Websitetology

Matt Cutts is the guy at Google who figures out how to deliver better search results- what gets to the first results page. Officially he’s the Head of Web Spam at Google- which makes sense once you realize a big part of his job is making sure that you aren’t trying to “game” Google. All those SEO tricks that may work for a minute- aren’t near as useful as new helpful content on a fairly regular basis. We’re in an “Expert Economy” and those with the newest, best answers to solve searchers problems- will be the people who get to the front page.The days of the static brochure type site are long over.Watch the video- and realize, everything that Matt is talking about is what we teach in the Websitetology seminar. He even praises WordPress, our content manager of choice right at the beginning of the video. And if you need further proof that Wordpress is the bomb, it’s the tool he uses for his blog (see link above)Some tips Matt makes are some of the things we emphasize- like make sure you add descriptions of your audio or video content as text, because Google can’t index audio. (That’s what we’re doing here!) He talks about Googles other tools, like Google base, Google Maps, Google local, as well as tips on video- Google video longer for videos longer than 10 minutes, YouTube for 10 minutes or less (although we’ve got “Directors Status” and have loaded up 30 minute videos to YouTube). He also reminds smart web content creators to use Google ad words to generate alternate key words for your posts.Matt’s best advice to a budding site builder- use a really old browser, or a text only browser to see how a bot sees your site. Flash and Javascript make your site much harder or impossible to crawl. If you do insist on using Flash, use it as decoration, but leave the navigation in HTML.If you are in Dayton OH, and want to learn all the ins and outs of building the best site for Google rank, or, if you want a seminar on how to build an easy to use, effective website that can get you to the front page of Google, you can read up on Matt Cutts or you can take the Websitetology seminar which will give you the insight to get to the top, without having to buy ad words.

About half of my posts on The Next Wave site seem to get trackback comments by a site “University Update” – the only thing is, there are no humans involved with “University Update”- it’s just a bot stealing my content.

I mark each trackback as SPAM- but, I can’t get my content off their site. Why do they do this? To aggregate content for search engine optimization- and then to hope to score some cash from Google Ad Sense click throughs.

Once again- if Google wasn’t so powerful, and if so many lame sites didn’t pay out huge cash to get hits through buying ad words, we wouldn’t have this problem.

The bots- scrapers, are talked about at length in the following CNET article which quotes Lorelle VanFossen who writes extensively about WordPress.

Please don’t steal this Web content | CNET News.com
automated digital plagiarism in which software bots can copy thousands of blog posts per hour and publish them verbatim onto Web sites on which contextual ads next to them can generate money for the site owner.

Such Web sites are known among Web publishers as “scraper sites” because they effectively scrape the content off blogs, usually through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other feeds on which those blogs are sent.

One of the questions that comes up often in the seminar is about what constitutes “Fair Use” and how much to use via the PressIt function of WordPress. My answer isn’t great, but I believe it works: always cite the source, don’t put it on your site unless you contribute something to the meaning, or understanding- making it more useful than it was in it’s original version.

This is where scrapers fail- they just copy and steal. Google should easily be able to see the original publisher- and be able to identify sites that are entirely made up of stolen content and vote them off the island- the problem is, that’s how Google makes a lot of money- and according to their ethos- getting filthy rich isn’t considered part of their “do no evil” mantra.

We’re not a huge fan of buying keywords, but having the right keywords in your posts sure helps you get placement.

If you aren’t sure what keywords you should use, think about what you would use to find your post in Google (or Yahoo if you must) and then try them, see who pops up. But, what about the related words? That’s where the Overture Keyword selector tool comes in handy:

Overture- Keyword Selector Tool
Keyword Selector Tool

• Enter a term related to your site and we will show you: Related searches that include your term
• How many times that term was searched on last month

Or you can use the Google tool:

Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Start your search by entering your own keyword phrases or a specific URL. You can then add new keywords to the green box at the right.

Either tool should help you focus your posts for maximum web search rank.

As P.T. Barnum was reputed to say “there’s a sucker born every minute” – there are people who will have you believe that you can make thousands of dollars by gaming Google adsense with a WordPress site and their “Package” of tools.

Most of what they include is available for free online- themes, plug-ins and even the advice.

The sad fact is, there are a lot of people that would rather pay money for a get rich quick scheme instead of taking a course that will teach you how to build legitimate business with a WordPress site.

And of course, Google has smart people working at eliminating click fraud and splog (SPam bLOG) sites from their search results.

But, if you can’t resist, here’s a link to that easy money:

Wordpress Elite – Powerful Blog Management

” You Can Now Easily Create a Niche Blog Empire Using WordPress That Spits Out Five Figure Adsense Checks Like a Winning Slot Machine on Steroids! “

Just remember, slot machines are still programmed to keep most of the money for the house.