SearchMasters

QuadraCentifiable

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1200

The battle lines are drawn to rank for QuadraCentifiable, the New Zealand SEO Competition phrase sent via txt message on the morning of 31 August 2010.

SearchMasters entry NZSEOChallenge.co.nz has been getting incoming links over the past days. It will be interesting to see whose Challenge Entry will rank top on the end of the first day.

I consider that this post will rank high, as will other competitors main business website blogs. But over the period of three months, the entrant websites will be ranking high and push out al ...

Source: QuadraCentifiable

NZ SEO Competition

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1200

Who is the best at SEO in New Zealand. An NZ SEO Competition has started today, and I have started a new domain NZ NZ SEO Challenge for the competition.

Actually, it's not who is the best, but rather who is the best at gathering community support, and coming up with a links strategy that will get them top.

The sponsor for the SEO Challenge is Adam Hutchinson of Fried.co.nz Online Idea Monkeys. Adam is well known for being able to get publicity and has made his name in riding the length of New Zealand on a motor scooter promoting Yamaha. And more recently with the NZ Txt Champion competition that promoted his Fried text messaging system.

Source: NZ SEO Competition

WordCamp Auckland

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1200

Live Blog of WordCamp Auckland

This page was updated throughout the day.

I have been part of the WordCamp Auckland August 2010 Business Time and Developer sessions.

I had a slot in the day talking about three simple secrets of Search Engine Optimisation.

See the full wordcamp 2010 flickr gallery

Talk by Rachel Cunliffe Cre8d-Design.com

Clients from all around the world, mostly word of mouth advertising Source: WordCamp Auckland

How much traffic will top of Google get

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +1200
How much traffic will top of Google get? An advertising network Chitika published results of traffic into its network, and found some interesting numbers as to amount of traffic each position gets from Google.

From second (17%) to first (34%) ought to get you twice the traffic. From third (11%) to second (17%) should get you 49% more traffic

But 34% of what? This question has two parts to it:
what is 100% - in the table below, 100% is the total of the top 20 results. However, we know that there are additional links on Google search results. ie Google places map results, and possibly 10+ Google sponsored results. Each of these will get clicks.

a percentage of what total traffic? Via the Google search phrase tool, you can find out the specif ...
Source: How much traffic will top of Google get

I am Found

Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 +1200
Feeling lost, let God find you. A music video from my friend Craig Thompson.

In the business of SEO and web development you come across all sorts. I have worked with Craig Thompson in the USA for a number of years on his many websites. He has just released a music video "I am Found" talking about one of the most dear parts of my life, that of my belief in God.

I have been though a lot of personal strife in the last 2 years, but God has been by my side as my support.

This video speaks of how God's amazing love is able to find us in our darkest hour and be our support.

Listen and enjoy.

[[youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/CzqPYBGCUSM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]] ...
Source: I am Found

Technical Interview with Matt Cutts - Crawling and Indexing

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +1300
I have a lot of respect for Eric Enge and he has put together a great summary of a technical interview with Matt Cutts about Crawling and Indexing.

I will highlight a few points below, but the full article referenced above is well worth a detailed read.

Matt Cutts quotes:

Matt Cutts: "the number of pages that we crawl is roughly proportional to your PageRank"
Matt Cutts: "One idea is that if you have a certain amount of PageRank, we are only willing to crawl so much from that site. But some of those pages might get discarded, which would sort of be a waste"
Matt Cutts: "Imagine we crawl three pag ...
Source: Technical Interview with Matt Cutts - Crawling and Indexing

Country bias in Google Search Results

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +1300
What bias is there in Google search results to the country you are searching from? My findings are that there is not only a country bias in Google search results, but there is a regional bias. In New Zealand results from both Google.co.nz, and on Google.com as seen from New Zealand, I found a bias towards not only New Zealand websites, but Australian and UK websites!

Please see my previous articles on Geographic Targeting.

In general, country bias is shown when searching on your country specific Google - ie Google.co.nz, Google.com.au etc:
If

you have a country specific domain (ie .co.nz),

or a generic domain that is hosted in a specific country (ie .com hosted in ...
Source: Country bias in Google Search Results

Fickle Google

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +1300
Fickle Google! Competitive search phrases are not easy to maintain high rankings for given the fickleness of Google.

Basic SEO is easy. Just get the right words onto the page, and have the website SEO friendly with plenty of links coming into the domain. I do that to many websites and get great results.

But when you are competing for a competitive search phrase, you bear the full brunt of Google's anti spam algorithm intricacies, and the humanness of their programming engineers.

The ups and downs of my SearchMasters Marketing page
I wrote an article in Sept 2008 about my efforts in ranking for the phrase Marketing - Fickle Google

Backlinks can go stale

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +1300

Matt Cutts says that backlinks can go stale.

Matt Cutts said...
"In order to prevent things from becoming stale, we tend to use the current link graph, rather than a link graph of all of time,"

Matt Cutts (Google employee and unofficial SEO spokesperson) was replying to a question about the Geocity website shutting up shop, but in doing so, gave further detail about how linking is used in rankings.

[[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fia_1b07jCQ]]

So what does this mean?

In order t ...
Source: Backlinks can go stale

'Paid Links' can reduce Google PR

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +1300
Paid links can reduce Google PR. Removal of paid links followed by a reinclusion request can get PR back to what it should be - all within 7 days!.

Case Study - SLAMXHYPE
I recently consulted with SLAMXHYPE for SEO of their mens fashion website. Part of the SEO question was why their Google PR was so low. With thousands of incoming links, their Google PR was only PR3. I considered their PR should have been a PR5-6.

I noted there were sitewide footer links to 24+ other websites in a COMPLEX Media Network. The links were not proper search ...
Source: 'Paid Links' can reduce Google PR

Google Personalised Search

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +1300

How well does your websites pages rank on Google? Google Personalised Search has gone the next step, introducing personalised search results even for not logged on users. When you are manually checking your websites rankings on Google, if you often click through onto your website via Google, your site is likely to rank higher than it would otherwise.

As an SEO Consultant, I want to make sure that I turn off all search personalisation so that I can see the true rankings on Google for a client.

I need to make sure that I am firstly logged out (and I have Google Personalised Search

Christchurch Motels - 162 Kings of Riccarton - SEO Case Study

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1300

The hotel industry is intensely competitive, and it is not easy to get websites ranked high for Motel/Hotel related phrases. An SEO case study for 162 Kings of Riccarton Motel.

162 Kings of Riccarton Christchurch Motels - an upmarket Christchurch Motel with a range of room types from 1 and 2 bedroom units, to luxury studio rooms.

The 162kings.co.nz Christchurch Motels website is hosted with AA and has a simple AA based content management system that allows text of the page to be edited within a pre ...
Source: Christchurch Motels - 162 Kings of Riccarton - SEO Case Study

SEO of News websites - BBC makes changes

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1300
SEO of news websites is interesting. Headlines and intros need to be catchy and short for readers, yet they are generally too short, and don't properly include search phrases.

The BBC has acknowledged the issue, and has made changes to the way it lists stories on its pages by including another data entry point for stories - longer headlines for the web.

Rather than having a headline as say:
"Doctor 'responsible' says Jackson"

They will include the full names:
"Janet Jackson blames doctor for Michael's death"

An example from todays news:
short headline for home page: "Ma ...
Source: SEO of News websites - BBC makes changes

Google Side Wiki

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1300

Google side wiki - Did you know that people can publicly comment in html enabled notes attached to your website? When you have the latest Google toolbar installed, you can click to see publicly available notes attached to each and every page of your website. People that are logged into Google can add notes to the sidewiki.

This has the potential of being a public relations nightmare for businesses if they do not handle it properly. Notes can be submitted for removal, and c ...
Source: Google Side Wiki

Public Relations Agency - ImpactPR - SEO Case Study

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1300

Impact PR is an Auckland Public Relations agency whose aim is to utilise the press to bring clients to the mind of their target consumer.

Part of that exercise is to bring their own Impact PR website to the mind of their target consumer. And where better to be found than higher on the search engines.

Impact PR - Click through to find out about the Public Relations expertise Qantas Media Award winning journalist Fleur Revell can bring to your organisation.

SEO and web development issues
With a domain n ...
Source: Public Relations Agency - ImpactPR - SEO Case Study