Welcome to the first SEO Chat newsletter of Spring 2008! That's right, spring officially started very early Thursday morning. It's a good excuse for a party if you didn't get enough celebrating in on Monday for St. Patrick's Day. Then again, sometimes it seems like just about anything is a good excuse for a party down here (hurricane parties anyone? Sheesh!). We're not partying, of course; we're busy working to bring you the best search-related information we can to help you get the edge you need.

We'll start with the article we're highlighting this week from eWeek. It's all about the 800 pound gorillas of IT. You know who I'm talking about -- all those companies we love, and hate, but can't ignore. You can bet Google is on that list, along with several others. If you're in just about any kind of business with an IT angle, you'll find yourself nodding your head while you read this, and probably taking notes. You'll read about these companies' histories, challenges, and what we can expect from them in the future.

It's been a very newsy week here at SEO Chat. On Wednesday we took a good look at Yahoo Buzz to see what all the, um, buzz was about. It's a social news service that just might avoid some of Digg's nastier problems while making publishers, advertisers and perhaps even users happy. On Tuesday we checked the state of the market for mobile search, focusing somewhat on Google Android. The latest smart phones have made surfing the web from a mobile device much less painful than it used to be, so you might want to consider that some of your visitors won't be sitting in front of a PC when they see your site. On Monday, we put Google's online health records program under the microscope (as much as we could without being part of the private beta), weighing the risks and the benefits.

And what can you learn from the collection of SEO-related tutorials we're highlighting for you this week from Tutorialized? We're so glad you asked. We cover choosing the right SEO service for your company; why sitemaps are important; how to promote your site to increase traffic; and more. Point your browser to Tutorialized today and check out all of our excellent tutorials.

If you have ever felt like it is taking forever for the search engines to index your web site, you'll be able to relate to the original poster of our Thread of the Week. He is trying to get a site that is both new AND large indexed -- a double challenge that just makes for even more frustration. Be sure to stop by the thread and offer your advice!

Finally, our spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, raises the question of new keywords. What is the best way to add a new keyword to your web site's search engine optimization? Should you use mainly on-page or off-page methods? Should you add it to your current pages, or create new content? Scroll down to the Spotlight for the answers.

Thanks again for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

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Despite its lack of success against the giant in the search engine field, Yahoo seems to understand Web 2.0 better than Google. Its newest service, Yahoo Buzz, accepts input and votes from users. Is it merely a clone of Digg, or something more?

On the face of it, Yahoo Buzz seems very much to be a Digg clone in the way it is supposed to work. It asks users to vote on the news stories they like. Content that gets lots of votes will then be featured on its front page.

In other ways, Buzz is different from Digg. It is not based solely on user votes. As Yahoo explains:A story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives. This is probably a more realistic measure of the popularity of an article than simply totaling votes. With three different metrics, it may suffer less from user attempts to game the system.

Read Yahoo Building Buzz with Buzz

Mobile Search
by Akinola Akintomide
2008-03-18

This article will look at problems facing mobile search and some of the solutions (both present and proposed) that are being proffered. First we'll define the problem and then we'll look at Google Android.
I can see the future..............
Infinity

Everyone has heard about Google Android. Okay, maybe not everybody has heard about it, but many have. I will come up with references to educate the uninitiated, but right now we will look at what this platform hopes to do for mobile search. It aims to answer a major problem facing mobile-application developers: how to make developing applications for mobile devices as open and easy as developing applications for the Web.

Experts, users, and other "stakeholders" (what's at stake?) agree that accessing the web from a handheld device or phone is vastly different from accessing it from a computer. Mobile users get the bare bones version of a Web site, with fewer applications, add-ons, and software. Combine this with an awful user interface and bad ergonomics, and accessing the web on a mobile device becomes a bit of a nightmare. The problems facing mobile Internet use have been blamed on networks, the mobile device itself, the software, the hardware, and the lack of a clear leader in the category, forcing developers to build their applications to work on a multiplicity of platforms.

Read Mobile Search

Google Unveils Online Health Record Pilot Program
by Terri Wells
2008-03-17

Google and the Cleveland Clinic agreed to partner on a program to store patient health records online. The patients, who volunteered for the electronic transfer of their records, will be able to access their own records. Though all health profiles will be password-protected, critics have accused the program of raising more problems than it solves.

On one level, this program is definitely a step forward. Most children and adults in the US move several times in their lives. Medical records get transferred from doctor to doctor - or not. The transition sometimes leaves potentially dangerous gaps in the record. Every time a doctor sees a new patient, the patient must fill out a form that usually runs to about four pages, covering the medical history of that patient and his or her immediate family (parents and siblings). Less-than-perfect memories could put patients at risk - and even if one's memory is perfect, filling out that form every time gets to be a real hassle.

Now imagine how an online health profile could help simplify this process. It would contain all of a patient's information in one place: prescriptions, allergies, operations, illnesses, relevant family data (such as a father's heart condition or a mother's breast cancer), and so forth. With modern technology, an online health record could even store X-ray and MRI images. Mammograms could be compared over time. And best of all, the record would be uninterrupted. Are you moving or otherwise transferring to a different doctor? No problem; all you have to do is give the new doctor's office access to your online health profile..

Read Google Unveils Online Health Record Pilot Program

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Choosing the Right SEO Service for Your Company
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How to Promote Your Site to Increase Traffic
SEO to promote a site to the world.
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Why Sitemaps Are Important
Sitemap is a robot-friendly layout of your website. Learn why they are important.
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How Search Engines Operate
How do search engines and its spiders actually work?
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Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Website
Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Website.
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It can be a challenge getting a new site indexed in the search engines; likewise, getting a large site completely indexed is tricky. The original poster of our Thread of of the Week is dealing with a site that is both new AND large. Be sure to drop by the thread and offer your opinion!

Increasing the speed at which Google indexes your site

I've just launched a site with 4,179 pages of [quality ;)] content,all of it well optimized for a range of search terms. I've dealt with a lot of large sites before, and a lot of new ones, but never a large AND new one at the same time.

I'm desperate to get the entire site indexed as quickly as possible, and I've done the obvious:

- Submitted a well formed Google site map
- Acquired links back to the site (I've got a number from respectable CSS Galleries, about 10 in total ranging from PR 4 to PR 8 in one case!)
- Updated the key parts of the site as often as possible

So far, in about a week, I've got 17 pages indexed. At this rate it'll take several years to get the whole thing covered, so what can I be pro-actively doing to speed this whole thing up?

Many thanks

It may sometimes take a month, maybe more? It's not like "Clap!" google please index my site.

I think you have to be patient, one week is a really short period. At least you got your main page indexed, right?

Link Flow Balance is really important with a new and large site like this. Balancing your link flow structure internally with minimal crawl depth will help speed things up for indexing and the Serps.

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

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Adding New Keywords

A simple SEO question often calls for a complicated answer - and sometimes it seems like the simpler the question, the more complicated the answer. For example, what is the best way to optimize a web site for a new keyword? As I noted with last week's Spotlight, the correct answer seems to be "it depends."

You might want to optimize a web site for a new keyword for any number of reasons, and some of these will dictate how you do it. If you're coming out with a new product or service, and the keyword is associated with it, you'll want to create a new page for the term, and probably mention it on the home page with a link to your new content. Don't forget to include the new keyword in your anchor text.

If you discover that searchers are starting to use the new term instead of keywords for which you have already optimized, the situation is trickier. Likewise, if you're optimizing a site for a client who wants to add that term, but it's not related to a new product or service, you may have a bit of a juggling act. That's especially true if you discover the new keyword is not a main search term, and would rather avoid optimizing for terms likely to deliver a low payback.

Do you need to change your home page? Possibly, but do so with caution. If your home page is already getting good traffic, you don't want to lose that. Does the new keyword naturally fit into the home page? Can you add it without throwing off your home page's main keyword content? Of course, if you're trying to add a more-searched-for keyword to boost a less popular one, you might be able to take more risks on your keyword balance with good results.

Some SEOs advocate optimizing a site for a new keyword mainly with back links using the new keyword as anchor text. While this is a good approach, you will need to back it up with on-site content optimized for the new keyword. Besides, search engines love fresh content, so adding another landing page could work well for the site overall. If you are still not convinced that adding a new page is the way to go, remember that the more keywords you try to target with a single page, the more difficult it gets to put them all into titles, meta tags, and page copy.

Are there exceptions? Sure. SEO Chat forum member gazzahk noted that "My home page targets over 40 combinations of keyword phrases and wins most of them it depends on your target market. It depends on your competition. It depends on your keyword phrases. It depends on your link juice." Know your market, and good luck!

Read the thread for this article.