Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Get some free clicks
Not playing in PPC yet? Then here is some free cash (well, credits) to get you started…
- $200 credit at Live Search (MSN). Code is DM-2-1106
- $75 credit at Yahoo. Code is US1522
- $50 credit at Ask.com. Code is SESCHI06
- $300 credit at LookSmart. Code is SESCHQ4
Now go forth and craft some great search ads!
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 12/23/2006
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Filed under: Paid Search ppc
Tagging WordPress Pages with Ultimate Tag Warrior
I’ve blogged before about the SEO benefits of tagging blog posts. For those bloggers using WordPress, I recommend the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to accomplish this.
But what if you have a WordPress-powered site and you want to tag static Pages, not just Posts? Well I have some good news! Even though Ultimate Tag Warrior doesn’t currently support tagging of Pages, I managed to figure out a workaround. The hack (to version 3.14159 of the plugin) involves the addition of a mere two lines of code…
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 12/13/2006
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Filed under: Blog Optimization tagging, Ultimate-Tag-Warrior, WordPress
Optimizing through Image Sharing Sites – SES Presentation
Here is the full Comparison Chart of Image Sharing Sites which I mentioned in my presentation on Optimizing through Image Sharing Sites at the SES Chicago ’06 Conference. Also, here is my PowerPoint presentation on Optimizing Through Image Sharing Sites.
There are quite a lot of Image Sharing Sites out there currently, but only a few of them stand out as best-in-class for potential SEO benefit purposes. Read on for a few more notes about this.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/06/2006
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Content Optimization, Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO flickr, Image Optimization, Image-Search-Optimization, Image-Sharing-Sites, ses
Dinner at Moto
So, I took Stephan Spencer out to a restaurant here in Chicago tonight that I was dying to try out: Moto Restaurant. We’re both here for the SES Conference, and it’s my first time in Chicago proper, so I wanted to try something I couldn’t get at home in Dallas. Moto had caught my eye because the chef, Homaro Cantu, is apparently something of a mad scientist. He’s known for using all sorts of bizarre ingredients and methods to create his food, and the place has this dangerously edgy feel to it that makes you feel like you’re engaging in borderline risky behaviour, just by eating there.
If you know Stephan, you might know that he tends to prefer simpler food in general, so he nearly balked at the idea of going. Once we’d arrived and had the first course or so, I think he was starting to think that the whole thing might be some horrifying Fu Manchu torture, or perhaps a really bad joke on my part. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/05/2006
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Filed under: General, Image Optimization Food, Image Optimization, Moto-Restaurant
Attending SES Chicago 06
I’ll be attending the Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2006 conference next week, and I’ll be speaking on the panel on Images & Search Engines, for anyone interested.
My part of the presentation will be on “Optimizing Through Image Sharing Sites”. I’ve written here previously about optimizing images for both image search and web search, but some of the material in next week’s presentation will be completely new, and hopefully worthwhile for anyone looking for new organic traffic opportunities to exploit. I’ve been sweating to complete some of the research for this for the past few weeks, and I think the resultant info will be pretty cool!
I’m planning to drop a handful of my bizcards off at the Superpages.com booth in the exhibit hall, for anyone interested in contacting me while at the conference. I understand that our booth will also be sharing space with our compatriots from Inceptor (a company we acquired earlier this year). I’ll be interested in seeing how this hybridized booth thing works out, along with any new Idearc branding that might start showing up on it.
Mike Sack from Inceptor will also be speaking later the same day as myself, on the panel for Converting Visitors Into Buyers.
Finally, I should also mention that Stephan Spencer, who graciously invited me to guest blog on here many months ago, will also be speaking that same day on the panel for Blog & Feed Search SEO. I’ve heard Stephan speak on this subject previously, along with Rick Klau from FeedBurner, and I found it very interesting/worthwhile.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/30/2006
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, General, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Blog Optimization, Image-Search-Optimization, search-engine-strategies, SES-Conference
Questions for SEOs
A few weeks ago Stephan invited me to their motley crew and though I start with great enthusiasm, I’ve had many sleepless nights considering how to make a first impression. I’m Paul O’Brien and while I, as do many, write a blog of my own at seobrien.com, I am grateful for the opportunity to share, amongst the tremendous SEO experience that Chris, Stephan, and Brian bring to the table, my natural search perspective and experience from Yahoo! and HP. My background lies in advertising, paid search, comparison shopping, and brand and demand gen advertising; SEO is only a part though it consistently remains the most beneficial. I’m a practical SEO, heavy in analytics and science, dependant on resources and support, and light on the technology; hopefully, I can share with you something of value.
At the risk of not delivering to your expectations, or perhaps merely my own, I thought I’d start simple. I noticed that over a year ago Stephan posted a great series of questions for SEOs, questions about the industry, the practice of SEO, and our future. Missing from NaturalSearchBlog is a discussion of the appropriate questions to ask an SEO when seeking support. Here are my thoughts:
- What techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
- Avoid companies that focus on getting you links or promise you top placement
- What risk is involved with the methods you suggest?
- Every technique has risk, get an answer and weigh it against the benefit. Consider that risks include a wide variety of hurdles and challenges such as IT intensive projects, adverse impacts on your brand, or withdrawal of your site from natural search results.
- What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?
- They should be able to get in, do some work, and get out, leaving you with the experience to maintain your optimized site
- Yes, you might want a full time, ongoing SEO but you don’t need one
- Can you show me examples of past work?
- You bet they can
- What was the client’s ROI?
- Sure, SEO is “free” in that it doesn’t have a marketing cost but good SEOs know the cost that went into their service, IT/engineering resources, copywriting, etc. Don’t be sold on just the improvements in traffic, position, or the growth in revenue, what was required to deliver that?
- What increases in traffic are reasonable to expect?
- This is tough because it depends on your site, but that’s why you should ask, expect an answer that is relative to your site and details that show how your experience is unique
- How long until I start to see results?
- What would you expect from OUR end to aid your work?
- Important because the answer is NOT ‘nothing’
- What were some of your top search ranking achievements?
- Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?
Look for a company that understands your business, marketing, technology, and the internet extensively. Most importantly, do not shop around based on price. You don’t want a deal as you need expertise while at the same time, SEO isn’t really expensive rocket science (it is alien for most people but not rocket science).
Find a professional that meets your needs, start with these questions, let us know what works for you, and what you look for from an SEO.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 11/29/2006
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Filed under: Best Practices, General, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tools, Worst Practices agencies, black-hat-seo, choosing-seo-firms, SEO, SEO-consulting, SEO-worst-practices, SEOs, support, vendors
Want to optimize? Don’t use Trackback Submitter
For a number of weeks now, we’ve seen a real spike in comment spam submitted to NaturalSearchBlog. We have a nice, heuristic-based module that keeps this out, and we moderate comments. I normally review the filtered comments, and they’re usually just tons of crappy spamlinks for sex, drugs, and gambling. Today I found a number of bona-fide comments that got aggressively filtered out with the deluge of spam, so I resurrected those and approved them. If you’ve commented here recently, we apologize for the delay in approving the comments — but they just got sucked in with the bulk of crap.
One of the 5,000-plus spam comments was from a vile company called “Trackback Submitter”. I knew what this was, of course, but I went to their site anyway in order to see what they say about themselves, and found unsurprisingly that they LIE, LIE, and LIE! If you’re a webmaster wanting to build traffic, avoid this software or you could damage yourself. Read on and I’ll explain…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/19/2006
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Tools, Worst Practices black-hat-seo, Blog Optimization, comment-spam, forum-spam, search-engine-penalizations, spambots
So-called Expert Claims Internet Yellow Pages “Overrated”
In the title of a transparently self-serving press release, Barry Maher claims that “online yellow pages advertising (is) often overrated”. Maher says in the release, “It may be the wave of the future, but the dull, old-fashioned, low-tech print directories are still the wave of the present. Businesses do need to be online. Just not at the expense of what’s driving in the dollars today.”
He goes on to say that “For most local companies, there’s still far, far more potential business in the print directories than in anything they might do online.”
(Before I go further, I should disclose that I work for arguably the biggest combined print and online yellow pages company in the US. My comments on this matter are merely my own opinion, though, and not any sort of official stance from my company.)
It seems to me that the headline title of the PR was intended to be controversy-provoking in order to attract more attention than an announcement about the publication of a book on how to advertise in yellow pages would otherwise be (yawn!). The intention was to promote Maher’s book on optimizing print YP ads, So, I really hesitated about rewarding this sort of thing with yet more attention than it merits. Yet, I believe that this claim is pretty irresponsible, so I’m going to address it. I don’t think that Maher can possibly understand IYP nor general internet advertising or he could not have said that “there’s… more potential business in the print directories… than… online” (paraphrased).
Read on and I’ll explain why I think this was not reasonable.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/17/2006
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Filed under: Advertising, Yellow Pages barry-maher, directories, iyp, Yellow Pages
KFC Ad Targeting Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and MSN Earth
KFC just constructed a giant ad of their logo/mascot, Colonel Saunders, out in the Nevada desert, in order to “make it viewable from space”. The ad was intentionally constructed near Area 51, the secretive military site that many UFO conspiracy theorists claim to be a hotbed for military testing of alien technologies. Their press release states:
“The Colonel Sanders ‘astrovertisement’ was built in Rachel, Nevada, the ‘UFO Capital of the World’, just off the world’s only extraterrestrial Highway, in the infamous Area 51.”
Here’s a Google video of its construction.
Aside from all their jokes about advertising to space aliens, KFC has actually constructed something that will show up in the satellite pix that many are viewing through Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and MSN Live Maps.
For a fun bit of linkbait, the ad’s website allows one to search around for a hidden message by zooming in and panning around. Finding the message allows one to win a free sandwich.
Now, I’ve joked before about optimizing roof ads for Google Maps, but this gargantuan Colonel ad is no joke — this took some serious money to construct! One of my friends who works for Yum! Brands’ corporate offices remarked that she could now see why their executives were pushing so heavily for cost-cutting — they’re spending tons on marketing to space aliens!
Jokes aside, this type of advertisement may become increasingly serious business as more and more businesses target people who are browsing around viewing satellite pictures through Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and MSN Live Maps. This sort of thing is being called “mapvertising” or “roofvertising”.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/17/2006
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Filed under: Advertising, Maps, Marketing Map-Advertising, Mapvertising, Rooftop-Ads, Roofvertising, Space-Ad
Google, Yahoo & MicroSoft to Cooperate on Sitemaps
I was delighted today that the Google and Yahoo search engines announced at PubCon that they would jointly support and collaborate upon one protocol for webmasters to use for submitting their site URLs for potential inclusion. View the video of the announcement here. MicroSoft has also apparently agreed to use the same protocol as well.
To support this initiative, they will jointly support sitemaps.org. If you recall, “sitemaps” was the product name that Google had been using, and which became deprecated just a few months ago in favor of “Google Webmaster Tools”. Obviously, the wheels had already begun turning to repurpose the “Sitemaps” brand name into a jointly-operated service.
Now when Sitemaps are generated to follow the common protocol, webmasters will still need to submit the link feeds to each of the SEs via their existing managment tools such as in Google Webmaster Tools and in Yahoo! Site Explorer.
If you recall, I was one of a number of webmasters out there who had requested that they collaborate on a common protocol, such as in a blog post I wrote back in September:
“Hopefully each of the major search engines will try to employ identical or compatible formats for site URLs, because it will be a hassle to have to keep up with multiple formats. This is an area where the SEs really ought to cooperate with one another for “pro bono publicoâ€? – for the common good. Currently, Yahoo seems to be just defensively immitating Google in this arena, and no one’s showing signs of collaborating.”
Kudos to Google and Yahoo for overcoming traditional corporate competitiveness to do something that mutually benefits website owners as well as the search engines!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/16/2006
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Filed under: Google, MSN Search, Tools, Yahoo Google, msn, Site-Explorer, site-submission, Sitemaps, Yahoo
