I forget how I stumbled across this product years ago - I think it went by another name but was forced to change name because there was another product with the same name…I am thinking it had something to do with Hot Dog but I could be very, very wrong *grin*

SEC was good in it’s day, but I am afraid that day has passed. I used it for ranking but it also does submission of your site to the search engines - and you can even schedule submissions on a repetitive basis! Yikes! This is so passé, to submit repeatedly to search engines… I never used this aspect of the software.

When I upgraded my license a few months ago, SEC said that they would be utilitzing the Google API key in the near future. As of today there is nothing on the site about this, nor is it addressed in the FAQ.

What I find is that I can rarely get a ranking for Yahoo! and Google has now stopped working as well….since I was checking rankings in 3 search engines, when 2 stop working, the product is not much good to me ;-)

I strongly recommend that you do not waste your money on this product, as good as it was in the past, it has not kept up with the current search engine terms and conditions.

This is the first of a series of articles on various search engine ranking software products that are on the market.

It would only be fair to disclose the following information: Google Information for Webmasters and Terms of Service indicate that No Automated Querying is allowed:

No Automated Querying

You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system without express permission in advance from Google. Note that “sending automated queries” includes, among other things:

• using any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage “ranks” on Google for various queries;

Express permission, I am assuming, means that the developer of the software requires any user of the software to provide a Google API, in order to use the software. If the sofware does not require you to use a Google API, they are not “legally” interacting with Google to provide you with a search engine ranking.

What this means to me is that I would not pay for that sofware as it will not work for long if it currently works at all!

Some software that I will review includes:

1. Search Engine Commando
2. Advanced Web Ranking
3. Web CEO
4. Free Monitor for Google
5. Digital Point Solutions

If you have used other software and wish to contribute, please feel free to comment! If you are reviewing a software product, provide the URL, whether or not it uses an API for the different search engines, if there is a trial version, etc.

I have just started playing with Google AdSense - I am not even displaying it in my blog yet, but only in my affiliate directory, which contains about 2 affiliate programs and gets no traffic ;-)

But it gives me encouragement…$.84 can become $84 eventually…and then maybe one day a grand total of $840 - you think? I think I’ll have to incorporate AdWords into my blog posts and see what that does ;-)

I started this blog post quoting another SEO who was picked up by a Topix newsfeed, discussing what MSN desires in order to rank your site highly in the search engines. I became skeptical of what I was reading…specifically that MSN “will not index text in headers, footers or tables”. What? I had to delete what I was writing and go straight to the horses mouth.

I scanned the section entitled “site owner help” but did not see any reference to text not being indexed from headers, footers and tables. If that were the case, 99% of all websites would not be indexed because most sites are still done in tables! And how does MSN know if I create my pages using a header and footer include? They are rendered at the server level before MSNbot views my site.

If you find this info in the site owner help please do reply here and let me know! I will amend my blog ;-)

Long story short, the following things are relevant on a page to help with rankings in any search engine:

• page title
• meta description
• meta keywords
• keyword rich content close to the top of the page
• reasonable page weight (too many graphics will make your page too heavy)
• keep text out of images if you want the text indexed
• internal linking - try to keep pages within 3 links of each other

That is a really short list - there are many, many more factors, but start with this and it will help ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers! Thanksgiving is such a big holiday in the US compared to Canada…it’s exciting to feel the vibe all the way up here!

Just when I thought I could blog about something other than Google, they have been spotted testing another new service…so of course I am obliged to tell you about it *grin*

I went to the official Google blog, didn’t see anything about Pay Per Call ads yet, but did see something about Froogle and local shopping! I’ll save that for tomorrow’s blog :-)

Some searchers have begun to see a phone icon next to the company’s sponsored listings. By clicking on the icon, they can enter a phone number and click a “Connect for Free” button to be linked up to the other party.

This is unbelievable and must be temporary, but Google is absorbing the cost for all phone calls - local and long-distance!

Check out some screenshots of what the PPC ad looks like with the phone icon on Greg Yardley’s Internet Blog.

Also of interest, Google’s FAQ on the Click to Call service, including privacy concerns (why would Google keep a searchers phone number for 4 months?).

This technology is obviously only available to certain advertisers at current time. Greg Yardley’s blog indicated that he came across the Click to Call (it is technically not Pay Per Call) while searching for “refinance” on Google - do you see Click to Call ads when you perform this search on Google? I don’t….but then again I am in Canada and these things always roll out in the US first *grin*