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“I recommend Netconcepts to any web marketer who cannot prioritize resources to search engine optimize internally. Over our 6 years in partnership, they have never steered us wrong!”

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In the midst of choosing an SEO vendor to advise or implement search engine optimization for you? Don’t base your decision on just a ‘gut feel’. Effectively separating the wheat from the chaff requires that objective rather than subjective criteria be used. These include:

1. PageRank scores
   Review PageRank scores of your candidate SEO firms’ home pages and their clients’ home pages. PageRank is Google’s scoring system for importance; it’s logarithmic like a Richter scale. Check PageRanks with the Google Toolbar. If you don’t have the Google toolbar installed on your browser, it’s probably easier just to use the free service at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/. Probably more enlightening however is to use the Google Directory to check PageRanks, because then you can see where they sit in comparison to a bunch of competitors in that same category, since the sites on each category page are listed in order of PageRank score. To do so, go to http://directory.google.com and type in the name of the business into the search box (e.g. “Netconcepts”), then when you find its listing in the search results, click on the category name (e.g. “Computers > Internet > … > Designers > Full Service > N”). Look for that company’s listing on that category page. Hopefully it’s near the top, and hopefully the little green bar in the left column is more green than gray.
2. Rankings
   Get a list of keywords from the SEO firm that they consider important to their business. Get a list of keywords from them that are important to their clients too. Check where they rank in Google for those keywords. If you have time, check rankings in Yahoo too (Yahoo has 32% market share, Google has 45%). Then, and here’s the important bit: check how popular those keywords are with searchers, using the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool at http://inventory.overture.com (or better yet, on WordTracker.com if you have a paid subscription to it). If the keyword is searched on infrequently, then a high ranking for that keyword is not so impressive.
3. Evidence of thought leadership
   Everyone claims to be a thought leader. A true thought leader, however, demonstrates this through such things as:
   • known reputation in that topic area by other thought leaders you know and trust
   • number of published articles written in that topic area
   • the caliber of those articles
   • number of conference presentations given in that topic area
   • the caliber of those presentations
   • number of books written that adequately cover that topic area
   • the caliber of those books
   • the extent to which they are quoted in the media in that topic area
   • a well-read, well-linked, and oft-quoted blog (web log)

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A couple months ago I shared one of my Google secrets, since that secret no longer worked. Specifically, it was how to obtain a list of the most important web sites according to Google.

Now, surprisingly, this little trick appears to work again (it stopped working in 2003), thanks to a bug introduced into Google’s algorithm. Two months ago, a search for http would have revealed results like HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Overview and Welcome! - The Apache HTTP Server Project. Today, these sites appear nowhere near the top of the results. Instead, the top results are occupied by a “who’s who” list of highly important web sites — sites that don’t include the word http anywhere in the text of the page.

As already noted by blogger Nathan Weinberg, this same phenonemon occurs when you search for www.

One thing I found curious is that http and www Google queries return different results. Now these results are NOT in order of PageRank score, at least not the PageRank scores as revealed by the Google Toolbar. You can verify this to be the case yourself simply by using SEO Chat’s PageRank Search tool. Indeed, it’s a well-known fact within the SEO community that the PageRank scores served up by the Google Toolbar servers are not the actual PageRanks used by Google in the ranking algorithm. PageRank debate aside, perhaps this list offers us a (now) rare glimpse at some of Google’s Chosen Ones — the most important sites on the Internet according to Google.

What makes me say this is due to a bug in Google? For one thing, these results are NOT relevant to the search query. Secondly, I’ve uncovered another bug newly introduced into Google’s algorithm, namely that the inurl: query operator does not work properly, and I think these two bugs might be related. For an example of this second bug in action, search Google for site:blogs.msdn.com scoble inurl:msnsearch and the top search result is currently blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/11/10/255417.aspx. Note there’s no msnsearch in that URL!

I’ve compiled a list the top 1000 results for each of the two queries for your convenience. You’ll see, they do vary quite dramatically:

(more…)

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US telecommunications giant Verizon already has 5 million pages in Google and 7 million pages in Yahoo! but Netconcepts President Stephan Spencer says there is room for improvement. It is all about making sure every page is indexed by the search engines as his company devotes six team members to the job.

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There is an interesting and amusing thread over at SEW. A punter asks, on the surface, an innocent question as to why his mate’s site has dropped out of Google.

A bunch of the regulars offer some suggestions for possible problems, and then on the second page, GoogleGuy appears and really wades in, revealing the site is linking to some very bad evil affiliate spammers.

Interesting that GoogleGuy would take the time to do some research on the site. Interesting that SEW allow such specifics to be discussed. Interesting that a good number of other SEO’s didn’t catch the real problem. And amusing that the punter gets his butt kicked from very high up in such a public manner. At least he had the good grace to admit he’s been a bad boy.

The lesson here people, is to be careful who you link to and who they link to in turn. Reciprocal linking is bad, you don’t know who else they have requested a link from. And do you have the time and skills to research those link properly. It took GoogleGuy to find the real problem and a bunch of professional SEO’s missed it.

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“We felt that Netconcepts’ understanding of search engine rankings would give Superpages.com a distinct advantage over other online directories.”

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Verizon’s Superpages.com may be #1 in the search engines for online shopping, but Netconcepts feels there is room for improvement. The company has scored a deal with the US telecommunications giant to improve its rankings in the search engines.

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Imagine an online ad that costs you nothing per impression, guarantees both a local and worldwide audience actively seeking your products and services, and offers 6 times the click-through rate of a banner ad… a search engine listing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the ultimate targeted, low cost and high return weapon in the e-marketer’s promotional arsenal.

Learn how to maximize your reach through the “organic” (unpaid) results in the search engines:

• Which search engines to target
• Keyword research tools and tactics
• Writing copy that “sings” to the search engines
• Benchmarking against your competitors
• Link building strategies that work
• Optimal search engine architecture
• Best practices to emulate
• Scams exposed
• Case studies - including the “inside scoop” on what worked and what didn’t
• Making your e-commerce or database-driven site “search engine friendly”
• Measuring the return on your search engine marketing investment
• Developing a search engine marketing plan
• Criteria for selecting a search engine marketing agency
• Online tools and resources

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“My job is to make my boss look good, and when SecureWorks hired Netconcepts for SEO I expected them to make me look good - and they definitely did.”

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