It's time for the latest edition of the SEO Chat newsletter. You probably know that visitors to your web site may be using any one of a number of different browsers. Now there's a new one they may be using, or rather, an upgrade to an old one, as eWeek explains. Is Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 likely to catch on? Is it worth installing? Check out the article to find out.

Unlike much of the rest of the web, we didn't participate in the mid-week shenanigans of April Fool's Day (though Google and Yahoo certainly did!). So you can trust our articles and other content this week. We continued two series: one that takes a close look at ways of making money online, and one that details various factors that influence your web site's ranking in the search engines. We also ran an article on web site statistics, to help you learn how to track your pages and improve their value to visitors.

Our sites feature a number of areas of interest if you're looking for more SEO-related information; one place you can check is Tutorialized. This site offers a variety of educational content, including nearly 100 tutorials focused specifically on SEO-related categories. Topics covered include link building, how search engines operate, social marketing optimization, and more.

Another popular place to find more SEO information is on our friendly forums. If you need advice or answers, you'll find them here, as you'll see from this week's thread. Duplicate content is a straightforward issue that doesn't apply to the HTML on your web pages, right? Well...check this week's thread for an answer.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, calls on you to consider exactly where you've focused your efforts. Should you be doing more on page optimization? Collecting more links? Paying more attention to keywords? Or perhaps none of the above? The answer might surprise you. Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the Weird brings back the thought bubbles! But for some reason Jenny's do not seem to work.
• Idiot of the week returns. Then goes away.
• Dev Shed Hulk hates PBS. And iPhones. Puppies though, he is still on the fence about.

Watch the video!

What are your most popular pages? Where does most of your traffic come from? Do you know? Do you know how you can find out? Keep reading to learn how you can discover your web site statistics, very useful information to know for just about anything you want to do with your site.

These are the questions every web master must face - at least, they must face it if they want to truly optimize their Web pages to gain more traffic from the search engines. If you do not know why traffic is visiting your pages, how can you take advantage of everything they like about your site?

You should always know which pieces of content are the most popular, which pages are the most highly-visited and how to track where your visitors are coming from when they arrive. It is time to learn more about Web site statistics - and everything they can tell you about your Web pages.

Read Web Site Statistics: Do You Know How to Track Your Pages?

Relevance and Other Search Engine Ranking Factors
by Ivan Strouchliak
2009-03-31

This is the third part of a five-part series on search engine optimization factors. In this part, we will cover topical relevance of links to a site, a site's relevance to the search query, whether Google manually awards rank to some sites, and more. We will also take a look at some factors that can negatively affect your site's ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs), and finish up with an in-depth look at different kinds of links.
Topical Relevance of Links to a Site

Does it matter if inbound links are topically related? If it does not I have wasted 14 years of my life. - Eric Ward

That is a bold statement.

It is not likely that Google can spot all links that are topically related, but it is one of the most important factors in SEO today. The topic, however, does not have to be a 100% exact match. A link from a site about credit cards to one about mortgages is still in the same space.

Read Relevance and Other Search Engine Ranking Factors

A Further Look at Making Money Online
by Joe Eitel
2009-03-30

One method of making money online is considerably less reliable than traditional retail business, but considerably more interesting. Although it is unlikely that most individuals will be able to make a living out of this type of revenue generation, it can certainly provide a considerable amount of extra cash with relatively little pain. This method of making money is taking advantage of online markets.

This money-making method has its roots in activities much older than the Internet. Since people have been engaging in economies, they have been attempting to buy goods at a low price and resell them at a higher price for a profit. This method of making money takes many forms, but one of them is to buy finished products that an individual no longer wants and find someone that does want those products.

Traditionally, someone that wanted to take advantage of markets might shop around at flea markets and garage sales to find arbitrary objects at a relatively low price. They would then sell these products at a boutique shop or to individuals that they know would be interested in them.

Read A Further Look at Making Money Online

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

MSN Optimization
The effective seo campaign needs to optimize your website for all popular search engines.
Read the tutorial.

Confessions of an Underground Link Building Ninja
Advanced Link Building Strategies to increase your rankings.
Read the tutorial.

Learn SEO Techniques from Beginners To Professionals
Learn seo techniques to get the results that you desire.
Read the tutorial.

Social Media Optimization Basics - Part 1
The basics of using social media sites in website promotion.
Read the tutorial.

Improve Search Engine Optimization
What to do and what not do for proper search engine optimization.
Read the tutorial.

Social Media Optimization Basics - Part 2
Harvest the power of social media for website promotion.
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

Questions about duplicate content come in many forms, since most SEOs know that Google penalizes for at least certain kinds of duplicate content. Here's a question focused on the web page's HTML. Be sure to stop by the thread and share your experience!

Duplicate content question

If I use the same content (including meta title, description, keywords, body texts and other contents) on more than one page in my website, is this considered black hat SEO? Is it banned by Google or Yahoo? Can anyone tell me?
Thanks!
Note: The content is not plagiarized from other sites.

Yes it can get you penalized. You need to keep everything unique. It will just show Google that you cut corners (in their eyes) and the quality of the domain is all in all reduced and not trusted. If done excessively then there could be major issues.

If it is not possible to keep everything unique, at least make the following different:

title
desc
header tag
images alt

Slightly modified page content is also good. But of course the same content is not recommended at all levels.

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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It's About Money, Not Ranking

Our forum members happily share articles and resources; one of our more respected members linked to an item recently that was nothing short of refreshing. It asks an important question: why are you doing search engine optimization and search engine marketing? To improve your page rank? To climb to the top of Google? To be seen in the search engines for your chosen keywords?

If those are your reasons, you're doing it wrong. Rankings may provide a visible scorecard, but if you're in business to make money online, that's about all they give you. Your primary objective is making money. Getting a high ranking on Google for certain keywords is only one aspect of a larger campaign to help you achieve this goal.

For example, say you rank well on Google for your keywords, but you're not getting much traffic. Or you're getting traffic, but they're not staying very long and/or not converting. Your attempt to get a high ranking worked, but it's not doing you any good. That makes your ranking rather pointless, doesn't it?

There are certain things you need to do to succeed in an online business. Those include making money, growing virally, and providing a needed service. If you rank well in Google, that can help those goals, but you need more. You need to offer your visitors something they want. You need to give them a reason to engage with your site, so they'll keep coming back and tell their friends about it. And if you're going to insist on ranking for keywords, you need to rank for the RIGHT keywords.

SEO is simply a subset of marketing. If you're so focused on any kind of marketing that it becomes more important than making money, the tail is wagging the dog. Take a step back, look at the overall picture of your business, consider your goals, and be prepared to refocus in order to achieve your goals. It's not all about Google; it's all about your customers. Good luck!