And the Tricks & Scams that Make Google Mad

Cloaking

It’s annoying to search for something on the Web and be directed to a website that has nothing to do with what you searched for. A website involved in cloaking is generally the culprit. This involves setting your website up in a way that causes search engines to see one thing, while human visitors see something completely different. This is the worst offense on Google’s list and should be avoided at all costs. Use the title, keyword and description meta-tags to describe the services that you provide as well as the content that is actually visible on your site.

Shady Links

Google’s page ranking system factors in the number of links that are pointing to a page (inbound links) when it evaluates that page’s importance. The pages with the most inbound links are generally awarded a higher page rank. Due to this fact, many have resorted to what is known as “link farming,” or paying for and acquiring links from brokers, sellers or exchangers. This is a very common issue that Google is quick to crack down on. It works well in the short term, but is not a viable SEO option. Google always notices and the accused website will either be dropped from the rankings or completely removed from Google’s directory.

Duplicate Content

Search engines don’t look kindly upon websites that contain content that is deliberately duplicated within the same site or on other domains. This is often an attempt to manipulate search rankings and gain more traffic. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Keyword Stuffing

The keywords used on a webpage are a major factor in determining that page’s rank. Using too many of the keywords that you’re hoping to optimize for, as well as packing keywords in hidden text, using different-color fonts (white background with white font on top) and tiny text is not a smart move in Google’s eyes. Determine the keywords that are relevant to your site and use them as naturally as possible throughout the context of the website.

Travis is the co-owner of Cache Valley Clash and has significant experience in the digital world. KiTE media is featuring Travis as a guest blogger on the site.

You may not have said it, but you know you’ve thought it.

“What if I made a viral video?” Well there chico, your probability of truly going viral are worse than getting hit by lightning or dying in a plane crash (always reassuring my wife in planes that she’s more likely to get struck by lightening; seems to work). Is there a science to the madness? Has anyone truly tamed the viral beast?

No. No one has.

No one has developed a clear formula to get a viral video every time. One of my good friends I met in the Czech Republic, Corey Graham, mentioned his brother filmed and posted calculated, produced action sports videos on YouTube.com. Like most people that talk about their friend’s YouTube channel, I brushed it off. Since then, Devin Graham, or devinsupertramp, has garnered well over 30 million views. He’s found a niche.

He recently partnered with Vooray and launched a few dozen college kids off a giant ramp into a lake, driven by a four-wheeler pulley system. The video gained 2 million hits in 10 days. What was the science? What was the method? I spoke with Devin a month ago about holding a giant food fight in my fraternity house. I indirectly asked him about his technique, and the number component to his most viral videos was that they were ideas that had either never been done before, or hadn’t been done aesthetically, strategically; showcasing attractive people.

Devin devours youtube searches hundreds at a time. He searches for opportunities, not to piggyback or copy others’ ideas. There has never been a well-filmed toilet papering of a house. Ok, thousands of houses are toilet-papered on youtube, but how many are toilet papered with 20,000 rolls to the point that the house becomes completely white?

Visits: The actual number of visits your site receives.

Page Views: The total number of pages that the visitors to your site viewed.

Pages/Visit: The average number of pages that each visitor to your site viewed.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site after viewing only the home page – they bounced). A bounce rate around 50% is normal.

% New Visits: The percentage of your site’s visits that are new visitors, who have never visited your site. A high number of new visitors suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough for visitors to come back.

Absolute Unique Visitors: How many people came to your site. This report graphs people instead of visits.

Traffic Sources: The different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site.

- Direct Traffic: Visits from people who typed your site URL directly into their browser or clicked a bookmark.

- Referring Sites: Visits from people who clicked to your site from another website (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc).

- Search Engines: Visits from people who clicked to your site from a search engine result page. Ideally this should be the highest source of visitors to your website. A high ratio of search engine visits denotes a well-optimized site that can easily be found online.

We recently heard some music from PJ Simas, an up-and-coming hip hop artist in Northern California. He does a little bit of everything when it comes to music, and you can download all of it at PJsimas.com. You can listen to a few of our favorites below. Enjoy!

PJ Simas – Someone Like You (Remix)

PJ Simas – Please Don’t Go (Mike Posner Cover)

PJ Simas – Liar Liar Remix

PJ Simas – Ocean Drop

http://www.mediafire.com/?kcu41zi3c8ucl3l

Google has introduced a new means of Internet marketing and social media integration: Google +1. Utah businesses can add this new tool to their current Internet advertising game plans. Consumers can use the +1 button to publicly show what they like, agree with, or recommend on the web. This information will be visible to others who are considering viewing a website. The more +1s a website, ad, article has – the more likely it is to receive additional views.

It’s similar to the Facebook ‘Like’ button, but has a much larger potential reach. The +1 button differs from the ‘Like’ button in the sense that it can appear in a variety of places, both on Google and on sites across the web. The ‘Like’ button is limited to Facebook content & fan pages. For example, you might see a +1 button for a Google search result, Google ad, or next to an article you’re reading on an online news site. Your +1’s and your social connections also help improve the content you see in Google Search (potentially affecting Search Engine Optimization and Internet search results).

Ask KiTE media today how to add the Google +1 Button to your website!

Plays a huge role in Search Engine Optimization and how easily searchers will be able to find your website. This tool provides the ability to check the page rank of any website. Try it out! Just enter any web address and press enter.

Search Engine Optimization, SEO – is the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and optimizing the site with those keywords to help ensure that the site places well when those keyword phrases are searched for on the Internet.

Search Engine Marketing, SEM – is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS) through the use of, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. “PAID” is the keyword with regards to SEM.

SERPS, search engine results pages – the results of an Internet search, laid out in page format.

Social Media Marketing, SMM – is an online marketing strategy that involves utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote a product, service or promotion. This is an especially helpful technique used in establishing a brand name.

Link Building – the process of linking to other websites or different pages/sections of one particular website. Link building is divided into two types: internal and external.

Internal Links – keywords that link to relevant pages within the same website.

External Links – keywords that link to other websites. A website benefits in terms of search engine ranking when other websites link to it.

Quality Score – a score given to an ad based on a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

Click Through Rate, CTR – is a measure of the number of users who viewed an ad in relation to those that actually clicked on the ad. It is obtained by dividing the “number of users who clicked on an ad” on a web page by the “number of times the ad was delivered” (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.

Bounce Rate – is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site after viewing only the home page)

Page Rank – is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance in regards to search engine rankings.

Website Optimization – the process of formatting a website and its content to allow greater access for search engines. This is a crucial aspect of any online marketing campaign and must be done in order to improve search engine ranking.

Pay-Per-Click – (not paper click) is an Internet advertising model (a form of Search Engine Marketing) used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. The Google AdWords program is a popular example of pay-per-click advertising.

Cost-Per-Click – is the sum paid by an advertiser to search engines and other Pay-Per-Click hosts (Google, Facebook, online classifieds sites, etc.) for a single click on their advertisement, which directs one visitor to the advertiser’s website.

Organic Search Results – are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being paid advertisements. In contrast, non-organic search results may include Pay-Per-Click advertising. Generally located directly below the Map listings in a Google search.

HTML, Hyper Text Markup Language – is the publishing language of the World Wide Web. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages. HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags, enclosed in angle brackets (like ), within the web page content. A web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome) can read HTML documents and compose them into visual or audible web pages.

Don’t miss out on the potential business opportunities that can discover you through a Google Places listing:

Step 1: Touch It Once

You have several letters to read on your desk, your phone rings, an alert sounds notifying you of a new e-mail, the e-mail has a new task for you to complete, one of your co-workers steps into your office with a question…its easy to get lost in the non-stop tasks of the workplace.

If you spend just 15 minutes per day to revisit, readdress, or reread documents or e-mails, you will waste 97 hours per year where no action is taken.

If you touch it, take action. That’s the first step to great time management. Don’t open the e-mail until you have time to deal with it.

Step 2: Make Lists

Lists help you stay focused on high priorities and highly productive matters. Keeping a list will double your productivity right away. Here’s the rule: list the six most important things you need to do, and get those six things completed each day. That doesn’t mean that you don’t keep a side list of running items that need to be accomplished throughout the week. When you plan each day (see Step 4), you can go to your week’s running list and use that as a menu of items from which to build your list of the six most important things for that day.

Step 3: Plan How Much Time You Will Allocate to Each Task

Do not think about when you will do each task yet. Just determine the amount of time you will realistically dedicate to each task. This is an important step to make sure that the six items on your list can actually be accomplished in a day. If one or more of the items on your list is too big to accomplish in one day, then write down how much time during that day you will dedicate to it. You will take care of bigger projects in manageable chunks of time.

Step 4: Plan the Day

Now that you have allocated amounts of time for each task, you need to plan them into your day. Make sure to set aside time to check e-mail. Remember, if you’re only touching it once, then you need to have a dedicated period of time each day when you can deal with it. Interruptions will undoubtedly arise throughout your day. It’s wise to schedule several brief periods of time for miscellaneous activities – quick meetings, responding to e-mail, etc.

Step 5: Prioritize

Ensure that your plan allows you to complete the most important task on your list first thing in the morning. If you put off your most difficult tasks until the end of the day it is likely that you will find a way to drop them off the list. Make sure most of your day is focused on proactive work and completing your most important tasks, not just the easiest.

Step 6: Ask Yourself, “Will It Hurt Me to Throw This Away?”

Studies show that 80 percent of all filed or stored information is never referred to again. So why hold on to it? To determine whether or not to keep something, ask yourself, “Will it hurt me to throw this away?” Could you get it again if you needed it? The answer is usually yes. Throw it away.

Holmes, C. (2008). The Ultimate sales machine. Penguin Group.