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This it the home of the archives of Above The Fold, my search engine marketing newsletter.
Above The Fold Articles
ABOVE the FOLD Vol. 2 issue 13.
sections:
tool of the week *** book of the week ***what would you like ***around the web: more Google Stuff*** random funny
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Around the Web (news):
Article: Keeping Visitors
Google:
- Changed its interface and search results, which demoted DMOZ listings
and put Froogle on the front page. The new change made Google's site
look more professional and made AdWords ads look more like regular
listings.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3332511 - To offer new email service with 1 Gig of storage for users. Many
cool features, still in beta testing.
http://www.gmail.google.com/
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html - Google Print Adds magazine articles.
http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/newsarchive/000763.shtml - Changed pricing structure of AdSense / AdWords. Now the pricing
on contextual ads is based on the likelyhood that the pages and terms
which triggered the ad will lead to a conversion. This is not exactly
what they were looking for, but many marketers were complaining about
AdSense ads producing poorly vs the results from search ads.
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000265.shtml
Casino Ads to be blocked on Google + Yahoo!
AltaVista Index now dead. AV now using Yahoo!
SearchGuild Forums
- SearchGuild now has a new look, give em a try.
http://www.searchguild.com
DMOZ support forum: a fun thread
WowDirectory.com
New directory provides free links (ran by Bruce Stone of Skaffe).
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Tool of the Week: Recently the beta version of a PageRank lookup tool was released. You specify a search term and any given PageRank value. The results will return web pages which rank high for that term and have a PageRank at or above the value you set.
http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php
also, a couple new link checking tools which allow you to check competitors
backlinks. not the coolest tools, but great for free :)
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000258.shtml
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Book of the Week: too darn busy.
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What Would You Like
This newsletter will only be good if I can offer what you are interested
in. Please send your SEO questions or any ideas you have for things
I should put in here.
mailto:aaron@search-marketing.info
Question 1) Are .php pages considered badly by search engines?
I have templates (in .php format) that will help me make my online store
and an Affiliate program. The Affiliate program will allow me to track
customers and pay the linking sites. With this, I can get a great number
of other xxxxx reseller sites to link to me.
To use these templates, certain pages need to be in .php format such
as the order page. I also need to set a page for these sites to link
to.
Question 2) Will the linked sites still boost my site's rating if the
link is not to the main "index.html" page but to a page within
my site? I could make an index.php also, but I do not know how that
will effect my rating.
Answer
Q1) "Are .php pages considered badly by search engines?" assuming
you are not using session ids and things like that then file path should
not matter.
Usually affiliates do not provide direct links and they go through some sort of redirect or third party site. The problem with an affiliate program which does not get tracked by a third part is that many people do not trust other vendors that much and sometimes the http referer value will get blocked. Also if they use a query string to track their site ?affliliate=104 those pages will usually get filtered out as duplicate content and may not add to your link popularity.
If you are good friends with many people then they still may want to give you the links though and if they are fine with tracking http referer or something like that to give them credit then go for it.
Q2) Inbound links to any page within your site help you build your
link equity. Take whatever quality inbound links you can. Moreover,
if the links are coming through recomendations from people in a related
field then that is the best type of link on the web. People in general
are known to lie about themselves. Possitive reviews from others go
a long way.
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more questions
1. Yahoo express inclusion & Overture site match -- how different
are they? which is more useful or need to go for both?
2. If Ask is fed through google, why pay them?
3. I have bought some domains for my top keywords and planning setup
optimised pages for each of them then finally link my 1 Wholesale and
1 Retail site to them. Will I be violating any SE rules?
more answers
1.) "Yahoo express inclusion & Overture site match -- how different are they? which is more useful or need to go for both?" Overture site match has incremental costs that might not be worth paying for. If you are already listed in Yahoo!, then there is no reason to pay Overture for each and every click unless you need the tracking or have rapidly changing content.
Yahoo! Express inclusion costs $299/yr ($600 for porn) to list your site within the Yahoo! directory. The Yahoo! Directory is separte from Yahoo! Search. Generally most sites listed within the directory will also eventually be included in all major search engines (based on the popularity of the Yahoo! website). My site might get between 0 - 5 hits per day from the Yahoo! directory, so it makes it somewhat hard to justify the fee based exclusivly on direct traffic.
A Yahoo! listing can also help establish search engine relevancy because some of the categories are good topical information resources. As to whether or not it is worth buying a Yahoo! listing, I believe it should be evaluated on a site by site basis. If $299 is very little compared to your ad budget then you may want to go for it. If $299 blows a bunch of your ad budget then there might be other places to look for more or better links.
2.) Ask is actually powered by Teoma. Ask has ads by Google, but the algorithmic search results are from Teoma. You are already listed in Teoma. Paid inclusion into Ask offers you very little unless you have rapidly rotating stock or are super frequent to update your page copy.
3.) It sounds rather sketchy off the start to me. Generally most sites
can do good on their own off of their own merit and making a small network
exclusively for search engines is a type of spam. You may be able to
get away with it, but it may eventually get you in trouble. Domain name
itself has very little direct effect on search engine rankings. The
right domain names make it easy to get optimized inbound text, which
then helps those pages rank better based on anchor text of inbound links.
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Random happening of the Week - please laugh, or maybe not.
A twisted world?
15 year old child pornographer arrested for taking pictures of herself?
http://www.vixxie.com/blog/
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