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Issue #4
24-11-2003

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ABAKUS Internet Marketing - Newsletter – Issue #4

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Editor: Alan Webb

mailto:nl@abakus-internet-marketing.de

Welcome to the fourth edition of my SEM newsletter. Its free, it's hopefully informative, so please feel free to pass it on to friends and colleagues.

In this issue:

Editor Foreword

1. Search Engine Marketing News

2. Optimizing for Christmas

3. Content that gets linked to

4. Newsletter information and press info

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Editor Foreword

The only real major news this month is that Google look set to go public with an initial public offering (IPO) where they are reported to be able to launch in March next year. More in the news below. It has been a bad month for Looksmart who are getting dropped from MSN.com for the directory listings. October and so far this month have been pretty hectic for myself. I had to prepare for a speaking session for Search engine strategies –Munich which was very enjoyable experience. Even though it was in German which is not my native language, I thoroughly enjoyed it and in fact the whole event was excellent. The ABAKUS forum surpassed my end of year milestone of 500 members over week ago and is becoming very active with some great posts and members (http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren). Today I woke up to find that the Google PageRank for the ABAKUS website had risen to 7. It is currently only showing on the www-va.google.com data center. It should propagate to the other data canters and be visible by all in the toolbar within a week.

As a special Christmas offer I've decided to give all newsletter subscribers a 15% discount for the optimization of their site. Go to http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/angebot/angebot.htm and then on 'Keyword 4' type in "top ranking" to be given a 15% discount!

And now for the news…

1. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING NEWS

Google to go public
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It’s been speculated about for months. It looks like it is set to happen. According to the Guardian Google is planning a US$ 15 billion float in which Google it is said could be ready for March 2004. The idea is apparently to sell the stock online, bypassing Wall Street.

This is not going to please the investment banks who are likely to lose a lot of lucrative fees.

More on the guardian report here: http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,1070120,00.html

Of course going public means Google are going to have to make quarterly financial reports public amonst other things. This should be very interesting indeed.

New ‘Sponsored Listings’ Blocker
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Bad news for advertisers is that just as pop-up blockers are becoming popular, the many advertisers who changed to sponsored listings through such services as Google Adwords and Overture, will now have to face a new tool that suppresses sponsored search results. Intermute (http://www.intermute.com) has plans to upgrade its product range next month with a tool to suppress sponsored search results. Called “Search Sanity”. The tool will let Web surfers block text-based ads from appearing when they conduct a Web search. Good news however for those surfers that do not sponsored paid for listings. More at Cnet…

http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5107846.html?tag=st_util_print

Google Deskbar
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Google has launched its own stand-alone search tool. It completely negates the need for Micrsofts Internet Explorer and searching is done through a search box in your task bar. It is pretty powerful with the option to search news, frrogle, images and also includes the new definitions features and has a thesaurus feature. I’ve tested it out and I’m impressed. You can download it at… http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html

It is currently only available in English.

Search Engine Strategies Expo & Conference München
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I was honored to be a guest speaker at the recent search engine strategies conference in Münich last week. Danny Sullivan of searchenginewatch.com was there as well as many experts from the German search engine marketing world. As my speech was not in my native language of English, it was quite nerve wracking but I think it went ok for my first public speaking event. I will be writing a full report of the event and publishing it on my forum within the next few days in this forum… http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/forum/viewforum/f-1.html so be sure to drop by regularly to catch it. There was some interesting news from the Google software engineer representative.

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2. OPTIMIZING FOR CHRISTMAS

Christmas is only around the corner, and next month the Christmas season increase in traffic, for particularly e-commerce sites, will start. Therefore, now is the time to get your website ready for all those online Christmas shoppers! This article gives you a few ideas about what you should be doing immediately in order to maximise traffic from search engines over the festive season.

There are many things you really should be taking care of now with regards to increasing your websites visibility over the festive season. Below a few online marketing ideas, and a 10 point checklist on things you might want to check over.

It is at this time that marketing managers should be thinking of special offers for the festive period. It can be anything such as ‘two for the price of one’ or a limited time discount, or a Christmas specific product, or even some kind of competition with a prize. Whatever you decide to do, it gives you a fantastic opportunity to create new pages for your website. This of course enables you to optimize those new special offer pages for search terms your existing pages may not cover. The more ‘Special offer’ pages you can add, the better. In my experience, most webmasters add Christmas offer content to existing pages, a paragraph or two about their special Christmas offer just at the time the offer starts. This a big mistake.

Uploading Christmas offer pages well over a month before the festive season causes a little bit of a dilemma in that the offer may well not have started yet. What you need to do is get the pages up now, however, if the offer doesn’t start until say December, simply add something like “Our forthcoming Christmas offer starting on…” or simply “Special Christmas offer starts soon” or suchlike. It is however imperative you get the pages up now, or else the search engine spiders are not going to index your new content and rank it in time to be found during the Christmas online shopping period.

Use these new pages to add secondary keywords to your website. For example, if you sell DVDs online, and have optimized on your existing pages for “DVDs online”, “DVD online shop” and “DVD films”. You might want to make sure your new pages include some other search terms such as “new DVD releases”, “DVD Movies”, “Discount DVDs” etc. From a search engine optimization perspective, The period before Christmas gives you a golden opportunity to get found on terms you weren’t previously found on. In short, develop Christmas offer pages optimized for terms you are not currently found on that are of course relevant to your site.

Creating new web pages for new keywords should not by the way just be limited to Christmas, but for whenever you have a special offer for one or more products/services.

The above covers the creation of Christmas special offer pages, but as you have your HTML editor now open, take the time to check that your existing pages are also up to scratch as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Below a 10 point Christmas SEO checklist:

1. Is your product name and related main search terms in the title tag e.g. <title>Keyword rich title</title>

2. Do you have your main search terms in the visible text at least 3 times.

3. Are you linking from your other internal pages to your product pages with keyword rich link text e.g. <a href="http://www.yourdomain/product-page.htm">Product or Keyword</a>

4. Are you using the Alt attribute on images to add your main search terms.

5. Have you recently tried to gain links from other websites. If not, do so now.

6. Can you exchange existing graphic text(image) for normal text anywhere on your pages.

7. Can you add text to those pages that currently have very little.

8. Have you made sure you have different meta descriptions for EVERY page.

9. Do you have a site map to assist search engine spiders in finding your pages.

10. Have you checked that those already linking to you, are doing so with the optimum link text (anchor text).

There is no better time than now to get the HTML editor out. Tweaking your site for the Christmas shopping traffic can increase your online revenue more than you might imagine.

I hope this article has at least given you some food for thought. Too often Christmas creeps up on you and often its too late for webmasters to make the most out of the increase in searchers looking to buy something. Don’t let it happen to you this year!

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3. CONTENT THAT GETS LINKED TO

I often stress in my articles the need to have incoming links with the right link text. This is however far more difficult than many think; and those who have tried to obtain links through email requests for a reciprocal know that it is a time consuming task. Wouldn’t it be better however to have a website that gets linked to voluntarily by webmasters. That naturally gets linked to rather than having to hunt down potential link partners?

For many branches this is very difficult as their theme/product is one which is somewhat niche or has essentially only competitors websites out there as link partners. It is however extremely important to get those links. The best way as mentioned is to get linked to naturally. Below a few content tips that you might want to implement on your site.

1. Most themes have their own technical jargon. Consider having a glossary/Lexicon on your site for your themes main terms. It is work but if you good a job, you can promote it and will in time get linked to naturally.

2. A comprehensive FAQ not only provides evidence of competence in your field but is also an opportunity to develop content that has an excellent chance of getting linked in the press or similarly related sites.

3. Create a Blog on your theme. A weblog is a great way to get links as blogs generally link to each other if they are of the same theme. Even if they belong to competing companies. A good blog will also make a name for itself and will in time get noticed by online publications and linked to.

4. Write lots of articles and archive them. Contact theme related online independent publications with a view to publication. I have many links from some major websites that I contacted for the publication of my articles.

5. Unique tool. If you can develop a unique online tool that has a use in your field then don’t hesitate to do so. ABAKUS have developed 3 of its own tools that get linked to regularly. Particularly the ‘Topword’ and ‘Keyword Domain’ tools which can be found on our tools page (http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/online-tools.htm)

Get links the easy way with unique quality content. Think carefully about creating content that is unique or is an excellent resource. Too often sites are bland sales/marketing text with little effort being made to stand out from the rest. The webmasters then wonder why no one wants to link to them. Take the time and effort. Your Google Pagerank and search engines rankings will benefit a great deal from it.

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4. NEWSLETTER INFORMATION / PRESS

You can pass on this newsletter, publish it in part, or in its entirety, under the one condition that full accreditation is given (Name, Company, and home page link). Any online incoming links must contain as link text “ABAKUS Internet Marketing” or “Search Engine Marketing”.

Members of the IT or internet press can receive full details about ABAKUS and Alan Webb upon request. Alan Webb is experienced in writing on search engine marketing and would welcome any press interest with a view for exclusive articles.

Should you have received this newsletter in error, or someone has submitted your email address without your knowledge, or you wish to unsubscribe for any reason please click on the link below.

Alan Webb
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/

Copyright (c) ABAKUS Internet Marketing

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