Why Do Some SEOs Want Toolbar PageRank To Go Away?

London, United Kingdom - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - February 1, 2007 - For the 16th consecutive month, Google remains the most-visited web site in France, according to digital age measurement service, comScore Networks, during the month of December.
comScore World Metrix, continuously measures and reports online behaviour on a world-wide basis, providing visitation metrics and demographic characteristics for web site audiences around the world. With active representation of countries that comprise the vast majority of the global Internet population, World Metrix provides its clients with worldwide Internet population estimates and harmonized online performance metrics based on a consistent methodology across all countries. More than 100 clients subscribe to comScore’s World Metrix service, including 8 of the top 10 interactive advertising agencies.

Based on data collected through its comScore World Metrix audience ratings service, other notable findings include: * Microsoft Sites and France Telecom retained their rankings as the top three properties among French Internet users, with 16.8, 15.7 and 13.6 million French visitors, respectively. * Half of the top 10 gainers in December were shopping sites, including card site Dromadaire.com with 1.7 million visitors (up 38 percent); comparison shopping engine Shopzilla.com Sites with 1.9 million visitors up 29 percent); Karstadt-Quelle, appearing on the top gainers list for two months in a row, with 5.7 million visitors (up 21 percent); Apple Computer with 3.8 million visitors (up 16 percent); and Kingfisher (which includes Darty.com, Castorama.fr and But.fr) with 2.4 million visitors (up 13 percent). In addition, Groupe PPR (which includes Fnac.com, Laredoute.fr and Conforama.fr) was the 8th most-visited site in France overall, growing 6 percent versus November to 9.4 million visitors; and La Poste, the site used to ship many of the Christmas gifts bought online, was up 14 percent to 4.3 million visitors. * Travel and weather were also top of mind among the French during December, as city guide Cityvox.fr grew 35 percent to 1.5 million visitors and MeteoFrance.com grew 20 percent to 2.2 million visitors.

comScore Europe is an operating division of comScore Networks, Inc., the leader in digital media measurement. comScore Europe provides details of visitation, demographics and online buying power for web site audiences across European, U.S. and global markets.
comScore Networks measures the digital age with a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers that allo comScore to confidentially capture browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures across a broad spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore consultants apply the knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that endeavor to deliver superior ROI. comScore services are used by global firms such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Interactive, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestle, MBNA, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Merck and Expedia.

With the largest index of websites available on the World Wide Web and the industry’s most advanced search technology, Google Inc. delivers the fastest and easiest way to find relevant information on the Internet. Google’s technological innovations have earned the company numerous industry awards and citations, including two Webby Awards; two WIRED magazine Readers Raves Awards; Best Internet Innovation and Technical Excellence Award from PC Magazine; Best Search Engine on the Internet from Yahoo! Internet Life; Top Ten Best Cybertech from TIME magazine; and Editor’s Pick from CNET. A growing number of companies worldwide, including Yahoo! and its international properties, Sony Corporation and its global affiliates, AOL/Netscape, and Cisco Systems, rely on Google to power search on their websites. A privately held company based in Mountain View, Calif., Google’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Capital.

Simplifying SEO - Five laws of effective search engine optimisation

With this number of factors and constantly updating algorithms, it’s tricky when I want to explain to a site owner when training or consulting which really matter. So here are five laws of effective SEO I have defined to assess strategic focus on SEO - hopefully it’s easier to remember five laws than 200!

I’ve also created a new SEO Gallery showing examples of SEO best practice from UK companies - you may want to check out the advanced SEO techniques being used.

1. The more pages on your site that are indexed by Google, the more visitors you will get.

Every page on your site is an opportunity to attract visitors interested in your content and services. So make sure your index inclusion is 100% and Google’s robots can find ALL of your relevant content. If you’re international, display it for different country versions of Google.

2. If you create more pages with unique keyphrase rich content, you will get more qualified visitors, leads and sales.

Make sure you use keyword tools to perform a gap analysis, identify target keyphrases and where you can’t optimise existing pages, create new content themed around your target keyphrases.

Don’t forget that more pages can lead to visitor confusion, so you need a sound navigation scheme and clear positioning messages throughout your site.

Another implication of this law is that every new page has an opportunity to attract visitors thanks to the long-tail effect, provided the creator knows the ranking factors and principles of SEO – so SEO style guides and training of content owners is vital. You can’t just leave everything to SEO specialists.

This training doesn’t have to be that involved – I’m just talking sensible URL naming, unique titles and meta descriptions and use of keyphrases in headings and links.

I find that not everyone is aware of the great tools available for assessing performance, so have compiled a list of the best keyphrase analysis tools for SEO. It’s a shame the old-favourite Overture is no longer performing, although it seems Yahoo! will revive it.

3. If you create more quality internal links, you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales.

I think everyone knows about the importance of external backlinks, but internal links have an important role to play in attracting visitors using your target keyphrases - particularly those from high PageRank pages which contain the right anchor text within the hyperlink.

I have been collecting together some examples in an SEO Best Practice Gallery. Common examples are sitemaps, footer links, related product links, sub-categories menus including breadcrumbs, and body copy links particularly near the start of a document – again, content owners need to be educated to include those.

Of course, it can be tricky implementing changes within an existing site design and navigation scheme, but you have more control of these links than external links.

4. If you create more quality external links, you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales.

Most SEOs agree this is the most important factor in competitive markets. So, a proactive approach to link-building is needed with the aim of gaining links with good relevance about a topic that deeplink into relevant themed pages.

Great content will also lead to more natural links, but it will only get you so far. You need to be proactive also. The challenges of who owns and pays for this must be overcome – is it a PR activity or a marketing activity?

5. If you spam, you will be found out eventually.

So don’t spam. You need to ensure that an ethical approach to SEO is used. You need to work through with an agency how ethical you are, since there are many shades of grey.

Put another way, you need to work out which colour SEO hat you wear – if you or your design agency are purists who wear a ‘pearly white hat’ then you won’t succeed with SEO, although you will have the warm glow of being totally ethical. Choose which colour hat you wear – these posts on ‘what is black hat SEO?‘ help explain that.