Baidu is the name of the most popular regional search engine in China. It is a search engine specifically for Chinese websites. The process of search engine optimization (SEO) is somewhat similar to general search engines like Google in that content, links, and keywords are important but there are some additional considerations that must be made when optimizing for this engine.
Baidu is a Chinese language search engine. Therefore, if you are trying to get your English website listed in Baidu, you’ll have to get it translated. Consider also that those using Baidu are Chinese and will not be performing searches in English anyways. Having your website converted to any of the Chinese dialects (i.e., Mandarin) requires using a human translator who is a native speaker in the target language. Never trust machine translation software to this job because it is impossible for it to convert the pages into grammatically correct target language.
Baidu prefers sites that are hosted in China. So, you’ll have to obtain hosting space there. Recommendations are to search for hosting and domain services in Hong Kong where web matters are relatively more open than with the mainland. Needless to say, the domain name of the candidate website should end with .cn. or .com.cn. Always make sure you submit your site when doing SEO for Baidu. They have a site submission page just as other major search engines.
Baidu doesn’t allow every kind of website. Don’t even mention the subject of pornography and make no criticisms of the established Chinese government. Baidu practices censorship in these areas. Therefore, the content in your website must be carefully edited to make sure there is no mention of these subject areas.
Keyword densities apply to Baidu just like the general search engines. However the keywords and surrounding content must be in Chinese. Recommendations are that the keyword density should be between 6 and 10% within the content. Keyword trends can also be checked from the Baidu index page. Keyword content should be fresh just as it should be with Google and other search engines. Fresh content indicates that the website is active which gives an indication of relevance.
The quantity of backlinks has more importance than the quality. The opposite is the case with Google. Basically, the more backlinks you get from wherever, the better. Underlying anchor text within the links is important as well and should, of course, be in Chinese. The downside to Baidu’s policy of “everything goes” for links is that there is the potential for link spamming similar to what black hat SEO experts implement. Also, ALT text for images is important just as it is with Google.
Baidu can use Pin-yin for searches. Pin-yin refers to the process of spelling Chinese words in Roman characters phonetically. The process converts the standard Mandarin dialect of the Chinese language into Roman characters that English-speaking people know. The problem is that Baidu does not recognize Pin-yin for keywords. You should also not write web content in Pin-yin because the Baidu indexing robots will not recognize it.
The search engine has a pay-per-click (PPC) program. Part of PPC is getting the right keywords to target and Baidu has a tool for keyword suggestions. This tool is for paid search account holders.
Meta data is very important to Baidu. With Google, meta data is not so important these days but it is still very much so with the Chinese search engine. This includes the title, description, and keywords meta tags. However be aware that they must also be written in Chinese.
In summary, keep in mind that Baidu is not Google. Baidu is used by a significantly different group of users who are still relatively new to the internet. But, if you are doing business with Chinese consumers as your target market, you will definitely have to include this search engine in your SEO strategy and search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns.
Tags: Baidu Search Engine, Baidu SEO, Search Engine Optimization
Yandex is the name of the Russian equivalent of the search engine Google. The name is short for “Yet Another Indexer.” In fact, it is the most popular search engine in Russia. This is probably because it is primarily for Russian websites and text is in the native language of that country. It is estimated that Yandex has between 50 and 60 percent of the market share for regional search engines in Russia.
Like any other search engine, it has its own algorithm for indexing and ranking websites. Search engine optimization (SEO) is just as important for a website listed in Yandex as it is for Google, Yahoo, and Bing and how it’s done is really not that different. Here are a few considerations you should make and some tips when doing SEO for Yandex.
It is helpful to understand a little of the history behind Yandex. By knowing some of the history, you understand the context that you are working in when doing SEO for this engine. Yandex first came on the web scene in 1997 in Moscow, Russia. It was designed to specifically be a Russian language search engine and can handle the semantics of search queries done in the country’s linguistics system. It was founded by CEO Arkady Volozh who had the vision of making the search engine a formidable competitor with Google (which is now the case).
Yandex is somewhat similar to Google in that both use a ranking metric for their pages. Google uses the famous PageRank while Yandex uses what it calls a “Quotation Index.” The quotation index is a metric used to show how trusted a website is in the domain of Yandex. Whereas Google has a very narrow Pagerank (0-10), the Yandex scale ranges from 0 to 150,000. There is really no comparison between the two metrics because those doing SEO in Google desire a higher Pagerank while those doing the same in Yandex seek lower values. For example, trusted, non-public websites in Yandex have values between 150 and 1,000. Just as with Google, Yandex offers a toolbar allowing you can see the quotation index for a site.
Backlinks affect the quotation index of a Russian website. The goal for SEO with Yandex (and with Google) is to get a high number of backlinks to the website being optimized. But volume of backlinks is not the only important factor here. You also want to make sure that the backlinks come from high-quality (trusted) websites already in the Yandex index. Another factor that weighs heavily on backlink quality is the region of the site linking to yours. Not surprisingly, backlinks from Russian websites are given a higher weight. And the same as with Google, relevant backlinks are likewise counted as more significant. In other words, if your website advertises curtains for sale, backlinks from a website selling residential windows would be appropriate.
Keywords are just as important on pages indexed in Yandex. However, Google.ru is not a good source of keyword metrics coming from Russia. In other words, your first choice in getting keyword suggestions would not be from Google Adwords. This is because Google has a significantly lower usage rate among Russian internet users. Yandex has an equivalent to Google Adwords named Wordstat. Wordstat shows trends of searches categorized by keywords allowing you to choose those you wish to target. Another tool used in the Google world is known as Google Insights where internet users can analyze the topmost popular searches and Yandex has covered this area as well with Yandex Interests.
Yandex has also developed their own information tools for SEO specialists. They have also created a set of webmaster guidelines and they have an equivalent for all the Google webmaster tools. Additional tools allow a webmaster to assign a region to a website and to edit site links (Quicklinks).
This search engine has some special priorities. Paid advertising seems to override organic. This is potentially a problem for some who wish to resort to only organic SEO methods. But Yandex has to pay the bills like everyone else. There are also differing opinions as to whether or not Yandex will allow a non-Russian site into its index although it you can find non-Russian sites in its SERPs (search engine result pages).
Tags: Yandex considerations, Yandex SEO
Some of your have asked me to create a tutorial for Mac for running rankingfactors.pl script. This post is the answer to your queries. Without further ado here are the steps:
PART 1 – Installing XAMPP & Copying Files
1> Download XAMPP for Mac at this link
2> Install XAMPP using instructions at: this link (just a couple of steps)
3> At this point you can go to the htdocs folder on your Mac (/Applications/XAMPP/htdocs)
4> You can cleanup this folder by placing all files and folders into a single folder or leave it as is.
5> Assuming you have downloaded the windows version of SEO Warrior (xampp distribution) simply copy all files and folders from the ‘htdocs’ (windows) to your Mac ‘htdocs’ folder.
6> Copy TreeBuilder.pm, Element.pm from the Windows (zip:\xampp\perl\site\lib\HTML) distribution to /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/HTML/
7> Copy Round.pm from the Windows (zip:\xampp\perl\lib\Math\MATH) distribution to /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/5.10.0/Math
With this step you will avoid getting the following error message:
Can't locate HTML/TreeBuilder.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/5.10.0/darwin-2level /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/5.10.0 /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/darwin-2level /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0 .) at rankingfactors.pl line 25.
8> Next we need to setup the path. You can execute the following command in a Terminal window (just for this window session) or place it in your .profile file (as a more permanent solution). Note: this is a single line and the only white space is after the ‘export’ word.
export PATH=/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/5.10.0:/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/perl5/site_perl/:/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin/:$PATH
You are now ready to run the script. Simply go to the /Applications/XAMPP/book/downloads/chapter-4 folder. (i.e. rankingfactors.pl 10 buy shoes)
That’s it! These instructions could also be helpful for Linux installations as well (especially the modules part).
Regards,
John
Tags: mac ranking factors script, mac tutorial, rankingfactors.pl
This is an update to my earlier post. I am currently working (in my spare time) on several items (most are not mentioned in the book):
> Video tutorial for SEO Warrior Keyword Dashboard –> within the next 30 days
> SEO Competitor Research Tool (collaboration with a partner site) –> by the end of November
> Mouse Tracking (Conversions Helper) Tool (collaboration with a partner site) –> by the end of June
> Articles –> throughout the year
> SEO Master Cheat Sheet –> by the end of April
> and more..
The ’light’ versions of these tools with be free for all owners of SEO Warrior book.
Stay tuned for more information.
Regards,
John
The purpose of the rankingfactors.pl Perl script is to dimistify what it is that makes search engines tick. More importantly it helps you learn about your competitors for your specific (targeted) keywords. It takes the top ten (or one hundred) results from Google (and Bing) and performs an in-depth analysis. You get to see how keywords of your choice are found in (search engine) search results as well as in the actual (search result) page titles, page copy, domain name, URL, META Description, header tags, and much more.
The script can be modified in any way you like. The following short video demonstration shows how you can run the script within the XAMPP environment (which you can download at http://book.seowarrior.net/xampp.zip).
For those that prefer written instructions, here is the step by step tutorial you need to run rankkingfactors.pl as described on page 80 of SEO Warrior. It is assumed that you have succeffully installed XAMPP on your PC (You can see the XAMPP tutorial at this link: http://www.seowarrior.net/accessing-book-materials-with-xampp/)
1> Start Apache by running: C:\xampp\apache_start.bat (if you wish to enable Page Rank queries)
2> Open the DOS Prompt window by doing Start|Run|cmd
3> Change your directory to: C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4\
4> Execute the setpath.bat batch file to ensure Perl will see all the required modules
Note: you are now ready to run the rankingfactors.pl Perl script
5a> If you wish to get a report on a specific keyword for the top 10 Google results execute the scripts as follows:
perl rankingfactors.pl 10 buy shoes
Note: “buy shoes” is a sample keyword
5b> If you wish to get a report for the top 100 Google results execute the script as follows:
perl rankingfactors.pl 100 buy shoes
Note: Depending on your selection the report will be generated in a few minutes. Be patient.
You will know when the script is complete by seeing the following lines of output.
C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4>perl rankingfactors.pl 10 buy shoes
Starting..
..cleanup done
..getting SERPs
..got the SERPs
..got the real titles
..finished partial title comparisons
..finished keyword title comparisons
..finished title page copy comparisons
..finished domain name exact keyword analysis
..finished domain name partial keyword analysis
..finished description META analysis
..finished header tags analysis
..finished keyword proximity analysis
..finished outbound links analysis
..finished outbound link PR analysis
..finished average page size analysis
..finished optimum number of words analysis
..finished website size analysis
C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4>
6a> To see the generated reports (for Google and Bing) browse to:
C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4\report\index.html
6b> Alternatively, you could open each report separately by browsing to:
C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4\report\bing.html
C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\chapter-4\report\google.html
For information regarding report metrics (what each statistic means) please reffer to Chapter 4 of SEO Warrior.
Regards,
John
Tags: rankingfactors.pl, seo warrior, tutorial, XAMPP
Some of you have had some issues in setting up your environments to run either Perl or PHP scripts. This tutorial will show you how you can do that easily by utilizing XAMPP. In just a few minutes you should be able to run everything by following the steps shown in this tutorial.
To start, here is a short video demonstation of how you can install XAMPP to view SEO Warrior book materials. Please note that I am using a vanilla Windows XP system in the video.
For those that do not wish to see the video follow the following steps:
1> Download SEO Warrior book materials at: http://book.seowarrior.net/xampp.zip
2> Unzip the package to c:\xampp
Note: Check this folder to make sure that you don’t get the “c:\xampp\xampp\” scenario
(if you cut the inner folder and paste it over the top folder at the roor level of drive C)
3) Run Apache by double clicking on: C:\xampp\apache_start.bat
(or by executing the batch file in Dos Prompt)
4) Browse to http://localhost:10000/
At this point you should see a screen looking just like the one below:
Note: If you do not see this screen, chances are your Apache is not running due to a port conflict (which could be caused by a program such as Skype). You can always manually get to the book scripts by going to C:\xampp\htdocs\book\downloads\
I hope this information and video was helpful and if you have any questions you can drop me a note.
Regards,
John
Tags: book, Scripts, seo warrior, XAMPP
Thank you for your patience. You can download the latest SEO Warrior code at: http://book.seowarrior.net/xampp.zip. All of the book scripts are found under /xampp/htdocs/book/downloads folder.
This release will be the last major release for the SEO Warrior book. The next minor release (if any) will be on March 15th, 2010. As promised, I will be releasing tutorial videos shortly!
Regards,
John
Tags: Scripts, seo warrior, XAMPP
Vertical search engines are also known as specialized search engines and they can oftentimes be very useful in quickly pinpointing the information you need without having to filter through general results pages. They also go by the name of topical search engines in that you search in the context of a main topic. Topics can be in subjects like medicine, law, government, and many others. But do vertical search engines provide any greater advantage than provided by the general search engines? Actually, they do, and what follows are some dynamics of the vertical search engine arena.
The competitive web search playing field is responsible for the rise of vertical search engines. There are so many websites competing for the coveted first page in a SERP (search engine results page). In fact, a search engine optimization (SEO) effort for the general search engines could take months before results are seen. For most businesses, this is unacceptable and another solution is required. With a specialized search engine, you are only competing with others in your same niche and those searching for information will not have to look at so many results from any given search query.
Vertical search engines help to drill down to the meaning of your searches. For example, let’s say you are a lawyer and want to get information on a particular law or case precedence. If you entered your question in a general search engine, you would be shown websites that address the query in either a general or specialized form and written for either legal professionals or public users trying to get information on laws they don’t understand. Clearly it would take far too long for the legal professional to do his or her research but this problem is more than likely solved if using a vertical search engine specifically for those who are working in this field.
Content considerations are still just as important in vertical search engines. In fact, content probably needs to be targeted to a very specific audience as opposed to the general nature of articles found on the web as a whole. Remember that content should never be written with just search engines in mind. It should always be written with intent of ultimately helping the readers or calling them to action.
Some types of vertical search engines are customized for the user. For example, the “answers” type vertical search engines actually have a team of volunteers who respond to user queries. In this fashion, you don’t have to comb through dozens of web sites before you find an answer. You can get an exact answer to your question from a subject expert volunteer. The answer to your question is usually posted on a web page for all to see which gives you a little exposure too.
There is more likelihood of customer conversions with vertical search engines. Customer conversion is a term used to refer to a sale as the result of a customer clicking on a site’s link. In other words, if the customer clicks on your link then there is a potential for that same customer to also buy something. Website proprietors want high conversion rates but with general search engines, there is more casual browsing or some stumble on a site totally by accident. It’s less unlikely that you will get casual browsers if they click through to your site from a specialized site in their topic of interest. While it has been determined that overall traffic is less than with general search engines, it is much more relevant therefore having the result of increased sales.
Tools are also available for these search engines so that a return on investment (ROI) can be determined. For example, you may have purchased ad space on one of these specialized engines and want to use a tool to report the conversion rate compared to the amount spent on ads. Keyword suggestion tools are also valuable so that you can make specific adjustments in the keywords you use to target your customers. Many vertical search engines also charge lower rates for advertising space which helps your bottom line as well.
You can find a listing of vertical search engines at http://bit.ly/19yvsU.
As promised, I have been working to incorporate all of the SEO Warrior scripts under XAMPP umbrella. Here are some of the things coming up in the next few days starting January 15th.
- integrated all book scripts into XAMPP for easy navigation & installation
(you would simply open http://localhost:10000/index.html to start navigation)
- several smaller bug fixes are in this release
- removed Yahoo! results from rankingfactors.pl script as Yahoo! will be using Bing
shortly
- added local PR checker script (htdocs/util/pr)
- video tutorials for SEO Warrior Dashboard and rankingfactors.pl script.
Here is a sneak peak at the SEO Warrior code XAMPP integration as well as the new look of the SEO Warrior Keyword Dashboard.
Thanks,
John
Tags: book, code, keyword dashboard, release, seo warrior
Bing is Microsoft’s solution to performing web searches on the Internet and, while relatively new, it holds promise as a major challenger to Google’s share of the market. This is especially the case since Microsoft joined in an agreement with Yahoo! Search to combine resources starting in 2010. The first question that those doing site search engine optimization (SEO) will ask is how to optimize for Bing. Optimizing for Bing is not drastically different than it is for the other major search engines but what makes it even easier is the rich set of tools provided for doing this task. Here are some of the tools provided for Bing SEO and how they facilitate the task of getting a site ranked in Bing.
Bing provides a site submission page similar to the other major search engines. Using the submission tool is free but you should not attempt to submit your site if it is already listed in Bing’s index. Plus, the site submission page requires to you enter a graphically presented code so as to discourage the use of automated submission scripts.
A user’s search experience can be enhanced with the Bing Web Page Error Toolkit. By default, when a web site cannot be found, a user receives a 404 redirect error page and nothing more. At this point, the user can either give up on the search or try to think of other search keywords that will be possibly able to locate the desired information. Microsoft provides a tool that allows developers to use the Bing search application programming interface (API) to return a page that gives helpful information to give the user other search options. The results are presented in the form of a related searches page and the API does the work of finding alternate keywords that could possibly be used to pinpoint the desired information. The results page can also be customized by the developer.
Side-by-side comparison tools are popular for checking SEO progress. If your site gets ranked at the top of a Google SERP, you will no doubt want to see how it is doing in Bing. There are several websites with side-by-side tools that allow you to enter a search phrase once and do a comparison of what both search engines return concurrently. It allows the SEO analyst to see what is working and make adjustments to what is not for a particular website.
The IIS SEO Toolkit from Microsoft provides a robust set of modules to make optimization tasks much easier. The modules provided are the Site Analysis Module, Sitemap Module, Site Index Module, and Robots Exclusion Module. Using all these modules, an SEO specialist can get an analysis of the current site they are optimizing, recommendations for improving ranking strategies, lists of site violations, and facilities for managing the robots.txt file and sitemaps.
Using the IIS SEO Toolkit Site Analysis tool, you can get comprehensive identification of common problems that work against optimization efforts. These are problems such as poor performance, broken links, and markup that is not valid. They are also referred to as violations. Analysis includes the detection duplicate content within the context of the analyzed website. Analysis results are also coupled with recommendations of how to correct any problems detected. There is also a query facility provided so that you have flexibility in providing a variety of comprehensive reports.
The IIS SEO Toolkit makes management of the robots.txt, sitemap, sitemap indexes easier. It is easier to manage the robots.txt file because you can get a logical view of your website in a graphical user interface and can make selections as to where a crawler is allowed and disallowed. Within the robots exclusion module, you can also add the sitemap location in order to specify how a crawler should access your URLs. Likewise, the sitemap and sitemap index modules allow easy editing and maintenance of these two objects that are critical effective SEO of a website.
