People are typing in longer searches than ever before, according to Hitwise,
a noted competition intelligence provider.

This means quite a few things though, really. It means that Google’s edge on understanding what people
want could be less effective than it was in the past. It could also mean that people are getting better at knowing exactly what they want.

Regardless, it sure points to tightening up landing pages and adding more content to the ole’ website!

Until next time

Daniel J Deyette

Mashing Data Together – How one company managed
to put cost per click,
Google estimated traffic, search
trends and number of results in Google into
one simple excel sheet. Brilliant!

Case Study – SEM Rush tool put together by Michael Goldfinch. By Dan Deyette – I’ll show you the tool, what it does and my unbiased view on the utility.

I remember when getting data out of Google and into Microsoft Excel or any other software required serious coding skills or a linux box and a 6 pack of Coke. It was a real challenge and most of us who had any kind of computer skills and wanted to harvest data from Yahoo/Google would simply copy & paste and then play with the data. Times are changing, quickly. More sites are "Mashing Data" to make their own tools, software and competitive intelligence is getting MUCH easier. So easy in fact, that SEM Rush has leveraged API’s and integrations to borrow some data from different parts of google and "Mash" them all onto one page of results for easy reading! Let’s give some examples… Say I want to know who the top websites getting traffic on the internet today are. These would be great places to advertise, try to get links from or even just study as a business model, wouldn’t you agree? I know, this report got a little "blurry" but check it out. Woudn’t it be nice to have the "seasonality" of Google Trends data on the same excel sheet with your search volume and other stats? Let’s break it down: Number of results – How many resutls appear in google for that phrase Competition – The level of advertisers in Google Pay Per Click Cost Per Click – How much it costs to bid on that keyword Average Volume – How many people per day look for it on Google Google Trends – Seasonality or even if this is a newly popular item. In case you hadn’t noticed, the wonderful thing about Google Trends is that it shows you whether your recent drop in traffic or gain is because of worldwide conditions or your rankings. It shows you how much "volume" any phrase is getting in relation to the last few years, and geographic regions. What Trends DOESNT do by itself is give you a number. An exact number, like "there were 3,000 people yesterday". It simply says, it’s way lower last month and much higher this week.. Helpful but not as helpful as an actual number. With an actual number, you can sit back and calculate things like potential ROI or conversion rates or market share potential. Having an idea of the cost per click in relation to seasonal high’s and lows and results in Google makes a lot of trending and analysis alot easier. If this tool stopped here, I’d never have posted this writeup. But trust me – It doesnt! Go play with it, the free version has TONS of features worth noting. The usages are endless. Check out SEM Rush today. You’ll be glad you did. I used to use SpyFu for all my competitive research needs, but the price is getting quite high for their tool. They want $18.95 for a 3 day membership. I used to pay $6.95 and that was alright by me. $50 per month is a bit high for something that essentially scrapes Google. SEM Rush is much more affordable. Their monthly price is similar to 3 days with SpyFu. Their tool does quite a bit more, and adds more value to your reports if you send weekly or monthly client reports or need to spice up an up coming presentation. Sincerely Daniel J Deyette

Then I realized,

Why not submit myself to a blog directory? Is there such a thing?

OF COURSE there is! Your competition are probably already listed
in such directories, where are you?

Where do we find these, how much and which ones do I invest my

precious time on?

I did a quick Google and instantly found "Blog Catalog" which only required a little link in my sidebar.
Cool, I can handle that. Then I started digging, some wanted money, others reciprocal links and so on.

Now, being in the business as long as I have been, I know a recip bleeds my PR. Unless they’re a site I trust, I’m not linking back to them (unless i don’t care about the site i’m building or it’s just a spam page).

But paying a few bucks to be listed places isn’t a bad deal, and of course there’s nothing wrong with the free ones either…

Here’s a short list of blog directories. You might as well get the benefit of my hard work.<GRIN>

GO sign your blog up to some directories & Get some free press.

COME ON NOW!!

Sincerely,
Daniel J Deyette

I have an inside advantage to Google that most people I know simply don’t.

No, it’s not a girlfriend that works there.
No, I haven’t got Matt Cutt’s cell phone number.
No, I haven’t hacked into their systems either…

No, what I’m talking about is experience. For the last 7 years, I’ve watched
the search giant value pages in different ways. For those who still don’t understand
search engines, you’re doing yourself a major dis-service. Mind you, there
isn’t anyone out there explaining it very simply either. It’s all pretty technical.

SEO History for Non-Technical Folks…

(1995) In the begining, there was words. Websites had words, people searched
for words… But search engines didn’t exist. Directories like Yahoo did.
You searched for Plumbing, and guess what? AAAA1 Plumbing was #1.

(1996) Then Came Search engines, The more times you mentioned the words
(Keyword Density) The more "on topic" your site was.

That seemed to work quite well until folks started making websites that said
the word "cheese" 5,000 times at the bottom of each page. Yay, we’re #1
for cheese in Yahoo! How Cheesy is that?

(1998) Google Arrives…

Directories (Are ya in the internet phone book at least?)
Links pointing to the site (Do other people like your site enough to talk about it?)
* Age – Ah yes, and some experience would be good!

Google’s original theory was that if all these documents were on a "main server"
in an office, how would you locate the document the searcher was looking for?
We’d assume it would be the most popular one everyone else was talking about
and using (links). We’d also assume i’d be probably one that had been used for a while
(Age).

(2005) On January 18th, Google created the "no follow" tag and began tracing links
that shouldn’t count as a "popularity" vote. They shouldn’t give value to your rankings
and standings in the engines.

In December of 2005 the entire game changed with the "Big Daddy" update. Many
of those changes are still in effect today.

Now, a link is not just a link… (Well, except maybe on Yahoo…) But MSN & Google
have decided to include the idea of "trust".

Trusted links are those that come from OLDER more credible sites. Sites that are
linked to other major outlets like Associated Press, Reuters & CNN and similar.
The NUMBER of links alone is truly just an imaginative number that means nothing.
3 Links from CNN, BBC & other press could easily out rank a site with 3,000 links
from unknown sites.

(2005-2007) Birth of Web 2.0 & Social Media In Search

Sites like digg.com and social bookmarking as well as social networking like ryze,
linkedin, facebook and literally thousands of other ones popped up as well. They’re
now starting to shift the results on Google results like a tsunami under the ocean
simply thru popularity.

What Matters Today? Modern Information Retrieval Via Google.

Things have changed ALOT since 2006. Some major things have been implemented
that are evolving to this moment.

I’m starting a website called GoogleMythKiller.com (feel free to signup but it’s not
even close to ready yet…)

I’m going to dispell things like.. .

Can A New Website Rank In Google?

YES! It can, want to know how? Sign up.. I’ll show you how with Few links and no
promotion, you could show up as a major player.

Does Pagerank Matter?

No, and I’ll tell you why it shouldn’t be a part of your planning.

Can you get banned for duplicate content?

Nope. Will duplicate content rank, yup! I’ll explain more about that too.

Lastly, another big one. Can you get links too quickly? Yes!

There are some types of links where you can get over 100,000 overnight (yes, that’s a real
number) and Google will value every one of them. And there are other scenarios, where
you can get 50 in one day and get bumped out of the index… Scared yet? If you don’t know
what i’m talking about, you owe it to yourself to find out more.

This Week’s take away…

Google isn’t built by web marketers, it’s built by Engineers. Engineers think logically and
very scientifically. Look at your website navigation.

Navigation should be very simple and look much like a science lab textbook or university
website..

Home page (Menu)
- News
- Press
- Updates etc.

- Health
- Heart
- Lungs
- Breathing
- Resperatory

See how every topic is nested inside another topic? Consider your blog categories on this
same level. Do you keep on topic & Use lots of related words within each category?

When sites like this get spidered they gain instant crediblity & trust within google. It’s just one
part of over 200 signals google uses to control the results showing up when you search.

I will begin from credible sources to cite MOST of those 200 signals and the guestimate
on weighting based on 13 years observing the SEO Industry.

Sincerely,
Daniel J Deyette