SeoBlackhat.co.uk

Amit Singhal, from Google, did a 50 slide presentation back in 2004, regarding the Challenges in Running a Commercial Web Search Engine.

Why am I covering it now? First, a member sent this to me to comment on, and I think it is rather interesting to see where things were then compared to five years later. Heres a hint: Not much has changed.

Question: How many queries are unique?
Answer: Over half

At first glance, you would look at that and think I have to do a better job of getting more keywords since users search patterns are not consistent.

Wait. After looking at the data from about 60 sites, here is an example from one of my typical sites.

108k visits from 28k keyword queries. Looking at it this way, it looks quite diverse, however, looking at the Top 100 queries, 56,656 visits came through. Which means about 52,000 visits came through the remaining 27,900 queries.

Am I optimizing for 28,000 keywords? Not even close. So how do you improve your chances of coming up for many of the phrases which may never come up on an analytics report or during keyword research.

If I can quote Dan Thies, Use modifiers aggressively.

What are modifiers? You already know them, but probably by a different name.

Examples of common modifiers are:

• best
• buy
• cheap
• discount
• wholesale
• online
• accessories

Modifiers allow you to expand your keyword set. So instead of having just blue widgets, you would have discount blue widgets, blue widget accessories etc. Geo Targeted (San Francisco, bay area, Chicago, etc.) would also be classified as a modifier.

Search Engine Cheat Sheet Posted

The Search Engine Cheat Sheet which was originally posted in the On-Page Factors eBook is now posted in the Tutorial section and it has been updated.

There were a few updated changes, here they are:

The displayed characters each engine accepts changed:

Google increased one character from 65 to 66. Here is an example of the new longer Title tag:

Yahoo! is currently 71 characters as evidenced by this example:

Microsofts Live.com shows 70 characters:

What does this mean? Basically that you have one extra character to play with when creating your Title tags. I just posted the information from Live and Yahoo! to show how the other two engines are currently behaving, but Google is still your main focal point. Since they are the lowest, you target that number.

Why?

The testing numbers are stil accurate. Titles which have ellipses (the three dots at the end) have a lower click through rate than Titles which do not.

Simply put, Video SEO is the art and science of ensuring that your video content attracts as much traffic as possible.

You have basically two options: You can host the videos on your own site or use Amazons S3 servers, or you can post them on YouTube and embed them in your pages.

Important Tip: If you post your videos on shared service like YouTube, make sure you read the Terms of Use. Often, by posting the video on their server you are transferring ownership of the video to them.

Where do viewers discover video online?

44% – Discover Randomly
43% – Via Sharing
43% – Via Video Websites
39% – Via Search Engines
27% – Via Marketing Email
4% – Via RSS & MRSS Feeds

Fact: 38% of users who search Google in 2008 were served VIDEO as part of Universal Search in the SERPs.

First Generation Video Search Engines:

• Depends primarily on Metadata and on-page text
• Most are moving to Second Generation
• Examples: Google Video, AOL Video, TruVEO, Yahoo! Video, Live Search

Second Generation Video Search Engines:

• Use Metadata, on-page text, UGC (User-Generated Content: Comments, Annotations, etc.), and advanced recognition technologies (speech, visual, facial, OCR, etc.)
• Examples: Blinkx, ClipBlast, VideoSurf, VideoCrawler

SEO Tips and Tricks for Video

• Search Engines cant read the video content, so it is recommended NOT to do a full transcript of the video, but rather a Cliff Notes summary of the content. Why? Instead of just having someone read the full transcript, which could be boring without the visual support. Plus, the summary can be an enticement to view the video, which could lead to conversion.
• Video search engines need to be told what the video is about using Metadata and On-Page text, just as you would a normal page with a few wrinkles.
• If possible, have multiple video formats available: flv, mov, mpeg, mp4, etc.
• Include the word video at the end of the filename along with your main keyword phrase. Use hyphens to separate words.
• Use In-File Metadata which will include: Metadata Title, Author, Date and Description.
• Keep in mind that video search engines arent real good at indexing Metadata right now, but they are getting better at it.
• Use only 1 video per URL and use unique URLs
• Place your videos in a folder just off the root, dont place them many levels deep.
• If you you have a lot of videos, you may consider using a subdomain (i.e. http://videos.yourdomain.com/).
• I dont recommend .tv extensions right now. You may want to register them, but dont use them for video just yet. The brandability is still poor.
• If you want a new domain for your videos, you might consider using your keyword term with video or media
  at the end. (Example: IndiaTravelMedia.com).
• Use embedded players, dont use pop-up players, they are annoying and many have pop-up blockers.
• Make sure your navigation includes a link to your video content.

Tips to Make Your Videos Viral

• Allow visitors to grab your embedded code to use on their sites or blogs.
• Include social bookmarking tool links (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
• Enable comments to invite conversation.
• Allow users to subscribe to your videos (so you can get them back with future video releases) via RSS/MRSS
• Use internal linking to promote your videos
• Use MRSS Feed Syndication

http://www.blinkx.com/rssupload

http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit

http://www.reelseo.com/submit-videos-rss-mrss

Google Video Sitemaps & XML Feed

Google has XML Sitemaps for Video. eMarketer projects that 87% of the total U.S. Internet audience will watch videos online by 2011. Guess who dominates in the video search market? Yeah, Google.

If you use the XML function, which I highly recommend, make sure you provide a thumbnail URL so you increase the likelihood your video is included in Googles video index.

• If you want your users to be able to watch your videos on Google video, make sure to set the player to Autoplay so that users will be shown the video after they click on the result.
• When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, it isnt only searchable in Google Video, but on other Google products as well. This can help you DOMINATE the video landscape.

How can you dominate? Well, think of this. We have all seen the famous eye tracking study of the SERPs, but have you seen the one when video thumbnails are presented to the user?

Now, if that isnt an eye opening experience, I dont know what is. Check out how much more of the page is getting the users attention. This drives the point home that people are heavily attracted to images. This is why you need video to dominate the SERPs.

A Page Layout Example

1. There is plenty of text around the video to give SEO support so the engine will know the theme of the video content.

2. Write an effective and compelling Title

3. The description needs to work hand-in-hand with the Title to gain interest from the visitor.

4. The video should be embedded with Social Bookmarking icons, rating option, Email to a friend, the link code and embed code to allow for the video to go viral.

5. Include a transcript, but not a full transcript. Keep it to a Cliff Notes summary.

6. Allow comments to bring life into the video posting.

7. Use cross linking for other related videos or related content on your own site or network of sites.

8. An option would be to include Vertical Channel Content, but this is optional.

9. Contextual ads can be used to monetize the site, but it is a good idea to have them tucked away to not distract from the real reason they are there – to watch your video content and become hooked.

10. Tag cloud. Keywords are placed here to raise awareness more for the video search engines indexing the page.

More Video Tips

• If you have a long video, break it up into many shorter videos. Visitors are more likely to click the Next button than they are to sit through a long video.
• Adobe Premiere Pro and OnLocation are solid desktop solutions for video editing.
• Link to your video from your site
• Send the link to your new video to your subscriber list on YouTubew

Many members ask me on a regular basis how you can ensure that you have an IP address that is clean, so let me tell you.

You will want to do a deep check on the IP address, meaning you want to check the main sources of the black lists. The following list is what I use to check IPs that have been assigned to me by my host. Before I give you this list please NEVER do the following:

You: Are all of these IP addresses you just assigned to me clean?

Host: Absolutely. We check and cross check all the IP addresses before assigning them.

You: Great, thanks!

This is a huge mistake, never take their word for it. Verify that the IP address is clean by using the following tools:

Open RBL – This program will check against many of the popular blacklists and will give you a quick overview of the blacklist giving you a status of that IP address on the lists.

The following are good separate blacklist checkers, as they tend to be quite trigger happy when blacklisting IPs.

http://www.ordb.org/lookup/
http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

This is another great way of making you feel like you are in full control of your business and allows you to ensure that you are given exactly what you have asked for. Webhosts give away dirty IP addresses on a regular basis so take the time to protect your business and verify that every IP address is germ free.

Finally I have got my finger out of my arse, and installed the cookie stuffing script

I have had alot of people asking about Forums and VIP service So once again here we go. I have alot to add and to update.

The VIP service will get access to tools not seen in the SEO Community, and alot of quality Info ect..

People wanting to Buy VIP status can go here: BUY VIP or Just click the bottom banner on the blog. Payments can be made through paypal, wire, cheque and Credit Cards via Plimus.

Previous Followers & Members Contact me for Discounts

Also the Cookie Stuffing Script is Complete, which can enable forum stuffing , Image stuffing, SWF Stuffing & Fake the referrer , plus live statistics all with front end and backend login. Possible the best Cookie Stuffing script made to date.

One of the best things you can do for yourself as an affiliate which is seldom talked about and never explained is going direct.

Going direct simply means you are dealing directly with the merchant aka company that owns a specific offer.

There are few exceptions to the rule that it’s always in your best interest to cut out the middle man in just about anything you do.

A middle man is only of benefit when they have a specialized skill that is valuable in whatever process you are participating in.

A quick example might be a real estate agent, typically they make finding you a new property or selling a property you already have much easier in which case it is worth paying their fee for that skillset which you do not posses.

When it comes to internet marketing the general population has been groomed to think that a middle man is necessary in just about everything you do online from buying traffic, to driving traffic, to selling traffic.

This really couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the end, each of you have to weigh the pros and cons of going direct or continuing to rely on middle men, but let’s take a quick look at what a CPA network really has to offer you in most cases:

1. Tons of offers to choose from. Ok, it’s pretty convenient to have a buffet of options right at your fingertips, you can test any offer as quick as you can drive clicks, everything is right there for you.
   
2. Consolidated payments. One check, one bank wire or one PayPal payment regardless if you made money with 100 different offers. No real accounts receivable to worry about on your end and therefore no need to chase dozens of advertisers for your money each week.
   
3. Statistics. What better information is there than what’s hot based on what hundreds or thousands of other affiliates are running with great success through the same traffic channels you plan to utilize.

I guess we could also add things like hot affiliate managers and open bar at affiliate summit parties but let’s stick to the basics.

1) If youre an affiliate, and you are directly linking to the merchants page with your affiliate code, change the CTA to /yourdomain.com/buy/ and do a 301 redirect to the merchant.
2) Make sure your Title tag is unique and contains the targeted keyword phrase.
3) Ditto with the Meta Description.
4) Ditto with the H1 tag.
5) Get the Privacy, Contact Us, About Us, Terms, etc. on the page if they arent already there.
6) Put the keyword phrase at the bottom of the page, just above the footer links. But dont link it to anything.
7) Use it at least twice in the body of the page.
Get some good solid links 5-10 or so to your landing page. As strange as it sounds, getting links from pages that are cached and it gets spidered by GoogleBot has helped in the slap – but not consistently.

My past experience has taught me that to gain traffic to your website is tedious work, I own alot of website, most are now on auto Pilot however getting them to have reputable traffic is hard work.

The Website:

Firstly pick a niche, and be the best at it, make sure the website is fully seo compatible, thats the main step, as spiders & Crawlers search your site for new info.. its no good if they cannot spider your site correctly.

Make sure you get your keywords in order, meta tags, titles, this is all major contributions to getting traffic via search engines. Try IBP , Internet business promoter, I use 9.2 the stable cracked version, it does an analysis of your website and compares against your competitors.

Pick an eye catching template, no too many flash objects too.. I sold a site ages ago.. that i did not use an seo for seobh.co.uk.. if you saw it then it has 21,000 members and did well, not the admin killed it with all his hostgator offers and basically killed the site off so beware dont over do it.

BackLinks:

Get backlinks, theres various ways, senuke, xrumer, prstorm they are all blackhat but hey.. if you want them fast use it. People say to me about been sandboxed.. I personally dont believe in it. I have had sites since the eighties and never been sandboxed, personally I think its bull, but we all have out own opinions.

Speak to people within your niche, ask them politely for 2 way backlinks, if they havent thier head up thier arse normally they do. But we arent all perfect.

Another way is using the hidden backlink method:

[code]<a href=http://www.yoursiteetc.com>:)</a>[/code]

More info how this is done is on the forums..

Submission services:

Get your site submitted. I use IBP , internet business promoter again, it can submit your website to 2500 search engines. But dont do it too often, every 4-6 weeks is ample enough.

Also try sites like, www.submitwebsite.info great to get your site out-there

Get Indexed – I have just recently created an indexing and backlink tool.. this will enable your new site to get indexed more quicker and get backlinks on HIGH PR sites at the same time.

This can be found here:

http://www.seoblackhat.co.uk/2009/11/08/new-backlink-tool-ceeated-version-2/

General:

In general theres ALOT of ways to get traffic, you can also use RSS Submit tools, theres alot out there, RSS FEEDS & Plugins, which can put your website on auto to 50 website feeds..

More ways are discussed within the forums, so dont be shy and join in.

I created this report so that I can teach my fellow black hatters a cool
blackhat backlink trick. As I stated earlier in my disclaimer, I
created this report for educational purposes only. However, if you
want to implement this technique to get additional backlinks, its
your call.
Lets get down to business!
Have you ever found a site with high PR that allows comments but
doesnt allow any links?
Heres a scenario:
Lets say that you own some websites that are in the insurance
niche.
You are browsing on the internet and you find a good forum that is
about health.
You visit prchecker to check the sites pagerank and to your
greatest delight you find out that the forum has a pagerank of 9!
Many webmasters will see this as a great backlink opportunity so
they will try to leave their site on this forum.
However, your niche is insurance so you cant leave a comment
with your site on this forum because it is unrelated and itll get
deleted.
After you register on the forum, you find out that it does not allow
signatures either. That means that you cant place your website
in a signature or in a comment (since its unrelated).
So you question yourself,
How can I place my link on the forum without getting noticed?
Hmmm it cant be done. Ill just search for another high PR
website and post there.
End of scenario
A lot of you have probably experienced this kind of scenario. You
might think that leaving your site on a forum like this is not
possible. Well youre wrong.
A task like this can be easily done by any individual. The
technique is not 100% undetectable, but itll give webmasters a
hard time to find your link which will be situated on their site.
So, what in the world is this technique that youre talking
about??
I think that I kept you waiting long enough. You know that most
websites and blogs will allow html on their comments right?
To place a backlink, most of you will write down:
<a href=http://www.yoursiteetc.com>Click here</a>
A comment like that will usually get deleted, but what if you write:
<a href=http://www.yoursiteetc.com>:)</a>
As you can see here, your link will be hidden in a smiley. No one
will expect that theres a link hidden in the smiley because the
smiley will look just normal!
Every website will accept smileys. However, if you step onto a site
that does not allow smileys, then I suggest that you use the full
stop technique.
<a href= http://www.yoursiteetc.com>.</a>
The Full Stop technique can be used on sites that do not allow
smileys. Itll still be much less detectable when compared to words
such as click here.
Forums allow bb code instead of html code. So, to apply this
method on a forum you have to type it like this:
[url=www.yoursiteetc.com];)[/url]
The idea behind this is that the smiley will look normal and it will
not show as a hyperlink. Ive seen some people using this
technique to get backlinks from High Pr sites.
<a href=http://www.yoursiteetc.com>:)</a>
No one will ever expect that you have your backlink hidden in a
smiley!
Conclusion
Simple but effective, dont you think?
Anyway, this method is not categorized as White Hat. As a
matter of fact it is a SEO blackhat method and I always suggest
that you stick with white hat methods. However, if you decide to
use this technique, make sure that you dont end up commenting
on the same websites over and over again, since that will result in
spam. Use it wisely..

I will be releasing my new image stuffing script coming soon. You will be able to cookie stuff forums using the /img tag and fake the referrer. This will be in the download section within the next couple of weeks.

So some brief info to add to make this post up..

Step by Step Forum Stuffing

Step 1

Make a Forum List

Use the Google searches from Lesson2 to make a forum list that is targeted to the affiliate program you want to stuff. You should start off with at least 20 forums to see what works but some people start with 50. I recommend using an Excel file to keep track of your forums and usernames. You can also keep track of the rules for each forum. An example would be that some forums requires 10 posts before you can post an IMG.

Step 2

Prepare your IMG links

Use your cookie stuffing script to generate your IMG links from your affiliate program links. Double check everything and make sure you are using the correct affiliate link and image url. Do a few tests and make sure it shows up in your stats log. If some of your forums allow HTML you can also prepare a flash code to use in those forums if your script allows it.

Step 3

Start posting!

BHW, WarriorForums and WickedFire are not good forums to stuff as they know all about cookie stuffing.

Start posting in the forums and use your IMG link in either the sig or right after the post text. Be careful on the forums and do not over do it. A few posts a day per forum is usually fine. If a forum is big enough and moves fast you may be able to do more posts. You will need to use the [IMG] [/IMG] code to insert the cookie stuffing IMG URL in your post.
If you want to stuff in QUANTITY of cookie stuffs you can reply to a lot of posts on the forum every day (you need a well thought out response) and hope that the forum does not notice. If you want QUALITY cookie stuffing you need to make a thread about what you are stuffing, or you can just reply to other threads about it. I would recommend waiting until you have a reputation on the forum before starting threads.