TastyPlacement in the Press

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Black Hat SEO in the US Senate

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The Austin American Statesman newspaper reported today that Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign website is riddled with hidden phrases such as “rick Perry gay” (Governor Rick Perry is Senator Hutchison’s opponent in the race for Texas Governor.  The story broke here, in the Statesman’s Postcards section. The hidden text is a thinly veiled a attempt to capture rankings for a wide variety of phrases.

The CSS display:none Tag

The Senator’s website (site has been taken down–as of July 30, 2009)  displayed nearly 2300 phrases–all hidden by the CSS tag, “display: none.” Among these phrases are “rick perry biography,” “governor perry texas”, and the now-infamous “perry gay.” A snippet of the 2300-line code appears below.

<div id="Layer1" style="display:none;">rick perry yell leader
www celebratingtexas
celebratingtexas
texans protecting our water environment and resources
cooper tire texarkana
texans for life coalition
bruchard nodes

The offending phrase was promptly removed after the Statesman broke the story.

Google strictly forbids hidden text and links, as set forth in their webmaster guidelines. Specifically, Google advises against “Using CSS to hide text”.

Michael of TastyPlacement was quoted in the article; you can read here.

Analytics and Monitoring

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Why SEO Campaigns Take Time

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A common question I hear from customers is “when will I see strong rankings from my SEO work?” That’s a good question, and there are several reasons why SEO is more “process” than “event”. Let’s take it step-by-step and break down why SEO campaigns take a little time to develop their full power.

Getting Links Takes Time

First of all, securing inbound links takes time. A typical white hat SEO campaign will involve writing to other websites and web directories and inviting those other websites to link to our own. Without an SEO campaign, links from other websites take years to develop naturally. One way of looking at an SEO campaign is a process that accelerates what would occur naturally. And, as we all know, inbound links are counted by all great search engines as a “vote”–sites with inbound links are deemed stronger, and hence are ranked better.

This process of writing to other websites takes time. Even if you or your SEO consultant completed say, 100 requests in a day, the webmasters of those 100 other sites may not get around to answering immediately. I have received messages back from other websites over a year after I have made the link request. So, you’ll get some links quickly, and some links will take much longer. The good news is that when you do undertake link requests, you can reasonably expect that your requests will bear fruit down the road, and it’s good to know that you’ve got some links that will be coming in months down the road. It’s like saving for a rainy day.

Once You Get an Inbound Link, It Takes Time for That Link to Be Indexed

Now, let’s assume that a few weeks have passed, and you have secured 50 valuable inbound links from 50 great websites all pointing to yours; remember, you requested 100 and you will never get every link you ask for so this example might even be very rosy. Some webmasters will never answer your request, and some will not link back for whatever reason.

But, so far so good, you have some links pointing into your site.

But wait–Google and Yahoo may not get around to indexing those 50 pages for days or weeks. Google will generally index most sites in 3 to 4 weeks; Yahoo takes quite a bit longer, and MSN longer still (as these 2nd tier search engines improve their technology, look for their indexing speed to catch up; they are slow to index and they know it). And, until the search engines update their indexes of the pages that link to your site, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist.

And if that wasn’t complicated enough, search engines are not slaves to webmasters–search engines do not index every page they find. So, even if Google comes upon a web page with a link to your site, it may index that page immediately, it may return a few times before the page is indexed. In that case, some links may take months to be indexed.

Only after your link is indexed do you enjoy the inbound linking power that that site gives you.

The Sites that Link to You Have to Wait for Their Links Too

And, don’t forget that the sites that link to you are “living” websites too. The strength of their web presence is based upon the links that they receive–and that landscape is constantly changing. When your site is new, the sites willing to link to you are going to tend to be new as well. As such, the inbound linking power of the sites that link to you will tend to be on the lite side. However, those sites will grow into stronger sites as they age, and then the inbound links that you enjoy from other sites will rise with that tide.

The Sandbox Effect

And then, of course, there is the sandbox effect. The sandbox effect refers to the phenomenon of a temporary ranking penalty applied to newer websites that undergo rapid expansion in either size or inbound links. The effect is fiercely debated and never conclusively proven either for or against.

Google’s informal mouthpiece, Google employee Matt Cutts, has publicly stated: “[t]here are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries.” Mr. Cutts’ statements are carefully crafted, frustratingly rare, and are widely regarded as extremely reliable.

And so, the sandbox effect may serve to temporarily dampen the effects of any promotional campaign that you undertake.

The lesson? Patience.

Mobile Website Design

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Your Customers Are Mobile-Ready…Are You?

Mobile Website Design and Mobile Marketing

What happens when a mobile user browses to your site? Mobile browsers do not render 99% of web pages in the same manner as a PC browser. And so, your users might see a meaningless jumble of images and text, with no visible navigation; Don’t expect to turn one of these millions of mobile browsing customers into a sale.

When we first wrote this page in 2008, we were way ahead of the curve. Now, the move to mobile is even more compelling.

The numbers of mobile users continue to increase with each passing month. We typically see our clients with a percentage of mobile users between 5% and 10% of total website visitors, although a few of our clients have 30% of their website traffic originate from mobile devices.

 

Automatic Mobile Browser Detection & Fully Responsive Mobile Design

Responsive Mobile Design
If you visit this site from a mobile browser, you’ll automatically be directed to a slimmed-down version of our site that is specifically design for mobile browsers. This automatic detection provides a seamless experience for your mobile customers. After all, Google delivers search results to mobile devices, why not give your customers the mobile experience they expect.

We achieve this automatic browser detection with some advanced server-side coding that we have tested on several servers and with about 25 mobile browsers and hand-held devices.

 

The Mobile User: High Income, Decision Maker, Ready to Buy

Mobile Design
The number of web pages served in the US to mobile browsers (PDAs, phones, handhelds, etc.) is expected to soon reach 1% of all internet pages served. Naturally, mobile browsers tend to be higher income and represent a higher percentage of business decision-makers than your average browser. Also, mobile browsers tend to be closer to a purchase point: in a car looking for a product, or traveling, etc.

The number of mobile searches, and mobile browser pages requested is rising quickly. Google is already anticipating a future where mobile users will make up a significant percentage of web traffic. With TastyPlacement, you’ll get superior design and superior vision to capture these affluent customers.

Generally, we install mobile browser versions with all our SEO and web design packages. Contact us to learn more.

 

More Than Just a Pretty Mobile Site

Mobile SiteOur mobile sites are more than just pretty mobile versions of websites. They are technically advanced, and appear elegantly in a wide range of browsers. Browser detection is done according to standards set by Google, so you won’t have indexing or ranking problems with your mobile site. Our mobile sites are very lean and very fast–so they load quickly and enjoy favor with search engines.

Get yours today, and stop missing out on web traffic and customers you are losing.

Keyword Density – Testing Master Pages

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In this post, we analyze a few pages from SEO masters to see if we can divine a magical formula for keyword density.

First, a quick definition. Keyword density is the frequency of a particular search phrase within a body of text or element within a web page. If a keyword phrase appears 100 times within the body of a web page with 1000 words, this frequency represents a keyword density of 10%.

I recently began thinking about keyword density after researching the question and learning that very few experts agree on the proper percentage of keyword density needed to achieve superior search engine results for a given keyphrase. So, we set out to run some analysis on a high-value, highly competitive search phrase to see what we could learn about keyword density. We selected the top search engine results pages and ran the results through a keyword density analyzer; we tabulated the results below.

How to Test Keyword Density: What Keyphrase to Test?

Our test had a few parameters:

  1. First, the search phrase had to be something that was competitive. We wanted to test a search phrase that the SEO’ers had worked hard to optimize. A competitive phrase was more likely to have been tested and retested to obtain high rankings.
  2. Second, we wanted a phrase from within the world of SEO–again, a phrase that was worked by its handlers, people that are versed in the idea of keyword density.
  3. So, we settled on the phrase “SEO Expert”.

We Googled our sample test phrase and sure enough, the top results were from easily recognized names in the world of SEO. The number 1 result was Brad Fallon’s (of the StomperNet SEO education courses) page, BradFallon.com.

And here are the top 3 search results for the search phrase “SEO Expert” (using a Chrome browser):

  1. www.bradfallon.com
  2. www.top10seotips.com/seo_expert.htm
  3. www.mrwebguru.com

Keyword Density – Running the Analysis

The table that follows shows the keyword density analysis for the top 3 performing pages for “SEO Expert” for a variety of HTML elements. We have also included the total number of on-page words.

Attribute Where “SEO Expert” Appears bradfallon.com
(% Keyword Density)		 Top10SEOTips (% Keyword Density) Mr.WebGuru (% Keyword Density)
Title Tag 44% 22.2% 28.6%
Body Text 0.1% 4.1% 1%
(Total Words in Body Text) 1744 1228 1366
H1/H2/H3 Tags 0% 23.5% 25%
Link Text 0.2% 11.8 3.1%
Bolded Body Text 0% 40% 0%
Meta Description 0% 14.8% 7.4%
Meta Keywords 0% 100% 0%

What It Means, and Solving the Riddle

These results intrigued me–at first. Top10SEOTips and Mr.WebGuru’s keyword densities, while for the most part relatively equal, bear almost no relation to the number 1 result, BradFallon.com.

First, with respect to Top10SEOTips and Mr.WebGuru, the results make sense. Sure, there are some differences: Mr.WebGuru has no Meta Keyword for “SEO Expert” and has no bolded body text. Nevertheless, the similarities between these two pages are striking: the keyword densities for Title Tags (22 vs. 28%) Total Word Count (1228 vs. 1366), and H1/H2/H3 Tags (23.5% vs. 25%) are nearly equal.

Meanwhile, Brad Fallon hardly seems to be trying–hence the riddle. Except for a very high keyword density in BradFallon.com’s Title Tag, the search phrase hardly appears at all. And, a reading and review of the pages themselves makes quite clear that Top10SEOTips and Mr.WebGuru are highly focused and hyper-optimized pages, while BradFallon.com is simply a blog front page which displays his 10 most recent posts.
So why does BradFallon.com rank so well for “SEO Expert” when his on-page keyword density is near zero? The answer lies in the number of backlinks that each page enjoys.

bradfallon.com Top10SEOTips Mr.WebGuru
Inbound Links/Backlinks 16,178 661 733

As this table shows, BradFallon.com enjoys a tremendous number of backlinks, more than 10 times the 2nd and 3rd results combined. BradFallon.com’s backlinks obviously “brute forced” the search rankings and pushed it to the top of the results–despite BradFallon.com’s lack of specific optimization for the phrase “SEO Expert”.

Keyword Density: The Lesson

But we set out to learn about keyword density–we already know backlinks are important. Setting aside BradFallon.com, the 2nd and 3rd ranked sites offer a valuable lesson. These highly tested pages are obviously finely honed–and thus the keyword density percentages that appear on these pages are a valuable and reliable benchmark that I’ll use going forward–at least until I can get 16,000 backlinks.

-Michael

How to Know if Your SEO Firm Is Outsourcing

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So, you hired an SEO firm that has promised you hundreds or thousands of inbound links–but how can you tell if they are outsourcing your important marketing to a foreign country? Of course, outsourcing isn’t a problem in itself, but if the quality of the backlinking submissions suffers, your SEO firm will leave a trail of bad grammar, misspellings, and poorly written descriptions to represent your company and website all over the ‘net.

We run a few internet directories in connection with our web design programs. And these internet directories receive hundreds of submissions a month from all over the world. We see hundreds of listings that are barely legible, or in violation of the most basic rules of link building. And so, every few days, we reject 90% of the inbound links that are submitted to our directories. These are links that should normally be approved, but we are forced to reject them not because of the quality of the sites, but because of the quality of the link submission title and description.

We’ll take a look at some obvious errors that cause real harm to real companies; and, we’ll learn what you can do to prevent it.

Sample: Poorly Written Title Tags (Grammar and Keyword Stuffing)

Here is a submission from a US-based real estate company that came into several of our directories. The unfortunate clients of this backlinking campaign are now left with potentially thousands of lost linking opportunities, and the few hundred links that did get approved were approved by low-value, non-human edited sites, and represent the company poorly. Keep in mind that we get hundreds of these low-quality submissions a week:

Title: Vineyard for sale| Buy a vineyard| vineyard estate for sale| york vineyard for s

Problems:

  • The foregoing title is too long for the default PHP Link Directory submission window, so in thousands of directories it will be cut off–that’s even if it is approved in the directory, which is not likely.
  • It’s obviously keyword-stuffed, so no decent directory will approve this submission for that reason  (we didn’t).
  • The first letters of each word (including city names) aren’t capitalized, so some directories won’t approve.
  • This backlinking campaign has obviously been outsourced to folks with poor English skills.

Sample: Description in Broken English

Description: We offers vineyard for sale, Martha’s vineyard for sale, buy vineyard, 
Marthas vineyard for sale, vineyard for sale California, vineyard
land for sale, for sale on vineyard, Oregon vineyard for sale,
vineyard property for sale, buy a vineyard, vineyard estate for sale.

Problems:

  • The grammar is horrible (“we offers”).
  • The description is keyword stuffed. Anyone who has ever worked in a serious, effective linking campaign knows that keyword stuffing yields a low number of approvals–because directory owners don’t like keywords stuffed titles or descriptions.

If you “follow the trail” of this unfortunate client around the web, you’ll find dozens of links written in broken English. And, one prominent link is this completely nonsensical article, which is little more than a collection of keywords separated by commas: Vineyard for sale| Buy a vineyard| vineyard estate for sale| york vineyard for sale [article was eventually taken down].

Ouch.

Here are some other examples of poorly written descriptions that we rejected:

Adventdesigns is a professional web design company which offer the services are web design, 3d animation, graphicdesign, multimedia and SEO services at affordable cost.

It is very nice blog having lots of information and review about website you usually don’t known about (this submission comes in by the dozens, each month, for a “family” of blog review sites).

How to Investigate the Quality of Your Inbound Links

You can investigate your inbound links to see how they appear on the web. Here’s how to do it:

1. First, you can sign up to Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a service that sends you email alerts when your company’s name (or any other phrase you choose) appears on the web. We use it to learn about new incoming links pointing to this site. Just google the phrase “Google Alerts” to sign up.

2. Or, you can use Yahoo Site Explorer to find all (or nearly all) of the links that point to your website.

  • Google the phrase “Yahoo Site Explorer” to get to the Site Explorer.
  • In the top window, type in the name of your website, and click the “Explorer URL” box.
  • You see a list of all the links on the web (well, the first 1000 or so) that point back to your site. From there you can visit the pages and see how the descriptions are written.

Good luck!

SEO Austin TX

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Design Portfolio

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Page Rank Update Imminent at Google, Penalties Expiring

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Unofficial town crier for Google, Matt Cutts, yesterday announced on his blog that Google’s “new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days.” That’s good news for SEO’ers and webmasters.

Matt added “I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.”

Update: we witnessed a competitor’s site go from the 70s for a long-tail search phrase into the 20s about about a day or two within the PR update–obviously that site was under a Google penalty that expired.