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Hospice Walk 2008
11 April 2008
read on...
Web Solutions Website to be Relaunched
31 March 2008
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New Websites Launched
23 January 2008
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Do you want to combat SPAM / JUNK Mail?
13 January 2008
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RECIPROCAL LINKS?
2nd November 2007
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WHAT DOES LEED'S & HUMBERSIDE HAVE IN COMMON?
12th October 2007
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"TOP RANKINGS IN GOOGLE GUARANTEED" REALLY? NO!
17th September 2007
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GOOGLE CHECKOUT
14th August 2007
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GOOGLE AND DOMAIN NAMES
31st July 2007
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LARGE TENDER WON
8th June 2007
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WEBSITES LAUNCHED
4th May 2007
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GOOGLE BOMBS DEFUSED?
28th February 2007
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VALENTINE'S DAY!
14th February 2007
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MERRY CLICK-MAS
12th December 2006
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IMPROVING THE RANKINGS OF INTERNATIONAL WEBSITES
20th December 2006
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THE NOTICE BOARD LAUNCHES
15th September 2006
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IT'S COMING!
4th August 2006
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THE NOTICE BOARD LAUNCHES
15th September 2006
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TESTIMONIAL
12th July 2006
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GOOGLE'S NEW ADS BOT
30th June 2006
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GOOGLE SUPPLEMENTAL INDEX
30th June 2006
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FOOTY HEAVEN
29th June 2006
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GOOGLE CLICK FRAUD CASE
22nd May 2006
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HAVE YOU GONE HEELY'S?
16th May 2006
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GOOGLE COMPLETES "BIG DADDY" UPDATE
19th April 2006
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PRESS LAUNCH
Ballymena Borough Council
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GOOGLE REMOVES SEO COMPANY FROM THEIR INDEX
15th February 2006
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HOSPICE WALK 2006
Keep fit and help a terriffic cause
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SEARCH ENGINE USAGE
Analysis Report
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HOSTING DEALS
Are you paying to much for your hosting?
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MICROSOFT PARTNER
We only use the best stuff
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NATURAL HAIR COMPANY
Stunning
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TESTIMONIAL
Many Thanks Guys - You're the Best.Trevor Falconer North Irish Militaria
read on...

 

Hospice Walk 2008

This year's NI Hospice Walk is now well on its way. Please give generously to this very worthwhile event. Web Solutions NI Ltd wishes all the participants great success.


Web Solutions Website to be Relaunched

A revamp of the Web Solutions NI website is currently underway. Watch this space !!


New Websites Launched

Take a look at the new websites launched in our Recent Work section.


Do you want to combat SPAM / JUNK Mail?

Is your mailbox cluttered with unwanted email?

Do you frequently receive large numbers of unsolicited email(commonly referred to as spam or junk mail)?

The volume of spam email sent over the Internet in recent months has dramatically increased.

Web Solutions NI Ltd can now offer you an add-on email service to combat this and help reduce the level of spam mail you receive.

This service offers a low-cost investment to provide you with the ultimate protection against spam email.

Web Solutions NI Ltd can fully configure the service to your own unique preferences, allowing you to reduce the volume of spam email received which in turn decreases the time wasted by you on filtering unwanted email.

If you would like to avail of this new service, then contact Web Solutions NI Ltd without delay to take advantage of this great new low-cost service.


RECIPROCAL LINKS?

By Scott Goodyear

What do you think of when you hear the words "Reciprocal Link Exchange"? (The title reciprocallinksarenotdead, is intentional, I'll tell you why at the end of the post.) I usually think of all of those lousy spam emails that we all get from time to time. You know the type, emails from various web sites that are completely unrelated to SEO or online marketing with text similar to: "We are interested in exchanging links with your site. Exchanging links can bring more business for both our sites and, as you may know, can increase our search engine traffic because Google ranks sites higher that have a good number of relevant links. We will add your link on http://www.somewebsitesellingstuffedanimals.com/linkexchange58.htm..." The problem is that these guys don't really get how reciprocal linking does and does not work.

How Reciprocal Linking Does Work

Reading SEOBlackHat the other day, I saw a link to this forum discussion about Pole Position Marketing's (PPM) post that "Reciprocal Links Are (Still) Not Dead" (you can also find the post on PPM's blog under: Your Mamma Don't Dance and Reciprocal Links Are Not Dead). PPM created several web pages on their site, mainly non-sense filler pages like this one, that link out to non-reciprocating pages or that link to pages that reciprocate a link back to PPM's site. One example of a reciprocating link is this page on PPM and the link at the bottom of the Up North Sports home page which links back to the main PPM home page with the text "WebSite Promotion Services":

The big discovery in PPM's article, in my own boiled down way, is that linking from lame door way pages with non-competative keyword phrases like "Reciprocallinksarenotdead" can cause both reciprocal and non-reciprocal pages to appear for non-competative keyword phrases in the search results. In PPM's own words:
"We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links. Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive"." Here is the blog post that PPM is referencing.

What are excessive reciprocallinks?

So what are "excessive" reciprocal links? There are lots of combinations where excessiveness can pop up. I'm going to give you a really obvious example of "excessive". Keep in mind that this is just one example.

Say you had a site that was all about pies, baking pies, eating pies, pies in the movies, pie reviews, etc. It would makes sense to have a variety of links pointing to your site. Pies have a potetnial appeal to just about every one (I like ice cream more). What if they have a "resources" section on their site and rather than lots of links pointing to pie related sites, they link to a variety of sites with just about every topic under the sun?

Lets also say that they have several pages like the reciprocallinksarenotdead page above. These pages may or may not be part of the normal flow of the site's navigation. The pages may be secretively hidden in a site map (hidden away from most visitors), or have a no-follow or other method to try to keep engines from them, or not. They often use page names like link.htm, links2.htm, ylinks.htm, glinks.html, glinks.htm, gpages55.htm, yhooresources.asp, and similar file or folder extensions. The file name or extension alone probably doesn't trip an alarm in the engines every time, but with other features like excessive links on a page, this certainly could cause a page to stick out like a red flag. Pages like the mock up above risk a site or page's ability to help itself to improved rankings or pass on any "popularity" to the sites that it links to. In Google terms, this creates a "bad neighborhood" and can be seen as an attempt to trick an engine into providing more page rank to you.

An Example of non excessive linking, please?

So what is not excessive? In my cheesy graphic above, I used the this Web 2.0 logo creator. Now, I didn't exchange links with the creator of the logo, but lets pretend for a second, that I did. Lets also pretend that the link just before this sentence was a link back from a link exchange. And lets additionally pretend that there was a blog on h-master.net where the Web 2.0 logo creator had a post back to MarketPosition and the blog had a past that said something like:
"10/17/07
Hey, look at this, I'm being features on sites like Valleywag, Fireworks Guru Forum, and MarketPosition. You must really like some of my flash based Web 2.0 parody pages. Thanks! If there is enough feedback, I'll create more things like this."

Certainly not excessive. A normal link and normal content for what you would find in most blogs, both on our site and in the imaginary blog that he might have, if he had a blog. If this situation were real, you wouldn't be able to tell if this was a link exchange, or me just commenting about his tool, linking to it, and him commenting back. By the way, this is also how paid links fly under the radar.

Summary of reciprocallinksarenotdead

So, link exchange dead? It was never dead. There were just some that used it in a non-excessive way and flew under the radar. There were others that don't understand what it means to be subtle and who incidentally flag themselves to the engines, and don't really help themselves in their original goal of obtaining improved rankigns for competative keywords. If you have an obscure term like Reciprocallinksarenotdead, it is entirely possible to rank on it by exchanging links with another web sites that has pages of non-sense filler content and a few simple links. It is also possible for a web page that doesn't even use the term "reciprocallinksarenotdead", to rank based on a few links from nonsense pages, this is a mini-Google bomb if you will. But for more competative terms? Probably not, then you are looking at much more filtering by engines like Google. Are your links used subtly, the way a car or other product is placed on a TV show or movie with out drawing a ton of attention to it? Or is your linking unsubtle like looking at a Nascar that is plastered with advertisements from grill to tailpipe? Depending on how your linking is set up and how competitive your target keyword is, this will likely make all the difference in the world as to your opinion on whether "link exchanges" are dead or whether obvious attempts to game the search engines through links, is nearing the end of usefulness.

====

By the way, as of 10/26/07, 2 days after this post was made, this post - the one you are reading, now ranks for "reciprocallinksarenotdead". Google and Yahoo have indexed this page and other pages off of MarketPosition.com, but they do not report that any one else is linking to this article yet. So, not a tough keyword to rank on.



WHAT DOES LEED'S & HUMBERSIDE HAVE IN COMMON?

They come to Web Solutions NI when they want a good website or special build bespoke software - thats what they have in common! A photographer from Leed's has ordered a website and an Open College in Humberside is using some of our Special Build Software. We welcome the connection and hope it can assure others that distance is no obstacle to dealing with us.


"TOP RANKINGS IN GOOGLE GUARANTEED" REALLY? NO!

Scott Goodyear

SEO has a reputation problem. While every web site wants to have a top ranking (or 20) in Google, web site owners can get burned by search engine marketers who over promise and under deliver. Because of this and other issues, some view SEOs as "sharks circling the unwary"; not unlike used car sales people and ambulance chasing lawyers. I summarize my attendance of the "The SEO Reputation Problem" session at SES San Jose below and offer a few thoughts on the issue.

Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive, Kristopher Jones of Pepperjam, Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide, Jonathan Hochman of Hochman Consultants, and Kathleen Fealy of SEMPO and KFMultimedia & Web were on hand to discuss the state of SEO reputation. Overall, SEO is a fairly young profession with roots in both marketing and information technology but because of it's newness, it is sensitive to negative publicity that occurs. The session was mainly Q/A with the audience, but each of the presenters had a short story or point to relate before the Q/A began.

Shari Thurow began the session by describing her experience as a Microsoft Search Champ a few years back. After attending a a kind of "summit" for online marketers at Microsoft, she came across a post from one of the attendees that expressed some of the public perception of SEOs. Mary Hodder of Napsterization wrote: "I'm at a search event at Microsoft.. of the 32 or so people.. there are about six search engine optimization people here. Kind of like being at the FBI and having criminals helping out in the room..." Shari said that as she unable to reply to this blog post directly, but she did end up "replying" in other ways... by speaking out about SEO on the web, in conferences, posting an article in a journal aimed at librarians, speaking at colleges, and so on. She also believes that we need to teach people how to find and identify good and bad search results and to dislodge the notion that a first place ranking in Google is always the best answer when one is searching.

Guarantees, like the overblown one in the title of this article, are items that web site owners should look out for when searching for an online marketer according to Kristopher Jones of Pepperjam. Too many companies try to find short cuts to gaining rankings and end up going with marketing companies that have over blown promises, don't deliver, and end up causing a negative impression of the SEO industry.

Jonathan Hochman explained that some of the reputation problem stem from practices like link selling. He says that selling link on sites like eBay, should be considered fraudulent. He wonders why eBay would continue to let auctions like these go up:


Above, I did a search for "link seo" at ebay and found an auction on 9/11/2007 where links are selling for $15. The text from the first auction says: "PR6 PAGE RANK 6 BACKLINK BACK LINK PAGERANK LINK 6 SEO".

Hochman is very big on Wikipedia and has an editor there for several years. He mentions that Wikipedia has worked to include the "no follow" tag on their pages due to SEO contests and others ploys to game Wikipedia. Typically as just about any one can edit Wikipedia, some aggressive marketers add links to their own sites or sites that they want to promote. In turn, Wikipedia took the step to include "no follow" to links in order to make this practice less appealing. (I would relate this to how search engines long ago devalued the meta keywords tag because marketers were stuffing these tags with keyword that had no relation to on page or on site content.)

Kathleen Fealy was up next. Although she had her own consulting company, she was mainly representing SEMPO, the "Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization". She said that she has spoken with a number of small businesses regarding search marketing and SEO. She says that she works with a lot of people in the mid/small biz sector. They have often been burned by email scams and new marketing "schemes" that go bad. She says that it is a challenge to market to some companies because there is confusion over what SEO is and thus the head of an IT department may rule that SEO doesn't work since some searches don't consistently display the same results over time. Many companies are familiar with pay per click programs, and don't see the value in SEO when they can just "pay for a ranking".

Fealy also says that as you never know if some is qualified to do SEO or not. She also argues that a little knowledge can be dangerous as some traditional marketers (print/radio/tv) some times get into SEO thinking "how hard can it be? It's programming for the "other web browser" [search engines]." Consultants doing similar jobs will give different pricing, some SEOs will use technical jargon, or and may give conflicting advice.

She says that perception is reality. A quality SEO may review a site and find that it needs a lot of work in order to make it spider friendly. But if the web site owners have been going through a "template" oriented web site company, they may ask the template company to make the edits to the web site template rather than working with the SEO. The problem with this is that the template company may agree to make changes but may not really understand what changes are needed or what SEO is, in the first place. The web site owner may view the template company's changes as SEO and think that SEO is a not real because they still haven't gained rankings.

Finally Jennifer Laycock was up. Part of her message was that you should be careful when interacting with social web sites like forums. You run the risk of destroying credibility. She likens this to going to a class reunion and having a business card shoved at you by some one who now works in insurance rather than just taking part in the reunion. She mentions her Bentoyum experiment and how competitors and others can misinterpret your actions and think you are trying to market to the community rather than take part. (She has a great series of articles on the Bentoyum experiment that you might want to check out.)

After this point, the floor was open and discussion began about how we, as an industry, might help shape the opinions that others have of our industry. There was some discussion about naming, should we call ourselves Internet Marketing Consultants vs. SEOs? Like Shari Thurow's presentation, a lot of talk focused on providing some type of outreach to other businesses as this may help people outside of our industry, to understand SEO. Kristopher Jones of Pepperjam said that he was irritated with people who are upset with things but don’t do anything to lead and change to change things. Bill Slawski from Seo by the Sea was in the audience and led a brief discussion on getting people away from the whole "black hat" vs. "white hat" mentality. The discussion focused on the opinion that the results, history, or reality of your work are better indicators of your skill than saying you subscribe to this or that theory of doing SEO. It seemed like there was a general consensus that if you use risky techniques to rank a page/site, often considered black hat, that you should warn your client of the possible repercussions.

Overall, the industry is still young and SEO has a lot of gray areas… what is good today, may be considered bad tomorrow and vice versa. It might be beneficial to know both the white and black hat side of things so you can understand SEO as a whole. Because there are SEOs who are all over the spectrum as far as SEO knowledge, experience, and ability, I don't think the reputation problem will go away very quickly.


GOOGLE CHECKOUT

Google have entered the eCommerce checkout market with Google Checkout. THIS WILL BE BIG!

SO WHAT?:
This will hurt Pay Pal, World Pay and Protx etc.

BAD NEWS:
Its not easy to integrate. It takes an expert to integrate as there is lots of server to server setup needed. Do not attempt to do this yourself unless you are very confident!

GOOD NEWS:
We launched our first eCommerce website for a client this morning using Google Checkout.

EVEN BETTER NEWS:
They had their first genuine sale within 2x hours!


GOOGLE AND DOMAIN NAMES

By Scott Goodyear

CNet's News Blog reports that Google will soon be able to read underscores that separate keywords in a URL. Thus in a URL like somesite.com/sonoma_wine_country.asp, Google will now see these three keywords sonoma, wine, and country as three distinct words rather than one long run on word with underscores in it. This great news for many blog users and further assists web masters when planning to add new content to their sites and deciding on what page names to create.

I would add a semi-related side conversation to this news if you are in the process of buying a domain name...

What about hyphenated domains names? I see quite a lot of real estate sites that have domains similar to portland-oregon-best-home-buys-for-real-estate-today.com (not real, but the format is similar to many real sites). Long and hyphenated domains names do not quite come to mind as easily as short multi word names like bestbuy.com, citysearch.com, cameraworld.com, pyramidbrewing.com, slickdeals.net, etc. While .com is probably the most known and understood domain name extension, and it's not a bad idea to snap up a good .com, .net, or .org domain, the addition of several underscores or hyphens between keywords is probably not a good idea for all sites.

It's true that when some one decides to link to your site or a page from your site, they could choose to link like this (fake address for the example but based on this): Matts Cutts has an open call for Google Web Master console feature improvements.

But many web site owners, bloggers, etc. may choose to link to a web site or page using the actual url like this:
Matt Cutts talks about the Google Webmaster console on this page http://www.google-web-master-console.com/blog/webmaster-console-features/

So, in either case, a search engine -may- decide that google, web, master, or console can be used to slightly boost the rankings. If anything this would be a cumulative boost, along with many other factors. Quite a number of affiliate marketers swear by the hyphenation technique because it could help you to not only rank for your domain name but also for keywords that you are probably targeting.

Can you be sure that your site's visitors will remember to put hyphens in the right places? What if they combine two words that should be separate? Typing in -real-estate- vs. -realestate- could lead them to a competitor. Even if you decide that you will pick up many of the off spellings and variations of your main domain, it seems like you exponentially grow the number domains you'll need to snap up to protect your main domain from typos and mis-spellings when you go with a hyphenated domain.

What about reputation issues? Domains that have more than 1 or 2 hyphens, look potentially spammy or throw away in nature to visitors and search engines. With out doing anything but looking at the addresses, where do you feel you are more likely to find the real site between these 3: bestbuy.com, best-buy.com, or best-buy-stores-and-sales.com? And as my even some of my less internet savvy (but getting smarter all the time) relatives point out, they occasionally receive emails that include URLs similar to ebay-customer-service.somerandomcompany.com. They've learned, that the URL is probably related to a phishing web site which is trying to con them out of their credit card number of a log in. In turn, they tend to stay away from odd looking (hyphenated) domains not only in emails, but also from search engines and web pages.


LARGE TENDER WON

We are delighted to be 'The Chosen One' that beat off stiff competition to become the preferred web designer for a well known brand with 14x shops across Northern Ireland. Watch this space!


WEBSITES LAUNCHED

More websites than you can shake a big stick at!
Keep an eye on our portfolio section.



GOOGLE BOMBS DEFUSED?

by Scott Goodyear

Google has announced that they have defused most Google bombs via an algorithmic update. For most sites, you have very little to worry about. In this post, I will: define what a Google bomb is, what sites may have to worry should Google become more aggressive about defusing these bombs, and should things remain as they are, some potential "SEO Karate" that bombed sites may wish to employ.


First off, just what is a Google bomb?

In essence, most Google bombs are simply massive link campaigns where numerous web sites link to a specific URL with a specific keyword in their link text. Some Google bombs are intentional or "pranks" like the "miserable failure" attempt to take over a little used search term by political bloggers and others. Some Google bombs may be more benign or occur by coincidence. For example, so many people link to Apple.com, with "click here" in their link text via sentences like this:

"click here" to download the QuickTime Player

that Google's algorithm can take this as a sign that the phrase "click here" should be associated with Apple's QuickTime page. Similar pages from Microsoft, MapQuest, and other popular sites are also well ranked for "click here" due to the overwhelming number of inbound links that these sites have. Google can weigh many different factors when deciding how to rank a page, at times, these links can overwhelm any other factor that might help a page to rank.



SEO Vs. Google bomb?

After reading various posts in forums, SEO blogs, and other places... Many are wondering why keywords like click here, french military victories, and other searches still display Google bombs in action. Does Google "hand edit" the search results? Google says no, that they have simply created an algorithm update. Google reps have also posted that sites that still appear these existing Google bombs happen to "want" to appear for these phrases, and thus they are "performing SEO", not Google bombing. Taking this line of reasoning into account, the French military victories site is a parody of Google's "did you mean" feature and obviously wants to appear for the term. Where as a senator or president's site showing up for "miserable failure", probably does not want to show up for the search term.

But how does Google determine if a site does or does not want to show up for a term if this is a programmatic change? Is this change broad and far reaching? Despite Google's reassurances, some SEOs insist this was a hand edit, was it?

I would postulate that this was likely a programmatic change as Google states, but that the update simply had a very narrow focus. Perhaps the narrow focus was only on specific, well known Google bombs rather than an all encompassing change in Google. Many of the more political or infamous searches like "miserable failure" or "waffles" no longer return rankings for pages from the White House site, Michael Moore's site, John Kerry's site, various senators, and other unwanted link bomb targets. These searches now return URLs from news sites and forums, that have discussed these terms and obviously have no problems with being ranked for the terms.

But this is not the end of unwanted, coincidental, or benign Google bombs. Searches like "waffle John Kerry" still point to the John Kerry site despite there being no "waffle" terms on the target page and surely, John Kerry's site does not link around it's own site with the term "waffle". So you can't say that the site "wants" to be ranked on this phrase. Searches like "failure in the White House" still point to the White House site. And you can still tell that behind the scenes, there is some word association going on at Google. So before you think that Google's comment about "wanting" to rank for a term and SEO Vs. Google bomb means that sites that do not use a term will not show up for a term, take a look the following information.

You would expect links to point to the White House site with the term "president" in their link text. You would expect Google, to count these links and note the emphasis and thus, use this emphasis as a factor in a site's rankings. And Google does:



Yet, depending on how you check word associations in Google, there seems to be some discrepancies as neither failure or miserable appear on "www.whitehouse.gov/president/" yet Google is finding an association... Is this still from link text bombing?:



Before this update, the synonym operator, ~, had displayed the same info as above. Today, this is missing from these searches:
failure: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=%7Efailure&btnG=Google+Search
miserable:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%7Emiserable&btnG=Search

While Google will still associate some keywords, it will no longer associate some phrases:



Mini-Google bombs?

When I initially read that Google was getting rid of these bombs, I thought that this would significantly change the way that Google counted back links. I had thought "a-ha, a new innovation", one that may not only fix the bombs but change the nature of "quality links", in order to add a new dimension to scoring and ranking pages. But as my previous examples show, this was probably not an overall change in scoring but rather a very narrow attempt to defuse some Google bombs.

Why would Google consider applying this to all links at some point in the future? The current change lets mini Gooogle bombs slip through. Some firms "Guarantee Top 10 Rankings in Google" by implementing mini-bombs that help sites rank well even if they are not optimize for some terms. By buying the rights to the content and domains of old web sites and blogs, some firms are able to create mini-networks of topically focused, aged, "trusted" sites and use these to create mini-Google bombs.

These firms typically perform little to no on site SEO beyond 'tweaking' some meta tags, creating low quality "door way" pages, adding hidden text, and pointing thousands of keyword laden links from their networks, at the client's pages. Once the client stops paying, the links go away and the ranking go as well. Or if the network is discovered and devalued by an engine, the rankings go away, and the client may or may not have a means of recourse with the firm that provided the links. There are several splits in the SEO world as to the ethicacy of such tactics. Since you can't guarantee long term results in Google, many SEOs on one side of the spectrum rely less on trivial 'tweaking', and instead focus on creating interesting content, improving site usability for human visitors as well as search engine spiders, and other long term strategies in order to improve a site's engine rankings.

SEO Karate!

OK, I'm just about to close this article but I wanted to point a few things out that may seem obvious after you think about it. Center yourself, take stock of your site, the SEO that you are using, the yin and yang of the links you are encouraging and...

Remember that while Google can introduce Google bomb minimizing tactics either in a narrow or broad way, Google is not the only engine out there. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and others are still affected by these bomb techniques. These other engines may or may not follow Google's lead.

Know that even if a keyword appears on a site, peppered if you will, in various pages of their content, this does not necessarily mean the site "wants" to be ranked for the term. This is probably why Google is not getting as aggressive as they could in squashing all Google bombs just yet. If their minimizing tactic was all encompassing and strongly based on SEO factors like text on the site, miserable failure does appear on the White House site, as does keywords like miserable and failure individually.


SEO Karate really comes in handy... As a child, I took karate lessons from schools founded by Chuck Norris and Fred Villari and I've come to learn that by knowing how to deflect or channel unwanted force that is pointed in your direction, you can take advantage of this force. In life you might choose to embrace and be proud of being a geek, a soccer fan, poker fan, whatever it is. The same is true for these bombs.


If some one links to your site with a bomb term, write some content that uses the term in your own way. I.E. The web master of the .gov site could change the wording on the page that was being link bombed. While the link bomb might have previously pointed to a biography page for the president, it could also have used the terms miserable and failure in such a way that it told the story that they wanted to tell rather than waiting for Google to remove the White House site from the miserable failure search. Somewhere on the page they could have had some copy like "Some one once said failure is not an option, we think...blah,blah,blah...The miserable conditions in X prompted us to do Y...blah, blah, blah". On the other side of things, political pundit Michael Moore had his site targeted by anti-Moore sites such that these links caused Moore's site to also show up for "Miserable Failure". Why did he not try to "own" the keyword on his own terms? Thus he could have had text similar to: "Company / politician / whatever X is a miserable failure, learn more it in this section of my site...".

Final Thoughts

Finally, before you think that Google bombs only affect well known, obvious targets in benign (click here) and malign ways (miserable failure), anyone can be targeted by link bombs. Understand that aggressive competitors, disgruntled customers, well meaning fans of your site, and others can link to your site with various terms that you can not control. You might or might not want the keyword, but you might want the links or traffic from the search. Control the message on your site so that you don't have to worry about what an engine may or may not do in the future.



VALENTINE'S DAY!

Fall in lurve with our websites.
Our websites work for our customers because we give them what THEY want - not what WE want.
Nobody knows your business like you do - so take our good advice that is freely gine - and get the site you always wanted.



MERRY CLICK-MAS

Online Sales continue to grow exponenoially.
Are you getting your share of improved sales?
Or do you not have a website from Web Solutions NI?


IMPROVING THE RANKINGS OF INTERNATIONAL WEBSITES

By Scott Goodyear

Need to improve a site's rankings in an international search engine? Have you already tried traditional optimization of content and link strategies? What else can an SEO do? Surprisingly, there are a few more steps to be considered in order to improve an international web site which can also prove helpful when pursuing improved international search engine rankings.

Is .COM Considered An International Domain?

The .com domain is typically the most sought after and well known of all domain types. While a .us top level domain does exist for US companies to register, it is thought that search engines consider a .com address as related primarily to US based websites or often used by sites that are not typically country specific. If your site is based in the UK, you might still consider a .com domain as it is easy for customers to remember, but if you are focusing primarily on UK search engines, register a .co.uk domain. If your site is in Ireland, an .ie domain should be considered, .fr for France, .in for India, .ca for Canada, and so on.

If you have both a regional and .com domain, the next question is do you use both or do you use only one and forward visitors from one URL to the other? If you have the resources to maintain both web sites, it is not a bad idea to keep both URLs up and running. If you do this and they are both in the same language, make sure that each has its own unique content to avoid duplication penalties. You may even link between the two domains to provide some link popularity between the domains but don't over do it. There is an line drawn between what some engines consider a "articifical linking network" and simply two or more sites that link to one another. On the other side, if one site is one language and you have another URL that has roughly the same content but in another language like say Italian, search engines generally do not penalize for duplicated content in different languages.

International Hosting

Like a domain name, where your site is hosted can play a role in rankings. In real life, if you spoke with an accent, this non-verbal clue may help someone to identify where you were born or grew up. Similarly, if you are a UK or Scottish company, the IP address can be a give away. Does your site have pages served from a fairly local server in Edinburgh, Scotland or is it served from a location like Dallas, Texas? Search engines can use this information to further identify your site for regional or international rankings.

If the hosting company you use tells you that their offices are in the UK or they use a .co.uk domain for their site's URL, be aware that they could be a reseller for another company in another country. In some cases, they may use a co-location service to host or manage web hosting servers in another country rather than in the country that their domain would seem to specify. Get in touch with your current or potential web hosting service to see where they host from. You may find that you will need to seek other hosting options or you may need to simply ask them to move your site to a server that they manage in the same target country.

If you are already online, you may be able to check where your site is being hosted from on your own. There are various tools online like those at DNS Stuff and Canvas Dreams' Web Host Locator which can check on your URL and give you the data that you need.

Don't Hide Your International Address, Phone Number, Etc.

Have a local or international phone number (a non-800/888 number)? Do you have an international business address? While it may seem like over-kill on some sites, depending on the design/style of the site, it's not a bad idea to keep this type of information readily available on many or all of your web site's pages. There are both SEO and non-SEO reasons for this.

SEO reasons: Niche keyword searches. While there are many keywords which are very difficult to rank on such as mortgage, real estate, realtor, etc., some searchers use a combination of items like a postal or zip code, a partial street address, a partial phone number, or other information along with a keyword or two during their search in order to narrow down general searches to something more specific. Since many of these combinations provide only a few hits per month, many companies ignore trying to optimize for these keyword combinations, and thus improve your chances of appearing with the addition of your contact info on the page or some basic optimization.

Customer Service reasons: Customers generally should not have to dig through your site's architecture in order to contact you if you have a high contact or regional specific company such as in real estate, mortgages, building supplies, local groceries, etc. While you generally want customers to read through your site in order to answer most of their questions before they contact you, every one reads/understands information in a different manner and they may not know or understand that they should click the 'contact us', 'about us', or a similar page for such information.

Directions To Your Location

Although I think you should keep your contact information on most your pages, this doesn't mean that you should remove or forget to use some type of 'contact us', 'about us', or a similar page on your site. When you create this page, do use words that represent your country, regional naming conventions, states, zones, and other words that describe your location. If you have any abbreviations, spell them out as well. After all "St." could reference a street, a suite, or a saint.

Give driving directions from a few well known locations rather than simply relying on external services. The content on your site helps you for SEO reasons and helps your customers to find you. If you want to also place links to an external mapping/driving directions service in order to give your visitors a means of double checking directions, go for it, but these external links normally do not play a direct part in helping you to obtain higher rankings.

Localized Language

Even if you speak the same language as the country and international site that you are attempting to get ranked, there may be regional or local spelling differences, slightly different terms to use, grammar differences, or other challenges to take into consideration. Although I speak US based English, it makes a difference if I am trying to SEO pages for boot repair parts and trunk repair parts in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. A boot is a type of shoe in most of these areas but outside of the US it can also indicate the storage compartment of a car. In the US we would call this area a trunk where as both in the US and elsewhere, a trunk usually indicates the main portion of a tree or a large container for storing items.

In Mexico and Span the way that one would optimize for mortgage lending services differs as well. The term "bienes raices" in commonly used in Mexico and in the Spanish speaking areas of the US and roughly means "real estate" or literally "root assets". In Spain you would use a term like "inmobiliaria" to describe real estate. In Mexico and the US you would use the term "prestamista" for a lender such as a mortgage broker or loan officer where as in Spain this term is often used for dishonest or questionable lenders such as "loan sharks". So you would not necessarily use the same terms in the same language to optimize for different countries that have a common language.

I love tools like Babel Fish and search engine based translation systems, but I would not put complete trust in them to accurately and meaningfully translate any web site for strict business and SEO purposes due to language nuances. Because of factors like these, a good translator or regional copy writer is a must.

Summary

SEOs are constantly working to improve website rankings but international and regional web sites often need a few extra tweaks to help them rank well. If you are attempting to improve a web site's ranking in an international engine, there are some basic steps that can take to increase the odds of ranking well. Use a domain that relates to your target country rather than a general domain like .com. If you use both a regional domain and a .com, provide unique content on both sites. Obtain hosting services from an IP address/host that is actually located in the country that you are targeting. Be obvious about your company contact information by placing it on all or many pages of your site so that it is easy for customers to find and easy for search engines to index. Even if you have basic contact information on many pages of your site, do have a "contact us" or similar page. Do research your target market's keywords and language style, if you are not native to the target country, and consider hiring some one to translate or regionalize the text for you. While these ideas may not cause your site to rocket to the top rankings in a international search engine over night, taken as a whole (along with traditional linking and SEO strategies), they can give you an edge toward improved rankings.


THE NOTICE BOARD LAUNCHES

FREE ads in your region and throughout the whole of the UK and Ireland. The first of 12 sections have launched today. Automotive covers cars, motorbikes, caravans etc.

http://www.thenoticeboard.net

CHECK IT OUT - its on our portfolio.


IT'S COMING!

A massive site is coming.
What's it all about?
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The difference is you can place FREE ads and sell just in YOUR region or ANYWHERE in the UK and IRELAND.
The Notice Board will be launched next month - keep an eye out!


THE NOTICE BOARD LAUNCHES

FREE ads in your region and throughout the whole of the UK and Ireland. The first of 12 sections have launched today. Automotive covers cars, motorbikes, caravans etc.

http://www.thenoticeboard.net

CHECK IT OUT - its on our portfolio.


TESTIMONIAL

I cannot praise your team enough, at every stage they have exceeded my expectation and introduced a little flair which has really made the site exceptional. I have already had so much positive feedback and a noticable increase in business. It is inevitable that in every project there are some snags, it is a measure of your commitment to customer service that any problems were addressed quickly and without fuss. I wish you all continued success and would recommend you without hesitation.

This is an unsolicted testimonial from Matt Symons of Matt Symons Photograhpy.


GOOGLE'S NEW ADS BOT

By Curtis Friedl

According to SearchEngineWatch.com and SearchEngineNews.com a new ad sense bot called Adsbot will soon begin showing up in your log files.

Optimization of site content grows in importance this year with the continued release of the Big Daddy infrastructure change. One part of this ongoing update is the creation of a dedicated Google Adsense bot (Adsbot). As we reported in an earlier http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/crawl-caching-proxy/

This effort on Google's part will hopefully reduce the number of pages that popup with nothing more then adsense results, or generic content with only a vague link to the search.

This change in Google's practice as well as the cache reviewing by Google's bots will prompt the creation of better page content, regardless of whether the page is designed for a paid marketing campaign, or for its organic rank. Site design, and content design will continue to become more important. It will become imperative that designers and marketers review the recommendations of the WebPosition Page Critic tool to ensure that their content is a close match for what Google and other engines are seeking in page content just to minimize their own ad spend.


GOOGLE SUPPLEMENTAL INDEX

By Scott Goodyear

A couple of years ago, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch had noted that in the competition for who had the largest index of web sites, Google had a new feature called the "supplemental index". This supplemental index contains many pages from sites that will never see the light of day during a typical search. These pages are found only when the search is so unusual or narrow that only pages from the supplemental index seem to be a match for the query. Since the "Big Daddy" update began in November 2005, many web masters are finding that while Google continues to crawl through their pages, and that updates to their pages do seem to be in Google's cache, still more and more of their pages are being relegated to the supplemental index.

Officially, the supplement index contains pages from sites that "...are part of Google's auxiliary index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index..." Basically, sites or pages that fall into the supplemental index are those that do not meet the criteria that Google uses for their normal index.


As SEO Jim Boykin of webuildpages.com explains on his blog, these sites often have duplicate content taken from others, no real content - as he gives the example of the fake 'directory' sites that create a million virtually generic pages, and what he calls 'orphaned pages' which are those page that are not linked to from the rest of the website in question or linked to from other sites on the web.

Based on the customers that have been contacting WebPosition seeking assistance, we can agree with Boykin's observations. Quite often 'turn key' web sites like those in the real estate, nutrition, work from home, or other industries that rely heavily on duplicated cookie-cutter web sites find that they have always had a difficult time obtaining rankings but more so with this recent Google update. Often these sites have an address like:

myaccountname.someturnkeywebcompany.com,
someturnkeywebcompany.com/myaccountname,
or sometimes even - myaccountname.com*.

(* But if you were to check they actually use a URL forwarding service or frames that redirect a visitor's browser behind the scenes to myaccountname.someturnkeywebcompany.com
or someturnkeywebcompany.com/myaccountname.)

Where they had once relied greatly on inbound links and link exchange services to artificially bolster their rankings, it appears that with more emphasis on the actual content of sites to drive rankings, the lack of providing actual unique content really hurts these sites when competing with sites that have original, unique content and several relevant inbound links.

This does make a bit of sense. When you go on the web to look for a book by a given author, with a specific title, you don't want to hit 600 affiliates from a single online book store that has the same exact web page content on the same book as the affiliates. You really want to see a variety of information such as a few book stores, a few reviews of the book, perhaps information about related books and movies, a bio on the author, etc. So an attempt to clear out as many duplicates as they can find can be useful for the end user but perhaps painful to those that are trying to sell an item or promote a service with little to no hands on activity/customization on their web site. And thus many sites are pushed into the supplemental index because they do not offer any thing that is compellingly different.

You can often compare the number of pages listed in Google vs. the number of pages that Google has with out many of the supplementals by using the following 2 searches:

search 1)
site:www.thenameofyoursite.com

search 2)
site:www.thenameofyoursite.com inurl:www.thenameofyoursite.com

See which pages are listed in the first search but not in the second. Work on those pages that are omitted from the second search. If listed in the supplemental index, they will have a look similar to:


Title of the Page The generic description of the page, product, service, etc. on the page that is extremely similar or identical to other pages on the web. ...
somesite.com/pages/somethingnotveryoriginal.htm - 12k - Supplemental Result- Cached - Similar pages


As we've mentioned in the past, it is also a good idea to make sure that your site is consistent in how your pages are presented. For example you should choose to consistently use the www or non www version of links through out your site and only allow one type of link to exist. A 301 redirect can help with this. While it may seem beneficial to show the same web page no matter if your customer types in:

thenameofyoursite.com
www.thenameofyoursite.com
thenameofyoursite.com/index.htm
www.thenameofyoursite.com/index.html
thenameofyoursite.com/home.asp
etc.
Engines sometimes see these as separate pages and can create a duplicate content penalty for your pages.


From time to time there can be a legitimate need to provide duplicate content. You may notice that at MarketPosition.com we often quote information from other sites, reprint entire articles (with the permission of the content owners), etc. There is certainly an invisible line in the sand with exceptions to the rule that boggle the mind, but the general theory is that you can present duplicate content provided that your site's content, overall, is very unique, with information that other sites do not offer. This is why sites that mainly serve as aggregators or hubs with little to no original content bounce around a bit more in the rankings. A search engine can try to check the age of a document, facts like when was content resembling XYZ first indexed, what site was the content first attributed to, and other factors. In going through this process, sometimes it is the original author who is attributed with the content being first published and yet other times it can be the aggregator depending on who appears to be the first publisher.

If you are still in the supplementals and you are positive that none of these factors are affecting your pages.... there are a few initial reports that Google is mistakenly merging data from old listings and new listings, that they may have had a 'bad data push' in which site: queries may be incorrect, as well others that report that titles and other information about some pages had been incorrectly merged from much older listings in Google (perhaps a data merge between old and new databases?) rather than just listing even an older DMOZ title, which could be causing a temporary problem and/or that this may simply be an indexing experiment that has affected some sites negatively. For more on this, check out:

Seroundtable.com
Webmasterworld.com
Searchenginewatch
Jimboykin.com

In summary, make sure that your content is as unique as it can be. Do this not only for your listings but also for your site visitors. Check to find any problem pages by comparing your listed pages through the two site: commands. Finally, if you use duplicated content - try to weight things out so that the majority of your content falls on the original content side of the scale. These tips can help your site overall and may help you to avoid finding your pages in the supplemental index.



FOOTY HEAVEN

Have you gone footy crazy too? If so keep up to scratch on:
http://worldcup.reuters.co.uk.

Hate the World Cup? Try to chill out on:
http://www.sluggerotoole.com



GOOGLE CLICK FRAUD CASE

Google Attempts Settlement In Click Fraud Case
By Curtis Friedl

Currently less scrupulous competitors will use various means to create clicks on competitor's ads with the sole purpose of forcing the advertiser to pay for the additional clicks. While keyword research and selection has always been a challenge "click fraud" has exploded into a nightmare for search engine marketers and destroyed their marketing budgets.

For the last several months Google has been involved in a lawsuit regarding fraudulent Clicks in their PPC program. This month Google offered a potential settlement, however it may not be the end of the story.

Recently Google announced that they were planning to settle a "click fraud" class action lawsuit for $90 million. $60 million of this would be to compensate the victims, while the remaining $30 million would be set aside to pay legal fees. Some feel that this may not be adequate compensation as Google has earned $13.3 billion in ad revenue since 2001 and currently has close to $10 billion in cash.

Google's offer of $60 million equals out to about $4.50 per $1000 spent on advertising through its net work in the past 4 plus years. The associate press points to numbers between $100 and $400 per $1000 spent, or as much as 40%. If true, Google may need to compensate their advertising members between 1 and 5 Billion dollars in over billings from the last few years rather than $60 million.

These settlements will very likely test the faith in Google's advertising program. Advertisers have until late June to agree to the settlement or reject it and seek a different offer.

The crux of the matter then and now, is that a search advertiser must agree and sign contracts requiring them to pay for all valid clicks, while the engine has the responsibility in determining what is or is not a valid click. This leaves the onus on an advertiser to prove that a click was invalid although they do not have access to all of the records or tools that Google uses to track clicks. However, even with this protection Google understands the need to protect its brand name and image. Shuman Ghosemajumder Google's Product Manager for Trust and Safety, indicated that the company is reviewing ways to make its AdWords program better with out revealing the crucial information that might help the swindlers avoid detection.

In the end, these numbers have been deemed too low for a final settlement by some. Lawyers representing several of Google's AdWords advertisers have filed suit hoping to block the proposed $90 million settlement. The lawyers claim that the settlement does not adequately compensate those affected. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months.

At the time of this writing, Yahoo's advertising network is faces a similar click fraud lawsuit. To learn about click fraud and its effects on the marketing on the search engines review this article from Wired.


HAVE YOU GONE HEELY'S?

Heely's - the latest craze. Forget roller blades, in-line skates etc THE new craze is Heely's. It's a normal trainer. you can walk and run as usual BUT in a magic moment you could be heelying down the road with great ease and little effort. Check out the site - it's packed with video tutorials (hope you have broadband tho!).


GOOGLE COMPLETES "BIG DADDY" UPDATE

In a January blog entry, we noted that Google was beginning testing on a new update known as "Big Daddy". These changes have now been completed and are live on Google.

The Big Daddy update actually involved changes to Google's infrastructure, which have been rolled out little by little over the past few months. According to Google's Matt Cutts, many of the changes may not even be noticeable by the average user. However, if you manage a web site, you may have noticed fluctuations in your rankings in recent months.

Here are a few notable features of the Big Daddy update:


If a web site had two versions of its domain name listed, one containing a "www" and the other not (i.e. www.webposition.com and webposition.com), then Google would traditionally treat them as separate web sites. This had the undesirable effect of diluting the link popularity resulting from your inbound links. The Big Daddy update has addressed this issue, and Google will now recognize the two versions of the domain as the same web site.

Google has employed a new version of their search engine spider, a new User-Agent, which is "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"


For more information and comments about the update, read this Q & A thread posted on March 27th in Matt Cutt's blog.

If you find that your web site's Google rankings have been adversely affected by the Big Daddy update, the first thing to do is to review the site's search engine optimization. An excellent tool to help with the optimization process is WebPosition's Page Critic. It's also a good idea to make sure the site does not have any duplicate content issues, or other violations of the search engines' terms of service.



PRESS LAUNCH

Web Solutions took part in the Press Launch of the new Ballymena Borough Council website on recently. Gareth Aughey, Web Solutions Sales Manager, said "There is a lot of information to organise in a clear way. The feedback has been fantastic and we are very pleased to have provided Ballymena with a website that is to navigate.


GOOGLE REMOVES SEO COMPANY FROM THEIR INDEX

by Richard Drawhorn

In a recent post in his search engine related blog, Google representative Matt Cutts has confirmed that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by them from Google's index. In this post, I'll review the reasoning behind this decision and provide a few tips on how to avoid this fate for your own web site.

In September, 2005, the Wall Street Journal Online published an article describing a scenario that would be a nightmare for any online business: your web site suddenly disappears from both Google and Yahoo seemingly overnight. This is exactly what happened to many web sites owners who had hired Traffic-Power.com to perform search engine optimization for their site.

The problems started when the major search engines detected that Traffic-Power.com had been using illicit practices to optimize web sites. According to the Wall Street Journal article, they employed techniques like creating pages that are stuffed full of keywords (this is known as "spamming"), or even presenting content not really related to the site and then redirecting the visitor when the link is clicked (this is known as "cloaking"). We have been warning our readers against these practices for years.

Another illicit technique used by Traffic-Power.com was to artifically promote the Link Popularity of their clients' web sites by linking them extensively within their own network of sites. Search engines measure inbound links to get a sense of how popular a site is amongst internet users. Such networked linking strategies are attempts to give the impression that the web site is more popular than it actually is, and are frowned upon by search engines. This is in fact one of the issues Google is attempting to address with their most recent algorithm change, as described in a recent article we published entitled Google's Jagger Update.

In his blog about search engine optimization topics, Google representative Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Traffic-Power.com has been removed from Google's index, along with any sites that have been promoted by Traffic-Power.com. One lesson to learn from this is that you are responsible for any actions that SEO consultants you hire perform on your web site. Last year, we published an article here at Marketposition.com called Outsourcing a SEO program that makes the point that you should be aware of the SEO practices of any consultants you hire. Here's a quote from the article: "Full disclosure - Ensure that [your SEO consultants] are willing and supportive of keeping you 'in-the-know' on their SEO practices. Don't risk your brand and search engine marketing by being punished by suspect SEO tactics that some SEO companies unfortunately do employ." In light of the recent events with Traffic-Power.com, this is a good time to review the important points made in that article.

Another example of Google's determination to enforce the guidelines for inclusion in their index is the recent removal of BMW.de from Google. In this case, BMW.de was presenting a different version of web pages to search engine spiders than it was presenting to human visitors. This is another example of cloaking, a practice to be avoided. Of course, BMW.de was promptly reincluded in Google's index, due to BMW's "quick response" in getting these issues resolved. Keep in mind, however, that just because BMW.de was promptly reincluded in Google's index does not mean that every site will be treated the same way. In fact, most web sites that are removed from Google's index will have a difficult time getting listed again. Getting reindexed is a process that involves submitting a reinclusion request and it may take months before your site regains its visibility in Google.

Conclusion

Google and other major search engines are evolving over time, and the intelligence of their algorithms is increasing. The ability of the engines to detect illicit optimization practices is improving, and it's more important than ever to ensure that your web site is not employing any techniques that violate search engines' terms of service. As a web site owner, it's your responsibility to make sure that SEO consultants you hire to improve your site's visibility are not employing these techniques.



HOSPICE WALK 2006

Do you want to leep fit, have a bit of craic AND help a terrific cause?
Then you need the Hospice Walk. All ages.
The idea is a bit of craic and raising money.
Dont forget it's a walk (except for Da who will be chasing Ma!!!)


SEARCH ENGINE USAGE

Figures just out reveal the most popular search engines.

Google Search (46.3% of searches)
Yahoo! Search (23.5% of searches)
MSN Search (11.4% of searches)
AOL Search (6.9% of searches)
My Way Search (2.5% of searches)
Ask Jeeves Search (2.3% of searches)

A total of 5.1 billion searches were performed with Google, Yahoo! and MSN remain the top 3 search engines as measured by share with Google still dominating in this category.

Figures are for November 2005.


HOSTING DEALS

We only use the best available servers.
Your website or database will be hosted on our dedicated Windows 2003 ASP .net servers. You will also get a website Control Panel with unlimited email addresses and very detailed visitor statistics.


MICROSOFT PARTNER

We at Web Solutions are proud to be official Microsoft Partners


NATURAL HAIR COMPANY

We have had great feedback re our new website design for the Natural Hair Company in Lisburn - see for yourself why - make sure your speakers are turned on!


TESTIMONIAL

From the original conception to the launch of my web-site the Web Solutions team worked with my ideas and had a great input into it. Together we built what was originally an idea I had in my mind, they made it happen!

Within the first week I had my first customer - from Holland!

As a professional retailer of over 35 years standing, I can highly recommend the team at Web Solutions to ease your business ideas into the modern high tech world of 21st century retailing.

Many thanks Guys - You're the Best.

Trevor Falconer
North Irish Militaria


   
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