Dave’s Answer:

Well, that’s a novel use of LinkedIn. You do realize that each person who uses the search will have different results, because it’s their LinkedIn account that will be used as the basis of how LinkedIn will actually present the results, right? And that the people whose records match will still have mostly non-functional data entries for your employee because if you aren’t linked to someone you can’t see most of their profile?

I don’t quite understand your logic here, but I can still show you how to reverse engineer the LinkedIn people search and create what you seek nonetheless.

The easiest way to accomplish this seems like it would be the basic people search that you see on the top right of most LinkedIn pages:

However, it’s not a freeform box a la Google, so you can’t do a search like “company: Microsoft name:smith,john”, so in fact it won’t work. Instead, we’re left having to explore the far more complicated “Advanced Search”, which is easily reached by clicking on “Advanced”. Now we’re in more sophisticated territory:

Before we crack open the hood and look inside, though, let’s try doing a search and see if we can reverse the URL instead. I’m skeptical this will work because of the sheer number of variables involved, but let’s see. I’m going to specify a search for lastname = Taylor, company = Boeing and the constraint that it’s the current company only.

The resultant URL:

Rather to my surprise, this does work! You can see that last name is “lname”, company is “company” and that “currentCompany” is the restriction parameter. Nice!

My first question at this point is whether we can simply delete all the other criteria and have it work properly:

Nope. Too much removed and the search didn’t work.

Through some experimentation, I have ascertained that this is the minimal set of criteria needed to be specified for the search to work:

Now it’s a matter of figuring out which of these values we want to let vary and which we want to keep constant. We also need to add a first name option, which proves to be “fname”, no surprise.

Unwrapping everything, we now know that we need:

• “search=” — to have it work properly
• “lname=last name” — the last name we’re using as a search value
• “distance=-1″ — since there’s no default value for distance from our location, “-1″ specifies that LinkedIn should ignore geographic constraints.
• “company=company name” — this will be a set value, the name of your company.
• “currentCompany=co” — constrains search to just people who work at the company today, not those that have worked there in the past.

There’s one more thing we can ascertain from examining this URL: the address of the search engine itself. That’s everything before the “?” in the URL: “http://www.linkedin.com/search”.

Now we can create our own rough HTML form that uses hidden variables for things we don’t want to vary and regular text input boxes for those we do:

It looks like this:

It’s not pretty, but if you try it you’ll find that it does indeed work as a simple way to search for Boeing employees at LinkedIn.

That’s the core of what you need for your project. I hope it works out for you!

Comments

So how do you create a LinkedIn Group? Read on for a step-by-step guide…

1) First, login to your linked in profile. To the left hand side of your profile, you’ll see a tab that says “Groups.”

LinkedIn Group Step 1

2) Click on the plus sign next to groups and a list of the groups you belong to/have created will drop down. If you want to edit your group, click on the one you wish edit (you can only edit the ones you created - in this case I clicked on the Authority Domains one I set up for the purpose of this example).

To create a group, click the “Create a Group” tab:

LinkedIn Group Creation - Step 2.5

3) After you click the “Create a Group,” you’ll see the screen below (it takes you directly to “Manage”). Simply fill out the information accordingly (its pretty self-explanatory–remember to use your keywords in both the Group Name, Summary and Description). Save the changes:

4) As soon as you’ve saved the changes, you’ll see a page under the Overview tab. This tab does exactly what it says: it gives you an overview of all the activity that’s been going on with your group:

LinkedIn Group Creation Overview - Step 4

5) Discussion tab - You can see what members of your group are talking about:

LinkedIn Group Discussions

6) News tab - You can see the latest news submitted to the group:

7) Updates - You can see what updates people have made

Members - Here is a list of members; only managers can edit this area:

9) Settings - Here you can modify your group settings as needed:

10) Manage - Here you can manage your account and settings, add up to ten people as managers, add , block or delete members, delete the group, pre-approve members, invite them, edit info & settings and change owner:

11) When you first login and click on groups, you’ll see a notification that looks like this when someone has applied to join your group:

LinkedIn Joined Group Notification

Comments

Assuming you have the right idea in mind, the question I get asked most often is how you can make your blog as successful as possible. Here are some tips for new bloggers on what you may want to focus on in your first 90 days of blogging:

DAYS 1 TO 15:

1. Find a good niche. Think hard about what you want to write about. It has to be something you are passionate about and interested in, otherwise it won’t work. The more specific you can get, the better. You can also broaden it later, but in the beginning you need to find a subject that you can own.

2. Choose a name and URL. This is a tough thing, but just as many companies these days do, you should let available URLs drive how you name your blog. If you can’t get the URL, don’t use the name. And make sure you plan to put your blog on a specific URL, whether you are using Typepad or Blogspot or any other service. Trust me on this, you’ll eventually wish you built your blog on your own URL, whether you think so today or not.

3. Grab a template and launch quickly. The biggest paralysis new bloggers have is wanting to get their new blog just right. In the first few weeks of your blog, the most important thing is to find your voice - so forget about design just launch it with a ready made template. Chances are remote that search engines will list it that quickly, and you’ll have a few weeks to get it right.

4. Add Google Analytics. Google has a free tool called Google Analytics which gives you some great metrics on your blog all for free. It requires you to do a bit of tricky cutting and pasting to add certain code to your blog, but it is totally worth it to do it early so you’ll have metrics from the first days of your blog to compare to and see how far you have come.

5. Create an editorial calendar. Some football coaches head into games scripting out their first 10 plays as part of their gameplan. You should do the same. Figure out the topics for your first ten posts, and then write them steadily. Not only does this get you thinking ahead, it also gives you a sense of how many posts per week you can realistically write.

DAYS 15 TO 30:

6. Reevaluate your blog title. At this point, you will likely have several blog posts to look at and a better sense of what you enjoy writing about. It’s the perfect time to check the title of your blog and theme that you set earlier and make sure it still accurately describes what you want to write about. If it doesn’t, now is the perfect time to fix it.

7. Design your blog brand. Now that you have your theme and several posts, you can design your blog. At this stage, you may just want to add a logo to an existing template or do something more custom. Either way, by having your blog brand set and several posts in your archive, you can really see what your design will look like.

8. Get your blog listed. It’s also time in these two weeks to get your blog listed on all the search engines by submitting it. You should also claim it on Technorati, and submit it to any other sites in your particular industry or area of focus. Remember, you don’t need to focus on promotion right now, this is just about getting your site listed.

9. Set up your feeds. Many bloggers today (including me) are using Feedburner to syndicate their RSS feeds and offer email subscriptions to their blog. Whether you choose to use Feedburner or not, setting up your feeds and making them available to readers will be important as you start to grow your blog.

10. Learn the art of headlining. In blog posts, titles make a big difference. Particularly because many readers will be accessing your content through RSS and the title may be the only thing you see. To deal with this truth, you need to think like a copywriter and treat your blog post titles like headlines. Learning to write good blog post titles will be a major skill you will use all the time.

DAYS 30 TO 60:

11. Set your targets. You’ll probably be getting close to finishing your first ten posts by now, or at least worrying about what you’ll write about next. Based on what you’ve been able to do in the first month, set a target for yourself of how many posts you will try to write per week. My target is three and I usually stick to it.

12. Learn the 25 styles. More than a year ago, I wrote a presentation designed to answer the common question from bloggers of what to write about. To help you fight “bloggers block” - view the presentation and learn the techniques. They will help you figure out what to write about, as they have helped me.

13. Contact your influencers. Now that you have a month of blogging experience, it’s also time to start asking for advice and introducing yourself to those who inspire you. Create a list of bloggers that you look up to and then religiously email one person from that list after you do a post. Ideally it will be someone who would be interested in your post and likely to respond to it.

14. Actively share your posts. In addition to emailing them to your influencers, you should start finding appropriate social networks and sites on which to share your blog posts. This could mean submitting them to Digg, or posting them onto del.icio.us with keyword tags. Essentially, you want to try a few tools to get your blog posts out there tagged and saved.

15. Integrate your blog into your profiles. At the point when you start your blog, you are probably already using other social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn. After the first month when you have some good activity on your blog, you can add the URL to your profiles and make sure that your network knows you have a blog.

DAYS 60 TO 90:

In these days, your main focus should be on content and connections. Try to create the best blog posts you can. Those that have insights, a strong point of view, and are highly shareable. If you can really succeed at having this great content, people will pass it along and your blog will have the greatest chance of getting passed along too. At this stage you should also make sure that you are using all of your social networks to also spread the word about your blog and your posts. The reason I don’t have specific lessons at this stage is that you’re starting to get into the point where you will probably be finding your own way and techniques that work for you. The best advice I can offer at this stage and moving ahead beyond 90 days is to try and stay as consistent as possible, and continue to create the best content you can, and share it with people in your network most likely to help you spread the word.

Good luck with your blog! And if you have a blog where you used these suggestions to help you launch, please leave a comment and let other readers know how these suggestions worked for you.

Comments

Site architecture.

Site architecture is important for SEO for three main reasons:

• To focus on the most important keyword terms
• Control the flow of link equity around the site
• Ensure spiders can crawl the site

Simple, eh. Yet many webmasters get it wrong.

Let’s take a look at how to do it properly.

Evaluate The Competition

One you’ve decided on your message, and your plan, the next step is to layout your site structure.

Start by evaluating your competition. Grab your list of keyword terms, and search for the most popular sites listed under those terms. Take a look at their navigation. What topic areas do they use for their main navigation scheme? Do they use secondary navigation? Are there similarities in topic areas across competitor sites?

Open a spreadsheet, and list their categories, and title tags, and look for keyword patterns. You’ll soon see similarities. By evaluating the navigation used by your competition, you’ll get a good feel for the tried-n-true “money” topics.

You can then run these sites through metrics sites like Compete.com.

Use the most common, heavily trafficked areas as your core navigation sections.

The Home Page Advantage

Those who know how Page Rank functions can skip this section.

Your home page will almost certainly have the highest level of authority.

While there are a lot of debates about the merits of PageRank when it comes to ranking, it is fair to say that PageRank is rough indicator of a pages’ level of authority. Pages with more authority are spidered more frequently and enjoy higher ranking than pages with lower authority. The home page is often the page with the most links pointing to it, so the home page typically has the highest level of authority. Authority passes from one page to the next.

For each link off a page, the authority level will be split.

For example - and I’m simplifying* greatly for the purposes of illustration - if you have a home page with a ten units of link juice, two links to two sub-pages would see each sub-page receive 5 points of link juice. If the sub-page has two links, each sub-sub would receive two units of link juice, and so on.

The important point to understand is that the further your pages are away from the home page, generally the less link juice those pages will have, unless they are linked from external pages. This is why you need to think carefully about site structure.

For SEO purposes, try to keep your money areas close to the home page.

*Note: Those who know how Page Rank functions will realise my explaination above is not technically correct. The way Page Rank splits is more sophisticated than that given in my illustration. For those who want a more technical breakdown of the Page Rank calculations, check out Phils post at WebWorkshop.

How Deep Do I Go?

Keeping your site structure shallow is a good rule of thumb. So long as you main page is linked well, all your internal pages will have sufficient authority to be crawled regularly. You also achieve clarity and focus.

A shallow site structure is not just about facilitating crawling. After all, you could just create a Google Site Map and achieve the same goal. Site structure is also about selectively passing authority to your money pages, and not wasting it on pages less deserving. This is straightforward with a small site, but the problem gets more challenging as you site grows.

One way to mange scale is by grouping your keyword terms into primary and secondary navigation.

Main & Secondary Navigation

Main navigation is where you place your core topics i.e. the most common, highly trafficked topics you found when you performed your competitive analysis. Typically, people use tabs across the top, or a list down the left hand side of the screen. Main navigation appears on all other pages.

Secondary navigation consists of all other links, such as latest post, related articles, etc. Secondary navigation does not appear on every page, but is related to the core page upon which it appears.

One way to split navigation is to organize your core areas into the main navigation tabs across the top, and provide secondary navigation down the side.

For example, let’s say you main navigation layout looked like this:

Each time I click a main navigation term, the secondary navigation down the left hand side changes. The secondary navigation are keywords related to the core area.

For those of you who are members, Aaron has an indepth video demonstration on Site Architecture And Internal Linking, as well as instruction on how to integrate and mange keywords.

Make Navigation Usable

Various studies indicate that humans are easily confused when presented with more than seven choices. Keep this in mind when creating your core navigation areas.

If you offer more than seven choices, find ways to break things down further. For example, by year, manufacturer, model, classification, etc.

You can also break these areas down with an “eye break” between each. Here’s a good example of this technique on Chocolate.com:

Search spiders, on the other hand, aren’t confused by multiple choices. Secondary navigation, which includes links within the body copy, provides plenty of opportunity to place keywords in links. Good for usability, too.

As your site grows, new content is linked to by secondary navigation. The key is to continually monitor what content produces the most money/visitor response. Elevate successful topics higher up you navigation tree, and relegate loss-making topics.

Use your analytics package to do this. In most packages, you can get breakdowns of the most popular, and least popular, pages. Organise this list by “most popular”. Your most popular pages should be at the top of your navigation tree. You also need to consider your business objectives. Your money pages might not be the same pages as your most popular pages, so it’s also a good idea to set up funnel tracking to ensure the pages you’re elevating also align with your business goals.

If a page is ranking well for a term, and that page is getting good results, you might want to consider adding a second page targeting the same term. Google may then group the pages together, effectively giving you listings #1 and #2.

Subject Themeing

A variant on Main & Secondary Navigation is subject themeing.

Themeing is a controversial topic in SEO. The assumption is that the search engines will try and determine the general theme of your site, therefore you should keep all your pages based around a central theme.

The theory goes that you can find out what words Google places in the same “theme” by using the tilde ~ command in Google. For example, if you search on ~ cars, you’ll see “automobile”, “auto”, “bmw” and other related terms highlighted in the SERP results. You use these terms as headings for pages in your site.

However, many people feel that themes do not work, because search engines return individual pages, not sites. Therefore, it follows that the topic of other pages on the site aren’t directly attributable to the ranking of an individual page.

Without getting into a debate about the the existence or non-existence of theme evaluation in the algorithm, themeing is a great way to conceptually organize your site and research keywords.

Establish a central theme, then create a list of sub-topics made up of related (~) terms. Make sub-topics of sub-topics. Eventually, your site resembles a pyramid structure. Each sub-topic is organized into a directory folder, which naturally “loads” keywords into URL strings, breadcrumb trails, etc. The entire site is made up of of keywords related to the main theme.

Bruce Clay provides a good overview of Subject Themeing.

Bleeding Page Rank?

You might also wish to balance the number of outgoing links with the number of internal links. Some people are concerned about this aspect, i.e. so-called “bleeding page rank”. A page doesn’t lose page rank because you link out, but linking does effect the level of page rank available to pass to other pages. This is also known as link equity.

It is good to be aware of this, but not let it dictate your course of action too much. Remember, outbound linking is a potential advertisement for your site, in the form of referral data in someone else logs. A good rule of thumb is to balance the number of internal links with the the number of external links. Personally, I ignore this aspect of SEO site construction and instead focus on providing visitor value.

Link Equity & No Follow

Another way to control the link equity that flows around your site is to use the no-follow tag. For example, check out the navigational links at the bottom of the page:

As these target pages aren’t important in terms of ranking, you could no-follow these pages ensure your main links have more link equity to pass to other pages.

Re-Focus On The Most Important Content

This might sound like sacrilege, but it can often pay not to let search engines display all the pages in your site.

Let’s say you have twenty pages, all titled “Acme”. Links containing the keyword term “Acme” point to various pages. What does the algorithm do when faced with these pages? It doesn’t display all of them for the keyword term “Acme”. It choses the one page it considers most worthy, and displays that.

Rather than leave it all to the algorithm, it often pays to pick the single most relevant page you want to rank, and 301 all the other similarly-themed pages to point to it. Here’s some instructions on how to 301 pages.

By doing this, you focus link equity on the most important page, rather than splitting it across multiple pages.

Create Cross Referenced Navigational Structures

Aaron has a good tip regarding cross-referencing within the secondary page body text. I’ll repeat it here for good measure:

This idea may sound a bit complex until you visualize it as a keyword chart with an x and y axis.

Imagine that a, b, c, … z are all good keywords.
Imagine that 1, 2, 3, … 10 are all good keywords.

If you have a page on each subject consider placing the navigation for a through z in the sidebar while using links and brief descriptions for 1 through 10 as the content of the page. If people search for d7, or b9, that cross referencing page will be relevant for it, and if it is done well it does not look too spammy. Since these types of pages can spread link equity across so many pages of different categories make sure they are linked to well high up in the site’s structure. These pages works especially well for categorized content cross referenced by locations.

Comments

The headline, given its power to convey meaning quickly, is more important than ever. Attention spans are limited. Media messages flood the channels. We’re busy. The function of the headline is to grab our attention and pull us deeper into the message.

Many books have been written on how to craft great headlines. I’m going to quote from the advertisers bible on the topic, Tested Adverting Methods by John Caples. Caples identifies three main classes of successful headlines.

The Three Main Classes Of Successful Headlines

• Self-Interest: The best headlines are those that appeal to self interest. They offer the reader benefits that they want, and they can get from you. For example, RETIRE AT 30
• News - Humans are pre-disposed to seek out what is new and different in their environment. For example, NEW, CHEAPER IPHONE CALL PLANS RELEASED
• Curiosity Appeal to our curious nature. LOST: $1 BILLION DOLLARS

Of the three, by far the most effective headline in advertising is the self interest headline. Our self interest usually trumps our curiosity, and news, especially when time is short.

Compare these two headlines:

PUT UP OR SHUT UP

FIVE TOTALLY NEW WAYS TO GET TOP RANKING IN GOOGLE

The first says nothing that appeals to our self interest. We don’t even know what it is about. But you’d be hard pressed not to click on the second headline. The self-interest is just too strong. This is why the second form is used so often in link-baiting and social media. It screams for attention, and then makes a strong appeal to self-interest.

There is a downside to such headlines, however. Modern audiences have become jaded and cynical, especially where marketing messages are concerned. Overplay the benefit, and you’ll come off as a shark. Link-baiting, a useful SEO tactic, has developed a bad reputation through overuse of this approach.

Eventually, people tune out.

Get Your Tone Right

We can twist the overused appeal-to-self interest headline strategy slightly to make it work for us. The key to getting the appeal to self-interest right is to get the tone right. Understand both the audiences’ desires and the tone of “voice” they respond to.

For example, look at Digg. A cynic might argue that a surefire way to get top page on Digg is to write a headline that includes the following subject matter, and do so using an irreverent tone:

• Criticism of Bush
• Anything about Digg itself
• Pumping Linux
• Dumping DRM
• Some crazy-weird activity from a country no-one has ever heard of

By the way, if anyone can come up with a headline that includes of those elements, feel free to add it to the comments

The headline needs to be crafted in such a way as to appeal to Diggs demographic, which is mostly young, tech-savvy males. This demographic tends to respond to a tone that is cynical, flippant and irreverent. Get that tone wrong - i.e. play it too straight, or too advertorial - and it doesn’t matter how strong the self-interest angle, it’s unlikely to work.

How To Use Headline Strategy In SEO.

SEO has an additional challenge.

For SEO to work well, the headline, which is often also used as the title tag, should include a keyword term. Many studies have shown that a SERP or Adword that includes the keyword term results in more clicks. In order to get the headline strategy to work for SEO, try amalgamating the keyword term with one of the three formats.

For example, where the keyword term is “high speed routers”, try:

• High Speed Routers- How To Get Routers At Half Price (appeal to self interest)
• High Speed Routers- Latest Features To Insist On (news, with a hint of self interest)
• High Speed Routers- How We Blew Our Budget (Curiosity)

Even if you’re not #1 in the serps for that term, you’re more likely to attract a click than the guy who simply uses “High Speed Routers”, by itself.

Your headline (i.e. the title tag) competes with at least ten other SERPs on the page, along with a various Adwords listings along the top and down the side. The top three SERP poitions are gold, but if you can add a touch of appeal-to-self-interest, or news, or curiosity, you’ll up your chances of getting the click.

If you want to go one step further with this tactic, use it as a way to segment visitors. The first example I gave is likely to attract those people who are ready to buy, and who are buying on price.

You then need to include your title as a heading on the page, which confirms to they visitor their click has got them where they wanted to be. They’re now far more likely to read beyond the headline.

Comments

Domain names you’re not using

If you own more than one domain name, then what are you doing with the other ones? Did you register them and they’re just sitting there…making someone else money? Seriously. Like many people, they have bought domain names and they never did anything with them. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If you typed them in the browser right now they would come up with a “Godaddy web page” or other landing page by the domain registrar…advertising that Registrar’s service and (you might now know this) it is making that registrar money when people click on the PPC ads on that domain name.

Did you know that if you simply went to a domain parking service like Sedo.com to park your domain names. All you have to do is sign up, change the nameservers on your domains, and tell the parking company what your domain name is about: give them a keyword phrase. That’s it. If you’re just sitting on some domain names that you’re not using, then you should consider parking them, selling them, or developing them.

Redirecting Domain Names
There is a unique group of people out there that use the 301 Permanent Redirect to their advantage: they acquire domain names that have links and traffic: and they redirect them to their current web sites. That is an option that you have if you own a domain name that has links and traffic. But I would only redirect it to a “live” web site if you are certain that the former topic of that domain name is in line with the domain name you are redirecting it to. So, if you own a former automotive site that has 100 backlinks that are good automotive links then it might make sense to redirect it to your existing automotive web site. There are other factors, and I plan on discussing those factors–and buying domain names for links–at a future date.

How do you know when do develop a domain?
Developing a domain name, whether you install WordPress on the domain name and make it a blog or a site or you hire a development team, a web designer, and a writer should depend on several factors. Developing a domain name, whether you do it yourself or not, means time and money. Let’s take a a look at an example of how you could determine, from an Search Engine Optimization perspective, whether or not you should develop the domain name you own or not.

Ultimately, “Should I develop this domain name or not?” is a question only you can answer. But, I would like to give you my unique perspective on this and how I go about logically determining (from my SEO perspective) whether or not to develop a domain or not.

There a few things that you can do that will might help you decide if you want to develop the domain or not. Here’s what I do. I will use “nailerkit.com” as an example, as it is a lot easier to use a real domain as an example. I currently own that domain name and plan on developing it at some later date.

I would also like to point out that this technique is good for “generic” domain names, ones that contain keywords or keyword phrases (keyword-rich), and do not contain a trademark.

1. First, go to Google and search for the domain name’s primary keyword phrase. In this case, I am using “nailer kit“. Are there Google AdWords ads for that phrase? In this case, there are. Companies believe that it’s a good enough keyword phrase for them to actually pay for ads for that keyword phrase.

2. Go to the Google Keyword Tool and search for the the phrase or keyword. I searched for “nailer kit” without quotes and I see that Google says that there are about 40,500 searches for that phrase, and 25 related phrases. That means that there IS traffic for the phrase, there are people who search for it, and there’s 25 potential pages for the site (one page per related keyword). So, I could fairly easily create a 26 page site.

3. Back to the search results for “nailer kit“. I look at the search results’ top 10 to see if someone else is using a domain with keywords in the URL and they’re ranking in the top 10. In this case there is not.

I look at the top 5 search results to see if any of those sites that are ranking are actually targeting that phrase as their main keyword (and they’re not for ‘nailer kit’).

I look at the top 5 search results and check the backlinks to those pages that are ranking. I take the actual page that’s ranking and check it’s links in Yahoo!. In this case, there are 34 links to that page. But, what is important to note is that there are 34 links from the same domain name, Lowes.com, and not from other domain names. If a web site has on-topic links from several different domain names there is a better chance that it will “beat out” a page that only has internal links from one domain name pointing to it. There are a lot of other factors involved in a search engine ranking, but since I should be able to get lots of on-topic links to a whole entire site about “nailer kits” then I stand a good chance of ranking well for “nailer kit” and “nailer kits”.

4. Some other considerations will include questions like:

- How easily can I create the content? How much will it cost to hire someone to write 26 pages of material about nailer kits? I could write it myself (probably about 1 day of time to write the content) or I could get someone else to write it (I have a writer who will write unique content for me at $7 an article or page).

I could also see a very good “link bait” type of articles on the site, one about “how to use a nailer” and “how to use framing nailers” and “how to pick the right nailer”. This is the type of content that other sites like to link to. And they tend to do well in the social media, which will help.

- Can I easily monetize the site? In this case, I can use a combination of Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network ads as well as affiliate product ads (using affiliate programs, potentially through popshops.com). I can find a lot of “nailer kits” and nailers to sell on the site.

- Would someone want to purchase the domain at a later date if it has traffic, is developed, has a revenue stream, and is a good generic domain? Yes, I think so.

- What is the link strategy? How are you going to get on-topic links to the site? In this case, once the site has enough content (I have already found 26 different pages for the site), submitting it to dmoz.org, botw.org, business.com, yahoo directory, and various home improvement sites will help. Spending about $500 on links and on directory listings will help. Using the content and the link bait articles on the site to promote the site in the social media will potentially help get links to it.

At this point, I have decided that it IS worth it to take the time to develop nailerkit.com. There’s enough potential traffic for the topic and I could develop it. Actually developing it will increase that domain name’s value in the long run and it will appeal the the “sellability” of the domain in the future. By searching for the site’s main keyword phrase, by doing some basic keyword research, and by looking at the overall potential for the domain name’s advertisers or your “potential profitability”, you should be able to determine whether or not you should develop the domain name or not.

Do you have questions? Do you have a domain name that you’re thinking of developing and want me to take a look at its overall marketability? Let me know.

Are you looking for marketing services such as social media optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click program management or consulting, or search engine optimization services? Feel free to contact me.

Comments

Dave’s Answer:

While you would think that something so rudimentary as the markup language for Web pages wouldn’t be a place where you’d find great controversy, in fact there are two different quite fervent camps in site design that are represented in this debate. What we’re talking about is whether markup should be functional or whether it should be presentation-based.

If you were on the functional side, you would say that when you’re writing content for online publication, you want to simply note how that element relates to the content overall. So “<cite>” for citations, “<a>” for anchor text (hypertext links), and so on. How it’s rendered, how the tool that the reader is using to view your content, is up to their tool’s preferences. Some users might prefer citations in yellow with a dark blue background, while others might want to simply have it underlined: it’s “up to the browser”.



In fact, when I teach web design classes, that’s our mantra, because however much you tweak things, the user’s tools, preferences and settings can and will doubtless change how they see your material.

Now, on the presentation side, designers would point out that while all of this is well and good with something like a citation, there’s such a difference between bold and italic in terms of how you read and process the information on the screen that it’s of great importance that the content producer have greater control over how it’s displayed.

While functional designers would use “<strong>” and “<em>” for words that should be emphasized or “stronger”, a presentation designer would eschew it completely and use “<b>” for bold and “<i>” for italics.

Which is right? Well, it’s hard to say. If you like having more control over the presentation of your material, then the presentation approach is going to be a better match. If you want to focus on your content and let the reader (or, more accurately, their reading tool) do the work, then a more functional approach may be for you.

As it turns out, this is somewhat of a moot point given the rise of Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS). CSS brings a far greater level of sophistication to presentation markup and while it initially seems a lot more complicated, the greater power makes it well worth learning.

In CSS, however, the markup “<bold!>” changes rather dramatically to “<span style=’font-weight:bold;’>bold!</span>”. A lot more complex, but as you might guess, there are dozens of different transformations you can apply to text with CSS elements — like wrapping the text with a thin border — that just aren’t even an option with HTML.

While I am a big fan of CSS and use it with astonishing frequency for even the most simple tasks, it’s definitely more complicated and, more of a problem, many Web sites let you use rudimentary HTML where you can’t use CSS. A great example is that most online forums and blogs allow “<b>” notation in your comments to let you emphasize words, but very few allow “<span>” to let you use the full power of CSS to really pretty up your prose.

Therefore it does behoove you to learn at least the dozen basic HTML markup tags for just those situations. In fact, I have a brief article on my Web site that gives you just this list, with a helpful explanation of each tag: Essential HTML tags bloggers need to know.

My recommendation for when you must use HTML? Use the presentation-based approach, not the functional approach.

In a word, “Go <b> go!”

Comments

Where it can get really complicated is where the same word is used with two quite distinct meanings. Unfortunately this has happened to one of the most important words relating to a web page: the description. One place the word description is used extensively is in the Open Directory Project or DMOZ. This site started off just over 10 years ago as GnuHoo, switching to NewHoo, before being acquired by Netscape. Being featured in the Open Directory Project provides a useful link for any site in gaining search engine visibility. In consequence many people have gone through the DMOZ submission process.

The Open Directory Project has human editors who prepare descriptions for all web pages. However a submitter can offer a description, which may be used or may be slightly modified. The guidance given for such a description includes the following:

Keep the description of your site brief - no longer than 25-30 words. A well-written, objective description will make listing your site easier.

• Write in complete sentences and/or descriptive phrases using proper grammar, punctuation and correct spelling.
• Avoid using promotional language and strings of key words and search terms.

Another place where this word Description is used is in the Description Meta tag, which is part of the Head section of any web page. If the Description Meta tag is provided then this will often be used by Google in preparing the explanatory snippet, which is provided in any keyword query report page. Since a good snippet may channel prospects to your website, it is worth putting a little effort into getting it right.

Google in its Webmaster Help Center offers the following advice on creating effective Description Meta tags.

Include clearly tagged facts in the description.
The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence format; it’s also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information - price, age, manufacturer - scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book.

<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Author: A.N. Author, Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, Length: 784 pages”>

In this example, information is clearly tagged and separated.

This clearly shows the conflict. DMOZ requires sentences. Google prefers tagged information. The content of the description meta tag should be written the way Google prefers it. To be absolutely sure that Google uses what is offered in the meta tag rather than the description that may exist in the Open Directory Project, the following meta tag can be used:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

This prevents all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using the Open Directory Project information in any way.

To specifically prevent Google from using that information as a page’s description, you can use the following:

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noodp”>

Comments

A huge number of people online don’t know the difference between their browser’s address bar and search bar. Let’s keep that in perspective. What will it take for them to learn?

That particular point has created a great conversation over at Read Write Web including an extremely well thought out response from John Andrews.

The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her [a user] than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.

To read John’s entire response head on over to Read Write Web. I however believe that another commenter, Jahbuh, got it right when he said;

The answer is very simple - People feel safer with Google correcting their mistakes than the typo sending them to a virus, porn laden site. How many times has a slip of the finger sent you to a site you would never visit? Do a Google search and even if you do a typo somehow Google still points you to the site you want to go to.

I don’t believe it is the advertising industry wanting to take advantage of inexperienced consumers, I don’t think it is a design issue of the navigation bar, and I don’t believe it is user ignorance that drives users to use Google and the other search engines for direct navigation.

I believe the majority of users use the search box for direct navigation because it provides a higher level of convenience and safe surfing. Should a user mistype a URL, if they are using a search engine, it will try to guess what the user actually intended and provide a set of search results that are free of any malicious software while providing the user with the opportunity to avoid any unwanted content.

For a number of years I believe a few individuals in the search marketing industry and some decision makers in companies promoting products that were perceived as malicious made business decisions that allowed them to make a lot of money while hardening users to the dangerous realities of the internet. This type of behavior and decision making is what changed the way users interact with the web.

Using search engines for direct navigation has almost become a common sense approach for many users because so many people in the past were infected with software that they didn’t want and had enormously difficult times removing. Gator was the name that became synonymous with the term “spy ware” and it along with other similar types of software I believe are what really changes the browsing habits of the general public.

What do you think, in this day and age can users really not tell the difference between a search engine’s search box and the navigation bar or is there a deeper relationship between users and search engines?

Comments

1. Identify Right Keywords and Incorporate Them in Your Headlines: Find out what search terms your target audience will use when looking for the kind of information, goods or services your site provides. You need to use relevant keywords in your headline to make the search engines identify your website as per the user query. It would be advisable for you to use Wordtracker for such a task as it is known to one of the best tools in this field.
2. Get Inbound Links from Similar Websites: It is essential that you find some high-quality websites that offer the same products or services as your website does and include them in a resource section on your website. It is quite possible that, your visitors will bookmark your ‘resources’ page as they will appreciate the hard work you’ve done for them. Maybe the website, whose link you’ve provided in your site, may link back to you as well. Linking to higher, authoritative websites provide a larger scope for increased search engine rankings.
3. Write Periodic Reviews of Relevant Websites: It is always beneficial for your website, if you write good, honest and useful reviews of the websites that are relevant to your website. Your reviews will greatly impress the visitors and also the owners of the websites that you’ve reviewed. A good coverage will lead to greater amount of inbound links. It is always better to send an e -mail to the websites as soon as your review is published. But, remember not to beg them for a link back.
4. Monitor your Website Traffic: It is always advisable to monitor your site traffic. This will inform you about the pages that have succeeded and those that haven’t. You can also use feedburner that would allow you to get simple statistics on web traffic.
5. Content is Very Important: All the above points would prove useless, if the content of your website isn’t able to compliment above four steps. Remember, your website is as good as its content is. If you are running a blog, then you should maintain constant activity on your blog and publish regularly. It is better to publish fewer high quality posts than many of low quality, ones. If you publish too much, readers may find it hard to identify the good posts from the casual ones and get frustrated. You don’t want that!

Following the above steps, will help you to increase your website rankings in the search engine results, without shedding tons of money and wasting your precious time.

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