A birdie told me today that Worio is sending out beta invitations to students in selected universities (I am not going to even pretend which schools these guys are talking about at this point). On the paper, Worio is an interesting concept. Worio is a semantic search engine that uses machine learning techniques to rank pages based on tags among other factors. But the tags are given by other users. In essence, if somebody believes your site to be a shopping site, and they give it the tag “shopping,” you are more likely to get ranked for not only the tag but similar keywords. So the more relevant tags that you receive, the better off you are.

There are some confusions and challenges surrounding this project as well. Worio developers have not included much more information on how their search engine will better the user experience, but they do mention that you will have the ability to remove tags that you don’t agree with. Now that could be tricky as if you are allowed to remove other people’s tags, then you can potentially game the system. What if you have a site that sells a terrible product? People who have used your product might tag you page with “fraud” or other terms. If you get to remove all those tags, you will essentially get to hide your bad reputation. Having said that, the ability to remove tags helps against attacks from let’s say aggressive competitors. But the bigger question is, how important are these tags in the ranking factor. In essence, are these tags as important as SEO title tags or are they like META Keyword? Maybe something in between? Who knows.

I personally don’t find Google to be a perfect search engine, and I am all for these startups coming out with ideas to better our search experience. But nobody has gotten it so far, and I don’t know if anybody will in the foreseeable future. But Worio is definitely an interesting concept and maybe Eric or Mike will be kind enough to share more info on their exciting project.

So let’s have a pop quiz here. What’s the most important part of any search engine optimization initiative? Bingo! It’s keyword research. Before you write any title tags or any META descriptions, you should do your keyword research. So what do I mean by keyword research? It means finding the right keywords that are right for your business goals. For instance, if you are a financial institution, you have a better chance of attracting and converting your visitors if you are targeting the right keywords. If your top keyword is “yogurt” then you probably will see a high bounce rate on your homepage or landing page. People who search for a rare kind of yogurt don’t come to your site to read your financial analysis, and you have probably 15 seconds to make that first impression, which you won’t with your finance-themed website.

But how do you know you have right keyword? You need to figure out what your business goals are? Are you trying to get more eyeballs to your site or do you want to convert more? That’s where super-crunchers come in. You can use your analytics team (in case you have that) to work with you to find the keywords that attract the most traffic and convert the best. But before doing that, you need to have an ultimate list of keywords that you will be choosing your main keywords from. There are two ways to do that. One way is to use tools such as Yahoo! Keywords tool (actually this is not really working anymore) and other free keywords tool and give your best shot at finding the best draft list for your business. Another way to do this is to use a professional keyword research tool such as WordTracker if you actually afford it (not that it’s expensive).
WordTracker allows you to do some serious keyword analysis by allowing you to compare search estimates for keywords and even compare their KEIs. This is particularly useful if you are trying to find keywords that are right for your business but necessarily so competitive that you can’t get ranked for. Imagine the term “books.” Now whoever says ranking for that term is easy is probably drinking something. But with the right tool such as WordTracker, you can make sure what you are going for before it’s too late. Don’t get me wrong. These short term keywords would make sense for some company such as Amazon, but not for a blog or small business at it would be really costly to get ranked for them.

The forecasting tool within Wordtracker is very powerful, while not completely accurate. You can find out if the keywords that you have chosen are likely to bomb in the next month or actually do some damage. But the best part of Wordtracker is the “dig” feature. You can find cool niches to target for your blog with this feature. As WordTracker describes it, digging is the process of moving to the next level in your keyword research to get more specific terms. For instance, digging the word waterboarding will allow you to find more specific terms such as “waterboarding torture” and see how competitive these terms are.

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You may know that Google and other search engines look at 302 redirects in a non-friendly kind of way. The reason is that there have been so many Black Hat SEO techniques that have taken advantage of HTTP 302 redirect method. But can you get in trouble for using 301 redirects?

The answer is yes and no. The right way to use HTTP 301 redirect is by redirecting pages that will be permanently pointing to another location. For instance, if you want http://www.X.com to always go to http://www.Y.com, then you can use a 301 redirect to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content, had you used frame redirects. But of course, there are situation where you may want to use 302 redirects. Let’s say that you have a website: http://www.x.com. But your website actually lives on http://www.x.com/XYZ. If you 301 redirect the first location to the second location, you will be probably listed on Google as http://www.x.com/XYZ. It may not be a big deal for you, but it definitely would look better on search results to have the first option. (more…)

I am sure you have heard stories of individuals who struck millions by selling well known domains such as iPhone.com or creditcards.com. In fact, Business 2.0 had an article on these guys a few months back, and how cellphones.com fetched over $4 millions in cash. Of course, acquiring such domains is so difficult that you may ask yourself, why bother with buying useless domains?

Simple! Domain buying is like buying real estate. Think of it as long term investment. If you are lucky and hit the jackpot you may end up making millions in the process, but even if you are not lucky there are good reasons to buy and keep buying domains. One simple reason is that as your domains age they become more valuable. Think of them as a wine that ages and becomes better. Not actually but close. Older domains get more trust from search engines than brand new ones, and by planning for the future you can save yourself a lot of hassle.

Also, domains are like houses. We only have a limited number of really good domains but demand is very high for them. Apply the supply - demand rule to it and bam! we have an arbitrage opportunity. Many have made millions using this simple concept as I am sure many will in the future.

I personally wish I was smart enough to register iPhone.com 5 years ago. I just couldn’t see it coming then, and I just can’t see what’s coming in the next couple of years. But those who can have real advantages over us mortals. I guess iPhone was a lucky shot, but those who registered smallbusiness.com or creditcards.com understood the supply-demand early one, and that’s why they are probably sitting on a beach right now enjoying their lives. Very good domains are too expensive, but there are other domains that you can buy for cheap and utilize in the future (either in form of starting your own business or selling it to those who need it). You may not fetch millions, but still the arbitrage opportunity is there. Just ask BuyDomains.com.

Have a good domain name? Share it with us and you may find someone who’s willing to pay $$$ for it.

I am sure you have heard of SEO professionals who claim magic pills that will push you to No. 1 on Google if you take them twice a day for a week. If you haven’t, then you are better off. SEO is no magic pill and in general there are no overnight winners in SEO. But if you are thinking of opening up a business or a Weblog, there are things that you can do to reduce the work needed to get good rankings on major search engines. One of the things is trying to snap up popular domains on auction sites such as Sedo. Aaron Wall, the author of SEOBook, had a good post a few days back about the company that bought searchguild.com for $8000. Not only those guys got the backlinks associated with searchguild.com, they avoided the possibility of suffering from Sandbox effect that Google enforces on brand new domains. (more…)

I know. I know. You have probably heard this question before, and nobody seems to have a definite answer to this question. But the funny thing is that nobody asks why this questions comes up so often when discussing search engine optimization. Search engine optimization has become one of the hottest field and a few SEOs are making crazy amount of money for offering their art to those who want to gain more visibility on the web. But the truth is, search engine optimization is a science period. Search engine optimization by definition is a process that you go through to optimize your pages for better visibility on search engines. A process in my mind refers to something that is more scientific.

So why SEO consultants want you to believe otherwise? The answer is simple. A scientific process can be done by anybody. Sure, it won’t be easy, but as long as you know the rules and follow the rules, you will be fine. An art however indicates that you may need some special talent to pull it off. There is no question that we have very good and very bad SEO professionals, but their level has nothing to do with their talent. Those who have simply worked hard on improving their SEO knowledge usually are more effective than SEOs who try to wing it. Search engine optimization is a science, and you can absolutely do it yourself. Anybody who is telling you otherwise is just plain wrong.

Search Engine Optimization is one area that many companies have not mastered yet. In essence, not only it is hard to quantify by corporations, it is mostly underestimated and overlooked. Of course, ignorance of top managers contributes to this phenomenon. However, analysts are now claiming that Search Engine Optimization is getting the attention it needs from more companies. At the same time, many are picking up the basic skills needed to provide adequate search optimization to companies, meaning that the talent is not as rare as it once was. What does this mean for pro SEOs? It shouldn’t affect the elite SEOs as much as everyday SEOs. After all, the top SEO consultants always bring more value to the table than just basic search engine optimizations.

But what should other SEO professionals do to avoid being victims to this upcoming wave? Mastering holistic SEO is the way to go. I have met many SEOs that claim they know nothing about design, usability, and … Having those skills can greatly affect how you will be viewed by corporations seeking your advice on search engine optimization. Of course, you don’t have to be a master designer or usability analyst, but having a solid understanding of those concepts goes a long way.

I decided to do a quick research, out of curiosity of course, to find out what people are searching for the most. I used WordTracker to figure out the top terms on the Web:

So it seems 3 out of top 5 most searched terms are related to sex and adult activities. But it’s funny that the term “google” has been searched 160K times today alone. The same for myspace! While I am not surprised to see Google and myspace there, I probably expected some other terms to appear in the top 5 such as loan, credit card, bankruptcy, or things of that nature. Obviously, people are occupied with more interesting terms.

If you have a WordPress blog, you know how hard it is to get the search engine optimization process right for your blog. Search engines are essentially very friendly towards blogs and forums due to the frequent updates that bloggers make on a daily basis, but if you don’t get the title tags, and other META tags right, you may end up having problems reaching your SEO goals. But no worries. There is an excellent plugin called “SEO Title Tag” that allows you to define customized titles for each and every page/post on your blog. SEO Title Tag is a great little plugin, especially for bloggers that do not have much coding background. Best of all, you don’t need a secondary tag such as Ultimate Tag Warrior to get this to work.

You all know that the SERPs usually show 10 results. According to numerous sources, the first placement gets you about 20-25% clicks for a specific term. The number then decreases as you go further down the page. So it just goes to show that you need to go for that No. 1 spot as the difference of received clicks between the first two spots is huge. So is it wise to assume from this trend that No. 9 listing will get more traffic than No. 10 listing? Not so fast! In fact, No. 10 usually beats No. 9 and sometimes even No. 8 listing in traffic volume due to the fact that people do not check out listings one by one. Once you get all the way down the page, you are only getting a fraction of available traffic, but No. 10, due to its positioning, can get more attention that let’s say No. 9. It’s rather counterintuitive but you are essentially better off being on No. 10 spot than No. 9. But be careful here as No. 10 spot is a fairly dangerous spot to have. If one of your competitors manages to better you, then you are off the first page and out of sight. But who said living on the edge is not exciting.