GlobalThoughtz Canada today announced the Top Canadian SEO Companies for Q1 2008 Scorecard results. Acroterion has moved into the number one Overall ranking and the best Organic Optimization firm in Canada.

Search3w.com, which received some 2000 Unique Visits per day has experienced exponential growth since it launched back in mid 2007 and utilizes unique proprietary technology for greater site visibility, search engine optimization and usability.

Acroterion Inc. was founded by “The Search Engine Doctor” – Martin Rotstain. Dr. Rotstain has won numerous awards for his research in SEO and E-commerce technology. Dr. Rotstain is a member at Search Engines Research Committee and is currently involved in research with PhDs around the world.

Full Image: http://blog.search3w.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/we-are-nnumber-1-canadian-seo-companies.gif

These days if you are not on the first page of a Google search you might not be invisible. Research has shown that people rarely go beyond the first page of a Google search. The Internet offers a rapid and extremely low cost way to perform test price/products, measure, change cycle and compare the effects immediately, even for different geographic spots – at almost zero advertising cost.

Search3w has a proven solution and seven years of experience that will do 3 things for your business:

Increase your web visibility – People will be able to find your website easily when they are searching Google, MSN and Yahoo!

Increases sales – Once they do, the site will provide what they are looking for, quickly and easily, results with more conversions (sales).

Increase walk-in traffic – web visibility increases in-store traffic by 60% according to a Jupiter Media study (and proved by our client’s data).

Usability Process

We propose a two-part Usability process:
1. Search Engine Optimization, to get more people to your site, and
2. Usability Testing, to ensure they have a good experience once they are there.

“Improving the customer experience increases the number of buyers by 40% and increases order size by 10%.” Creative Good – The actual ROI from a usability test can vary dramatically, but it is rare to find a website that does not experience a positive return from this investment if they actually implement the changes recommended.

Usability testing done at Staples.com, for example, produced the following results:

- 67% more repeat customers - 31- 45% reduced drop off rates
- 10% better shopping experience - 80% increased traffic

A common web owners’ mistake is to think “Build it, and They Will Buy”. The fact is “Build it, and They Will Compare”. Online shoppers start by comparing not buying. Usability outputs will be published on Search3w Site Wizard pages so almost no effort needs to make by your staff.

Because of the way your current content management system has set up your site, Google will never rank your website well as it stands. However, Search3w uses proprietary technology to boost Web page rankings for sites such yours. With one client, for example, Search3w technology was responsible for:

- 33 TIMES more revenue in 1 month - $64,000 more sales in 1 month
- Increasing the web site visibility by a factor of 5
- Increasing walk-in customers by 60%

Read More on Usability >>

Measuring and comparing the demand for your keyword (Daily World Searches) against the number of Web pages that include it (Competition) is a helpful approach to pick up the best keywords. The resulting ratio, KEI or ‘Keyword Effectiveness Index’ will give an idea of how important a specific keyword is.

The formula for KEI is KEI = (DS^2/C) = (DS/C * DS)

DS = Number of daily world searches
C = The competition.

KEI RESULT
The KEI range goes from 0 to over 400.

< 0,001 = Poor keyword
0,001-0,010 = Good Keyword
0,010-0,100+ = Excellent Keyword

Keywords with the highest KEI combine popularity and less competition. It means that it is more likely that you will get a high ranking, if you use these keywords for optimizations.

Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume41/vol41.html with my conclusions.

Google issuing a widespread PageRank update penalizing sites suspected of participating in link buying or selling. As you can imagine, the reaction from the search engine optimization community has been something of an angry frenzy. Anyone who read Search Engine Land’s post on October 7th
http://searchengineland.com/071024-093938.php heralding that Google would lower the PageRank for those suspected of selling links shouldn’t have been surprised when they woke up two weeks later and saw a shorter green bar in their browser, but most never saw it coming.

PageRank Algorithm Update
Site owners across the Web will remember October 24, 2007 as the day Google lowered their PageRank, with a large number of site owners reporting significant drops. Early rumors were that the PageRank update was a direct attack by Google to lower the value of sites that buy and sell links. Search Engine Land’s list included names like The Washington Post, Forbes, Engadget, Problogger, Herald and plenty more. Not surprisingly, site owners were angry. Bloggers expressed their frustration with Google’s attack on PageRank. One wrote that Google had used the PageRank hammer, while others opted for the more dramatic Google Declares Jihad on Links.The day after the drop, webmasters were still reeling as Forbes declared that Google had scared the search crowd. There were even exaggerated reports that DigitalPoint members were being put on a suicide watch after watching their sites tank.

What Does This Google PageRank Message Mean?
Many offering up a theory as to why some sites were hit and others were spared in a post entitled How Does Google Determine Which Sites Sell Links? In the latter post, Barry Schwartz wondered if perhaps Google had some help identifying paid links due to site owners outing each other and using the paid link reporting tool released in June.Additional community members offered insight like 5 Things You Can Do With Your New PageRank and The Oracle of Mountain View, while others simply made fun of the mass hysteria with PageRank Victim Badges and PageRank: LOLCats Style.

Confirming the Penalty
On October 29, we finally received confirmation that the update site owners were seeing in PageRank was, in fact, a penalty. Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts emailed Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal to let him know that the Google PageRank update that had occurred was a result of Google’s campaign against those buying and selling links to influence PageRank.

What does it mean to you?
Acroterion as a company did all to ensure our clients are not classified and filtered out by Google updates.
The last 6 months Acroterion team synergetic work hard to replace all our clients’ links and to move them to a better spots, far away from Google radar.Even if you lost PageRank and your incoming links are down in drain (might be possible) it’s not the end of the world.
Ask yourself these questions:

1. Have I lost business in the last two weeks?

2. Am I still on Google Organic 1^st page as before?

My opinion is that Google XMAS update has not been finished yet. US dollar is weak, Google shares is rocketing high, and they want to keep their not be evil motto especially for THE shopping time. From mid November to the first week of December look closely at your ranking formula again and examine its results.

I have no time to post more interesting posts recently, but this one worth it! This question has been received on our free “Ask SEO Expert” service.

Question: My site had a Google penalty for duplicate content. Maybe also for bad linking but not sure is this. A weber send me a email to told me I would write a spam-report to google. He had a lot of fun to kill my business. It’s only 4 days from now that it happen but I already clean up all my site as he got only unique content now and no more link back except 4 links of directories that worth it and which I’m in. I have a statements that said these directory accept our site and this prove our legitimate. I’m still first for my site name and my pages are still index. But my traffic drop 75% in a matter of seconds. I want to get back. I did not sent any re-inclusion yet cause I think it’s better show them I’ve been penalise for a little while at least.

Jeff

I have asked Jeff if he can provide me with more details about the recent 12 months SEO “love fair”.

My domain is an old one. I bought it in April 2003 but it was the property of someone else since 1998. For over 3 years now I did use a technique of duplicate content. Every page got a root word and are duplicate in 30 to 90 page with the same content but the title and the H1 and H2 are different each time. All these page are linked each other from the bottom with a list of text link containing the title of each page and the link are {hidden}.. and not only relative to document. So it give some back link.

Sin 2 month from now I start to promote my site in many destroys which ask for a link back. I then build up a page with many partners links. I removed those one and I kept only the one which worth something for (4 o them I had over 100 before), and I put a text saying that these directory accept our site darns they evaluate it so it prove how good he his.

Everything was going well and I had more and more traffic. Then a mad webmaster send me an email saying Yahoo!! I will send a spam report about your site for duplicate content hahaha! I found his IP address and I ban it from all my site and email.

It was the first time in many years that I put a email on my site to let people contact me. And I remove it now because of this. 2 days after, it happens. My traffic drop on the floor. Nothing from Google was coming anymore. I then delete every duplicate page and bunch of link which where all together. I build only unique content. I remove my back link as I said and theses directory will probably put you mine in a little while.

Since that day, I write unique content to fill back all my page in order of the most traffic they where bringing me in the pas. I also have a not-found 404 page. My pages are still in the index so favor, even duplicate ones. But my backlink are not there anymore. Only a few ones left. Which are my own site but on other servers with different IP’s.

My site still come up first when I type hes URL. But my traffique is lost.

I saw on the web that this kind of penalty could last 30 days for the first offence if you make the good changes but you don’t need to ask for a re-inclusion. Do you think it’s true and I should wait a month before ask? The fatal day where God throw my away is last July 12.

They only good new I got since then it’s my page views by visitors jump from 1,9 to 3,9 and the time pass from 1:30 min. to 3:17 min. and the rebound rate fall from 60% to 37%.

Please help me!

Jeff

Jeff, Apparently every possible mistake has been done

Quickly looking at your site (and sending my own bot) I found:

1. Five dead links out of 66 pages found. Google site: shows 232 pages indexed – Bad ratio…
2. Many of the index pages are inside Google hell “Supplemental Result” – Read more about it at http://blog.acroterion.ca/selected-news/google-new-algorithms-and-search-engines-changes/
3. No Robots.txt found to solve described problem.
4. Wrong 404 redirect has been used.
5. ..and so on..

Hi,

I’m replying you back to tell you that my penalty been release this morning. But your advices been good for me so I want to tell you some info of my experience so you can add info on your site. Or play with it to make more money by knowing but not necessarly saying it.

Everywhere they said that there is a kind of 30 day penalty for first offense. For me it last 1 week, 7 days flush. My traffic went down on july 12 in the middle of the day and came back this morning july 18.

Since I saw the traffic goes down and because the guy who sent a report spam told it to me 2 days before, I was ready to act and I did it right away. Since that day I start deleting all my copy pages and replace them by unique content one after the other stating in order of the modt traffik generator page. Ful day working non stop I upload and took off my link partner page. Kept only 4 of them wich had real valu ans replace a text wich was sayong write me to exchange link by These sites are directory wich accept our site, so it proove how good he is.

I did not write a re-inclusion letter to google. Nothing, I stay calm and gave no sound to them by any way. I did not stop uploading like a crazy, I was really motivated.

Then this morning, In my analytics stats, Google was already at 250 visitors at 7 o’clock am. Every day during last week I received only 6 visitors from google. I remark also that the coming back off google was gradual. Yesterday I receive 33 visitors, the day before 12 and every day before that including july 13 I receive 5 or 6 visitors. So since two days I start to double and then today its back to normal.

So I hope it will help you knowing more about it and knowing that if you act pretty quick it can last as low as 7 days. I’ll contact you back if I made a mistake and if my traffik stop during the day. If no news from me, it means everthing is fine.

Thanks again for your support.

I have another wich had the panealty the same day and I did send a re-inclusion for this one and he is still penalize.

Jeff

Many things are hapeening right under our nose with no pulic attention. Working with Adobe 7 you’re doing text selection and right click. But have you noticed the “Yahoo Contextual Search” option right there? See yourself:

I searched Adobe website and it just laying there:

Yahoo Contextual Searching (part of Y!Q)

“If you select text, either a single word or phrase within a PDF, and right click with the mouse, then you are presented with menu item that allows you to use the Yahoo Contextual (Y!Q) Search Engine. For longer phrases especially, this returns better results than with a regular search. For more information on how Y!Q works, please vis it the Yahoo website at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/yq . ”

Why Google cannot sign nice partnerships like this, or they do? Maybe Google belives in monotheism ?

As someone who’s seating at SEMPO Research Committee, we have worked hard to develop this survey to gain a better understanding of the nature and extent of SEO market. Thanks to all SEMPO members and Radar Research LLC who participated in preparing this survey.

This is your chance to have your voice heard. By participating in SEMPO’s 3rd annual State of the Market Survey, you have the opportunity to share your opinions and expertise. Whether you are seasoned in SEM or still wet behind the ears, your input is valued and needed!

Why should you take the survey?
Taking the survey will actually stimulate you to think about the resources you devote to SEO and paid search – which is a valuable exercise in itself.
First dibs – you will receive the preliminary survey results before they are released to SEMPO’s membership.
Support the SEM industry – this survey is highly regarded as a valuable resource for the industry.
A chance to attend an SES conference for free.

The time that you invest in completing this survey will help show where the industry is, how it has grown, how it is expected to grow, and trends for the future. Not only does this information benefit the individuals and companies involved in SEM, it benefits the industry as a whole. This survey has proven to be a valuable representation of the ever changing, rapidly growing SEM industry.

Please tell all your colleagues and online marketing acquaintances about this survey – participation is NOT limited to SEMPO members. SEM and SEO agencies, online and traditional agencies, in-house marketers all are welcome.

Free Giveaway! As a thank you to everyone who participates in the survey, each respondent will be eligible to win one free full-conference pass to any Search Engine Strategies (SES) event in 2007, valued at over $1,000 USD. The winner’s name will be randomly selected once the survey has closed.

Time to get started! Please click here to complete the survey.

SEO is becoming increasingly important to all who look to do business and use the Internet as a marketing tool. It is the path in which your market finds your offering. It has become almost a necessity for businesses to incorporate SEO in to their marketing plan. Many companies struggle with the decision on whether to hire a firm or conduct their SEO in-house. Unfortunately many companies lack the knowledge about SEO and assume it will be cheaper for them in the long run to hire someone “in-house”. For some companies this may be efficient while others the overlooking the hiring of a professional firm to SEO can be costly. It is as critical to your business’ health as if you were to feel that you could heal a fatal disease yourself because you have access to the Internet and books instead of going to a highly trained physician. Now you laugh and say that would be absurd, but is the growth of your company worth the risk.
Knowledge Versus Cost Versus Time = Your Success
SEO is an ever changing business. Search engines change their algorithm frequently and new rules are put into place. One has to have the resources to find this information and understand how to implement the changes. An SEO firm is more likely to be aware of changes to search engine optimization protocols than an in-house individual. Many in-house individual will focus on developing and implementing your SEO strategies but typically remain in the dark about what goes on outside your organization due to they do not work with other scenarios.

Free Inhouse SEO Advice. Click here!

Outsourced SEO professionals must perform these same functions while constantly studying the industry, staying current with changing trends and familiarizing themselves with the latest SEO techniques. It is a part of their day to day business and necessary if they intend to compete in the marketplace and wish to survive.
What about cost? Surely the cost of hiring an individual is substantially less than the cost of hiring a company, right? This is a common misconception. Let’s look at it this way. You hire an E-Commerce Marketing Manager whose job is to develop and implements the strategic online marketing plan for an organization. Staying abreast of changes in the online marketing environment to best serve the objectives of the organization and adjusts plans accordingly. They may even be responsible for overseeing other aspects of the website such as the advertising and content components. In most cases the individual will be wearing many hats spreading them thin. His or her base salary according to Salary.com on average would be $85,703. That is $7,141.92 a month and roughly $42 an hour. This is for one individual with hopes that they bear positive results. Let’s say they do not. It will take 3 to 6 months to start to truly see if the individual is an asset or not. That is $21,425.76 if you decide to let the individual go in just the third month. Not to include cost of taxes and benefits. And if successful, your company just paid $85,703 per year for SEO.
The average SEO firm charges anywhere from $5500 to $35000 to perform the same task with a staff of highly trained professionals in the area of link building, writing, optimizing, web development etc. Even on the high end you are getting a staff for the entire year for around what it cost you to hire an individual in-house for a quarter. And if it does not bear positive results and you decide to terminate the relationship you will only have lost less than $10,000 if prorated based on the $35,000. in most cases you can even get some of that back. This logistically saves you time and money.
Would you agree that having one individual do the job of five is rarely a good idea? Would you feel it cost effective?
Time is another concern with in-house SEO. Will one individual be able to optimize multiple pages, write content, tags, build links, run reports and perform other SEO tasks in a timely fashion? One person can only do so much. Would you agree that time is money? Most SEO firms can do in a matter of days what might take an individual weeks to do. Many companies who use in-house SEO personnel spend more than necessary to get the same amount of work done in a longer amount of time. Once again you have one individual doing many tasks versus many individuals doing one task effectively.
In any case, is outsourcing the right move for you or your company? Whether you choose to outsource or not, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Do your research by performing a simple cost/benefit analysis on what outsourcing versus in-house SEO will cost. It cost twice as much when you do it wrong the first time.
Results are all that matters. Top rankings for phrases no one is searching for means little, and shouldn’t be used as a gauge of someone’s abilities.

Ensure they can provide you with keywords that work for your business as well as a diverse plan of action.
What do others say about the company or individual? Ask for references and check them. But even if they have limited or no reference don’t panic. They still may know what they are doing. Just test them on a small project and see if they bear results for you. This is a true way to measure if they work for you. There are many variables you may not have privilege to in a reference such as their personal relationship or if they were a part of a team that was successful but they contributed little.
Remember, SEO is important to your business growth and time is money one way or another. Do the math and ask yourself what makes sense for you.

Jeff Beale is a marketing specialist that has worked with planning and implementing marketing strategies for several businesses ranging from independently owner organizations to government and corporate entities. He is known for saving thousands in marketing dollars and increasing growth with the utilization of a diverse Internet marketing strategy which integrates functional web design with focused SEO.

Free Inhouse SEO Advice. Click here!

Not true. The term “SEO is not an exact science” is using by Search Engines Marketers who do not fully understand how search engines works. It is pure and simple mathematics if you know how to do it. It is also true that the science of mathematics in general and Google in particular includes many grey areas such as Google Algorithm and Axiomatic Set Theory and more, but how do you think Google, Ask, Yahoo and MSN retrieve, sort and score the results sets for a given query? By a theory, or by a guess?! Ah, you might say that “search engines optimization” is not the same as “search engines”, not a paradox?

Trial of Galileo Galilei 1633

It is like the “Surprise Quiz Paradox”: teacher announces to his class that there will be a surprise quiz some time during the next week. The paradox is if you mentioned “search engines optimization” it also includes “search engines”!

One more idiots proof : Show me one webmaster or SEM that will not agree to one (or more) of the following statements. Think of top competive example like iPod or jewlery website and take it to Google’s first page.

1. “I can gueantee the results if I personally had a friend who’s Google engineer”
2. “for unlimited budget anyone can do it”
3. “for a $100,000 I can get you enough quality links to beat any of the top ten winners”
4. “if you buy 4 years old iPod/jewlery website with 600 outbound links – I can do it”
5. “if you buy iPod/jewlery website with PageRank 7 – I can do it”
6. “get me one, just one link from Amazon/NYtimes/CNN… home page and…”

Conclusion: SEO is an exact science, it all depands on what, how, how-much and when you put the things in the formula to work.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060803IABGoogleYahooDefiningClicks.html

The Click Measurement Working Group established by IAB and the member companies who have joined it will develop a series of click measurement guidelines. The definition they establish will help to separate legitimate clicks on advertisements from the illicit ones that advertisers consider to be invalid, or worse, fraudulent.

IAB’s announcement comes in the wake of Google’s $90 million settlement in an Arkansas click fraud case. The plaintiffs in that suit are continuing to battle with Yahoo, Ask, LookSmart, and other companies over click fraud allegations.

Ideally, the adoption of such guidelines will provide more transparency into how search advertising companies measure and charge for clicks. Clicks that do not meet the standard will stand out when an advertiser has an account independently audited against the defined guidelines.

Google dominates the search advertising industry. Its actions impact the other players around it. Recently, Google began to show its AdWords clients more information on invalid clicks, a small step toward greater transparency into its measurements.

Transparency has been a persistent demand of search advertising clients. Search engines have intentionally kept their methods opaque to outsiders, even those who fuel its revenue stream. They claim transparency will educate criminals on how to beat the system.

The development of a click guideline could help people game the system as much as it assists advertisers in identifying legitimate clicks. If the fraudsters out there can come up with a way to meet the guidelines, assuming they haven’t done so already, advertisers may end up paying for illicit clicks unless the search companies can reliably identify them before the advertiser is charged.