it caches the root URL of the site.

Cache-to-Ranking Latency – Noun phrase. The length of time that elapses from a page’s contents being reported in a search engine cache image until the page contents are found for specific queries.

Clustered Results – Noun phrase. You see this most often with Ask, but it happens in Google quite a bit and I think Yahoo! also does it sometimes. You’ll see 2 pages from the same site, the 2nd one indented. Now, Ask likes to put little folders in the margin to show how smart they are about clustering search results from multiple sites under a single topic. But did you know that Google clusters sites and hides them from you? If you change your Google Preferences to show more than ten listings per page, you’ll see the clustered listings. That is why so many data center tools show you different rankings from what you think you’re seeing.

Collapsed Results or Collapsed Listings – Noun phrases. Usually what I call Clustered Results when I cannot think of the word “cluster” (which is more often than not). Technically, these expressions should really only refer to the hidden clusters described above.

Crawl-to-Cache-Time – Noun phrase. The amount of time that elapses from when a search engine fetches a page from a Web site until the page’s contents appear in the search engine’s cache report for the page. Abbreviated as CCT.

Crawl-to-Passed-Value Time or Crawl-to-Passed-Value Latency – Noun phrases. The amount of time that elapses from when a search engine fetches a page until the links on the page pass value (PageRank or anchor text) to their destinations.

Crawl-to-Ranking Time – Noun phrase. The amount of time that elapses from when a search engine fetches a page from a Web site until the page is returned in the top ten results for a designated query.

FCP – Acronym. Frequently Cached Page. A page that is crawled and cached by a search engine on a very frequent basis, usually every two weeks or less.

Filter – Noun. A process whereby a Web document is evaluated and either flagged as “spam”, “potential spam”, “adult-oriented content”, “illegal content”, or something else. Each search engine employs multiple filters. Some filters were designed into the algorithms from the start. Some filters have been added as afterthoughts as search engines have had to react to manipulative or otherwise previously undetected inappropriate content.

Filthy Linking Rich Principle – Noun phrase. The more links a document has accrued, the more links the document will accrue. Stated another way, the more visible a document is in search engine results, the more likely the document is to accrue links, and hence the more visible the document becomes in search engine results.

First Visibility Principle – Noun phrase. The first document to cross the Idiot threshold (q.v.) becomes the first authority on the topic.

Fuzzy point – Noun phrase. The approximate state of knowledge where the information about a document’s indexing status and information about the number of queries to which the document is relevant are approximately equal.

Host – Noun. A much-used term in academic search engineering literature to distinguish between “Web document collections” on a systemic level. A host is not necessarily the same as a site. Hosts are generally defined to be either entire domains (example.com) or sub-domains (sub1.example.com). A domain to which one or more sub-domains belong would be treated as multiple individual hosts, distinct from one another. A host is easier to identify than a Web site, which may be only a part of a host’s content.

Idiot Threshold – Noun phrase. A figurative status at which a document has accrued enough meaningless links through word-of-mouth that the document assumes the status of being an authority on a topic.

Index – Noun. The database(s) against which queries are resolved. All of the major search engines maintain multiple indexes. Each is a separate, distinct database, either physically (kept in separate files) or virtually (logically segmented portions of a master database). The expression database is probably inappropriate for describing what the search engines maintain. When you see me refer to Main Index, think of that as the “static Web page index”. Other indexes may include Image Indexes, News Indexes, and Blog Indexes. I have some ideas on how these various indexes are built, but I don’t expect to share them on this blog.

Index – Verb. The process of adding information about Web content to a search engine’s database about the Web. The indexing process may entail considerable effort depending upon the complexity and applicability of the document.

Indexer – Noun. A type of program that search engines use to update their databases with information about retrieved and parsed Web documents. You rarely see even knowledgeable SEO forum moderators and admins speak of indexers and parsers, perhaps out of a misguided concern that they will confuse people who are new to search engine optimization. Unfortunately, those new people visit the forums to learn about SEO, so teaching them the wrong terminology does them a great disservice.

Influencer – Noun. A Web site or individual whose content is deemed to be influential in adjusting search result (q.v.) rankings, usually either through the creation of new content or the placement of links to other documents. Some blogs (q.v.) can be powerful influencers.

Internal Links or Internal Linkage – Noun phrase. These are the links within your own site that point to other pages in your site. Search engines may use a different, host-level definition for internal links. It is possible that all the major search engines now distinguish between host-internal and host-external links. See host for more information.

Internal PageRank – Noun phrase. This is the actual static value that Google computes and adds to dynamic (run-time, query-time) relevance scores to determine search results rankings. Matt Cutts distinguished between Internal PageRank and Toolbar PageRank on his blog. He also confirmed that he was talking about Internal PageRank where I cited him in my PageRank: Where it helps, where it doesn’t help, and other facts post at Spider-Food in July 2006. Most SEO forum moderators and admins appear to be speaking about Internal PageRank when they discuss PageRank at all, except where they qualify their remarks to address the Toolbar PR value (that nearly all moderators and admins now tell people to ignore). The Toolbar PR value is a proxy value and it is only published 3-4 times a year, making it a virtually worthless indicator of quality or value.

Link mass – Noun phrase. The combination of all connected links that lead to any given page in a hypertext document collection. Absolute link mass cannot be measured. Relative link mass can be approximately measured.

Link pathway – Noun phrase. Two or more pages connected as in a chain (a “path”) by hypertext links.

Link pathway segment – Noun phrase. A segment or portion of a larger link pathway at least 1 document long and at least 2 documents shorter than the link pathway (the beginning and terminating documents in the link pathway cannot be in the link pathway segment).

Link Trap – Noun phrase. Similar to a link bait page, a link trap is usually built by cheaters in reciprocal linking schemes where the outbound links are designed not to pass value.

MCP – Acronym. Moderately Cached Page. A page that is crawled and cached by a search engine on an occasional basis, usually every two to six weeks.

Opacity – Noun. A metric or measure of a range of search listings (q.v.) for a query which are not obviously optimized to be included in the search results. A perfectly opaque search result (q.v.) has an Opacity value of 1.0, reflecting the fact that none of the search listings (q.v.) are obviously optimized for placement in the result.

Page Zone, or Zone – Noun phrase, noun. An arbitrarily designated visible portion of a Web page. Page zones are used for advertising and link placement.

PageRank Trap – Noun phrase. A specialized form of link bait, a PageRank trap is a page whose outbound links only point to other pages on the same domain or site. Usually an article or forum discussion thread that attracts links from other sites.

Parser – Noun. A type of program used by search engines to break down your HTML pages into components for indexing. The parser strips your indexable content and passes it to one or more indexers. Many SEO forum moderators and admins who should know better continue to speak of “spiders” doing the parsing and indexing. Spiders basically retrieve files and place them into (search engine internal) queing areas for the parsers to munch on.

Partially Indexed Listings – Noun phrase. See URL Listings below.

Preservation, or Preservation Principle – Noun, noun phrase. The belief that a Web site can retain all or most of its PageRank by “hoarding” or “sculpting” PageRank. The Preservation Principle is an SEO myth.

Quality Links – Noun phrase. A nonsense expression with no real value or purpose other than to act as a catchall for the types of links people think are better than “those other links”. Googlers use “quality links” as a subtle way of telling people to stop getting cheap spammy links. Many SEO forum moderators and admins use “quality links” in a somewhat broader but similar fashion, if only because they don’t know exactly what criteria make links good for any particular search engine but they recognize that people who are asking about linkage have a problem. Nearly everyone else seems to use the expression to refer to their (usually non-performing) backlinks. I wrote about high quality links at SEOmoz (in a post designed to rank for “high quality links” on the basis of content — but the lesson passed over everyone’s head, except for Aaron Pratt who saw what I was doing right away).

Saturation – Noun. 1) The extent to which a Web site’s pages are included in a search engine index. 2) The extent to which a Web site’s pages appear in a given query’s search result. 3) The extent to which a link profile is distributed across a Web site’s pages.

SERP – Acronym for Search Engine Results Page. Everyone seems to know this acronym by now. I have always hated it even though I now reluctantly use it. SRP (search results page) would be better, since it’s all inclusive. You can have a DRP (Directory Results Page) which some people might argue should be called a DSRP (Directory Search Results Page). I still get click throughs from Yahoo! and DMOZ directory page listings (or a DLP, Directory Listings Page).

Sitelinks – Noun. Google invented this term, which is better than my classic “little clustered links under the main listing”. Sitelinks are those “little clustered links under the main listing” that deep link into the site by category or topic. Many people wonder how these Sitelinks appear. Googlers always say, “That’s algorithmically determined and we have no control over them” — meaning, “We wrote special commands into our software to create those things and we’re not going to tell you what criteria are used to decide which sites get them.” My best guess is that sites that have more than 1,000 pages of content, clear content categorization in their non-breadcrumb internal links, and lots of deep links from other domains are good candidates for Sitelinks. Other criteria are probably taken into consideration. Sitelinks are only shown for the top listing in a popular query result.

Sitemap – Noun. A page on your Web site that links to all the other pages, or at least to all the important section top-level pages. Google has usurped this expression for their “Google Sitemaps” feature (now incorporated into the XML Sitemaps standard supported by several major search engines), where you can upload a file listing all of your pages for their crawlers. I have noticed that Googlers are now speaking of HTML Sitemaps to distinguish those Web site pages from the XML Sitemaps. I think it would be best if everyone adopted the convention of saying “XML Sitemap” or “HTML Sitemap” so we are all on the same page.

Transparency – Noun. A metric or measure of a range of search listings (q.v.) for a query which are obviously optimized to be included in the search results. A perfectly transparent search result (q.v.) has a Transparency value of 1.0, reflecting the fact that all of its listings are obviously optimized for inclusion in the search result.

Trust – Noun. Currently the latest SEO buzz word. Generally speaking, the SEO community picks up on a concept about six months to two years after it’s been worked through by the search engineers. Hardcore spammers (the ultimate “Black Hat” SEOs) are usually pretty good at detecting trends before everyone else. Trust has now officially been done to death. It is incorporated into every algorithm (including Windows Live even though we all agree that Microsoft still has a way to go) and the search engines are already looking at other issues. Trust is being placed in the hands of the Webmasters, but most Webmasters don’t seem to want the responsibility.

Update – Noun. From the SEO side, an update is any noticeable change to the way a search engine behaves. From the search engines’ side, an update is any intended change in a search engine’s makeup or data. Matt Cutts offers an incomplete explanation of a Google update in his December 2006 Explaining Algorithm Updates and Data Refreshes post. He wrote a similar post in September 2005 with What’s An Update?. I don’t expect Matt to confirm every algorithmic change. That would pretty much defeat the purpose of many of them. Yahoo! and Windows Live occasionally issue “weather reports”. Matt has informally issued some on Google’s behalf.

Uncertainty Principle of SEO – Noun phrase. The two states of a Web document (indexed and relevance to a given set of queries) cannot be determined at the same time. The more queries to which a page is known to be relevant, the less information about the page’s indexing status can be determined. The more information about a page’s indexing status that is known, the fewer queries to which the page is relevant.

Universal Search – Noun phrase. The practice by major search engines like Ask, Google, Live, and Yahoo! of melding results from several search databases to provide the user with a more diverse selection of search listings (usually combining video, news, blog, Web, book, and other search tools).

Universal Search Injection – Noun phrase. The practice by Universal Search-capable services of augmenting search results (q.v.) with additional, supplemental listings not normally included in the standard 1..10 listings. Universal Search Injection listings usually have more complex structures, provide more information, and are more transient in nature than normal search listings (q.v.). Universal Search Injections may include links to several documents.

URL Listings or URL-only Listings – Noun phrase. These are the site listings that appear in Google with nothing more than a URL. Matt Cutts explained that they are uncrawled links that Google knows something about from inbound linkage. Google will (or used to) occasionally pull a description from the Open Directory Project for uncrawled links, but you often see them without any description at all. Uncrawled links are not shown in Google’s SafeSearch mode. Matt also discussed them here.

Validate – Verb. Every time I use this word people reach for their W3C manuals. When I speak of search engines validating Web sites, I don’t mean they are looking to see if the HTML code meets some arbitrary standard. I mean they pass each URL through a process whereby they establish, according to their own criteria, that the site is “not spam”. Many spam sites appear to validate. The search engines are not perfect. Nonetheless, many spam sites don’t last long because they don’t validate or their validation is revoked. Maybe I could have used a better expression, but I can’t think of one.

Authority – Adjective. A document (page) pointed to by several hubs (experts). An authority page is assumed to have a lot of content relevant to a primary topic.

Blog – Noun. A Web site or portion of a Web site devoted to “Web logging” or “Web journaling”. Blogs are typically used to create content and place links for search results management (q.v.).

Body Links – Noun phrase. Hypertext links placed within the main content of a Web page.

Churn – Noun. The process by which a search engine regularly or occasionally changes listings in its results due to content or algorithmic factors. Churn is normal for most queries.

Conversion – Noun. A conversion is any desired action that is taken as a result of visiting a Web page. Conversions are used in many Web marketing metrics. Conversions fall into three categories: Informational Conversions (q.v.), Transformational Conversions (q.v.), and Transactional Conversions (q.v.).

Content-rich doorway – Noun phrase. A doorway page dressed up with graphics, navigation, and linked to from a site map so that it looks like a normal part of a Web site. The copy is written to rank for a single keyword expression.

Crawl Page – Noun phrase. A document consisting of links to other pages, provided for the sole purpose of giving crawlers (robots) links to follow. Spammers used to submit these puppies to the search engines en masse. Maybe they still do.

Doorway – Noun. A document with a small amount of text (usually coherent but sometimes gibberish) intended to rank well specifically for one targeted expression. In the old days, people created as many doorways as they had targeted keywords and search engines to work with.

Expert (page or document) – Adjective. In Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm (as well as the CLEVER, ExpertRank, and Edison algorithms) an expert is a document about a specific topic for which hubs exist, such that the expert document is pointed to by many hubs. Cf. Hub.

Frogblog – Noun. Technically, other people coined the expression for blogs devoted to all things French. But I adopted the term to refer to a network of blogs that a spammer (or really active blogger) hops around, posting brief (often useless drivel) entries for the sake of being active. Frogblogs usually have a lot of Javascript ads in the margins. All six margins.

Gizmo – Noun. Now often called “widgets” (by mistake, I think, as “widgets” tend to be more under-the-hood type things), gizmos were useful mini-apps or functions used to spiff up otherwise boring pages. Hit counters are gizmos. Event countdown calendars are gizmos. Any Javascript whizbang plug-in for a page is a gizmo.

Hallway – Adjective/Noun. A crawl page that only links to doorway pages. Usually called “hallway page”, sometimes shortened to “hallway”.

Hub – Noun. A document that links out to many other documents devoted to a single topic. Think of any category page in a major directory like Yahoo! or DMOZ. All the documents linked to are assumed to be authorities (sort of a circular logic). In Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm (as well as the CLEVER, ExpertRank, and Edison algorithms) a hub is a document about a specific topic that links to many experts in the topic. Cf. Expert.

Informational Conversion – Noun phrase. An informational conversion occurs when a visitor finds the precise information he is seeking on a Web page.

Landing Page – Noun phrase. A content-rich doorway most often used to receive PPC traffic. Copy is written for the visitor, not the search engine, making a sales pitch (usually — I’ve seen a few that meandered pointlessly with fake testimonials).

Link Baiting – Noun phrase. The practice of creating attention-grabbing headlines and seeding links to articles on social media sites for the purpose of generating thousands of links on blogs, forums, and other sites in a very brief period of time. It is assumed that the content is link-worthy, but this is a subjective point.

Link Building – Noun phrase. The process of acquiring links for a Web document through creation, request, reciprocation, or lease/purchase, or distribution of copy through automated services.

Link Farm – Noun phrase. Any group of Web sites where every member site in the group links to every other member site in the group.

Link Flow – Noun phrase. An expression used by many people to describe PageRank. In SEO Theory, link flow is the link pathway users and search engines may use to get from one page to another.

Mashup – Noun. A page made up from gizmos (or mostly from gizmos). The gizmos could be RSS feeds, Javascript feeds, etc. Any content pushed by free content distribution sites. Google maps is a great gizmo.

MFA – Acronym. Made For Advertising (page). A broad class of pages, in my opinion, as some of them actually have sensible content (like cheap directories, article abstract pages, article reprint pages, press release reprints, etc.). The real purpose of the pages, of course, is to draw traffic in the hope people will click on the Javascript ads from Yahoo!, Google, or whomever.

Mushblog – Noun. An automated blog consisting entirely of randomly generated content, usually in the form of ellipsis (…) impregnated text fragments intended to look like fair use citations. Mushblogs host Javascript ads from Yahoo! and Google. No human fingers touch those posts. Some really cool Mushblogs actually have trails of autogenerated comments (which is the only cool thing about them, in my opinion) on some of the posts.

Navigational links – Noun phrase. The (usually uniformly used) internal links a Web site uses to provide visitors with clear pathways between pages.

Query Space – Noun phrase. The collection of all queries and their relevant results for a set of related search expressions.

Search Engine Optimization – Noun phrase. The practice of designing, modifying, and/or supplementing Web documents to rank well in search engines. Now mostly superceded by link building (q.v.) and/or link baiting (q.v.).

Search Listing – Noun phrase. The information provided by a search engine about a specific Web document in response to a query as part of a search result (q.v.). A typical search listing may include a page title, descriptive text (called a “snippet”), page name/URL, cache information, and other supplemental/incidental information.

Search Result – Noun phrase. The search listings (q.v.) provided by a search engine in response to a query.

Search Results Management – Noun phrase. The concept of managing multiple listings within a single search result. Search Results Management is instrumental to the search reputation management (q.v.) process.

Search Visibility – Noun phrase. The extent to which a Web site can be found in search engine results across all queries. A Web page has limited search visibility, whereas a Web site has full search visibility.

SEO – Acronym. Search engine optimization (q.v.).

SEO Practices – Noun phrase. The techniques and/or methodologies employed to enhance or modify Web document structure and content, as well as links pointing to Web documents, to ensure that search engines include the Web document in desired search listings (q.v.).

SEO Theory – Noun phrase. 1. The theoretical principles for optimizing search engine results pages from an outside (non-search management) perspective. 2. The principles, methods, and techniques employed by search engine optimization specialists for influencing the rankings of specific Web documents in search engine results. 3. The study of the components and interactions of complex information indexing systems with the people who use those systems to index content and to find content.

Site Map – Noun phrase. Also spelled “sitemap”. An on-site directory of important (or all) pages. Sitemaps have been divided into XML Sitemaps which are used by search engines and HTML Sitemaps which are used by visitors for quick navigation to deep content. Some specialized sitemaps may only list certain types of content.

Signpost Page – Noun phrase. A goofy advertising page. The entire page might be one advertisement built around a picture of a business or it might be a table filled with small ads from many businesses. Signposts are revenue-generating pages hosted by real Web sites with actual traffic that somehow induce their visitors to browse the signpost pages. Sort of like, “Visit our sponsors because they paid us outrageous fees to put their print-ad style advertisements on one of our Web pages.” A few sites actually consist of nothing but signpost pages, but I don’t see many of them any more. These are not classified ad sites. These are not business directories. These are random collections of advertisements plastered on Web pages in usually no real order.

SpamAd Page – Noun. An MFA page, but it’s spammy gibberish. Useless junk that no one in their right mind (and maybe not in their unright mind) would want to read. Just loaded with scraped content and/or gibberish in the hope it ranks well for something and that all visitors will click on the Javascript ads.

Transactional Conversion – Noun phrase. A transactional conversion occurs when a visitor exchanges something of value (such as money) for a product, service, or other form of valued commodity. Purchases, fee payments, bill payments, and paid membership registrations are all examples of transactional conversions.

Transformational Conversion – Noun phrase. A transformational conversion occurs when a visitor knowingly discloses information to a Web site. Subscribing to an RSS feed or newsletter, for example, is a transformational conversion.

TSETSB – Acronym. The Search Engine That Spam Built. A pejorative name for Google which became immensely popular with the SEO community after people realized the link farms they developed for Inktomi worked better on Google. Sometimes revived when people discuss the MFA/SpamAd issues and the click fraud controversy.