I'm sure by now that everyone who reads here knows the AdWords Keyword Tool is showing numbers instead of the graphs it would show just a few weeks back. I think one of the big questions on everyone's mind is just how accurate is the data being shown? I decided to take a look in a few accounts I have access to and found at least keyword that seems to meet all the criteria I would use for a test. I found one in particular that was live in November, and the AdWords Keyword Tool does reference November data.
Here are a few details:
- The keyword is exact match.
- 100% impression share for November.
- It's opted in Google + Search Network
- US targeting
When logged into the account the keyword tool indicates that the approximate November search volume was 44,830. That estimate is based on exact match and the correct location targeting. Here's what surprised me - the actual number of impressions that keyword received in November was 56,770. Do a little rounding and the estimate provided by the keyword tool comes out within 10% of the real number.
Now of course that's one keyword in one account and in no way am I trying to imply that the keyword tool will be that accurate in all cases. I'm honestly surprised though at just how accurate it is in this case.
Anyone else seeing similar numbers?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Strategies For Quality Link Building - Say No To PR
Previously Google used regularly push PageRank (PR) data to its toolbar, figuring out the value of a potential link was pretty simple. The more PageRank, the fewer outbound links, the more valuable. Today, the toolbar isn’t even updated quarterly and webmasters have to do a little more analysis to assess the value of a link.
Where do you start? Look for more quality and relevance. We might not be able to see the current PR of a page, but we do know that PageRank affects crawl rate, so it’s logical to conclude that a quality page will be cached recently. A page that has not been crawled within the past month is probably not pushing much link power.
Is the content relevant to your target page? Are the other outbound links relevant? What’s the quality of the other websites the pages links to? In other words, what sort of a neighborhood are you joining? Will the anchor text benefit your site?
Sometimes the page may not yet have the value you’d like, but if you know it’s a new page, you can look at the other similar pages on the site to determine whether that page will carry value in the future. For example, you might want to decide between two article directories. Examine other pages in your niche to see what sort of crawl rate they seem to be getting; look to see whether older pages have toolbar PR. Who else is writing for the directory? What’s the quality of their content?
Some websites are just gimmes! That is, you know a link from them is worthwhile – .edu and .gov sites if you can get them – and when they are relevant. Links from your industry association or from your local chamber of commerce. Charitable websites or links from any organization you sponsor.
New SEOs frequently ask, what about link exchanges? Link exchanges still have value when they are highly relevant. Let’s say you have a restaurant in a popular tourist destination. It makes sense that you would exchange links with your vendors, and perhaps with websites for accommodations or attractions in your area. You might even feel comfortable exchanging links with some other restaurants in your area. After all, most visitors and locals will patronize more than one place.
The key is always relevance and usability. Ask yourself: am I helping the visitor to my website? If the answer is yes, the link is likely to drive traffic between the two sites, and that alone makes the exchange is worthwhile. The important thing to remember about exchanges is that they should only be a small part of your overall link profile. You want as many links as possible to be one way.
Where do you start? Look for more quality and relevance. We might not be able to see the current PR of a page, but we do know that PageRank affects crawl rate, so it’s logical to conclude that a quality page will be cached recently. A page that has not been crawled within the past month is probably not pushing much link power.
Is the content relevant to your target page? Are the other outbound links relevant? What’s the quality of the other websites the pages links to? In other words, what sort of a neighborhood are you joining? Will the anchor text benefit your site?
Sometimes the page may not yet have the value you’d like, but if you know it’s a new page, you can look at the other similar pages on the site to determine whether that page will carry value in the future. For example, you might want to decide between two article directories. Examine other pages in your niche to see what sort of crawl rate they seem to be getting; look to see whether older pages have toolbar PR. Who else is writing for the directory? What’s the quality of their content?
Some websites are just gimmes! That is, you know a link from them is worthwhile – .edu and .gov sites if you can get them – and when they are relevant. Links from your industry association or from your local chamber of commerce. Charitable websites or links from any organization you sponsor.
New SEOs frequently ask, what about link exchanges? Link exchanges still have value when they are highly relevant. Let’s say you have a restaurant in a popular tourist destination. It makes sense that you would exchange links with your vendors, and perhaps with websites for accommodations or attractions in your area. You might even feel comfortable exchanging links with some other restaurants in your area. After all, most visitors and locals will patronize more than one place.
The key is always relevance and usability. Ask yourself: am I helping the visitor to my website? If the answer is yes, the link is likely to drive traffic between the two sites, and that alone makes the exchange is worthwhile. The important thing to remember about exchanges is that they should only be a small part of your overall link profile. You want as many links as possible to be one way.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Things You Should Remember While Building Links
Link building is an extremely necessary part of search engine optimization. Links to your website can help relevant traffic and the search engines find and explore your web pages and so are of great significance.
It is necessary when running an SEO campaign to monitor your link building and to look out for any signs of weakness. You need to know if your link building is not good enough so improvements can be made. High quality links to your website can make a significant difference to your website and so must always be a priority.
If your website is ranked in low positions within the search results provided by the major search engines then this is a sign your approach to link building is not satisfactory. A number of high quality links to your website can improve your rankings a great deal.
If you are still experiencing low rankings, you obviously do not have enough quality links to your web pages and this must therefore be worked upon. The more quality links you have, the greater the potential for exposure in the search results through the obtaining of top spots in the search result rankings.
The amount of traffic visiting your website is another important indicator of how efficiently your link building strategy is working. When running an on-line business, you must always be monitoring the amount of traffic visiting your pages because this is an issue of such great importance. For a business to be successful, you must first get users on your site and exploring what you have on offer.
If you do not have a lot of traffic visiting your website then your link building is not good enough. You should have relevant traffic arriving on your web pages from a range of suitable sources. This is achieved through the building of high quality links.
The third sign that improvements need to be made with the way you are building links to your site is if you search for your company name using a search engine and do not dominate the results. When searching for your business on-line, the first page of results should be relevant to your business and should be directing traffic to your website. If you are creating links from high quality sites to your own then this will be the case. If you do not have links from websites of this kind then they will not likely be featured in the search results and you are therefore missing many opportunities.
Building links is extremely important but is also quite challenging. Only the building of high quality and useful links to your website is beneficial in search engine optimization and many business owners struggle with this. They don’t know who they should be linking from and how to go about creating these links either.
We at Mindcore Consultants can help. We are highly experienced in link building and can develop a number of highly productive and effective links to your website which will benefit your business in many ways.
It is necessary when running an SEO campaign to monitor your link building and to look out for any signs of weakness. You need to know if your link building is not good enough so improvements can be made. High quality links to your website can make a significant difference to your website and so must always be a priority.
If your website is ranked in low positions within the search results provided by the major search engines then this is a sign your approach to link building is not satisfactory. A number of high quality links to your website can improve your rankings a great deal.
If you are still experiencing low rankings, you obviously do not have enough quality links to your web pages and this must therefore be worked upon. The more quality links you have, the greater the potential for exposure in the search results through the obtaining of top spots in the search result rankings.
The amount of traffic visiting your website is another important indicator of how efficiently your link building strategy is working. When running an on-line business, you must always be monitoring the amount of traffic visiting your pages because this is an issue of such great importance. For a business to be successful, you must first get users on your site and exploring what you have on offer.
If you do not have a lot of traffic visiting your website then your link building is not good enough. You should have relevant traffic arriving on your web pages from a range of suitable sources. This is achieved through the building of high quality links.
The third sign that improvements need to be made with the way you are building links to your site is if you search for your company name using a search engine and do not dominate the results. When searching for your business on-line, the first page of results should be relevant to your business and should be directing traffic to your website. If you are creating links from high quality sites to your own then this will be the case. If you do not have links from websites of this kind then they will not likely be featured in the search results and you are therefore missing many opportunities.
Building links is extremely important but is also quite challenging. Only the building of high quality and useful links to your website is beneficial in search engine optimization and many business owners struggle with this. They don’t know who they should be linking from and how to go about creating these links either.
We at Mindcore Consultants can help. We are highly experienced in link building and can develop a number of highly productive and effective links to your website which will benefit your business in many ways.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Shortcuts to Perfect SEO?
SEO is a complicated and competitive field of economic activity. The rewards of a successful campaign can be significant and may change the whole economic trajectory of a firm. However, to obtain these kinds of rewards you are looking at a lot of hard work if you are thinking of doing any aspect of the campaign yourself. It is always prudent to obtain the services of a specialist firm. Nevertheless, the question remains where there are sensible ways in which a campaign can get ahead of competing campaigns.
At Mindcore consultancy we try to ensure that our campaigns are always focused, flexible and multifaceted in nature. However, we always make each campaign as unique as the site it tries to advance is. This gives our campaigns a competitive edge over some rival campaigns. Notwithstanding this fact, none of our campaigns attain their targets with a great deal or rapidity. Furthermore, every campaign which is pursued takes a lot of effort, relevant skills and some other resources.
Whether or not there are shortcuts in SEO depends on two factors. The first is your view of black hat practices. These unethical methods may be thought of as a potential shortcut. The second thing is your definition of a shortcut. If the concept of a shortcut includes getting a little bit ahead somewhat faster than you would otherwise do, then that is different from perceiving a shortcut as something which gives you speedy access to something which is greatly desired.
When it comes to unethical practices, these can give a firm a transient advantage over its rivals. However, the satisfaction that can be gained from a deal with a black hat firm is only ever temporary. In the first instance, potential consumers are quick to spot untrustworthy sites and are unlikely to make meaningful purchases from them.
However, the consequences of using black hat methods can be much more severe than that because they can include being banished from the index via obtaining a search engine penalty. Google and the like are becoming more adept at tracking down unethical behaviour year on year.
While the lesson of black hat strategy is that the use of an underhand shortcut usually spells serious trouble somewhere down the track, it remains true that there is a myriad of legitimate ways by which incremental advantages can be pursued. Indeed, using Facebook and Twitter in conjunction with a SEO campaign can get more visitors to a site. In addition, it can provide more knowledge about those visitors for future marketing, while also ensuring that it is often the right type of visitor who frequents the site.
Using the social media networking sites can generate brand awareness in a positive way. So it could be said that it is something of a shortcut.If a lot of visitors come flocking to a site but find that it takes a long time to load they will become frustrated. Frustration can be compounded if they find it tricky to move about the site while they are satisfying their needs. Conversion rate optimization is essential, whether it is a shortcut or not.
At Mindcore consultancy we try to ensure that our campaigns are always focused, flexible and multifaceted in nature. However, we always make each campaign as unique as the site it tries to advance is. This gives our campaigns a competitive edge over some rival campaigns. Notwithstanding this fact, none of our campaigns attain their targets with a great deal or rapidity. Furthermore, every campaign which is pursued takes a lot of effort, relevant skills and some other resources.
Whether or not there are shortcuts in SEO depends on two factors. The first is your view of black hat practices. These unethical methods may be thought of as a potential shortcut. The second thing is your definition of a shortcut. If the concept of a shortcut includes getting a little bit ahead somewhat faster than you would otherwise do, then that is different from perceiving a shortcut as something which gives you speedy access to something which is greatly desired.
When it comes to unethical practices, these can give a firm a transient advantage over its rivals. However, the satisfaction that can be gained from a deal with a black hat firm is only ever temporary. In the first instance, potential consumers are quick to spot untrustworthy sites and are unlikely to make meaningful purchases from them.
However, the consequences of using black hat methods can be much more severe than that because they can include being banished from the index via obtaining a search engine penalty. Google and the like are becoming more adept at tracking down unethical behaviour year on year.
While the lesson of black hat strategy is that the use of an underhand shortcut usually spells serious trouble somewhere down the track, it remains true that there is a myriad of legitimate ways by which incremental advantages can be pursued. Indeed, using Facebook and Twitter in conjunction with a SEO campaign can get more visitors to a site. In addition, it can provide more knowledge about those visitors for future marketing, while also ensuring that it is often the right type of visitor who frequents the site.
Using the social media networking sites can generate brand awareness in a positive way. So it could be said that it is something of a shortcut.If a lot of visitors come flocking to a site but find that it takes a long time to load they will become frustrated. Frustration can be compounded if they find it tricky to move about the site while they are satisfying their needs. Conversion rate optimization is essential, whether it is a shortcut or not.
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