Caydel’s SEO Blog

It appears that Adbrite has performed a nice visual update to their advertisers’ interface. The new interface allows for more clearer organization, allowing AJAX-powered updates of your live bids etc. According to Kevin Weatherman of Adbrite, there will a corresponding update to the publishers’ interface ‘Coming Soon’!

(Click to Enlarge)

Additionally, advertisers will soon be able to create unique channels, or groups of sites, and run their ads solely across that group of sites. Sounds like there are a bunch of improvements coming soon from Adbrite - I can’t wait to see what else they have planned!

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It has long been a question asked tongue in cheek - Sex, or Chocolate?

For a definitive response, I turned to Google Trends. Sex is in blue, Chocolate is in red.

As you can see, sex is by far more important to Google users than chocolate. Looking a bit more into it, I decided to see how money stacked up. Once again Sex is in blue, Money is in red:

Once again, we can see that sex is even more important than money. So, now I guess we really know what drives society!

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Today, for my employer, I am creating a list of top SEO resources for him top refer to after I leave here permanently tomorrow. Here is what I have so far, if anyone has any recommendations or comments on the list, I would really appreciate them! I want to keep the list somewhat compact though - If I hand him a list of 20,000 different links, I can guarantee none would be read…

SEO / Keyword Analysis Links

Overture Tools -Overture is a search engine which used to power yahoo for a while. Generally gets 20% or less of the traffic that Google would get, so vary your stats accordingly.

1. http://inventory.overture.com/ - The Overture Inventory gives the search volume in the last month for the keywords you specified, along with the search volume of related keywords.

2. http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/ - The Overture Bidtool shows the highest bids currently placed upon a certain term within the Overture Search Marketing system, which is very similar in style to Google Adwords. Generally the prices reflected here are 60%-70% of what equivelent keywords would be bid on through the Google Adwords system.

WordTracker – Wordtracker is a paid service to analyze keywords, and links, to find the keywords and phrases that would be the most efficient to target through the use of their ‘Keyword Efficiency Index’.

3. http://wordtracker.com/

DigitalPoint Tools – There are more in the right-hand Nav bar under ‘Webmaster Tools’

4. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ - This tool will check against the Wordtracker and Overture engines to find search volume for given keywords, in addition to suggesting other terms

5. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/ - This tool will track rankings and backlinks for a given website or page… Register and check it out – it is very useful.

Other Tools

5. http://chkdom.com/ - As the title states, ‘A Quick Tool to Check a Domain’. This will check indexed pages, backlinks and saturation on the big three engines.

6. http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com – The Yahoo SiteExplorer shows the indexed pages and backlinks in the Yahoo Engine. Yahoo shows *all* their backlink data, sorted by link weight. IE, your best backlinks are at the top.

7. http://www.seomoz.org/tools/kwtool.php – The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool allows you to run tests and reports on keywords, to determine the difficulty of ranking for certain keywords. While you are at SEOmoz, make sure to read the articles at: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php and http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php

SEO Websites – These websites show the latest in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing news…

1. Search Engine Roundtable: http://www.seroundtable.com/ - Search Engine Roundtable reports on the most active threads in the SEO/SEM forums.

2. Search Engine Watch Blog - http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/ - More Cutting Edge Search Engin News

3. Threadwatch - http://www.threadwatch.org/ - Important - this is a daily read….

4. SEOmoz Blog - http://www.seomoz.org/blog.php – SEOmoz is great SEO company from the states. Their blog alsways has interesting SEO tips and tidbits…

5. SEOBook Blog - http://www.seobook.com/blog.php – This blog is written by one of the top minds in the SEO industry. Although I’ve never read it, his book is considered to be one of the best in the industry.

Recommended Webmaster Forums – In addition to the below, watch for forums referenced in the Search Engine Roudtable pages – they will generally be very good sources for information.

1. DigitalPoint Forums - http://forums.digitalpoint.com – All webmaster talk, all the time. Lots to learn about here

2. eWealth Forums - http://www.ewealth.com – More affiliate marketing related, great if you want to monetize website traffic

Misc. Resources - Public outcry has prompted me to add these as well:

1. Webmaster Radio - http://www.webmasterradio.fm - the source for constant webmaster/SEO broadcast shows, with an awesome chat room….

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A recent post by Stundbl today got me pointed towards CrazyEgg.com. CrazyEgg.com provides a service by which you can track how many visitors, and clicks you get to your site, as well as the location of the clicks and more - a really cool service. If you want a better idea of what they do, or to see that stats they can and will produce, check out their demo.

The tracking is really easy to set up; merely place a single line of javascript onto the page you wish to track. The only complaint I have is that their free version is somewhat limited; of course, that *is* the nature of business. As it is, the free version still hold a lot of promise for helping you to optimize your content based on information concerning user behaviour on your site.
According to the latest post on the CrazyEgg blog, the initial problems they were experiencing after the launch have somewhat cleared up, and they are stabilizing. I would recommend signing up, and seeing what they can do for your site!

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Jamie Sirovich recently made a post about why SEF URLs are still important, despite the fact that the perception of their importance as an SEO tool has dropped somewhat in the last year.

Jamie focuses mostly on non-SEO factors apart from the fact that the keywords must still count for something. He focuses on the user-friendly aspects of SEF URLs, such as ease of memory, visual appeal when compared to a string of arguments, useful when the URL is cited as anchor text, and the fact that because it is so very visible in a search result, it may very well help provide a major call to action for the user.

These are the types of things I enjoy reading on SEO blogs. Web design should be about user-friendliness and content first, and SEO secondly. Too bad so many SEOs forget that order of events.

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It appears that Microsoft is starting to get protective over their digital property rights. Recently, they have begun a new set of lawsuits against companies, and individuals who have registered large numbers of domains that may possibly infringe on Microsoft-owned Trademarks, such as WindowsLiveTutorial.com and HaloChamps.com.

Once again, a company getting retarded over digital rights. Don’t get me wrong - if someone had a website corresponding to a product name of mine, then I would push to get it back. In Microsoft’s case, I could understand if the were pushing for XBox.com, Windows.com, MSN.com or similar names. But bu targetting sites such as HaloChamps.com, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

While the vast majority of the sites which are being targetted in the lawsuits are merely parked domains which contain Microsoft trademarks, think about what Microsoft is accomplishing with this - in essence, they are killing of their communities.

How many community websites do you see which contain game or product names in the domain or title of the website? I can think of hundreds! By scaring people from using their trademarks, Microsoft is going to stink community support of their products. Who wants to open a website, if they have to be afraid of using certain names and titles in their site lest the Microsoft monkey jumps on their back?

Now, if someone was pretending a direct association with Microsoft ont their site, that would be another story alltogether. And I don’t think they are going after existing, growing community sites. Rather, they are targetting cybersquatters. Nevertheless, I think much of what I have said above with respect to community acceptance holds true.

I am tempted to purchase a Microsoft trademark-infringing domain, and see what type of a response I get - it could be fun to get a C & D notice. As it is, I wonder what will happen to IE7.com… In one of my favourite ironies of the year, some smartass registered it and placed an oversized Firefox banner on it, pointing to the Firefox website….

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FOR THOSE COMING FROM REDDIT, READ THE EXPLANATION BELOW BEFORE YOU VISIT THE VIDEO:
If you look at the tags associated with Matt’s video here, you will see that someone has managed to get it associated with the Gay Porn tag. Is this a joke by an SEO or fellow Google Employee? Other attached tags include ‘Shoemoney was here’, ‘umpa umpa love’, ‘gilligan’ and more.

I think this is bloody hilarious. Obviously, someone has a great sense of humour, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke one at Matt. To whoever did this, great job!

Check out the Matt Cutts Video on Google Video Tagged as Gay Porn

digg story

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