Big TRAFFIC dips

Anybody else notice a large dip in traffic over the last 2 weeks. I've seen a drop in overall traffic across all the sites we manage of 5 - 15%?

If anyone else has some insight, is it just November traffic that drops?

Let me know guys would be interesting to compare stats.

Traffic Fundi Search Team

Removing Spammy Links - Google's official statement

This month, Google published an official statement about low quality links in their webmaster blog. For those of you who are new to SEO, there are various types of links that search engines consider when valuating the importance of your website but for the purpose of this article, we'll stick to 2 types;

1. High quality links (one way links from authoritative sites within the same industry, business you're in)

2. Poor quality, low quality links (one way links from either SPAMMY sites, or sites that just are nothings in the internet world)

According to Google, in order to reduce the "so called" negative effect that one way poor quality links have on your site, this is what you need to do:

1. Linking is a significant factor in Google's ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements.

2. If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that.

3. It the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don't worry and focus on the links that are under your control.

4. Google recommends to optimize the many factors than influence indexing and ranking. The top 10 optimizer in our website optimization tool has been designed for exactly that task.It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in the search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.

5. Google says that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time and that they may not be considered by Google's ranking algorithm.

6. If you want to make sure Google knows about the spammy links and is valuing them appropriately, you can report them to Google with their spam report or paid links report forms.

What are your thoughts on this?

Essential Steps to successful SEO - 301 Permanent Redirects!

If there's one thing that makes me sad :(, it's seeing people loose their site rankings! I've seen it numerous times over the last couple of weeks and disaster recovery is not always a simple process so... I decided to start writing the "Essential steps to successful SEO" guide for those of you interested. If you're not, then try reading something on SA Property News ;-).


Something I do know, having been in the SEO game for a couple of years, is that getting your site to the TOP of the rankings comes with alot sweat, hard work & effort! The rewards are amazing & gratifying and seeing client climb from NOWHERE to SOMEWHERE is a feeling that's untouchable (I know what you're thinking, it comes close).

So, why 301 redirects? And more importantly why Permanent 301 redirects?

Here's a scenario! You have a website trafficfundi.com and it's been running for 5 years. It's also been generating 4000 hits a day, but your business decides to re brand and change company names to trafficwizard.com (think this sites available). One of things you need to do is a website redesign and restructuring, which also means moving the site to a new domain.

You spend R300 000 on a website(ripped off once again) and switch everything over to the new domain (At this point you've totally forgotten about marketing or haven't even thought about it yet). 3 weeks later, you're getting 4 hits a day and you can't understand why, so you phone the SEO guru's and bitch about spending R10 000 to fix it!

So here's where 301 redirects (The essential SEO tip) come into play.

If you do a "site:www.trafficfundi.com" in Google, it will tell you how many pages you have indexed in the Google index. When you move your website to the new domain, all those pages listed in the Google index HAVE TO MOVE ACROSS. If you don't move them across, or you don't redirect those pages to the new domain name, you're going to get a error page, saying sorry this page no longer exists! This means:

1. You're going to loose all the PR that those pages had
2. All the links (whether you built the links or not) no longer have any validation. This alone means that people linking to your old site are going to get penalised for linking to a broken link.
So think about all the other sites you're damaging in the process!!!
3. You're going to P!$$ Google off!

So ensure, that if you delete a page (you think about who is linking to that page - and whether or not THEY need it! A sure way to Successful SEO: Always always always use 301 PERMANENT redirects when moving sites or pages!

Thanks to Bruce Clay for an awesome page on how to 301 permanent redirect anything!!!!http://www.bruceclay.co.za/newsletter/0405/redirects.html

Internetix Conference - Jhb 2009

Jhb Internetix 2009 was by far the best launch TrafficFundi could have hoped for.

With a turnout of over 2000 people at this years Internetix conference hosted by Internet Solutions, it was a major success and one too keep an eye out for in the near future.

Some of the guest speakers included:

Tyer Reed - Founder of TinyImpact
Justin Spratt
Roy Blumenthall
Mark Gevisser


The hot topic of the year this year seemed to have focused around Social Media Marketing, using the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools to your advantage in the online space and VOIP.

It appears as though the aim of most technological companies is to move all communication, whether it be landlines or cellphones to VOIP. Cheaper, more cost effective communication networks.

The sponsors this year included:

Attix 5
Microsoft
NeoTel
Blackberry
Cisco
Dimension Data
Seacom

Apologies if I've left anyone out but I seemed to have misplaced my pamphlet!!

After a 12 hour session of selling Search engine optimisation and digital marketing to the masses, TrafficFundi retired to the all night pub & dinner with a great rounding off by the South African rock band "Watershed".

All in all a very successful day!

Hopefully the TrafficFundi TEAM did their part in getting our name out there.

Thanks to all of you - Randy Ronnie, Sexy Steve, Jumpin Justin, Aaard workin Adi, Crazy Chris, Toy toy Thuli and the SPANKERS - who've assisted in making TrafficFundi a reality.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Below I've added some photo's of the TrafficFundi team @ Internetix.

How to go about "Tweeting"

In the social networking world, Twitter is the latest tool to voice your current activities and opinions. However, the benefits of using Twitter extend far beyond personal chit-chat or “tweeting” and can be a useful way to market your business, and to guarantee that your company has a say in the realm of micro-blogging.

Micro-blogging, to clarify, is yet way to communicate online on an immediate basis. For users of Facebook, status updates, or any answer to the question “what are you doing right now?” qualifies as micro-blogging. This social networking development means that valuable snippets of information, such as websites, events and news can be shared constantly to a global Twitter network.

If you have already taken the time out to set up a Twitter profile, chances are you already know the benefits of Twitter-networking. However, if you are struggling to find friends on Twitter, or interesting profiles to follow, here are some helpful hints from Mack Collier, who wrote an article entitled “So How do you Find People on Twitter?” for http://www.searchengineguide.com/.

According to Collier, finding friends on Twitter is as simple as searching for people by name, location or topic, for example “search marketing”, or any other topic that interests you. Collier also suggests using the Twitter Pack's wiki, which allows you to find companies with a presence on Twitter, or Tweetscan. Tweetscan also allows for users to search for any profiles of interest, and a means for others to reply to your Twitter profile.

Collier also suggests that finding people can also be a case of just following your friend’s friends, by keeping track of any conversations between them. Therefore, by being receptive to ongoing conversations in the Twitter-sphere you can enhance your social networking experience, and benefit from your profile's exposure in the micro-blogging sphere.

References:

Collier, M. (2008) “So How Do You Find People on Twitter?” Available at: searchengineguide.com [Accessed 25 March 2009]

PageRank Sculpting

Google has changed the way it uses the nofollow attribute. According to Matt Cutts, the new changes will affect the way people have previously used the nofollow attribute. So the question is, does nofollow have any benefit at all?



What is PageRank sculpting?


PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page of the same website. Pagerank flows from one page to another, with inbound links to the page adding to PR and outbound links 'leaking' it. By structuring the links on your pages, you can have influence on how the PR is spread on your site. This is called PageRank Sculpting.


Many people believed that by using nofollow attributes within internal links on your site, you could push more page rank to a single page and not pass page rank to the other page.

Well, for those of you who were using it, I suggest it's time to change your SEO strategies.
For more information please read Matt Cutts article on changes according to Google:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Bing.com

Came across this little ad. Seems as though Bing.com is on a massive advertising punt to overthrow the Google BOMB. Wonder if it's going to work.

If anyone's had any good experiences with BING.com or wants to share their thoughts, please do.



BING.com is it the new Google? For those of you wanting additional information on Bing.com read all about it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30983177/

Let the traffic begin!

Welcome to the official opening of the TRAFFICFUNDI blog. I am very pleased to say that in no less that 30 mins, I've managed to setup a BLOGGER account and find a relatively nice template to make this blog stand out a little more than your usual run of the mill site that pops up every 3 seconds.

For those of you wanting to find out more about TRAFFICFUNDI, who we are and what we do. Stick around. Join our TWITTER group, MEET us on Facebook and MINGLE with us on Linkedin.

If you're into Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Advertising and Entrepreneurship beyond your wildest dreams, then you've come to the right place.

Our official site is http://www.trafficfundi.com/ but as a result of plenty graphics, logo's, designs currently flying around, the site has not yet been officially launched.

Stay Tuned.