Getting this right the first time can make a whole lot of difference in the future when it comes to marketing your business and getting people to even remember your business. Most would choose a domain name with their business brand. eg menkom.com.au our business name is Menkom and many years ago we registered this domain. This is ok, however with the advancements in search engines Menkom means nothing to Google or even humans. Its purely a brand name.

The chances of people searching ‘Menkom’ for any IT or Web related services is next to ZERO because there is no actual connection between the word Menkom and English dictionary term IT or Web related services.

If for example our domain name was ‘www.menkom-it-web-solutions.com.au’ then there is a GOOD chance that with the right SEO optimisation you could be ranked well when someone searches the keywords ‘MENKOM’ or ‘IT WEB SOLUTIONS’ or any combination of those.

Why is this ?

Google works by looking at the keywords that people enter into the Google search engine and gives relevant results. Putting keywords into your domain is good way to tell Google ‘Hey this is what i do’ without too much guess work. Google treats the hyphens and dot’s as spaces eg the domain name to Google would read as ‘www menkom it web solutions’. This means if anyone types ANY of those keywords into the Google search engine you have a good chance of ranking better than if you didn’t.

This is only one factor of SEO optimisation however it’s an important one.

But my domain name is too long and hard to remember!

Not everyone is going to remember ‘www.menkom-it-web-solutions.com.au’ it’s rather long and will make your email address look ugly.

Well yes you have a point.

However you should not worry too much about this as technology these days over come that. For example people bookmark webpages in their browsers, brower auto complete finishes off typing whatever sites you have visited before, email addresses are auto saved in a history file and in most cases you only need to type in the first part of the name.

The benefits outweigh these problems in my opinion, others may think different thou.

If your domain name ends up being too long then you may have to compromise and choose less keywords try and keep it to one or two hyphens maximum.

Try not to bundle words to make a long domain name eg. ‘www.menkomitwebsolutions.com.au’ as you can see it looks confusing but more than that on a technical perspective even thou your keywords are in there Google will not see them as separate words in fact the only keyword you have there is ‘menkomitwebsolutions’ and the chances of someone typing that into Google are probably 0%.

Domain names and your brand

As time goes on brand is becoming more relevant for Google, so its advisable to not only choose a domain name for the sake of Google. You should always include your brand as part of the domain name. If however you were to produce mini sites that you wanted to target keywords for and have no use to brand them as a business then we could use something like ‘furniture-removals-sydney.com.au’

As you can see there is no branding there, no business name but it is keyword rich domain name and probably highly searched in Google.

Here are some examples of how to choose a domain name:

Business name: Maynards
Keywords: Furniture Removals

Suggested domain: maynards-furniture-removals.com.au

Business name: Menkom
Keywords: Web Designers

Suggested domain: menkom-webdesigners.com.au

If your business only targets a metro area you could include something like
menkom-webdesigners-sydney.com.au

Final thoughts and recommendations ?

If your business name is Maynards and you really do want to only register that name without additional keywords you can register both eg register ‘www.maynards.com.au’ and also ‘www.maynards-furniture-removals.com.au’ what you can do then is park the ‘www.maynards.com.au’ domain and host your website on ‘www.maynards-furniture-removals.com.au’.

This setup means that when you go to setup email accounts you will have the option of using either the short version or the long version. It also means that no matter if someone typed in the short version or the long version they will end up on the same website.

By now you should understand more on how to choose a domain name that will keep Google happy as well as promote your brand.

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If your looking for someone to help you on how to choose a domain name as well as have a multiple domain name setup with your website don’t hesitate to contact us 1300 855 465

Launch a popup menu of your favorite files and folders with FolderMenu

So there is a great program that i finally found that does EXACTLY what i want and its FREE.

Up till now i was using a program called LaunchOnFly which was good but up till a few years ago it was free then it went payware for about $30 bux. I did not find the value in paying that much especially since the new version was not really that much better than the last.

Up till today i could not for the life of me find a program with similar functionality all i wanted was a menu i could configure with shortcuts of programs and files that i could easily launch with the middle click of my mouse button. It was difficult to find a program that actually could use the middle click of the mouse button most only supported hotkeys within windows, which is ok but is not productive enough for me.

Finally FolderMenu has appeared in 64bit and 32bit glory. Its portable meaning you dont have to install anything just run it off your desktop and its free.

How would i use it ? Well we all have shortcuts and favorite programs we want to launch easily right, instead of having 50 icons on your desktop causing clutter you can manage it with FolderMenu and even categorise them into sections eg. Office Applications, Antivirus Applications etc…. or just put all the icons in the main folder. This is how i would use FolderMenu at its most basic features. This means you can now delete all the shortcuts from your desktop so it wont look so cluttered and distracting whilst your trying to work.

Probabaly the best feature of this software is that the menu can be invoked with the middle mouse button anywhere on your desktop this means a massive productivity boost for you. Imagine how many times you need to navigate to the start menu, or the task bar or your desktop to find the icon you need to launch going back and forth is a massive time waster even if it takes 1 second longer times that by 100 times and your wasting precious time.

I can guarantee you that you will be more productive with this tool and i urge you all to give it a go.

If you feel this software has made you more productive you can donate whatever you think its worth to the author on his homepage. Menkom are big advocates of donating or paying for software that we find value in using.

Download Launch a popup menu of your favorite files and folders with FolderMenu

We all love yellow pages right ? WRONG.

Our business up till recently did advertise with yellow pages however we have stopped all forms of advertising for more reasons than one. Here i will go into 6 more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages and why you should consider stopping your advertisements with yellow pages.

1. Yellow pages gives bad customer service

Do you like to be on hold for 25minutes to then be greeted by a rep that does not have a clue what your talking about and needs to forward your call to another department to only be asked your security questions again ? I know this is not uncommon and if there is one thing that really gives me the sh$%s is repeating what i have just wasted my breath telling someone else before. Yellow pages is the king of this.

2. Yellow pages is a dead advertising medium

Yes this is true. Its not what it used to be. Have you noticed how yellow pages is now exploring different ways to get your business thru website design, online marketing such as SEO, PPC and other methods. Seriously what does yellow pages know about online marketing they are a company based around a off line advertising book. That’s it. They have not been in the game long enough to be called experts in online advertising with technologies such as SEO, PPC marketing. Its best to leave these online marketing strategies to the real experts not people who employee cheap labor and call themselves experts. Besides this in a 2008 report it estimated that they would loose close to 40% of their revenue over a 5 year period due to people not opting to advertise in the book anymore. However recent articles show this is happening quicker than expected. There are many other forms of advertising that will give you a better return on your investment.

3. Yellow pages has a poor return of investment

Talk about poor return on investment. We have advertised in yellow pages local for quite a few years and to be totally honest i think we received about 3 calls out of it. We should of stopped earlier however this was not on our priority list at the time. Will it work for you ? probably not however give it a try put an ad in your local yellow pages and test and measure it for a period of 12 months. I would say if you don’t get regular calls from it then its a waste of time and money. Be expected to pay in upwards of thousands of dollars for a decent ad too.

4. What about yellow pages online ?

No sorry this does not work either. A few years ago the system used to be fair and was based around first in best dressed. Now its all about who wants to pay the most to be listed up the top. We studied this and also advertised online for a couple of years but its important to find out how many possible leads you may get before you invest in this. For example if your a plumber find out from them how many people are searching for a plumber in your local area in a given month, if its thousands then i guess a conversion of 1-3% maybe ok as that would amount to a fair bit of work. However if its in the hundreds forget it, there is very little change you will convert to actual jobs. Why would people first visit yellow pages online when they have the power of Google ? Google is not just a search engine for information anymore its a full blow directory listing service that can find you the cheapest products, local tradesmen as well as latest news and much more. Its shown that 80% of all users have Google set as their homepage, and from this the searches begin. Think about it, when you need to look for a service do you search Yellow pages or Google first ?

5. Is yellow pages suited to any business ?

It may be, firstly big businesses may still see value in it. Why because they have deep pockets, it can cost in upwards of $30,000 for a full page ad in a yellow pages book, BANG! hows that. For the average small business i would say steer clear from it, unless you can inject some serious dollars into it and stand out from your competitors don’t bother.

Last but not least,

6. The proofing system is flawed

Yes its flawed, here is something we experienced and we are not alone on this also. On the 16th of December we got a call from Yellow pages asking to renew our advertisement in the book, they mentioned they would send out a proof and that we could make any changes if necessary. So happens that a week later our company went on holiday breaks till mid January. When we got back from our break we noticed an invoice in our Po box, and no proof. We were like WTF is this. We called them and they basically said that we never got back to them and that advertising was closed and that it was too late to make any changes, we argued that we never even got the proof in the first place and that they should of not asked for proofing during the Christmas break, they should be well aware that 90% of businesses do not trade during this time. Well it was bad luck for us, we had to pay. But we were not happy. Was this a tactic to swindle their customers ? or is their proofing system flawed who knows, but it was certainly fishy.

This wraps up our article on 6 more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages. Please LIKE and share our article.

Want some more reasons to not advertise in yellow pages. Check this article out on 11 reasons why your business should not advertise with yellow pages

So this has been something that did my head in for the most part of a full day on How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress.

I think because its relatively new and a lot of assumptions together with poor documentation has it made it more difficult to get a grasp on what this is and also how to properly implement it.

I read several articles on this topic and there is a lot of ways that it can be implemented, some worked and some didn’t well not for me anyway. I will show you and demonstrate how i personally got this working and why its important for any online marketing campaign.

Why is How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress important?

There is a shift coming which has already started. As you may know Google has launched GooglePlus, GooglePlus in a nutshell is a social network like Facebook. I guess due to the fierce competitive nature Google wants you to use the GooglePlus network and not Facebook so they have cleverly integrated the social network as having significance in Google search results via SEO.

This means that having a GooglePlus profile is rather significant and will be more significant as time goes on to get better search rankings in Google.

I personally think its a great idea! At first i didn’t like it however now that i have implemented it and know how and why its introduced its actually a smart. For one thing it validates user generated content by cross linking your GooglePlus profile with your content on your website, this means that people being able to steal content is much harder than it was before, it will lower the content stealers search ranking further if this is found to be true. It also adds credibility to you and your website because in Google search results you will see a small picture of the author of the content. This is why i think its a smart move to jump on the bandwagon now and in the next part i will show you How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress.

How do you set this up ?

As mentioned there are a few ways on How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress and im sure there are some i am not even aware of, some of the documentation is hard to understand so ill try and make it easy to understand and implement.

1. You will need a GooglePlus profile

2. You will need a WordPress blog website

3. Log into your website and go to the USERS -> YOUR PROFILE  inside the Bio box you would most likely have your bio information already. At the end of your bio add the following.

You will have to substitute the GooglePlus profile url with your own. What you have done here is set your profile that appears on all blog posts your write to set the REL=AUTHOR markup. This tells Google “I am the author of this post and my GooglePlus profile is located at …”

4. You will need to have an About Us page, or About Me page, or Team Members Page, or a page that basically has information about “YOU” i would recommend if you don’t have one to create one. This page should have information about yourself or your business.

5. You will need to create a menu item to this page, generally this is done via the main navigation menu (its important that this menu item is accessible from all pages). In APPEARANCE -> MENUS in WordPress click on the SCREEN OPTIONS panel right up the top and you will most likely see something called XFN Link Relationships, make sure this is enabled (i am not sure if older version of wordpress have this so make sure you update currently i use v3.3)

6. Once you have added the new page to your menu drop down the menu item box and you will see a new box there for the XFN Link Relationship, in that type ME, does not have to be capitals lowercase is fine. What we have done here is added REL=ME to that pages link. This tells Google “This page is about ME the author of this blog post” This is the second step completed.

7. Log into your GooglePlus profile and under ABOUT look at the right hand side under CONTRIBUTOR links, ADD the About Us page url you set to have the ME Link relationship, and save. You can also add the entire root level domain of your website, eg. www.menkom.com.au

8. Now that that is all out of the way lets test How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress works. Go here http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and type in a url from a blog post where your Bio appears (generally this is on every post) eg. http://www.menkom.com.au/2012/security/email-cpanel-scam/ Once you have clicked on Preview you will see that it will show my avatar on the post with all status messages saying its been VERIFIED.

9. The last step is to tell Google that we want them to add us as a verified author. Go to this form

That’s it your done. If everything went well you now know How to setup rel author rel me for GooglePlus in WordPress

Coming soon! is a video on how to do this… watch this space!

Beware the Email Cpanel Scam. Ive actually recieved it a couple of times and as its not an isolated thing i thought i would share it to let people know it is infact a scam and to beware.

Please click on the below image to enlarge, this is what the scam looks like. I almost fell for it but as always i inspected the email and found the sender and also the url links do not infact link to anything related to cpanel themselves. The message reads something like this:

“Due to the system maintenance, we kindly ask you to take a few minutes to confirm your FTP details,” one message reads. “Please confirm your FTP details by using the link below.”

I urge everyone to please delete this email, better still ‘Mark it as spam’ so you don’t receive it again.

What does the Email Cpanel Scam do ?

Looking into it, it seems they want your Cpanel details to get into your cpanel account, this is very bad. If someone has your cpanel details they have the potential of literally DELETING YOUR WEBSITE, DELETING YOUR EMAILS.

Whilst the email cpanel scam is directly not malicious it does ask for important details that can then cause a lot of harm and grief.

Introduction – So what is Peerblock anyway ?

I stumbled across this little freeware program called Peerblock that supposedly can protect you from anti-p2p companies spying on your whilst you download with torrents. It does this by matching an IP or a range of IP’s from a block list to incoming connections on your computer.

Torrent ? what is a torrent ?

A torrent is a small file that you download and the file contains information on who has the file(s) you want to download eg, movies, images, pdfs, music, documents etc..etc…. when used together with a torrent program eg. uTorrent you load up the torrent file and shortly you will begin to see peers that also have the file(s) your looking for some of which are partly completed and some of which are 100% completed. You will be able to download parts of the file(s) your looking for from the various users who are hosting the file(s). Once your download is 100% complete you are then considered a seeder (this means you now host a 100% complete copy of the file and you can share it with others).

Are there legitimate uses for torrents ?

Absolutely. This technology has been around for a while and is probably one of the most common ways to download files freely and quickly. Generally the more seeders hosting the files the quicker the downloading is. Many record companies, music makers, movie producers etc.. use this technology to share their media to the world, the beauty of torrents is that once 1 other person has the complete download they can easily share it with others. This is called viral sharing as one file can quickly spread to thousands in days. This save time, money on marketing for the person who wants to get their brand / production out to the world.

Of course there are illegitimate uses for torrents like anything there is the good and the bad, the bad being that you can now easily share copyrighted material also, such as albums, movies etc.

How to protect yourself when downloading torrents

Peerblock is a free program that you install for windows that sits quietly in the background and monitors all network connections and looks for connections to a list of known bad or banned ip addresses. If you attempt to connect to a bad ip address this program will block the connection silently. It is well known that the FBI, RIAA, MPAA, Police etc… are now well aware of p2p networks and are on the lookout to catch individuals who download material on the torrent network. Thousands have been given warning letters around the world, many have been prosecuted as well. I personally know someone who had a letter sent to them from their ISP unauthorised downloading. Peerblock will assist in helping you stay clear from these organisations and remain safe online.

Peerblock in your business

Its a known fact that employees download material from the internet on a daily and regular basis, yes that means your business too. In many cases they use the torrent network to download files, in most cases it cant be helped and someone may figure out a way to get past any protection you have to not allow downloading from torrents anyway, in this case its best to use Peerblock as a preventative measure so you dont get in trouble the last thing you want is an employee to be downloading music files then you get smacked with a warning letter from authorities.

In conclusion

This is not a full proof method on how to protect yourself when downloading torrents however it is one countermeasure that i have found works with little fuss.

For more information on who is watching you when you connect to a p2p network click here

Download Peerblock Here

NOTE: When testing this program i found that by default the program also blocks HTTP requests meaning that you will find some websites may not load properly, its because they are being blocked. I would recommend you ALLOW HTTP requests in the settings to resolve this.

So you think your website is the best? You have spent a lot of time, energy and money into developing your website but its not getting enough sales ? maybe your not getting enough contact leads, or maybe your just curious to know what others think of your brand new website ?.

I came across a great website today offering a pretty neat service on how to test your website. They offer website usability testing services, for testing your website so whats usability testing anyway you may ask ?…

In a nutshell it’s basically going thru a set of procedures of questions to find out just how user friendly your website is to the real world such as consumers or clients generally these tests are undertaken by external testers rather than someone in your actual team this gives real world results and unbiased opinions. So is testing your website important ? Absolutely.

How to Test Your Website – Usertesting.com

Usertesting.com have revolutionized how to test your website, testing your website used to be a tedious and time consuming job plus it used to put a lot of people out as you had to ask users if they were willing to test your website. The results were at times biased and also unreliable. Now its all changed for a small fee you can basically hire people to perform this task  and get results within 1 hour of testing your website. For as little as $39 per user they will perform usability testing on your website and give you unbiased results based on questions you want them to answer.

What i like about this service for testing your website ?

What i really like about this service on how to test your website is that you don’t have to worry about anything such as a testing environment, gathering users for testing, writing out documentation etc…. but probably the best thing is that you actually get to see video footage of the users actually using your website with audio speech as well. This means you can visually see how they test your website, you can see the mouse move, any pauses, what they are thinking at the time, what they would like to see etc…. there is nothing better than visual to backup the results. You have the ability of downloading the video footage also for later viewing or to show to a panel of decision makers so any further tweaks or enhancements can be done to your website.

If you want to know how to test your website easily i suggest you visit www.usertesting.com today signup and see just how well you think your website performs, you will get insightful information that you can then use to better enhance your website.

Menkom are partnered up with usertesting.com and can organise testing your website for you if necessary.

In this article i explore How to Deal With a Competitor Using Your Trademark or Name in Google.

I visited the website of an acquaintance of mine and noticed that they used their name in the keywords and meta description as well as other places, i thought to myself why would someone do this ? Why would you want to be ranked for your own name ? It really depends i guess on your business model this website in question actually had his name in the domain name also and the website was more of a personal blog rather than a general business website. In doing some research i found many complaints of people abusing the use of names as keywords to rank higher in Google for that phrase to either defame a person or simply to come up higher in the rankings of Google for someone elses name, possibly your competitor.

Can you imagine how degrading it would be if someone started using your name as keywords in their website only to talk about about you or your business ? How would you deal with it ? You could ask the webmaster of that offending website to take down that content but i would highly doubt they would comply in the first place but it looks like you have some ammunition to resolve this problem.

How to Deal With a Competitor Using Your Trademark or Name in Google

Google has trademark violation policies in place which recently in European countries does not exist anymore however it is still in effect in Australia which is great news for us aussies. Take a look at the following links from Google to learn and even file a complaint against a website if they are using your name or trademark in Google Adwords Campaigns if your lucky Google with promptly remove the offending ads from their systems so they wont show anymore and probably tell the owner of the website to remove the material entirely or they wont be crawled by Google again.

Google’s Trademark Policy for Australia

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6118

Updates to Google Trademark Policy for Other Countries

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177578

Google’s Trademark Policy Investigation Procedures for Australia

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=144298

File a Trademark Complaint Now

https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint

Summary: How to Deal With a Competitor Using Your Trademark or Name in Google

If you find someone or a business who is using your personal name (full name) or your business name you may have a leg to stand on and you have the right to put forward a complaint to Google for investigation.

Some other strategies i would put in place would be to start using your full name as SEO content on your website this way you will achieve higher rankings in Google if someone happened to type your name into Google, this also holds true for your business name. Remember its not about getting ranked number 1 for your business name or your personal name this should not be your primary goal i would only do this if it so happened that there were other websites out there that actually rank in Google in the first place. If you happen to rank on the first page in Google already then you should have nothing to worry about.

We are currently in some final testing stages to make sure our system is working as expected, we expect full usage of this system the first week back from the Christmas holidays.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s the art of increasing your site’s natural search engine ranking, so that you rank high in the right searches. It entails:

1. ‘On-page’ and ‘On-site’ optimisation – Telling the search engines what your site is about, so they know what searches it’s relevant to. This involves making your site ‘search-friendly’ so their ‘bots’ can read it, then using the right keywords in your content and code (e.g. HTML) and paying careful attention to how all your pages fit together.

2. ‘Off-page’ optimisation – Proving to the search engines that your site is important in its field (i.e. will likely be helpful to searchers). This process is mostly a matter of increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site.

Why do you need SEO?

The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase relevant traffic to your website, hence generating more evenue for the web site. Search engines are critical to traffic generation because:

- The Internet is the world’s second most commonly used medium after television (internet Statistics Compendium, 2006)

- Approximately 1.5 billion people use the Internet, worldwide (Internet World Stats, 2008)

- 93% of users worldwide use search engines to find websites (Forrester Research)

- 80% of Asia Pacific Internet Users Go Online to Shop (Visa survey)

- 74% of the Australian population uses the Internet as of December 2007 (international Telecommunication Union)

- 66% of online Americans have purchased a product online (Pew Internet)

- Search engines are the way most people (85%) find new sites, and the way most businesses find new sources for products and services (Direct Marketing Association)

- Roughly 750 million people worldwide over the age 15 conducted a search on the Internet in August 2007 (comScore)

- About 15% of traffic on brand names is landing at competitor, affiliate or ‘other’ websites in US and AU markets where trademark restrictions are not strictly enforced (Hitwise)

What SEO is NOT

A silver bullet for increasing your web site’s revenue. If done well, it will increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site, but you also need to focus on your site’s design, usability and message, in order to increase conversions.

What NOT to expect from SEO

A top 5 position (or even top 20) after 1 week of SEO. It takes a lot of time and manual labour to rank well. You should expect anywhere between 3 to 12 weeks for moderate results with moderate competition, and up to a year for extremely competitive key phrases. The cost should reflect the results and work involved.

Engaging an SEO company

Generating links takes a long time and involves a lot of work. Like any other form of promotion, it requires investment – either in time or money. If you decide to pay an SEO company, always ask them exactly what they’ll be doing. Ask them what keywords they’ll be targeting, and how they’ll target them.

There are no secret methods, so if they can’t or won’t tell you, DO NOT engage them. If they tell you but you are unable to completely understand, DO NOT engage them. (There are no link generation methods that are too complex for the layperson to understand when explained properly.) Also, always be clear in your own mind about exactly what you’re paying for. Remember that there are two parts to obtaining a high ranking: optimizing your site, and building links back to your site. Always get your SEO company to explain exactly which part(s) they will do for you, and how they plan to do it.

Things to be wary of

While most SEO providers are honest and decent, a handful are not. They know that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an utter mystery to most of their customers, and that nobody outside of Google truly knows Google’s ranking rules. So they lie. So before engaging an SEO company, consider the following.

? No SEO provider has a deal with Google. That would totally undermine the relevance of Google’s results. All SEOs are on the outside, looking in. Doing their best to unravel the complex mathematical mystery that is Google’s ranking algorithm.

? “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” This is from Google itself. If the provider says they can, avoid them!

? You can’t rank for an unlimited number of keywords. To optimise your site for a keyword or keyword phrase, you just use it more often than any other word or phrase. But because your site has only a finite number of words, there’s a limit to the number of keywords you can target.

? Some SEO providers display misleading logos. E.g. They might display the logo of a major bank on their Clients page, when all they have ever done for that bank is Pay-Per-Click advertising – not SEO – for a single keyword, once, long ago. So always be sure to ask exactly what your SEO provider has done for each client it claims. And ask for references.

? There’s no point submitting your site to thousands of search engines. This won’t get you a high ranking. The truth is, you usually don’t have to submit your site at all.

? You don’t have to spend a lot on Google AdWords to get a good organic ranking. Paid search advertising is absolutely independent of your site’s natural ranking. Google’s success relies on its ability to deliver relevant results. The moment it took money in return for natural search ranking, its reputation for relevance would be justifiably ruined.

Questions you should ask your prospective SEO provider

Pricing should not be the deciding factor when choosing an SEO provider. You should also consider customer service, results, experience, proven achievements, and whether they offer any written guarantees for their service. Before engaging any SEO provider, always ask them the following questions.

1. Can you guarantee the #1 position on Google? If the answer is yes, avoid them! This is what Google has to say on the matter: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

2. Can you provide top results with generic keyphrases? Make sure the key-phrases chosen for your site are generic terms and are likely to be typed into the search field by users. It is extremely easy to rank well for obscure key-phrases that no one searches for, like “tall handsome rich Plumber and leaks repair perth wa”. It’s much harder to rank well for just “plumber perth” or “perth plumber”.

3. Do you supply a comprehensive written quotation & guarantee? Make sure their quote outlines the key-phrases your site will be optimised for, pricing, and the search engines being targeted (Google, Yahoo and MSN). Also ensure you get some form of guarantee (with a stated period for which the guarantee is valid).

4. Do you follow the guidelines set out by the search engines? Google, Yahoo and other significant search engines have gone to the trouble of writing up guidelines so they don’t have to penalise you for unethical practices. If your SEO provider fails to follow these guidelines, your site will likely be penalised or – worse – banned from the search results, altogether.

5. How long have you been performing SEO and can I contact your customers for references? If an SEO provider is unwilling to provide references, this may be a sign that they have something to hide. When checking references, ask about the provider’s performance and general quality of service. Also ask if they’d be willing to recommend the provider.

How do search engines work?

Search engine companies like Google and Yahoo are all about finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more ad revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant and high quality. In the words of Nathan Buggia of Microsoft Live Search: “Our whole role in life is to find the best content on the web and bring it together with people who are looking for that content. And to do that, we’ve invented a couple of algorithms to figure out what people think is good content.” (SMX East Search Marketing Conference, New York City, October 2008) Here’s a simplistic explanation of how search engines work:

1. Crawl – They send out ‘bots’ (aka ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’) that crawl your pages and send back details for processing.

2. Index – They then use really complex mathematical algorithms to deduce the subject matter of your site from frequently used words and the text on links to, from, and within your site. This tells them which searches your pages are relevant to.

3. Rank – They consider some 200 factors when ranking, but the most important – of those that you can actually manipulate – is the number of external links pointing to your site, where those links come from, and what anchor text is used in those links. If there are lots of links pointing to your site, all from quality sites, and all with relevant words in their anchor text,

you’re likely to rank well. The logic is that if all those webmasters are willing to link to you and they’ve used a variety of relevant words in their links (i.e. they’re not automated links), your site must be relevant and important.

Note that the age of your site and the consistency of your subject matter over time also impact your ranking; they build site authority.

SEO vs SEM

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing: the use of search engines to market/promote your website. Although many people think that SEM is just paid advertising (e.g. Google Adwords, sponsored linked, etc.), this is NOT the case. SEM is an umbrella term that includes SEO. In other words, SEO is a specific kind of SEM.

SEO vs Paid Search Advertising

Paid search advertising includes the likes of Google Adwords. Your ad displays whenever someone searches for a word that is related to your product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are labelled with something like “Sponsored Links”. The ranking of your ad depends mostly on how much you’re prepared to pay for each click you get.

Usually it costs you nothing to place your ad, but you pay each time someone clicks on it to visit your site. And unlike the natural results, your ad will appear within minutes of you setting it up.

Most businesses find a high natural search ranking (through SEO) is more cost effective than a high rank paid search ad. That’s because your SEO investment generally tapers once you achieve a high ranking, whereas your paid search investment will normally continue to increase.

That said, paid search advertising is an effective stop-gap measure. Many businesses use paid search ads until their SEO does its job. Some also use paid search ads for time-sensitive and shortterm campaigns (where instant results are required).

SEO and paid search advertising are usually best performed by the same provider, because they’ve already performed the necessary research, they’ve consulted extensively with you, and they’re in the best position to ensure your SEO and paid advertising complement each other to achieve your objectives.

IMPORTANT: Paid search advertising does NOT affect your natural search ranking.

Glossary

Algorithm

A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their

search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they’re the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).

ALT text

“Alternate Text” – used to describe an image. This text is displayed by browsers that don’t support image display, and by vision-impaired users who use screen readers that read the Alt text aloud to describe the image.

Anchor Text

(aka Link Text) The clickable text of a hyperlink.

Below the fold

Content of a web page that is not seen by the user unless they scroll down.

Blind Traffic

Low quality traffic generated by misleading banners or SPAM.

Bot

Search engines find pages on the World Wide Web by sending out ‘bots’ that make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. These bots send back information which the search engines then use to index each site to ensure it displays in the most appropriate  searches.

Clustering

In search engine search results pages, clustering is limiting each represented website to one or two listings. Clustering is also used to describe the practice of grouping related web pages together in your website structure.

CPA

Cost Per Action. An accurate measure of the effectiveness of a paid search ad. (The cost of getting a single user to perform a desired action.  (Not just click on your ad.)

CPC

Cost Per Click. The cost of getting a single user to click on your paid search ad.

CPM

Cost per 1,000 impressions. A metric used in the administration of paid search advertising. (An ‘impression’ occurs when your ad is displayed during a user’s search.)

Crawl

Search engine ‘bots’ (aka ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’) make their way across your website gathering data to send back for analysis. This process is called ‘crawling’. Bots make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a bot, a text link is like a door. Think of it as the search engines reading your site.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets. A set of standards that govern the appearance of your website (so things like font size, background colour, margin  width, etc., don’t have to be defined individually in the code of every page).

CTR

Click Through Ratio. A metric used to measure the effectiveness of a paid search ad. It’s the number of times users have clicked on your ad to visit your site versus the total number of impressions.

Doorway Page

A web page designed to draw in Internet traffic from search engines, and then direct this traffic to another page or website.

EPV – Earnings Per Visitor.

Google PageRank

How Google scores a website’s importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar (from http://toolbar.google.com), you can view the PR of any site you visit. (Note, however, that the PageRank you see through the toolbar is very unreliable.)

Hit

A single access request made to the server. A hit can be many things other than an actual human visit, so hits are NOT a reliable indication of traffic. A web page can register multiple hits due to the number of graphics and/or scripts making up the page.

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.

IBL

Inbound Link (aka backlink). A link from another site to yours.

Keyword

(aka “key phrase” or “keyword phrase”) A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use is known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic and very difficult to rank for.

Natural Search Results

The ‘real’ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

Outbound Link

A link from your site to another site.

Page Views

The number of times a web page is served/viewed. This is a much more accurate measurement of traffic than “HITS”.

PPC

Pay Per Click. A form of paid search advertising where you pay whenever someone clicks on your ad to visit your site.

Query

When someone searches for a word or phrase using a search engine.

Rank

Your position in the natural search results that display when someone uses a search engine to search for a word related to your site’s subject matter.

ROI

Return on Investment.

SE

Search engine.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation.

SEO Copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient in web copy, but also experienced in writing copy that is optimized for search engines, and who will therefore help you rank higher. (Glenn Murray, co-author of this document is an SEO copywriter)

SERP

Search Engine (Search) Results Page. The page that displays the results

when you click Search in a search engine.

Stemming

Variations to a particular word. E.g. if you search for “design”, a search engine that supports stemming may return results that includes “designs”,”designer” and “designing”.

Copyright

This text is copyrighted by Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) (www.webindustry.asn.au). Members and non-members are welcome (in fact, encouraged) to use this document in full for distribution to clients; however non-members are unable to ‘re-brand’ this document in any way. AWIA

Members are welcome to re-brand this document, as long as the text in its ENTIRETY including this Copyright and Credit statements and all other text is shown in full.

With your help, clients entering into contracts with members of the web industry will have a much clearer and fairer system of ‘rating potential suppliers’