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Posts Tagged ‘google’

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 »

6 Not So Obvious Types of Duplicate Content

Friday, March 5th, 2010

When thinking about duplicate content, we generally only consider written content. Is what you are posting on your website original? Simply copying and pasting something from somewhere else is a big mistake- that much is obvious.

But something you may not consider to be duplicate content may be considered such by search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. You see, they’re trying to return diverse content to their users …they have a vested interest in ensuring what they display on page 1 is helpful and diverse for their users.

That is what you have to consider – what do search engines consider duplicate? Not doing so could spell disaster for your site’s rankings. Site penalties can occur if a site is simply structured the same way for instance.

Continue reading for 6 not so obvious types of duplicate content to ensure you are not penalized for such an infraction.

1. Two websites share the same structure and content

Two websites having the same structure (i.e. same three column template) and the same content on a single page or site wide with the same linking scheme is prone to trouble. This is by far the most extreme example of duplicate content but the easiest to identify.

2. Identical structure with paraphrased content

Another scenario where two sites have an identical structure but the content is not 100% identical. Copywriters and content developers may see this as a grey area. But Google has a zero tolerance policy on this issue…content from one site simply cannot be a rehashed version of the same thing from another site.

3. Identical structure with similar content

In structural terms, it’s pretty clear two sites are identical. In this situation, the content on each site still has too close a resemblance. If it appears the content is managed in a similar fashion and presented in the same scope, the site(s) may be penalized.

4. Partially identical structure with similar content

While it may seem like splitting hairs, Google is very meticulous. Site A and Site B may only have a few pages that are identical but if the content between the two sites is sufficiently similar, they may take action and not index one of the sites.

5. Identical structure with reminiscent content

In this scenario, both sites have a similar structure and linking scheme while the content is relatively similar. Some content developers may think simply using a Thesaurus to change a few words may avoid detection but the search engines can spot this kind of move.

6. Unique structure with pieced together content

Two sites may have their own unique site structure and linking scheme but their content is simply scraped together from different sources the writer found. Search engines will flag this as duplicate content and act accordingly.

Image, videos and other document formats are sometimes ignored by the search engines since most don’t have the capability to spot duplicate forms of these types of content. They sometimes attempt to remove duplications based on file size, image size and file name however. Therefore in the future, it will be important you think about this as technology continues to evolve.

It should be obvious that simply copying and pasting content to your site is not only dishonest, it is robbing the original creator of that piece without due credit and compensation. But these other scenarios where search engines may flag your site are just as important. While you may not think your site is a duplication of another, what the search engines see is really what matters.

Tags: bing, google, organic search, search engine optimization, SEO copywriting, Site Architecture, Yahoo!
Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Do Meta Tags Really Matter?

Monday, March 1st, 2010

As far as propelling your website to the top of the search engines, they don’t. While Meta tags have no significant impact on actual search engine rankings, they do provide value in how your website appears on a search engine results page (SERP).

Meta tags are basically text included in the source code of an HTML document that’s intended to describe the page to a search engine for the purpose of cataloging its content. There are two types of Meta tags – description and keyword

So do Meta tags matter?

Yes they do as the description found within the tag indicates what you want someone to see on a search engine results page. They help a searcher easily determine whether or not your page is relevant to their needs. Without it, many people will simply move on and think your site doesn’t offer them any value.

If you do not include a Meta tag in your source code, the search engine will glean your page and cherry-pick words it thinks best describes your page. This doesn’t work too well however and can result in terrible descriptions being displayed on a SERP.

You should be very careful in how you use a Meta tag though. Many SEOs have abused these tags in the past thinking it would garner them a competitive advantage. To avoid any potential problems, avoid repeating keywords and use only those words relevant to your site’s theme. Beware of any trademark infringements and check with legal counsel before using another company’s trademarked terms anywhere in your source code.

Typically, the character limit for both description and keyword Meta tags is 250, which includes spaces and commas. Anything past the 250 mark is generally ignored by the search engines.

Just be careful – improper use of a Meta tag could result in your site being penalized by the search engines.

Tags: bing, google, organic search, search engine optimization, Site Architecture, Yahoo!
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

How Google’s Unique Algorithm Dominates Search Engine World

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Ever wonder how a search engine like Google disseminates web pages on the Internet to produce the best results possible for its searchers?

This week, engineers, product managers and executives at Google will be meeting to determine how they can make their search engine smarter. As you know from our recent post on the topic, Google has made many changes over the course of its 10+ year history.

Google has become synonymous with search, commanding around 2/3 of search traffic. But that isn’t making them slow down as they strive to “organize the world’s information” as the company’s mission statement says. None of the upstarts like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and others present a threat to Google in their own right. But going forward, search will not simply be dominated by Google but rather incorporate a combination of services.

The biggest threat to Google however is Bing, Microsoft’s revamped search engine. They’re trying to fill in places they feel Google’s algorithm falls short, namely in the health, reference and shopping sectors.

While Bing is increasing market share, Google is still miles ahead of them in the simple task of dissecting a search and returning relevant results. Using contextual signals, Google has been able to master the ability to figure out what a searcher is looking for.

Google culls data from all of its searchers to achieve these ends by seeing the search terms people use along with what they re-enter into the search if what they’re given isn’t satisfactory.

And the most incredible thing, Google makes these changes under the radar. Searchers have no idea that their searches are constantly dissected and that the company is always trying new things to improve its algorithm.

Explore this topic more in this article from Wired Magazine which outlines some of Google’s internal processes. Knowledge like this can be tremendously helpful in optimizing your website for the search engines.

Tags: bing, google, organic search, personalized search, search engine optimization, social media, Yahoo!
Posted in Articles, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Finding a Proper Balance of Links for your Website

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! find your website through other sites linking to it. A site with a large number of quality sites linking to it signifies a certain importance to the search engines, boosting your rankings in the process.

There are many ways you can acquire links to your site. They can be purchased from a link farm, or you can get people to link to you through social networks like Facebook, StumbleUpon and Digg. In the end, the highest quality links come from sites in a similar industry whose audience will find your content appealing and useful.

Allowing the structure of links to your site to become too homogenous can cause many negative consequences for your site and its rankings. Links coming from only one type of site, or only to your homepage or links that all have the same anchor text links are all red flags to the search engines that your site has an unnatural link structure.

As a result, search engines will penalize your site, perhaps even de-listing it from the search engines.

To avoid trouble like this, you should attempt a general 80/20 link balancing act, which means:

80% of your links should come from sites that are topically relevant to yours with the remaining 20% coming from unrelated or marginally related sites
80% of incoming links should go to your homepage with the remaining 20% (at minimum) going to sub-pages within your site
80% of links should have your keywords in the anchor text while the remaining 20% having a less optimized link, like “click here” or your URL as the anchor text
80% of your links should be one-way and the remaining 20% reciprocal

Of course, these are just general guidelines but a good rule of thumb to avoid any problems with the search engines. You don’t want your site to appear over-optimized to the search engines so you need to balance your link ratios to avoid this red flag.

Tags: bing, google, link building, organic search, search engine optimization, Site Architecture, Yahoo!
Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 1 Comment »

SEO ‘Local Search’ Revolution upon Us

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Often dubbed “the new YellowPages” by techies and SEO professionals, local search through Google Maps is one form of online marketing that’s slated to see astronomical growth in the next few years…it’s even perhaps a revolution of sorts in waiting with the casualty being the fabled phone book and YellowPages.

Think about it…how often do you search for local businesses using your phonebook anymore?

But going forward, people won’t be using their computers to search for local businesses online. No, they’ll be using their SmartPhone – Blackberry, IPhone and more. And 2010 will see a plethora of new SmartPhones sweeping the market from all major service providers.

What’s the consequence of this? For any local business that relies on YellowPages to advertise their business, it means a shift in how people find them. If their listing doesn’t appear in Google Maps and online, they will be missing out on a lot of opportunities.

To illustrate, a recent training course at Planet Ocean witnessed a demo of the power and ease of Google Maps’ smartphone utility. A 35-year old attendee used his phone to access Google Maps and search for orthodontist in the area he was located – all possible because most smartphones come equipped with a GPS tracking device.

Therefore, all he had to do was enter the keyword into the search and the device automatically displayed locations of orthodontists closest to his current location – along with directions on how to get there!

And these listings come equipped with customer reviews and other relevant information for making a buying decision!

The moral of the story is this – smartphones are in actuality mobile computer devices jam-packed with features one would normally not associate with a “phone”. Could this be the newest “gold rush” to hit the U.S.? In the real gold rush in Alaska in the late 19^th century, real fortunes were made not in gold, but selling the tools to mine for gold.

So if you’re in search of opportunities in online marketing and SEO, it would behoove you to consider local search and how your business must be able to harness it or lose out to more prepared competitors.

Tags: google, Online Marketing, search engine optimization, small business
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 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 »

Do Not “Over-Optimize” – Monitor Keyword Density to Avoid Exclusion from Search Engine Results

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

We’ve probably made scant mention of it here before but it’s an important concept to understand on its own, and that is proper keyword density.

In 2003, Google did a major update to its ranking algorithms. SEOs refer to this as the “Florida update,” as it marks the day when search engine optimization became difficult. Before November ’03, SEOs would simply say you should liberally use keyword phrases on your pages. The Florida update changed all of this.

Now, web pages that use keywords too aggressively are filtered out of search results altogether (Matt Cutts explains a little more in the video below)

“Over-optimization” describes over-use of keywords in your site’s copy. Not only does excessive keyword use get your site filtered out of search results, it makes your copy look unprofessional to readers. Most people who see a web page with the same phrase in every sentence won’t take it too seriously.

Instead, modify keywords and use variations of your main phrase in your site’s copy. Four ways you could accomplish this include: singular vs. plural forms of keywords, use synonyms, add relevant modifiers and change the order of the words.

There are tools available to help you find different variations of the same keyword phrase. Take advantage of these tools from Quintura, Google and/or Bing to research different ways you can phrase keywords.

There’s also a very easy way to locate extra keyword phrases and that is when you are typing your main phrase into Google, search suggestions appear below the input bar. You can diversify your keyword phrases with these suggestions for a quick solution.

Either way, do not over-optimize, that is use the same keyword phrase on a page too many times. Your readers will pick up on it and your site will get in trouble with the search engines. While we can’t tell you a magic number, read your copy as if you’re an outsider. You should be able to tell pretty easily what’s too much and what isn’t.

For more tips on maximizing keyword usage without destroying your copy’s flow, take a look at 11 Steps to Increasing Keyword Saturation while Maintaining Valuable Content in the search engine optimization knowledge center today.

Tags: google, keyword research, organic search, search engine optimization
Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Organic Search Continues Its Upward Trajectory

Monday, January 25th, 2010

It’s always interesting to see the trends in marketing online. How are people looking for information online?

For me, it continues to be a Google search using keyword phrases that closely describe what I’m looking for. I find searches like these to be very useful most of the time and if not, I can tweak the words I’m using to find what I’m looking for.

So it’s no surprise to me that organic search continues to be a preferred means of locating information online – and growing too.

According to new data from comScore, over 131 billion searches were conducted worldwide in December, 2009, a 46% increase over December ‘08. Searches in the U.S. alone grew by 22%, despite the country’s now two-year old recession.

And the U.S. continues to be the largest country on Earth when you consider online searches. While growth for 2008-2009 was much larger in countries like Russia (92%), France (61%) and Brazil (53%), the U.S. still accounts for the lion’s share of online searches.

So where do these searches originate from?

Well as we’ve reported here, Google still handles the majority of online searches – over 67% in December, 2009 with 58% growth between 12/2008 and 12/2009. And not just search engines are included in this list, which reflects a large number of searchers who go beyond the “core” search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing. Ebay came in 5^th with 2.1 billion searches, growing by 58% year-over-year. Facebook handled 1.6 billion searches, a 43% increase year-over-year.

Data like this underscores the importance of optimizing websites for the search engines. It’s clear that an increasing number of Internet users rely on organic search to find what they’re looking for online.

How do you locate information online?

Tags: bing, google, Online Marketing, organic search, search engine optimization, Yahoo!
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology | No Comments »

Use Caution with Session IDs and Dynamic URLs

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

In order for a spider to crawl your website and index it in the search engines effectively, the web address or URL for your webpages should be as simple as possible.

As we’ve discussed in the past, sites with static URLs that are simple are crawled and indexed much more efficiently than those containing dynamic characters and session Identifiers.

Session IDs are most common in ecommerce sites and are embedded in a URL so the website can track their customers from page to page and they are used keep track of items in a customer’s shopping cart. But these IDs cause problems for search engine spiders because they create a large number of links for the spider to crawl. This can create a situation where the search engine indexes essentially the same page over and over. Search engines like Google refer to it as a ‘spider trap’.

Below are a couple of examples of how session IDs can give the appearance of an endless number of pages within a single site. A spider coming to your website may find a page with the following URL:

http://www.yoursite/shop.cgi?id=dkom2354kle03i

This page gets indexed but when the spider returns later to look for new content, it finds the following:

http://www.yoursite/shop.cgi?id=hj545jkf93jf4k

This is actually the same page as before, just with a different special session ID but the spider sees it as a brand new URL. Because of this confusion, search engine spiders are programmed to avoid pages containing these session IDs.

While Google and others are trying to improve their ability to crawl URLs with session IDs, it’s best to avoid them whenever possible. It’s best to avoid them until you absolutely must track what a customer is doing, like when they start adding items to their shopping cart.

It’s also possible to store session IDs in cookies rather than URLs. Changing this may require the expertise of a web programmer though.

The gist of the story is this – the more dynamic variables in a URL, the more difficult it will be for search engines to index your pages. To maximize your position in the search engines, use simple URLs that are easy to locate, crawl and index.

Tags: google, search engine optimization, Site Architecture
Posted in Site Architecture, Tip of the Day | 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 »

Importance of Good Information Architecture

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Having a successful content and information oriented website means it has to be organized in a way that’s easy for users to navigate. This not only improves your conversion rate but your site’s rankings in the search engines as well.

It’s all too common for sites to have a lot of content – articles, blogs, video clips, photos, etc. – that’s totally disorganized and cluttered with noises, ads. Suffice it to say this would not lead to a good experience for any user. Without good user experience, no amount of optimization will help your site’s rankings.

So how can I be sure my site’s information architecture is the best it can be to lure in the most visitors and make the most conversions?

Understanding how people search online is the first step to developing good information architecture. When searching online, we want content that’s fast and simple and in small chunks…we like to stay on task. Google knows this so to have high rankings, create sites using keywords you know people respond well to. You can integrate head and long tail keywords to tap into the main terms people use when looking for what you’re offering.

Having too many links to off-site pages especially messes with a site’s information architecture. Having too much scattered and loosely connected information causes the site/page to lose its core message.

Accommodating your users is the number 1 goal of your website’s content. For it to work to your maximum advantage, it has to be setup in a way that doesn’t inhibit user friendliness or the search engine’s ability to crawl it.

Search engines look closely at user-friendliness when ranking websites. And especially since Google may begin factoring site speed into their ranking algorithm, flashy sites undoubtedly will suffer in terms of their ranking and conversion.

Tags: google, keyword research, organic search, search engine optimization, Site Architecture
Posted in Site Architecture, Writing for search engines | No Comments »

Google Announces New Page Speed Report in Webmaster Tools

Friday, December 4th, 2009

On the heels of a recent announcement from Google explaining their newest addition to the search algorithm, the search engine giant has now added a site speed feature to Webmaster Tools.

You can now access the new feature through the “Site performance” reports under the “Labs” section of the tool. It basically shows how fast your site loads in comparison to other sites and also includes a nice graph that shows your site’s speed over time.

It’s a small step in their larger effort to make the web faster for their users. Studies show that speeding up a site leads to higher user retention and activity, along with lowering costs and increasing revenue.

In addition to general site speed, Google also details specific pages and their load time. They give tips on how to improve speed on a per-page basis.

This new tool can be very helpful to ensuring your pages load as quickly as possible. While we don’t know how much significance will be placed on the new ranking factor, you can be sure that having fast loading web pages will be beneficial to your site. However, since they are adding this new feature to Webmaster Tools, it may be safe to assume that page speed will become an important ranking factor.

See a screen shot of one the site performance reports below.

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

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 »

News Corporation and Microsoft Consider Web Pact

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Following up on our previous posts regarding content from news sites appearing in short form on sites like Google News and other blogs and news/information sites, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft are reportedly in talks to pay the media organization to “de-list” its sites from Google.

Reportedly, Microsoft is approaching other news organizations with the same offer in an attempt to grab market share from Google. In October, Microsoft’s Bing accounted for just under 10% of online searches according to comScore.

Actions like this could prove to be a boon to the ailing newspaper industry, who has been struggling with declining print readership and advertising revenues for years. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has said he will use all legal channels available to prevent Google from “stealing” news stories.

News aggregators and search engines like Google contend that collecting short pieces of articles – usually the headline and first two sentences – is allowed under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Microsoft’s move is also seen as a direct assault on Google, putting pressure on the leading search engine to pay newspapers for content.

Google is downplaying this news, saying they don’t need news content to survive and that it constitutes just a sliver of their revenue.

Tags: bing, blogs, google, Online Marketing
Posted in Online Marketing, 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 »

Why are Pages designated in my Robots.txt File Appearing in Google Search Engine Results?

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Occasionally, things happen online that we don’t understand…thinking something has been done when we explicitly said we didn’t want done.

One of these instances has to do with the Robots.txt file, which we discussed a couple of months ago. Robots.txt is a simple text file that webmasters put in the root directory of a website to instruct a search engine to not crawl a given webpage.

(Read our search engine optimization blog post from Sept. 10^th to find out why you would want to do that)

But sometimes, those pages we instructed Google not to crawl appear in a search engine results page. How did that happen? I thought I told Google I didn’t want that page crawled?

It’s easy to spot one of these…the listing will only have a link to the page and will not include any kind of description.

As Matt Cutts, a software engineer and head of Google’s Webspam team explains, Google always honors the request in your Robots.txt file…the feature has been around for years and no bugs have caused it to malfunction in quite a long time now.

Rather, Google will include a page they haven’t crawled in their search results if there are other sites containing relevant keyword anchor text links pointing to it. Lots of links to a page or website indicates to Google that the page is pretty important – therefore, it’s possibly very valuable to the user.

You can include a no index meta tag at the top of any page you do not want Google to include in a search engine results page. The page will be crawled but once the spider sees this tag, it will drop the page from any search results.

Watch the video below to learn more.

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

Collision of Social Media Marketing and SEO Revolutionizing Online Search

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

It’s long been held that social media marketing and search engine optimization are mutually exclusive – one has nothing to do with the other. Tweets on Twitter or public messages on Facebook have up until now been the exclusive domain of those sites. The only people who could see those messages were friends of the person or company that posted them.

But that’s changing thanks to some new licensing deals between social networking sites and major search engines. Bing is partnering with both Twitter and Facebook to include public content for crawling and indexing. And Twitter has also secured a deal with Google to include their updates in general search results.

What does this mean for online marketers and SEO professionals?

These developments are indeed pioneering a new world in search engine marketing. Content from social media sites will now play an increasingly large role in driving traffic to your website. No longer are these two forms of online marketing exclusive to one another.

Eventually, search will become even more personalized to each user based on their social media activity and their friends’ activity. All of SEO things we talk about here will still be very important but having a strong social media presence will now take on a more critical role in building traffic from search engine results.

As illustrated by this slide from HubSpot, social media will now become just as important as content creation and inbound links to building search engine rankings. Expect social networking analysis to become an integral part of search engine ranking algorithms going forward.

Search engine marketing firm SEO Advantage invites you to learn more about social media marketing and how it can be an effective tool to help you reach more people online at our SEO knowledge center.

Tags: bing, google, Online Marketing, search engine optimization, social media, Twitter
Posted in Online Marketing, 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 »

Proper Anatomy of a URL – An SEO Cheat Sheet

Friday, October 16th, 2009

One topic that comes up often when optimizing a website for the search engines involves URLs. How should they be constructed, optimized and what do each of the pieces mean are common questions.

As we explain in an SEO knowledge center article from a few months ago, a URL should be as simple as possible so the search engines can easily crawl and index it. If you’re trying to achieve high search engine rankings in the shortest amount of time, URLs need to be short and contain different keywords for efficient crawling.

Dynamic URLs like you see on many ecommerce sites can overtax a search engine spider computer program trying to crawl and index your site. A site with short, static URLs will be crawled and indexed more efficiently and ranked higher.

But what are the different parts to a URL and thus how would I know if mine is setup correctly?

Well, Dr. Pete at SEOMoz just released a wonderful cheat sheet that outlines the different parts of a URL, including parts where Google looks for keyword phrases and other tips to optimize your URL for the search engines.

It’s an interesting chart where I was able to learn a couple things myself about URLs.

This all reminds me of an old saying – “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know”.

It’s true, you never can stop learning. So take a look, download and keep this little URL cheat sheet handy for future reference.

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

Accelerating Product Performance and Sales from Google Starts with Your Data Feed

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

One of our partners, Channel Intelligence, is hosting a webinar tomorrow (Wed.) featuring new services and upcoming improvements by Google expected to help merchants with the 2009 holiday shopping season.

Scheduled for Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT, the webinar will feature how to boost product sales through enriched product data feeds and other retailer-tested tips, as well as several new innovations merchants can draw on. Guest speakers from Google, Inc. will join CI to present upcoming Google enhancements that retailers can leverage for the 2009 holiday season.

Google offers merchants many tools to help drive shoppers to online and local stores, including a few new enhancements about to be introduced just in time for the holiday shopping season. Guest speakers Vivek Tata, Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Sarah Beritzhoff, Strategic Partner Manager, of Google, Inc., will join CI’s Larry Weeks, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing Consulting, and Rob Streeter, Sr. Manager Partner Development, to discuss ways merchants can better leverage Google for a more profitable 2009 holiday shopping season.

CI will share tips with merchants on ways to maximize product performance and increase sales from various Google properties, as well as share success stories from current retailer customers.

A foundational element often overlooked when advertising on Google is the provision of content rich, high-quality data feeds, since Google’s powerful database leverages data feeds to render the merchants’ products to the right consumer at the right time. Attendees can expect to learn more about this essential element and its role in successful campaigns, as well as a host of other ways to improve sales performance.

Attendees can register here

Tags: data feeds, ecommerce, google, Online Marketing, paid search, partners
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Advantage, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

Customize your Site’s Appearance in Google

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Of all the talk here about web site customization and organic search engine rankings, one point we haven’t mentioned is customizing how your site appears in Google’s search engine results page.

That’s right, you can now easily customize how your listing appears in Google…before you were limited to just titles and descriptions but now you can include star ratings, product images, prices, business addresses and more.

Look at this example…you can see a star rating system, number of reviews and a price range.

Google’s Rich Snippets feature displays this information, pulling it from special tags imbedded in the page’s HTML code. Those special tags come in two forms: microformats or RDFa.

While they sound complicated, each of these formats are pretty easy to master. Developers have yet to settle on a standard but Google accepts both. To denote data to be displayed on your Google listing, you simply wrap it with descriptive class attributes in one of these two tags.

Here’s what the code would look like for Café Cakes:

<span class=”name”>Café Cakes</span>

<span class=”rating”>4</span>out of 5.

<span class=”count”>28</span>reviews.

</div>

The “hreview” tag tells Google that it’s a review…the other information is added using the name, rating, count and pricerange span classes.

For now, Google only has Rich Snippet Listings for marketing restaurants online. They are working to add more categories but currently, business directory sites and others based on user reviews and categorizing businesses stand to gain the most. But Google is rapidly expanding this program so Rich Snippets is likely to become more relevant to many other types of websites in the future as well.

Search Engine News says “…listings that are enhanced with Rich Snippets can expect to increase their click through rate – so we highly recommend them.”

Google has some great examples and tutorials on the following Rich Snippets: Reviews, People, Products and Businesses and organizations. And learn much more about Google’s Rich Snippets in general here.

Tags: google, organic search, search engine optimization, Site Architecture
Posted in Online Marketing, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day | No Comments »

The Importance of PageRank in Marketing your Small Business Online

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

If you’re exploring online marketing options – which by the way is a smart move – then the term search engine optimization (SEO) either has come up or will. And you can’t think about SEO without thinking about Google, who accounts for nearly 2/3 of online searches.

In simplistic terms, SEO is the process of optimizing your site for the search engines. When we say optimizing, we mean that you develop your website so searches for specific keyword phrases will result in a higher ranking for your website in the search engines than others.

But how does Google crawl, sort and rank all of the literally billions of web pages on the Internet?

This is where PageRank comes in.

When you’re developing your website and optimizing it for the search engines, you will go through a process of identifying terms potential clients will use to search for you online. When someone types your search terms in, Google has an algorithm that determines which websites should be displayed in rank order on the results page. You want to rank high on these “organic” results since people rarely go beyond page 1 or 2 in search engine result pages.

Google’s algorithm is very complex…it would be impossible to go into detail here. But in basic terms, it boils down to this:

Search Ranking = Relevance x PageRank

Relevance is basically that – a measure of how your website, or more specifically one of your web pages, matches the keyword phrase the user entered into the search bar. Google uses your content and the content of websites linking to yours to determine what your page is about.

But what counts in your rankings is your site’s PageRank, or an independent measure of how Google perceives your site’s quality, authority and credibility. Google reports this number on a simple 0-10 scale…but how is PageRank calculated?

While there is much debate about PageRank, one thing is about universally accepted – PageRank is primarily determined by how many other pages are linking to yours. Links are a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. But remember, not all web pages are created equal. Larger web pages with more credibility that link to you will have more value to your PageRank than those with less credibility.

And how does Google determine these sites’ credibility? Well by their PageRank…sites with a higher PageRank that link to yours will carry a lot more value than those with lower PageRank. Not that sites with low PageRank don’t help…it simply will take more of them linking to you to have the same effect.

For example, let’s say you have a friend link to you from his personal blog. Let’s say his PageRank is 2 – this will help but if you get 100 more links to your site from sites like your friend’s, it will help more.

But if you can get a link from a site that has a PageRank of 6 then just that one link is like getting those 100 additional links I’m alluding to above. Internet marketing blog HubSpot divides PageRank into these broad categories.

0-3: New sites or sites with minimal links

4-5: Popular sites with a good amount of inbound links

6: Very popular sites with hundreds of links, many of them quality links

7-10: Usually major media outlets, big companies or A-list bloggers

How do I figure out my PageRank?

There are two ways to determine what your approximate PageRank is. You can download the Google Toolbar and enable the PageRank feature after installation. Or you can check out HubSpot’s Website Grader tool that will tell you your PageRank and a bunch of other interesting things.

One thing I should point out before I go…it’s believed that PageRank is calculated on a logarithmic scale, meaning the difference between PR4 and PR5 is likely 5-10 times the difference between PR3 and PR4. Therefore, there are likely over 100 times more PR2 web pages than those with a PageRank of 4. Meaning, if you get to a PR6, you’re likely in the top 0.1% of websites on the Internet. If most of your competitors have a PR2 or PR3, then you’re in pretty good shape.

Learn how SEO Advantage can help boost your PageRank and thus your search engine rankings by visiting our SEO knowledge center.

And feel free to contact us today to see how we can help you take advantage of one of the most powerful marketing channels in the known universe.

Tags: google, keyword research, organic search, PageRank, search engine optimization
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 2 Comments »

Developing a SEO Link Building Strategy that Delivers Link Value

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

As we’ve mentioned here and in our SEO knowledge center, links are one of the most fundamental things to building high search engine rankings.

Links give a site more value in the eyes of the search engines but not all links count for SEO purposes. Some links may be totally invisible to the search engines and in other instances Google may reduce the value of links for whatever reason. So…

How do you know whether a link on a page passes SEO value or not? What are cases in which links do not count?

These are important questions to answer to prevent yourself from wasting valuable time on links that won’t do anything for you. Basically, there are two requirements links need to possess to count for SEO purposes:

1. Link must be coded in HTML

To be certain you see benefits in your rankings from links, code them in HTML. As long as the link uses something like <a href=http://www.seo-advantage.com/> then you’re okay. Google has also started counting Javascript links but HTML is still the preferred method.

2. Be sure the page the link is on is indexed in Google

A link can only benefit your rankings if Google knows about the page it’s on. You can see if a page is indexed in Google by going to the main search bar and typing “site:” and then the URL. New pages usually take a few days to be crawled and indexed so be patient.

But even if your links meet the above conditions that doesn’t mean they’re automatically counted. Technical conditions that would prevent a link from being counted include:

1. Nofollow tag

Google ignores links that use the rel=”nofollow” tag and does not pass any SEO value along. Many blogs use the nofollow feature in their comment areas to prevent spamming and Google requires the nofollow attribute for advertisements and paid links.

2. Robots nofollow

The meta robots nofollow tag found in the header of a page is similar to the regular nofollow and leads to all links on that page being nofollowed.

3. Redirect links

Unless a permanent 301 redirect is used, any time a link goes through some intermediary page to track clicks or sales or display a disclaimer page, the link will not pass any SEO value.

4. Javascript links

As I mentioned above, Google is starting to crawl Javascript links but there is much debate as to whether these links pass any value or not. Use HTML whenever possible.

So you’ve built a bunch of links on your website using the basic outline mentioned above. They are technically sound but you’re not seeing the benefits you should. Read on for symptoms of a link that Google has devalued.

1. Strangely low PageRank

While toolbar PageRank is not that reliable of a metric, it can point to problem areas in respect to your SEO links. If a site is obviously selling paid links, Google will often penalize its PageRank and stop the flow of link value from the site.

2. Slow crawl rate, old cache date

If Google trusts a page and considers it important, it will crawl and index the page quickly and often. If the cache date of the page your links are on is over a month old, that’s a sign Google doesn’t trust that page and as a result, links do not pass any value.

3. Link location

Links in the sidebar or footer of a page are often devalued since Google views these as being used as advertisements to manipulate search results. Editorial links embedded in content are much more valuable so Google gives the most weight to these links.

After all this, you’re probably asking “How do I check to see if a link is passing value?”

There is a way to check but it’s not always easy. What you do is create a link on the target location with unique anchor text. For example, on our search engine optimization firm website, we could create a link in the content saying “jabberwocky SEO”. This is an obscure but related term to what we do. Then, we go to Google and type that phrase in the search bar. If our page comes up in the search results containing that keyphrase, the process worked.

Read more about developing SEO link building strategies that deliver link value in this article from Winning the Web. And if you have any questions about link building, feel free to contact SEO Advantage and get quick answers to your questions from one of our experienced SEO engineers.

Tags: google, link building, search engine optimization
Posted in SEO Technology, Tip of the Day | 2 Comments »

Search Engine Stats for August 2009 – Bing Update

Monday, September 28th, 2009

The results are in for August regarding search engine use – where are people going for their Internet searches?

Well, Google remains king with nearly 2/3 of all Internet searches in August – growing 2.6% over July.

But the biggest increase came from Microsoft’s Bing – the number of queries from users in the U.S. grew by 22%! But they still place third behind Yahoo! and Google, accounting for 1 in 10 Internet search queries in the United States last month.

Yahoo! saw its search volume drop by 4.2% in August but it still comes in at #2 with around 16% of all Internet search queries in August in the U.S.

It’s not surprising to see Bing grow like it is – they have been marketing their new search engine pretty aggressively lately. New TV ads can be seen traversing the airwaves touting the usability of this new search engine product.

Of course, they’re not going to surpass Google anytime soon, no matter how much advertising they do. Google is much more established in the search engine optimization field and the population in general. Bing will have to demonstrate how their search engine offers more value than Google if they ever hope to be the big dog in the search engine field.

Besides, yesterday was Google’s 11^th birthday! If you were searching on Google yesterday, you probably noticed that the letter L in their name was replaced by two ones…causing some confusion, people saw this as a “LL” but it was merely recognition of their 11^th birthday.

Happy Birthday Google!

Tags: bing, google, organic search, Yahoo!
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Watch Articles | 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 »

BtoB’s Media Power 50 Ranks the Top Places for B-to-B Advertising

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Every year, BtoB Magazine lists the top 50 places to advertise to other businesses. Here are the top 10:

Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com
Google.com
The Economist and Economist.com
Yahoo
NFL partnerships and advertising
TechTarget’s network of websites
Forbes and Forbes.com
CNBC’s ‘Power Lunch’
BusinessWeek and Businessweek.com
InformationWeek and Informationweek.com

To arrive at this list, BtoB editors and reporters examined media outlets with both objective and subjective criteria. They evaluated data such as ad revenue and audience, and interviewed top media buyers, advertisers and industry analysts for their options on the most powerful and targeted b-to-b advertising venues.

Among the other 40 top places for b-to-b advertising are cnn.com, Newsweek, USA Today, Barron’s, New York Times, Msnbc.com, Allbusiness.com, Bloomberg.com, BNET, Business.com, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Inc., Linkedin.com, ThomasNet and more.

What’s interesting is to see the mix of media outlets ranging from the traditional print publications (WSJ) to social media (Linkedin.com) and even sporting events (NFL). And they got it right when they said “Google may dominate search, but Yahoo is the leader in display advertising. Small b-to-b markets rely on Yahoo’s targeting capabilities to find new customers on the Web.”

Tags: B2B marketing, google, Yahoo!
Posted in Online Marketing, 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.