Friendly URLs May 8, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google , add a commentI wish I had kept better track of my usage stats from years gone by for one of my sites. I’ve moved hosts a few times and never thought back then about potentially trying to monetize the site. It is full of original content on learning about web development and I get a reasonable amount of traffic. But I’m sure I used to get far more traffic.
The site started with static HTML pages and that was the way I went for several years. Then I got interested in Content Management Systems (CMS) and decided to roll my content into a Mambo setup. It worked well enough but has SO much going on I spent more time fidgeting with tweaking the interface than developing more good content. Last year I decided to roll my own CMS that provided me with exactly what I need and nothing more. I’m very please with where I have it now except that I was feeding an id number to my application page via the query string and the URL had no reference to all the juicy good content contained on the page. Bad Dog! Bad!
So this week I set out to fix my bad. I used a rewrite within my htaccess file for my site and updated my links site wide. Since the site is fully database driven this was easy and quick to do, although for all images and relative links within my own site I needed to change the path to stem from the sites root directory. This took a bit longer to do but not a big deal.
My stumbling block for not having done this earlier was getting my mind around how to setup the htaccess file properly with the rewrite rules. Fortunately I found a site that allows you to enter a dynamic URL and converts it to a Search Engine friendly one. It also spits out what you need to include in the htaccess file for all of it to work. Once I saw this I was able to get my mind around the process.
Now my content rich site has Search Engine friendly URLs and I look forward to seeing what sort of traffic increases I may get as a result. I will keep a better archive of sites stats as well as I move forward with this.
Progress - Growth and a little rebound March 26, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Affiliate Marketing, Forums , add a commentJust a little bit of a status update.
My forums which I have spoken about a few times and offered up stats here have continued to grow, with March being a big traffic month. I get huge volume spikes when other related forums link to me but nearly 5000 visits about 60-something-thousand page view makes March an exciting month for me. I am not monetizing this site yet, I am going to allow in to continue growing before I start throwing ads up.
Meanwhile the one site that I a monetizing had a great run in terms of Google placement, was earning nicely, then it dropped a little, now it seems to be crawling back up for some relevant search phrases. I posted about the Christmas Rush here.
Here is a screen shots of my earning since - you’ll see it had been doing quite well until March but it looks like it may be on it’s way back up.
So there you have it, as requested, and update on my sites growth. I am satisfied with their growth considering they have been a little neglected as of late.
Preliminary Review: SEOBook February 26, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing , add a commentA while back I mentioned that we purchased Aaron Walls SEO Book. I am sure Stray Dog will have a lot to say about it in the future.
Until then: I read most of the SEO book - everything that I felt was relevant to me - in about three days. Let me be the first (well I guess I am not the first, let me reiterate what everyone else has said:)) to say it is that it is a great book and worth every penny.
It’s a well written, easy reading, resource. I found that I did not want to put it down although I am pretty passionate about SEO.
The book is chalked full of useful tips and concepts, many which I have heard of or thought about and many of which I have not. There is no special tip to gaming google its just full of concepts to help you build a great SEO’ed site with a lot of quality incoming links.
I’d consider it the ultimate resource for those that are new to SEO and a great review / road map for more experienced readers.
My game plan involves reading it again soon and at that time taking notes of all tips that I need to implement then acting on them. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!
It’s probably worth mentioning that I do not have an affiliate link up and am just giving you my honest feedback on a great product.
Are Two Sites Better Than One? February 26, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Search Engine Marketing, Adwords, Domain Names , add a commentA “Filthy Jack” reader writes:
i’m looking for some advice…in terms of a client that has a business that operates out of two separate cities…they will have a home page that allows the user to select their city of choice for services…but what i’m wondering is for seo purposes do you think it’s in their best interest to have two separate websites? i’m thinking that one massive website should do the trick as long as all pertinent seo features for both cities is incorporated into the development…but my seo knowledge isn’t advanced–and i don’t have the answer to this one and i’m looking for advice
Evil Green and I discussed it and here is what we think:
One of Google’s key factors in search relevance is how many other sites link to a site. Further, this relevance is increased by both the quality of the site that shows up in the search results and the quality of the sites linking to it. So the question here is whether or not having two sites for the one company would be advantageous in this manner. From this standpoint I do not feel it would be.
We could also look at the domain name and how that may help. Assume we have XYZ Deck and Fence and they have a Kansas City operation and a St. Louis operation. It may be beneficial to have two domains with two sites:
xyzdeckandfencekansas.com / xyzdeckandfencestlouis.com
This would help show up in searches for deck, fence and kansas
OR
deck, fence, st. louis
This same goal could be accomplished with two sections in the site:
xyzdeckandfence.com/kansas / xyzdeckandfence.com/stlouis
However, this information in the title and meta description tag plus within the actual page content may derive the same benefit.
I really do not see a clear advantage in you doing two sites in this case. You may though want to consider if there is a benefit to the client in appearing like they are only in one city. There may be an advantage in appearing more ‘local’ and not ‘too big’. Or it could be the other way around. Some things to consider:
1. Is there a major delineation in services offered between the two cities?
2. is there a difference in pricing between the two cities?
If it is indeed pretty much the same site then I’d go with one.
If they are in a competitive field then they may want to look at a Google adwords campaign so they can precisely market to those within their trading area.
That’s my best advice given what you have provided. I may have more to offer if you want to go deeper.
I have some info for you February 19, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing, Ranting and Raving, Domain Names , 2commentsYou want some .info, I’ve got some .info for you. Stay away from those junky domain names. I typically only register dot-coms and maybe the odd dot-net and I think in the future I will try to buy existing sites rather than starting from scratch but I have decided that I will only buy the main TLDs (top level domains) from now on.
Here is why, so my forums are experiencing more traffic, more posts, more members, and more SPAM. I normally receive 2-5 spam posts a day and that’s with CAPTCHA Image Verification on my registration form. At least 70% of this spam comes from members who have registered with .info domain names such as xxxx@payday-loans-for-free.info or xxxx@save-on-v-iagra.info. There is no way all these spammers are not frustrating the search engines which leads me to believe they will take action by weighting them lower. I think I will avoid hyphens (“-“) as well as that seems to be common theme as well.I know I am going to try and avoid looking and smelling like spammer so I don’t get painted as one – I’d suggest you do the same.
Google Secondary Results = Results February 8, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Search Engine Marketing , add a commentSo one of my small eBay affiliate sites has received the indentation treatment. See an example below:
Since being indexed as above my traffic has increased considerably. I am guessing your listing really catches the readers eyes when it is indented as seen above.
How did I receive this secondary result? Apparently Google will combine your results if you have more than one page ranking for the search query. For example if one page from your site would normally rank 3rd and one page would normally rank 9th for the same search term Google will combine the results indenting the second below the first.
My pages are currently ranking #1 and #2 for a term that’s searched about 50 times a day. It is not a ton of traffic but its not all that bad. It is bringing in a little bit of revenue. 
Blog Post Purchased - Links Coming December 20, 2006
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing , add a commentSo, in an effort to get more quality incoming links to my classifieds site, I purchased a blog post on another site. The author recommended my site and included three links within the post. All of this for $20.00. His site gets a fair amount traffic and its home page is 3 or 4 on the PR scale. I don’t expect it to drive much (or any) traffic but I am hoping it is a nice incoming link in the search engines eyes.
As mentioned earlier I did cancel my adwords campaign in an effort to spend more money on initiative such as the one mentioned above.
For those that are curious I found this over at Digital Point.
The Link Affect December 12, 2006
Posted by Evil Green in : Uncategorized, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Search Engine Marketing , add a commentAffect or Effect? I never get that right.
Anyway, I am going to spend some time over the next few days attempting to get a few quality incoming links.
My classifieds site which receives about 2 uniques a day (not counting Adwords traffic), recently scored a good incoming link which provides about 3-5 more uniques a day and is obviously of value for SEO purposes.
This has motivated to me to look at getting more incoming links. I plan on emailing a lot of related sites suggesting a link and cancelling my Adwords campaign ($60.00 per month) to purchase a couple of decent incoming links.
I think the value in getting these links is for SEO purposes more than traffic however a 5-10 links providing 5 uniques a day adds 25-50 visitors a day and this often has a slow compounding affect (or effect).
Here is to link building!
My Goal - $96.77 per day December 11, 2006
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing, Ranting and Raving , add a commentOn Friday I talked about the two things that I feel are ever so important in the SEO game. This post is regarding item #2, setting goals and working towards them.
My goal is to earn $96.77, in other words $3000.00 in a 31 day month. As I work towards it, I will talk about what I am doing and its effects.
In November I earned an average of: $7.93 per day (equivalent to $245.91 in a 31 day month) however most of this was made as an eBay affiliate and I expect revenue to be about 30% less in December and January due to November being a good month for online Christmas shopping.
So that’s what I am working towards, I will keep you posted on the progress.
And here I go! December 8, 2006
Posted by Stray Dog in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing , add a commentI’ve been developing web sites for approximately 7 years and have been involved with multimedia development for over 10. One aspect of web development that I am quite novice in is search engine optimization and marketing. Not to say that I don’t know anything. I know the buzz-words and can talk relatively intelligently on concepts relating to optimizing sites for SEO. BUT — This is not a topic that I have had any true first-hand experiences with. So enough is enough…
With so many already out there being so knowledgeable on the topic and readily sharing it with other developers you would be a fool not to pull up a stool and listen to what is being said. So, with virtual stool pulled up to the WWW I’m ready to learn!! And as I learn and what I learn I will be sharing here with the readers of this site. Good luck to us all!