Have you seen the "Make Money on Google" advertisements in Google? If not, your'e really not missing out ... Most of the ads you'll find for "Make Money" are worthless, nevertheless ... many people are taken in by the lure of easy money, and apperently Google, is not too happy about people being ripped off by the worthless ads and has decided to crack down on the fraud ... Though most people have enough sense to take the ads at face value ... there are many that may believe that the ads are legitimate based solely on the misconception that if it's seen on the front page of Google, there may be some merit to it. Poor Soles ...

Image Credit: Barry Schwartz

Even though there have been reports of these worthless "Make Money on Google" ads for some time now, Search Engine Watch recently reported that Google is cracking down on ads they feel may be related to AdWords fraud. Moreover, Google has also reported taking against the account owners too ... A thread in Google's AdWords Help Forum shows evidence that Google is serious and even stated future account termination for violations.

Florida SEO Says, "Dear JavaScript ... Will You Ever Forgive Me? "

In my last post ... I attempted to explain how pure JavaScript menus were not good for SEO. However, after reading how the message came across to some of my readers, I feel it's probably best if I add some clarification. Thanks to Dan Switzer at PengoWorks for pointing out that my post needed some explanation. What I mentioned regarded the usage of pure JavaScript menus -Not All- JavaScript menus. If my post confused anyone, I apologize. There are lot's of SEO friendly menus that incorporate both JavaScript and yet maintain good web design practices ... So, now let's take a look at a few that stuck out with me.

In my humble opinion, menus that use JavaScript to manipulate the DOM (Document Object Model) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to handle styling, maintain a good balance between usability and provide a dynamically appealing experience.

Okay ... So Show Me Some Cool Stuff Now

Before I show the following examples I want to point out the main factor that make these menus search engine friendly is the accessibility of the links to the robots. These menus do not rely on JavaScript to display the content either.

The first example here is from one of the most respected names in design ... A List Apart. Here Dave Shea provides an excellent detail on creating a menu implementing CSS Sprites with JQuery.

1. CSS Sprites2 - It's JavaScript Time

A List Apart
by: Dave Shea

Next, one of my favorite designers, Collis Ta'eed provides in exhaustive detail, everything required to create a very attractive and effective tabbed content area using CSS & JQuery ...

2. Slick Tabbed Content Area using CSS & JQuery

NetTuts
by: Collis Ta'eed

Soh Tanaka offers a very clean and attractive JQuery & CSS menu. Aside from issues with IE6's non-support of the :hover psuedo-class for elements other than anchor tags, this is a very good menu and degrades gracefully with JavaScript disabled.

3. Sexy Drop Down Menu w JQuery & CSS

Noupe
by: Soh Tanaka

Clark gives a solid example of how to create an animated drop down menu that also degrades well with JavaScript disabled - The key here is that the animation on the list elements is acceptable regardless of whether the visitor has JavaScript enabled.

4. Animated Drop Down Menu with jQuery

ClarkLab

Okay ... I'm not a great designer by any sense. But, when I created this site I decided I wanted a little DHTML action and of course promote good SEO techniques at the same time ... So, I used Adobe's Spry  Accordion Widget to build my right navigation ... It too degrades gracefully with JavaScript disabled - The menus tabs will simply open up if JavaScript is not activated.

5. SEO Compliant Spry Accordion Menu

by: Adobe Lab

There are many excellent examples out there ... I really just wanted to take a few minutes to clarify the difference between a pure JavaScript menu and a menu that uses JavaScript and CSS.

That's it.

SEO 101: Search Engine Robots Can't Follow Links in Pure JavaScript Menus

I've recently been receiving some interesting quotes for SEO services with Florida Search Engine Optimization. As part of the standard procedure I employ when reviewing a prospective client's site, I inform them that site architecture is very important and therefore must be taken into consideration. On several occassions I've suggested the removal of JavaScript based menus, and was met with a challenge. One of the prospective clients asked me why it was neccessary. So, I explained the mechanics of a crawler to him in some detail. The other prospective client wasn't all that trusting at first, so he decided to get a second opionion from another SEO before giving me the go ahead. I didn't have any problem with that ... I've been doing SEO for a while now and I've yet to find a client that accepted my opinion of a site review on blind faith regardless of the successful campaigns I've demonstrated.

SEO Experience Required - A Case for SEO Standardization?

What happened next really suprised me. I expected the need to debate my case with the prospective client that was not all that warm to me. However, I was actually opposed by both client's SEO's. Yes, that's correct. Both of the prospective client's SEO's were baffled as to why I suggested having text based menus. Oh yeah ... we SEO's tend to think they know everything ...

After receiving the suggestion for the menu removal, one of the SEO's mentioned to my client, "It's not important ... just make an XML sitemap so the robots can find you ... " I found that rather amusing. However, I found the other SEO's comment to be just as interesting as the first's. He simply stated that "He's even made Flash based sites rank on the first page ... " Thing is, the client requested a quote for services with me primarily due to the SEO's lack of effectiveness ... said SEO didn't so much as provide one case-in-point example - Pwned. So an experienced SEO is essentially stating that by providing an XML sitemap to the navigation of a site, serious issues arising from JavaScript based menus can be resolved. Okay - I don't think so ... But, let's see how accurate this is ... or isn't.

To Crawl or Not to Crawl? That Is ... Important.

A web site's internal link structure is very important when considering SEO. Almost any Decent SEO will attest to this. So why is it important? Because a web site is really nothing more than a group of pages linked together. Granted the linking relationships can become quite complex but it's really just a  Web of Links. When robots can't determine what is and isn't a link, they can't move from link A to B ... Link A was never realized.

To demonstrate ... Let's take a look at a site that employs JavaScript navigation and may not neccessarily require having highly crawlable links. I'm going to use Deluxe-Menu.com for this example - It's a very nice site that uses a JavaScript based menu, and does so with impunity - The site's entire theme is provided on the home page.

From the Eyes of a Spider - Where's the Web?

So what we see here is a screen shot of the site's navigation ... We can clearly see the links for Home, Product Info, Samples, Download, Purchase and Support in the menu. Simple enough. However, if we inspect the internal linking of the page through a text-only browser such as Lynx,  it also shows that there are no visible traces to these links. The screen shot below is from the SEO text browser over at domaintools.com which, I have quite a habit of using ...

So what are we're looking at here? This basically provides a detail of the elements a search engine robot would recognize when they visit a site. Blue signifies an anchor or link element. Red signifies images - for this example it isn't relevant to us whether those images are also links. The first link we see at the top of the page is for the site's logo, deluxe-menu.com. The next link we see in the document structure is for the site's sitemap which comes directly after the JavaScript menu. Notice how there are no links elements recognized by the text browser for the menu. A crawler would not identify this as a link either.

Okay, so I wouldn't expect someone in the C-Suite to be able to gauge the performance or effectiveness of a web site. But for an SEO? This should be first year  ... I find an unusually high amount of people claiming to be a "professional SEO" that don't know the first thing about web design, web development, Server Side programming or even HTML for that matter ...

In short ... This is old hat.

While I was hacking and cursing my way through a routine to convert RSS feeds in to HTML ... I had an idea. I thought, "Wow, maybe there's another way to do this ..." Converting RSS can be messy so I opted for a much easier and cleaner solution ... JSON. For those Ajax pros out there ... have a heart ... I'm definitely a nOOb at JSON ... I just wanted to share my experience because the introduction and experience was enlightening ... at least to me it was.

Before I go in to this, I am offering this obligatory warning. What I'm about to do may not be in compliance with Google's T.O.S. So, if you get yourself in a pickle with the big G ... It's on you. You've been warned.

What I wanted to do is create dynamic and fresh content for say ... Oh the news. That's a no brainer. Typically you could just grab some RSS feeds and embed them in your content. So, What if you wanted the HTML from say ... Google's news ... Hmmm? You could use a SOAP request to Google for the info ... But SOAP won't be supported by Google for much longer ... So, that's no good. That's where Google's RESTful JSON interface comes in. According to Google documentation for their AJAX Search API, The interface was created for developers that need to have access to Google's Search API in non-JavaScript environments. The docs provide the base URL's to retrieve results for several of their searchers. Here' s a list of all the types of searchers you can access remotely.

• Web Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web
• Local Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/local
• Video Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/video
• Blog Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/blogs
• News Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news
• Book Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/books
• Image Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images
• Patent Search: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/patent

So I decided to have my hand at grabbing some news ... Here we go ...

<!--- Create a Couple Vars for the Search Params ... ---> 

<cfset gQuery = #ReReplaceNoCase("ColdFusion","\s+","%20","ALL")#>

<cfset qRegion = #ReReplaceNoCase("Fort Lauderdale","\s+","%20","ALL")#>



<!--- Call Google's AJAX Service ---> 

<cfset gData = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news?v=1.0&rsz=large&#qRegion#&q=#gQuery#">



<!--- Save the Result to a Var ---> 

<cfhttp

   url="#gData#"

   method="get"

   result="gDataResult">

</cfhttp>



<!--- Make the Data is JSON --->

<cfset gData = #SerializeJSON(gDataResult,false)#>



<!--- Clean up the Result Data with RegEx --->

<cfset gData = #REReplace(gDataResult.FileContent, 

      "^\s*[[:word:]]*\s*\(\s*","")#>

<cfset gData = #REReplace(gData, "\s*\)\s*$", "")#>



<!--- Make Sure We Have JSON ... --->

<cfif !IsJSON(gData)>

  <h3>Uh Oh ... Somthing Went Terribly Wrong ... <br />

      But! Don't Fret ... Coders are Hard at Work to Get Things Up ... <br />

      Right Away ...  ;)

  </h3>



<!--- If the JSON is Good, Deserialize It. --->

<cfelse>

    <cfset gData = #DeserializeJSON(gData)#>



<!--- Create a Var for the Reponse Data   --->

<cfset response = #gData.responseData.results#>

  <cfloop from="1" to="#ArrayLen(response)#" index="ndx">

    <cfoutput>

      <p><strong>

          <a href="#response[ndx].unescapedurl#" rel="nofollow" 

          target="_blank">#response[ndx].titleNoFormatting#</a>

          </strong><br /><br/>

          #response[ndx].content# <br /> <br />

      </p>

    </cfoutput>

  </cfloop>

</cfif>

The Google Search API's Class reference has a list of all the arguments you can include as URL parameters that will give you plenty of options to customize your results ...

After reading this post you won't be able to "Master Search Engine Rankings" ... However, with some simple guidelines, you can create an effective plan to put your analytics data to work for you. Before I jump on my soapbox and start preaching the gospel of SEO, I want to state for the record that there isn't one absolute way to plan out an SEO strategy.To be honest, I don't think I've ever taken the same exact approach for any web site I've worked on ... and I've worked on quite a few over the years.

SEO is to Analytics as Grapes are to Wine

When I was in college I waited tables at a really exclusive restaurant because ... well, I could make decent money if I could sell steak and wine. Every day we would have lessons from an in-house sommelier that would instruct us about all the different features of what ever wine they had to offer. I really didn't know much about wine so I tried to get this guy to tell me everything he knew. So, I asked, "What do I need to know to sell the best wines?" and he said ... "It's grape juice ... just tell the customers what's it tastes like ..." That made it ridiculously easy to look at wine as nothing more than ... sour grapes ... my wine sales soared after that ... The point is ... SEO Analytics are not mysterious, esoteric and complicated. People are though ... and many SEO's and web masters don't really "get the point" to having analytics data.

SEO Analytics Data » Looks So Good

I hate to be a buzz kill but in my book there really isn't anything exciting about ... data. Maybe if some hot naked blonde was presenting it to me ... I might be a bit more interested ... but that doesn't happen ... everyday. Now don't get me wrong, there are some great software applications that display visual depictions of rankings, conversions, click-patterns, visitor trending and heat maps, in uber cool Flash and Flex applications or snazzy charting and graphics, but the only thing these visuals are representing is data. That's it.

Analysis Paralysis is Not Good

When I first started in SEO I was working for a company with a fairly large base of resources and tools at my disposal to research, review, study and learn all about the SEO field. That wasn't necessarily a good thing. Though I have a voracious appetite for knowledge ... I found that after a while I wasn't being all that effective with all of this stuff I learned. I had to keep what I could use everyday and leave the rest for later. So, that got me looking in to some GTD solutions ... more stuff to learn ... but, this time the learning was definitely worth it.

Research » Plan » Execute

That's it. This is my big secret to mastering search engine rankings ... It's that simple. Please note that I said simple ... not easy. If you want your analytics data to work for you ... you need to know what metrics are important to you, and which one's are not. Since I do SEO work mostly in the services sector, most of my clients are interested in generating business leads. Based on that, the most important metric for me to measure is the value of a new client for my clients. Once I have that figured, I move in to action by setting up goals and objectives. SEO Analytics data is simply the information required to create ... A Plan. Once I know the key performance indicators for my campaigns, I set up a plan to either increase or maintain the positive aspects and reduce the threats and liabilities. As soon as I forge a solid plan of action ... I execute. After I execute ... I go back to the analytics data, do my research, come up with another plan and execute again. Guess what I do next.

Goal Conversions are The Bottom Line

Recently there seems to be a big shift in focus in the SEO industry regarding the importance of conversions over search engine rankings. This concept really sounds like a no-brainer to me ... probably because I was trained in SEO by a company that earned income solely from their lead generation ... If our rankings didn't turn into conversions for our clients ... We didn't complete our goals ... We lost our clients. The bottom line for my SEO strategy has always been focused toward online conversions of search traffic.

So Why Are Conversions Important » Now?

Last year Google ramped up their personalized search initiative which effectively tailors search results from behavior based user data ... According to Google's Matt Cutts, there needs to be a shift in the way SEO's currently operate. WebProNews's Mike McDonald recently asked Matt "Is Ranking Dead?" In response to Mike Matt stated,

"I'm not sure I would say ranking is dead but it's not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It's great if you're ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn't help you very much."

"The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don't worry about 'can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase ' ... "

The video below is from the interview with Matt Cutts and Mike McDonald at PubCon LasVegas ...

Furthermore, Google's working diligently on their Universal Search model and SEO's need to be able to adapt to Google's ever changing environment by learning to develop and initiate a broader range of tools to complete the conversion equation by bringing in targeted search traffic. For the SEO industry this means you need to focus more than ever before on building campaigns that are targeted towards conversions and not so much on rankings. However, it is important to note that rankings are only a metric, and have always been only part of the equation that is required to increase conversions. Obtaining search engine rankings without actually benefiting from that positioning is not very useful.

SEO is Changing » Is Your SEO Strategy Changing Too?

Recently there was a guest post by Eduard Blacquiare on Joost de Valk's site entitled, "Measuring SEO » Why Rankings Are Worthless". In his post he mentions several key points supporting the transition of rankings-based success to a conversion focused model. Some of the key factors Eduard mentioned are:

• Ranking Checkers » Google has recently been blocking some automated ranking testing equipment.
• Personal Search » Google is putting a great emphasis on their efforts to tailor their search results.

Furthermore, Eduard continues in his post with his view on things we can do to measure our success.

• Measure the Growth Rate of Search Engine Traffic ...
• Measure the Growth Rate of Search Engine Traffic per Keyword ...
• Measure the Growth of Conversions from Search Engine Traffic ...
• Measure the Growth of Conversions from Search Engine Traffic per Keyword ...

Personalized Search » What About Traffic from Nationally Focused Search Terms?

This is a topic I would like to discuss with Matt myself... In Matt's discussion with Mike McDonald, he mentions searching for the word "bank" will illicit a different result in the United States than it would in Great Britain. This is due in part because part of the metrics to determine personalized search results are based on the user's I.P., their search trends and their search behavior. From what we can infer from what Matt stated, personalized search result are relevant to the term as well as user data. Though personal search is playing a big roll in the dynamic, ever-changing environment at Google, I don't believe that competition for keyword ranking is going to be dismissed for nationally focused keywords.

Analytics are Paramount in the Quest to Obtain Conversions

Again, I received a fairly intense introduction to the SEO industry, so I have a solid understanding of the importance of conversion statistics. One of the first tools that I used was ClickTracks, which I still to this day consider a powerful tool in any SEO's arsenal. However, I recently also picked up a copy of the absolutely fantastic book, "Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics" by Brian Clifton which I highly recommend for anyone interested in measuring the success of their SEO marketing campaigns.

A Little Gem at the End

So, now that you've gotten this far, I can only assert that you are interested in the success of your SEO campaigns. Again there was another excellent post on Joost de Valk's blog, this one by Andre Scholten, on how you can track your organic Google rankings with Google Analytics ... Here's the video on Vimeo ...

Adding a ranking filter in Google Analytics from Joost de Valk on Vimeo.

I've implemented this on several of the campaigns that I am currently running and I can verify that it definitely works. You can now have your organic keyword rankings appear in your Analytics reports by setting up some custom filters in your Google Analytics account. This means you can determine the quality of the conversions you are getting from both paid, and non-paid keywords and their respective positioning in the search engine results pages ... How's that for conversion statistics?

That's It.

Hyves Google Web Site Penalty Checker » As I was perusing through the updates on Seo Master List, I saw an interesting post from Search Engine Watch regarding checking whether your web site is penalized or banished from Google by simply adding "hyves." Before your domain name ... IE (hyves.google.com) Though it may seem strange ... it apparently works. All you have to do is add the name hyves before your domain name and you will get the results ...

According to Marcus Tandler, AKA Media Adonis, the resulting PageRank from the addition of the sub-domain will return the result in the form of the following grades on the Google Tool Bar PageRank indicator:

• PR 0 » The site is banned in Google
• PR 4 » The site has received a Google Penalty
• PR 7 » The site is okay.

You might want to take a look at your site's condition soon though ... once this gets out to the mainstream it's only a matter of time before the big G gets it offline ...

Apache apparently has a server module call mod_negotiation which contains an option called MultiViews. MultiViews is a setting that gives the server the ability to decide the best representation for a requested file that doesn't exist. Furthermore, If MultiViews is enabled on the server, it will take operational precedence before any mod_rewrite directives that you provide in your .htaccess files. Had I been aware of this setting being turned on by default with my host, I would have requested for them to turn if off. However, I was completely oblivious that the setting even existed. The Apache documentation states ...

MultiViews » I should have known

My issue with MultiViews was discovered after a WordPress installation went south. I had installed WP 2.7 with a theme that I created and a group of plug-ins which I typically use. After creating a page for the HTML sitemap, I browsed the URL to make sure everything was working correctly. The destination URL was www.website.com/sitemap/, yet when I browsed to the page, the server was re-writing the URL as www.website.com/sitemap.xml/ which incidentally did not exist. Now, I also had Arne Brachold's Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress installed and I figured that there must be something wrong with either my .htaccess files or his sitemap plug-in on WP 2.7. After uninstalling his plug-in and several others in an attempt to solve the mysterious problem, checking and re-checking my .htaccess files, re-installing WordPress several times and arguing with my host that I have exhausted practically all efforts ... I became quite irritated. It was only when one of the tech support guys that had some experience with Apache realized the issue and sent me an e-mail informing me that the issue was due to MultiViews being enabled on the server. He suggested that I should have had requested to have it turned off ... I should have known.

Woe to you ... on shared hosting

If you are on shared hosting, you may not even know that some shared hosting accounts come equipped with the mod_negotiation module activated by default. If you are using the Apache2handler and want to find out yourself, just create a .php file with phpinfo(); in it and run that ... you should be able see if the mod_negotiation module is loaded ... If you are using the CGI/FastCGI such as I am, I don't know how you can tell ... phpinfo(); doesn't reveal those settings ... for the record contact your host.

SEO Side Effects » Duplicate Content with MutiViews

After doing some research and about MutiViews, I found a thread on WebMasterWorld stating that there may be duplicate content issues from using the MultiViews as well. Apparently MutiViews will allow for multiple URL's to point to the same content ... If you are having issues with duplicate content ... or if you can't seem to get your mod_rewrite directives to work as expected, you may want to take a look at the fantastic article in WebMasterWorld by: JDMorgan "A guide to fixing duplicate content & URL issues on Apache" ...

That's it.

While doing my morning crawl through my email I ran across an article from Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting regarding a recent interview he had with Angus Norton of Microsoft ... after reading the article, I was persuaded to go check out Eric's site to see if there is anything valuable to the SEO world that he was kind enough to share with the rest of the us ... and sure enough there was ...

Perusing through the linkbuilding category on his site, I found a reference to LinkDiagnosis.Com ... knowing Eric to be of a discriminating taste, I investigated a little more ... and I'm glad I did ... This is one gold mine of a tool ...

Once you go to LinkDiagnosis.Com ... you need to click on the download link and install the firefox extension (Sorry IE users) and then restart your browser ... then return to the page and enter your URL or your competitions ...

I'll let you be the judge of the rest ...

That's it ...

Okay ... I haven't been blogging too much as most of those that I speak to have mentioned ... Well ... I have to be honest ... I really haven't been interested enough in anything to write ... maybe I'm just being resistant to the "Once a Week" suggestions from the blogging pros ...

For what it's worth ... the blog bug has somewhat returned ... so, I'll try to get back to writing at least once a week ... Blog ... Blah ... Blah ... Let's see how long this lasts ... Oh yeah ... Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ... If I don't blog again before their times arrive ...

Blog Humbug ...