----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Detlef Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- May 04, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #060 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... // -- FEATURED POST -- // "Overly Broad Use Of The Term Spam" ~ Ed Last // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // "Textbook SEO" "Yahoo! Faces Class Action Suit" ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- FEATURED POST -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> TOPIC: Overly Broad Use Of The Term Spam "Should we be taking steps in our professional organizations to protect the reputations of ethical search marketers?" From: Ed Last SearchReturn, We work with a lot of different industries and the more competitive the industry, the harder it is to rank well for the competitive keywords. Ethical Search Optimisation is only as good as your client's patience. We have had good results using good, clear and concise content (ethical SEO), and doing everything right - But at the same time, in a extremely competitive market (where PPC costs £6+ per click), it's not easily possible to rank well 'ethically' - Perhaps in 2 years, when the search algorithms are finely-tuned, then ethical SEO will be vital - Until then, my clients aren't going to be 'my clients' if they have to wait 2 years for results! Regards, Ed ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Textbook SEO http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/print.php/3602456 Essentials: Recent discussion about textbook SEO, (title and meta tags), has prompted varied opinions. Matt Cutts was interviewed by Mike Grehan on the issue, and if you listen carefully to what he says, Matt talks about the value of designing your template and making sure things are in place first. Then he sees going after popularity with buzz marketing as a way to increase your presence. The rather antique "viral marketing" method has worked great for building popularity in a natural way, and has been part of the SEO arsenal for ages. Naturally building links generates the clean popularity you need. You want the kind of links that people choose to publish for pointing to something useful. Such links can deliver great traffic in their own right. The most important bit from this conversation comes when Matt discusses Google's use of the description tag that can increase clicks. Keep in mind that the title is even more prominently displayed. Attracting relevant clicks has an affect on your user behavior rankings, and solid textbook SEO has therefore never been more important. Tune your textbook SEO to the context of the query, and let the search engines do the rest by bolding query text in your result listings. When you Google [pinot grigio] as Mike points out you will see results for a page that currently hasn't been crawled. Number two may actually get as many clicks, if not more than number one, simply because the query text is bold and displayed in the listing. If the number one listing was crawled and as such remained in the top spot, Pinot Grigio would be in the title and snippet to truly capitalize on search impressions. Textbook SEO is not as effective as linking for ranking with Google and Ask, but textbook SEO has considerably more strength in Yahoo! than Google and Ask. As a consequence, Matt from Google does not advocate tweaking SEO much. But once impressions are up from good rankings, tweaking can still be useful for tuning relevancy to boost CTR (and benefit with increased user-behavior ranking). ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Yahoo! Faces Class Action Suit http://www.searchreturn.com/digest/refs059.shtml Essentials: Google recently settled their click fraud class action for $90 million. Many thought that the amount to settle is simply tiny compared with the inflated costs advertisers suffered which Google made off with. Additionally, Google settled with advertising credits and not cash. Now Yahoo! faces a suit where the complaints are much worse, citing AdWare and domain abuses that inflate costs for Yahoo! contextual advertisers. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? Contact the postmaster: mailto:postmaster@searchreturn.com Information on how to sponsor this publication: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/advertise.shtml Published by SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com Website Membership: http://www.searchreturn.com/register.shtml The contents of the digest do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SearchReturn or Detlef Johnson. SearchReturn and Detlef Johnson make no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents of the SearchReturn Digest. Copyright 2006 Detlef Johnson. All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------