Keeping up-to-date on search engines...

Finding ways to stay informed of the subtle changes in the global search engines can be a daunting task. Major engines constantly change how, who and why they list different results. Press releases from the search engines will never tell you everything you need to know so an additional tool in the struggle can be forums. Search Engine Forums is a widely used forum for web masters and marketers alike who are looking for opinions and information from people working in the industry.

Researching Keywords

You may think the keywords you should be targeting are obvious for your site right? A bit of research may well prove that there are a few quirks in what your users actually type into their favourite search engines. A few spelling mistakes, some geographical discrepancies and shortened versions may provide some keywords with valuable and as yet untapped traffic. The current favourite for research is the Overture Search Suggestion Tool; a handy tool which provides both related terms to your keywords and statistics on the searches performed in the last month on the Overture site. Further insight and research can be gained from Wordtracker; a paid subscription based site featuring a number of useful tools for competitive comparisons of keywords.

 Search Engine Strategies 2002 - Sydney

The renowned SES conference comes as close as it ever will to New Zealand with plenty of good advice, better contact building and a few lively characters. The conference attendance was surprisingly small from my perspective (with a few of the major engines missing and only a handful of the PPC's attending) however the organisers (australia.internet.com) appear to have been pleased. Over the next few weeks nzbase.com will be updated with some key insights gained from the conference.

 Domainz finally catching up?

Domainz New Zealand have finally started to catch up with the rest of the online community in New Zealand by launcing their re-developed site. I must admit that the site is way ahead of the old site (which was almost impossible to navigate) and the help sections provided reasonably easy to use instructions.

One of the main problems is still the fact that domains must have a registered DNS host before they can be registered on the domainz site. This is just ridiculous and forces users who don't know much about the web to go through their ISP for the domain. While this may be the result wanted by Domainz what is the advantage to the consumer? Domainz should be providing a service whereby the domain will be automatically registered to a default host. A good example of this in action is at inww.com (a major .com.au provider).

Roll on the day when New Zealand moves into the competitive world and adopts a regisitry system which is not run by one organisation.