Blogging to Fame!

SEO Master - 84%
I got across this very informative and interesting Quiz at SEOMoz. 84% ain't a bad score I think. Wat Say? Well before you go through the answers below, take the quiz and get your score. Here is where I went wrong...

• #1 Which of the following is the least important area in which to include your keyword(s)?

  Your Answer: Internal Anchor Text

  Correct Answer: Meta Keywords

  The meta keywords tag is least important among these because search engines do not consider it in ranking calculations and it's never seen by visitors or searchers (unlike the meta description tag, which displays beneath listings in the SERPs).

• #2 Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and humans)?

  Your Answer: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

  Correct Answer: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

  The best choice would be www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile - it provides the most semantic information, the best description of the content on the page and contains no parameters or subdomains that could cause issues at the engines. For more on URL structuring, see this post on SEOmoz.

• #3 When linking to external websites, a good strategy to move up in the rankings is to use the keywords you're attempting to rank for on that page as the anchor text of the external-pointing links. For example, if you were attempting to rank a page for the phrase "hulk smash" you would want to use that phrase, "hulk smash" as the anchor text of a link pointing to a web page on another domain.

  Your Answer: False

  Correct Answer: False

  The biggest problem with linking out to other websites with your targeted keyword phrases in the anchor text is that it creates additional competition for your page in the search results, as you give relevance through anchor text and link juice to a competing page on a competing site. Thus, FALSE is the correct answer.

• #4 Which of the following is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?

  Your Answer: Frequently add new content

  Correct Answer: Frequently add new content

  Adding new content on a regular basis is the only one of the methods listed that will promote more frequent spidering and indexing. Tags like crawl delay have never been shown to be effective (and aren't even supported by many of the major engines). The other "partially" correct answer would be to turn up crawl frequency inside Webmaster Central at Google, but this only works if Google wants to crawl your site more actively and is restricted from doing so.

• #5 Which of the following is a legitimate technique to improve rankings & traffic from search engines?

  Your Answer: Re-writing title tags on your pages to reflect high search volume, relevant keywords

  Correct Answer: Re-writing title tags on your pages to reflect high search volume, relevant keywords

  Of the choices, only the option to change title tags to reflect better keywords is a legitimate and effective SEO technique.

• #6 Danny Sullivan is best known (in the field of web search) as:

  Your Answer: The recently-promoted CEO of Ask.com

  Correct Answer: A journalist and pundit who covers the field of web search

  Although there's an answer we'd love to choose :), the correct answer is that Danny's a journalist and pundit on web search who currently operates the SearchEngineLand blog and runs the SearchMarketingExpo event series.

• #7 Which of the following is the WORST criteria for estimating the value of a link to your page/site?

  Your Answer: The popularity of the domain on which the page is hosted according to Alexa

  Correct Answer: The popularity of the domain on which the page is hosted according to Alexa

  Since Alexa data is typically less useful than monkey's throwing darts at a laptop, that's the obvious choice for worst metric. The others can all contribute at least some valuable insight into the value a link might pass.

• #8 How can Meta Description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?

  Your Answer: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing

  Correct Answer: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing

  The correct answer is that they serve as the copy in the SERPs and are thus valuable for influencing click-through rates.

• #9 Which of the following content types is most easily crawled by the major web search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Ask.com)?

  Your Answer: XHTML

  Correct Answer: XHTML

  XHTML is the obvious choice as the other file types all create problems for search engine spiders.

• #10 Which of the following sources is considered to be the best for acquiring competitive link data?

  Your Answer: Google

  Correct Answer: Yahoo!

  Since Yahoo! is the only engine still providing in-depth, comprehensive link data for both sites and pages, it's the obvious choice. Link commands have been disabled at MSN, throttled at Google, never existed at Ask.com and provide only a tiny subset of data at Alexa.

• #11 Which of the following site architecture issues MOST impedes the ability of search engine spiders to crawl a site?

  Your Answer: Web pages that employ iFrames

  Correct Answer: Pages that require form submission to reach database content

  Since search engines will assume a site is crawlable if it has no robots.txt file, doesn't have any crawl-specific issues with paid links, can read iFrames perfectly well and is able to spider and index plenty of pages with multiple URL parameters, the correct answer is clear. Pages that require form submission effectively block spiders, as automated bots will not complete form submissions to attempt to discover web content.

• #12 What is the generally accepted difference between SEO and SEM?

  Your Answer: SEO refers to organic/natural listings while SEM covers PPC, or paid search

  Correct Answer: SEO focuses on organic/natural search rankings, SEM encompasses all aspects of search marketing

  SEO - Search Engine Optimization - refers to the practice of ranking pages in the organic results at the search engines. SEM - Search Engine Marketing - refers to all practices that leverage search engines for traffic, branding, advertising & marketing.

• #13 Which of these is NOT generally considered to be a highly important factor for ranking for a particular search term?

  Your Answer: HTML Validation (according to W3C standards) of a page

  Correct Answer: HTML Validation (according to W3C standards) of a page

  As this document would indicate, W3C validation is clearly the odd man out in this bunch.

• #14 When creating a "flat architecture" for a site, you attempt to minimize what?

  Your Answer: The number of tabs/windows that open during normal navigation

  Correct Answer: The number of links a search engine must follow to reach content pages

  Flat site architecture refers to the link structure of the site, and thus, the only answer is "the number of links a search engine must follow to reach content pages."

• #15 In the search marketing industry, what is traditionally represented by this graph?
  

  Your Answer: The "long tail" theory of keyword demand

  Correct Answer: The "long tail" theory of keyword demand

  The graph shown represents the long tail concept, which is most frequently applied to keyword demand in the search marketing world. The theory is explained in detail here.

• #16 Which of the following is NOT a "best practice" for creating high quality title tags?

  Your Answer: Include an exhaustive list of keywords

  Correct Answer: Include an exhaustive list of keywords

  Since all the rest are very good ideas for title tag optimization (see this post for more), the outlier is to include an exhaustive list of keywords. Title tags are meant to describe the content on the page and to target 1-2 keyword phrases in the search engines, and thus, it would be terribly unwise to stuff many terms/phrases into the tag.

• #17 Which of the following character limits is the best choice to use when limiting the length of title tags (assuming you want those tags to fully display in the search results at the major engines)?

  Your Answer: 65

  Correct Answer: 65

  As Google & Yahoo! both display between 62-68 characters (there appears to be some various depending on both the country of origin of the search and the exact query), and MSN/Live hovers between 65-69, the best answer is... 65!

• #18 PageRank is so named because it was created by Larry Page, not because it ranks pages.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  As you can read on Google's fun facts page, PageRank was named for its co-creator, Larry.

• #19 A page on your site that serves as a "sitemap," linking to other pages on your domain in an organized, list format, is important because...

  Your Answer: It may help search engine crawlers to easily access many pages on your site

  Correct Answer: It may help search engine crawlers to easily access many pages on your site

  As none of the others are remotely true, the only correct answer is that a sitemap page may help search engine crawlers easily access many pages on your site, particularly if your link structure is otherwise problematic.

• #20 Which of the following search engines patented the concept of "TrustRank" as a methodology for ranking web sites & pages?

  Your Answer: Google

  Correct Answer: Yahoo!

  The correct answer comes via the patent guru himself, Bill Slawski, who notes:
  

  The citation that I’ve seen most commonly pointed at regarding trustrank is this paper - Combating Web Spam with TrustRank (pdf).

  The authors listed on that paper are the named inventors on this Yahoo patent application:

  1 Link-based spam detection (20060095416)

  The remaining four describe an expansion of the trustrank process, referred to as dual trustrank, which adds elements of the social graph to the use of trustrank.

  2 Using community annotations as anchortext (20060294085)

  3 Realtime indexing and search in large, rapidly changing document collections (20060294086)

  4 Trust propagation through both explicit and implicit social networks (20060294134)

  5 Search engine with augmented relevance ranking by community participation (20070112761)

• #21 Why are absolute (http://www.mysite.com/my-category)URLs better than relative ("/my-category") URLs for on-page internal linking?

  Your Answer: They provide more keyword context for search engines judging internal links

  Correct Answer: When scraped and copied on other domains, they provide a link back to the website

  None of the answers makes sense, except that which refers to scrapers, who often copy pages without changing links and will thus link back to your site, helping to reduce duplicate content issues, and potentially provide some link value as well.

• #22 How can you avoid the duplicate content problems that often accompany temporal pagination issues (where content moves down a page and from page to page, as is often seen in lists of articles, multi-page articles and blogs)?

  Your Answer: Add a meta robots tag with "noindex, follow" to the paginated pages

  Correct Answer: Add a meta robots tag with "noindex, follow" to the paginated pages

  The only method listed in the answers that's effective is to use "noindex, follow" on the paginated, non-canonical pages.

• #23 If you update your site's URL structure to create new versions of your pages, what should you do with the old URLs?

  Your Answer: 301 redirect them to the new URLs

  Correct Answer: 301 redirect them to the new URLs

  The correct move is to 301 the pages so they pass link juice and visitors to the new, proper locations.

• #24 When you have multiple-pages targeting the same keywords on a domain, which of the following is the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization?

  Your Answer: Place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links

  Correct Answer: Place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links

  As this blog post explains, it's best to "place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links."

• #25 The de-facto version of a page located on the primary URL you want associated with the content is known as:

  Your Answer: Canonical Version

  Correct Answer: Canonical Version

  The only answer that is generally accepted in the search community is "canonical version."

• #26 Which domain extensions are more often associated with greater trust and authority in the search engines?

  Your Answer: .edu, .mil and .gov

  Correct Answer: .edu, .mil and .gov

  Although the search engines themselves have said there are no specific algorithmic elements that make domains from .gov, .edu and .mil more trustworthy or authoritative, these sites, due to the restriction of the TLD licensing, certainly have an association with more trust in webmaster's eyes (and, very often, the search results).

• #27 High quality links to a site's homepage will help to increase the ranking ability of deeper pages on the same domain.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  The answer is "TRUE" as the properties of PageRank, domain trust, authority and many other search ranking factors will cause internal pages on a well-linked-to domain to rank more highly.

• #28 The practice of showing one version of content on a URL to search engines, and another, different version to human visitors of the same URL is known as?
  
  

  
  

  Your Answer: Cloaking

  Correct Answer: Cloaking

  As WebmasterWorld notes, this practice is called cloaking.

• #29 Which HTTP server response code indicates a file/folder that no longer exists?

  Your Answer: 404

  Correct Answer: 404

  The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 404 is the correct answer.

• #30 Spammy sites or blogs begin linking to your site. What effect is this likely to have on your search engine rankings?

  Your Answer: It may negatively affect your rankings as search engines associate your site with bad neighborhoods on the web

  Correct Answer: A very slight positive effect is most likely, as search engines are not perfectly able to discount the link value of all spammy sites

  The correct answer is that a very slight positive effect is most likely. This is because search engines do NOT want to penalize for the acquisition of spammy links, as this would simply encourage sites to point low quality links at their competition in order to knock them out of the results. The slight positive effect is typical because not all engines are 100% perfect at removing the link value from spam.

• #31 A link from a PageRank "3" page (according to the Google toolbar) hosted on a very strong, trusted domain can be more valuable than a link from a PageRank "4" page hosted on a weaker domain.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  Since PageRank is not nearly the overwhelmingly strong factor influencing search rankings at Google these days, the answer is definitely "TRUE."

• #32 What's the largest page size that Google's spider will crawl?

  Your Answer: No set limit exists - Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile

  Correct Answer: No set limit exists - Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile

  As evidenced by many of the 500-100K+ pages in Google's index, there is no set limit, and the search engine may spider unusually large documents if it feels the effort is warranted (particularly if many important links point to a page).

• #33 Is it generally considered acceptable to have the same content resolve on both www and non-www URLs of a website?

  Your Answer: Yes, the search engines recognize they're the same thing

  Correct Answer: No, this may cause negative indexing/ranking issues

  This is generally considered a bad idea, and may have negative effects if the search engines do not properly count links to both versions (the most common issue) or even view the two as duplicate, competing content (unlikely, though possible).

• #34 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been temporarily relocated and links to the old location will not pass influence to the new location?

  Your Answer: 302

  Correct Answer: 302

  The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 302 is the correct answer.

• #35 Which of these is least likely to have difficulty ranking for its targeted terms/phrases in Google?

  Your Answer: A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links

  Correct Answer: A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links

  This is a tough question, and the answer is even somewhat debatable. However, as phrased, the MOST correct answer is almost certainly - "A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links" - as each of the other situations have many examples of having very difficult times ranking well.

• #36 What is the advantage of putting all of your important keywords in the Meta Keywords tag?

  Your Answer: There is no specific advantage for search engines

  Correct Answer: There is no specific advantage for search engines

  The answer is that no advantage is conferred upon sites who include their terms in the meta keywords tag. For more on the subject, read Danny Sullivan's excellent post.

• #37 Which of the following link building tactics do search engines tacitly endorse?

  Your Answer: Viral content creation & promotion

  Correct Answer: Viral content creation & promotion

  As representatives from each of the major engines have acknowledged publicly, viral content creation and promotion is viewed as a legitimate and preferred tactic for link acquisition.

• #38 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been permanently relocated and all links to the old page will pass their influence to the new page location?

  Your Answer: 301

  Correct Answer: 301

  The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 301 is the correct answer.

• #39 Which of the following factors is considered when search engines assign value to links?

  Your Answer: The date/time the link was created and the temporal relationship between that link's appearance and other time-sensitive criteria

  Correct Answer: The date/time the link was created and the temporal relationship between that link's appearance and other time-sensitive criteria

  The only one of these that search engines would consider (and have mentioned in patent applications like this one) is the temporal data.

• #40 There is no apparent search engine rankings benefit to having a keyword-matched domain name (eg www.example.com for keyword "example").

  Your Answer: FALSE

  Correct Answer: FALSE

  This is "FALSE," as many examples of keyword-targeted domains have been shown to have a phenomenal amount of ranking success in the engines, despite other factors not being nearly as strong as the competition.

• #41 If you want a page to pass value through its links, but stay out of the search engines' indices, which of the following tags should you place in the header?

  Your Answer: Use meta robots="noindex, follow"

  Correct Answer: Use meta robots="noindex, follow"

  As Google tells us here, the proper format would be to use meta robots="noindex, follow"

• #42 Which of these factors is LEAST likely to decrease the value of a link?

  Your Answer: The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)

  Correct Answer: The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)

  The right answer is "a link from the domain being linked to pointing at the linking site already exists (each domain link to pages on the other's site)." This is because despite the fact that these links are technically "reciprocal," they don't fit any pattern of penalization for such links (such as being listed on link list style pages). The search engines are least likely to devalue these because of all the natural patterns in which such linking occurs (blogrolls, news sites, forums, hobbyists, schools, etc.)

• #43 Which of the following is a requirement for getting in the Google Local listings?

  Your Answer: A physical mail address in your claimed location

  Correct Answer: A physical mail address in your claimed location

  The only one that's a must-have is the physical mailing address.

• #44 Which of the following engines offers paid inclusion services for their main web index (not advertising):

  Your Answer: Yahoo!

  Correct Answer: Yahoo!

  Currently, only Yahoo! offers paid inclusion through their search submit program.

• #45 When is it advisable to leave the meta description off of a page?

  Your Answer: When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all

  Correct Answer: When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all

  The correct answer is "When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all." Duplicate meta description tags aren't the worst thing in the world, but they're certainly not providing any value and may have downsides from a duplicate content perspective (particularly if page content is very similar). Besides that, the other answers simply don't make sense :)

• #46 A domain will not be hurt by having a penalized site or page 301'd to it.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  This is "TRUE," and has been tested by many a black hat. The danger here is that, once again, crafty spammers could use this technique to hurt their competitors if the search engines did penalize the receiving domain.

• #47 Which of the following strategies is the best way to lift a page out of Google's supplemental index?

  Your Answer: Link to it internally from strong pages

  Correct Answer: Link to it internally from strong pages

  As "supplemental" has been defined by engineers at Google as being a page with very little PageRank, the best way to lift it out, from the options given, is to link to it internally from strong pages.

• #48 Which of the following is NOT speculated to be a contributing factor in achieving "breakout" site results in Google?
  
  

  
  A sample of "breakout" results for the query, Comedy Central, at Google

  Your Answer: Having an active AdWords campaign

  Correct Answer: Having an active AdWords campaign

  The only one that doesn't fit is the use of an AdWords campaign, which Google has said has no impact on organic listings.

• #49 Which of the following is the best method to insure that a page does not get crawled or indexed by a search engine?

  Your Answer: Restrict the page using robots.txt

  Correct Answer: Restrict the page using robots.txt

  The clear best method above, and the one prescribed by the engines, is to use the robots.txt file to restrict access.

• #50 If you want to rank for a country specific TLD/Top-Level-Domain extension (such as Yahoo.jp or Google.ca) which of the following is NOT important?

  Your Answer: Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension

  Correct Answer: Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension

  Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension is certainly not a requirement nor a suggested method for inclusion into a country-specific search engine's results. See this recent video for more.

• #51 Which of the following CANNOT get you penalized at the major search engines?

  Your Answer: Selling links that pass value

  Correct Answer: Using "nofollow" internally on your site to control the flow of link juice

  As Matt Cutts has noted recently, using "nofollow" to sculpt the flow of link juice is perfectly acceptable.

• #52 Which of the following directories had its ability to pass link value removed?

  Your Answer: www.bluefind.org - The Bluefind Web Directory

  Correct Answer: www.bluefind.org - The Bluefind Web Directory

  Only BlueFind suffered this penalty - having had its ability to pass link value removed by Google, ostensibly for "selling PageRank."

• #53 Which of the following is an acceptable way to show HTML text to search engines while creating a graphical image to display to users?

  Your Answer: CSS image replacement - create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class

  Correct Answer: CSS image replacement - create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class

  The only method that's approved by search engines is to use CSS image replacement with the exact copy in both the image and the HTML text.

• #54 For high-volume search phrases, the Search Engines usually will not differentiate between singular and plural versions of a term (eg "cell phone" vs. "cell phones" or "bird feeder" vs. "bird feeders").

  Your Answer: FALSE

  Correct Answer: FALSE

  As we can see from searches on the various phrases - cell phone vs. cell phones and bird feeder vs. bird feeders - this is FALSE. There are clear differentiations.

• #55 If your site is ranked in the #1 organic position for a given query, advertising in the top paid position for that search result will generally not produce an additional volume of search traffic.

  Your Answer: FALSE

  Correct Answer: FALSE

  Research from several sources, including this eye-tracking research report from MarketingSherpa, indicates that the correct answer is FALSE. You get more traffic and click-throughs with both the top paid and organic results than either individually.

• #56 What's likely to happen if multiple accounts on a single IP address vote up a story at Digg in a short time period?

  Your Answer: Your accounts will be suspended

  Correct Answer: Your accounts will be suspended

  The most likely result, particularly if this is done multiple times, is to have the accounts suspended.

• #57 Let's assume that you're running SEO for an auction website with many listings, sorted by categories and subcategories. To achieve the maximum search engine traffic benefit, what should you do with individual product/auction pages after the auction has expired and the product is no longer available?

  Your Answer: 301 redirect them to the most appropriate category page associated with the product

  Correct Answer: 301 redirect them to the most appropriate category page associated with the product

  The "best" answer of the choices given is to 301 redirect the pages to the most appropriate category page associated with the product - this ensures that link value won't be lost, and visitors who come to the old page will get the best user experience as well.

• #58 Which factor is most likely to decrease the ranking value of a link?

  Your Answer: Comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links

  Correct Answer: Comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links

  All of the answers can provide significant link value except "comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links," which is very likely to have a strong negative affect on the value of the link.

• #59 Which of the following search engine and country combination does not represent the most popular search engine in that country?

  Your Answer: Japan / Yahoo

  Correct Answer: Japan / Yahoo

  All of the above are correct, except Japan, where Google appears to now have a dominant search market share, despite Yahoo! getting more web traffic and visits. See also this piece from Multilingual-Search.com.

• #60 Where do search engines consider content inside an iFrame to be located?

  Your Answer: On the source page the iFrame pulls from

  Correct Answer: On the source page the iFrame pulls from

  Engines judge iframe content the same way browsers do, and consider them to be part of the source page the iFrame pulls from (not the URL displaying the iFrame content).

• #61 If the company you buy links from gets "busted" (discovered and penalized) by a search engine, the links you have from them will:

  Your Answer: Stop passing link value

  Correct Answer: Stop passing link value

  Since search engines don't want to give webmasters the ability to knock their competitors out with paid links, they will simply devalue the links they discover to be part of paid networks, such that they no longer pass value.

• #62 Which of these queries would not have an "Instant Answer" or "Onebox Result" on Google?

  Your Answer: Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco

  Correct Answer: Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco

  No surprisingly, the only correct answer is "Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco."

• #63 Which major search engine serves advertising listings (paid search results) from the PPC program of one of the other major engines?

  Your Answer: Ask.com

  Correct Answer: Ask.com

  Ask.com is the only major engine that shows ad results from another engine - specifically, Google.

• #64 Duplicate content is primarily an off-site issue, created through content licensing deals and copyright violations of scraped and re-published content, rather than a site-internal problem.

  Your Answer: FALSE

  Correct Answer: FALSE

  The answer is FALSE, as on-site duplicate content issues can be serious and cause plenty of problems in the search engines.

• #65 Links from 'noindex, follow' pages are treated exactly the same as links from default ('index, follow') pages.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  This is TRUE - according to Matt Cutts in a comment here, links on pages with "noindex, follow" are treated exactly the same as links from default ("index, follow") pages.

• #66 Which metric is NOT used by the major search engines to measure relevance or popularity in their ranking algorithms?

  Your Answer: Keyword density in text on the page

  Correct Answer: Keyword density in text on the page

  Keyword density is the outlier here. Dr. Garcia explains why search engines don't use the metric here.

• #67 If they have the same content, the Search Engines will consider example.com/avocado and example.com/avocado/ to be the same page.

  Your Answer: TRUE

  Correct Answer: TRUE

  The answer is TRUE, as engines don't consider the trailing slash to create a different page (examples here and here).

• #68 Which Search Engines currently allow the 'nocontent' attribute?

  Your Answer: Yahoo!

  Correct Answer: Yahoo!

  To date, only Yahoo! has implemented the nocontent parameter.

• #69 In which of the following countries does Ask.com have the most significant percentage of search engine market share?

  Your Answer: United States

  Correct Answer: United States

  Surprisingly, the answer is the US, where Ask.com has an estimated 5% market share.

• #70 For search engine rankings & traffic in Google & Yahoo!, it is generally better to have many, small, single topic focused sites with links spread out between them than one, large, inclusive site with all the links pointing to that single domain.

  Your Answer: FALSE

  Correct Answer: FALSE

  This is FALSE, primarily because the search engines' current algorithms places a great deal of weight on large, trusted domains, rather than small, niche sites.

• #71 The 4 major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask serve what approximate percentage of all searches performed in the US?

  Your Answer: ~95%

  Correct Answer: ~95%

  According to nearly every study reported (including ComScore's), the four major networks, when AOL is included (serving Google results), provide ~95% of all searches in the US.

• #72 The linkfromdomain operator displays what information and is available at which search engine(s)?

  Your Answer: Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at MSN/Live only

  Correct Answer: Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at MSN/Live only

  As can be seen here, Microsoft/Live is the only engine to provide the command and it shows what pages are linked-to by a given domain.

• #73 Which of the following social media websites is the least popular (as measured by active users & visitors)?

  Your Answer: Newsvine

  Correct Answer: Newsvine

  Newsvine is the smallest of the above, both in terms of traffic and users.

• #74 Which of the following pieces of information is NOT available from current keyword research sources?

  Your Answer: Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers

  Correct Answer: Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers

  Since all of the current search engines have blind bid systems, the cost-per-click paid by advertisers is currently unavailable anywhere.

• #75 The use of AJAX presents what common problem for search engines and websites?

  Your Answer: It creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs

  Correct Answer: It creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs

  The largest problem for search engines is that AJAX frequently "creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs."

Labels: Blog Optimization

Usability is about making things accessible and easy to use. You like to stay in a place and spend time with someone whom you are comfortable with. One of the main factors that Usability comprises of is the comfort level you provide your visitors. Don’t make them think about they should not and how they can reach what they want without having to think where from. Search boxes and site navigation should not be an issue for the visitors to resolve.

13. State clearly even if you have to repeat things- You get new visitors daily, and which ever post they might be landing on would be presented to them for the first time. Many people think that they should not repeat what they have already written about, without realizing that their first time visitors have not read any piece of their work before. If relevant speak again of the important points, and provide necessary links to the posts where the topic of your post is discussed before. This way even you would decrease the monotony from your posts and still your first time visitors would not feel that you have missed specific points.

14. Bullets and numbered Lists- Like paragraphs, bullets and numbered lists help you to give a clear presentation. It will also help you gain attention of skimmers and jumpers. It removes monotony from the post, giving it an organized look, as well. This will also save time of your users and they will thank you for it.

15. Home page linking and other Links- More often than not, most of the traffic lands on interior pages rather than the home page which makes a link to your homepage an absolute necessity on every page whether you have a blog or a website.

Other Links included in you posts whether internal or outbound should say where they go. Will you Like to Click here and Here without knowing where you’ll go. Providing a brief information where they lead to or a link title will be of help to your visitors and will inform them where they are headed to. This will help you make your visitors click where you want them to click. Have you ever heard about a Fear of unknown. This is it.

16. Make it easy to Subscribe- Essential part of your return traffic should consists of your subscriber traffic. How effective your blog is equally proportional to how many people want to read it on a regular basis. These are who subscribe your feed, and because subscribers are such an important part of blogging success, you need to make it easy for users to sign up. Offer both email and RSS options. Services like Feedburner help make you make your feed compatible to both RSS and Atom Aggregators.

17. Browser Compatibility- One thing that people often forget while personalizing their blog design is to check the appearance on different browsers. What may look right on Firefox may not look the same in Internet Explorer. The placement of widgets specially can cause blunders.

Get into the shoes of your reader and evaluate it. If you want, taking your friend's help is also a good option. Improve your reader's expereince and make your blog sticky.

Happy Blogging,
Divya

Related Posts:-
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage-Part 2
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage- Part I

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Usability

Labels: Better Blogging, Blog Optimization, Web Usability

How to determine what you should blog about?
When you are beginning to blog or taking up your next blog, you need to have a list of all the topics you can blog about. While starting you can think about the various possibilities available. You can have even a list of hundred. In this post we will tackle your list and see the most monetizing and profiting options from it.

Blog your interests: If you are going to establish an individual blog this can be a good starting point. You will anyways be knowledgeable about the subject and would keep up-to-date with it. Writing about it will not only increase your knowledge but you will also know what your target audience wants from you. People will also be enthusiastic once they notice you are passionate about the subject, and would like to know more from you. They would know that they’ll get the latest News about the niche at your blog, so you’ll have more repeat visits, who knows you might create a fan-following of your very own. Interacting and answering issues will be very interesting. You can write about anything from Maintaining Lifestyles to Politics and from Mobiles to latest Technologies.

Have you ever tried to search something but nothing relevant came up, this could be it. You can create a blog about a topic which needs information but yet not looked into by anyone else. It is the best to be the first to fulfill an information gap. Do research using Overture Keyword research tool or any other to find out that there are other people looking for the same subject. I don’t want you be the only one to look for it and write about it.

If you are blogging for your company, it is best to cater to your customers and prospects and write about the topic that interest them. I am taking it for granted that you know your subject well. Provide updates about new products and services, tips and tricks to use your product and latest developments of your company’s market. Don’t sell or even soft sell. You can tell cool features your company is providing but do not tell your visitors to go and buy, this is not what a blog meant for. You can achieve the zenith of customer relationships through your blog.

When you are done with the list, we can start eliminating topics that would end in poor results. Cross those items on your list that make you feel uneasy, and those about which you would not be able to write almost daily keeping it still interesting and fresh. Eliminate those which are not sustainable. You can blog about Cricket World Cup 2007 but that would result in seasonal topic after which you would not be able to produce anything. It might be fine for people who are looking to have periodic profits.

After you are only left with a few try to answer these-

1. Is the topic popular enough to bring in loads of traffic?
2. How much competition already exists?
3. Do you know something through research or experience, which your competition is missing out?
4. Are there any developments in the field, is it growing or shrinking?
5. Do you have enough content or resources through which you can find some?
6. Are there any other income resources for you as a blogger apart from Adsense, like affiliate or network products related to your niche or either do you have your service or product?

It may not be possible that you have perfect answer to every point above but after going through it you could yourself find an answer to the blog topic you should pick.

This article by Chris Garrett is a must read before you decide your niche.

For being a successful blogger, you should either generate an income source or a fan following. Many blogs die out before they come to lime-light. Then this isn’t Blogging to Fame.

Till next time
Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Strategies, Blogging Tactics

Labels: Better Blogging, Blog Optimization

With so much emphasis given in a last few posts on strategies, I also included that strategies begin the moment you decide have your own blog. One of the first things you’ll be deciding about is your blog’s niche. The most important step to head start your planning.

What is a Niche?

Niche is a small and tightly knitted segment of the market you want to cater to.

As for Blogging a Niche defines the theme of your blog. It is what your blog would talk about in general and in details, and everything related to it. Niche also defines the your target market which you’ll cater through your blog, the number and the kind of visitors it will attract. You can either choose a niche with: Large target market, High competition OR Smaller target market, Lower competition.

Your aim is to emerge as an expert in your niche. Once you have decided your target audience, your blog should be a one stop solution for them. Now if you have a smaller and more focused blog, attaining expertise is not only easier but more targeted audience will give you a higher conversion rate.

Be aware while choosing you Niche:

There is no harm if you do not want your blog be bound by limitations, or blogging about whatever you feel like from cars to music or from internet marketing to cooking. This is a casual approach, and should only be followed, if you are blogging for fun. Professional and serious bloggers, prefer sticking to one theme per blog. Whatever your approach is, you got to stick to your plan. Once you have decided the niche and started your blog it is hard to change directions. If you are not satisfied and want to shift your focus, it is like starting from scratch and building a new blog. While shifting focus, you may eventually loose your already existing audience, which obviously would not be a choice.

Chose an area, which you are passionate about, something that is not time-sensitive, which stops appealing after a few months.

A Blog is for life, well almost. Once you start achieving what goals you have set for your blog, you would not want to leave it(why not ask Problogger), and each time creating new blog will not take you anywhere. So if you are going to blog for life, your content should not run dry or boring. You need something that will develop, excite and spark enthusiasm.

Lets take an example. You might consider Business as a niche, but that would still be very broad. Business --> Marketing --> Online Marketing --> Blogging, and Business --> Marketing --> Online Marketing --> Search Engine Optimization, are two different niches you can handle with two different blogs, and still have enough to write forever because it is an upcoming and always updating field.

You also need to be knowledgeable in the niche you are choosing. You cannot afford to prove yourself a novice, if you soon want to be an A-Lister.

Reading and Writing is not all about blogging. You have to go above and beyond the level of an average surfer that is where you will add value to your blog and emerge as a master. If you are writing the same stuff as others are, you would be a part of the crowd. You need your own thoughts and knowledge about the subject. That is why it is necessary why you should blog what you are passionate about.

To be continued...

Till then, Happy Blogging
Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Strategies, Blogging Tactics

Labels: Better Blogging, Blog Optimization

In the Search Engine Race many new terms kept propping up. When Content became the King, categorizing it became all the more important to make it more accessible and usable. Keywords became the theme of the content and it was started put into various categories to which it belonged. Then came in the scene a more far more relevant term- Tagging. It was a technique to yet more organize and make it more discoverable.

Tags and Keywords and Categories might sound to have same roots, but essentially all three are different to their cores. People often mistake them to be synonyms of each other. The purpose of all the three is to make the content more findable or better say searchable by organizing the abundance of information available on net both for the producer and the end user of it.

The phenomenon generally works with user generated content. Lets take a deeper look.

Categories- The main or broad area under which we will be writing our post are the categories. They are few in number and is the broadest organizational technique. They are well-planned and are more constant. They normally define the subject we are talking about, and is decided before we put down a word.

Keywords- They are theme on which your post depends. This was coined for search engines and were related to the terms on which you are searchable. Keywords are embedded in the post or your article and evenly distributed.

Tags- They act like metadata about your post or descriptive words that are added while submitting it to various tag hype locations like Technorati, Del.icio.us, Netscape and Flickr to make it easier for others to find. For example, a story about a new iPod might have the followings tags: Apple, iPod, mp3, Steve Jobs.

When it comes to tags, they can be described by the reader who is bookmarking your article as their reaction to it. It can be as absurd as a ‘interesting French article’ for an article written in French about sunset.

Difference between Tagging and Keywords-

The main difference between tagging and keywords is the interface through which each is defined. Like mentioned above Keywords are words in your text and Tags are Metadata, something that defines your text and is still not included with it. Tagging is made extremely simple by the above mentioned tagging interfaces, Keywords have to be either inserted within the code or for blogs they should be decided while writing posts. You cannot just pop up the keywords without any reference.

Difference between Tagging and Categories-

1. Categories are previously defined and are limited in number while tags can be many.
2. Tags are spontaneous reaction of the tagger to the post or the pictures he is tagging, which can change with individuals. While categories are generally described by the author.
3. Relations between categories are tree-like, but those between tags are network-like.
4. Categories will organize my content and describe what I am talking about but tags help me share it with others.

All the above three, are very neccesary to make your content accessible. If you have any questions you can ask me. Just leave it in the comment.

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Optimization,Categories,Tagging,Keywords

Labels: Blog Optimization

Its high time you stop running around following self acclaimed Search Engine Marketers and gurus, when you can build your Online business empire. Focusing on your business to make it world class should be the most important thing for you. Interactive blogs/sites where visitor need is the focus, do more business rather than highly optimized sites. These sites easily get a page rank of 4 and with a bit of focus on their marketing strategies yields a 5 or 6 PR. Google wants you to do the same. No amount of SEO would help till you do not have good traffic to your site.

Well you would say SEO will bring traffic to your site, and I would agree with you contradicting my own statement, but you need many other traffic resources to fulfill the your need of increasing your prospect base.

Link building is one of the ways your gurus will tell you to put your efforts and money in. If your blog is running good, or even if it is just upcoming you will have to handle many link exchange requests. They not yet realize that link exchange is of no use now and was technique of the past. Search engines became aware of the fact that webmasters are trying to lead them into believing their pseudo popularity, and started to discount such strategies. They will award a PR of 2 to such cases.

Links from link purchase are also considered non earned and is not effective any more. This is leading to a downfall of link selling business which was once much hyped. The basic motive of link purchase and link exchange was for SEO and generating traffic, which was not very useful for either of them. Google now takes care that people follow the long and natural way to make these links. According to its official blog:-
“[…]Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. We have more people working on Google's link-weighting for quality control and to correct issues we find. So nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites. Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice.[…]” To read the rest of the article you can click here.

Now what is the game I am talking about. What everybody knows is that Google is the master of all the search engine traffic. With all this strictness coming into scene the money being invested in the above techniques is left on the table. The biggest under cover game of Google…

From where do Google earns? It has a giant infrastructure and all services it offers are free. So how do they get the funds to maintain these services. The only place where Google generates income is through advertising which is better known as their Adwords program, and the only way you can generate targeted traffic is by advertising for your site in their sponsored results.

All the content of your site and the hard work that goes into it will only give you a few cents each click on the adsense ads placed on your blog/site, while Google earns in million of dollars using your very own efforts, because the bulk of adsense usage.

If you want to earn a few dollars from these ads you will need a lot of traffic to your site, and where will the traffic come from till your site is not on the top of result pages? From investing in their Adwords. Who is the master, Google, and who is dancing to its tunes, we the webmasters who want to earn their bread and butter or a Merc from our online business.

If you want to make your own rules, then play the game differently to get the ball in your court. Google does pay you a little price for the labor you put in the right direction. What it stresses on is to make links naturally and organically or by Linkbaiting. The more focused your site is, the more targeted and better quality ads you’ll get. Another point to notice is the stress on using Social Media sites like Digg.
Other lines from the same article says:-
“[…]Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites. One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as digg.com. Another example is to earn a reputation in a certain field by building an authority through services such as http://answers.yahoo.com. Our general advice is: Always focus on the users and not on search engines when developing your optimization strategy. Ask yourself what creates value for your users. Investing in the quality of your content and thereby earning natural back links benefits both the users and drives more qualified traffic to your site.[…]”

Don’t hang around asking for links anymore. Give people reasons to link you. Be the champion of your own game like Google is. Make your rules and let others play by it. Be the pioneer of new methodologies which are ethical and safe. Build your business. All the self made SEO gurus are in reality amateurs and do not know what actually SEO is. A successful SEO expert knows to assess the nerve of visitor’s psychology, how they come, where they click and where lies the potential traffic source. Its not about Search Engines its about you and your visitors, because business is made of Humans not Search Engine Robots. Follow Google’s advice to beat it and it will love you for making it loose.

Cheers To your Success,
Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Social Media , Blog Optimization

Labels: Blog Monetization/Adsense/Adwords, Blog Optimization

It is very necessary for an e-prenuer to understand how important it is to provide useful, high quality content to web site visitors, and the importance of this content simply cannot be overstated. With all the posts I have written about content optimization, I have always insisted on making it accessible to the web traffic.

Tagging- the best way to define Content.

When we start talking about content overload and how excessively the same information is present on the net, it should be emphasized that your content needs to defined, optimized and presented to your audience. Tagging is where you manually define a category for your content.

• It makes your content more intuitively found and shared.
• Increases your Web visibility
• Tags are visible metadata which makes it more trust-worthy by the Search engines, unlike Meta tags.

The way that content is delivered, however, is constantly changing, and it
is important for anyone who does business or generates revenue via the internet to understand the changing nature of web searching and web site content.

Social bookmarking Sites have dramatically increased the popularity of tagging where users can come and tag content while bookmarking it, manually. It makes it more accessible for other visitors to find relevant content or content which is tagged by other members very easily increasing its accessibility.

Tagging efficiently will make your content appear under all related keyword searches and though tagging and key words are two totally different terms but work in a similar way when pulling your content on search engines, so tag your content with equal care. The same post can tagged under different category by different people. Like keywords, here also it is necessary to narrow your outlook to more specific tags rather than a broad classification for your content.

With all the upcoming and new trends, Technorati introduced a new tags feature on its two years anniversary which shows blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, music, people tagged with the users' topic or interests. All in one solution on a single page.

This makes Technorati not only the best blog search engine but also an all purpose one. A hot place to find everything happening on Web. Not only this, Technorati has optimized its tag pages for Google’s SERPs. With all the keyword relevance and kind of data it comes up with its Tag.

According to Dave Sifry- “[…]The beauty of tags is that they’re metadata: data about data. What does that mean? Tags actually describe their subject, as opposed to, say, keywords, which just occur within them. We think tags are becoming popular because on the Live Web, categories and topics are just as useful than keywords for describing and finding content, especially when that content doesn’t necessarily contain lots of relevant text[…]”

Tag your Content and tag it effectively.You can read more about Tagging in An Introdution to Tag and Ping

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

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Technorati Tags:- Tagging

Labels: Blog Optimization