I just lucked into the most fabulous opportunity - the SES Exhibit Hall in Miami featured a well-staffed google both and not that many visitors. I got Vanessa Fox's full attention for an hour. (If only I had been better prepared with questions - what an opportunity!!!)
I need to revisit this question about Top Search Queries.... What does it mean?
It's explained as: "Top search queries are the queries on the selected search property that most often returned pages from your site" ...over the previous three weeks.
Does this mean that:
a. These are the searches that my site ranks highest on. - I don't think so since I know there are searches where I am number one but which are not listed. Those are lower volume searches.
b. These are the highest volumes searches that returned my site in the results. If this is true, what is the cut-off that google is using to say that my site was "returned"? My table has seaches where the highest average position is 11.
I thought b. was the answer but Vanessa said that this couldn't be the whole story since she has seen tables where people are listed with positions as low as the 40s.
I've now thought of a third possible explanation...
c these are the highest volume searches where some minimum number of people actually clicked on my link.
This is the only explanation that I can think of that can explain this table.
This would require Google to:
1 - Find searches that people have clicked on my site
2 - Prioritize them by volume
Explanation C also makes sense because its using similiar data to whats in the second table but in a different way. I will test this by picking some huge volume term such as "learning games" or "homeschool" (where I place around 40th) and click on them and see if these terms hit the table. Stay tuned....
I'm also puzzling now over the term: "selected search properties". What does this peculiar phrase mean?
My blog with most of the notes from the conversation -http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/2006/07/vanessa-fox-at-ses-miami-google.html and my site http://www.Time4Learning.com
PS - my next personal project is to figure out how to use trackbacks on blogs and some other basics about blogging. I just sent this in to a newsgroup and google has let it go up: I'm also going to put it up on David Naylor's blog, is that too many?
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
vanessa fox at SES Miami - google insights for free!
I drove to the SES Miami conference today and found an underpopulated exhibit hall and a booth full of google employees ready to help by answering questions.I cannot begin to describe my excitement.
A patient and knowledgeable Vanessa Fox fielded by questions which were too-often punctuated by, "Sorry, can you back up and explain...." She did backup and try again. thanks thank thanks.
Heres what I retained. I only wish I had a bigger brain, more time to prepare, and better note-taking....
1. My site is basically OK. My two tiered site map is fine, there's no clear advantage for me building & maintaining a site map, and there are no obvious red flags to worry about. But.....
2. Stop wasting time building internal links. Google doesn't count or weigh them. Internal links only count in so far as the spider uses them to find pages. It's only external links that give pages "page rank". (I asked "Is this "party line" or is it true?" She assured me it was true-true. Then she smiled at me. I believed her.)
3. Stop wasting time obsessing over the page rank bar. Its even more useless than i thought. And while google iste maps will tell us the one page that is doing the best on our site, Vanessa will "not ever ever ever tell" what the relative page rank of any other internal page is. She said that my page crawl stats show a healthy distribution of page rank and that there are no real problems with timeouts (despite what the reportcard web site was telling me) or code errors.
4. Learn to use redirects. This has been a area of ignorance for me. Learn about 200, 404, 301s and how to use my excess domains thru redirects. Also, having no robot.txt file, I've been sending out my handling of a "page not found" which is a 200 and serving up a default page which people like but which doesn't much help the spider.
5 Build a robot.txt file which is easy peasy. Now its done!
6. Put no follow on my links to secure pages (ie https:) to save time for the spider.
7. Do not repeat text. If possible, have my new articles start on my site and then get republished so its clear that i'm the source. I've been doing this backwards by having a blog which I used for rough drafts of pages and then move to my site when they are well-written.
8 For keyphrases which the google crawl query stats list as a high volume search but which are not in the high volume clicks table, revisit how my listing is appearing on the google search to make it more attractive.
9. The page analysis shows some terms as not appearing often in my site but which I consider to be crucial. Use them more!
Read read read - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
http://gsitecrawler.com/articles/error-404-200.asp
http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40132&topic=8845
http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8843
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemaps
thanks thanks thanks thanks to vanessa fox
Are you coming back next year?
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Intermediate SEO blogging
I corresponded with Adam (who makes to-do lists) . Here's his answers (in italics) to my questions on blog software.
Here are some blog and non-blog related articles that I find very valuable
The Blogger's Primer. Key new points for me in Aaron Brazell's article: use of trackbacks (which I still don't really get), the focus on readers & audience (which frankly is not the intent of all blogs. Mine seem to have no readers but they still attract search engine attention and create links of value), and how points of blog netiquette.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php - Good article, not focused on blogs. Did have an item that caught my eye: the "No follow" link - SEOmoz
http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=62690 - Another good starter overview, non-blog oriented
I also mentioned Feedburner in one article recently. Feedburner can help promote your blog and it takes about five minutes to set up– my advice would be to spend a few minutes and give it a shot, it’s one of those things that’s easier to make sense of why you need it after you’ve tried it.
- This is now done although I got stymmied in the set-up when feedburner said:
Advanced Publicity: Modifying your "Autodiscovery" settings
If you want to make your FeedBurner feed easier still for site visitors to subscribe to, you should modify the "autodiscovery" HTML tags in your Blogger site template...our Support Forums (link) explains how to modify the autodiscovery tags in Blogger.
And I quote the Feedback forum/blog link...."
Tip #1: Offer a single feed If a visitor comes to your site and sees a number of different chicklets ...."
woops. lost me right there. Whats a chicklet? and then when I got to Tip2, I understood less with its code for the chicklet rather than the burned feed....huh?
Here are some blog and non-blog related articles that I find very valuable
The Blogger's Primer. Key new points for me in Aaron Brazell's article: use of trackbacks (which I still don't really get), the focus on readers & audience (which frankly is not the intent of all blogs. Mine seem to have no readers but they still attract search engine attention and create links of value), and how points of blog netiquette.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php - Good article, not focused on blogs. Did have an item that caught my eye: the "No follow" link - SEOmoz
http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=62690 - Another good starter overview, non-blog oriented
I also mentioned Feedburner in one article recently. Feedburner can help promote your blog and it takes about five minutes to set up– my advice would be to spend a few minutes and give it a shot, it’s one of those things that’s easier to make sense of why you need it after you’ve tried it.
- This is now done although I got stymmied in the set-up when feedburner said:
Advanced Publicity: Modifying your "Autodiscovery" settings
If you want to make your FeedBurner feed easier still for site visitors to subscribe to, you should modify the "autodiscovery" HTML tags in your Blogger site template...our Support Forums (link) explains how to modify the autodiscovery tags in Blogger.
And I quote the Feedback forum/blog link...."
Tip #1: Offer a single feed If a visitor comes to your site and sees a number of different chicklets ...."
woops. lost me right there. Whats a chicklet? and then when I got to Tip2, I understood less with its code for the chicklet rather than the burned feed....huh?
Friday, July 07, 2006
Which blog & tools are best for SEO purposes?
I've started to wonder whats the best blog software or setup to use if the goal is seo. I thought about this when I read Adam's (who makes to-do lists) colum this morning:
Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner.Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account. Under 'Publicize' in your account make sure to sign up for 'Ping Shot'. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.
Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner.Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account. Under 'Publicize' in your account make sure to sign up for 'Ping Shot'. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.
- Is it the blog software that matters such as blogger, wordpress, iblogs etc?
- Is it better or worse to host it on your own domain for SEO purposes?
- How good is the built-in ping from the software?
- Does manually using pingomatic help?
- Are blog communities a help or hindrance? (such as www.homeschoolblogger.com/EdMouse)
- What is this feedburner?
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
HTML Errors Do NOT matter - - - today.
like magic, this email arrived answering the question that I asked last week: HTML code errors & SEO - Do HTML errors matter?
Do Search Engines Care About Valid HTML?
(thank you Entire Web. More specifically, thanks Adam for the article and your help Getting Organized)
Like most web developers, I've heard a lot about the importance of valid html recently. I've read about how it makes it easier for people with disabilities to access your site, how it's more stable for browsers, and how it will make your site easier to be indexed by the search engines.
So when I set out to design my most recent site, I made sure that I validated each and every page of the site. But then I got to thinking – while it may make my site easier to index, does that mean that it will improve my search engine rankings? How many of the top sites have valid html?
To get a feel for how much value the search engines place on being html validated, I decided to do a little experiment. I started by downloading the handy Firefox HTML Validator Extension (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/) that shows in the corner of the browser whether or not the current page you are on is valid html. It shows a green check when the page is valid, an exclamation point when there are warnings, and a red x when there are serious errors.
I decided to use Yahoo! Buzz Index to determine the top 5 most searched terms for the day, which happened to be "World Cup 2006", "WWE", "FIFA", "Shakira", and "Paris Hilton". I then searched each term in the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and checked the top 10 results for each with the validator. That gave me 150 of the most important data points on the web for that day.
The results were particularly shocking to me – only 7 of the 150 resulting pages had valid html (4.7%). 97 of the 150 had warnings (64.7%) while 46 of the 150 received the red x (30.7%). The results were pretty much independent of search engine or term. Google had only 4 out of 50 results validate (8%), MSN had 3 of 50 (6%), and Yahoo! had none. The term with the most valid results was "Paris Hilton" which turned up 3 of the 7 valid pages. Now I realize that this isn't a completely exhaustive study, but it at least shows that valid html doesn't seem to be much of a factor for the top searches on the top search engines.
Even more surprising was that none of the three search engines home pages validated! How important is valid html if Google, Yahoo!, and MSN don't even practice it themselves? It should be noted, however, that MSN's results page was valid html. Yahoo's homepage had 154 warnings, MSN's had 65, and Google's had 22. Google's search results page not only didn't validate, it had 6 errors!
In perusing the web I also noticed that immensely popular sites like ESPN.com, IMDB, and MySpace don't validate. So what is one to conclude from all of this?
It's reasonable to conclude that at this time valid html isn't going to help you improve your search position. If it has any impact on results, it is minimal compared to other factors. The other reasons to use valid html are strong and I would still recommend all developers begin validating their sites; just don't expect that doing it will catapult you up the search rankings right now.
About the Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others. John updated his thoughts on HTML Correctness in Feb 2007
Monday, July 03, 2006
Google Adwords - One million
I'm a huge fan of Google adwords. Reasons.
1. Last holiday season, they sent me a gift package that included a nifty usb memory key, a tiny google mouse (i gave to my daughter), a usb hub (ilan berkner quickly found a use for it), a USB light (really cool but not sure what to do with it), and a leather carrying case for it all.
2. This past week, I received a certificate suitable for framing (see attached) and....drum roll please.... a small refrigerator (I'll take a picture of it soon) suitable for a small office, bedroom, or cube.
3. I built my little business with adwords. BTW - I will admit that while I built my business with adwords and use adwords for alot of interesting research, I've never actually profitted from it. The problem is that I can't seem to get the cost per customer acquisition down below the value of the customer. So I built a nice small business from adwords but have been forced to look elsewhere to build profitable business.
Now I do maintain a flow of adwords-based traffic which I use to analyse different landing pages and key phrases and seasonality. Since google's adwords have a built in analysis tool and I've alot of history on the value of their traffic (apparently over one million leads), I have a good database to compare and analyse by results against. Let me think, at a dollar / click, I have now paid google one million dollars. OK. I admit. I don't pay $1 / click very often. There are only a few terms out there that I pay that much for. What are they? ooooooo, thats a big secret.
I also pruned and optimized my little adwords campaign to a size where it is profitable. But small. In any case, thanks google. I have just built a link to an authority site which much give credibility to this blog.
Trivia question. According to alexa, what are the number one and two sites by visitor time?
- yahoo
Site Architecture for SEO Purposes
Fact is, I'm such a bigger that there's so many basics which if, I could figure out or if someone would teach me, I'm sure that I could do much better in SEO. My biggest recent breakthrough is that I'm to #11 (from #12 where I sat for a month) on homeschool curriculum. Just a little more tailwind and I might make it onto the front page for google. ....then i move to (sing along)....Easy street.....(anybody seen Annie lately?)
Let's talk site architecture and sitemaps. (note, i'm not even ready to do a nifty google site map)
I have a site map that I set up so visitors could find what they were looking for, so the spiders could find all the pages, and so that I with my faulty memory could remember how I had organized my site. Pretty soon, my site map became too confusing and lengthy for visitors to find anything. I re-organized it and re-organized it. I started leaving off less important (for people) pages and soon, I couldn't remember what pages I had (vs pages I had just thought about making) without firing up the tools. Once I found myself creating a set of pages that when I started to put up, I found that I had written the month before (sad but true). So my new approach is that I have two site map pages...
- a site map that is indexed off most pages including the home page.
- a siteindex which has all of my pages listed.
Now, I think that I've figured out how the pros do it. I'm looking at a page belonging to some big seo-experts (I'm not sure if its secretive that they own it) in which they have both a human and computer oriented map on the same page but the computer one is hidden unless the humans click for more. Take a look on the left side under the label "additional resources"
http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/
Very clever. I wonder if google might somehow someday consider that hidden text and black-hattish.
Let's talk site architecture and sitemaps. (note, i'm not even ready to do a nifty google site map)
I have a site map that I set up so visitors could find what they were looking for, so the spiders could find all the pages, and so that I with my faulty memory could remember how I had organized my site. Pretty soon, my site map became too confusing and lengthy for visitors to find anything. I re-organized it and re-organized it. I started leaving off less important (for people) pages and soon, I couldn't remember what pages I had (vs pages I had just thought about making) without firing up the tools. Once I found myself creating a set of pages that when I started to put up, I found that I had written the month before (sad but true). So my new approach is that I have two site map pages...
- a site map that is indexed off most pages including the home page.
- a siteindex which has all of my pages listed.
Now, I think that I've figured out how the pros do it. I'm looking at a page belonging to some big seo-experts (I'm not sure if its secretive that they own it) in which they have both a human and computer oriented map on the same page but the computer one is hidden unless the humans click for more. Take a look on the left side under the label "additional resources"
http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/
Very clever. I wonder if google might somehow someday consider that hidden text and black-hattish.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Google vs yahoo - on homeschool curriculum
I had alot of fun looking at this tool. This week, Time4Learning is 12th for "homeschool curriculum" on google, 2nd on yahoo. Ahead of us on both engines are some of the "marketing machine sites" (for want of a better term):
- suite101 - www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/homeschool_curriculum
- about - www.homeschooling.about.com/od/curriculum/
- pearson education megasite - www.school.familyeducation.com/home-schooling/ curriculum-planning/38847.html.
- suite101 - www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/homeschool_curriculum
- about - www.homeschooling.about.com/od/curriculum/
- pearson education megasite - www.school.familyeducation.com/home-schooling/ curriculum-planning/38847.html.
This table is taken from: http://www.seochat.com/?option=com_seotools&tool=36.(I wonder if it'll work here....Its not working in preview mode
| |||||||||||||||
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Technical SEO issues on my mind
1. Do html code errors materially affect site from an SEO point of view?
Only so far as it impedes rapid spidering and link following....
Discussion: http://forums.devshed.com/search-engine-optimization-108/html-code-errors-seo-361845.html#post1536774 .
2. Impact of caps and comments in seo page names. Whats up with this?
this page - http://www.time4learning.com/homeschool-curriculum.htm - shows a 5 google page rank. This is the exact url of the page.
but this url (same page) http://www.time4learning.com/Homeschool-curriculum.htm - shows a zero page rank.
I have a link that has a comment: http://www.time4learning.com/homeschool-curriculum.htm#topchoice This url takes the user to the right page but the page rank indicator says zero.
I'm assuming that the instant google toolbar page rank indicator is not indicative in this case of the underlying reality in google. Anybody know different?
3. Transmission of page rank. I'm trying to quantify the value of links. Assume the purpose of the link is google seo. Is a page with rank 6 and 1 link twice as valuable as a link from that same page with two outgoing links? Has anyone ever seen a discussion of this point? I think the answer to this is a basic understanding of the google principle which is that a page's power to transmit its page rank is a function of some damper effect with the remainder divided among the number of outgoing links from that page. But, the related and interesting questions are:
- value of a link as a function of number of outgoing links from that page
- value of page rank: 7 vs 6 vs 5 vs 4 vs 3 etc
4. Best use of blog links & social networking - I suspect that I'm doing this the hard way.
http://marketingdefined.com/blog/2006/05/tagnping-using-social-bookmarks-instantly-increases-inbound-links.html
Great list of directories - http://marketingdefined.com/dir/main_directories.htm
Only so far as it impedes rapid spidering and link following....
Discussion: http://forums.devshed.com/search-engine-optimization-108/html-code-errors-seo-361845.html#post1536774 .
2. Impact of caps and comments in seo page names. Whats up with this?
this page - http://www.time4learning.com/homeschool-curriculum.htm - shows a 5 google page rank. This is the exact url of the page.
but this url (same page) http://www.time4learning.com/Homeschool-curriculum.htm - shows a zero page rank.
I have a link that has a comment: http://www.time4learning.com/homeschool-curriculum.htm#topchoice This url takes the user to the right page but the page rank indicator says zero.
I'm assuming that the instant google toolbar page rank indicator is not indicative in this case of the underlying reality in google. Anybody know different?
3. Transmission of page rank. I'm trying to quantify the value of links. Assume the purpose of the link is google seo. Is a page with rank 6 and 1 link twice as valuable as a link from that same page with two outgoing links? Has anyone ever seen a discussion of this point? I think the answer to this is a basic understanding of the google principle which is that a page's power to transmit its page rank is a function of some damper effect with the remainder divided among the number of outgoing links from that page. But, the related and interesting questions are:
- value of a link as a function of number of outgoing links from that page
- value of page rank: 7 vs 6 vs 5 vs 4 vs 3 etc
4. Best use of blog links & social networking - I suspect that I'm doing this the hard way.
http://marketingdefined.com/blog/2006/05/tagnping-using-social-bookmarks-instantly-increases-inbound-links.html
Great list of directories - http://marketingdefined.com/dir/main_directories.htm
Friday, June 23, 2006
HomeSchoolBuzz.com - Homeschool News Blog
HomeSchoolBuzz.com - Homeschool News Blog
There is some great technology and ability to network around blogs here. It's time for me to learn about:
- pings
- trackbacks
- rss
- group blogs
- "blog this"
and all the other nifty tools that seem to be widely in use.
There is some great technology and ability to network around blogs here. It's time for me to learn about:
- pings
- trackbacks
- rss
- group blogs
- "blog this"
and all the other nifty tools that seem to be widely in use.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
google help - validated but no site map
I registered in some new way with google going down the path towards a site map but only getting so far as to validate my site.
They have two very interesting tables under statistics, query stats. Can anyone explain their explanation? Google says:
Top search queries are the queries that most often returned pages from your site and top search query clicks are the top queries that directed traffic to your site (based on the number of clicks to your pages).
1. "Top search queries are the queries that most often returned pages from your site ". Does this mean that:
a. of all the searches, these are the ones that my site ranks highest on? - I don't think so.
b. of all of the searches, these are the ones that produced the absolute highest number of returns of my site. (so number of searches times my ranking on the search)?
I think its the latter but its unclear to me whether ranking means that I'm in the top 3, top 1o, or anywhere in the list. From studying the table, I see that the lowest average position listed is 14. Does this mean that they are using the top 15 as the universe of searches and are listing those searches which have the highest volume in which I showed up in the top 15?
2. top search query clicks are the top queries that directed traffic to your site (based on the number of clicks to your pages). This seems clear.
They have two very interesting tables under statistics, query stats. Can anyone explain their explanation? Google says:
Top search queries are the queries that most often returned pages from your site and top search query clicks are the top queries that directed traffic to your site (based on the number of clicks to your pages).
1. "Top search queries are the queries that most often returned pages from your site ". Does this mean that:
a. of all the searches, these are the ones that my site ranks highest on? - I don't think so.
b. of all of the searches, these are the ones that produced the absolute highest number of returns of my site. (so number of searches times my ranking on the search)?
I think its the latter but its unclear to me whether ranking means that I'm in the top 3, top 1o, or anywhere in the list. From studying the table, I see that the lowest average position listed is 14. Does this mean that they are using the top 15 as the universe of searches and are listing those searches which have the highest volume in which I showed up in the top 15?
2. top search query clicks are the top queries that directed traffic to your site (based on the number of clicks to your pages). This seems clear.
HTML code errors & SEO
HTML Code Errors & SEO - Does Spelling Count?
I have received this advice:
To improve your search engine ranking, I would start by cleaning up your code. Your HTML is a mess. Take a look:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.Time4Learning.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline
It's important to have code that validates!
------------------------------------
I've checked my site (using DreamWeaver's tool and a few free website checks including the one above) and most pages have dozens and dozens of errors. I know that google says that they care about errors, what do you think. Does it make a tangible difference?
And if so, does the Dreamweaver function for automatically fixing errors work or do I need to do it by hand, page-by-page. Does anybody know someone who specializes in doing this?
---------------------------
More data:
I have started with google to register for a site map but only got as far as validating my site which has earned me access to some new data.
They have some info on site errors including HTTP errors. The indicator shows only a tiny shading and the only listed error is a 404 with the URL (which doesn't exist: www.time4learning.com/om/alpha/Signup_Parent_Information.aspx .
Oddly enough, I am not doing well on the terms that I most care about such as homeschool curriculum . Stay tuned.....
I've put this out for discussion at the Dev Shack. http://forums.devshed.com/search-engine-optimization-108/html-code-errors-seo-361845.html#post1529955
Well, nobody at DevShack seems to have responded but a newsletter from EntireWeb written by the very organized Adam McFarland arrived on 7/4 answering my exact question.
ps - i updated my thoughts on html correctness on feb 07.
I have received this advice:
To improve your search engine ranking, I would start by cleaning up your code. Your HTML is a mess. Take a look:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.Time4Learning.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline
It's important to have code that validates!
------------------------------------
I've checked my site (using DreamWeaver's tool and a few free website checks including the one above) and most pages have dozens and dozens of errors. I know that google says that they care about errors, what do you think. Does it make a tangible difference?
And if so, does the Dreamweaver function for automatically fixing errors work or do I need to do it by hand, page-by-page. Does anybody know someone who specializes in doing this?
---------------------------
More data:
I have started with google to register for a site map but only got as far as validating my site which has earned me access to some new data.
They have some info on site errors including HTTP errors. The indicator shows only a tiny shading and the only listed error is a 404 with the URL (which doesn't exist: www.time4learning.com/om/alpha/Signup_Parent_Information.aspx .
Oddly enough, I am not doing well on the terms that I most care about such as homeschool curriculum . Stay tuned.....
I've put this out for discussion at the Dev Shack. http://forums.devshed.com/search-engine-optimization-108/html-code-errors-seo-361845.html#post1529955
Well, nobody at DevShack seems to have responded but a newsletter from EntireWeb written by the very organized Adam McFarland arrived on 7/4 answering my exact question.
ps - i updated my thoughts on html correctness on feb 07.
Home User problems: "Can't see site"
While not exactly a marketing issue, this technology gotcha has my focus this week (well, one of them along with some personnel and office issues) and its possible that it might have prevented some percentage of people from ever seeing our site over the last two years that we've been marketing:
----------------------
"Page not found" - Is a DNS with "***.255" the problem?
I have an online home education website, PreK-8th grade, which has a number of users who report that they cannot get to our site. This problem has been around for years but due to a recent rash of problems, I'm focusing on it.
I've found that there are some cases where users can browse the web fine but every effort to see our site is stymied. Typing in our url, our dns, pinging us , and tracert efforts all produce "not found" or "timed out" messages. Our users are all home users mostly non-technical. I've found two cases where once they remove the router, the problem goes away. In one case its netgear, in another its TP-Link.
The site is www.Time4Learning.com . My DNS is http://64.234.204.255 . I've been told that the problem could be the address and the .255 ending that this is often blocked by routers.
- Why is it blocked?
- What should I do about it?
- If I ask my hoster (webstream) to change my dns, will this be disruptive in any way to my users?
- I also got a cryptic email from the support line at one of the router companies suggesting that I "have your hoster point to the RFC that says that a .255 is now valid"
- what does that mean?
As a side note, we are not a technical company and are currently between programmers.
john
homeschool curriculum
Discussions:
netgear support - emiails back & forth
tp-link support - emails back & forth (they do not yet seem to have understood the problem)
webstream support - they have not yet answered...
Forums:
netgear - http://forum1.netgear.com/support/viewtopic.php?p=131020#131020
dnsstuff - http://forums.dnsstuff.com/tool/post/dnsstuff/vpost?id=1110884
netshed - dns forum - http://forums.devshed.com/dns-36/page-not-found-is-255-the-problem-361788.html
------------------
Postscript - I got this response from my hosting company:
Ah yes, the 'ole don't assign .0 and .255 addresses. While most people, who don't have much experience with IP's and subnetting, think these are invalid addresses, they actually are valid in classes other than /24's. Unfortunately some, usually small home routers, assume traffic coming from a .255 address is a smurf attack and block it.
The only way to fix this is to give you another address since we cannot correct the manufacture's router problems. I'll go ahead and assign another while also leaving your .255 bound. This will assure you no down time.
Your new IP is http://64.234.204.10
PROBLEM SOLVED!!! :>
----------------------
"Page not found" - Is a DNS with "***.255" the problem?
I have an online home education website, PreK-8th grade, which has a number of users who report that they cannot get to our site. This problem has been around for years but due to a recent rash of problems, I'm focusing on it.
I've found that there are some cases where users can browse the web fine but every effort to see our site is stymied. Typing in our url, our dns, pinging us , and tracert efforts all produce "not found" or "timed out" messages. Our users are all home users mostly non-technical. I've found two cases where once they remove the router, the problem goes away. In one case its netgear, in another its TP-Link.
The site is www.Time4Learning.com . My DNS is http://64.234.204.255 . I've been told that the problem could be the address and the .255 ending that this is often blocked by routers.
- Why is it blocked?
- What should I do about it?
- If I ask my hoster (webstream) to change my dns, will this be disruptive in any way to my users?
- I also got a cryptic email from the support line at one of the router companies suggesting that I "have your hoster point to the RFC that says that a .255 is now valid"
- what does that mean?
As a side note, we are not a technical company and are currently between programmers.
john
homeschool curriculum
Discussions:
netgear support - emiails back & forth
tp-link support - emails back & forth (they do not yet seem to have understood the problem)
webstream support - they have not yet answered...
Forums:
netgear - http://forum1.netgear.com/support/viewtopic.php?p=131020#131020
dnsstuff - http://forums.dnsstuff.com/tool/post/dnsstuff/vpost?id=1110884
netshed - dns forum - http://forums.devshed.com/dns-36/page-not-found-is-255-the-problem-361788.html
------------------
Postscript - I got this response from my hosting company:
Ah yes, the 'ole don't assign .0 and .255 addresses. While most people, who don't have much experience with IP's and subnetting, think these are invalid addresses, they actually are valid in classes other than /24's. Unfortunately some, usually small home routers, assume traffic coming from a .255 address is a smurf attack and block it.
The only way to fix this is to give you another address since we cannot correct the manufacture's router problems. I'll go ahead and assign another while also leaving your .255 bound. This will assure you no down time.
Your new IP is http://64.234.204.10
PROBLEM SOLVED!!! :>
Friday, June 16, 2006
SEO Article - Funny! - Relevancy vs Popularity
Link Popularity vs. Relevancy
I was contacted recently by an online directory. The woman who phoned me began by telling me that they didn't have a web designer listed in my area and they had 20-30 people every week who were looking for a web designer and were unable to find one. As I listened to this sad story tears started to form in my eyes as I began to realise that in the 21st century there are still people in the world who are having to go without a web designer.
Of course I quickly realised that this sob story was intended to soften me up in an attempt to sell me something, so I interjected by saying: "So you're looking for someone to advertise on your website?"
"Oh no it's not advertising," she said, "We're looking for one exclusive web designer in your area to handle all the enquiries we are getting..."
She went on to tell me that this fantastic opportunity would only cost me £1 per day and that they would be able to get me listed on the first page of search results in all the major search engines.
Now there's one thing I don't like and that is when people use a promise to try and sell you something knowing full well they cannot deliver on that promise.
"So if I go to Google and type in web design wiltshire, will I find your company?" I asked.
To my amusement she replied with one of the funniest lines I have ever heard in telephone marketing: "Oh no," she said, "we don't use Google anymore - we use Yahoo instead."
(this is the second best SEO joke that I know - for the best seo joke...)
Once I had stopped laughing I pointed out to her that nearly 60% of all Internet searches were made through Google and if you were in business online you would not deliberately 'stop using Google'. What she was saying of course was that it was harder to get a top ten listing in Google than it was with Yahoo.
Now the point of all this is that when she was busy making excuses for not being listed in Google she did say something rather interesting and that was that 'Google does not always show you the websites that are the most relevant to your search phrase'.
Now this is quite interesting. Because Google uses a different formula from Yahoo and MSN when calculating search results, you get a different set of results from each search engine for the same search query.
MSN appears to give more weight to keywords than they do to link popularity, whereas Google places a high importance on the quality and quantity of incoming links but also takes into account a whole host of other factors.
The more success I had with getting top ten search engine results the more I advertised those successes on the SEO page of my website. Every so often I would check the results to see if I was still on the first page. What I began to notice was that on MSN the SEO page of my website was getting to number one for a phrase that I had listed on that page.
For example, I built a website for an acupuncturist in Swindon, Wiltshire and wanted to advertise the fact that I had secured a number one slot in Google for the search phrase 'acupuncture treatment wiltshire', so I listed it on the SEO page of my website. A week or so later when I went to check the MSN rankings for the acupuncture site I noticed that the SEO page of my site was at number one for the search phrase 'acupuncture treatment wiltshire'.
Now the problem with this of course is that the search phrase is not relevant to that website. So in terms of relevancy MSN has failed: it has not delivered the most relevant websites for that search phrase because it has put a web design company at the top instead of an acupuncture website. This is one of the pitfalls of placing too much emphasis on keywords.
But why was my site at the top instead of the acupuncture site (which was coming in at number 2 or 3)? Presumably because my site is more established, has more incoming links and a higher Page Rank. Presumably, although not definitely.
So do these problems occur with Google? The answer to that is yes and no.
Google does get irrelevant sites mixed up in it's top ten from time to time but they are more likely to be there because of Page Rank than because of keywords. An article about SEO and linking strategies that I published on a high ranking website turned up in the top ten for a completely unrelated search phrase because I had mentioned that phrase once in the article. The reason was that Google placed more importance on the PR of the site the article was on than the keyword density of that particular phrase.
As Page Rank is based largely on link popularity the end result in this case was that link popularity beat relevancy hands-down. This is the main bone of contention that many webmasters have about Google: link popularity does not necessarily equate to relevancy and ultimately it is relevancy that is most important to the user.
Some may argue that a more popular site is more relevant. But if you were looking for a web designer in Marlborough you wouldn't want to find a listing for a hotel in the top ten just because it had more incoming links and a higher page rank than the site of a local web designer and happened to have a link to another web designer at the bottom of the page.
Part of the problem of course is that whatever system is in place some people will try to cheat the system. That leads to companies like Google having to change the way they evaluate the web pages that their robots crawl. This inadvertently leads to some website owners finding that their sites have been devalued because they have accidentally done something with their site that is frowned upon by Google because it was once used by the cheats to artificially boost their search engine rankings.
Until such time as a telepathic search engine is invented it seems unlikely that such problems will be eliminated. Perhaps in the coming years some kind of global directory will be used in conjunction with domain name registration, whereby each website could be registered in a maximum of two categories (web design and SEO for example) and some kind of system could be used to make sure that websites could only show up in search results for search phrases related to those categories. It would probably be too expensive and labour intensive to implement but I'm sure if someone could find a way of making money from it we might well see it happen!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quoted greatfully from the EntireWeb newsletter. Those people publish the absolute best SEO newsletter for beginner intermediate SEO people.
About the Author: Rob Butler is a web designer in Marlborough Wiltshire and specialises in securing top ten search engine rankings for small to medium sized companies.
Of course, my interest is in seo for my own site where you can Learn Reading Math Online
through Educational Teaching Games providing both Special Needs Learning and Gifted Education.
I was contacted recently by an online directory. The woman who phoned me began by telling me that they didn't have a web designer listed in my area and they had 20-30 people every week who were looking for a web designer and were unable to find one. As I listened to this sad story tears started to form in my eyes as I began to realise that in the 21st century there are still people in the world who are having to go without a web designer.
Of course I quickly realised that this sob story was intended to soften me up in an attempt to sell me something, so I interjected by saying: "So you're looking for someone to advertise on your website?"
"Oh no it's not advertising," she said, "We're looking for one exclusive web designer in your area to handle all the enquiries we are getting..."
She went on to tell me that this fantastic opportunity would only cost me £1 per day and that they would be able to get me listed on the first page of search results in all the major search engines.
Now there's one thing I don't like and that is when people use a promise to try and sell you something knowing full well they cannot deliver on that promise.
"So if I go to Google and type in web design wiltshire, will I find your company?" I asked.
To my amusement she replied with one of the funniest lines I have ever heard in telephone marketing: "Oh no," she said, "we don't use Google anymore - we use Yahoo instead."
(this is the second best SEO joke that I know - for the best seo joke...)
Once I had stopped laughing I pointed out to her that nearly 60% of all Internet searches were made through Google and if you were in business online you would not deliberately 'stop using Google'. What she was saying of course was that it was harder to get a top ten listing in Google than it was with Yahoo.
Now the point of all this is that when she was busy making excuses for not being listed in Google she did say something rather interesting and that was that 'Google does not always show you the websites that are the most relevant to your search phrase'.
Now this is quite interesting. Because Google uses a different formula from Yahoo and MSN when calculating search results, you get a different set of results from each search engine for the same search query.
MSN appears to give more weight to keywords than they do to link popularity, whereas Google places a high importance on the quality and quantity of incoming links but also takes into account a whole host of other factors.
The more success I had with getting top ten search engine results the more I advertised those successes on the SEO page of my website. Every so often I would check the results to see if I was still on the first page. What I began to notice was that on MSN the SEO page of my website was getting to number one for a phrase that I had listed on that page.
For example, I built a website for an acupuncturist in Swindon, Wiltshire and wanted to advertise the fact that I had secured a number one slot in Google for the search phrase 'acupuncture treatment wiltshire', so I listed it on the SEO page of my website. A week or so later when I went to check the MSN rankings for the acupuncture site I noticed that the SEO page of my site was at number one for the search phrase 'acupuncture treatment wiltshire'.
Now the problem with this of course is that the search phrase is not relevant to that website. So in terms of relevancy MSN has failed: it has not delivered the most relevant websites for that search phrase because it has put a web design company at the top instead of an acupuncture website. This is one of the pitfalls of placing too much emphasis on keywords.
But why was my site at the top instead of the acupuncture site (which was coming in at number 2 or 3)? Presumably because my site is more established, has more incoming links and a higher Page Rank. Presumably, although not definitely.
So do these problems occur with Google? The answer to that is yes and no.
Google does get irrelevant sites mixed up in it's top ten from time to time but they are more likely to be there because of Page Rank than because of keywords. An article about SEO and linking strategies that I published on a high ranking website turned up in the top ten for a completely unrelated search phrase because I had mentioned that phrase once in the article. The reason was that Google placed more importance on the PR of the site the article was on than the keyword density of that particular phrase.
As Page Rank is based largely on link popularity the end result in this case was that link popularity beat relevancy hands-down. This is the main bone of contention that many webmasters have about Google: link popularity does not necessarily equate to relevancy and ultimately it is relevancy that is most important to the user.
Some may argue that a more popular site is more relevant. But if you were looking for a web designer in Marlborough you wouldn't want to find a listing for a hotel in the top ten just because it had more incoming links and a higher page rank than the site of a local web designer and happened to have a link to another web designer at the bottom of the page.
Part of the problem of course is that whatever system is in place some people will try to cheat the system. That leads to companies like Google having to change the way they evaluate the web pages that their robots crawl. This inadvertently leads to some website owners finding that their sites have been devalued because they have accidentally done something with their site that is frowned upon by Google because it was once used by the cheats to artificially boost their search engine rankings.
Until such time as a telepathic search engine is invented it seems unlikely that such problems will be eliminated. Perhaps in the coming years some kind of global directory will be used in conjunction with domain name registration, whereby each website could be registered in a maximum of two categories (web design and SEO for example) and some kind of system could be used to make sure that websites could only show up in search results for search phrases related to those categories. It would probably be too expensive and labour intensive to implement but I'm sure if someone could find a way of making money from it we might well see it happen!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quoted greatfully from the EntireWeb newsletter. Those people publish the absolute best SEO newsletter for beginner intermediate SEO people.
About the Author: Rob Butler is a web designer in Marlborough Wiltshire and specialises in securing top ten search engine rankings for small to medium sized companies.
Of course, my interest is in seo for my own site where you can Learn Reading Math Online
through Educational Teaching Games providing both Special Needs Learning and Gifted Education.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Home Education for this dummy
| Domains | r1c2 | 2/1/6 | 3/31 | May20 | June7 | july |
| Time4Learning | ? | 2820 | ? | 2500 | 2600 | . |
| Todays Learners | . | . | 305 | 329 | . | |
| Learning & Fun | . | . | 55 | 276 | 282 | . |
| Reading S. P.org | . | . | . | . | 80 | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | tada |
The solution to my problem of avoiding excess space was suggested by the brilliant and helpful mr. peter of: http://bloggerfordummies.blogspot.com . Please accept these links and kudos as a sign of my gratitude.
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