Nobody likes a slow website, and now officially Google doesn’t. And by “now” , I mean a couple of months ago. Yes ironic I know, a slow response with this post.

Google is constantly checking your site’s performance and all indications point to this being a ranking factor in future. This was reported a late last year by WebProNews, after an interview with the venerable Matt Cutts from the Goog.

By their own admission Google is all about the ”user experience”, with their prime SEO mantra being; “make websites for users, not for the search engines”. And page load time is one if the most important user experience issues that you’ll encounter when browsing the web.

It’s a well known “statistic” that if a web page does not load in less than 3 seconds a user will ”bounce” from the site, return to the search results and probably pick one of your competitors. So, how can you speed up a slow site?

Examine your site’s performance

First off, you should analyze all information available about how your pages load using some readily available tools. As a good SEO or webmaster you’ve probably already signed up for Google’s Webmaster Tools. A recently added feature is the “Site Performance” section, which is found under the “Labs” menu item.

This will give you a general indication of whether Google sees your site as being fast and provides a few tips on how your pages can be improved for speed. We can also see over time how your work in improving web site speed is taking effect.

For a more immediate read-out of a webpage’s performance we use the Yahoo YSlow plugin for Firebug (a Firefox plug-in). YSlow can be run on a live page that you are viewing and gives instant (depending on page load time of course :) ) feedback on what areas you can address to improve load time. It will also give you an indication of the “emtpy cache” (first time visitor) and “primed cache” (repeat visitor) performance.

For an advanced metric of page load time, Google Analytics can be configured to record a page load time metric and gives a reasonable representation of the issue from the user perspective. Analytics can be made to track the load time based on internet connection speed in so giving a broad indication of your site’s performance.

Enable GZip Compression

All modern browsers support webpage GZip compression and are able to decompress the data sent from your server. The less data that is transferred for each page, the less time it takes for a page to load in a browser. For those site owners who have a restriction on the amount of traffic with their host, GZip compression will reduce the amount of data that you have to serve.

You can use a GZip compression test to check if your pages are currently compressed and if not, this tool will estimate of the size of savings to expect. If GZip compression is enabled, the actual % of data saved during compression is shown. This tool can also test CSS and JS files.

Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers both support GZip, and quick and dirty instructions for enabling GZip compression is shown below:

Apache Server

The module that deals with GZip compression on an Apache server is “mod_deflate”. Create an “info.php” file and add the code <?php phpinfo() ?>, upload to your server and browse “/info.php” to get a readout of the Apache modules installed. If mod_deflate is loaded on your webserver then the following .htaccess declaration will enable GZip for a lot of file types.

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/javascript application/x-javascript application/x-httpd-php application/rss+xml application/atom_xml
</IfModule>

If mod_deflate can’t be loaded by your host or server admin (it requires a core recompile for installation) then the following .htaccess declaration will enable GZip compression for php files only. The “gzhandler” is not as efficient at compressing data than “mod_deflate”, so will be marginally slower and the savings will me slightly less but for most sites will suffice.

php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler

If your pages are .htm or .html (as opposed to .php) add the following lines at the top of your .htaccess to get Apache to parse those files as .php so that they will be compressed.

RemoveHandler .html .htm
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

Microsoft IIS

If you’re running a Microsoft IIS server, the following document will explain how compression can be activated: http://g.www.ms.akadns.net/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/25d2170b-09c0-45fd-8da4-898cf9a7d568.mspx?mfr=true

Reduce Image Size

These days websites are very graphicy, with most sites having appealing header images, product images and so forth. Unfortunately the more graphics on a site, the more data needs to be sent to the user’s browser leading to longer load times. This is especially an issue for first time visitors who don’t have the images cached.

Most competent web designers keep this in mind and will try to maximize the JPeg compression versus the image quality to speed up page loading. But there are some cool tools out there that can further improve things.

One of the most useful image tools that we use is SmushIt (found in the YSlow plugin that is mentioned earlier in this post). SmushIt is able to examine the images on a web page and compress them even further with no noticeable degradation in image quality. Smushing your header and background images is a must, and the data savings are often surprising.

One of the big no-no’s that we often come across is using the browsers image scaling to fit a large image into a small space.  We often find this is the case in product catalogs, when a large product image is used for the shingle thumbnail on the category listing pages. In this case, use a small thumbnail in the shingle instead of scaling.

For all other cases browser image scaling should be avoided, as the web browser is slow at scaling, not to mention the extra time spent downloading the large image. Always  ensure images are scaled to the correct size before use on your pages, and you’ll notice an improvement in load time.

If your website template uses a lot of background images, header images and image buttons  then the number of HTTP requests for a webpage will be quite high. Each request takes time and can slow down a page. To reduce this delay combine these template images into a CSS sprite image. This is basically one “big” image that contains all of your template images and using CSS classes you can pick out the correct part of this image that you need for each of the graphic elements on the page.

CSS and JavaScript Code

There are a few strategies for improving CSS and JavaScript file load time. At a minimum you should externalize all CSS and JS files so that they can be cached by the users browser. In addition, if you have more that one CSS or JS include file, combine all the CSS includes into one file, do the same with the JS includes, and this will reduce http requests. For the hardcore guys out there, try to Minify the CSS/JavaScript which will remove unnecessary white-space and line-breaks. Minify can be also found in the YSlow plugin for Firebug.

Reduce the amount of database calls in your application

A lot of websites out there rely on an SQL database to store information that is shown to your users. If your site runs a product catalog or a CMS systems then the odds are that a database is involved. Every time a page is requested by a browser, the database is queried for the information that the user will see on the page. This back and forth takes time and can be a bottleneck.

To speed things up, only run the minimum database queries that are required and only request the actual table fields from the database that you need. Avoid “SELECT * FROM” in your SQL queries. Optimizing things in this way can get quite quite knarly, so be prepared for a lot of hard work. For large sites that get a lot of traffic this can help in page load time tremendously and is worth the effort.

Wordpress

Wordpress is the most popular blogging software out there, and due to it’s flexibility is increasingly being used as a CMS system. Wordpress uses an SQL database to store all your posts and pages.

Hundreds of “plug-ins” are available for Wordpress to help customize it in countless ways. Unfortunately the more plugins that you install the slower Wordpress becomes. The less plugins that are activated the faster your Wordpress blog will be. You should also go as far as removing all unactivated wordpress plugins from your “plugin” directory.

A useful addition to Wordpress are “Widgets”, which allow for “real time updated” areas within your template. There are Widgets available to show latest posts, most popular posts, dynamic menus and much more. The problem is that each one of these widgets will poll the database to get the information required, thus increasing the load time of the page. Try to reduce the number of widgets that you use and if a widget is showing content that doesn’t change too often, try to hardcode the HTML with what the widget would display.

Summary

There are many more things to look at to speed up a website and those listed above are the areas that we initially tend to look at for our search engine optimization clients. Depending on the size of a site and the amount of traffic it gets, even the simplest change can have a significant effect.

If there are any other ways you have found to speed up a site, we’d love to know of your experiences.

He emerged in Western Pennsylvania on Tuesday to see his shadow, which traditionally means winter will last another six weeks.

12,000+ people from as far as Chile and the Netherlands, came to watch the pseudo-German tradition unfold. It has mutated from the original holiday of “Candelmas” and has become somewhat of a pop-culture tradition more than anything.

People stand around in near freezing, and sometimes below freezing, temperatures to watch a Marmot look for a shadow.  This is all with the understanding that a superstition will forecast the weather for the next month and a half, approximately.

Far from a factual undertaking, the whole circus is now geared towards entertainment.

You can see “Phil” at his website;   www.punxsutawneyphil.com .  The site header is carefully worded;

“Greetings from Punxsutawney! A tribute site to the world’s most famous weather-forecasting groundhog”.

However, a direct search for the Marmot today, puts his site at 3rd place, behind “news” and then “groundhog.org”. This begs the question, why wouldn’t Phil want his traffic pointing to his site and then monetize it heavily?

Maybe because Marmot’s have no real use for money, and less use for people and attention?

Reference PETA and their recommendation, not surprisingly to, “stop waking Phil up because taking pictures of him is cruel,and he should be replaced with a robot.”

Personally, I think perhaps we might all be better served if all protestors would be replaced with robots; They could circle and hold signs and broadcast propaganda from speakers, but then who would be able to tell the difference, honestly?

Practicality aside, let’s pretend that Phil is the Capitalist that we all would be in his shoes (if he wore any).

Further internet searches related to Punxsutawney Phil today topped out at 3rd most searched items:

punxsutawney phil, groundhog day, punxsutawney phil 2010, punxsutawney phil video, will punxsutawney phil see his shadow, national hurricane center, empire state building, punxsutawney phil 1986, and punxsutawney phil pictures being the most relevant searches.

For example, when you enter “punxsutawney phil” on a Google search, you get a sponsored link for “eBay”; Sponsored Links Punxsutawney Phil -Beanie Babies & Other Plush Dolls. Bid on Punxsutawney Phil.
For the search “groundhog day” you will get a set of sponsored links for “www.alliedcreditsolutions.com” and

“www.PartyCheap.com“.

Who knew that there would be parties and credit solutions associated with burrowing rodents? Usually those kind of Marmot parties in the Northwest involve using ”credit solutions” to purchase a rifle and/or some ammo, and then the “party” portion involves some beer and “downsizing” the Marmot population from your tailgate, but I digress.

If you would like to follow Phil on some of the social media outlets, there are a number of sites he is purported to use:

On facebook this is supposedly the one to use:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Punxsutawney-Phil/103061141793

Then there are a number of videos to watch, and youtube is no exception.

Then on Twitter, it starts to get confusing since there are two: GroundhogPhil and PunxsutawnePhil.

Amazingly, the little guy while unable to speak human dialects, is able to text you in English by  text “Groundhog” to 247365.

They will get a text message with the prediction on Feb. 2 (today).

The revenue and traffic can’t all be benefiting the marmot, so what is a “groundhog” to do?

First, the Marmot needs to take stock of what he owns and is entitled to protect.

Has he done a sufficient job of protecting and registering his intellectual property?

How much of what is irritating him is considered “fair use”?

Next, he needs a good strategy to both protect what is acquirable, enforceable, and still available.

Last, he needs a team or solution that involves expertise and experience with online legal and enforcement issues.

If you find your self in a similar situation as our furry friend, Metamend has online reputation management solutions to prevent you from having your own groundhog day with regard to your online identity.

The somewhat “quakeresque” public perception of religious leadership is that anything “tech” is bad and living in an 1800’s way of life with a candle, and wooden shack and a Holy Bible is something we should all aspire to.

Possibly contrary to the stereotype, Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging his priests to become more versed in internet and technical things. The Vatican has been very much near the cutting edge, believe it or not, for most of the internet’s existence.

For example; The Vatican / Holy See has had its own internet ccTld since inception of the naming standard. The registration web site is http://www.nic.va, which is currently offline. The only used .va extension is vatican.va and the website is live.

Some of the content on the Vatican site is the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Here is where the Vatican explains its position with regard to the internet. The site is very content heavy, and perhaps a bit wordy, but very thorough. The Pope has also weighed in on internet issues in the past.
Last year he warned ICANN of the “perils” of allowing new internet domains such as “.catholic, .anglican, .orthodox, .hindu, .islam, .muslim, and perhaps .buddhist”. The Pope felt there was the danger of over or under acknowledging each religion and the problems that could follow sanctioning and not sanctioning each possible extension.

Given the overall Muslim reaction to Israel, fundamentalist cartoons, and even our own World Trade Center, its hard to argue with the Pope’s opinion to err on the side of caution when mixing religion and law.
In addition to the Vatican’s multilingual Web site, it has recently launched the “Pope2you” portal, which offers a Facebook app, iPhone app, YouTube channel, and selected videos.

The pope has cautioned his internet handlers to use discretion and be mindful of social media content. Executives from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google also attended a Vatican meeting to brief officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.
He says: “Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ. This will not only enliven their pastoral outreach, but also will give a ’soul’ to the fabric of communications that make up the Web.”

The meeting which addressed Internet copyright issues and hacking, included testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official. The Vatican’s top communications official, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, has said a key priority of the Catholic Church is to be able to use new technologies to spread its message, particularly to the young.

“Our dream in this global village created by new technologies is that the church and Jesus’ disciples can have their tent – Jesus’ tent – so that the attention of men and women who walk the streets of the world is turned toward it,” he said recently on Vatican Radio.

Coincidentally, there is an internet cafe near the vatican called “Hackers” which is a Restaurant that serves pizza, beer, has state-of-the-art computers on-site and also provides internet access. In case anyone would like to add it to their travel itinerary, it is at address: Via Sebastiano Veniero 10-16 in Vatican City, tel: 06-3973-9268.

The Vatican has a notable history on the internet starting with the founders of Apple computer.

Using a captain crunch whistle, Steve Wozniak actually called the Vatican as a prank. He asked for the pope, and said, this is Henry Kissinger calling on behalf with Richard Nixon at the summit meeting in Moscow. He actually didn’t get anywhere as the Archbishop had spoken to Henry Kissinger early that day, and would not grant access to the Pope, as the story goes.

Later, Pope John Paul II used mass media and information technology to get out his message, overseeing the 1995 launch of the Vatican’s Web site, http://www.vatican.va. Virtual tours, and audio feeds from Vatican Radio can be found on the website.
The radio stations are: Vatican Radio Ch1  Vatican City, Vatican Radio “One-O-Five live”: Italian, English,
French and Spanish, Vatican Radio Ch2  Vatican City, Arabic, Czech, Croatian, Esperanto, French, English,
Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish,German, Hungarian.
Vatican Radio Ch3  Vatican City Albanian, Armenian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Esperanto,
Philippine, Latvian, Lithuanian, Rumanian, Russian,Scandinavian, Ukranian
Vatican Radio Ch4  Vatican City  Amharic, Chinese, French (Africa), Hindi, English (Africa),
English (India), Kiswahili, Malealam, Portuguese (Africa),Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tigrino, Vietnamese.
Vatican Radio Ch5  Vatican City Arabic, French, English, Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil),
Spanish (Spain, Ispanoamerica).
But even in the wake of the Vatican trying to stay current, it still has online shortcomings.
Earlier in the year, Pope Benedict stated that he was disappointed that Vatican officials hadn’t done a simple Internet search to discover the Holocaust-denying comments of an ultraconservative bishop whose excommunication he had lifted.
Pope Benedict wrote a letter to his bishops saying that he had “learned the lesson” after public outrage over Bishop Richard Williamson’s re-instatement. The Pope assured all the Vatican would in the future pay greater attention to the Internet as a source of news.

This is a situation where a carefully crafted Online Reputation Management strategy would solve the problems at hand. Metamend has such solutions to help you fix your internet reputation issues.

It appears we are all not quite seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with the latest economic slump. It has hit everyone hard regardless of business size or industry and in many cases marketing dollars are the first to disappear.

Truth be known, many companies that do succeed during tougher economic times are the ones who actually increase their online marketing budgets.  In many cases this strategy is used to take advantage of the competition dropping their strategies all together and the benefits are far reaching well after the economy woes are over.

Everyone can understand the incredible value in this economy of having highly relevant traffic directed to your website showcasing your products or services. A skilled SEO company is your best and most cost effective option to handle the daunting task of continuously growing relevant and converting search engine traffic.

There are a large amount of key points to consider when deciding whether or not to outsource your SEM / SEO initiatives. The following points are two that are common throughout regardless of industry.

Keeping Current and Connected

The search engine marketing environment is a fast ever-changing world and typically reputable SEO /SEM firms stay current with tactics and trends. In-house marketing and IT employees are commonly wearing many hats and it is difficult to be up to date with current developments and news throughout the industry. This can include certifications, training and industry specific tips and tricks.

Enterprise level search marketing firms have an extensive network of professional colleagues and other contacts operating within the major search engine companies. The majority of SEM company employees have spent a great deal of time and effort participating within their own industry via social media channels such as twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. These added benefits can be a huge advantage to you and your company and in every case is a significant time saver if these resources need to be tapped for information during a search engine optimization of paid advertising campaign.

Can Our In-house Developer or Marketing Manager Do It All?

Perhaps, although these skilled individuals is very rare.  Surprisingly enough it is common to find even mid-sized firms employ a single staff member to handle not only their web properties, social media management, paid advertising management but their search marketing strategy as well. The most skilled of professionals would find this an impossible juggling act and those who can manage this multi disciplined work load should be well coveted.

The potential danger of your company losing this individual over time and not finding a suitable replacement could be devastating.  Companies that place a high value on this type of risk management should consider seeking outside professional search marketing assistance.

Freeing up in-house resources to focus on other vital business aspects of your company during these troubled economic times can be an extremely cost effective move.

As a free open source option for beginners, advanced webmasters and SEO’s alike, Wordpress has become one of the most popular platforms in which to build a web property. Although Wordpress is rounding the corner towards version 3.0 there is still a lot of useful SEO tools that are not and will not be built-in to the blogging software.

Once having installed the software to your web server one must hunt around the internet tirelessly for Plugins in order to satisfy their requirements for SEO. Metamend has decided to make this task easier for our valued web visitors by putting together a little wordpress seo bundle. This Wordpress SEO theme bundle could save the average person hours of time researching and obtaining the best tools for Wordpress.

Wordpress in itself is naturally good for SEO in the way that it allows so much control over the website including on-page optimization and file naming. With a few additional plugins you can turn a wordpress site into an SEO dream.

To learn more about Wordpress and to download our comprehensive Wordpress SEO Bundle click here.

Having said that, and even after having lived through 1980’s, I had mixed emotions as I thought about how in 2010 this movie would have changed? We now all have a cell phone, and usually its a phone that essentially doubles as your laptop for most duties. Most of us get our news online and have, long ago good or bad, cancelled our paper newsprint. One giant wide screen, Plasma, or LED TV has replaced the TV bank, and Satellite TV does not require a 10 foot dish. But I digress;

I think the situation is much like the 1956 version of “The Body Snatchers” where the takeover happened when we went to sleep; incrementally, so that no-one would notice. We happily latched on to the new technology and marveled at its ease of use. We raced to enjoy the fun and how it was making our lives simpler, and we became more connected one improvement at a time. Soon, we couldn’t wait to give up pieces of our anonymity to stay current with the new technology. But if you think we have gone as far as we can with giving up privacy, then you would be well served to take notice of one or more of these new changes that I found:

Take “Blippy”for example; Their website went live recently,  and what Blippy does is broadcast all your purchases online for everyone to see. You simply submit your credit card or debit card number, and Blippy automatically posts your transaction data. This data can now be cross-posted to Twitter, of all things.

Your posts will list the business where your purchases were made and how much you spent. If that isn’t intrusive enough, even more detail can be shared in the “comments” area. Twitter CEO Evan Williams is reportedly among the investors for Blippy. The Palo Alto based company insists that their high-tech encryption will protect data from being stolen or reused, as if that is the sole concern here.

Proponents suggest that we now live in such an “open” society that objections are mostly from people with last century thinking, and I have to say, I am in that last century thinking category.

Moving on, is Straley’s Seattle-based company MeteorSolutions.
This company tags each visitor to a website and then tracks whomever they tell about your site as well as how they share links and content. In effect you are virally evangelizing for that site and are known as an “influencer,” according to the company. I used to think this was known as spyware but, I suppose if its voluntary, the whole “spy” portion is out of the equation. Again, I don’t understand this “tracking me” mentality, but seeing as how I enjoyed DOS based applications in the 80’s, perhaps this is just not in my demographic.

This takes us to 21st century Employee screening. Several places online suggest now that employers should screen all applicants in a uniform manner by creating a list of the social media they will search for, on each applicant, and construct a list of the lawful information about each applicant desired from the social media search, (carefully minding discrimination laws and perceptions). I personally have always liked a one page resume myself, and a referral from someone whom I believe has good judgement. I have been known to roll the dice with an employee who I thought may have caught a bad break in life but was deep down a good candidate, and would appreciate a “second chance” from anyone. This type of decision is intuition and experience, and so far I have not seen a social media site that can replicate that, and I don’t think I would want to either.

If that isn’t intrusive enough, recently, a new application known as UStream uses your net phone camera  so you can let people see you walk down the street in real time. Ustream also doesn’t offer any real privacy settings when broadcasting from the iPhone, so people you don’t know can observe your streams when you are broadcasting. Apparently, just your credit card shopping tracking in real time isn’t enough, but now people want to see you walk between those purchases on camera.

Your ID is even ratting you out; US Passports contain RFID tracking. Any kind of card that contains information stored on an RFID chip is readable at a distance. Many have suggested that based upon a viral youtube video, that our US passports could be used to target US tourists for IEDs on foreign soil.

If your ID wasn’t bad enough, your car is tracking and reporting on you as well, and acting in conjunction with your data phone. Onstar now has a mobile app to communicate and interact with your car, as well as Mercedes-Benz and Ford as well.

Ford is planning to roll out iPhone apps that send navigation instructions from a leading car to the car behind it so that the follower doesn’t get lost if they’re separated by traffic or stoplights. Another app will let drivers command an iPhone to select among internet radio stations using the Sync voice recognition system, allowing the driver to keep looking at the road.

Mercedes-Benz and Hughes Telematics are working on a service app that will let drivers manage streaming music, locate points of interest or reply to e-mail, all by voice control. Both Mercedes-Benz and Ford will create their own app stores for mobile applications that run in its cars.

A recent TV commercial shows how Onstar can be used to signal your lights, and kill your engine via satellite. This is of course with the expressed purpose of preventing stolen cars, and would never be used in a “big brother” fashion, such as a no-start for late or missed car payments, insurance issues, repossession, bad mood customer service person, etc. That requires a significant amount of trust, that I don’t really possess, even in this open 21st century.

What is the sum of all of this for our industry? I see the writing on the wall for online Reputation Management and I believe we have just seen the tip of this boat-sinking iceberg. I believe this will all lead to new, more and deeper infringement and reputation attacks and those of us in this industry need to be vigilant and roll with these changes. If you want to learn more about Reputation Management, please feel free to use Metamend expertise and we can help you protect or rebuild your good name.

Ad Hoc Keyword Research is Dead

Determining an optimal keyword list can be a very involved process and is always considered the lynchpin of any successful search marketing campaign. Gone are the days of focusing your search marketing efforts on a phrase list consisting of one or two keyword terms. These “short-tail” phrases might prove to be over saturated in the search engines results or are lacking in specific relevancy to your message thus leading to a poor conversion potential. Finding those “long-tail” terms will always lead to a great ROI potential, and greater user retention.

The Process –In a Nutshell

The phraseology process has in recent years has truly become an art form and each analyst will have a core set of tools and different methods of data collection when crafting their final targeted terms.

The first step of this process typically includes the collecting of related search terms en masse. Generating large groups of search terms varying in length are gathered using keyword search tools and one should utilize more than one set of tools. Relying on one keyword tool can be detrimental to the end result when assessing your keyword targets. It is always a safe bet to back up your search data comparing the results between multiple sources. As one can imagine different search data sources can lead to very different results.

Most reputable search marketing firms will have a gambit of in-house developed tools at their disposal however here is a sample of commonly used search / keyword tools:

• Google’s Keyword Tool and Insights to Search
• Keyword Discovery
• Word Tracker
• Wordstream
• Keyword Spy
• SEOmoz – Keyword Difficulty Tool

At the end of this phase you should take a close look at historical analytics to see what terms have delivered the most relevant targets in the past. It is imperative not to destroy the great traffic you have enjoyed in the past by diluting it with new terms. Build on past successes instead of just replacing it with another term.
Once your core phrase targets have been collected and loosely organized the paring down phase of the process kicks in. The removal of unachievable terms (due competition) and others that have a lower relevancy or traffic potential should be performed. The results should deliver you with somewhat of a refined core list to work from.

The final goal of course is to have a tightly refined targeted list to apply to your search engine optimization strategies and this is where the historical knowledge of the types of keywords that convert comes in to play.
Assessing the realistic expectations of the phrases you wish to employ is prudent. Can your site compete with the others targeting that term? Are you able to do what it takes to add value to your site in order to target that particular term? These are the questions that need to be addresses before committing to the final targets.

These tips are truly a very broad look at what is needed to come up with solid targets that will over time deliver you with all that huge traffic increases you are looking for. An experienced keyword analyst will have the insight to provide a solid targeted list and the search / historical data to back up the choices.

The Company Branding and Messaging Misconception

The right mindset is essential to come up with the final keyword selection that is going to deliver you with those “money” terms.  All too often traditional marketing individuals have a difficult time understanding that what has works for years on a billboard does not necessary translate into a winning term via search. This is not to say that one should not pay close attention to fully understanding a company’s brick and mortar business and the existing marketing initiatives. The more intimate you are with the business messaging, product or service will obviously have a large impact on the phraseology process.

Marketing managers and business owners will also sometimes have strong views on what terms they wish to be found under. All too often these terms are not searched by web searchers in great numbers and in some cases can deliver irrelevant results.

For example, an auto insurance company might be apprehensive with the keyword suggestion “cheap auto insurance quotes” with the thinking that the word “cheap” degrades the quality of their business and perhaps places a misconception on the quality of their service. They may push you on this and suggest that “inexpensive automobile insurance quotes” is what they want you to utilize in your strategies. Nine times out of ten once they realize that people just don’t search that way and your suggestions will come to fruition.

Mark Johnstone

Search Engine Marketing Analyst and Project Manager
Google AdWords Qualified Individual
Metamend – Search Engine Marketing Experts

Search engine giant Google announced yesterday that they have been targeted by cyber attacks of “varying degrees on a regular basis”. Google’s Chief legal Officer David Drummond also mentioned that Google was not the sole recipient of these attacks and that it included at least 20 other companies from a variety of different industries. Google investigation thus far has led them to pass along the details of this cyber activity to these additional companies.

It is apparent that the attackers attempted to access Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and Google is reporting that the malicious activity was for the most part unsuccessful. The unauthorized access consisted of two Gmail accounts being compromised and the attackers were only able to view the account creation dates, email subject lines and basic account information. Google immediately implemented changes to their architecture to enhance security for its users.

This latest round of cyber attacks has promoted Google to review their business ventures in China. In the interim Google has decided to not to continue censoring delivered results to Chinese web surfers claiming that they do not wish to further limit free speech.

This could very well be the end of Google operations in China resulting in google.cn and local offices being shut down completely.

What does this mean for Search Engine Optimization?

Until a final decision by the powers that be at Google and the Chinese Government the verdict is still out on how this may affect the search engine marketing world.  One would think that if Google pulled out of the Chinese market it could have a negative impact on companies that have heavily invested in optimizing and targeting this already massive and growing market.

If we look at “.UK” for example and its domain name registration and web hosting company, LCN.com they will be offering free .UK domain names as part of its “10th Birthday Countdown Promotion”. This “free” offer is only valid with purchase any other two year domain extension in the same order, but the strategy is clear; get more domains out there.

Then this week, Montenegro has released a news story about how their domain  .ME is ‘proving attractive to businesses’. Central to their strategy is the personal nature of the word “me” which has the same meaning in a host of languages. Not only that, but the extension has a marketing side-effect, that a number of other extensions also possess, which is simply, .me spells a word by itself; like youand.me and whatabout.me, and even notify.me.

Other notable extensions include Tonga, such as go.to and how.to, Italy with fix.it, find.it, Tuvalu, with the obvious .tv, then the “abbreviations” like Cocos Keeling with .cc marketed as “Carbon Copy” or Samoa with .ws for “Web Site” and finally Laos with .la for “Los Angeles”. New uses for some extensions like bit.ly, a hyperlink shortening site, exist in the gray area of the internet since .ly is the extension for Libya, an oft-times sanctioned adversary of the United States. TechnicalLu that is doing business with a sanctioned foreign power for Americans depending on the State Department’s stance at that time.

Moving on, and while it spells nothing and isn’t short for anything, .CN has been a very successful selling domain.  China apparently is done with that success and has stated that no overseas application for .CN will be accepted until further notice from the registry. Very puzzling.

Conversely, .TK or Tokelau announced that they have opened the .TK registry for free domains with full name server support. In the past, Dot TK has provided free domain name registration services but only with its URL forwarding service.

Perhaps coincidence, but with the Nexus one launch recently and itunes store bulging with “app”s, its hard to deny the writing on the wall.

If you have seen the writing on the wall and its negatively about you, Metamend has a dedicated ORM team to assist you in keeping your good name.

More surprising however, is the apparent lack of a proactive domain strategy.

NexusOne.com appears to have been around since 1998 and does not appear to be owned by Google nor any Google service provider or affiliate. In fact, it appears to be a web design themed site. Google has not publically shared any plan or strategy to acquire the domain name either.

So what exactly is Google’s strategy here?

We have all seen the shift from broad purchasing of defensive registrations by companies, to instead, better utilize property owned and step up enforcement efforts. There are many ways companies are doing this, and service providers like Metamend have the experience and expertise to assist in crafting these domain name management strategies.

In this instance, not much is going on domain-wise either. However, Google does appear to have “unofficially” acquired at least two gtlds with variations of the “nexus one” brand, but I will not list them here as this is not been made official.

If you look at basic variations, we see the following intellectual property still available:

nexus-1.biz – was still available at the time of this writing…

GTLD domains that have been registered in the last month:

nexus-1.us – registered Tue Dec 29 22:10:51 GMT 200
nexus-1.mobi and nexus-1.info – 15-Dec-2009 04:42:37 UTC
nexus-1.org – 18-Dec-2009 14:41:51 UTC
nexus-one.us – Sun Dec 13 09:00:05 GMT 2009
nexus-one.mobi – 13-Dec-2009 09:00:11 UTC
nexus-one.info – 12-Dec-2009 02:16:11 UTC
nexus-one.biz – Sun Dec 13 09:01:46 GMT 2009
nexus-one.org – 13-Dec-2009 08:51:49 UTC
nexusone.us – Fri Dec 11 02:37:58 GMT 2009
nexusone.mobi – 13-Dec-2009 06:28:08 UTC
nexusone.biz – Wed Dec 15 01:48:26 GMT 2004
nexusone.org – 15-Dec-2004 01:48:28 UTC
nexus1.us – Fri Dec 11 02:38:18 GMT 2009
nexus1.mobi – 13-Dec-2009 09:37:35 UTC
nexus1.info – 13-Dec-2009 04:17:58 UTC

and finally, domains which have been registered for a while:

nexus1.net – 09-jul-1998
nexus1.org – 31-Mar-2009 09:45:03 UTC
nexus1.biz – Mon Nov 25 14:08:35 GMT 2002
nexusone.com – 08-jul-1998
nexusone.net – 27-aug-2007
nexusone.info – 23-Sep-2009 20:36:43 UTC
nexus-1.net – 21 May 2009 14:11:34
nexus-one.net -  Tuesday, 26-Sep-2006
nexus-one.com – 24-jun-2009
nexus-1.com – 03-mar-2000
A trademark application for the name “Nexus One” was filed by Google, Inc. on December 10 and we see the first wave of new (2009+) registrations within hours on December 11th.

I am sure there are host of “good faith” reasons and coincidences, but it is compelling to say the least. In the next few December days, the lion’s share of the rest of the “nexus one” variants were registered and not apparently by Google.

No one can deny that Google obviously knows what it is doing business-wise but their online strategy here is confusing at best.

They have done a fine job of registering and enforcing their “Google” mark from a gtld perspective, but when we look at “gmail” we see that nexus one was not the first time this confusing strategy was employed.

Gmail.com is the Google e-mail client that a good portion of us use and is owned by Google, but gmail.net, gmail.org, gmail.biz, and gmail.info are not. G-mail.net, g-mail.org, and gmail.info are also owned by someone other than Google.

This is usually the result of Marketing, Legal, Production and most any or all other divisions of a company not talking to each other, or simply a non-existent strategy in most cases. Also some companies do not care and simply throw caution to the wind. I would not advise any of the above strategies or lack of.

Instead, I would have recommended the following steps to insure a smoother launch:

First, perform some due diligence.

Do a little internet and TM research and see if someone else has already had a similar idea to yours. If so, maybe consider a variation of your desired name or do a bit more research and try to find out if the domain holder would be willing to sell it or lease it to you. Remember that in most cases honey will get you a lot farther than vinegar; be nice, and try asking first.

Next, register all the gtlds. It is a shame to have to go back and negotiate the .net when it outperforms your .com. Keep in mind that SEO and similar tactics outpace direct searching these days so even a non-dot com can catch more traffic than the actual .com.

Finally, coordinate the timing in a coherent manner in advance of filing or purchasing anything. We saw in this instance with the “Nexus One” mark that within hours of the TM filing, possible squats were already showing up.

If you are in need of a strategy of this nature, I recommend contacting Metamend and we can assist you in developing your own online domain management strategy.