The 10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic Without Google

Having a mix of trophy and long-tail phrases ranking in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) is the equivalent of manna from heaven to any online business. There’s nothing better, if you have it, and nothing worse, if you lose it.

More than one business has suffered collateral (sometimes fatal) damage in the wake of a Google algorithm update. Thousands more are certain to suffer a similar fate in the future.

The reality is that most small companies willnever rank well in Google and are wasting their time focusing on SERPs alone. The days of David beating Goliath in organic search are numbered, at best, and in most cases, nothing but a memory.

If you don’t have the budget to create content and build backlinks better than your competitors, you will not outrank them. If you’re a new entry in a crowded niche, it will be a long time, if ever, before you achieve any meaningful SERPs.

Rather than worry about losing or never having Google organic search traffic, plan for it. No one can afford to rely upon a single traffic source for business. You need multiple streams of traffic as insurance against the inevitable changes in search algorithms.

Here are the 10 best ways to generate traffic without Google.

1. Blog Commenting

2. Content Aggregators

3. Forum Commenting

4. Google+

5. Guest Blogging

6. Q&A

7. Reddit

8. Social Media

9. YouTube

10. Email

7 Social Media Predictions for 2009

It's a new year, which means it's time to raise a virtual glass within your social network and toast your collective social graphs for a great 2009. Here are seven things to look for this year.

1. Social Media Continues its Rapid Growth

Social media will be propelled by the ease in which phones and netbooks are able to access them. Mobile devices will be the primary way people access these networks and tools.

People ages 35 to 50 will further adopt social media. These users activity levels will be less than those under 35 years old; primarily using social media to stay connected with those that they know or to reconnect with friends from the past rather than using the tools to meet new people. One exception will be growing their business network in sites like LinkedIn (see prediction 2).

The social media activity level of Baby Boomers is analogous to how senior citizens today utilize e-mail. Whereas Generation X all have an e-mail account and access it daily, these older users aren't all on e-mail and those who are access it only a few times per week.

2. Business Networks Surge as Economic Crisis Continues

Job seekers will look for every edge and contact available, and online business networks will be their primary resource. Integration points between sites like Facebook and LinkedIn will continue to be enhanced to make transitions for the user as seamless as possible.

This will help bring us closer to an interconnected Web rather than one that has been historically comprised of walled gardens and ghettos. This openness can already be seen on the music industry side with Apple recently announcing that all of their iTunes will be DRM-free.

3. Many Free Services Will Become Defunct

Sites and companies will learn it's difficult to make a profit, especially as banner revenue declines, and it will take some transition to figure out a better ad revenue model for the Web than banners. Don't be surprised if the leveraging of the social graph (i.e., online representation of our relationships) becomes the world's largest referral program.

4. More Traditional Broadcast Television Moves Online

Just as we've seen many people live without a landline telephone -- using only a cell phone -- we'll see households stop paying for cable and view what the Web has to offer via their Internet connection and hook up their computers to their high definition televisions. Keep in mind that YouTube already supports HD and the Democratic National Convention was in HD online.

5. Social Media Changes Offline Behavior

The openness of social media can often have drastic consequences in relation to jobs, relationships, etc. People will start leading their lives as if their mother is watching.

6. More Social Media Searches for Products and Services

People don't care what Google thinks as much as they do about referrals from friends. The technology is already available (e.g., Facebook Beacon) to track purchases online. Seeing what your friends purchased, as well as their opinions, is invaluable.

Unfortunately, the real adoption of this won't occur till 2010. Google has already recognized that their main competition isn't Yahoo, MSN and Ask; but Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter. Hence, a few months ago they launched Google Suggest, which allows users to rank and comment on search results they receive as well as view other's comments.

Don't be surprised if Google buys Twitter. After all, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams originally started Blogger, which Google purchased in 2003.

7. Marketing Budgets will Continue Shrinking

The financial downturn will encourage more marketing executives to turn to organic social media initiatives to drive awareness and interest.

All in all, 2009 looks to be a year of significant growth for social media. So if you haven't yet figured out how to incorporate a social media marketing plan into your business model, make it a New Year's resolution to do so.

Google Changes, Colorizes Favicon

Google’s new fav icon (January 2009):

Google's new fav icon

Why the change? Google said in the past that the redesigned favicon reflected a “Simple, Playful & Unique Brand.” Has that changed? Maybe they changed it because some people really didn’t like the new favicon?

Want To Rank Tops In Google? Do YouTube Videos, Stupid

The Forrester Blog published a small but interesting study on how you can improve your chances, by 50 times, of showing up at the top of the Google search results. Their tip? Utilize Google’s Universal Search by creating videos.

Not only does Forrester share statistics and analysis on how to improve your odds with videos, but they also share tips on how to improve your video’s chance at being the top video in Google web search.

Let’s first discuss the odds. The blog post showed that a video has a “11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results.” If you compare that to web pages for the same keyword set, you only have a “500,000-to-1 chance” of getting on the first page. So for keywords that show video results in Google, you have a “50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index,” reports Forrester.

How can you improve those odds? Well, use some of the tips Forrester gives on how to achieve that top spot for your video.

* Insert keywords into your video filenames.
* Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)
* Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
* Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.
* Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

Google’s Countdown To 2009 Promotes Products & Services

Did you know Google has a countdown to 2009 calendar? It is available at google.com/countdownto2009/ and it basically is a dressed up calendar with ways to use Google for the holidays. Each day of the calendar has a new Google tip for the holidays. There is also a mobile version and it can be added to your iGoogle home page.

So far, Google has offered tips on using Google Product Search, using Google Docs for greeting cards, searching for scores, conversions, gifts, and many other services. It is a cute way for Google to promote their search services. Here is a screen capture of what I see on December 16th at the countdown to 2006.

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Settings Section & Enhances Crawl Rate Controls

The Google Webmaster team announced three main things at their blog over the past day or so. The first we covered, was the new Google help discussions area. The second was adding a new settings link in webmaster tools to consolidate some features. The third item is enhancements to controlling your crawl rate.

Let me take you through the last two in more detail.

Google has moved four features to this new settings area. The features include setting your geographic target, controlling your preferred domain, opting in to enhanced image search and setting your crawl rate control. The crawl rate control will be discussed below, cause that feature was slightly changed. Here is a picture of the new settings page:

Google enhanced the crawl rate controls to let you either choose to let Google determine the best control rate or let advanced users pick their own crawl rates. Do note, like I said at the Search Engine Roundtable, some webmasters are reporting that they are unable to change their control rates. Here is a picture of the new AJAX slider you can use to change your crawl rate at a more granular level:

Free .EDU & .GOV Backlinks

Obtaining high-quality backlinks is obviously the undisputed king in any SEO campaign. You need targeted backlinks with good anchors to really drive your rankings in the SERPS.

Everyone knows about spamming around do-follow blog comments on Wordpress blogs but what about getting links on coveted EDU or GOV domains?

EDU and GOV links have authority. The problem with gaining backlinks on GOV and EDU domains is the work it involves and is generally impossible to search out any webmaster on those domains for a link exchange opportunity.

Fortunately there are tons of EDU and GOV domains out there– we just need to find them, and Google makes this process faily simple.

Running the Google command site:.gov or site:.edu will tell Google to only show results from those two type of domain extensions. So, if I wanted to find Wordpress blogs on .edu or .gov URL’s I would run something like site:.gov wp-admin or site:.edu wp-admin. That will give you a few thousands Wordpress blogs to check out, but also try site:.edu blog or site:.gov blog or site:.edu comment.php, etc. for other blogs that may have comment forms enabled. Those searches bring up a few million results.

Ever wonder how blackhatters compete on the most competitive terms in the world (like Viagra)? EDU backlinks of course! (And lots of other techniques)

So I’ve located a blog on the Harvard school site, actually a student blog hosted by Wordpress MU. Wordpress MU is great and I will discuss it further in a later post but regardless I have successfully placed a link on an EDU domain — Harvard Law at that. (and a note to everyone, thay have the MU blog creation turned off unless you own a Harvard domain e-mail address.)

And that concludes this tutorial. Getting quality EDU and GOV backlinks just takes a little bit of imagination, and with patience you will soon get in to the groove. It may take a bit of frustration starting out but once you hit the jackpot you’ll be thankful you took the time!

Google 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist; Fastest Rising Searches

Google’s official list of the most popular search activity for 2008, aka Zeitgeist, has yet to make its debut, but the search giant has been leaking out tasty tidbits of data to get us salivating for even more search data.

The fastest-rising search terms of 2008

1. Obama
2. Facebook
3. Att
4. iPhone
5. YouTube
6. Fox news
7. Palin
8. Beijing 2008
9. David Cook
10. Surf the channel

These queries have seen the most growth since 2007. It will be interesting to see which ones stick around for 2009, and compare scorecards at that point. Facebook, iPhone and YouTube are the most likely candidates, though Obama could prove to have some staying power. Sarah Palin, Beijing 2008 and American Idol David Cook are most likely to fall off the radar screen.

Holiday gift-giving with Google

In honor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2008, Google Base posted the early trends appearing in millions of searches for the most popular gifts so far this holiday season. In addition to the overall list of popular products, Google reported cold weather apparel including branded searches for “north face jacket” and “burton jacket”, as well as wacky searches for “ugly christmas sweaters” and “dog sweaters”.

Top gift / product searches overall

1. nintendo wii
2. wii fit
3. ipod touch
4. xbox 360
5. nintendo ds
6. ipod nano
7. uggs
8. nikon d90
9. zune
10. digital picture frame

The Google Holiday Shopping guide breaks down more popular gift categories on Google Product Search, including the Top 10 searches for Video Games & Toys, Winter Apparel and Specialty Foods. Bonus savings offers are being extended to shoppers who use Google Checkout at hundreds of partner retailers.

Do-It-Yourself trendspotting at Google

Until the official 2008 Zeitgeist is available, the research tools at both Google Insights and Google Trends are simple ways to look up the popularity of a topic (no matter how obscure), compare web search volume for different personalities or websites over the course of 2008, or a single day or month.

Yahoo Launches Search Assist For Image Search

Yahoo has rolled out the Search Assist feature to Image Search. For example, a search for images on barack obama will return images within the actual Search Assist bar. Here is a screen capture:
To generate search assist image results, go to Yahoo Image Search and begin typing. If the query is popular enough and can be refined, Yahoo will show images within a different refinement category. So in the example above, the first image on the left, is a refinement option to see [barack obama family] pictures.

In addition, after you search, you can click on the little up arrow under the search box, to open up Search Assist. This feature, i.e. opening the search assist box after a search, is new.

Yahoo also said they will be launching Search Assist for Images on Yahoo.com soon.

Happy Thanksgiving & Programming Note

Happy Thanksgiving Search Engine Land readers! Today, in observance of the holiday, we hope to not write here today. So make sure to tune in tomorrow for today’s search news and tomorrows.

To give you something fun to look at, I’ll post what I did at the Search Engine Roundtable, a collection of special Thanksgiving logos from across the search industry.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Google’s Logo:


Live.com’s theme:


Ask.com’s theme:


DogPile’s logo:


AOL’s logo (which is also animated):


FriendFeed’s Logo:


Search Engine Roundtable’s theme:


Cre8asite Forums Logo:

Live Search Launches Instant Cashback For eBay Purchases

Microsoft just announced Live Search instant cashback rewards. This instant reward currently only applies to items purchased at eBay. If you make a purchase at eBay, using Live Search Cashback, you should see the rewards instantly in your PayPal account. Yes, you won’t have to wait 60 days to see the money.

Clearly, having instant cashback rewards with all their partners is something we would love to see. But for now, having eBay give you instant cash back is really nice to have.

What about all the past rewards pending 60 day approval via eBay? Well, I checked one of my orders and I currently do not see my cash back reward in my PayPal account. So I assume this won’t impact past orders.

This is one way to get users to trust the Microsoft Live Search Cashback program is to offer the rewards instantly. This is not exactly their response to the major distrust they earned over Black Friday, but it does help.

Microsoft in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion?

Microsoft is in talks to acquire Yahoo’s online search business for $20 billion, reports The Sunday Times. But this report has been described as “total fiction” by Ross Levinsohn, one of the two key players who were to play a major role in the reported Microsoft-Yahoo deal, according to BoomTown . BoomTown says it has also spoken to top sources at Yahoo and Microsoft and all scoff at such a deal now taking place or that either side has been in any such discussions of late.

Under the talk proposal as reported by The Times, Microsoft would support a new management team -- led by Jonathan Miller, ex-chairman and CEO of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media -- to take control of Yahoo. Under the proposal, Microsoft would also provide a $5 billion facility to Miller and Levinsohn who would raise an additional $5 billion from external investors to buy over 30 per cent of Yahoo shares.

The talks with Yahoo involve Microsoft obtaining a 10-year operating agreement to manage the search business. It would also receive a two-year call option to buy the search business for $20 billion. That would leave Yahoo to run its own email, messaging, and content services. It is expected that the operating agreement would boost Yahoo’s income by as much as $2 billion per annum, informs The Times.

Yahoo Launches “Vertical Lens” Search Through BOSS

Yahoo announced an expansion to the BOSS technology named “vertical lens” technology. In short, this allows developers build their own vertical search engines using Yahoo’s search technology, through BOSS. This new technology is replacing Yahoo’s old Search Builder tool.

When we questioned Yahoo as to why they dropped Search Builder for BOSS, Yahoo told us:

BOSS vertical search engine is more powerful. Not only it can support Search Builder’s functionality, it has the following features

* It gets “structured” content from customer sites to allow searchers to navigate and refine their searches.
* It gets proprietary content in real time; the content is searchable immediately
* It builds a vertical lens of the web for the customer and blends the results from this lens with the customer data.
* It customizes ranking based on customer needs: ranking can be recency based, popularity based, or social based

Personally, I have been a Google Custom Search Engine user, but I am very interested in giving Yahoo’s solution a try on some of my sites.

YouTube Defaults Videos In HD Format: But Forgets Embed Feature

YouTube announced that all videos on their web site will now be in the wider format HD format, 16:9 ratio. The YouTube player is now 960 pixels wide, as opposed to the standard format of 4:3 ratio. 4:3 aspect ratio videos will continue to play in the wider format, but YouTube has added black borders to the right and left of the video, to fill that space.

YouTube has a help document describing how to upload better quality videos. It includes using MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format with MP3 audio and a video resolution of 480×360 or higher with a frame rate of 24fps or higher.

Below is an embedded version of me covering the news on video. Note, the default embed code still uses the old 4:3 aspect ratio. Why not give the new format or at least an option for it in the “customize” section?

Here is the default embed code, converting my 19:6 ratio to a 4:3:



Here is when I use code by a third party to make it in HD format

Google Page Rank - What Do You Know About it

Whether you are a search engine optimiser, a web master or you simply want to know how search engines work, you need to know about Google page rank. This article explains how Google determines trusted sites and elaborates on some of the factors in detail including the PageRank algorithm.

Page rank, an introduction

Google uses the ‘page rank algorithm’ amongst many other factors to determine which web pages are displayed at the top of search results. Expressed in a range from 0 to 10, the algorithm essentially ‘confers’ ranking from one page to another. Thus, for example, if a page rank 6 page links to you and there are no other external links on that page your page potentially gets a page rank boost of up to 4.8 (only a maximum of around 0.8 of the page’s own rank can be conferred). The reality is that the conferred ranking is distributed across ALL links on that page so a page rank 5 page with 5 links on it confers at most 0.8 page rank to each of its linked-to pages.

In practice, page rank is something the webmasters tend to obsess about, frankly because it is one of the few visual measures of ranking provided by Google, other than of course the presence of a site at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Page rank is, in fact, a measure of . . .page rank. Many webmasters rigidly refuse to trade links with sites with lower page rank than their own, regardless of relevance. This is a mistake.

There are a good many page rank 0 websites that appear at the top of the results for relatively competitive terms. Equally some high page rank sites don’t appear for their target keywords. All of this indicates that, as you may expect, page rank is but one of many ranking factors in the Google algorithm.

The Google algorithm has developed over time and is far more complicated than it used to be. For example trusted sites will have higher search rankings and Google is known to have had teams hand reviewing high traffic and ‘major brand’ sites. The ranking that really matters is overall ranking in the SERPs. Over the last few years many methods have developed to improve a page’s rank. Today, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of promoting a site’s overall search ranking by using a combination of various legitimate techniques.

Link Building

Google’s page rank and indeed your overall position is based on how well linked a site is. Link building is the process of creating (on your own site and on other people’s) relevant links to improve a page’s SERPs ranking. The more relevant sites that link to a site, the higher it will rank for relevant search terms. In contrast, having random or off-topic links to a site will not really improve its search ranking and may indeed harm it, particularly if you have returned or ‘reciprocated’ those links. This is not to say that reciprocal linking is a bad thing (contrary to the opinions of some in the industry).

Google still rewards on-topic reciprocal links provided that they are properly acquired. Decent, on-topic links with relevant terms in the link text or anchor text from legitimate sites should create sustainable long term ranking. The focus here is on relevance and the ranking of the other site in the SERPs — not on whether it is a PR5 site or not.

On-Page Content and Code Optimisation

Early search engines used to heavily rely on META tags - these were created by the web designer to describe their own site and write their own keywords. However since these are easily manipulated (and abused), modern search engines such as Google index or crawl pages’ content and determine their own descriptions and keyword relevance based upon on-page content in combination with META tags, keyword density, the use of heading tags and so forth.

Designing pages to contain only relevant content to a subject is thus vital for good SEO. Each page should try to be specific to a particular topic (and include relevant keywords) but of course link to other topics. Generally it is important to make the first section of text in a page concise and relevant to the content of the rest of the page. The importance of fresh, unique, regularly updated content cannot be overstated.

Google to shut down Lively by end of 2008

Google has decided to shut down Lively , an online tool that allows users to create 3D (three dimensional) virtual chat rooms where they can invite friends and chat with them online. According to the company, Lively will not be available after December 31st, 2008. Lively was launched in July 2008.

“It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams,” Google has said .

Niniane Wang, an engineering manager at Google, had developed Lively as a part of Google’s 20 per cent project that allows the company’s employees to spend one day a week working on projects outside their day-to-day responsibilities.

Five tips for creating SEO friendly Flash

Ready to optimize Flash content using SWFObject 2.0? Here are five tips to help you get started. But before you jump ahead, remember that while Flash accessibility programming has become the best means to get your Flash content recognized by spiders, the fact still remains that when it comes to website design for search engine performance, textual content still reigns supreme.

Include traffic-driving, keyword-based messages. Understand the keywords your target market is searching for, and feature them in the messages within your Flash content. If replicated in Flash replacement content, these keywords have the potential to drive traffic to your website.

Emphasize language over images. When deciding on your Flash design scheme, remember that while language can be replicated in replacement content, the same cannot be done for images. Therefore, whenever possible, leave your images out of your Flash content (you can optimize image files separately) and focus on content that can be replaced and recognized by engines.

Use videos that contain content that can be “replaced.” Customer-engaging video content with keyword-rich messages can now actually help stimulate search engine visibility if it is replicated in text form. Just remember that if your video primarily consists of dialogue, the “spoken words” must also be available in readable form to qualify to be “replaced” in text form.

Include links in replacement content, If your Flash content features links to other important parts of your website, make sure to include them in the Flash replacement content, making them visibile search engine crawlers.

Avoid spam tactics. Make sure the replacement content made available for search engines is an accurate representation of the Flash content that is made available for users.

Google SMS Search now offers internet like experience

Google India has launched a newer version of its SMS Search service that allows users to SMS their query to 9-77-33-00000 at the cost of a regular SMS and get instant answers. According to the company, the new Google SMS Search service is available across all operators on both GSM and CDMA mobile phones across India.

Google claims that its new SMS-based search service works just like its internet search and can offer cricket scores, stock updates, Indian Railways train schedules, PNR (train ticket) status, horoscopes, movie show-times, latest news, flight status, weather information and facts & figures. Google SMS Search service can also work as a local business search, dictionary, calculator and currency convertor.

“No longer do you need to remember complicated strings to put before your query, you can search as if you are searching on Google web search – we will do all the hard work to understand your query and give you the best results on SMS,” Google India has said.

Google Hosting Time-Life Photo Archive, 10 Million Unpublished Images Now Live

TimeWarner and Google have announced that starting today Google will make available millions of images from the Life Magazine photo archive. The vast majority (97 percent) of these images have never been seen by the public (they were sitting around in physical envelopes). These are hard-copy photographs that have been or are being scanned by Google and will be hosted by Google. They will show up in Google.com and Google Image search results. All these photos are available in high-resolution (5 and 6 megapixels).

The images will be free to use for “personal and research purposes” but will be digitally watermarked to prevent unauthorized or unlicensed commercial uses. There are links to appropriate contacts for those who want to use the images commercially.

The images are labeled by subject(s) and organized by decade and category. They can also be searched by photographer and date. In other words you can search for all images by a particular photographer in a particular year or decade.

Why would TimeWarner do this? The company merchandises the photography and there’s a link on every page to a Time page where people can purchase the image:

Today about “three million images” are present, according to Google’s RJ Pittman, and roughly seven million more will be added as they’re scanned over time.

The photos are accessible through a dedicated front door but are also integrated into the core image search index. Pittman said that working on this project for roughly a year has yielded benefits and improvements that will be integrated into Google image search as a whole. He added that Google is looking to make image search, including the interface, better and suggested that the Life archive represents something of a preview of how Google image search could develop over time.

Google isn’t monetizing these images specifically at the present.

Facebook launches new feature to remind users of upcoming birthdays

Social networking site Facebook has added a new feature that can remind users of upcoming birthdays of their friends via an email notification. “If you opt in, you will receive an email on the weekend summarizing the upcoming birthdays of your friends for the next week,” according to Facebook .

“That’s good news for all of us who want more birthday information. It’s bad news for Birthday Alert and its clones that already do that on Facebook,” writes Michael Arrington on TechCrunch . “Birthdays are big business. Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch started their social network Bebo with a simple birthday reminder service. That service had 100 million users at one point and still brings in $4 million per year in revenue from e-cards and gift purchases. Bebo was funded in the early days from birthday reminder revenue.”