Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- What's Your Favorite Part of SEO?
Do you love SEO? What's your favorite part? Forum members discuss what interests them on a WebProWorld thread. How about you? One member loves the thrill of the constant challenge of following industry trends. SEO is great for writers, and she is one, so this field makes her very enthusiastic. Many people love the writing element of SEO. And some, like me, are computer geeks. :) The task is never really monotonous. The industry is - Seeking "High-Level" SEO Strategies
Let's get the basics out of the way. Basic SEO includes keyword research, competition analysis, meta keywords/description, an image strategy, indexing and evaluation, content changes, on-page optimization, link building, and a strategy for online marketing. But let's take it a step further. What else is left? That pretty much covers it. The SitePoint Forums thread has a pretty extensive SEO strategy outline which includes URL optimization, content optimization, site submission to search engines, XML sitemap - Help! I Rank #1 But Have No Customers!
A SitePoint Forums member did everything right, or so he thought: he ranks #1 for their target keyword phrase, but they have no customers. Where did he go wrong, or what can he do to right the situation? Forum members offer many useful tips: Additional website tweaking may be in order. You may want to provide more direct "calls to action" so that a visitor is aware that there's a product/service to be bought. Check - Can Hotlinking Get You Filtered in Google Image Search?
What do you suppose would be the problem if your images are not showing up in Google Image Search? Let's review the scenario: a webmaster has a site that has purely G-rated images, but his images are not appearing in the search results. He supposes that this could be because other sites, which don't use friendly images or text, are hotlinking to his images. How do you test the theory? You could see which images - Microsoft Launches Live Search Webmaster Tools as Public Beta
About a week ago, I provided exclusive screen shots of the new Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Tools portal. It appears that as of last night, Microsoft has released the http://webmaster.live.com/ to the public, as a beta. So far, there is a lot of discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld on the release and not much about the features inside of the tool. Ben, Chris and I discussed some of those features on the Search Pulse - Are SEOs Still Buying Links?
After all the recent Google PageRank news and "penalties," the big question is, are SEOs still buying links? A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a poll, that is asking that question. They break the poll down into four possible answers. Here are the current results with 42 responses: No - I never bought links and never will (17) 40.48% No - The Google Penalization Scare Me! (4) 9.52% Yeah - It's Still Working Well For Me - Search Pulse 42: Live Search Portal, Google AdWords Exclusion, Link Command, AdSense Click Change, & More
The 42nd edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. Chris returned to the show to help Ben and I discuss some really exciting topics. We chatted about Microsofts new Live Search Webmaster Portal. We also discussed how Live Search's link command is now working. Google AdWords is testing a new advanced site exclusion feature. Google AdSense changed their on-click event behavior. Google fixed a bug with their total search results shown. AdWords
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Distinguishing Between Filtering And Penalties, HighRankings Forums
- Location In Google Adwords, HighRankings Forums
- MyBlogLog Has Been All Messed Up For 15 Hours, Sphinn
- The Sphinn Awards Part 2, Sphinn
- Why doesn't Google penalize Yahoo's Directory?, WebProWorld
- Are you using Gmail?, DigitalPoint Forums
- The ugliest google logo(google maps) I saw., DigitalPoint Forums
- Who's Still Buying Links?, DigitalPoint Forums
- Yahoo! Launches Chinese Language Version of Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Taiwan, DigitalPoint Forums
