Search Engine Optimization and Your Internet Profits

I just came through an interesting exercise. No matter you are (or not!) a search engine optimization webmaster, the next article is critical for your SERP's.

The next quiz is divided into 3 sections (On-page optimization, link building and general search engine optimization), and is geared towards the basics -- so hopefully you should all be doing pretty well in it.

The answers are at the end, but please don't peek! Let's get started.

On-Page Optimization

1. Your website sells Green Widgets - what is the best Title tag for your main page?

a. Get Green Widgets, Buy Green Widgets, Green Widgets, Green Widget
b. We have Cheap Green Widgets with great prices and selection
c. Buy Green Widgets Discount Widgets
d. Home Greenwidgets.com

2. Your site map has more than 100 links to your pages. Do you:

a. Create a hierarchy of links, and split up the site map into multiple pages.
b. Keep adding new links, no problem.
c. Add a second page to your site map and add new links to that.
d. Stop adding links to your site map completely.

3. How many words should you consider writing in a page of pure content (such as an article, a blog post or a product review)?

a. 100-200
b. 500-800
c. 200-400
d. 800+

4. What is the optimum keyword density you should aim for?

a. 2%-5%.
b. Keep the content normal, but stuff the page with hidden text in alt tags, meta tags and "white-on-white" text to maximize keyword density.
c. As much as possible, while keeping the content human-readable.
d. Forget keyword density - search engines pay very little attention to it any more. Just focus on writing content that people will want to link to.

5. What should you put inside meta tags?

a. Put your full keyword list in the meta keywords tag, and put your most important keywords in the meta description tag.
b. Ignore the meta tags - search engines don't use them.
c. Write a short description of your website in the meta description tag, and put your most important keywords in the meta keywords tag.
d. Put your most important keywords in the meta keywords tag and don't use a meta description tag.

6. How should you use images on your site?

a. Use the alt tag to accurately describe the each image, and include descriptive content around each image.
b. Put your most important keyword in an alt tags followed by the word "graphic".
c. Just use them wherever it is necessary from an aesthetic perspective, without regard for alt tags because they aren't really that important.
d. Use alt tags to "hide" your full keyword list so you can increase your page's keyword density.

7. Which style tag is preferred by the W3C for emphasizing important text?

a. <b>
b. <strong>
c. <heavy>
d. <bold>

Link Building

8. What types of websites are most trusted by search engines (authority sites)?

a. High PR websites
b. .edu and .gov websites
c. Low PR websites with lots of backlinks
d. Medium to High PR websites with lots of backlinks from other high ranking websites
e. Both b and d

9. Which of these sites will provide the most valuable link?

a. A PR 7 website
b. A PR 5 site closely related to your niche with strong backlinks from .edu and .gov (trusted) domains
c. A website with hundreds of pages of duplicate content that is banned in the search engines
d. A PR 6 website loosely related to your niche but with few 'trusted' backlinks

10. Suppose that you were offered the following 4 choices as a link -- which one would be the most valuable?

a. An optimized contextual link (a link as part of a page's content with proper anchor text) from a closely related PR 5 site's main page content
b. A link on the links page of an unrelated PR 7 site -- shared with 50 other links (and their two line descriptions)
c. A link on the links page of closely related PR 6 site -- shared with 20 other links
d. A PR 6 link from a directory page with 10 other links only

11. If you were building links for greenwidgets.com, what would be your strategy in choosing anchor text?

a. Buy high PR links from closely related sites that offer traffic as well as link wealth
b. Use organic marketing tactics to encourage natural link growth using your site's content
c. Submit articles to article directories and link to your site's inner pages in those articles to build 'deep' links
d. All of the above

12. Which of these four is the most important in assessing a link?

a. The anchor text
b. The PR of the page you're getting the links from
c. The number of outgoing links on the link page
d. The title tag of the link page


13. How many links should you get for your site in the first 6 months (on average)?

a. 50-70 links a month
b. 100+ links a month
c. As many quality links as you can
d. 25-40 a month

General Search Engine Optimization

14. What does PageRank technically measure?

a. The linking power carried by one particular link
b. How many external, inbound links point to a particular page
c. The number and quality of the links pointing to a particular page
d. Your ranking position in the search engines

15. What does the term "Sandbox" describe in reference to Google's SERPs?

a. The ranking factors affecting all new websites that are targeting highly competitive keywords before targeting less competitive keywords
b. Google's system for penalizing sites exhibiting an overly-optimizing back-link structure
c. Google's penalty for building too many links too quickly
d. Google's play area for their staff during lunch break

16. What is the best way for websites with very little content (like ecommerce stores) rank highly for competitive product terms?

a. They have a lot of natural links (one-way, contextual) with optimal anchor text from a wide variety of websites
b. Their pages are stuffed with keywords and "white text"
c. They use content-generating software to spam the search engines and attain false rankings
d. They pay a lot of money to get high PR links

17. Which of these will NOT get your site penalized in Google?

a. Thousands of automatically-generated pages built only for the search engines
b. Building quality links at a steady pace
c. Scraping (stealing) content from other websites
d. Getting links from websites that Google considers to be from a 'bad' link neighborhood

18. Which of these five methods will not give you an accurate estimate of the search demand in a niche?

a. Overture search term figures
b. WordTracker.com numbers
c. Nichebot.com
d. Statcounter.com
e. Google Suggest

19. When designing the site structure of a website, which of the following statements is NOT a good idea?

a. Make a site map that points to each page on the site
b. Attempt to make all pages accessible from the home page by at most 3 clicks
c. Link all of your inner pages to all of your other websites
d. Create a category structure that goes from broad to narrow

20. Which is the best method of getting traffic to your site?

a. Pay-per-click ads
b. Pay for high PR links so that you get a PR yourself, which will help boost your own search engine rankings
c. Submit your website to search engines and popular directories, and focus on creating content
d. Create quality content that people in your niche would want to link to, and then promote that content through article syndication, blogs and forums
e. All of the above

Ok, now that you've answered all the 20 questions, compare your answers to the answer sheet below. This was a fairly basic quiz, so if you get less than 10 right, you should seriously consider reviewing the material in this newsletter.

However, if you got more than 15 right, congratulations -- you've got the basics right. Make sure that you apply these principles to your websites as well, otherwise you wont see good rankings.

Answers Key:

1. c
2. a
3. b
4. d
5. c
6. a
7. b
8. e
9. b
10. a
11. d
12. a
13. c
14. c
15. a
16. a
17. b
18. d
19. c
20. e

Article by Brad Callen, Professional SEO.

Who's Listening to Podcasts?

Podcasting was the breakout Internet phenomenon of 2005. It changed the listening habits of millions of consumers and affected the way radio — and to an extent, television — broadcasters communicated to their audiences.

Bridge Ratings found that approximately 5 million radio listeners downloaded at least one podcast in 2005, and that figure will nearly double in 2006 — and double again in 2007.

The demographic breakdown is more intriguing. On one hand, 78% of those who have ever listened to a podcast are male. However, of that group, women are more likely than men to have listened in the past week.

Read the full details on eMarketer article.

Ad Dimension and Internet Profits Connectivity

Nielsen NetRatings, Inc. provides the industry’s global standard for Internet and digital media measurement and analysis, offering technology-driven Internet information solutions for media, advertising, ecommerce and financial companies which enable customers to make informed decisions regarding their Internet strategies.

They publish weekly and monthly information about different stuff, including but not limited to ad sized used on the Net, site genres where ads are placed and Internet global average usage.

Here are some interesting data about ad formats. If you don't think there is a connection between ad formats and your internet profits, take a closer look at this article and think again.


TOP SITE GENRES: this shows the top 10 site genres where ads were placed between Jan 2-Jan 8, 2006.

Email - 8,775,972,000

General Community - 3,644,250,000

Portals & Search Engines - 3,275,972,000

General/National News - 1,681,028,000

Finance - 1,472,360,000

Sports & Recreation - 1,373,204,000

Entertainment - 946,862,000

Local/Regional - 887,377,000

Games - 755,031,000

Home & Garden - 738,027,000

Other - 4,086,540,000 (*Source: Nielsen//NetRatings)

MOST POPULAR AD SIZES: measured by the number of creative elements.

Leaderboard (728x90) - 13,812

Full Banner (468x60) - 10,348

Medium Rectangle (300x250) - 9,012

Wide Skyscraper (160x600) - 6,993

Non-Standard Dimension - 5,628

Skyscraper (180x150) - 5,235

Unspecified - 5,130

Half Banner (234x60) - 3,938

Square Button (125x125) - 3,781

Button #2 (120x60) - 3,545

Other - 12,659 (*Source: Nielsen//NetRatings)

Global Internet Index: Average Usage
Month of November 2005, Panel Type: Home

Sessions/Visits per Person per Month - 32

Domains Visited per Person per Month - 68

Web Pages per Person per Month - 1,360

Page Views per Surfing Session - 41

PC Time Spent per Month - 27:42:48

Time Spent During Surfing Session - 0:51:23

Duration of a Web Page Viewed - 0:00:42 (*Source: Nielsen//NetRatings)

* Nielsen NetRatings services include the Nielsen//NetRatings Internet audience measurement service NetView, AdRelevance, the leading online ad measurement service, @Plan, the leading target-marketing platform for Internet media planning, buying and selling, WebRF, the industry’s first comprehensive media reach and frequency planning tool, and custom research and analysis. These services enable customers to make informed business-critical decisions regarding their Internet strategies.

Survey Shows Americans' Attitude Toward Top Brands

The study identifies iPod, Google, Oprah and eBay among year's winning brands; Howard Stern, Britney Spears and Hummer are in decline.

Landor Associates, a leading branding and design consultancy, and research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the results of a national survey that examines Americans' attitude toward some of the top brands that made headlines this year.

The 2005 ImagePower Newsmaker Brands Survey identifies which high-profile brands came out on top in consumer's minds, which brands suffered, and what Americans think their future holds for 2006.

Conducted in mid-December, the survey examines the year's most noteworthy brands within categories such as Internet, portable technology, telecommunications companies, television programs and networks, and celebrity brands.

The research identifies the top 20 winning and losing brands for 2005, and offers predictions for their performance in 2006. By surveying a representative sample of the population, the survey offers significant insight into brand perceptions and trends for the upcoming year.

"Brands make a powerful impact on people, especially in today's world of ever-increasing consumer choice," said Allen Adamson, Managing Director of Landor Associates in New York.

"This survey highlights the importance that brands play within many aspects of our lives, and reveals some interesting trends, such as the dominance of technology and Internet-based brands. Companies that take a proactive approach to managing their brands are in a much better position to earn respect from their customers, as exemplified by the top-ranked brands on the list."

Top 20 winning and losing brands/celebrities in 2005 and how consumers think their public images will fare in 2006

2005 Winners

1 iPod
2 Google
3 Oprah Winfrey
4 eBay
5 Las Vegas1
6 Lost
7 Amazon.com
8 DVR technology
9 Yahoo
10 Extreme Makeover Home Edition
11 Desperate Housewives
12 Ford Escape hybrid
13 Subway
14 Fox
15 Xbox 360
16 New York City
17 ABC
18 Target
19 National Football League (NFL)
20 Sirius Satellite Radio

2006 Predicted Winners

1 Google
2 Oprah Winfrey
3 eBay
4 Las Vegas
5 iPod
6 Amazon.com
7 Yahoo
8 ABC
9 DVR technology
10 New York City
11 Subway
12 National Football League (NFL)
13 Fox
14 Xbox 360
15 Lost
16 Brian Williams
17 Extreme Makeover Home Edition
18 NBC
19 Kohl's
20 Nascar

2005 Losers

1 United Airlines
2 Howard Stern
3 Britney Spears
4 Blockbuster Video
5 Miami1
6 Hummer
7 Clear Channel Communications
8 National Basketball Association (NBA)
9 Houston1
10 Major League Baseball (MLB)
11 SBC/AT&T
12 The Apprentice (Donald Trump)
13 FIFA World Cup 2006
14 Sidekick
15 Survivor
16 Sears
17 The Gap
18 Sprint/Nextel
19 Weeds
20 Donald Trump

2006 Predicted Losers

1 Britney Spears
2 United Airlines
3 Howard Stern
4 Hummer
5 The Apprentice (Donald Trump)
6 Survivor
7 Blockbuster Video
8 Sidekick
9 Clear Channel Communications
10 Donald Trump
11 National Basketball Association (NBA)
12 Sears
13 SBC/AT&T
14 Weeds
15 Rome
16 Major League Baseball (MLB)
17 FIFA World Cup 2006
18 The Gap
19 Sprint/Nextel
20 iRiver

Among the results, a few key trends stand out:

- Dominance of Internet and technology brands.

The strong showing of Internet and technology companies illustrates the broad appeal these brands have throughout the country. Four Internet brands (Google, eBay, Amazon.com and Yahoo!) are among the top 10 winning brands in 2005, while the iPod brand earned the No. 1 overall spot. The release of the shuffle, nano and video iPods in 2005 combined with effective branding efforts helped iPod continue its domination of the MP3 market. Other technology brands in the top 20 include DVR, Xbox 360 and SIRIUS Satellite Radio.

- Reality TV programs are out, while TV dramas are back in.

In recent years, the abundance of reality television programs has offered audiences plenty of choices, but most Americans now prefer tuning in to dramatic programs. Reality shows "Survivor" and "The Apprentice (Donald Trump)" were named among the top 20 losing brands in 2005, while dramas such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" were named among the winning brands.

- Polarizing celebrity brands.

Britney Spears, Howard Stern and Donald Trump are all deemed "losers" this year, but are all making money with their brand names. Britney Spears has a top-selling perfume, Howard Stern has a $500 million deal with SIRIUS Satellite Radio and Donald Trump continues to grow his brand empire. On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey earned tremendous positive appeal and placed third on the 2005 winning brands list. Oprah continues to generate positive buzz through her giveaways, book club, magazine and various successful extensions of her brand.

- Sports Utility Vehicles lose to hybrid cars.

While SUVs continue to be top-sellers in the U.S., hybrid cars win the battle, as the Ford Escape hybrid makes the winners list and the Hummer ranks No. 6 on the losers list. With the rise in gas prices and increased sensitivity to the environment, drivers realize the importance of hybrid cars and car manufacturers are responding by offering sleeker, more popular models in hybrid form.

Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates (PSB) has nearly 30 years of experience in leveraging consumer opinion to provide clients with a competitive advantage, or more simply -- providing clients with Winning Knowledge.