SEO, SEM, PPC, SMM Consultant

My Article is in Top 5 Finalist of SEM Scholarship Contest 2009 by Marketing Pilgrim

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:32:00 +0700

If you have been following me for more than a year, you’d know that I have been one of the 5 finalists last year in Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Scholarship Contest 2008 for my article, 13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing. It was a Hook Article and attracted a lot of people. But, an Idea Article of Linda Bustos, 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics, won most of the votes from the judges.

So this year I have come up with an Idea Article. Rather a research work that I have been doing for couple of months. Hook Articles are easy to promote, but Idea Article is not. But, I enjoyed the competion. This year the article title was, How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel – Article Theme Versioing. Below is the banner I designed to promote the article:

My article once again became one of the top finalists in the SEM Scholarship 2009 Contest. Still, the voting on articles is pending from the judges. The article getting most amount of votes will win the scholarship.

Please read the published post on this news on Marketing Pilgrim. Here is a list of other 4 articles:

Though my article is listed as the first article, the post disclaims any specific order. So, I have gathered Bitly Total Traffic Analysis to give some oder. So, here it is:

Total Bitly Traffic

How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel = 2,289 Visitors/Clicks
15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer = 2,026 Visitors/Clicks
You Know You Work In Search When You… = 1,842 Visitors/Clicks
9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design 808 Holistic Online Marketing = 707 Visitors/Clicks.

Looks like my social media network has helped me a lot to gain this momentum. And helped me to gain the highest social media traffic. I am seeking evryones wishes and prayer for the contents andd specially thank all of my peers in my Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.

Bing.com is Live Now > Live.com and Kumo.com Merges with Bing

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:15:00 +0600

Update: The Title of this article was Bing.com is Live Now > Live.com is not Bing yet > Kumo Merged with Bing. After few hours Live.com was also redirected to Bing.com. Now, Bing.com is the ultimate search engine by Microsoft.

This is a great breaking news for search marketers. Bing.com is Live now after so many days of anticipation. Microsoft has been working on 2 search engines Bing.com and Kumo.com. But, currently Bing.com, Live.com, and Kumo.com all have the same site, i.e. Bing.com.

For rest of the world (like Bangladesh), Bing Homepage shows UK homepage. But, Bing also has search home page for specific countries, cultures, and languages. Here is a list of the countries that Bing currently supports. For some countries, you will find separate versions according to language. e.g. For USA, they have versions for the English and the Hispanics and for Canada, hey have both Engilsh and French home page.

This morning, I found that the site is hosted in UK Servers at 213.155.157.8 IP. Now, they changed the server to The Netherlands at 62.41.85.43 IP. I guess they are clouding the servers over Europe.

Bing Review

Here is my review about Bing:

I like the Text Preview feature of Bing when you mouse-over a result in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This is something that I have predicted earlier in Visual Results section of this article. The prediction was for Google, but I am glad that Bing already used it.
Related search is a good feature, but I guess that this is not something new.
The Image and Video search is quite promising, but the slowest I have ever seen.
In my quick analysis, I found that Bing is somewhat favoring fresh contents.
For most keywords, I have found only businesses. e.g. for Clipping Path, the search results only show business sites. While, Google tries to show both business and literature sites.
That means, the monopolistic influence of WikiPedia is diminished with Bing. (However, in India homepage, I found some influence of Wikipedia for keywords and none in UK homepage)
So, bing is actually the commercial cousin of Google, while Google can remain as the Oracle of Knowledge.

Have a look at the Promo Video they have released earlier:

Archive.org's Wayback Machine - 5 Great Use of it in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:14:44 +0600

Recently, I’ve blogged about 5 Great Reasons Why Archive.org’s Wayback Machine is a Great SEO Tool in JVision Designs blog.

Here are the higlights of the article:

You can use Archive.org’s Wayback Machine for SEO Diagnosis with WinMerge. The Wayback Machine gives you the historial site codes and WinMerge allows to to see the changes in codes.
Old links are good for SEO. If you want to age your current links, then the best place to find them is in the Wayback Machine.
If you want to troubleshoot all time links that are broken, you can use the Wayback Machine and Xenu’s Link Sleuth software to find them and then take measures for improving Usability as well as SEO.
Unique contents are the new King now. But, have you thought that you have created unique content earlier, and it is now residing in the Wayback Machine repository? Use them freely for inbound link building for your site. Use them as soon as possible, before the scrappers do.
For claiming copyright for your contents, you need a good evidence and the pages indexed in the Wayback Machine can ensure you exactly that.

The US Spelling - Search Engine Optimization in Blue The UK...

Wed, 27 May 2009 16:28:00 +0600

The US Spelling - Search Engine Optimization in Blue

The UK Spelling - Search Engine Optimisation in Red

I wanted to see if Search Engine Optimization (The Us Spelling) is more popular than Search Engine Optimisation (The UK Spelling). As usually, it is true.

But, the interesting fact, in the News on Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Optimisation, the UK Spelling is the winner.

Can it be that:

Most News Sites use UK or Commonwealth English?
The boom of SEO Industry is currently happening in UK, Australia, India, Philippines more than USA? (The geo-search trend also says that)
The cities searching for the term are the cities where the SEO Industry is blooming and booming?

Delhi, India
Chennai, India
Mumbai, India
San Diego, CA, USA
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Miami, FL, USA
Phoenix, AZ, USA
Austin, TX, USA
Irvine, CA, USA
Tampa, FL, USA.

Highly Recommended RSS Feeds for Search & Internet Marketing

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:37:00 +0600

To stay aware about the Search and Internet Marketing Industry Trends and News, I subscribe to the following feeds:

Please click the links to land on the Feeds page, not the blog site. Alternatively, if you would like to have all those feeds in one, I have compiled these Highly Recommended RSS Feeds in one feed by Yahoo Pipes. You can also subscribe there.

Joomla SEO Checklist - Search Engine Optimization for Joomla

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:22:10 +0600

Joomla SEO Checklist - Search Engine Optimization for Joomla:

Joomla is the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the Opensource world. It’s flexible and user friendly features are contributing in it’s popularity as a CMS. Packt Publishing has been…

Activities in Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:23:22 +0600

There is a wide variation of the social activities in the real world. This is also true for online social activities. There are endless activities in Social Media Marketing (SMM). However, here is the tip of the iceburg:

Communicating Information & Expertise

Blogging,
Microblogging (e.g. Twitter),
Expertise sharing (e.g. Forum, LinkedIn & Yahoo Answers, etc.)
Quick Sales & Support Communication, etc.

Sharing Online Resources

News & Press Release sharing,
Internet Resource sharing (e.g. Bookmarking),
Image and Video sharing,
Music/Audio sharing and Podcasting, etc.

Community Participation

Social Networking & reaching target audience,
Interest group participation,
Community involvement & participation,
Create supporters for Causes and Events, etc.

Branding and Reputation Building

Branding and creating social attachment with a brand,
Use vairous social media feature for Brand recommendation media,
Maintain Corporate Transperency,
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR),
Online Reputation Management, etc.

Search & Internet Marketing

Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
Increasing traffic and ROI for sites,
Inbound Link Building (Both follow and not followed links), etc.

SEO Perspective on 301 Permanent Redirects for Old Broken Links

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:08:32 +0600

SEO Perspective on 301 Permanent Redirects for Old Broken Links:

Sites are not just created, they also evolve. Sites throw away the old cloak and put on a new cloak. But, little does the site owners know that they are also throwing away precious old wine of link…

Domain Age vs. Link Age - SEO Perspective

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0600

Link Age and Domain Age are totally different things.

Domain Age denotes the age from the time when the site was registered (Source: WHOIS information).

Link Age denotes the age from the time the specific page/link was created (Source: Document Inception Date).

So, over time, you can have many new links in an old site.

Image Courtesy: SXC.hu - Free Stock Images Site

Domain age has significant influence in Google Rankings and it is proven. Old sites has been awarded with better ranking since 2005, as Google found that spammers evacuate site quite frequently.

But, many Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) debate over the positive influence of “Link Age” in SEO. Many debate that Google likes fresh contents in old sites. So, for Link Age, this is somewhat inverse relation to positive SEO factors involving age. i.e. the newer the link age, the better the ranking.

Darren McLaughlin, in the Sootle Directory blog, mentioned the Google Patent using Document Inception Date for the freshness of links.

However, there are a great number of SEOs that believe that old links are better than new links. In their view, link age is also important as domain age. Again, it is also evidant that Google punishes the pages that have not been updated for long time. However, in the view of these SEOs, the freshness of content in old link has more marketibility than new links.

Is SEO Expenditure an Expense or Asset? Or Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:21:06 +0600

Is SEO Expenditure an Expense or Asset? Or Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?:

Your website is your intellectual real estate. Even though you bear annual variable cost of maintaining the site, the cost never can be labeled as expense. After finishing your site, Search Engine…

5 P's of Presenting a Page or Generate Copywriting Ideas for Webpages

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:51:00 +0600

If you provide any product and/or service, then you need to present yourself on the webpage. To get your business online, you have to copywrite your contents and make a good presentation. Now, what will you write?

Here are 5 P’s that you need to consider while preparing your contents or presentation, which as well can be used for a good web brochure or even hardcopy of corporate identity (brochure).

Preface

You need to have a great introduction before you start the conversation. Use hook words to attract the reader to go through rest of the contents in your webpage. This can be either through words/contents, images, or any other web resources.

Presentation

Always remember that there are quick visitors that will stay for few seconds and never will go through all of your contents. I guess this type of visitors is the major part of your traffic. So, you always need something that speaks more than thousand words. It can be any Presentation in flash or any other animated format that speaks louder, especially communicates quicker than words/contents.

Principles

When you are offering service or product, always mention what are your principles. i.e. what quality guidelines you follow. If a visitor is reading more of your contents, then s/he would also like to know how good you are at this service and/or products you are offering. And a mention of your principles is a very good start.

Process

The customer may also want to know how you manufacture or do the work. This portion can also include the tools you use. If you fear that the customer may have lack of confidence on you, then you should mention them. Mentioning your processes can also attract other large companies through your website, since they want to see if you can do it right.

Portfolio

The visitor also would be interested in what experience you have gained earlier. And what type of similar task you do. This doesn’t have to be past work, it can be a demo also.

These 5 P’s will help you to develop ideas for copywriting for your website.

How to identify the CMS Used in a Website

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:10:00 +0600

I was having trouble with identifying the CMS used in a website. And couldn’t find any article on the web that can help me do that. So, I invented my own method to look for publicly accessible default user or admin login page for each CMS.

Since each CMS has different default location for user login or admin panel (dashboard), you can look for these locations to find out what type of CMS the site is using. And if any of the default location shows login page, not 404 error page, then you have got the CMS.

One thing you have to watch for, is the actual location the site is using the CMS. Often site owners don’t use the CMS in Root (/) directory of the site. e.g. for blogs, they may use another /blog/ folder or virtuemart users may use /store/ folder.

Follow these specific guidelines for identifying CMS of an website:

WordPress

How would you know if the site uses WordPress. Simple, go to location that looks like these:

http://www.example.com/wp-admin
http://www.example.com/blog/wp-admin

If you see a loging page asking for User ID and Password, then the site/blog or the blog portion of the site is build with WordPress.

Joomla

The default location for Joomla admin panel looks like this:

http://www.example.com/administrator
http://www.example.com/store/administrator

These administrator pages are publicly accesible. So if you can see them, then the site is using Joomla. If joomla is used as CMS of the site, then you can access them even if you use Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs.

Drupal

Drupal Dashboard is located usually in:

http://www.example.com/?q=user or
http://www.example.com/?q=admin

But, things can change if you are using Search Engine Friendly URLs in Drupal using Mod_Rewrite. The usual location for the Drupal Dashboard, when the SEF URL is used, is:

http://www.example.com/user or
http://www.example.com/admin

If you can see the login page, you have your CMS.

Update: Wappalyzer

These are methods you can try. But, you can automate it through Wappalyzer FireFox Addon. It can track the type of CMS or Application used on site.

Turn Twitter Search Into Business Lead Bulletin Board

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:56:00 +0600

Click the image to land in Real Time Lead hunt in Twitter Search

Twitter search has proven its worth in providing you real time news by people around the globe. But, do you know that you can use twitter search for hunting business leads in your niche?

Twitter search will shows the leads that people are talking about in real time. All you have to do is search for common keywords used for leads, e.g. Need, “Looking For”, “searching for”, and other keywords you can think of as common words that people use for leads. Make sure you use OR in between them, so that search results show from tweets that contain any one of the keywords.

Then use your business keyword. e.g. if you are a Web Designer, then use “web design” OR “web designer”. This will show you a lot of business leads people are talking about in twitter in your line of business.

The searches also generate RSS feeds, maybe putting the feed in your RSS Reader or lead hunt software will be very valuable for you.

Update: Now you can save search and see it on your Twitter Timeline. You can find the search box below the right column. After searching there, you’ll find “Save this search” button on the top of the results. Quite handy.

The Death Of “Web 2.0″ - I don't Think So, We are Living the Web 2.0 Dream

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:26:36 +0600

The Death Of “Web 2.0″ - I don't Think So, We are Living the Web 2.0 Dream:

There may be economic downturn in recent years, but this is not going to stop the technological development. Sometimes, the buzz for a technology falls when we are using the technology. The…

Rel=“Canonical” URL Tag Introduced by Google, Yahoo, and Live

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 03:07:00 +0600

Like rel=”nofollow” URL tag, a new rel Tag (canonical) has been introduced and currently being supported by major search engine to tell the search engines that the specific URL is the duplicate.

This tag makes the webmasters free from relying with server end 301 redirect management, since this URL tag will be work as same as 301 redirects. And this can help retain the Authority of the home or any other page by disregarding pages that support session IDs, affiliate versions, printed, pdf versions, etc. that create duplicates of the original page.

More FAQ on this is on SEOMoz.

See what Matt Cutts, the Web Spam Head in Google has to say about it:

Absolute URLs in Internal Links can Hurt your Ranking in Google

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:43:00 +0600

Recently, one of the sites I was working on, had a great fall in ranking in Google. Me, along with the owner have revised the site and was blaming it for over optimization, since I have also used link titles () for every links.

But I have many sites that are performing well with the link titles. So, I can’t blame it on the link titles. But, I also changed the Relative URLs () to Absolute URLs ().

The major reason to use Absolute URL is because of the suggestion that many SEOs are providing to fight content forgery by scrappers. It creates problems for them to steal your contents. And if they do that, you can also get links from their site.

But, after implementing this trick on 2 sites, both sites’ rank fell rapidly. When, I changed the Absolute URLs of one site to Relative URLs, the rank started rising.

Now, here are my analysis and thought about this:

When Google finds a link with http:// prefix, it thinks it is an external link and most of the page may seem like floating pages
In recent studies on “Site Authority”, many SEOs refer that internal pages create the authority for the site. So, if Google treat them as external link, then the Authority Link Juice can’t get transferred to the main site
Google bot generally goes through sites and find their internal pages first and record links with http:// prefix for later crawling. So, absolute URLs can slow down the crawling process.

Disclaimer: I still need to update the 2nd site to blame it on the Absolute URLs. But, any comment here may differ with other SEO professionals experiencing other things.

Finding Twitter Elites in Your Niche

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:31:00 +0600

Twitter Grader has been providing list of general Twitter Elites as well as Twitter Elites within location. Initially, like most users, I have used it to see my scores and see how I was improving my grade according to their algorithm.

But, you can use it to search for Elite Tweeters in your Niche. To find elites in your niche, you should use only one major keyword, e.g. SEO, SEM, Leather, Marketing. Multiple keywords or “Quoted Phrase Search” doesn’t work.

Ranking the Quality of a Blog ... Continues with Jason Alba

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:34:00 +0600

Jason Alba, JibberJobber.com CEO, Author, Speaker suggested some updates about ranking in LinkedIn Bloggers Group. I am delighted to highlight them here:

Jason Alba: comments - are there ANY comments? Many blogs don’t have any, so getting comments consistently is a good sign.

Asif Anwar: That is also related to traffic. But, traffic that is driven to get involved with the blog. This is also good to determine stickiness of the blog. This is also true for trackbacks it receives.

Jason Alba: content - is the content well-written or does it look scrappy, too long, or rambling?

Asif Anwar: Well, judging many blogs for their contents is a tough job. But, I also believe on what you said. I think this is not a good measure to rank. Because, a blog is either a good blog or a splog. So, judging content quality manually, for ranking many blogs would be a waste of time, since there are many blogs out there with good contents. And I want to rank only the good blogs.

Jason Alba: Frequency of posts - does the blogger post at least once a week? At least three times a week? If there are weeks with gaps, that’s not a good sign.

Asif Anwar: Yes, that also can be a good indicator. But, if we turn back to quality contents, then it takes much time to post a researched content, while regular statements are easy to post. So, I would not go for this as a big factor for ranking. Just, think of your favorite actor who stars in a movie after long time, but makes hit films. It doesn’t mean that your actor is inferior than others who stars in movies frequently.

Jason Alba: google ads - if there are TOO many ads, which imo is usually more than one section of the blog, I feel the blogger doesn’t understand community and conversation and value add and instead goes for “w00t! I’m going to make 5 cents!”

Asif Anwar: I fully agree on this.

Jason Alba: widgets - if there are too many widgets I’m assuming they don’t get it. Widgets, in general, add to the noise on your blog, and noise is the last thing you want to introduce on your own property.

Asif Anwar: It’s sometimes smart to have widgets in your Web 1.0 site to represent Web 2.0 functionality. Having a Web 2.0 site for yourself can be costly. I always support simplicity, but wouldn’t blame on widgets.

Ranking the Quality of a Blog

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:53:00 +0600

Finding quality blogs is not a problem. However, ranking them is.

So I did a little research and found these facts:

I liked the Technorati Authority score that says how much a blog or site is talked about in other blogs in past 180 days. Technorati Authority score of 1234 means, within last 180 days, this blog had earned 1234 links from other blog. So, as the time goes by, the score also changes. So, this algo is totally about conversions on other blogs, not about traffic.
While, Alexa rank is purely based on Traffic or Hits on a site or blog.
Google PageRank is also another factor for blog quality. But, it depends on the all time Link Popularity of a site or blog. But, it does not show the recent popularity, like technoratti does.
Another good way to Rank a blog post in Google Reader is through PostRank (Previous AideRSS) that includes Rank of Posts by Engagement (Details about ranking is here: http://www.postrank.com/postrank). In Twitter, @aiderss confirmed me that you can also see the rank of blogs’ engagement level in Google Reader Folder view.

Social Media or PR 2.0

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:54:00 +0600

News media used to give us updated news on national and international happenings. And at rare times, they used to give news about our locality. The Press Releases used to come out at specific time and we used to get synchronized with the news media during that specified time.

When Social Media came, media for news-you-need-to-know has changed. No, newspaper will highlight your cousin had a baby, but the Social Media is telling you that.

Moreover, these social media, like twitter has become so fast in spreading news that, law enfrocement people are forcing @breakingnews to stop relaying news about Mumbai Attacks.

So, Social Media is here to stay and bye bye Traditional News Media.