Thursday, April 30, 2009

Joomla SEO Checklist - Search Engine Optimization for Joomla

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Joomla is the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the Opensource world. It's flexible and user friendly features are contributing in it's popularity as a CMS. Packt Publishing has been awarding Joomla as the best CMS for couple of years. However, apart from awards, Joomla also became popular to many users around the world, since it is the most sophisticated CMS, a person get for free.

However, the default Joomla Template is not at all search engine friendly. Therefore, every Joomla site needs to be further optimized for the search engines.

Joomla SEO - No it doesn't say sex. It's just your eyes :-)

There are many things you can do to make your Joomla site search engine friendly. In this task list/checklist, I am listing some of the major SEO tasks you can do for your Joomla site with some of the new and advance techniques in the SEO industry:

PRE-SEO


Common Search Engine Optimization tasks for every site.

  • Keyword Research and Analysis
  • Competitor and Related Site Analysis
  • Content Analysis (Check duplicates with copyscape and check relevance)
  • Page, Category Level, and Article Level Onpage SEO Analysis (through Web CEO or iBusiness Promoter)
  • Current Link Architecture Analysis
  • Old Link Architecture Analysis (through Archive.org's Wayback Machine)
  • Onpage SEO Checklist Preparation (if you don't plan to do it yourself).

ONSITE-SEO


General Search Engine Optimization tasks that are not page specific.

  • Install and Modify Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs (Choose among JoomSEF, SH404SEF, SEF Advance, etc.)
  • Rename the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess.
  • Configure or update SEF for other plugins like: VirtueMart, SOBI, etc.
  • Mod Rewrite (htaccess) for SEF and old/broken links and create 301 Permanent redirect, so that no link juice spills out of your site or you miss none on other sites.
  • Elliminate the duplicate URL problem with SEF. However, most SEF Components now come with the feature to redirect duplicate URLs to one URL.
  • Dissolve the Pagination problem that affects the site after installing SEF with default configuration.
  • After fully implementing SEF URLs, use HTTrack Website Copier to cache the SEF URLs. Because after implementing SEF, the URLs individually create 404 errors.
  • Install Web Analytics Scripts (Google Analytics, Statcounter, etc.)
  • Install Canonical URLs to direct all files properly to neWWW location. If you are satisfied with non-WWW URLs, then it will do you no harm. But, be consistant.
  • Install Joomla Sitemaps Plugin (Joomap, LiveMap, SEF Service Map) or make one from XML-Sitemaps.com (if your site has less than 500 pages)
  • Submit site and sitemap to Google Webmaster Central and verify the site,
  • Optimize your RSS feeds, enable subscription, "Publicize Your Feed" with FeedBurner
  • Implement multilingual capability if required.

ONPAGE-SEO


Search Engine Optimization tasks specific to pages.

Meta SEO

  • Install the Joomla SEO Patch, so that you have the full freedom to tailor custom Meta Information, like - Keywords and Description Meta tags.
  • Switch Title Tag Placement from "Site Name - Article Page Title" to "Article Page Title - Site Name". i.e. bring the most important keyword first. Also make sure that your <title> tag is the first tag after <head> tag.
  • Ensure that each article's Short Description or Summary is the Description Meta Tag. It's not cool to auto generate the description meta.
  • Install JoomSEO Metabot to generate automated keywords on the fly. However, don't automate other onpage SEO features.
  • Alternatively, if you have less pages in your site, don't automate. It's always better to have hand-coded strategic keywords in the Keywords Meta
  • Commonly use Robots Meta to Index and Follow (index,follow) the pages that are important for you.
  • Alternatively, make sure that the duplicate contents in the site have Robots Meta saying "noindex,follow" (tell Google not to index, but to follow).
  • Use noarchive, noodp, nosnippet, etc. in Robots Meta, if you are bugged by scrappers or don't like the result you see in Google. Otherwise, leave it.
  • Use country, language, and encoding Meta Tags for Local Search Engines.
  • Try to avoide unnecessary Meta Information from page

SEO for Link Architecture

  • Analyze Link Architecture and determine plan for relevant link structure for proper link juice flow.
  • Integrate Nofollow for pages that are totally irrelevant. Strategically implement Page Rank Sculpting or Siloing and other Nofollowing techniques.
  • Use various XFN Relationship Tags for links in the Joomla site that are duplicate (rel="canonical"), similar/related (rel="me"), dependents/partners (rel="friend"), external (rel="external"), irrelevant (rel="nofollow"). This is not proven that these XFN Relationships other than Nofollow will affect SEO. But, it's always worth it to be ready for the future.

Joomla Template Customization - SEO Copyediting

  • Call the page title ($myPageTitle;) at the top and at the bottom of the page.
  • Use bread-crumb or pathway to link to respective category page
  • Use related page module to generate a set of links to the related pages from the article level page. e.g. for VirtueMart, you can use related products module or show products that says, "You may also be interested in these products".
  • Plant H1 tag for Page Title in the Body Tag for the most important keyword placeholder.
  • Configure the site with H2 and H3 Tags for other important keyword placeholders.
  • Social Media Optimize (SMO) the site for greater shareability.
  • Copywrite/rewrite the duplicate contents, if your site has contents copied from other sites.
  • Optimize CSS for outlook and the greater freedom to use Bold and H1, H2, H3 tags.
  • Use a site layout heavily based on CSS and <div> or tableless CSS.
  • W3C Validate the site without any warning or errors. However, for Joomla, this can be a tough job.
  • Outsource the Java Script to external files as much as you can before the </head> tag.
  • Clean up unnecessary Markups, e.g. use of <b>, <span> or <h1> in blank space is not necessary.
  • Reduce the Code : Content Ratio as much as you can.
  • Optimize the Images for the search engines.
  • Create and activate a compelling 404 Error page. Remember to copy Google's 404 scripts from your Google Webmaster Central account and paste it in that page.
  • Remember that Multilingual Optimization with Joomfish also needs tweaking for other components and plugin as well.

Disclaimer: This task list assumes that you already have a site and using linux server. And this Joomla SEO Checklist is not a complete one, since there are endless tasks you can perform to increase the traffic of your site or just increase ROI.

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

SEO Perspective on 301 Permanent Redirects for Old Broken Links

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Sites are not just created, they also evolve. Sites throw away the old bottle and replace it with a new bottle. But, little does the site owners know that they are also throwing away precious old wine of link juice along with their old bottle. Even many webmasters and Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) forget about this fact.

The common evolution pattern is Plain HTML site > Animated Flash site > Content Management System (CMS) site. However, for many sites, the pattern can be more complex. And during each change, many webmasters and site owners don't bother about redirecting the old links to the right page or link. But, this not only harms the visitors, but also the search engines.

301 Permanent Redirects and SEO Value Transfer

301 Permanent Redirects transfers all the SEO value you can think of for a site including: PageRank, Authority, Link Juice, etc. So, if a site has inbound links from high PageRank pages that is not present in the site or leads to a 404 page, then the possibility of getting the link juice and authority for the page is near to zero. Because, the keyword stream flowing the link juice may not land on page that has that desired keyword. And since the Google Bomb Update, incoming anchor texts coming to a page that does not have the keyword, has very little or no probability to rank well in Google.

But, does 301 Redirects Transfer Age?

Well, the question whether 301 Permanent Redirects transfer age is much debated. However, there is no harm in permanently redirecting your old links to the relevant new links. If it is broken, then you are bleeding the link juice out of your site :-o

It is evident that using 301 Permanent Redirect to redirect old links to relevant page in your existing site is one of the best practices in SEO. Because, there may be many links out there that are linking to your specific page with specific anchor text. So feeding both your visitors and search engines with relevant information instead of a nice 404 page, is the best thing you can do.

WHAT TO DO THEN?

Find Old Links and Anchor Texts

First you have to find out what were your old links. If you were the site owner, you may know after hard guessing. But, if it is your client's site, then guess can never work. The best way to find them is by using Archive.org.

From there, you have to collect links from all available chronological versions of the site. You also need to store the Anchor Texts used for the link, so that you can find relevant current page to redirect.

Identify Broken Links

Once you collect all the old links, you have to verify if the link is broken. Xenu's Link Sleuth can help you in automatically identify broken links. However, for working 404 pages, you might get wrong results, since it will show 200 OK Status. So, it would be wise to turn off the 404 pages for the time being. However, there are many software that can help you identify broken links.

Identify the Relevant Current Page

Once the broken link is identified, go to Google and search within your site with the Anchor Text of the broken link. e.g. you can search for ["Anchor Text of the Broken Link" site:mysite.com] in Google. The first result you get from the search, is the most relevant current page in the eye of Google. Once you get the relevant current page, then you are ready to redirect.

301 Permanent Redirect Using .htaccess

For 301 permanent redirects, you need to manipulate the .htaccess file in your root folder of your site. Tony Spencer over SEOBook.com provides a good article on how you can do it, once you have the list of old links and the corresponding new links.

Prepare for the Future

So the next time you plan to upgrade your site, it is wise to have a back up of your current link structure along with the old ones. So, when your site takes on new links, you can easily create 301 permanent redirect for the current links to the relevant future site.

The 301 Twist

Some SEOs believe that old links are stronger in getting ranks than newer links, if the content freshness is periodically maintained. So, you can switch the previous method and use the old link as the current link and permanently (301) redirect the current link to the old link.

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Is SEO Expenditure an Expense or Asset? Or Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?

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Your website is your intellectual real estate. Even though you bear annual variable cost of maintaining the site, the cost never can be labeled as expense. After finishing your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) to market your site, are they incurring expense or adding value to your website? Let’s start with some definition:

Expense in terms of asset: The portion of the asset or capital given away as variable cost for specific utility that has no reusability and to get the same utility, you have to pay again. e.g. advertising cost.

Asset in terms of expenditure: The expenditure invested as fixed cost for specific utility that has reusability. So with the investment, you get the same utility for a certain period of time. Please note that all assets are perishable, except for real estates. e.g. your computer is an asset not expense, but if you rent it, then it is an expense.

Is SEO Cost and Expense or Asset?

The accounting formula

Asset = Liability + Equity
i.e. Equity = Asset - Liability
in another analog, Profit = Capital – Expense

According to this formula, you can get more profit by decreasing expenditure or increasing capital. Remember that cost on capital is fixed in nature, but expense can be variable. Now, in terms of gaining profitability, how should the expenditure on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) be labeled? As “Capital” or “Expense”?

Investment in SEO an Expense or Asset?

PPC is somewhat a marketing expenditure. It is instantly perishable and each time you have to buy advertisement to get customers to your site. PPC is a variable cost. So, this affects the expense, not the asset.

But, SEO is not like that. Because, it is not intended for short term marketing. SEO has reusability and brings you customers even after the SEO is finished. SEO expenditure has no attribute to be labeled as variable cost.

So, SEO expense is a capital expenditure which increases your asset and should never be treated as expense, since it adds value (not cost) to your site.

Does SEO Cost Influence Profitability?

We have tried to convince some customers that SEO doesn't affect your profitability. Because, it becomes your asset. And asset is not expenditure that would negatively influence your profitability. The perishable behavior of SEO, may make it seem like expense. But, all assets are perishable. And we own a lot of short timed assets. So, if SEO expenditure is an asset, then you are increasing investment, not giving away money. So, it never negatively affect profitibility, rather it should affect possitively.

Update on Advertising

Advertising and PPC cost as I have said are "Expenses". But this may not be the case. It can also turn into asset if you can make a strong brand out of your business. KFC is still making money from Bangladesh and India and not a single chicken is coming from Kentuky. Their previous advertising has paid off and made their Brand and Goodwill as an asset. So, the next time you advertise for growing your brand, please remeber that you are investing, not spending.

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Death Of “Web 2.0″ - I don't Think So, We are Living the Web 2.0 Dream

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There may be economic downturn in recent years, but this is not going to stop the technological development. Sometimes, the buzz for a technology falls when we are using the technology. The technological development has always seen rapid growth. The growth of Web 2.0 wouldn't change too, unless Web 3.0 comes in, which I believe will be nothing but convergence of many media.

In a recent article in my Favorite blog TechCrunch, Robin Wauters wrote an article titling, "The Death Of Web 2.0". In his article he has analyzed the fall of Web 2.0 buzz through Google Analytics and Insights and showed that the Trend for the term "Web 2.0" has started to fall.

I would like to differ and provide some comment on the article.

Google Trend and Google Insights shows the buzz that is going on with a specific keyword. The buzz that stopped growing and started falling doesn't mean that the thing is dead. The fact is, the thing is very much alive and we stopped creating buzz about it, since we now know what it is. Let me show you the same examples for the keyword "Internet":

From the image, we can see that the keyword "Internet" have had a steady fall from 2004. Does it mean that Internet is steadily dieing? Or does it mean, it's not a buzz word, it used to be before 2004.

In my sense, the trend that goes up shows people's dreams. When a trend goes up, the dream is also high, which creates the buzz. But, when you are living the dream, you go on with new thing to dream about. That's what happening to "Internet". We are living the dream today.

So, shouldn't we say that we are also living the "Web 2.0 Dream".

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Google Kickout Penalization or Google Sandbox is a Myth Now

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Yamin Noor

Can you please let me know what are the prime factor for Google indexing? And when Google penalizes most???

Asif Anwar

Google Kickout Penalization (or Google Sandbox) is a myth now. Google now does filtering and clustering to keep unnecessary results out. You'll find most pages indexed, but not coming in results as a prominent page. However, manual Google penalization or kickout is also done. But, mostly done with algorithms.

Google indexes any page that it finds on the pages stored in their repository or cached page. So, a good way to get indexed and stay indexed in Google is by having links from pages that are already in Google. You have to make sure that the link to your site is not using nofollow tags.

But, the better way to do it is through sitemaps. I have posted a blog on how to use sitemaps for your site to help Google to index your pages.

Google dislikes: duplicate contents, hidden texts (e.g white text with white background), cloaking (robots-based redirects to another set of contents) and a lot of others. And most of these may penalize you for lesser appearance in search results. For a peek on how duplicate content filter penalizes the search results, you can see this.

But, when you search for "site:http://www.yoursite.com" in Google, you'll always find it.

_______________________________ Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Future Google Search Page or Search Engine Result Page (SERP) - A Vision

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Background: I have aired a question in LinkedIn to seek peoples' vision of the future of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) or Google Search Page. I got very interesting answers and I am thankful to all the people that replied.

In my prophecy article, I have mentioned that internet search will become more user-friendly and visual (as the 2nd of 13 prophecies). This post puts more light on this prophecy.

As the speed of internet increases, as the number of pages in the websphere increases, and as the participation of the people with web increase over time, Search Engines like Google would be able to and have to provide more features and user experience to stay in top of the competition. Here are some of my vision for future Search Engine Result Page (SERP):

Future Google Search Page - Search Engine Result Page (SERP) Vission/Prophecy Please click the image for larger view

Visual Results

We will see more visual results in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Search results will become more visible than the current text-based results we see today. So, you can have a peek on the results before you plan to click and open it. I hope you have seen quick preview pop-in by Snapshot for external link in WordPress that gives you the preview before opening it. Interactive function like mouse-over preview and expansion will increase visitor experience.

Supplemented Results as “More results from this site”

Some times you see Google results that are from the same site and supplemented or indented inward. This option eats up a position for a page. i.e. a site stays in 2 position in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This creates a problem for you see other pages. I believe that Google come with resolution for this problem and make other pages from the site mentioning the searched keyword would be easily viewed.

Visibility of the Similar Pages

Currently, the similar page result is provided as link at bottom of the result. However, as things are going to be visible, we would be able to preview similar pages as well. That way, you can have similar pages all together. Pages with duplicate contents can also fall under this option. When you mouse-over the “View Similar Pages” button, you would be able to see more results within the results and search faster than ever. This will show pages that follow similar themes, duplicate contents, similar conversions, etc.

Site Conversation

Almost every page has a link to another page. Many people talk about, praise, and criticize the site in another page, site, forum, social media, etc. A mouse-over sensitive button saying “View Pages Talking About This Site” will help you to view these sites as well. Currently, for buying we do background search for a company or a product to choose the best one. But, for that we make more than one search. But, this option will meet all your search needs in one search. This will also provide insights to conversations with nofollow tags on other pages.

More Search Result

Due to the growth of the web, instead of the default top 10 results, SERPs can reflect this growth with default top 15-20 results. Moreover, as the similar and linked pages can be viewed, you would have the flexibility to view more than 200 results in same place.

Video Advertisement - AdScreen

The advertisements will be replaced by videos. Moreover, the era of video search has started and you now can find videos saying the keyword in Youtube. So, the sponsored videos can get broad matching for the search keywords. Advertisement can come as autoplay videos (obviously with a Pause button) from the highest bidder of the keyword. Like AdWords, this will be called AdScreen.

This is my vision of the future Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

More future shock:

See the variety of visual results in Ask.com for Angelina Jolie (Suggested by: Harald Anderson)

See the use of visual search in SearchMe Beta (Suggested by: Allan Svelmøe Hansen)

A new search engine with interactive fucntion, FleeQ (Suggested by: Jonathan W. Logan)

This site shows up when you search Google Visual Search: OnlineiLink.com

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Friday, September 5, 2008

Should SEO and SEM Marry Each Other, Date or Just Stay Single?

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Lorna Li says in: SEO + SEM: Should SEO & SEM be jointly managed in one department?

In my previous question "How to build an enterprise SEO program & team from scratch" http://is.gd/Nxr I am exploring am exploring what the ideal structure of a top-tier, fully fledged enterprise Search Engine Marketing program should look like.

From my research, there appears to be a number of recommendations as to why SEO and SEM should be closely integrated, or at least managed in the same group, rather than in completely separate departments, or farmed out to different agencies.

Should SEO & SEM "married"? Why? Please explain the benefits of close collaboration between the SEO and SEM teams.

What are the disadvantages that come with separation and lack of transparency between the 2 programs. What happens if SEO and SEM are handled by different agency vendors and how do you recommend overcoming the separation. What specific information needs to be shared between the 2?

Image courtesy: SXC.HU (My favourite Free Stock Image Site)

Asif Anwar says:

I presume that you are referring SEO as Organic Search Marketing and SEM as other paid Search Marketing (e.g. PPC, PPM, and Search Engine Placement). Anyway, it's all about keywords and search. In that sense, both have same goal. So, is the goal so common that they should get married. Or should SEO and SEM date, or just stay single?

What if SEO and SEM get married?

Let's define marriage first:

"Marriage is about mutual understanding and about the economy of utilizing the limited combined resources in an efficient way for better life, if not, better future."

Well, that's not a perfect one, but in Economics, it should sound like that. If I translate that for corporate language than it would be this:

Mutual Understanding

If SEO and SEM are operating differently, then they are learning in different ways. This can mean doing the same homework over and over again. Not doing the homework separately is very healthy for the economy. That's why we see the giant companies acquiring (or marrying) the small companies. So that, the homework is not done again in the same economy. Even though, the giants have the setup to do it all over again. But, that's bad for the industry. You are increasing the competition without adding any value to the economy. So, whoever the husband between SEO or SEM is, both of their understanding can help each other greatly. The SEM can use the learning from SEO and vice versa to reduce marketing cost and increase ROI. Isn't that what the companies and advertisers are looking for? With mutual understanding, they can mutually reduce their homework and add value to the economy.

Utilizing Combined Resources

Before marriage, you probably have been using a small blender for milk shake that served your need. But, after marriage you can afford a better blender, which costs less than 2 blenders alone. i.e. you can also cut the capital investment and cost if you have them together. Moreover, they also can interchange their duties to perform other tasks.

Utilizing Limited Resources

You definitely have a budget for your marketing, from which you can't go beyond. So, you should economize on getting more sales with less money. Since you are in fixed budget for SEO, you can cutout the variable budget for PPC, when you have competitive advantage in organic results for a specific keyword. So, for PPC you can only explore the markets, where you don't have competitive advantage on. That's should make the great use of your limited budget. So, managing these in separate units would mean extra cost for you, since there wouldn't be any synchronization between these two units.

Utilizing Resources in an Efficient Way

When you have total understanding of Internet Marketing, you can have the flexibility to implement your strategy and set the players in the field. Thereby, you can play a good and strategic game utilizing every resource efficiently. Moreover, you can also reduce waste or spillover, which is a major factor in reducing cost and maximizing profit.

Enjoying a Better Life

Companies can gain greater ROI from the marriage and the management can also get all the information for their strategy from one source. So, that'll make life easier and comfortable. It is obvious that combined SEO and SEM saves money for you. In return, you get greater ROI.

For a Better Future

In harsh situations, when comfortable life can't be ensured, marriages are made in the intention to have better future. Investments are also like this. Getting the reward right away isn't possible. Combined investment in SEO and SEM can mean quicker break even. Moreover, as resources are utilized efficiently, the chance of having better life is quicker than having them separated.

What are alternatives if they can't marry each other?

Date each other?

Now, if it happens that SEO and SEM can't marry, then they can go out on dates from time to time to share things together. Even if they are separate, they should share each others learning from time to time by synchronizing each other and go toward a mutual understanding. That way, some cost for advertising and marketing can be reduced by removing Ad spending away from SEM, when SEO has organically reached its goal for a specific keyword. However, it can be more time consuming if you are to synchronize learning within these units.

Be neighbors?

If they don't synchronize, then the best way to learn from each other is by staying in the same premises and experiencing social and corporate activities together. That also can expand their learning.

What happens if SEO and SEM are Single?

SEO and SEM in the isolated island may mean loss in terms of the many benefits I mentioned above. But, not always their marriage is necessary. Their marriage can encourage cost reduction. But sometimes for the sake of online branding and converting visitors into sales takes more than strict control of organic search marketing and paid search advertisement.

In the sales funnel, from visitors to sales, the communication and information feeding should be made several times before the purchase. So, limiting your doorways for the visitors to your business can harm you, if you are planning to sale big.

In case of online sales funnel, remember that:

  • Not all search engine visitors are your customers,
  • All those that find you when searching may not be your customer (direct competion starts here)
  • All the people that return to your site, doesn't mean that they will make an inquiry,
  • All the people that makes an inquiry about your product or services, doesn't mean that they will purchase your product.

So, in all stages of the sales funnel, there should be multiple ways for the visitor to get information about your company or product. If you have done SEO and simulteniously running PPC for content network (AdWords for AdSense), the chances are, when the visitor is reading something related, s/he might come back to your site.

Otherwise, after going a long way, the visitor might buy from the last good outlet s/he could remember, even though you were in top of the search (SEO efficient) when s/he found you earlier. This happens to us always, when we go to a special product mall. Everyone visits the front stalls, but you happen to buy from a stall inside the mall. There is almost no extra competitive advatage for being the front stall (SEO effecient), when you have product that visitors always move around to find a good burgain.

Another fact is, the objectives of SEO and SEM is not same. Most of the time SEM/PPC concetrates on Conversion and SEO on Branding & Reputation Building. I said "most of the time", not "always". e.g. Most popular keywords may not convert well and will mean unnecessary PPC spending on visitors that are not in action mood to purchase. But, popular keywords are good for Branding and Branding is one of the major target of SEO. This difference in objectives is a good reason to stay in separate units.

Confused? Well, if you have a product that visitors doesn't care much about going for a good burgain (usually for cheaper products), having SEO and minor PPC dating is sufficient. If you are a small company, then having SEO and SEM get married would be a right choice. If you want to sell big, then SEO and SEM should stay single.

_____________________________

Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Sunday, July 13, 2008

3rd SEM Scholarship Contest by Marketing Pilgrim and My Result

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The result for the 3rd SEM Scholarship Contest of Marketing Pilgrim finally has been declared. And sorry to say that I didn’t win the scholarship. However, I am glad that I have made myself (my article) into the 5 finalists, competing with 31 other capable Internet Marketers. I believe this is a great achievement from Bangladesh with literally 1/3rd electricity availability time (in peak hours) and 1/16th of internet speed than USA.

The winner is Linda Bustos for her article: 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do to Mess up Their Analytics. Congratulations Linda! Her article was really a masterpiece, which won her many votes from the judges. I came in as 2nd Runner Up both in terms of votes and traffic separately. But, votes and traffic combined I am the 4th among these 5 finalists. And, here is the result:

The good news is, I have the highest Time on Page (4 min 36 seconds). So, that makes my article getting the most time attention from the visitors. I am not sure, but that should mean more conversion (sales), shouldn’t it? ;-)

This traffic report was not provided to the participants before the result was published. However, I had the confidence that I would make it to the final 5. Obviously, I knew what I was doing and how that can affect my traffic. However, some figures also have assured me to stay on this belief. e.g. I had the highest number comments with highest number of visitor comments. Here are some of the figures:

All Figures are for Comments made Before June 30, 2008

Article

Total Comments

Author Comments

Trackback Comments

Visitor Comments

8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To...

49

9

18

22

A Bulletproof SEO Strategy for Real ...

30

2

5

23

13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing

52

4

14

34

The Process of Producing Web Traffic …

16

2

2

12

New Technique for Optimizing Flash Sites ...

16

2

2

12

If want to see them graphically, then here you go:

I was also convinced by the number of results in Google for the exact term of the Article Titles. For the exact Article Title term in Google, the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) showed highest 929 Web Results in Google (at July 13, 2008). Please have a look at the number of results Google possesses for each of the 5 finalists:

I would like to give special thanks to all the people in my network, especially in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Orkut. I would also like to specially thank those who have taken the initiative to blog for my article. It was really a tough time for me, but I really had great fun.

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers