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
AdSense Spider Cross-Pollinates for Google
A few bloggers such as Jenstar have just posted that pages spidered by Google’s AdSense bot are appearing in Google’s regular search results pages. Shoemoney just blogged that Matt Cutts has officially verified that this is happening, saying that this was done so that they wouldn’t have to spider the same content twice, and that Google did this as part of their recent Big Daddy infrastructure improvements.
This has a couple of interesting ramifications for SEO professionals and those of us who are optimizing our sites for Google, since bot detection systems may now need to be updated and since this may essentially be a new way of committing site/page submissions into Google’s indices. And we all thought automated URL submissions were dead! I’ll explain further…. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/19/2006
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Filed under: Google, Spiders AdSense, bots, Googlebot, Robots.txt, Spiders, URL-submission
Optimize your roof ads for Google Maps
Since SEMs and SEOs are trying to use every way possible to increase their site exposure and ad visibility in the search engines, I thought it would be a good time to provide some tips on how to properly and effectively optimize your rooftop ads to appear in Google Maps.
Now, Danny Sullivan claimed that logos on rooftops are not intended for Google Maps, but this assertion is no longer correct, since I heard a recent segment in the last week on NPR about a rooftop ad company which is specifically gearing their ads to appear on the satellite images.
An article on Wired about that same company, RoofShout.com [7/14/08: link is now defunct], indicates that this may indeed be a viable new ad medium. For tips about how you can optimize for the rooftop media (which I will refer to as “SkySense Ads”), read on…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/13/2006
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Filed under: Content Optimization, General, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks April-Fools, Google, Google-Maps, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Can you believe Google’s estimated number of search results?
I’ve never had much faith in Google’s estimated number of results (and for good reason). Every so often I run queries that I know will return a huge results set and I note the number of pages found, such as for “the” or “http”. The number of results just get bigger and bigger, like the length of the preverbial “fish that got away” with each telling of the tale! Continue reading…
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 04/12/2006
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Filed under: Google, Searching, Yahoo
Plenty of Traffic
Plentyoffish.com was recently reported to have over $300k in AdSense revenue per month, according to an exclusive interview with the creator, Markus Frind.
In a forum on WebmasterWorld, one thing Markus Frind suggested for those wishing to be successful as AdSense publishers really stood out for me:
“Do not enter markets with a lot of competition monitized via adsense. Try and undercut paid content markets by offering a free service, or better yet create your own market.”
So, there you have a great formula for success: choose an industry that charges fees for access to info/content, and offer it for free, paid by the contextual advertising.
Newspaper Industry: are you listening?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/09/2006
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Filed under: Best Practices, General AdSense, Google, Google-AdSense
Google Releases New Related Links Feature
Google Labs has just released a new feature called Google Related Links which allows webmasters to place a little tabbed user-interface navigation box on their site. The box will pull in links to sites related to the content on your webpage, allowing you to display related links to Searches, News, and Web Pages.
I’ve copied a screengrab below so that you can see how the real thing looks:
Perhaps this is a useful feature for some, but I’m thinking that most web editors prefer to choose their own related links and are better able to choose appropriate ones than this automated option.
So, are there other incentives to adding the code?
Their FAQ states that they do not pay publishers for adding the feature “at this time”. This would seem to hint that they’re considering paying for the referral traffic, which I think that most publishers would agree that they should.
A question: will Google bias the links supplied by this application towards searches which have better pay-for-performance ad revenue for themselves?
There’s something just a hair insidious seeming about this as well, however. On the PR face of it, Google represents that they want to help people out, make life easier, and enable people to find what they want to find on the web. But, Google is integrating itself more and more deeply into people’s websites, increasing dependency upon them. They provide search services for sites already, they’ve launched applications to allow people to design webpages through them, and they’re providing people with free web usage reporting and maps.
If there’s one thing that people have learned within the IT disaster recovery industry, placing too much dependency upon a single entity will create a single point of failure in a system. Admittedly, Google has nice infrastructure, but have you ever seen a company yet that never had a technical failure of some sort? What happens as increasing amounts of the internet itself is supported by Google, rather than by distributed systems?
In any case, it will be interesting to watch how many sites adopt this new feature without monetary incentives to do so.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/05/2006
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Filed under: Dynamic Sites, General, Google, Research and Development, Tools
Afraid of Click Fraud? Try Pay-For-Call
Back when the internet’s structure was created, it was set up with protocols focused upon linking distributed info together and making info easily accessible. Growth happened since then (understatement of the year), and people invented a lot of new systems on top of that existing structure which were never anticipated in the original internet design. Since the original system was built without these new paradigms in mind, all sorts of problems and weaknesses have arisen which were not addressed in those original architecture standards. Security, identity of users and site owners, traceability, authenticity — all these aspects have been cited as we have tried to control and limit things like spam, hacking, fraud, denial-of-service attacks, etc.
As online advertising evolved on the internet, and moved from a pay-for-impressions model to something closer to pay-for-performance models, the backbone internet architecture didn’t evolve in sync with it. So, all the attendant weaknesses or limitations are also impacting the online advertising industry.
So, where does that leave us with our PPC ads? Is there a solution for Click Fraud? Read on, and I’ll explain…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/31/2006
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Filed under: Monetization of Search, Paid Search
New Domain Names for Brands – Very Limited
I saw this blog by Dennis Forbes which could be interesting for any of you who are planning to create a new brand name with associated domain name: The Search For A Domain Name.
If you’ve done any whois queries in hopes of setting up a new domain name, you’ll already know the frustration of being denied the names you’d like to have most. It leads one to wonder how many common names are already snapped up. Dennis has done a bit of interesting research presented in his article on some common name permutations, and what percentages are already registered or parked until someone pays fees to the companies which have speculated by snapping them up.
I’m betting that if he took a database of common dictionary names and ran similar analysis, he’d also find 100% of those already taken by the same speculators. Interesting reading, though.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/31/2006
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Filed under: General, Market Data, Reference Material, URLs
Drop your bids if your keyword is on this list
Anybody who’s bidding in Google AdWords on any of the words in this list of top-paying AdSense keywords better drop their bids or stop syndicating your ads on the AdSense network, or be prepared to pay for a bunch of worthless non-converting traffic. That’s because it’s about to become a feeding frenzy of bloggers and site owners on the AdSense network optimizing their content to get ads for these top-paying keywords to show up on their sites.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 03/30/2006
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Filed under: Monetization of Search, Paid Search
Need more traffic? Try Image Search Optimization
With all the focus on optimization of textual page content and near-obsessive concentration on text-oriented web search engine results pages (“SERPs”), most webmasters and SEOs neglect an area of their potential repertoire which could provide a lot of benefit to their site and business: image search optimization.
One aspect of effective optimization is to keep your eyes open for all the various avenues for referral traffic which can convert to a sale on your site. Depending upon the products or services you offer, it may be very valuable to consider the possibilities of optimizing for the Image Search utilities offered by the various search engines. Even if your site isn’t a product or services website, if you’re looking to increase organic referral traffic, optimizing for image search could work well for you. Read on and I’ll explain…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/22/2006
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Filed under: Content Optimization, HTML Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks Google, Google-Images, Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Tsk Tsk … Spammers
Note to self: Never send a blanket email campaign to SES attendees lest we get blogstormed by Zawodny. Check out what he did to Atlas OnePoint’s rankings.
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002403.html
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 12/12/2005
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Filed under: Conferences, Worst Practices atlas-onepoint, blogstorm, jeremy-zawodny, spam
