This weeks Developer Shed Weekly Newsletter sponsored by AppDev

Here at SEO Chat, we believe in treats. But sometimes if you want them, you have to act quickly. For example, we're giving away 300 really cool Developer Shed T-shirts. But if you want one, you need to be among the first 300 to fill out our little survey. We just want to get a btter idea of what you look for when you visit SEO Chat and the rest of the sites in our family. So point your browser to our survey page and claim your FREE Developer Shed T-Shirt now!

After you're done there, you may want to check out this week's eWeek article. If you've noticed fewer value-added resellers and been wondering where they went, you'll definitely want to read the article. It explains the major shift going on in the market. As it turns out, VARs (or former VARs) aren't making most of their money from reselling anymore. So where is their revenue coming from? Read the article to find out.

It's all about SEO tips this week on SEO Chat. We know some of you have been doing SEO for a long time, but even if you know -- or think you know -- exactly how to make Google jump through hoops for you, there's always more to learn. That's why we published some advanced SEO tips on Monday, and ran an article on Tuesday that gave some interesting insights into how to use linkbait and social networking without sounding like a smarmy salesman. On Wednesday we faced the issue that many site owners and SEOs don't want to face: sites need regular "tune-ups" to keep them running smoothly. If you think you need a site tune-up, you'll get some good advice.

We highlighted a really excellent assortment of SEO-related tutorials from Tutorialized this week. If you've ever wondered how search engines work, or how to optimize for MSN, these tutorials will tell you. There are also some good ones on link building, and tips and tricks for Google. Oh, and don't forget to check out our other excellent tutorials on Tutorialized!

Do meta tags matter anymore? Even for keywords? That subject comes up from time to time in our SEO Chat forums. It came up again this week in our Thread of the Week. If they don't matter, why do sites that use them do well? Check the Thread of the Week to find out!

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, deals with the latest PageRank update from Google. A lot of SEOs and site owners were hurt in the latest update; both their PR and their positions in the search engine results pages dropped. What is going on? Scroll down and read the Spotlight to find out.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

SEO/SEM White Papers

How Findability Can Drive Business Growth and Identify Trends Early Enough to Make a Difference
Advanced search technology is the underpinning for delivering a terrific customer experience and can be the catalyst for unifying your customer experience across channels & across the customer lifecycle. Read how IBM offers a range of tools, technologies, & applications for search, unified by an open architecture & offered as adaptable services.
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Beyond Search to Navigation and Discovery: Why search alone is not enough
In this audio interview, ISYS discusses why search alone is no longer enough to address the entire scope of information access needs. To realize greater productivity, better quality decisions and improved customer service you must get beyond search to leverage navigation and discovery.
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Leveraging Enterprise Search Software to Tackle E-Discovery
Enterprise search is rapidly emerging as a key component to electronic discovery and is proving to be the very technology that organizations need today to comply with new federal rules that went into effect Dec. 1, 2006.
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All White Papers.

SEO Index

Tuning Up Your Website

Linkbait, Social Networking, and Hardcore SEO

Learning SEO by Doing it Hardcore

 News You Can't Use

    SEO on Tutorialized

 SEO Thread of The Week

 SEO Chat News Spotlight

Introducing Tech News by Developer Shed. News you can't use.

It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's news you can't use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions:

	Will Dick Cheney give into the darkside? Is it really a good idea for rednecks to have a shotgun rack mounted to their bed? Can we finally, finally do it with a robot? Will your dog finally be able to relieve those sexual frustrations on anything other than your leg? Why doesn't the thought helmet work for Jenny the news girl? Watch the video!

Tuning Up Your Web Site
by Terri Wells -- 2007-11-07

Sometimes web sites are like cars. You can have a site that looks gorgeous from the outside, but if it's under-performing and not getting you where you want to go, it might be time for a tune up - or even a complete overhaul. Read on for your own care and maintenance guide.

Regular readers of SEO Chat will know that I recently discussed a series of tips on doing SEO that some might consider a little unorthodox. One of the tips advised readers to engage in regular site redesign - say every six months to a year - for a variety of reasons. This got me thinking about how one would approach redesigning a web site for SEO purposes.

To begin with, an important part of SEO as a discipline involves getting the details right. Admittedly, I say that as someone who has read a lot about the subject; I've never optimized a web site beyond writing articles and making sure they stayed on topic. But most of the information I've read on SEO, whether it's been from books, forum posts, blogs, articles, or what have you, has emphasized the "little things" that make a big difference.

Read Tuning Up Your Web Site

Linkbait, Social Networking, and Hardcore SEO
by Terri Wells -- 2007-11-06

If you’ve completed the on-page optimization for your web site, it’s time to look at the off-page half of your work. With Google getting better at spotting paid links and reciprocal link exchanges, you’ll need something more natural to give you “link juice.” Then again, if you’re thinking only in terms of link juice, you just might be doing it wrong.

If you've been following my articles recently, you know that I've been writing about a recent post Michael Martinez made in his "SEO Theory and Analysis" blog. In that post, he gave a list of 20 hardcore SEO tips and explained each one.

I'm glad he explained them, because many of the tips seemed counter-intuitive. For example, why would you want to stop using keywords in your URLs? But actually doing each tip gives the student an education guaranteed to advance his or her skills as an SEO. You might not WANT to stop using keywords in your URLS, but it's good to know HOW to do SEO without them. That way, if you're ever in a position where you can't use keywords in your URLs - due to a stubborn client, perhaps - you won't be at a loss for ideas.

Read Linbait, Social Networking, and Hardcore SEO

Learning SEO by Doing it Hardcore
by Terri Wells -- 2007-11-05

Are you ready to take your SEO skills to the next level? The “learn by doing” approach works best, but what do you do after you’ve done something so many times that it’s automatic? You get out of your comfort zone by doing something a little different and scary that you might not have considered doing before.

Most importantly, you learn from the experience. That’s the focus of this article. As with an earlier article on hardcore SEO, I’m taking my inspiration from Michael Martinez’s "SEO Theory and Analysis" blog. He departed from his “theoretical musings” long enough to give 20 tips. While he didn’t explicitly divide them into which tips would be most helpful for which purposes, I could see certain patterns in some of them. Doing any one of his tips will give an education to any SEO, but the ones I’ve culled for this article stood out for me.

The first one I’d like to cover is actually the fourteenth tip on the list: “Learn how to write Who, What, Where, When, and Why in 4 paragraphs or less.” Maybe education is declining these days, but I can remember learning that in grade school – though I’ll readily admit I might not adhere to it as closely as I should. Still, it’s important to learn the rules well before you break them; when you understand them deeply enough, you’ll know when and how you can get away with breaking them.

Read Learning SEO by Doing it Hardcore

Tutorialized has a dedicated SEO section for Search Optimization, Website Marketing, and many other SEO/SEM related tutorials.

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers
How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers.
Read the tutorial.

The Best Way How To Improve Link Popularity
There are many ways how to improve link popularity.
Read the tutorial.

MSN Optimization For Beginners
Learn to optimize your site for the new MSN Search and watch the traffic roll in.
Read the tutorial.

Link Building By Giving Free Word Press Themes
Build links by giving free Word Press Themes.
Read the tutorial.

Google - Tips 'n' tricks, submission, listing and ranking
Learn some great tips and tricks on Google here.
Read the tutorial.

Number of keywords...

I've been told that is good to keep your keywords to 5-7 per page, but I have seen great results for sites with over 50 keywords in their meta tags...

IF I use a kw tag I never go over 10...That's just an attempt to spam in mine and many others opinions. It's a retro holdover from the Meta engine era, when it actually worked...Well!

Melanie

Absolute waste of time using a meta keywords tag. The site you mention that's ranking well is ranking for other reasons than their meta keywords tag.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

Google's Latest Update: No PR for You

The most recent update to PageRank from Google was six months and more in the making. Nearly everyone has been complaining about a drop in PR. Many are complaining that they no longer show up for important keywords. In some cases, those are keywords for which they used to be on the first four pages. What happened?

Google's algorithm weighs many factors, but at its heart it counts links. Every link to a web site counts as a "vote" for that site. It's a statement, in the most explicit way possible, that the site being linked to is relevant to a particular topic.

This approach has been part of the algorithm since the beginning, so naturally it's also the part that webmasters, site owners, and SEOs have had the most time to learn how to "cheat." Some of these techniques include reciprocal linking, one-way purchased links, link spamming in blog comments, dropping links in forums, writing articles with a bio box that features a link, and many more. There are white hat and black hat SEO techniques for link building, but it's the rare SEO who depends entirely on the idea that "if you build it, they will link."

That's why this last update affected so many web sites. As channel5 noted in our SEO Chat forums, "The PR update recently seems to have been aimed at those sites that sell text links for PR manipulation purposes, and there also seems to have been a hit on excessive reciprocal linking…" This can lead to a domino affect; if you have reciprocal links to a site that has purchased links from somewhere else, for example, your PR may drop because their PR has dropped, so a link from them does not pass along as much "link juice."

It's worse than that, actually; since it's a reciprocal link, and those have also been devalued, they're passing along even less link juice. So what can you do about it? Realize that buying links probably won't work anymore. Don't give up entirely on reciprocal links; in some cases, they still make a lot of sense. The obvious example of this is the content-based site that reviews something and links back to the manufacturer's or retailer's site - which then links back to the content-based site's review in a "Look what they're saying about this product" section.

In short, as with many things involving site building, you need to think like the search engines and your site visitors. Which links would they find most useful for their purposes? If it's valuable to them, it's valuable to you.

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