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Is Google Delaying Index of New Content?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

A new theory about Google is swirling around regarding how quick the search engine crawls and indexes new content. Is the delayed crawling/indexing a penalty? Or is it a bug?…no one really knows for sure but there’s much discussion about it.

To quickly summarize what’s going on, webmasters are complaining about how they’re posting content and waiting – around 7 days to be precise – for Google to crawl and index their new content.

Not everyone is spotting this problem so that’s why some are speculating that Google is penalizing sites for doing something it sees as wrong. Another possibility being circulated is that there is an indexing bug triggered by certain types of sites or code sets.

Respondents to a webmaster’s complaint in the HighRankings forum contend that he needs more links pointing to his site. The frequency of content could also be a factor – sites who post new content regularly will see the Google crawler index their page more frequently.

Perhaps this particular webmaster has included a SEO-plugin on their page that embeds “no-follow” and/or “no-embed” tags and that’s what is taking so long…some of the sites evaluated suggest this could be the problem.

Are you running into any problems like this?

Also, we invite you to take a look at highlights from the just completed SMX West search expo conference in Santa Clara, California. While some of the events centered on pay-per-click, you’re sure to find some great SEO/online marketing tips as this conference draws some of the best and brightest in the industry.

Tags: google, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Building Internal Link Structure after Google Indexes your Site

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Just what is the best way to unveil a new or vastly expanded site to the world? What I mean by “best way” is the best method for achieving high search engine rankings quickly.

There’s no universal way to answer that question. Every SEO/SEM has their own strategies that they implement, test and tweak. Simply throwing something up there and forgetting about it is a terrible idea.

But an interesting way of rolling out a new or renovated site was explored on a recent WebMasterWorld discussion thread. A senior member of the community, Wheel, is expanding a site he manages from 21 to approximately 5,000 pages. He’s looking to take a new approach to rolling out his site – let Google index all of it up front then go back and use Google and the site command to determine which pages to internally link to.

A popular SEO tactic is linking to other pages in a website from popular keywords. This gives you added boost in the search engines for that keyword phrase.

What’s different about Wheel is that he’s going to post all of his pages once and let Google go ahead and index them. He says he’s doing it this way because he has so much content that it would be impossible to sort through it all. Therefore, he will go ahead and get it all indexed then use his site command with keywords…[site: wheeldomain.com keyword+here]… to find the pages that contain that specific word(s) he wants to rank for. He will then choose the strongest pages and link to other pages on the site with that keyword.

Interesting method indeed, which drew mixed response in the forum since this method may initially seem backwards to most search engine optimization professionals. Some say Google will degrade his site outright while others think it will be wise to unveil the site in bits and pieces rather than all at once.

One reply to Wheel’s question at the bottom is pretty interesting – I suggest taking a look at it.

Tags: organic search, search engine optimization, Site Architecture
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Some Thoughts on Google’s New Personalized Search Results Strategy

Friday, January 29th, 2010

WARNING – We’re going to stray a bit from SEO today and venture a little bit into the philosophical.

However, it goes without saying that Google’s new personalized search strategy is making waves among search engine optimization experts. How will personalization for anyone using Google, not just members logged into their accounts, affect the search results they see?

Answers to this question and many others like what this new feature means for websites who use organic search marketing channels will probably take a bit of time to answer.

Google has maintained user history for quite some time now – installing a “cookie” on a user’s web browser, which logs your searches with the engine. Now, they are taking this data to personalize your search results without your knowledge up front. While the cookies can be disabled on your browser and the personalization setting disabled in Google itself, most users and clients won’t take the time to do it since they probably don’t understand what’s going on in the first place.

One webmaster/SEO discussing the topic on a forum says it’s not an easy task to keep Google search history turned off – once this user turned his Google search history off, it somehow was turned back on without his knowledge.

Which is what leads to so much concern about this change – a user’s privacy and how it is compromised with this sort of policy – a big concern among webmasters and SEOs to say the least, as evidenced by a discussion on Google’s change at WebMasterWorld.

What are the implications on one’s privacy with a move like this? Before, users had to “opt-in” for personalized search results. They could request this personalization if they wanted to. Now, it’s “opt-out”…so now unsuspecting web users are having their prior search history and location dictate the results they see.

Not only does this carry consequences for privacy, it also can limit what someone sees. Now, their access to all available sources will be limited to what Google thinks they want to see, not what they need to see necessarily…a new precedent indeed.

Tags: google, organic search, personalized search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Google Personalizes Search Results for Everyone

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Late one recent Friday afternoon, Google made a big announcement that went largely unnoticed in the search engine world but could possibly have dramatic consequences for searchers and search engine optimization pros.

The change revolves around Google’s implementation of personalized search results for everyone – not only for Google members signed into their accounts.

Company engineers and officials claim the switch is designed to provide better and more relevant search results to their users. Google will now customize search results based on your search activity over the last 80 days. Users will know when Google has customized their results when they see a “view customizations” link in the top right of the search results – they can click on that link to see how Google has personalized their search results.

Users can opt out of this feature by making a couple of simple clicks as outlined in the video below.

Why is this a big change? Well up until now, Google and other search engines have by and large returned the same results to anyone using the same keyword phrase to search for something. Now, it will be much easier to return results Google thinks is more focused on what the searcher is looking for.

How does this affect SEO and does this mean that optimizing websites for search engines is dead?

Well, personalized search isn’t new and on some level, especially in geographic terms, it has been around for awhile. Searchers in Europe will likely see different results than searchers using the same term in the U.S.

Nevertheless, debate is fierce about how this is going to affect SEO and whether it’s a good change or not. Some think personalized search results are great for users while others think it will only return things people want to see and limit their access to all available sources. Others even think this isn’t big news at all and SEOs and webmasters are making much ado about nothing.

You can safely assume though that SEO is still needed just so you can have a shot at top search engine rankings – not having any optimization at all will definitely relegate your rankings to page 2 or lower.

We’ll keep you posted on anything we learn into the New Year about new personalized search features from Google and if there are any strategies you need to implement on your site to maintain high rankings.

Tags: google, personalized search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Bing Update – Webmaster Tools Not Accepting Sites with Hyphens and Spyder Crawling Sites Twice

Friday, December 18th, 2009

It’s been a little while since we’ve reported on anything involving Bing and how it’s functioning for webmasters and SEO professionals.

While Microsoft’s newest search engine has been gaining market share in online search since its inception, webmasters and SEOs have had to deal with some glitches. Here are two of the latest.

A few days ago, webmasters were reporting in Bing’s forum that the search engine’s webmaster tools utility was not accepting URLs with hyphens in them. This caught my attention since our URL for this blog has a hyphen along with our SEO firm’s homepage (http://www.seo-advantage.com/).

Fortunately for our homepage, if you enter the URL without a hyphen, you end up at the same place.

Technicians at Bing are working on the problem and may have resolved it already.

The other glitch causing headaches for webmasters and SEOs is the crawler for the search engine is crawling a page twice – once for its compressed version and the other time for the uncompressed version.

Comments in the Bing forum complain that this is a waste of bandwidth and defeats the purpose of HTTP compression. An older thread from WebMasterWorld discusses image indexing by search engines and that possibly being a cause of the problem.

While Bing says they are working on the problem, there is no confirmation on when it will be resolved.

Stay tuned for any further updates to these issues or any technical issues with Bing.

Tags: bing, search engine optimization, seo maintenance
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 1 Comment »

Google’s Zeitgeist 2009 – Fastest Rising and Most Popular Online Searches

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

You may be wondering, “What does this have to do with optimizing my website for the search engines?”

Well, nothing really – but we like to include things that are of general interest sometimes to keep things interesting. And this term, zeitgeist, caught my attention as it carries certain significance with me.

Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary defines the term zeitgeist as “the spirit of the age; trend of thought and feeling in a period.” Therefore, Google’s use of the term to outline the fastest rising Google searches and the most popular search terms is justifiable.

So what has captivated the curiosity of web surfers this year?

Well, searches of Michael Jackson (probably due to his untimely death) topped the Google’s global list of fastest growing search terms. He wasn’t the only entertainer to make the list – sensation Lady Gaga topped many regional lists and landed #9 on the global list.

2009’s online search zeitgeist also indicates social media is very much alive and well, a sweeping confirmation of its increasing importance. Facebook and Spanish social-networking site Tuenti appeared in the #2 and #3 fastest growing search term spot respectively. Twitter came in at #5 – the first time it has appeared on Google’s zeitgeist list.

Concerns about the swine flu epidemic also drove individuals looking for information to Google. In the U.S., it had more searches than another major event of the year – the inauguration of President Barack Obama!

And finally, the sour economy brought out the thrifty consciousness of many as evidenced by the rising popularity of do-it-yourself searches and searches for comfort food recipes to make at home. Chili was the most popular recipe searched for on Google in the U.S.

Check out Google’s Zeitgeist 2009 site for the U.S. for some interesting lists and charts on search trends for the year – it’s pretty interesting to see what the global trends are in terms of online search. Perhaps information like this can be helpful – but it’s definitely interesting nonetheless.

Tags: google, keyword research, social media, Twitter
Posted in Forum Watch, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Google’s Search Engine Ranking Factors

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Just what are the factors Google uses in their algorithms to rank sites in the search engines?

No one knows exactly of course – search engine optimization professionals have been trying to do this even before Google was born.

At the recent PubCon conference, Google software engineer Matt Cutts commented that there are over 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. So, SEOs on WebMasterWorld are starting to write down what these factors may be. There are only a few on there now so they have a long way to go.

Of course, determining the significance placed on each of these is a whole other kettle of beans. Search engine optimization pros have been trying to do this for years now. But as time drags on and more websites come online, this has only gotten more difficult.

Some of the major ranking factor categories include: domain, architecture, content, linking, penalties and more.

A list like this can be useful on some level…but knowing which elements carry more weight is what’s more important and where you need to focus your effort.

Tags: organic search, PageRank, search engine optimization, Site Architecture
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 1 Comment »

Potential New Google Ranking Factor – Site Speed

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Intense lobbying within Google recently has prompted Matt Cutts, Google’s spam chief, to announce a potential new addition to the search algorithm next year.

Speaking at the Pubcon conference in Las Vegas that just concluded, Cutts says Google’s co-founders want search to be real fast – like flipping through a magazine. They would like faster web pages to rank better than slower ones. It’s already a factor in the AdWords quality score, but there is now a big push to include site speed for the organic search algorithm as well.

It was implied at the conference by Cutts that it’s a real possibility for 2010.

Rusty Brick, who attended the conference, speculated that it won’t be too major however unless the page takes an extremely long time to load. Each of the over 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithm are weighed differently.

Virtually no one on the forums complains of the quality score of their AdWords sites is affected by site speed. It’s assumed that the same criteria will be applied to the organic ranking algorithm.

Stay tuned to the search engine optimization blog at SEO Advantage for more developments on this issue…but expect it to be one more factor in how sites are ranked in the search engines next year.

Tags: google, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 1 Comment »

PageRank Data Removed From Google Webmaster Tools

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Anyone intimately involved in optimizing websites for the search engines knows that the Google Webmaster Tools utility is an invaluable part of monitoring your site. It’s easy to login and see your site’s position in all of the elements Google uses to rank your site.

One of those elements is PageRank which we’ve discussed some here – mainly in the context of link building and how web pages with higher PageRank carry more value.

But Search Engine Roundtable is confirming that Google is removing PageRank data from the Webmaster Tools utility. However, they will still keep the data in the Google Toolbar, which is a simple add-on tool available for download.

In responding to an inquiry about the change on Google’s Webmaster Help thread, an employee of the popular search engine stated that PageRank is not that important and advises webmasters not to focus on it so much.

Other webmasters and SEOs argue that if PageRank is something they shouldn’t focus on, why only remove it from the Webmaster Tools utility?

Of course any advice directly from Google should be taken with a grain of salt. For link building purposes, a website’s PageRank data can be some useful information.

While we agree it’s not the Holy Grail, PageRank is important to think about.

Tags: google, link building, organic search, PageRank, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 1 Comment »

Non-Scientific Poll Asks Whether SEO Professionals Should Promote Their Rankings

Monday, September 14th, 2009

New poll results just released by Rusty Brick at S.E. Roundtable pose the question “Should you flaunt your search engine rankings?”

While there are a variety of responses to this question, only 12% of respondents say it is a good idea.

But these 18 or so individuals who answered in the affirmative to this question are nowhere to be found on the accompanying WebMasterWorld discussion thread.

The search engine professionals discussing this question on the thread generally dismissed the idea for a variety of reasons…some even implied dishonest SEOs will flaunt their rankings by PhotoShopping (hopefully that’s a word!!) their site’s information into a page 1 search engine results page.

Aside from just plain dishonesty to make a quick buck, there are other more practical business reasons not to promote page 1 rankings.

First of all, rankings can fluctuate. As one SEO on the discussion board said, “What the GoogleGod giveth, the GoogleGod taketh away.” And they fluctuate for a variety of reasons – geographic location, time of day and other factors play into rankings. If you make this claim and then someone searches for your keywords only to find your site on page 2 or 3, your credibility will certainly suffer.

Flaunting our ranking achievements isn’t our style here at SEO Advantage. We agree with many of our SEO colleagues on the discussion board that it isn’t good business practice to make statements like that.

While high rankings are something to be proud of, it isn’t the whole enchilada…site architecture, copy and other elements have to be there for high rankings to make a meaningful impact in sales conversions and the bottom line.

Tags: organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Advantage, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Why Including the Trailing Slash at the End of a URL is Important for Link Building

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Web developers and SEO professionals often debate the importance of a trailing slash at the end of a URL link. Some people not so familiar with link building and search engine optimization dismiss their importance, saying it doesn’t really matter if you include the slash or not.

But the truth is it does matter – if you do business with a web developer or SEO firm who dismisses the importance of including a “/” at the end of a website they’re linking to, find a new one immediately.

SEO blogger Sebastien explained it in pretty simple terms…URLs are like phone numbers in that each character matters. If you take a digit off the end of a phone number, you don’t go anywhere. The slash at the end of a URL shares much the same characteristics. If someone gives you a web address to link on your website, use it as is or not at all.

Make sure you and the other webmaster agree on a format for the URL and stick with it.

Servers have different ways of handling issues like this. Say for instance the link on your site doesn’t contain the trailing slash but the other site does, several things can happen that will negate any link building benefits you’re trying to get. Some do a re-direct while others will simply display an error (404) message.

Some servers may even return a 200 response for both versions of the URL. Not only does this mean wasted time and effort from a link building perspective, you could potentially run into duplicate content problems as well.

Read this Search Engine Journal post for more information.

Tags: link building, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Three Major Classifications of Unique Content

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Developing unique content is surely a necessity and challenge for building rankings in the search engines and by extension, developing a following.

Search engines look for and reward unique content – not because they want to make us SEO copywriters miserable but because they want to find the most valuable information for their users.

And the search engines are very good at identifying unique content. They will be able to easily determine what’s legitimate and what isn’t.

Below are three major classifications of unique content.

1. Editorial content

These are things like blogs and articles – anything that is written by a human. Examples of this is our SEO blog and SEO knowledge center. This is ideal for small sites trying to corner a certain niche. You can either generate this yourself or hire a SEO copywriter to research and write it.

2. Machine-built content

Examples of this include sites like Expedia and Bing travel – basically things like hotel reviews or unique data regarding a product or service. The sites take data sources and produce automated content. Real estate sites like Zillo.com are great examples. Payscale.com and Salary.com are great examples in the job search/HR area.

3. User-generated content

Is just that, content generated by site visitors. It’s extremely difficult to harness but can be very valuable if it’s done right. You have to first build a community of followers and then have incentives for them to produce content. Sites like Wikipedia, Digg and YouTube are just a few examples.

In the end, it pays to have a strategy in place before you begin generating content. Sit down and figure out which content type is best for what you’re trying to build and the business you’re trying to leverage. It is possible to use a combination of all three.

Watch this video from Rand Fish at SEOMoz to learn more.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Generating Unique Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Tags: Online Marketing, organic search, search engine optimization, SEO copywriting
Posted in Forum Watch, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Should you Undo a 301 Redirect?

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Webmasters and search engine optimization professionals sometimes setup 301 redirects on their sites to replace old un-crawlable URLs with ones friendly to search engine indexing and ranking.

But a webmaster recently expressed on a WebMasterWorld thread his frustration with his rankings after redirecting the majority of his site to new URLs. He’s getting a bit nervous in thinking the redirect was a big mistake and will have disastrous consequences for his long-term goals.

Prior to the change, he had #1 and #3 rankings in Google and Bing respectively but has since seen rankings fluctuate wildly. He’s pondering whether to forget about the 301 redirect and go back to his original URLs.

This issue here is – a month after instituting a 301 redirect, should you reverse course if rankings are not improving?

According to WebMasterWorld veteran willybfriendly, it generally takes 3-4 months for all of this to work itself out. Changing course will only lengthen the time it takes to get your search engine rankings back.

Rusty Brick at S.E. Roundtable agrees – if after that 3-4 month time frame you’re not seeing an improvement, there may be another issue with your domain.

Join the forum discussion at WebMasterWorld.

Tags: organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Google Spam Chief Gives Insights into NoFollow

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

It’s been widely reported across the blogosphere and discussed among SEO pros in recent months of the surprise announcement by Matt Cutts regarding noFollow links.

Basically, noFollow links may no longer work in sculpting PageRank…Google spiders no longer are factoring them in.

There’s been much discussion as to the affect of these changes – search engine optimization professionals are about evenly split on the consequences of this change along with how to deal with it.

But at the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in San Jose, Cutts sat down and gave his suggestions as to how to handle noFollow links.

He suggests on where to use noFollow and where not to use it along with what to do if you already have it embedded in your site’s code. Watch this short interview with Cutts to try and understand his thinking regarding this practice.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Matt Cutts on NoFollow from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Tags: google, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

The Perfectly Optimized Page – An Attempt to Explain What Goes on With On-Page Keyword Optimization

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

As a search engine optimization company ourselves, we know that there’s no “perfect” formula for on-page optimization. Here, Rand Fish of SEOMoz attempts to lay out the perfectly optimized page.

While it may not include every single element that goes into search engine optimization, I think his blog post goes a long way toward explaining many of the things that should be addressed in the structure and content of a web site as it’s being optimized.

Note that this refers to “on-page optimization”, which does not cover the elements also thought to be necessary by many such as linking structure, trust/authority of the host domain, registration and hosting data, external link text, traffic and CTR data, social graph metrics, etc.

The Perfectly Optimized Page, Courtesy of SEOMoz.org

The full post is well worth a read…

Tags: search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Poll Indicates 38% of Webmasters Will Retain NoFollow Links

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

A few weeks ago, Rusty Brick over at Search Engine Roundtable floated a poll asking what webmasters plan to do in light of Matt Cutts’ announcement in June.

As you may remember, Cutts announced at the SMX Conference in late May and early June that noFollow links will not work like they have in the past. Search engine optimization professionals have used them in a practice known as PageRank sculpting.

Instead of having link juice go to static pages like an “about us” or “contact us” page, webmasters could redirect it to higher yielding pages by using noFollow links.

But that’s changing thanks to Google’s new policy…38% of webmasters however will continue to use them according to this poll.

Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

Forum discussion at WebMasterWorld seems mixed…many SEO professionals are still digesting the news of all this.

Tags: link building, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Conduct a Holistic SEO Site Audit in an Hour

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Site audits are one of the most fundamental tasks for an SEO professional – but sometimes one has to be done in a jiffy.

When beginning an SEO and online marketing project, you need to quickly assess the status of the site in terms of its standing in the search engines. A more extensive review can be done later, but you need to do an initial assessment quickly.

Don’t worry…it doesn’t take too long to get an idea of what a website has and what it lacks in terms of SEO.

Using Google Webmaster Tools and Web analytics package for the site, you need to determine:

When the site underwent its last major redesign

Number of indexed pages

User-friendliness (non-SEO but important to site visitors and by extension, the search engines)

Locate duplicate and template content

How title tags and H1 tags are used

….and more

Check out this interesting article at Search Engine Watch – The 60 Minute SEO Site Audit – and then quickly assess where your site is at and what you need to do for it to dominate in the search engines.

Tags: Online Marketing, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

7 Signs You Should Run As Fast As You Can From an SEO Consultant

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Seeking advice or SEO services to help your website build rankings and conversions?

Perusing some of my usual SEO and online marketing news sources today I came across a post at HubSpot that explores 7 signs that the SEO consultant you are talking to is either incompetent or a fraud.

These tips can give you an idea if the SEO firm employs legitimate tactics to rank your site higher. Like any other business or industry, SEO has a lot posers who will make lavish promises to you and not deliver. In the end, all you’re left with is a site that isn’t ranking well at all – worst yet, you will be out of thousands of dollars.

1. References “unknown” experts in their sites and marketing literature

If they excessively make very vague references like “experts” that have provided them with “proprietary” or “cutting-edge” techniques and never mention SEO experts like Rand Fishkin (from SEOMoz), Aaron Wall (from SEOBook.com) or Matt Cutts (Google’s SEO guy) when writing about or discussing SEO, it’s likely you can’t trust them.

2. Suggests specific keyword densities

Emphasizing the idea you should stuff website copy with keywords to accelerate rankings is another sign. Content needs to be useful and informative and not stuffed with words that will be picked up by the search engines. Even if in some alternate reality the site wasn’t penalized or banned by Google, it wouldn’t be any use to you since no one will ever actually read it and do something. And if they pull some figure out of a hat like you need to have a 14.2% keyword density, head for the hills.

Keywords definitely are important but they should be weaved into your copy to make it sound more informative and “natural” sounding.

3. Frenzied directory submissions

The basis of their SEO services is to list your site in a million directories is another sign. Directories can be great if they’re used properly. But especially be suspect if they say they have a proprietary list of directories that nobody else knows about.

4. Obsession about link buying

Anyone can buy links…any SEO consultant who says you need to spend thousands of dollars buying links, get away from them now! Your goal should be to create great inbound links you do not pay for by having great content. Simply paying money for links will be noticed by Google and your site will be treated accordingly.

5. Naïve use of social networking sites

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. can be very valuable in marketing your business online…if they’re used right. If an SEO consultant says they have hundreds of friends out there that will produce activity for you, take a vacation, go see your mom, whatever just get away from them. Besides, techniques like this can get your URL permanently banned.

6. Endorses black hat practices

Do not hire an SEO consultant service that says they are using what’s known as black hat techniques. Examples include: hidden text on pages, redirecting users to other sites, offering different content to search engines and actual readers or anything that sounds like they’re tricking the search engines. There are many legitimate techniques an SEO can employ to boost rankings. Using black hat techniques like that can result in a penalty or total site ban.

7. Excessively confusing explanation

SEO isn’t rocket science…any reasonably intelligent person can understand the basics. If they can’t explain their rationale and approach in a way you can understand, politely decline.

Read the post for more detail and discussion on things to watch for when looking for SEO services.

Tags: Online Marketing, organic search, search engine optimization, SEO Advantage, SEO copywriting
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 1 Comment »

Properly Integrating SEO into the Development Process

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Search engine optimization simply referred to as a line item on a project plan?

That may sound ridiculous to some of us in the business but unfortunately, many large projects in the corporate world treat it as such. But the fact is optimizing a website for the search engines is a task that must be integrated into the entire development cycle.

Recent conversations about how SEO professionals and project developers view each other conclude that each needs to know a little bit about their counterpart’s job. Each of them working together is beneficial to the project and the organization.

But in many organizations, it’s not that simple. A project team usually involves several other people as well.

So how do you make sure SEO doesn’t fall through the cracks?

Find an informative Q&A at SEOMoz to learn more about properly integrating SEO into the development process and the consequences neglecting it can have.

In effect, search engine optimization has to be weaved into every aspect of the development life cycle. As SEO pro Jessica Bowman puts it, “The shorter list would be where doesn’t SEO go into the development process?”

It’s best for everyone to have some understanding of SEO and its importance. Only slight changes to a site can have disastrous consequences if SEO techniques are not considered.

One way to get others to fully appreciate search engine optimization technology is to offer various training courses and then ask participants to try out what they learned on their personal websites. Seeing their own sites rank well in search engines will impress them much more than a large and complex corporate one.

Tags: Online Marketing, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

New “More Results” Link Now On Google’s Search Engine Results Page

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Last Friday, Google started showing a “show more results from” link in its search engine results page. The new feature is an expandable link that shows 5 more listings from a particular site.

In the past, there would be a link “More Results from blah blah” at the bottom of some search results. Users could click that link, which counted as a new search query, to bring up all of the pages from a particular site that match the keywords in their search.

This new way should save searchers time and make search queries go much faster. It may lead to fewer queries per user for Google because it’s unclear whether Google, comScore and HitWise are counting a click on the more results link as another query. But webmasters seem to really like the new feature. Sites optimized for the search engines will be that much easier to investigate.

See an example of the new features below courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable.

And what the old way looked like from a S.E. Roundtable post in 2005.

See a discussion of this new feature at DigitalPoint Forums.

Tags: google, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Long Awaited Yahoo! – Microsoft Deal Announced

Friday, July 31st, 2009

The search engine marketing blogs and forums have spoken of a deal between the two search engines for a while now. After much anticipation, a 10-year deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft was announced this week.

Not much for SEO and SEM professionals to worry about right now – the deal still needs to be approved by federal regulators. In short though, this new partnership:

Microsoft acquires an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies and the ability to integrate it into existing web search platforms
Each company will keep its own separate display advertising business and sales staff
Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! for traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network through a revenue sharing agreement
The agreement is for 10 years

Yahoo!’s appearance will not change but will include a disclaimer at the bottom of each page saying “Powered by Bing.” Nothing will change until regulators approve the deal, expected no earlier than the first of next year.

Integration in the United States will begin with search and then with search ads, which will now be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter. Integration will then expand to other countries.

No need to get excited right now – it’s going to take some time for these changes to happen. And according to Rusty Brick at Search Engine Roundtable, Yahoo! has made many changes in the past so even though their agreement with Microsoft is for 10 years, don’t be surprised if something drastic changes in 5.

Learn more at this Search Engine Land article and see what search engine optimization professionals have to say about this merger at DigitalPoint and WebMasterWorld forums.

Tags: bing, Online Marketing, paid search, search engine optimization, Yahoo!
Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing | No Comments »

Google and Bing July 2009 Updates

Monday, July 27th, 2009

A couple of posts in today’s Search Engine Roundtable indicate some possible changes in the offing for both Google and Bing.

Google’s changes for July seem pretty insignificant – webmasters discussing these events in a WebmasterWorld thread are noticing old data show up in Google, indicating a possible “rollback.” Things like old cache, old dates and old snippets are appearing. It’s unclear if this is a rollback, an old index or the beginnings of something much bigger.

Stay tuned to the search engine optimization e-blog for any updates.

Bing is also doing some updating of its own. Chatter on the forums indicates a clear update – sites with high rankings now have poor rankings and vice versa. One commenter on HighRankings forum says this is nothing new for Microsoft’s search engine. Bing is currently dropping sites and pages like crazy at the moment, which has been a common practice for MSN search in the past.

Here’s an excerpt of what’s going on:

“I was no.1 for my main keyword, and had been there for quite some time. Though I went to show a client an example and searched for my term in bing and now i’m not in the top 200?

Was a bit embarrasing to say the least!”

See these WebMaster World and Bing Community threads for more insights.

Check back again soon with seo-e.com for any updates and current happenings with the search engines.

Tags: bing, google, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Survey Says Google AdSense Earnings Down in July 2009

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

There’s an interesting little survey over at Search Engine Roundtable I find revealing about the durability of PPC in this economy…another piece of evidence to support the theory that search engine optimization holds better long term benefits over pay-per-click.

Especially in a down economy, marketing managers and online search professionals have to find ways to get the most for their online marketing dollar.

There has been much abuzz around AdSense and WebMasterWorld forums lately from publishers saying their revenues are way down. 56% of those surveyed by Rusty Brick say their revenues are down while another 20% say they’re stagnant.

While not everyone is singing the AdSense blues, I think it does exemplify the downfalls of PPC, especially in the down economy. Buyers are much more conservative these days with their money – a glitzy ad just isn’t going to get the job done.

Since organic search rankings build on themselves over time, an investment now can mean you’re there in waiting when the economy begins to recover.

Read the poll and our prior search engine optimization e-blog post on the advantages of SEO over PPC.

Tags: Online Marketing, organic search, paid search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Yahoo! Launches New Optional Homepage Design

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

While it has been known for months, Yahoo! today unveiled the beta version of its new homepage. The most notable change is the left column, which in the past has been generic links to news, sports, travel, etc.

But now, a new customizable menu appears that effectively turns the left side into a RSS reader or “dashboard”. As users scroll over each widget, a smaller window will appear displaying the site’s content.

Users will now be able to add widgets or applications; basically any third-party site with RSS capability but Yahoo has created a wide-range of widgets for this launch. They will also recommend widgets to users based on their browsing and click-stream behavior.

Yahoo! also plans to conduct random testing to integrate search results pages into this same design. Widgets in the left column will effectively be search filters – users will be able to filter their search to YouTube or videos only for example. However, it’s all being selectively tested right now so it’s unclear when it will be available to the public at-large.

The new homepage will also be available as a mobile application (i.e. Blackberry, IPhone) fairly soon.

See this Search Engine Land article for more examples of Yahoo’s new page…and it’s online now.

It looks pretty neat, better functionality than the old Yahoo! page. It might serve as a good place to organize online activities into one place, kind of like a news aggregator but all inclusive.

Tags: Online Marketing, search engine optimization, Yahoo!
Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing | 1 Comment »

Google Profiling Search Professionals – 7 Red Flags to Avoid

Friday, July 17th, 2009

There has been much discussion lately as to whether Google treats search engine professionals as criminals, which was sparked by a surprise announcement about NoFollow links by Google’s spam czar Matt Cutts at the SMX conference last month.

No matter if you believe Google profiles SEOs or not, you need to do your best not to be labeled as an SEO. There’s an interesting article at Winning the Web that details 7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!

If you are profiled as an SEO by Google, they will heavily scrutinize your site and hold you to a much higher standard. Avoid this by following these 7 steps:

Don’t bloviate about your SEO tactics – Be careful what you tell others about all the cutting-edge SEO techniques you are using…it could come back to haunt you.
Sites all tied together are an easy target – Separate your sites as much as possible (i.e. different IP addresses, no interlinking). Google can trace IP addresses and has a lot of information about you and your sites.
Do not over optimize for certain keywords – It’s always been pretty simple to optimize content for SEO. But Google now automatically filters and penalizes sites it thinks are “over-optimized”. Focus a little less on things like keyword density and generate engaging content instead.
Unnatural link profile – Google definitely penalizes sites when it thinks a site’s link profile is unnatural. Examples include too many links too fast, too many links from low quality, unrelated sites, etc.
Avoid NoFollow to sculpt PageRank – Using NoFollow is a definite red flag since Google believes the only people that know about this are professional SEOs.
Do not buy or sell obvious paid links – Google has been pretty harsh on paid links since late 2007, claiming any site buying or selling links will be penalized.
Using SEO and links to get a spammy site to the top – Is a big no-no as well…following the previous six tips but missing this one can get you in trouble. Even if you did your SEO under the radar, some money making scheme site may get to the top, but it won’t stay there for long.

SEO is certainly tougher these days. The best advice, don’t do things that draw attention to yourself. Be sure sites you build or maintain provide some value to its readers.

Have you been profiled or seen SEO red flags like these? Leave us a comment below.

Learn more at the Search Engine Roundtable and this forum discussion at Sphinn.

Tags: link building, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Are Bing’s Algorithms Placing Emphasis on Domain Names?

Monday, July 13th, 2009

A good domain name containing a strong keyword phrase is beneficial in terms of search engine optimization…we’ve mentioned here in the search engine optimization e-blog that it’s generally not a good idea to change the URL of a page already ranking well in Google.

But a post at Search Engine Roundtable and forum discussion at Bing Community sheds light on how Microsoft’s newest search engine, Bing, treats domain names.

Apparently, Bing places more emphasis on the URL, or domain name, than Google. If the URL contains a strong keyword, say for example http://www.widgets.com, it would rank really high in Bing. But the quality, content and code of the site may be of poor quality.

Heck, the site may even have nothing to do with widgets!

Consensus in the forum is that Bing places way too much emphasis on keywords in the URL.

Cleo includes a real world example on the forum, http://www.architecturalrenderings.com/, which appears at #5 for the search term “architectural renderings” but is simply a doorway page that is stuffed with that keyword. It isn’t very useful and has very little content but ranks really well in Bing.

Tags: organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 6 Comments »

Influential Federal Judge Suggests Need for New Copyright Law

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Well, the 4^th of July for this year is behind us…celebrating America’s 233^rd birthday has been great but now it’s back to work!

A follow up of sorts to previous posts on the matter – conservative jurist Richard Posner of the seventh circuit court of appeals is proposing a ban on linking to online content without permission.

Not only would this action have dire consequences in the SEO copywriting world, it would dramatically change long-standing rules of fair use. As you may know, fair use allows for the reproduction of short excerpts of copyrighted material for the purpose of commentary, reporting, etc.

Alas, what we do daily here at the SEO-e blog.

Posner has a reputation of being a brilliant and provocative thinker, characterized as “the most mercilessly seditious legal theorist of his generation” by a 2001 New Yorker profile. His 2003 landmark decision in the case McKevitt v. Pallasch stripped first amendment protections for journalists from having to reveal confidential sources.

Consequence of this decision was made quite public in 2005 when New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days for not revealing her source in the infamous CIA leak case.

In terms of copyright, Posner seems to be willfully ignorant to how bloggers actually drive traffic to original source sites like AP and Reuters, resulting in more eyes seeing their content and advertising. In a 2005 essay, he wrote “the bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media”.

Fortunately, Posner cannot enact his views through the bench – amending the Copyright law requires an act of Congress along with President Obama’s signature.

But traditional newspaper outlets across the country are beating their chests loudly to get something passed. And when something affects corporate interests in terms of copyrights, Congress has been known to act with great alarm.

We’ll continue to monitor the situation here at the search engine optimization e-blog. Stay in the loop on any legislative proposals here and if necessary, be prepared to call your congressman to keep the Internet open and “free” – a familiar theme from this past weekend’s festivities.

Tags: organic search, search engine optimization, SEO copywriting
Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Searchers like Bing Better but Plan to Stay with Google

Monday, June 29th, 2009

A new report from the Catalyst Group shows searchers giving good marks to Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. However, many of the same searchers indicated they plan on continuing with Google since they are familiar with it and use many of its additional features like Gmail and Google News.

Key findings from the study are reported in this TechCrunch article, which says even if Bing proves to be just as good as Google, it may not matter since Google’s brand is so established and well-known.

A focus group of 12 people was monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches…after this, each individual completed a survey and interview. All participants were exclusive Google users before the experiment.

Test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria: visual design, organization of features, filtering options and relevance of results. It beat Google on everything except relevance of results, the most important criteria.

Catalyst CEO Nick Gould concludes that Microsoft “created something as good as Google and that is not good enough.” Overall, the test subjects “were not swayed.” No wonder Microsoft is spending up to $100 million on Bing marketing.

See the full results of the Catalyst Group’s study including data from the eye-tracking cameras used to gauge the attention given to ad space on each search engine.

See forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Tags: bing, google, search engine optimization
Posted in Articles, Forum Watch | 1 Comment »

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