Lots of factors go into Google’s algorithm that determines the quality score for any given ad, but how many people actually click on the ad is one of the major ones. Ads that appear first, though, get a boost in click-through rates simply by being listed above all the other ads. Google is now taking into account the boost in click-through rates an ad gets by dint of its position, and backing that out from the quality score. That should result in a boost to overall quality scores.

The second change will be more visible. We’ll be seeing a lot more ads above search results in addition to the side because Google also just made it easier for ads to occupy those slots. In the past, only ads with that were both ranked the highest and met a minimum quality score would be placed above the regular search results. Here’s how Google explains this change in its AdWords blog:

To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we’ll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. For instance, suppose the ad in position 1 on the right side of the page doesn’t have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position 2 does. It’s now possible for the number 2 ad to jump over the number 1 ad and appear above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions.

The change also ensures that there is a larger pool of ads that can be placed up top. Those ads occupy the most valuable real estate on the page. Putting more ads there should result in more clicks, and thus more revenues for Google. And remember, because of change No. 1, there should be more ads with high enough quality scores to make it to that coveted spot.

In the past, Google has been conservative about which ads it would place above search results because it does not want to dilute the overall search experience. By redefining what makes a quality ad, it can put more ads up there and still feel good about itself.

The fact is that you can’t afford to miss all the potential opportunities. While many small businesses don’t have a huge marketing budget, that’s no reason for a lack of search engine visibility. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the top-performing tactics in online marketing and outperforms traditional media like TV, radio and print. You can save money by doing the work yourself, but it’s also wise to hire consultants for some vital tasks like SEO copywriting, analytics and conducting the SEO review.

This article will show you how, on a small budget, you can use SEO to drive more business to your site from people who never even heard of you before you became visible in the SERPs. We will review the SEO techniques that result in high rankings, increased conversions, and improved marketing ROI.

Defining website goals

Your site objectives will depend on the type of site you are promoting. For instance, if you have an ecommerce site, your objective is likely to increase sales. A few examples of website goals are shown below:

B2C site objective: increase sales
Content management site objective: increase readership
B2B site objective: increase leads
Self-service site objective: increase customer satisfaction while decreasing customer support calls
Blog site objective: create links and interest in product, service or topic
Your SEO campaign will target your site goals by identifying and measuring your site’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Your KPIs should be measured before and after your SEO campaign to determine effectiveness. Some examples of SEO KPIs might be:

Traffic from branded keywords vs. non-branded keywords
Number of unique pages crawled
Number of pages yielding traffic
Number of visitors per keyword
Knowledge of web analytics is important because it can tell you how to tweak your campaigns for better performance. Hire a consultant if you don’t have analytics expertise yourself.

Know your customers and review your site

Knowing your customers
You must be in touch with the demands of the marketplace if you’re going to create successful SEO copy for your website. Many site owners think they understand their customers but merely use their own preconceived notions of customer needs. To really understand your customers, you must interact with them as often as possible. Below are a few ways you can do this.

Gather keyword intelligence from your site logs or site search
Survey customers to get feedback after every sale or periodically
Provide customer reviews on your site or conduct an annual customer audit
Use blogs and social networking to interact with customers
Communicate with customers through newsletters based on their interests
Before starting an SEO campaign, it’s important to review your site to learn how it is currently performing.

Conducting an SEO site review
The purpose of an SEO site review is to assess the current search effectiveness of your site and spell out what needs to be done to improve performance. The data is also used as a baseline to track performance over time. The site review can reveal unknown facts about your site’s code and structure that might be impeding your search engine rankings.

It is wise to hire an external consultant to conduct your site review because this person comes with a different perspective and can open your eyes to things you wouldn’t think of yourself. If you hire an experienced SEO consultant to identify and prioritize the changes necessary to improve your site’s performance, you’ll have a blueprint for success.

Another option is the Website Health Check Tool offered by Aaron Wall, which provides some of the information you need to improve your site. It can tell you if Google is indexing your site and how quickly it is indexing your new pages. It can flag duplicate content pages and point out canonical URL issues, etc.

After the site review, it’s time to implement changes and build web pages.

The anatomy of building web pages

Hopefully, your site was designed for SEO and you followed the webmaster guidelines from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search.

The best way to attract search traffic is to create large quantities of keyword-focused, customer-centric web pages about your product, service or niche. Keep in mind that long tail keywords add up and will always create more traffic than your highly competitive keywords, especially for newer domains. Logical, keyword-focused site architecture with good navigation is important as well.

Title tag: Keep your title short (65 characters or less), forming a sentence beginning with your primary keyword(s). The title is the first thing users see in the SERPs, so use enticing, descriptive copy. Create unique title tags for every page.

Meta description: Create your description tag to grab the click. Use keywords as soon as possible and keep it short (150 characters or less) since snippets are usually truncated in different lengths by search engines.

Header: Include primary keywords and spark interest. Keep it short and relevant. Use only one H1 tag per page.

Body text: Build pages that have a purpose for your visitors and are focused on two to three primary keywords. Include your primary keyword at the beginning and at end of the page. Support your primary keywords with related keywords to establish context on your pages and facilitate spidering. Close with a call to action. Write in conversational style; focus on customer needs while being mindful of search spiders. Write concisely as web users tend to scan. Let your headers organize the copy with the use of bullets and bold text for emphasis. Leave plenty of white space. Use anchor text for internal and external linking and vary your anchor text by using related keywords. If possible, hire a professional SEO copywriter.

Internal links: Link relevant pages to each other internally throughout site content. Ensure keyword-focused anchor text is relevant to the destination page. Use navigation text links rather than images or Javascript. Use breadcrumb links, subject/topic group links and sitemap links.

External links: Get listed in DMOZ and quality directories in your niche. When looking for one-way links, search your primary keywords to identify competitors, then find out who is linking to them. Create a list and be prepared to offer something of value in return for a static link with relevant anchor text. Start a business blog and post valuable information on other blogs relevant to your business. Write hot content in your area of expertise and submit to relevant publications or post on your blog. Hire a linking consultant to fast start your linking strategy.

Images: Use images to lend credibility to your content and create interest. Keep image size to a minimum for fast display. Use relevant alt text.

Sitemap: Create a sitemap of all the pages in your site to reveal link structure. This helps search spiders find all relevant pages of your site available for crawling.

Site validation: Ensure your pages are indexable and links can be followed with the free W3C Markup Validation Service.

SEO tools to simplify tasks

SEO tasks are time consuming, so you need tools to save time and simplify your tasks. Some tools are free and others cost money. Below are selective lists of tools for analytics, keyword research, competitive research, link analysis and search engine rank checking.

Analytics tools: Used to optimize site content and design, maximizing performance. For more information on web analytics, see Avinash Kaushik’s blog, Occam’s Razor.

Google Analytics: Robust analytics tool
Google Website Optimizer: Test and optimize site content and design to maximize performance
Piwik: Open source web analytics
Webalizer: Free web server log file analyzer

Keyword research tools: Used to discover keywords to target and tells you how competitive they are. Keyword research can be difficult and time consuming. If you can’t do this yourself, SEO Research Labs will provide a keyword research and analysis package for $99.95.

Wordtracker Free Keywords: Generates up to 100 related keywords and get an estimate of their daily search volume.
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool: Generates keywords based on your keyword/URL input
Keyword Discovery: This free search term suggestion tool generates the top 100 keywords
Microsoft adCenter Keyword Forecast: Gives impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords

Competitive research tools: Used to determine how much traffic your competitors get and which search terms send them the most traffic.

Alexa: Gives you traffic trends for competing websites
Compete.com: Track and compare competitors with free site metrics for the top 1,000,000 web domains
Google Search Insights: Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames
Xinu: Free competitive analysis tool that provides PageRank, backlinks, site age, social bookmarking and link data
Link analysis tools: Used to analyze your link profile compared to your competitors, identify and fix broken links and find new linking sources to give your site the authority needed for top rankings.

Xenu Link Sleuth: Free software identifies broken links, verifies internal links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and Java applets.
Backlink Watch: Free tool shows details on your backlinks including anchor text
SEO Book Backlink Analyzer: Free tool shows anchor text linking to your site or page
SEO Book Hub Finder: Free tool identifies hub sites/pages that link to related resources
SEO Book Link Popularity Tool: Free tool compares your link profile to leading competitors
Tip: Download Firefox for SEO plug-ins that streamline many SEO tasks. The Online Marketing Blog has a list of Firefox SEO plug-ins and descriptions.

Search engine ranking checkers: Used to track your site rankings in the SERPs for important keywords, tracking that information against competing sites (or your own earlier rankings) to gauge SEO effectiveness. Note: search rankings are not the only measure of success.

SEO Book Google Rank Checker: Free tool searches Google with 100 results per page to show you where your site ranks for a particular term
DigitalPoint Search Engine Keyword Tracker & Keyword Ranking Tool: Free tool checks Google Yahoo and MSN for search engine rankings and tracks those rankings historically

1. Do you have a list of unused domains you may have bought but aren’t using?
2. Where are your additional unused domains being hosted?
3. How many sub-domains do you currently have?
4. Do you advertise your url in any offline advertising (magazines, radio etc.)?
5. Do you use server load balancing i.e www1.domain.com, www2.domain.com?
6. Do you already have listings on Craigslist, Kijiji, Gumtree?
7. Do you use Facebook, Youtube, Google Video to promote your services?
8. Do you have any embeddable content (widgets, calculators) that use dynamic query strings?
9. Are all your telephone numbers, addresses, and contact email id’s up to date
10. Where do you see your online marketing efforts going in 1 year’s time?
11. What digital content do you have that might be able to be added to your website? And, do you think this content is useful to a particular audience?

Avoid the horror stories and the OMG moments by remembering to ask the questions you usually don’t ask your client the next time around. I’m sure there’s more that experienced SEO’s can offer, so please leave me a comment with your thoughts and opinions on the subject.

Power up Chrome with bookmarklets

Firefox fans will be disappointed by Chrome’s lack of add-ons. Chome is still in early beta, so there’s a possibility that add-ons will be in the browser’s future. But even now, there are ways you can use add-ons to Chrome, via bookmarklets.

Bookmarklets are little pieces of JavaScript that you can store as a bookmark, and when clicked upon, they run as a kind of miniprogram. They don’t include a full set of features and interactivity, as do Firefox add-ons or Internet Explorer’s ActiveX controls; think of them as one-trick ponies that accomplish a single task.

Because Chrome is in beta, not every bookmarklet will necessarily work with it. But there have been a number of bookmarklets written specifically for Chrome, and other bookmarklets work just fine with it.

To add a bookmarklet to Chrome, first display Chrome’s bookmarks bar, which appears just below the Omnibox. (Pressing Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.) Once you do that, when you get to a page with a bookmarklet link, drag the link to the Chrome bookmarks bar. Once it’s there, to run the bookmarklet, click on it.

The Blogote blog has a list of bookmarklets that are supposed to work with Chrome. You can drag the bookmarklets to Chrome’s bookmarks bar from there.

For example, the “Adblock+” bookmarklet is useful for those who want to surf without a lot of flashing, noisy ads. While it won’t block all ads, it can block third-party iFrames as well as ads with Java, Flash and music. After you’ve installed it, when you’re on a page whose ads you want to block, click the bookmarklet, and it does its work.

For bookmarklets designed to work with many browsers, not just Chrome, head to the CyberNotes page on CyberNet. Unfortunately, although the site has icons to show whether each bookmarklet works with Firefox, IE or Opera, there’s not yet a Chrome icon. So if you see a bookmarklet that looks interesting, just grab it and see if it works.

I’m a fan of the “View site’s cookies” bookmarklet, which displays all of the cookies placed on your PC by the site you’re currently visiting. The screenshot to the right shows both bookmarklets in action.

You can also do a Google search for bookmarklets and try each of them out with Chrome. Note that not all will work, and even those that have supposedly been tested with Chrome might not work with the latest version of the browser. (For example, I couldn’t get the Gmail This bookmarklet to work. It’s supposed to mail the current page via Gmail, but it didn’t work in my Chrome installation.)

Reload closed tabs

At first blush, Chrome appears to have one very serious shortcoming — it doesn’t seem to be able to reload tabs that you’ve closed, something that both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 can do. But there are in fact several ways to reload closed tabs.

If you want to reload the last tab you’ve closed, press Ctrl-Shift-T, and Chrome will open it for you. Want to open the tab you closed before that? Press Ctrl-Shift-T again. You can do this for up to the last 10 tabs you closed.

You can also use the New Tab page to reopen a tab you closed fairly recently. When you open a new tab, you get a page showing thumbnails of your nine most-visited sites, plus blue search and bookmarks boxes on the right. If you closed any tabs within the past few minutes, you’ll also see a yellow box containing your three most recently closed tabs, which lets you skip directly to the site you want.

Finally, there’s a setting that lets you start up Chrome displaying all the tabs that were open when you last closed it down. Click the Tools icon, choose Options, and on the Basics tab, select “Restore the pages that were open last,” then click Close.

From now on, when you open Chrome, the browser will launch and reload all the tabs that were open when you closed it

Give Chrome a new theme

Themes are a way to change the look and feel of a browser, including the background colors and icons. As shipped, the beta of Chrome doesn’t appear to have any way to change themes, but be assured, future versions will.

In the meantime, you can change themes yourself, with a little bit of work. First, make sure that your PC is set to display hidden files via Windows Explorer. (In Windows XP, select Tools –> Folder Options, click the View tab, select “Show hidden files and folders,” and click OK. In Windows Vista, launch Windows Explorer and choose Organize –> Folder and Search Options, click the View tab, select “Show hidden files and folders,” and click OK.)

Once you do that, you need to locate Chrome’s Themes directory. In Windows XP, go to

C:\Documents and Settings\username\
Local Settings\Application Data\Google\
Chrome\Application

In Vista, go to

C:\Users\username\AppData\
Local\Google\Chrome\Application

In both cases, substitute your username for username.

When you’re in that folder, look for a subfolder that matches Chrome’s current version number — as I write this, the version is 0.2.149.29. (To find out Chrome’s current version number, in Chrome click the Tools icon and select “About Google Chrome.”) Then look for the Themes subfolder.

So, for example, as I write this, the themes folder in Vista is

C:\Users\username\AppData\
Local\Google\Chrome\Application\
0.2.149.29\Themes

In the folder, you’ll find a file called “default.dll,” which is the themes file. To use a different theme, you’ll need to replace that file with a different default.dll, which contains the theme you want to use. There are quite a few of them available on the Internet, as I’ll explain in a few paragraphs.

Close Chrome, then rename the default.dll file to something like “originaldefault.dll.” Then copy a new theme into the directory, making sure it has the filename “default.dll.” After that, launch Chrome, and your new theme will be in place. To revert to your original theme, delete or rename the new default.dll you’re using, and rename “originaldefault.dll” back to “default.dll.”

Google hasn’t yet created themes for Chrome, but plenty of people on the Internet have already. Do a Google search for Chrome themes, and you’ll find them. Try the Pitchblack theme at DeviantArt or several found at the Google Chrome themes blog. Another good place to find them is at Chromespot.

If you’re a Red Sox fan like me, there’s even a Red Sox Chrome theme available. It’s a bit flaky, though, and reading the text on the top of your tabs can be difficult. Still, when it comes to rooting for the Sox, sacrifices are always in order.

In addition, there’s a beta of a Chrome theme manager called XChrome, which provides a graphical user interface for installing and managing themes. Keep in mind that it’s beta, so download and use it at your own risk. The software will also ultimately be available at CTheme.net.
Manage your downloads

Chrome’s download manager is a surprisingly good one, even if it is a bit hidden. Before you start downloading, set your default download path by clicking the Tools icon, selecting Options, clicking the Minor Tweaks tab, browsing to your default download location, and clicking Close. If you want to be asked where to download a file each time, check “Ask where to save each file before downloading.”

Chrome’s download feature lets you pause and resume downloads. When you’re downloading a file, press Ctrl-J to open the Downloads tab. From here, you can pause and resume downloads as well as manage files you’ve already downloaded. You can also click any download to open it, and click the “Show in folder” link to open the folder that contains the download.

Downloads also show up at the bottom of the tab from which you’ve downloaded them, as you can see below. Click the download button for each. From a menu that appears, you can open the file and open the folder that contains the file. You can also drag the button to your Desktop or a folder in Windows Explorer and move the file there.

Peer into the mysteries of Chrome with about: pages

Chrome has a special syntax that allows you see a great deal of information about the browser’s operation, including the memory it’s using, its cached files, its plug-ins and more. Just type about: followed by the appropriate switch in the Omnibox (the name for Google’s Address Bar).

For instance, to see the version of Chrome you’re running, as well as the version of the browser’s WebKit rendering engine and other version information, type about:version in the Omnibox.

Here’s a rundown of some of the most interesting and useful about: pages:
about:memory
This displays the memory used by Chrome, including the memory used by each tab and by plug-ins such as Flash. If you’re running another browser, it will also display that browser’s memory use, although it won’t break it down by individual tabs.

bout:cache
This lists every item in Chrome’s cache, including pages, individual graphics, and so on. There’s a link for each item. Click the link, and you’ll get more information about that item.

about:plugins
This lists all of Chrome’s installed plug-ins, such as for Flash, Acrobat, and RealPlayer. Interestingly, there is an ActiveX plug-in installed in Chrome by default, but it’s unclear whether it will properly run all ActiveX controls.

about:dns
This page gives information about one of Chrome’s speed-up features. When you visit a Web page, Chrome does a DNS resolution for the IP addresses of the links on the page. In this way, when you click a link, Chrome already knows the IP address and sends you there faster.

The about:dns page displays information about Chrome’s DNS use, including DNS records that it has prefetched.

about:stats
Ubergeeks will love this one — it lists a mind-boggling array of statistics about the current state of the browser, none of which I understand. In fact, the only thing I understand on this page is the tongue-in-cheek title at the top: “Shhh! This page is secret!”

about:histograms
Here’s another one for the supergeek set. I can make neither heads nor tails of it. If you can, tell the world about in the comments form at the bottom of this page.

about:network
This shows statistics about Chrome’s use of the Internet or network in several different ways. For example, it shows every element on every Web page that Chrome contacts and whether the contact was successful, among other information.

After you launch the about:network page, click the Start I/O Tracking button. Then go to another tab and browse the Web as you would normally. Click back to the about:network page, and you’ll see the network activity, including pages contacted, individual files downloaded and so on.

Similarly, you can track the browser’s performance. Click the Start Profiling button, go to another tab and browse the Web, come back to the about:network page, and click Show Performance. The results page is a little confusing, but it shows the load time, byte size and more for all the elements on each Web page you’ve visited.

about:crash
Want to crash a tab? Then type in about:crash, and you’ll do it and see the page pictured at right. Although developers might find this useful, for most of us it’s a silly novelty, but still kind of fun to do.

about:internets
Showing that Google programmers still have a sense of humor, typing about:internets into the Omnibox launches a hidden Easter egg. I’m not going to ruin the fun and reveal what you’ll see. (Hint: It has something to do with an Alaskan politician — not Gov. Sarah Palin — and his grasp of the Internet.) Windows XP users get a better Easter egg than Vista users because they get visuals as well.

Use Chrome as a universal calculator and converter

The Omnibox has a nifty feature that you’ll want to use — it can perform calculations and convert between units of measurement, such as from inches to centimeters. To use the calculator, type in the calculation you want done into the Omnibox, such as 87 times 53 (or 87*53). You’ll see the answer (4,611 in our example) appear in the drop-down list.

Similarly, to convert between units of measurement, type in the units and amount you want to convert, such as “8 kilometers in miles.” You can also use abbreviations, such as “5 kg in oz.”

Chrome performs this magic by using the same Google Calculator built into Google’s search box. So if you use another search engine instead of Google as your default, the Calculator won’t work. For an excellent guide to using the Google Calculator, see the Shortcut: Calculator page on the GoogleGuide site.

Launch Web sites in Chrome directly from Firefox

If you’re a Firefox user who also wants to test out and use Chrome, here’s a great way to get the browsers to co-exist: a Firefox extension that lets you launch any page in Chrome, from directly within Firefox. In fact, it will even let you tell Firefox to always open certain pages in Chrome — for example, every time you type in the Gmail URL in Firefox, it can automatically open the site in Chrome instead.

First, go to the Open Websites in Google Chrome from Firefox add-on page. Then download the open-in-google-chrome.xpi file to your PC. After that, drag it into Firefox, and you’ll launch the installation. Restart Firefox to complete the installation.

Once you do that, you need to configure the extension to work properly by telling it where to find the Chrome executable file. In Firefox, choose Tools –>Add-Ons and click the Options button in the Open in Google Chrome extension. The options page of the extension opens. Click the Browse button at the top of the page, and browse to the location for chrome.exe. In Windows XP, you’ll find it in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\, where username is your username. In Windows Vista, you’ll find it in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\.

If you want certain sites to always open in Chrome when you visit them, type in a site’s URL in the box at the bottom of the screen and click Add. Then click OK.

From now on, if you’re on a site in Firefox and want to view it in Chrome, right-click the page you’re on and choose “View this page in Google Chrome.” To open a link in Chrome, right-click the link and choose “Open Link in Google Chrome.” And when you visit pages you’ve specified to be viewed in Chrome, they’ll always open in that browser, without requiring you to take any action.

By the way, if you’re a Firefox user who likes the look and feel of Chrome but don’t want to switch to the beta, you can get a free extension called Chrome Package that makes Firefox look more like Chrome.

Use Chrome keyboard shortcuts

If you don’t like to spend your time mousing around, Chrome has a full set of keyboard shortcuts, many of which are shared with other browsers. For a complete list, go to Google’s Chrome keyboard shortcut page. Here are some of the most useful.

CHROME KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Key combination                     Action
Ctrl+N                                       Open a new window
Ctrl+Shift+N                              Open a new window in Incognito mode
Alt+F4                                       Close the current window
Ctrl+T                                       Open a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+T                             Reopen the last tab you closed (Chrome remembers the last ten tabs)
Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8              Switch to a specific tab (the number corresponds to the tab’s position                                                              on the tab strip)
Ctrl+9                                       Switch to the rightmost tab
Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PgDown         Switch to the next tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+PgUp    Switch to the previous tab
F6, Ctrl+L, or Alt+D                  Jump to the Omnibox
Ctrl+B                                       Toggle the bookmarks bar on and off
Ctrl+H                                      View the History page
Ctrl+J                                       View the Downloads page
Shift+Esc                                  Run the Task Manager
F5 or Ctrl+R                             Reload the current page
Ctrl+D                                      Bookmark the page
Ctrl++                                     Make text on the page larger
Ctrl+-                                      Make text on the page smaller
Ctrl+0                                      Return the text to its normal size

Search alternate sites from the Omnibox

This tip isn’t exactly a secret, but it’s just too useful to leave out. Anyone who uses Chrome knows that the Omnibox doubles as a search box. You set your primary search engine (Google by default) by right-clicking the Omnibox, selecting “Edit search engines,” choosing a site from the list and clicking Make Default. But you can also use a nifty shortcut to do a quick search using any search engine you’ve previously used in Chrome.

Type the first letter or letters of the site’s URL, such as “y” or “ya” for Yahoo, then press the Tab key. A Search site button like the one shown below appears. Type in your search query to search using that search engine.

There’s a small gotcha to keep in mind with this trick: If you haven’t already visited the Web site and done a search, the Search site button won’t appear. But it should work for any site at which you’ve previously searched, as long as the site adheres to the OpenSearch standard.

To tell whether a site adheres to the standard, visit the site and do a search, then right-click the Omnibox and select Edit Search Engines. If the site you’re on appears in the list in the Search Engines dialog, it does follow the OpenSearch standard. Only the search engines that appear in this list will be able to use the Tab key trick.

Get more tips

If you’re looking for even more Chrome secrets, you’ll find a few in my blog post “Three hidden Chrome features you’ll love.” My in-depth review of Chrome covers other tips, such as how to make Web applications run like desktop applications.

What they note way down in the fourth paragraph, however, is that they don’t actually index all of those pages, so you can’t find them on Google. Estimates on the true size of the Google index are a mere 40 billion pages or so.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch had this to say about the timing of the announcement:
Why don’t they index all the pages they’ve found? Some of them are spam. But it’s also very expensive to index sites. And the fact that Google indexes many news sites, blogs and other rapidly changing web sites every 15 minutes makes all that indexing even more expensive. So they make value judgment on what to actually index and what not to. And most of the web is left out.

Google also says “But we’re proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine.”

That may be true today, but it probably won’t be true next week (check back here then). Google knows that as well as we do, and that’s why they posted this today.

Chester/North Wales company MSM.com also works with digital agency TBG and Doner Cardwell Hawkins.

MSM.com’s latest reported traffic figures showed the company was currently attracting just shy of 100 million visitors.

The value of the paid SEO business has not been disclosed but the company did recently announce that its total spend on digital advertising and search would exceed £50m. The company also announced that it planned to increase the budget for its newspaper advertising campaigns.

Alan Harding, head of search at moneysupermarket.com, said: “Search is one of the most important channels for us to drive activity to our websites and Efficient Frontier will now work with our in-house team of search professionals to help us manage our complex search campaigns, which span many different industries.”

Google grabbed 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending June 28, 2008, Hitwise announced today. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.62, 5.46 and 4.17 percent respectively. The remaining 42 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.70 percent of U.S. searches.

Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 5/31/ 2007, 4/26/08, 5/26/2007 from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

In the U.K. market, Google search properties (Google.co.uk and Google.com) accounted for 87 percent of all UK searches in June 2008 representing a 10 percent increase compared to June 2007. Yahoo! search properties accounted for 4.00 percent of UK searches in June 2008, a 2 percent increase compared to April 2008. MSN search properties accounted for 3.72 percent and Ask search properties accounted for 3.07 percent of searches. MSN increased two percent compared to April 2008 and Ask increased 6 percent.

In the Australia market, Google search accounted for 88 percent of all AU searches in June 2008 representing a 12 percent increase compared to June 2007. MSN search accounted for 7 percent and Yahoo! search accounted for 4.00 percent of AU searches in June 2008.

via searchenginewatch.com

Writing on realbusiness.co.uk, entrepreneur Dawn Gibbins said that these are some of the most important site features that crawlers - also known as spiders - look at when collecting information for engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

A news section that has articles added to it at least once a month can be helpful, as can submitting links to online directories and making good use of both long tail and popular keywords and phrases, she advised.

“The first terms that spring to mind may not be the most useful,” Ms Gibbins stated.

“Rather than single words, it can be much more effective to weave whole phrases through your site. These are known as long tail search terms.”

According to the Search Engine Roundtable blog, web users appear to be searching less for short tail keywords - the most obvious search terms - and more for long tail keywords.

via epiphanysolutions.co.uk