Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond

I was going through some articles in my Google RSS Reader and Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable found that you can subscribe to Google search results via Google Alerts. This is awesome because you can not view search results kind of in real time as well as manage your online reputation better!

I had some existing alerts setup so I had to setup new ones to be able to get the alert subscriptions via RSS. Here are some quick instructions for those who don’t have alerts setup now or for those who want to subscribe through RSS instead:

1. Get a Google Account
2. Sign up for Google Alerts
3. Click “Manage Your Alerts”
4. Create a new alert as shown making sure to select feed as the delivery option instead of email.
5. Hit create alert and then you can subscribe via RSS

I’m exicted to play with these and see how they work out. It will be interesting to see the capabilities of Google RSS for search as it develops.

Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond

I was working on some client stuff the other day and I went to check their links in Yahoo. I normally use my Firefox search because it is defaulted to Yahoo and then I use the Google toolbar for Google searches. Anyways, I did the link operator as show below. For those of you who don’t know what this does, it will search Yahoo’s index for how many pages they have of your site. You can also use other search operators to find things like links (what I was really looking for).

Once I hit search, I then want to see what links I have back to the site. I normally filter my results to take our any internal links and then filter again to see links coming into the whole site and not just the page I searched.

To filter the results, you click the drop down next to “Show Inlinks:” and select one of the options. When I do this, I get redirected to Yahoo’s main search page. I was confused so I tried it again and it still didn’t work. I checked the urls then throughout the process and noticed something weird. When I do the site operator or link operator from Yahoo’s main search, it automatically redirects me to Yahoo’s Site Explorer, like it should. The interesting part is that it then gives me a url that looks like this:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Ftkg.com&bwm=p&bwms=p&fr=sfp&fr2=seo-rd-se

This url is interesting because of the last part, the “fr2=seo-rd-se”. This looks like Yahoo is redirecting “SEO” traffic back to their main search when people are tyring these queries. It is almost like they are trying to filter out SEO search traffic or something. It is really annoying to not be able to do these queries from Yahoo’s main search. If you go to Yahoo’s Site Explorer directly, it allows you to filter the links without any problems.

Guest Blogger: Emily Croskey

If you have taken the time to learn about Search Engine optimization, you may have come across two odd phrases, White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO, and you may have wondered – just what are these exactly?

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is used to describe any Search Engine optimization techniques that are ethically correct, and follow all of the Search Engine best practice guidelines, no short cuts are taken and no ‘cheating’ is involved. If you want to build a site that will stand the test of time, then White Hat SEO is the only way to go. White Hat techniques are designed to build traffic and rankings over time, by using a combination of on-page and off-page optimization techniques.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO uses significantly less ethical techniques, many of which are fully capable of seeing a website banned from the major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Black Hat SEO will push as much traffic to the site as possible in the shortest amount of time. If you have a reputable brand name that you wish to keep clean, using Black Hat SEO techniques could potentially tarnish your good name and image.

Your website would greatly benefit from White Hat SEO techniques. Even though you may have quicker results using Black Hat SEO techniques, in the long run it is not worth it. The best thing to do is to have an ethically sound website by using only White Hat SEO – it will pay off greatly!

Guest Blogger: Chad Henderson

While it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing that is the “most important” component of page optimization, there will be few who disagree that content is consistently at the top of the importance list.  With keyword research and page titles complete, the next consideration is content, or copy, on the page.  I’ve narrowed down a much larger list into 4 considerations for content creation you should make.

Action oriented web content
A user should easily identify what action or activity (conversion) you wish them to take.  For an e-commerce site, the ability to purchase a product (the sales process) should be easily recognized and easy to follow.  For an informational site, the ability to contact you should be easily recognized.  The internet is the ultimate example of a medium that limits the amount of time that a user will be engaged, so action oriented content should quickly convince them to take the activity you wish them to take.

Web Writing Patterns
Writing patterns for the web should reflect a conclusion first approach, letting the user know about the ultimate goal of the content previous to building it up with supportive content that will typically not be read by the user.  However, the search engine will appreciate the presence of supportive, relative content on a page and will consider it when evaluating the strength of it.  Additionally, studies show that the utilization of bullets can be an effective method for both user and search engines. Emphasis on the page, accomplished by appropriate HTML tagging will also be beneficial.

Content Keyword Density
Keyword density, or the saturation of key phrases on a page, is one of several factors that help the search engine determine the theme or topic of the page.  While keyword density is important, an overly saturated page can be perceived as “spammy”.  The general rule of thumb, as it is for other optimization strategies, is to ensure that the content reads well for the user, which will translate well for the search engines.

Site Readability Studies
Typical studies, such as the one provided by various readability studies in the picture below, reflect a typical pattern of reading that is demonstrated with most sites.  The “F” pattern, should be considered when thinking about where to place the important pieces of the information for the user.  From a search engine perspective, higher importance is placed to copy placed in at the top left of the page.

The Karcher Group is on the look out for an SEM with at least 2 years experience in the SEO industry!

The ideal SEM candidate will have at least 2 years experience with natural SEO, pay-per-click, link building (including online PR, article distribution, etc) and social media marketing strategies. In addition to the SEM knowledge, you should also be familiar with analyzing & interpreting website data/stats and tracking Search Engine rankings, link popularity, saturation, etc.

Read all about what we’re looking for in our experienced SEM search…

Guest Blogger: Chad Henderson

For those new to the SEO, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of information that needs to be collected so that your search marketing campaign is on target.  While we have discussed some issues such as creating page titles and keyword research in previous blogs, I wanted to take a second to mention some  tools available through the search engines that can be very useful.  These tools are built into the search engines and can provide a ton of great information that may help you in a variety of ways.  We’re focusing on Google, because well, it’s usually accepted as the industry benchmark, although tools in the other search engines are also available.

Search Operators
Known as search operators, these word based phrases (there are a few symbols that also help) added to the text of a Google search can provide a plethora of information that assist the planning or execution of an SEO campaign.  The basic syntax for their entry within the google search box (although some can be used within the search string and others have other exceptions) is:

{SEARCH OPERATOR}:{URL} OR {PHRASE}

Syntax examples of each are provided within each of the operators below.

site operator:

The site: search operator added to a search query tells Google to restrict results to those pages within the supplied domain.  The site: operator is also fantastic tool to evaluate the visibility or “indexability” of a site.  The search operator returns a listing of pages within a site that have been indexed by the search engine.  If you know that your site has 100 pages within it, and the search engines only see 1, then it is an indication that you have issues that need to be resolved.

Example: seminars site:www.tkg.com

(noting no space after site:,  resulting in pages about “seminars” within www.tkg.com)

link operator:

The link: operator reports the number and source of links coming into a specific URL, and is a general indicator of a sites popularity.  External link popularity, or the quantity and quality of links comining into your site, is an extremely important indicator of value to the search engines.

Example: link:www.tkg.com

cache operator:

The cache: operator displays the cached version of site as recorded in the index of the search engine.  “TEXT version only” options, available when viewing the cache: results, also give a good indication of the text (search engine favorite) that is seen on the page.  The absence of text in a cache: page result may be an indication of site limitations that would need resolved.

Example: cache:www.tkg.com

allinurl operator:

The allinurl: operator displays google results where the search phrase is contained within the url of the page.  When using multiple phrases, the Google results will display results where the phrase(s) occurs anywhere within the URL, in any order.

Example: allinurl: web marketing

info operator:

The info: search operator will report information that Google has about the specific domain you are inquiring about. Usually, the results are simply linked entry points into many of the other tools already mentioned.

Example: info:www.tkg.com

I am confident that these search operators will allow you to gather some great information about your site, or that of a competitor.