The 12 Days of Christmas, Google Style
By Kalena Jordan
Play the midi (a new window
will pop up) and enjoy:
On the first day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
an AdWords
API.
On the second day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Toolbar
3
and an AdWords API.
On the third day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Urchin
Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the fourth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Desktop
Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the fifth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
AdSense
for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the sixth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Google
Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the seventh day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
a
Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the eighth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Gmail
Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the ninth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Blogger
for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the tenth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Google
Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Content
Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Google
gave to me:
Froogle
Local,
Content Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above article may be re-published as long
as the content remains unchanged and the
following paragraph is included at the end of
the article, including the link:
<>
As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena
Jordan manages and tutors at Search
Engine College, an online training
institution offering instructor-led short
courses and downloadable self-study courses in
Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine
Marketing subjects.
<>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Greetings Readers!
As 2005 draws to a close, I've been
contemplating the exciting growth of my own
online business this year and all the amazing
advances that have taken place in the search
engine industry that have allowed my business to
flourish.
Two words kept popping up again and again in my
newsfeeds this year: Google and Blogs.
Although Google dominated advances in search
once again, it seems that 2005 really was the
year the humble blog was discovered by Joe Public.
In the spirit of the season, and inspired by Google's
milestones throughout 2005, I've written a
special tribute carol called The Twelve Days
of Christmas, Google Style. To be sung along
to the tune of (duh) The Twelve Days of
Christmas. Turn your sound up, hit the midi
link on the left and put on your best karaoke voice!
And on that note, it's time to wind up the
newsletter for the year and try to wind myself
down. This year we're heading to Sydney for
Christmas with the relatives, Christchurch to
catch up with friends for New Year's Eve and
then to our holiday house near Queenstown,
New Zealand for absolute privacy minus (shock!
horror!) a laptop, PC or phone of any kind. Wish
me luck on the cold turkey front.
Have a happy holiday, thanks for reading and see
you back here in 2006.
Till next time - wishing you high rankings...
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| FAQ1: Why has my site vanished from Google? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
I have had my site for nearly ten years and have
been listed very well with Google since they
began. A few weeks ago I vanished. Below is a
copy of an email to Google. Please do not
mention my web URL. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Jamie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Jamie
You are kidding right? You REALLY don't know why
your site has disappeared? Looks like Google has
actually banned your site from their index and I
don't blame them. Why do I think it's banned?
The site isn't cached by Googlebot, shows a
Toolbar PageRank of zero, it has no backward
links and no pages indexed.
Why don't I blame them? Because the site uses
many of the retro spam tactics that were popular
back in the 90s:
* Keyword-stuffed Title Tags
* Keyword-stuffed META Description Tags
* Keyword-stuffed META Keyword Tags
* Keyword-stuffed Alt Image attributes
* Multiple doorway pages (consider your
index1.htm, p1975.htm and p2197.htm as three of
many examples)
* Duplicate content on many pages
* A cross-linked internal directory of over
1,000 pages (while not necessarily spammy, could
be seen as an attempt to artificially inflate
your link popularity).
The list goes on. Looks like you've got some
serious rebuilding to do Jamie.
Start here.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ2: How do I track ad conversions? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
I want to track the response we receive to
newspaper and magazine advertising by using a
tail on our website address, i.e
www.site.com/jh. As I understand it Google will
downgrade the site because the content is
identical to the main default page and that
having now learnt about redirects, could I use
the redirect option safely to effectively
monitor the advertising in the same way? Or
would Google still "frown" on this as bad
policy?
Does it make any difference whether I
use either scenario, i.e., A) Have duplicate
page content at /jh or B) Have a redirect on /jh
to the default page?
Adrian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Adrian
You don't need to create a separate page to
track your ads. You simply need to use a
tracking URL in your advertisements such as
www.site.com?source=magazineJH. You can change
the content after "source=" to whatever you
like, as long as it helps you differentiate the
source of traffic. This is how people running
pay per click campaigns track the performance of
their ads.
These tracking URLs still take people to your
home page, but the unique address allows you to
monitor how many people entered your site
through a particular ad.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ 3: How do I submit a Google site re-inclusion request? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
I think our site has been removed from Google
for some dodgy link scheme our designer
integrated before he left us. We've removed it
but how do I ask Google to reinstate us?
Ashton
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Ashton
This week I stumbled upon a very useful post by
Google staffer Matt Cutts. If you believe your
site has been penalized or removed entirely from
the Google index, and you've been wondering how
to get it re-included, it's essential that you
read this
post. Here's an extract:
"Fundamentally, Google wants to know two
things: 1) that any spam on the site is gone or
fixed, and 2) that it's not going to happen
again. I'd recommend giving a short explanation
of what happened from your perspective: what
actions may have led to any penalties and any
corrective action that you've taken to prevent
any spam in the future.
If you employed an SEO company, it indicates
good faith if you tell us specifics about the
SEO firm and what they did-it assists us in
evaluating reinclusion
requests. Note that SEO and mostly-affiliate
sites may need to provide more evidence of good
faith before a site will be reincluded; such
sites should be quite familiar with Google's
quality guidelines".
Kalena | | |
| FAQ 4: Should I submit articles to attract more links? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
Now that Jagger has sunk into place, I'm
re-evaluating link strategies. What do you think
about providing articles to online libraries
like ezine.com? I have gotten some articles
picked up with links to my site. Should I do more?
Jeanne
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Jeanne
Article marketing is a great way to build up the
link popularity of your website. Particularly if
the articles you write and circulate are related
to the content on your own site, because the
link/s from your articles pointing back to your
site usually contain anchor text that includes
your target keywords.
By all means, continue to write fresh, relevant
articles and submit them to article directories
and article announcement lists. You'll find some
useful places to circulate your articles in this
post I made back in October.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ 5: How can we get Google to index all our pages? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
Here's the short version of our situation and my
question: Googlebots faithfully visit our site
virtually every night and do major downloading
everytime, and yet most of our cached pages
remain outdated (such as January 24, 2005). How
can we get Google to index and update all our pages?
Rick
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Rick
In answer to your question, just two words: Google
Sitemaps.
Kalena | | |
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