ComCorp Announces Dramatic New Tracking Software
Posted on 04. Oct, 2007 by ComCorp in ComCorp
As Ecommerce advances into the twenty-first century, the need for proper search engine optimization and search engine marketing becomes a critical need of every properly functioning business. To this end, it becomes exceptionally important to fine-tune marketing to website performance. With the advent of Clarity, powerful tracking technology has become streamlined and affordable.
“We decided to name it “Clarity” because that is exactly what it provides. Clarity on all web traffic from all sources on the web,” explains Tammy Camp, President and CEO of ComCorp, Inc., implementer of the new software. “Clarity provides detailed statistics for sales, downloads and signups which is not available on the platforms with current competitors. Clarity is also unique because it detects click fraud.”
Although possessing a sporty, clean, highly usable interface, the real power of Clarity, with its super, powerful tracking engine, lies hidden behind its elegant design. It is literally capable of analyzing and storing hundreds of important megabytes of traffic data. With the best functionality in its price class, Clarity allows for tracking and analysis of all website traffic on multiple sites. With this type of data, clients will have the information they need to maximize the return on their investment and increase conversion rates for their visitors.
Clarity is perfect for companies wishing to reach higher levels in Internet marketing. Clarity provides comprehensive data acquisition and analysis, allowing companies to easily track and optimize their campaigns. It helps locate new advertising sites, creates better key words to enhance traffic and acquire conversion rates. Its functionality encompasses banner advertising, email, pay-per-click and affiliate marketing, allowing the thorough investigation of sales, assignments, downloads, page loading with a great deal of information about the visitors performing these operations.
Clarity allows examination of long-term trends in days or months but, following increased demand for extensive fine-tuning of campaigns, launches and follow-ups, also permits daylong and even hourly data inspection.
Special features include invisible PHP tracking for PHP-built sites, easy built-in functionality for split testing, comprehensive portrait of visitors’ activity, including sales and all other useful-to-know visitor behavior; ability to monitor specific visitors or designated groups; ability to track AdSense clicks, a way to detect click fraud. With Clarity, entrepreneurs can view all their sites’ general statistics, including unique visitors, requested pages, allowing for valuable comparisons between natural and paid traffic.
For more information about Clarity, please contact Tammy Camp, President and CEO of ComCorp at +1 404 496 4885 or email her at info@comcorp.com
About ComCorp:
Founded in 2004, ComCorp, Inc. (www.comcorp.com), a privately held company based in Delray Beach, Florida, is one of the world’s largest and most experienced Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay-for-performance Marketing and Ecommerce Consulting firms. The company consistently increases qualified website traffic for hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and small businesses worldwide. As a result, ComCorp sustains exceptionally high client retention rates. The company is led by a team of Google Adwords Qualified Professionals, Yahoo! Search Ambassadors, SEMPO members and other highly experienced Internet Marketing professionals. ComCorp serves clients throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.
The DMOZ Challenge
Posted on 02. Oct, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
The DMOZ challenge stems from a disbelief that it’s possible to get a web site approved for inclusion in the DMOZ database within a three month period. The challenge was issued on an ad revenue-sharing forum in January of 2007.
DEFINITIONS
DMOZ is also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP. The name DMOZ comes from its original domain name directory.mozilla.org due to its loose affiliation with the Mozilla project. The concept behind the organization of the Open Directory Project it’s a human edited open content directory of web sites. ODP is currently owned by Netscape and is multilingual. It’s maintained by a community of volunteer editors who must be approved by existing editors. Web sites are categorized using a hierarchical ontology scheme in which sites are grouped by individuals, classes or sets of objects, attributes, relations or events. Ontology is a representation of how the field of knowledge is categorized. In practice, major categories are broken down into smaller and smaller units, each a part of the one above it.
HISTORY
The Open Directory Project was begun as the Gnuhoo in 1998. The Free Software Project objected to the use of “Gnu” in the name, because FSP believed it to be against the spirit of free software. Gnuhoo became NewHoo, whereupon Yahoo objected. Before the name could be changed to the new choice of ZURL, Netscape acquired the project and it became ODP. Netscape was obtained by AOL that later merged with Time-Warner. The number of indexed URL’s has grown from 100,000 shortly after acquisition by Netscape to over 4 million in December 2003. On line reports have been available and updated monthly since January 2006.
By May of 2005 75 world languages are included with almost 7500 active editors at that time.
CONTENT
Editors specializing in adding new listings, editing existing listing for spelling and grammatical errors, or removing spam and duplicates from submissions, maintain the directory. Content users include Yahoo, Netscape, Google, AOL and Alexa. Over 300 websites are licensed to use ODP data in the English language with an additional 238 in other languages.
Because ODP has maintained its stance of no cost for admissions, there has been a gradual divergence of content of the directory between ODP and other directories which use paid submissions. The free directory tends to attract more informational articles and websites, while the commercial directories are increasingly showing heavier concentration of merchandise and commercial products.
EDITORS
The structure of editors is hierarchical in the same way as the categories. New editors not picked lightly and some sections or categories go for long period with not editing, as a result.
COMPLAINTS
Although there are written procedures in place for dealing with complaints, critics state that there is bias amongst editors for their own web sites. There may be conflict of interest issues at work since statistics about the number of web sites owned by editors show a high percentage of editor websites are approved for admission to the directory.
In House or Outsourcing SEO
Posted on 25. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
In the past only the largest companies could afford to have in house staffing to do search engine optimization. Although more companies, including small and medium sized businesses have recognized the benefits of utilizing such skills to increase sales revenues, finding skilled and experienced people to fill the gap has been increasingly difficult.
The outsourcing SEO companies understandably are not going to promote the use of either other SEO companies or in house staff, because it cuts into their own potential business. Additionally, there is a certain mystique associated with search engine optimization in the minds of uneducated businessmen and women.
On the other side, because skilled and experienced SEO people are still hard to find, the business may be forced to use outsourcing to obtain quality and experience. Businesses in certain areas of the United States find it more difficult to obtain in house SEO staff. Usually the East Coast and West Coast have people who can perform the job satisfactorily while the central part of the country has fewer qualified candidates.
That being said, here are some of the pros and cons for each method of obtaining good search engine optimization for your business web sites.
IN HOUSE ADVANTAGES
In house staff understands the buzzwords of their industry. It will be more likely that appropriate keywords can be chosen, and the local talent will know the infrastructure of their business better than an outsourcing expert, no matter how skilled they are at optimization. Not always, but usually in house staff will be less expensive than outsourcing, even if outsourcing must be contracted to audit the work of the in house folks.
In house folks are more likely to understand the internal politics of the company and how to get the suggested changes completed without being sandbagged by another staff member for reasons that have nothing to do with need or quality of the work.
In house staff can focus on the needs of the business rather than being distracted by the needs of multiple clients that may be experienced by outsourcing companies. An internal team will consist of people who are needed to accomplish the task at hand. The internal team is less likely to implement methods that will not work in the environment of the business.
An in house SEO person or team will help to monitor the implementation of backlinks so that both ends of the link receive benefits.
OUTSOURCING ADVANTAGES
Outsourcing companies typically have wider experience in the field and may understand and use methods, which the in house staff either is unaware of, or is unable to use effectively. For small projects that are limited in scope, outsourcing companies may be able to complete the job more economically.
Outsourcing companies are less likely to be biased for or against a particular department in suggesting needed changes. They may be better able to criticize a proposed change because they can see the larger picture and are able to offer criticize without worrying about internal politics of the business.
Outsourcing teams are usually able to provide links and link building strategies that the internal SEO team would not be able to access. They are more likely to provide tangible results in a shorter amount of time than the in house staff.
Finally, outsourcing means other valuable assistance in addition to the specific task at hand is made available to the business.
Backlinks
Posted on 24. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
Backlinks are any links that come into a web site or web page. In a wider sense, backlinks are any connections between an outside web page, domain, web directory or web site. Backlinks are also called inward links, in links, inbound links or incoming links. Search engines, particularly Google use the number of incoming links as one measurement of the importance or ranking of the page. Google’s algorithm is called PageRank. Other search engines tend to place less emphasis on the backlinks and more on other factors such as page content.
Most search engines, including Google provide a way to view the number of incoming links on most web pages. Backlink data is generally not tracked for password protected pages or for dynamic pages due to the difficulty of implementing programming for such information.
In using backlinks, some study must be given to the concept of link popularity. Some backlinks are better than others. Originally, when Google first stressed the importance of backlinks, many web designers thought to increase page rankings by simply increasing the number of backlinks that appeared on the web pages in question. Then it was realized that so-called link farms were selling their services. These e-businesses sold links as a product.
Thousands of links unrelated to the product on the individual web page was worthless information and the algorithms were adjusted to disregard links to obvious link farms.
So, in adding backlinks to your web pages, you should consider the following points. First, every page should have at least one backlink. An incoming link implies that the page is important enough to create interest by other web sites in the same or similar industries or fields. Many incoming links would seem to indicate that your web page is recognized as an authority on the subject.
Again, not all incoming links are rated the same. An incoming link from a major directory will have a higher rank than will a backlink from an obscure home page.
One-way links, incoming are generally considered to be more important that reciprocal links. Indeed, too many outgoing links can reduce the page rating. By the same reasoning, a backlink with a web page that has few outgoing links is considered to be a better link than a backlink with a web page with many outgoing links. The major concept is to create the impression that other web pages treat your link as important; that it’s not necessary to have many links if they have your page.
Your backlinks should be anchored with relevant text. The search engines need to be able to see that there is a good reason for the backlink; the incoming link came to your web page for specific information found in your keywords, and found the information on the landing page.
Some web masters create multiple domains in order to use multiple backlinks for their clients. Unfortunately, these methods to increase web page ranking can backfire on you and result in a lower web page listing rather than a higher one.
Black Hat SEO
Posted on 22. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
Black hat search engine optimization methods are generally considered to be those that cannot be seen by the visitor to the site or are not part of the cohesive whole site. However, in the sense that black hat search engine optimization is perceived to be unethical, it might be wise4r to attempt to find another term to refer to ‘black hat” web masters. For, such techniques are not misleading the public necessarily, nor are they illegal in most cases.
In the cases where such techniques might mislead the Google searcher, it is usually due as much to accident as to deliberate intent. In other words, the keywords can be misleading, thus causing the search engine to call in pages that should not have been selected because of the content displayed. A deliberate attack would be to deliberately set out to hijack the web address of a profitable competitor just to prove it could be done.
There are several techniques that are commonly considered to be black hat search engine optimization methods. For instance, comments tags allow you to hide keywords within your source code. Generally, since search engines don’t look at the comments anyway, this method of adding keywords is less helpful than some others. Some black hat types use stuffed ALT attributes. ALT attributes are intended to assist those people using accessibility devices such as Braille readers and screen readers. The Alternative text describes the image so that the blind person can understand what the object is that is placed on the screen. A black hat technique will not describe the object, but will instead pad the text with more keywords. They may also describe the image AND pad the text with added keywords. A good rule of thumb is to use ALT attributes that could be understood if read aloud. Extra words that don’t describe the image are counter to the purpose of the ALT attributes. Another caution is to avoid using very small 1 pixel by 1-pixel images just for the purpose of additional ALT attributes.
Because of keyword stuffing, many of the search engines have attached less and less importance to the META description tags. The keyword stuffing is the black hat technique. Instead of using real informative descriptions of the content material for the page, the META description was being used just to randomly insert keyword strings. Because of the use of black hat META description treatment the search engines have reduced the importance of the use of keywords, or have taken steps to relate keywords to the page context. In this instance, search engines have also determined an upper limit of keyword usage. In other words, too many keywords reduce the rank in the same way that too few keywords does. Actually, since it’s assumed to be deliberate black hat techniques, it can result in removing the web page or entire web site from the rankings.
The important points to remember to avoid potential black hat accusations is no keyword stuffing, stay away from bad neighborhoods and build a great resource site.
White Hat SEO
Posted on 20. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
White hat SEO is a term used to describe so-called ethical search engine optimization, as opposed to black hat SEO. The basic premise for white hat search engine optimization is that the methods used to increase the ranking of the web pages will be consistent with search engine guidelines. Good SEO techniques mean that what the viewer sees is pleasing to the eye and is a response to the basic query posed on the search engine.
Probably the most important thing to remember when optimizing search engine results is that consistent efforts to comply with basic web design factors will get better results over time than will high risk techniques commonly known as black hat SEO. There are both on page and off page white hat techniques that should be utilized. It cannot be overemphasized that search engine optimization should be the overriding reason for presenting a web site. The most effective approach is to prepare and present a web site that is understandable and agreeable to human viewers that will also be perceived well by the search engines.
Since ‘white hat’ has the connotation of ethical as opposed to ‘black hat’, many web site developers use the term incorrectly to refer to others methods as being somehow less ethical than their own. Generally, the term white hat has been used to mean if it the SEO results can be seen by the visitor to the web page it is a white hat SEO. If it cannot be seen by a visitor, or is something that is not an integral part of the whole, then it is unethical or black hat.
The major reason for adopting white hat methods is that the search engines provide a lower ranking for pages that use black hat methods. A web page that consistently uses black hat methods will receive a lower ranking or will be banned completely. If banned, the web page results simply don’t show up in search engine queries. It’s important to remember that using methods that search engines don’t approve of is not morally wrong, just a violation of what may be arbitrary rules.
So, assuming you don’t want to be ranked lower than you deserve, or banned, how can you use so-called white hat techniques to improve your search engine placement? Review your web sites and check for things like dangling links. Dangling links are those that don’t go anywhere else. Each page in your website should link to at least one other page. Make sure all the links off site work and go to pages that you are proud to be associated with.
Review the use of keywords and phrases in your META attributes. Use ALT attributes where appropriate. Google in particular looks for relevant links so that the viewer who is sent to your page is going to find material that matches the search queries. The search engines also want to see your page titles match the content on the page.
In short, the following white hat methods have been proved to be effective in improving search engine rankings.
Select your keywords carefully, distribute them throughout your web site and don’t overuse them
Make sure internal links get the viewer to the search term with no more than 4 clicks and 2 clicks is preferable
Try to use good incoming links appropriately to match your keywords and pages.
Robots.txt
Posted on 17. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
Robots are programs that wander the web automatically performing functions and gathering information. They are also known as crawlers, spiders, or web wanderers. Sometimes they are called web worms or web ants. Robots are the generic name, spiders sounds more impressive when referred to by the press. Crawlers are robots that perform a specific function. Web worms usually are replicating type programs and Web ants are distributed and cooperating robots. These robots do not physically visit the sites, but simply request documents from sites, and thereby from any links to the sites.
Robots perform many functions, but the most common duties are indexing, mirroring, HTML validation, what’s New monitoring and link validation. Most people are familiar with the robots that perform indexing functions. By using the computer to collect and categorize large amounts of data, more effective use of human analysis can be made.
Robots are created to automatically perform the functions for which they are identified. The choice of which pages are accessed by robots is the dependent upon the type of robot and who the sending agent is. Robots may use an historical list of URL’s, server lists, or popular web sites in order to get a starting place of sites to visit. You can submit a list of the pages that you want to have crawled by a robot.
By reviewing your web log, you can determine if your site has been visited by a robot. If this is something you want to happen, then you need do nothing further. Once you see that your web site has been visited by a robot, the rest is automatic. The robot automatically schedules revisits, looking for anything different. The material that is retrieved from your website is stored on the search engine site where it can be used to perform the specific function for which the robot was created.
If you have pages that you don’t want the robot to access, there are specific coding and files which can be set up to accomplish the desired exclusion. If you can’t write a robots.txt file, you can choose to insert HTML information into your source code that will accomplish the same result. Exclusion of robots from access to any or all pages on your website is at best a ‘Do not enter sign” rather than a locked door. There are forums that have been set up to talk about various issues and problems in dealing with the whole subject of robots.txt.
There are several disadvantages to using robots.txt software applications. First is the undue strain it places on bandwidth resources. Particularly where users have low bandwidth quotas, a ‘rapid fire’ robot can be extremely threatening to the network. Robots will also place extra demands upon the server as well.
Other issues arising with wider use of robots include determining which pages should be included or excluded. In the past, almost everything collected by the robot was retained, which can be very wasteful and very expensive; Progression toward a standard across the industry has resulted in the web standard of exclusion. This is robot.txt. It tells the robot to ignore specific pages or blocks of text.
Title Tags
Posted on 13. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
Title attributes or title tags are additional information in the HTML coding to tell the search engines that this is the subject of your web page. Whether it’s a blog or a web page, each page should have a title so the search engine crawler can determine what it is the page is intended to say. When search engines crawl web pages, they view the META title tag and then determine how well the content of the page matches the title. A good match will cause the web page to rank higher with the search engine, while a poor title, a misleading title or a false title will cause the page to be ranked lower or not indexed at all.
In order to increase the web traffic to your page, one of the simplest things you can do it to maximize the effect of your title attributes. For example, if your business title is , it’s a catchy title for a used book store, but probably won’t win you many points in the ranking, simply because there’s nothing to tell the viewer what it is you sell. If you were to make your business title , you have a much better chance of your title attributes being ranked by a search engine spider.
In the first example neither the viewer nor the search engine would know that the page or the business is about. In the second example, it’s clear that the page is about used books or is a used book business. In the second instance, the search engine has a better idea of what the page is about and you have a better chance of receiving a higher ranking when the page is indexed.
Another point to remember is not to attempt to up your rate of key words by adding them to a title. Using the above example, your title should not be . Because with this example, the title of your web page becomes: Endless Pages – Used Books Rare Books Out-Of-Print Books and Antiquarian Books, a viewer seeing that returned as a search result would probably be annoyed and not bother to go to the site. There’s nothing wrong with using all of those keywords in your web content, but don’t attempt to put all your keywords in the title of your page.
Your title shouldn’t contain any unnecessary words. A web page title of is too wordy, and contains several words that will not strengthen the page to the search engine crawlers who visit there. Even necessary words can make a title too long to be attractive to search engine crawlers and viewers alike.
A good title to your web page can be a key factor in bring visitors to your site, so it’s certainly worthwhile to spend adequate time in thinking about and planning for an effective title.
Site Maps
Posted on 12. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
Site maps are graphical representations of the way pages on a web site relate to each other. Site maps or site indexes are often prepared in planning a web site, particularly is the web site is large or complicated. This planning helps to ensure that all web pages are linked to the correct other web pages for the purpose of search engine optimization. Site maps or indexes are also used as a directory for web users to be able to more easily find the particular materials for which they are searching.
Site maps are important in determining that all pages in a web site can be found, not only by the human viewer but by the search engine robots. Site maps are even more important when the web site uses JavaScript or Macromedia Flash, neither of which can be viewed by the search engine robots. In this case, HTML code must be added to direct the search engine robot to additional pages.
Most search engines limit the number of links which they will follow from any one page, so you’re far better off to give the search engine robot a list of all the web pages which are associated with a site so that each one can be indexed in the search engine results.
Google Sitemaps was software developed to allow web masters to publish lists of their site. Without Sitemaps, only about one hundred dynamic page links would be followed. With Sitemaps, nearly one million links are listed. This means that much material that would otherwise not have been available to web users is identified on search engines.
Users have been slow to recognize the value of using a site map to find information on a site. Recent studies indicate most people will not perceive a site map as a road map to the website. They seem to be unable to comprehend information from a particular page. Many user’s cannot even find the site map with it is clearly market.
The same studies shows that most web site maps could not be understood by the user. Whether this is the fault of the programmer or the user remains to be seen. It’s important that the site map also reflect the purpose and mission of the search end game. At the same time, the site map should not just repeat the titles or descriptions of the balance of the web page. The site index doesn’t have to be boring, but it should definitely be informative and clear.
It’s important that the site map be easily accessible from one page. While drop down menus are certainly popular among many, in practice they can be much harder to prepare and design. They make it more difficult to see how the individual pages work together. Shorter site maps are generally just as informative as longer site maps and make it possible to better perceive the overall picture.
Site maps also should not attempt to present a moving view of a page. It should reflect the composition of the web site at a given moment in time.
Please view the search engine optimization services provided by ComCorp, Inc. ComCorp is a leading provider of Internet marketing services.
Monthly Submissions
Posted on 10. Sep, 2007 by ComCorp in Search Engine Optimization
There are two schools of thought about the frequency for submission of web page URL’s to search engines and directories. One group says that web pages should be submitted frequently, even monthly to all the major search engines because the search engines such as Google drop as many as 60% of URL’s each month in order to make way for updated web listings. Proponents of monthly submission state that it keeps your URL at the top of Google’s index list. Another reason for monthly submission is that it reminds you to update and check links, content and structure of your website on a regular basis. Finally, with most sites except for Google going to a pay per click, pay for ranking, pay for listing, monthly submissions are required to keep your web pages in the indexing queue.
Many of the search engine optimization and ranking companies offer package deals at various levels promising to submit your web pages monthly for an entire year to x number of search engines. These submission packages range in cost from $49 to hundreds of dollars per year. Generally the paid inclusion sites cost up to $300 per website per year.
When you look at the other side of the picture, there is a preponderance of anecdotal and logical evidence that monthly submission not only are not necessary, they are not recommended for a number of reasons.
First, if your web site is submitted once to the top three web search engines, including Google, Yahoo Panama and MSN Search, you will be reaching over 95% of all web searches. You should think about it and determine if the efforts to reach 5% of the web surfers are really worth the cost.
Second, submitting a large number of web pages from one IP address during a short period of time can result in the search engine spider regarding your web site as spamming the internet and could result in your being banned from submitting at all.
Next, submitting a website for indexing through one of the ‘pay for submission’ programs does not necessarily mean your web site will be accepted and indexed. Even it is is, there is no guarantee that the indexing will occur in a short time frame. And if you are accepted and indexed, there are no guarantee that your ranking will be high enough to do you any good.
Since building content rich web pages with good quality links to high performance sites will get your web pages noticed quickly by the search spiders, and since Google is a high link focused search engine, you should follow this submission schedule for your web pages.
Submit your finished and polished pages ONCE to the search engines. This can be to the free submission services. The search engine spiders will find your site either way, and once found they will not forget to visit you in the future. Essentially, that’s all a submission is–an invitation to the search engine spider to visit your site and review it.
If you need to make significant changes in your website, you can resubmit but not more often than once or twice monthly. Spiders don’t check your site more often than that anyway.
So, the bottom line is don’t submit your URL’s monthly. Use your time and money to revitalize your content pages and to avoid unfinished sites which affect the health of the search engine spider.
