SEO by Chris Estes

Even the sacred life leads to online marketing. Does that mean I can do holy work and be a Madison Ave. marketer? I was reading the New York TImes this morning on my commute, as I do everyday, and found an article that caught my eye. In a discussion with a friend a couple weeks ago, we were discussing the priesthood and how their membership was dropping off. So I read, to have some interesting point to bring into the discussion. Instead I found something I wasn’t looking for, the Catholic Church using the internet to recruit priest. www.nypriest.com

The story isn’t about internet marketing as much as it is about recruiting to the Priesthood. If you want to read the article, go here.

After reading the article I had to see their website. I somewhat expected a Microsoft Word Style website from 1995 (not much better than mine). At first click I found a very powerful Flash Page. Somebody really did a great job on creating their website. It is neat, clean, and well laid out. One thing that surprised me – it didn’t look very “Churchy.” A good bit of thought went into it and it paid off.

As to the NYPriest.com SEO… There are very few Search Engine friendly elements and though they have a solid page rank could do considerably better. It looks like they have a $1million marketing plan without a complete online marketing campaign.

This SEO test will be a part of a series I want to write about on the effects of the sitemap protocol and if it is really working. Hopefully by the end we will all better understand sitemaps and core principals about XML sitemaps. Stay tuned for more articles on the different sitemap related posts and the tools used.

The experiments

I am going to run an experiment testing sitemap.xml and hanging pages. This will not be a flawless test but it will help me prove my assumptions.

I have been telling clients that if you add a url to an XML sitemap that it will be discovered. Why do I say this? Often times due to different varying factors search engines have a hard time finding pages inside of dynamic content pages. This test is not going to be about accessibility or how content is delivered. The SEO Experiement is only about sitemap files.

The test is going to be limited to hard coding the url into an xml sitemap and see if it can be found. My assumption will not be a solution to linking or standard url structure.

We already know that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will index urls similar to http://www.domain.com/?=123. We also know that pages with session id’s are usually not indexed because of the session variables. What I am trying to prove is that a url listed in an XML sitemap will be found by Google, Yahoo, and MSN without back links and only submitted through the different search engine webmaster tools .

How I am going to do this test is by creating a unique page that is not linked by any other pages and add it to its very own xml sitemap to be discovered. Once I created the pages I will add the sitemap to the webmaster tools section of each search engine. I am going to create another page and add it to a urllist.txt (an old protocol used by Yahoo. In the xml Sitemap I am going to put in 1 page only that is free floating and see how long it takes to get indexed by each search engine. In the urllist.txt file I am going to add another page and see if it is indexed.

Assumptions/problems/and forecast – Hypothesis

The file will be picked up in Yahoo and cached much fast than Google with xml sitemap file. The urllist.txt file will probably not be found on MSN which will be one problem. The other problem with MSN is they don’t yet have a way to add multiple sitemap files through their portal, even though they read robots.txt. The files from the urllist.txt will be picked up first by Yahoo and Google will follow.

Scope

2 html pages

1 sitemap.xml page

1 urllist.txt page

Result

To be continued

Because I don’t want to spoil the experiment I won’t give the specifics locations of the files or exactly how I am going to do it. The experiment could take 1 day or 2 weeks. For now we will see. Stay tuned for the results and summary. More experiments are coming.

Many people ask what is the key to successful SEO? In a short answer there is no one exact scheme or plan that fits every website, except to have a plan. Like in a business if you don’t have a plan then you are destine for failure. With any effective plan you have to know what you want for an end result and how to get there. Effective plans begin with:

• Target Keywords and Key Phrases
• Targeting your audience
• Writing effective content

 Simple right?  If you can maintain and understand those basic things you have a the basis for an effective SEO campaign.  There are many detail postings and strategy oriented Search Engine Optimization articles, always remember to keep it simple.

The word optimization means streamline, simple, and easy.  Keep it simple.  If it seems complex then you should change it. 

In the world of SEO there is constantly some new tool that is forever popping up.  Well I just found a user input search engine that is fully interactive and user contributed, Stumpedia.  I have added several keywords and links.  I have already found a couple ares that can and will be abused.  I am not going to share them as it may cause problems and that isn’t right. 

Google is updating

In addition to that gem of a find I have also started noticing a Google update happening.  Webmaster tools are updated and Page Rank is being adjusted.  I haven’t heard any official word but some major update is going on.

I couldn’t help but share those two bits of information as I begin final preparations for the beginning of the move.  I am still seeking Guest Bloggers.

Search engine marketing by definition is marketing and advertising through search engines. 

If you do a quick search on Search Engine Marketing you will find all types of answers. The most practical answer is advertising through search engines. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are two different marketing techniques. Both use search engines, both use keywords, both can be found on the same search engine result pages (SERP), but both are different. They are different in their approach. Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is paid or sponsored search often called Pay-Per-Click. The most commonly used tools for sponsor search is Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. Search Engine Optimization is for free organic results and used with page content and many other factors discussed at this site.

Both Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing use keywords. They use keywords as a way to sell advertising space. Advertising space? If you have ever noticed along the top and bottom of most Search Engine Result Pages there are links. Those links are being paid to be there. Most all the times the ads are purchased based upon search terms or blocks of search terms.

What does this have to do with search engine optimization? With a joint effort of search engine marketing and optimization can produce a major Return on Investment (ROI). SEO is a long term investment and SEM should be used for the interim. Together the two different approaches can make a big difference on ROI. Using a Pay-Per-Click campaign to "kick start" a marketing campaign is a good idea. Pay-Per-Click offers very little direct SEO advantages besides traffic and visibility. Visibility leads to the potential of bookmarking and linking. Traffic brings search agents to the site also.

Back in the old days, summer 2007, search marketing occasionally gave excellent links. With many sites hosting paid listings on their site, much like SEO by Chris, search bot crawlers would occasionally index paid ads from these text link advertisements. Hosted ads are not supposed to be indexed or crawled, errors do happen (after all humans program the search agents). An ad appearing on a page often means that the ads are contextually relevant giving a credible link. Since October 2007 less of these type of indexing errors. Since these errors are not supposed to happen and should continue to be phased out as indexes are updated.

So what is Search Engine Marketing to Search Engine Optimization? Together in tandem they are part of complete online marketing strategy. Effectively used they will produce a maximum return on investment.