Web Hosting – Web Development

We were doing some SEO and SEM the other day and just happened to be working with one of our clients that are located in a different state and we realized that their keyword phrases were ranking with different natural position results in Google. We will refer to this as Localized Ranking in Google or Regional Ranking in Google.

My client was looking at his results for a specific keyword phrase and saying, no look again, it is on page 1 and I was saying, NO I see it on page 2. In the middle of all this I decided to call another developer that was in a different state and had him test the results. Guess what, it was different for him too!

Has Google grown so big that they have different servers in every major city? Well, we attended a webinar a while back and seems not only do they have a lot of servers popping up all over the world, but also have humans interacting a bit with some of the ranking and results. That is fine, but when we are doing SEM (search engine marketing) and trying to accurately measure our results it becomes a little more difficult these days!

After we realized this was happening we purposely started to optimize for one keyword phrase in particular and we wanted to measure how long it would take to make its way across Google’s various servers and to also measure how much the ranking would increase. Upon doing this we came across yet another factor in Google. Not only do they present the natural results for a keyword phrase differently from a localized or regional area, but we also realized the keyword rankings would vary from browser to browser.

For this specific reason, when we perform SEO or SEM on a website, we are now deploying a team of developers from many different regions and locations to measure the total effectiveness of the keyword marketing campaign.

After a few days we noticed the optimization for one of the keyword phrase was taking effect but on a different scale for each of us. For the client, they moved up from Google’s page 1 position 10 to position 5 yet for me it I saw this particular phrase on page 8 and it moved up all the way to page 5! That is a strange result to say the least. So, with this in mind, does it seem like Google might have to Propagate SERP (search engine rank position) across all there servers?!!

CASE STUDY – NOTE: This was not the case for all keyword phrases, but it did occur more often than not. I would like to open this topic up for discussion and welcome all thoughts and findings with Google’s Localized Search Engine results and rankings of keyword phrases.

ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder

Just wanted to let everyone know that we have downloaded the ColdFusion 9 testing server and we are giving it a whirl. We  have not installed the ColdFusion Builder yet, but we have already been using the Eclipse IDE and the CFEclipse Plugin and have it installed so it will be very easy for us to get it going as soon as we can find some time.

Our team does a lot of “hardcoding” and the CFEclipse IDE’s codewriter is something we prefer to use over DreamWeaver. We also prefer the Function reference and library provided by the CFEclipse Version.

Well, I was checking out Big Ben Forta’s blog today and he mentioned a great new coldfusion site and WSIWYG edititor site. The site is written with ColdFusion and allows you to share Code Snippets, Source Code, HTML and more. It is cool too, because it gives you your own URL so you can pass the URL directly to folks that need to see the code. Here is the one I did View

Thanks again to tBlurb.com for creating this great ColdFusion Sharing site.

Ok folks, I am currently studying to become an SEO Specialist and to get SEO Certified, so I figured I would document my SEO Study Guide each time I work on a new chapter. I will start by making SEO keypoints and then turn it into a study guide. In due time, I will offer my clients an online SEO Test and they can also become SEO Certified. Ok, lets begin.

Chapter 1: Keyword research

The first thing we want you to do is choose 20 – 40 keywords that will represent your website and that will allow you to perform an SEO campaign for the keywords you choose. Ok, once you do that, pick the top 10 keywords or keyphrases you want to optimize your website for.

To launch a successful keyword campaign you will want to use these for future onpage optimization, website submissions, directory submissions and link exchanges.

Note: It is easier to optimize a keyword phrase (2 or 3 words) and even easier to choose longer phrases which will have less competion and convert to quick sales. You will choose these phrases based off what someone would type into Google or other search engines.

Choosing Keywords

We will devide this into 2 steps:

1. Make a huge list of keywords.
2. Sort them out and choose the profitable keywords.

So, now it is time to brainstorm and make a list of every word and phrase that someone might use to find the service your site offers. Make sure to ask others what words they would use to. It is very good to ask someone that is not in your profession what they would use too!

Use Excel and put each word phrase on a line because you will use this to calculate other results later. Use the single words first then develop the phrases by combining them focusing on phrases someone will use to find your site using one of the search engines.

Keyword Variations: Think of other words that mean the same thing and try to focus on profession versions and gender or age group versions.

Free tools

Once you develop a good list of around 40 words and phrases, use the search engine database’s to find what people have actually Searched for.

Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) That’s a paid service for regular use, but it offers the benefit of a free version, which can be used to complete your keyword research if you are fairly organized.

Free Wordtracker (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/) is almost equally useful as the paid one. If you enter your main keyword, Wordtracker lists out suggestions for other popular search terms that contain that particular word or phrase. However, like any free tool, it has a few downsides. For instance, it won’t store your keywords for future use, it only gives you 100 suggestions and lets you get suggestions for just one word at a time.

Google’s Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) Quite a useful thing. Select to generate keyword ideas with Descriptive Words or Phrases. Enter a keyword for the start and go ahead to get a nice list of keywords.

Keyword Discovery (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html) This search term suggestion tool can also be quite helpful, as long as it’s free. The drawback is again, that you can only ask for suggestions for one keyword at a time, and won’t be able to check more than 100 keywords daily. Besides, like the rest of free tools, it won’t store your keywords for the future.

Spy on competitors

Choose a keyword phrase you would like to compete for and enter it in google’s search field. Copy your competitors URL and open up the google keyword tool. 

Choose the option to generate keyword ideas using the website’s content, and paste the competitor’s URL in.

Now wait a few minutes, and Google will show you a great list of keywords your competition is using. After that one finishes, check the next website and do the same thing and watch the keyword list grow.

When applicable, don’t forget to use mispelled words!

Well, I was looking at some of the new tags in ColdFusion 8 and have to admit I was pleasantly suprised to see the <cffeed> tag! I have been a little behind the times with my ColdFusion Development while getting the new hosting business online, but think it will be a great tag to use for RSS feeds. Read the rest of this entry »