Author: Nick

SEO Tips – Part 2

By SEO, SEO Tips

Choose carefully your keywords

As I mentioned before, choosing carefully your key-phrases is crucial for your SEO campaign.

How to do it right?

Start from obvious keywords that describe in the best way your activity, ask your friends how do they search Internet if they want to get what you offer, use software tools to get more suggestions.

After you have run out of suggestions, the next place to go is Google, type “AdWords keyword tool” – Google offers a free key suggestion tool.

You need a Google Account to get rid of annoying CAPTCHA, but it is working without an account just fine, just go to “Reporting and Tools” and pick up “Keyword Tool”

Type in your best key-phrase and click search. The “Keyword Tool” will come back with suggestions, see example below – suggestions for keyword ‘games’:

 

It provides you enough information to get an idea about the value of each suggested key: 

  • Competition, 
  • Global Monthly Searches, 
  • Local Monthly Searches.

A good way to sort the key-phrases is based on their ‘Key efficiency index’=KEI.

A good formula for KEI is:

KEI=((4-R)/3)*Sv*Sv/C

Where we have:

Relevance (R): it is how closely your keyword is related to what you offer to your customers. 

Use a three points scale:

  • 1 for Excellent
  • 2 for Good
  • 3 for Poor

Search Volume (Sv): it is how many queries are made for a keyword per month. 

Competition (C): that’s how many websites are already more or less optimized for this keyword.

The easiest way to calculate the KEI is, export in Excel your preferred suggestions from Google’s keyword suggestion tool, create a column for ‘Relevance’ and add your best assessment there (remember 1 to 3), then create another column called ‘KEI’ and calculate it based on above formula. 

Coz Google’s data about competition is less than one – you should multiply it with 10^6 or 10^8 for reasonable results (avoid huge number).

Once you have the column ‘KEI‘ calculated, you should sort your keywords descending based on column KEI value and voila, you have the first logically ordered list of key-phrases.

Few things to remember when you work with  “Google’s keyword Tool”:

  • use Match Type = [Exact] to get a realistic number for Monthly Searches
  • use Local Monthly Searches – forget about Global (if you use this free tool – think local first – start small, grow big)
  • due to the fact that competition number is not terribly accurate, better don’t use it – get your competitors number from Google, just type in your ‘keyword’, press search and read the competition as shown below:

KEI is not all that you need, to be able to pick up the most marketable key-phrases for your niche… You need to apply few more filters, do more research, in order to get to the honey.

 You need to get more data about your competition and the real dimension of it.

How many webpages are optimized for the same potential key-phrases? 

How many links are out there having these key-phrases as anchors?

You should answer these questions before picking up your ‘most marketable’ keys.

Google helps and let you use search operators to figure out these answers, and the ones that we want to use are INTITLE and INANCHOR.

Example – Type in Google:

INTITLE:[keyword]

INANCHOR:[keyword]

Having the number of sites optimized for a specific keyword, gives you the real dimension of your competition = number of websites that have the ‘keyword’ in their title.

If this number is in billions…then you are totally screwed (big boys are using your keywords), if number is in low millions that’s more achievable and if number is less than a million just GO FOR IT.

 

Best thing is to add few new columns to your previously put together Excel file and recalculate the KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index) based on INTITLE (replacing C-Competition with INTITLE number), then you can sort the keys descending by this new column (INTITLE KEY).

Continuing example given before with keyword ‘games’ – below are the top 20-ish keywords, ordered descending based on their true key efficiency – giving you the TOP of your ‘most marketable’ keys…

Many keys will have similar descending patterns on both KEI columns (“KEI” and “INTITLE KEI”), but you can see that are some surprises.

BY example [car games] based on KEI=465.51 should be placed higher in the list, but due to a relatively high number of optimised competitors web pages = intitle:[car games] = 49,000,000 it will be downgraded having INTITLE KEI lower than [shooting games] by example, which has only 2.5 mil sites that have this key in the title (compared with 49 mil for [car games]).

 

You could use more formulas and more filters if you want and need – free imagination always helps and by the way….if you have a favorite key that doesn’t qualify based on formulas, but your gut feel says use it, then use it.

 

Formulas are good in SEO, coz give you a sorted list based on some logical assumptions, but your gut feel can be the missing parameter that can send to you millions of visitors. 

So keep an eye on your gut feel.

 

Keywords Selection, Hard work? Yes, if you have to do all these stuff manually, or using just EXCEL (or similar), then you need time….a lot of time.

 

If you don’t have time or just need to be quicker…you can do it using SEO software. 

Which one? Are so many out there and all cost money and promise miracles….

I can tell you about my choice SEO POWERSUITE from Link-Assistant. 

Rank Tracker (part of SEO Powersuite) – it slashes your SEO workload in half and does all above and much more….

FREE version is fully featured, no restrictions, it is easy to use and in this way it is not hard to figure out if you truly like it or not.

 

Next time at SEO Tips – we talk about On-Site Optimisation.

Cheers,

Nick

SEO Tips – Part I

By SEO, SEO Tips
Search Engine Optimization Tips – Part 1
 
Note: This article is old, but still valuable that’s why I updated it with SEO tools relevant today (2019).
 
SEO is so important for any Site, without a proper SEO campaign you can’t get known and high in any SERP.
 
But what exactly you need to do in order to be ranked higher?
 
I. Choose carefully your keywords – they have to be relevant for your business and also achievable. Check KEY, INTITLE, INANCHOR numbers – rank your keys.
 
II. On-Site optimization – optimize the meta title and meta description of all your landing pages – using your targeted keywords.
 
III. Make links using your targeted keywords – do follow, no follow, exchange links, one way links, web directories, articles, blog articles, blog comments – all matters – use your targeted keywords as anchors.
 
IV. Have a strong presence on Social Media – all these help getting more links and traffic – Youtube, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter…
 

V. Maintain BLOG(s) – have a blog on your domain – easy way to grow your content – maintain few other blogs on Sites highly ranked and indexed very often – Blogspot, WordPress, Posterous, Squidoo….

VI. USE SEO Software Tools -  of course is much easier to use software instead of manually tracking your progress. Useful SEO software like SEMRush or AHREFS.

 
 
Starting with “Search Engine Optimization Tips – Part 2†we will give you more details about SEO categories 1 to 6 highlighted above.
 

How much traffic gets 1st Page from Google’s SERP?

By Google Traffic
Almost 8 out of 10 people search the web to find services – buy gadgets, clothes, find doctors, find restaurants, order food and almost everything you can imagine…
Internet opened up a big box full of services and your business has to be in that box otherwise you miss 8 out 10 of your potential customers.
It is almost a crime for you business, if you don’t have a web presence.  
Only 2 in 10 still use dusty, thick, paper directory books – like Yellow Pages.
8 out 10 search the BIG 3 to get information. Big 3 search engines are the dominant names on the search market:
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Yahoo
Combined, BIG 3 represent more than 95% of the search market.
ASK and AOL completes the picture with other 4-5%.  Stats from comScore proved it.
Who uses Google? Bing? Yahoo?
The answer is everybody relies on Search Engines more and more each and every day and Internet gets into our life from all the angels.
Our PC is connected to the Internet, our smart phones and tablets are too and even the old TV has a smart set-top box that links it to the mighty WWW.
So, we all are hooked in, but who uses what? 
Google tends to attract more skeptic individuals that search a lot until they decide where to buy from.
Yahoo still has more conservators users, Yahoo’s loyal and somehow older, which also search less until they buy things.
Bing powers Yahoo now and it will bring the change for old Yahoo – Bing has a new breed of users – the skeptics that dislike Google and want a different search experience.
So, it’s damn important to get your business listed on the big WWW and also you want it placed as high as possible in BIG 3’s SERP (Search Engine Return Page).
Once you are there, you want your business to be visited and get thousands of potential customers, but actually who gets the traffic?
It’s definitely a step forward to have a Site, Blog, and Social Media presence for your Business, but to get the traffic you need to AIM for PAGE #1 in SERP of BIG 3’s.
How much traffic Google’s Page#1 gets?
Let’s start saying…a lot….almost everybody gets the info from first page, which by default has 10 organic results displayed on it.
Very rare, we adventure exploring Page2, Page3, Page4….of SERP and even if we do, probably we do it for research purposes and NOT to BUY something.
If you want your SERVICES to be bought….you need to be on PAGE#1 of SERP for all your most important keywords.
Page #1 gets 90-95% of the traffic; the other pages get only impressions and NO CLICKS.
It’s true that Page #1 in Google, by example, gets all the cream and based on stats the Top10 traffic split would be (example below is based on my experience and my websitesstats):
Get the first spot on the first page in Google SEPR for your important key phrases and you will get between 35% and 60% of the clicks from a particular key traffic – percentage may depends on your particular niche.
Second spot is not bad either, it will give you 10-20% of the clicks and number 3 brings at least 10%.
In almost all the niches, from forth place onwards you will get less than 10% of the clicks and the drop is more linear than for the first three positions.
 If you have any other interesting stats about subject please share/comment.
Cheers,
Nick

Android 2.3.3 problems on HTC Desire HD

By Android 2.3.3 - Gingerbread

As many others, I have updated the HTC DESIRE HD to the new Gingerbread – Android 2.3.3, hoping to get a better OS…as  I knew that the new OS iteration comes with new forms of communication for developers and users, including better Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities, so that developers can start delivering contactless, proximity-based applications.

On top of NFC we all hoped to improve battery life and proxy issue for wireless networks.

But, I’ve updated my HTC Desire HD from android 2.2 to 2.3.3 few days ago, and my battery life is dramatically shortened now… before i charged my phone every 2 days and now battery is gone is less then 10hours.

Many others seems to have issues with WiFi, GSM, GPS since the update – issue being – decreased signal levels and multiple dropouts in areas where everything worked fine with Android 2.2.
Personally, I haven’t noticed WiFi, GSM, GPS issues, but a 10h battery life is killing me.

I’m interested to get a FIX for this troubled version Android 2.3.3 – Gingerbread!
Anybody knows when 2.3.4 will be released – post here.
Or, can we roll back to 2.2?

My HTC Desire HD – got sick again….

Google Page Rank Update 2011

By Google Page Rank

PageRank is Google algorithm, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.
It is a complicated algorithm, no doubt, more explanations about it are well documented on this wiki-page.

The thing  that we want to debate here is not the algorithm itself, we know lots about it and still don’t know enough or if this PR matters too much for your SERP (Search Engine Result Page) Rank.

Due to PR inconsistent release schedule and to its very narrow scale 0-10, it is widely believed that Google PR doesn’t count too much for your ranking.

Though, in SEO world everybody checks the PR, at least as the first glimpse about a webpage, and as you know a ZERO Page Rank doesn’t look good.

Roughly, a new Google PR is released each ~3months. They don’t have a precise date for the release….and sometimes Google just don’t DO IT for a longer while.

A history of Google Page Rank updates (as we know it) is shown below:

  • NEW: PR UPDATE 7 AUG 2011
  • NEW: PR UPDATE 27 JUNE 2011
  • Network Wide Toolbar Pagerank Update – JANUARY 2011
  • Network Wide Toolbar Pagerank Update April 2010
  • Network Wide – Dec 31, 2009
  • Network Wide – 30 October 2009
  • Network Wide 27/28 May 2009 – Google PR Update
  • Network Wide 1 / 2 April 2009 – Google Pagerank Update 2009
  • Network Wide 30-31 December 2008
  • Network Wide 27 September 2008
  • Network Wide 26 July 2008
  • Network Wide 29 April 2008
  • Network Wide 9,10,11,12 January 2008
  • Network Wide 26 October 2007
  • Network Wide 28 April 2007

As you can see,  last year, Google didn’t bother too much to update its PR (to be read – didn’t bother to let us know about PR changes) and they release only ONE update.

This situation created a lot of tension in SEO world and it’s about to be repeated this year?
Nobody really knows, besides Google.

What we know is, that last Google Page Rank Update has been seen on ~19Jan 2011 and since then we have had only speculations about a new release.

It is expected soon a new release, especially by people who want to be ranked for the first time…

Subscribe here to get updates about Google Page Rank change. We will post daily updates about news related with the Google PR change.

HTC Desire HD GPS problem – always searching for GPS satellites

By HTC

I like my HTC Desire HD and I quite depend on it, with all the apps installed on it and sync-ed calendar and phone book, so when it broke….I was sad.
It worked fine for a while and then GPS stopped working.

As many other did, I searched forums and installed all GPS Test Apps from Markets – all gave me very consistent results – your GPS is not working.
But it has been working before, my HTC DHD is not one of the factory faulty ones.

What can be wrong then – I asked myself?

It could be:
1.  Any dodgy software upgrade – Navigation or Radio
2. Internal GPS IC
3. The GPS Antenna

1.  Any dodgy software upgrade – Navigation or Radio

I tried to uninstall the Navigation Pro (recently purchased) and flash latest RADIO – didn’t help.
Factory Reset – didn’t work.

2. Internal GPS ICToo bad then, it is still under warranty, I will go back to my Crazy John guys and surrender the phone…but let’s do one more thing…

3. The GPS Antenna
Then I have found that GPS antenna is quite accessible and has few design issues that could give it contact problems. It is assembled together with the flash-light near the camera and the entire panel is not soldered in place, it is just clipped in place and it contains the GPS antenna also. 

Then, I have found this movie, that solved my mystery:Change GPS Antenna – HTC DHD.

If you believe that GPS antenna is faulty,  first thing, just press down the dual LED flash panel with your thumbs and then try the Navigation software again – if it locks on satellites in few seconds, then you have solved the issue – your GPS antenna just had an imperfect contact, it was moved a bit from its connection.
If this trick is not working, then follow this movie to change the antenna or if the phone is still under warranty just let them do it.

 
 Luckily, in my case was just a contact issue and it was solved by  pressing down the flash-light panel with my thumbs, all around its edges. 
Then, I tried again the Navigation software and it locked the GPS satellites very quickly, few seconds everything looks fine now and if symptoms reoccur I will try to get a spare GPS antenna handy… just in case.

Cheers,

Nick
 

Wii – Install HBC (Homebrew Channel) – and play games from USB HD

By Wii Talk

Nintendo Wii has proven to be a very nice console that keeps lots of people around the TV, jumping, hoping and struggling to keep up with the ‘electronic monsters’.

The thing is, doesn’t matter how much fun you have playing your games, it is always a new one out there that needs to be tried out. It is quite an expensive fun especially when you have to feed the needs of few ‘hungry’ kidz or maybe adults.
Wii games prices are UP and as long as we spend money buying them, at this high prices, they will stay up.

Why you can’t get freebies for Wii?
Now, freebies are in big demand for other hardware platforms as PCs or smartphones.
Markets are full of apps, games, tools for free and/or at low prices.
Big boys are making good money from Wii games and accessories and are not willing to stop.

There is a ‘movement’ called “The homebrew channel” that gives you access to free apps and games for Wii – all  developed and offered as freeware by good people.
Offer is not huge, but covers Utilities, Audio, Video, OS, Math.

OK, apps, games for free, but how can we install HBC (homebrew channel) to be able to play them?
And most important HBC offers the possibility of playing ‘back-up’ games stored on a USB hard-drive.


So, how do we install HBC?

First stop will be at https://hbc.hackmii.com/ , download page, here you find few hacks that will let you install the HBC.
The thing is all depends what WII IOS (Wii Operating System) version do you have. If is too new, the exploit won’t work or are not quite easy to apply.
You can get great help from Lifehacker site – they have posted installation methods/tutorials for each individual hack.

In my case – WII IOS 4.3xx –Bathaxx was the solution, and it worked smoothly.
About Bathaxx: Bathaxx is an exploit found in the game LEGO Batman. The exploit was made by Team Twiizers & lewurm.

Once you see this image on your Wii, you should celebrate the first victory.

Now, you have to install few more things on your Wii and then play from USB HD, save games on USB HD, download covers, cheats….lots of goodies.
What needs to be done?
Install  DOP-Mii v12
Install  cIOS
Install  USB Loader GX

The guys from Lifehacker have a spot on tutorial about this.

Install and enjoy playing Wii from USB HD.

Do you get a lot of SPAM lately?

By SPAM SPAM

I don’t know what happened, but in the last month or so I’ve got tons of SPAM. It has gone above my mild annoyance level and now it really piss me off.


In the past I just ignored it, or I marked some emails as SPAM, or I filtered out few email addresses, but in the last month or so I’ve been bombarded with spam emails,  content spam on forum and blogs and who knows how many dodgy robots harvested my email addresses and definitely I have been called on my published phone numbers by countless ‘cold calls marketers’ from +91 country.


Fine Print Note: The thing is, you publish you phone to get some business and end up getting ONLY SPAM – and ‘they’ say that AU has a good anti SPAM security…


I’ve studied the spammers tops and  stats for a while now and are pretty conclusive – lots of spammers from only a few countries.







































Source of the stats – Project Honey Pot


What can we do to stop the spammers?


Well, under SPAM acts or legislations, SPAM is illegal in many countries – and Australia is ranked as having a good law and good anti-spam security (imagine how bad could be in other countries).


In Australia, anti-spam legislation - the Spam Act 2003 - covers email, instant messaging, SMS (text messages) and MMS (image-based mobile phone messaging) messages of a commercial nature. It does not cover faxes, internet pop-ups or voice telemarketing. Telemarketing calls are covered by the Do Not Call Register.

ACMA – and   Spam Act 2003 – says that is illegal to send, or cause to be sent, unsolicited commercial electronic messages – email, instant messaging, SMS and MMS.
The ACMA is responsible for enforcing the Spam Act and actively works to fight spam in Australia.
ACMA has posted on their Site info about current SPAM activities and  and they bring down as many spammer as they could, I suppose.


They encourage anybody to report SPAM, SPAM emails by forwarding it to report@submit.spam.acma.gov.au, or Spam SMS, a service to allows you to quickly and easily report SMS you suspect may breach Australia’s spam laws.


What else can you do fighting international SPAM?


An interesting project is:


Project Honey Pot


“Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.”


They offer for FREE few nice features/services:

  • IP Data – a broad collection of malicious IPs, harvesters, spam servers, directory attackers, comment spammers – plus lookup IP
  • stats – per countries, useragents, usernames, spamvertised
  • HTTP blacklist, Monitor your IP Space
  • Plus they send real time their SPAM FEEDS to anti-spam filter developers and companies assessing reputation of IP addresses
  • the project organizers also help various law enforcement agencies combat private and commercial unsolicited bulk mailing offenses and overall work to help reduce the amount of spam being sent and received on the Internet
You can also install on your site a ‘Honey Pot’ scripts that will ‘entrap’ the spammers helping cleaning up the WEB.
They also thought about bloggers:
 
“Some people who want to participate in Project Honey Pot don’t have their own servers. To allow these folks to help out, we have created a QuickLinks program where they can drive harvester traffic to existing Honey Pots. Sharing your Honey Pot will increase the number of harvesters that it catches, allow more people to participate in the Project, and, we think, generally increase your karmic goodness”
 
Give them a try – it’s free, useful and with good intentions.

 









and you will get your own stats and tops:





Fight the SPAM – is annoying and makes the WEB insecure place. Plus, remember all these dodgy guys want to steal your money.


Cheers,
Nick





wderswcderasz

By Google Experiment

Another experiment to see how fast Google is finding wderswcderasz on the WEB.
wderswcderasz is on Blogspot that is a preferred spot for Google to crawl.

Go  wderswcderasz, fly wderswcderasz!

opmdcsdcpb

By Google Experiment

Well, this is not quite a real article, this is just another gyhwesaa like example. We just want to see how quick Google picks up this new word opmdcsdcpb and how we will rank in search results for this ‘word’.

As gyhwesaa, opmdcsdcpb is a perfect example of keyword with almost no competition and very low number of searches.
This original article will have to compete against few lots of copy-paste articles that will contain the same fabricated word opmdcsdcpb in them. Let’s see how they will rank against each oder.

Fly opmdcsdcpb, fly opmdcsdcpb!