Archive for the ‘Forum Watch’ Category

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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.

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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 Perfectly Optimized Page, Courtesy of SEOMoz.org

The full post is well worth a read…

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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

Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

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

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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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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:

      1. Microsoft acquires an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies and the ability to integrate it into existing web search platforms
      2. Each company will keep its own separate display advertising business and sales staff
      3. Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! for traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network through a revenue sharing agreement
      4. 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.

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      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.

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      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.

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      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.

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      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:

      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
      4. 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.
      5. 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.
      6. 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.
      7. 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.

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      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.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 6 Comments »

      Influential Federal Judge Suggests Need for New Copyright Law

      Monday, July 6th, 2009

      Well, the 4th of July for this year is behind us…celebrating America’s 233rd 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.

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      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.

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      Posted in Articles, Forum Watch | 1 Comment »

      Organize Link Building Campaigns with Excel Type Worksheets

      Friday, June 26th, 2009

      We have all most likely used an Excel spreadsheet in the past to organize some information into a list – using them for link building campaigns though is a must to keep track of all the links going out and coming in.

      Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has a great short blog piece on link building worksheets. Remember though, these are just examples…do not use an exact variant of the examples below but pick and choose from each and add custom elements of your own that you see fit.

      The first example from Garrett French of Link-Building-Guide.com is a comprehensive and concise worksheet that promotes an advanced approach to link building…evaluate each linking page and track keywords in the title, text and within tags. This guide provides a systematic approach to link acquisition and takes into account many advanced SEO features like crawlers and massive amounts of link data.

      Another link building spreadsheet from Kalena describes organizing a spreadsheet for directory submissions. Her system creates 5 or 6 Excel worksheets for different aspects of the link building campaign – columns in each workbook have the same headings. Read more about Kalena’s system here.

      YourSEOplan also gives suggestions on how to construct a link building worksheet along with examples you can download…columns include: URL of linking page, requested landing page, contact e-mail, date requested, link received? (Y/N) and notes.

      Two more examples, Raven Tools and WordStrea, are given in the comments section of Ann’s blog.

      Also, see this forum discussion at Sphinn for more insights.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 3 Comments »

      SEO Best Practices – A Comprehensive Listing

      Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

      Online marketing professionals like you and me are always on the lookout for tips and techniques we should employ to make the site’s we work on search engine friendly.

      SEOMoz today released a comprehensive list of SEO best practices. Like many other professions, there is room for debate…but these tips can give your website a solid SEO foundation. This list this time is also based on correlation data collected by SEOMoz. Data that revealed some best practices should be removed from the list and others more strongly emphasized.

      This year’s list has information on a wide-variety of SEO elements and how to employ them in crafting a site optimized for the search engines. Elements include: title tags, H1 tags, meta keyword tags, parameter driven URLs, canonical tags and more.

      Read the tips along with the comments to learn more in this SEOMoz blog post.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

      Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories for May, 2009

      Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

      We reported here on May 1st the top 10 search terms in 10 separate categories for March. Search Engine Watch has posted this data from Hitwise for May.

      These lists, released monthly, can help you find useful keyword phrases that can integrate well into your content, bringing higher search engine rankings.

      Categories in May’s survey are the same as March’s. They are: IT and Internet, automotive manufacturers, movies, net communities and chat, food and beverage brands and manufacturers, pharmaceutical and medical products, blogs and personal websites, broadcast media, shopping rewards and directories and travel destinations and accommodations.

      Keyword data is collected by Hitwise by monitoring how 25 million users around the world (10 million in the U.S.) interact with over 1 million websites in 160 industries. Data is anonymous and obtained through partnerships with internet service providers in accordance with all local, state, federal and international privacy laws.

      Check back again with the search engine optimization blog regularly for important announcements like this and stay up-to-date with the tips you need to know to optimize your site for the search engines. We should have data for June by the middle of next month.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing, Search Engine Watch Articles | No Comments »

      “Invalid XML Tag” Warning Message Appears in Google Webmasters

      Monday, June 15th, 2009

      Many webmasters have been reporting in recent days they have had warnings appear in their Google Webmasters utility that reads “Invalid XML Tag. This tag was not recognized. Please fix it and resubmit. Parent tag: author”. Google has confirmed it as a bug.

      It was first thought this bug only affected Blogger/Blogspot sites but Rusty Brick found them in other sites last Thursday and Friday but the bug is now gone.

      In an announcement on their Webmaster Help Forum, Google said this message is simply “…informational and does not affect our parsing of your RSS feed for Sitemaps, nor does it affect your site’s crawling and indexing.”

      A thread from a Google employee says you can safely ignore this message if you see it.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | 2 Comments »

      Mentor for Google’s Creators Rajiv Motwani Dies at Age 47

      Friday, June 12th, 2009

      A piece of news I came across that should be on the minds of all search engine marketers…Stanford computer science professor Rajiv Motwani died at his home last Friday in Atherton, California, he was 47.

      His death is still under investigation by the San Mateo County coroner but the police do not suspect any foul play was involved.

      Motwani was a frequent investor in many tech start-ups but is most well known as a mentor to many young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were graduate students at Stanford in the mid 1990’s.

      Professor Motwani, who was an expert in algorithmic and mathematical theories underlying computer science, helped Page and Brin explore the possibilities of analyzing the Web as a graph of interconnected pages.

      Those conversations and Professor Motwani’s approach, Brin said Monday, were “what enabled us to ultimately create something that turned out to be very useful for search.”

      Read more about Motwani’s untimely death here.

      His death has caused an outpouring of eulogies and from many of Silicon Valley’s best-known entrepreneurs and inventors. As search engine optimization professionals, we should recognize Professor Motwani and his academic theories as a major pillar of the SEO profession.

      We at SEO Advantage extend are deepest sympathy to his family, friends and colleagues.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing, SEO Technology | No Comments »

      Troubleshoot Problems and Tune-Up Performance with an SEO Audit

      Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

      Auditing your website for SEO from time to time is vital to ensuring you maintain high search engine rankings and site traffic.

      Three veteran search engine optimization professionals (read about their workshops at the SMX Conference) recently gave their perspective on how search engines work and things you should look at when conducting an audit.

      First up was Derrick Wheeler, who explained how search engines work. Organic search engine optimization is the process by which you systematically satisfy the needs of the search engines and your users. Successfully troubleshooting anything requires information.

      Refer to your log files and Webmaster tools to see how a search engine is crawling your site. Check to see how you rank for certain keywords and determine how much traffic you get from search engines. Also, understand how people navigate when they are on your site.

      Next, Adam Audette explains that SEO site audits are part art, part science. If a site or navigation just doesn’t seem right, you need to dive-in and figure out why. This art requires diligence and trust.

      Once problems have been identified, SEOs have many tools at their disposal. Like science, everything must be documented.

      Vanessa Fox was the other speaker…she has developed different checklists you can employ to conduct an SEO audit. These checklists include important things like URL discovery, accessibility and crawl efficiency to name a few.

      Read the article at Outspoken Media for more information on SEO audits and helping your site maintain peak performance for the long-term.

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      Posted in Articles, Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

      Microsoft’s Bing Now Added to Google Analytics

      Monday, June 8th, 2009

      A week after Bing was unveiled to the world, Google has added this new search engine to their analytic reports. Webmasters expressed frustration that Bing was not immediately available in search engine referral reports Google’s free analytic reports.

      It seems Google added Bing support over the weekend, perhaps Saturday evening according to this S.E. Roundtable post.

      If you go to Google Analytics now, you can click “traffic sources” then “search engines” and see the number of keyword referrals have been sent your way by Bing since Friday, June 5th.

      The delay could be attributed to the fact Bing came online a few days before it was anticipated.

      S.E. Roundtable concluded only 0.39% of his search referrals between for this past weekend came through Bing.

      See forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

      How Will the NoFollow PageRank Sculpting Issue Affect Blogs?

      Thursday, June 4th, 2009

      As you likely know, blogs are a great and informal way to build long-term search engine rankings. But how will Google’s new NoFollow PageRank policy announced in yesterday’s SEO-e post affect blogs’ ability to get the most link juice they can for their parent websites?

      Search Engine Roundtable gives a good explanation of the effects this change can potentially have. For instance, if you have 10 links on a page and nofollow 5 of them, the 5 that are followed will only get half credit now.

      Therefore, if you have 40 links on your page and 15 of them are nofollows, over 1/3 of your links will be wasted according to SER’s example.

      Blogs automatically generate nofollow links through user-generated comments – so technically, this change will have a pretty big impact on sites that include blogs since search engine optimization professionals use nofollow links in a practice called PageRank sculpting – or diverting PageRank to more important, higher conversion pages.

      See the conversation at WebmasterWorld for more insights.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing, SEO Technology | No Comments »

      Google Announces Surprise Change on NoFollow Links

      Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

      Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team, made a surprise announcement today regarding the nofollow attribute for links according to a Search Engine Watch article.

      Nofollow links were originally developed by Google in ‘05 to fight spamming on blogs. By 2007, they developed into a powerful tool for professional SEO’s who use them in a practice called PageRank sculpting, which diverts PageRank to more important pages on a site.

      Rather than having link juice going to a static “contact us” or “about us” page, it can be going to pages that yield conversions.

      But according to Cutts, who made the bombshell announcement at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, nofollow may not continue to work like SEOs think. Danny Sullivan explains it well, simply speaking:

      “If you have $10 in authority to spend on those ten links, and you block 5 of them, the other 5 aren’t going to get $2 each. They’re still getting $1. It’s just that the other $5 you thought you were saving is now going to waste.”

      See this forum thread at Sphinn and blog post from Rusty Brick for more insights.

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      Much Needed Changes Made to Google Maps Guidelines

      Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

      Google has made some much needed changes to its business listing quality guidelines in Google Maps. This change is welcomed by professional SEOs as necessary to limiting the onslaught spam entries to the Google Local Business Center that has occurred over the past two years.

      The new general guidelines went into effect yesterday and include:

      1. Only enter listings for businesses you own or are explicitly authorized to represent

      2. Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website

      3. Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers and URLs in the title along with your proper business name

      4. Create only one listing for each physical location of your business.

      5. When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business.

      6. Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business.

      7. Provide the one URL that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as “click through” sites may lead to penalization.

      8. Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title, address or category fields.

      This list is only general as other factors could lead to your site being removed. If you’re not sure if something would be allowed or not, err on the caution or get clarification by posting a question in Maps Help Forum.

      Search engine optimization professionals are delighted Google has made these changes…see some of their reaction in this Webmaster World discussion thread.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing, SEO Technology | No Comments »

      Update on Microsoft’s New Search Engine

      Monday, June 1st, 2009

      On May 20th, we reported here in the search engine optimization blog an announcement that Microsoft would soon be unveiling a new search platform. It was to be called Kumo and be on display at a digital tech conference that took place last week – that’s what we thought was going to happen anyway.

      At the conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made an announcement – the Kumo name has been replaced with Bing, a totally rebranded search engine. MSN Live Search will be phased out with this change, which has consistently been far behind Google and Yahoo! in terms of search numbers.

      A commentary at Search Engine News does not interpret this move to be smart on Microsoft’s part. Basically, professional SEOs shouldn’t take these developments too seriously. Microsoft has strayed away from the user-driven solutions that have worked well for them, like Office and their acquisition of Hotmail in the 1990’s.

      According to a discussion thread at Webmaster World, Bing is supposed to go live this Wednesday, June 3rd.

      We’ll continue to monitor Bing and report here any useful functions that can help optimize your website and yield conversions.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Search Engine Watch Articles | 1 Comment »

      Should Changing your Best SEO Performing Pages Be a Concern?

      Thursday, May 28th, 2009

      Changing the URL of a page ranking well in the search engines can be a risky move, but it can be done if necessary according to a post at Search Engine Roundtable.

      There is an interesting Cre8asite forum thread discussion about changing pages that are ranking well. Specifically, a Cre8asite member is adding a content management system (CMS). To transfer the page to CMS, its URL will have to change – a certain drawback of this particular system.

      Replies were varied…some suggested changing the page will cause rankings to go down for awhile but they would return. Others suggested the new page should be setup with maximum search engine optimization.

      The administrator however was quite critical of CMS and said it is neither necessary nor prudent to move the page. A page ranks well in search engines because of links, not whether it’s CMS or not.

      Check out this interesting discussion at Crea8site with some more analysis from the Roundtable, who suggests if you need to move the page do it during a slow season.

      And check back soon with the search engine optimization knowledge center for a more in-depth analysis of CMS.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, SEO Technology | No Comments »

      New & Improved Google Suggest – Faster is Better

      Thursday, May 21st, 2009

      After some extensive testing, Google today announced more features to Google Suggest that will make searches go faster. These new features were added after extensive comment by individual users and online marketers and will be gradually rolled out – but should all be available soon.

      “Suggestions on the results page” is the first such addition. Before, Google only gave suggestions on searches originating from their homepage. Now, searches from a results page will provide suggestions that relate to the current results page.

      Google estimates that 1/4 of all internet searches are simply monthly repeats…personalized suggestions can help you remember that query that worked so well before. Sign in to your Google account and enable the Web History feature to make it work.

      If you’re starting to type in a search and Google thinks you are looking for a specific site, it will be listed where you can click on it and go straight there.

      Finally, in addition to navigational suggestions, Google will also include sponsored ads if they detect the most relevant results in a search query may include an ad.

      A couple other changes: Google will no longer include the result count in the suggestion box and the text of suggestions will be in bold to help searchers more quickly scan the list.

      Check out this forum discussion at WebmasterWorld to see what the pros think about these changes.

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      Re-Directing Organic Traffic to Targeted Landing Pages

      Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

      Find an interesting discussion at Search Engine World involving targeted landing pages – a questioner is trying to improve their conversion rate for a “speed dating” service website.

      His site appears #1 in Google rankings for the keyword “speed dating” – but he also offers other services and is concerned when someone clicks on his site directly from Google search, they quickly leave because they can’t find what they want – in the thread, he’s looking for any issues he should consider before setting up re-directs to targeted landing pages if certain terms are contained in the referring URL.

      While this may sound like a plausible solution, the problem lies more in the site’s architecture according to various replies from some of the best minds in the search engine optimization world.

      One tip is to never rely 100% on keywords as a “lead qualifier” – in terms of conversions, messaging and site design are more important. The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to a site – getting someone to buy is more tethered to those other important characteristics.

      If you’re considering targeted landing pages along these lines, beware of the consequences it could have with Google. A SEW forums editor also commented in this thread that Google could see that as a form of cloaking.

      See the thread here.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Online Marketing, Search Engine Watch Articles | No Comments »

      Finding a Good Domain Name

      Friday, May 15th, 2009

      When developing an online presence, one of the first steps is to find a good domain name, which can be difficult to find since many common ones are already taken.

      First, there are several things to consider when selecting a web address – see this article in the search engine optimization knowledge center for more information.

      This forum at Webmaster World has an ongoing discussion regarding two-word domain names and the difficulty in finding good ones – some are taken by companies and parked – meaning, they have purchased the rights to that name to gain a competitive edge. Others purchase a domain with the intention of developing a site but are unable to for any number of unforeseeable circumstances.

      It’s still possible to find good domains but it takes time and patience…see the forum and find out what the experts are thinking.

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      Posted in Forum Watch, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

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