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.
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.
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.
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.
Occasionally, we drop in on different presentations circulating online to give us insight into the state of the inbound (i.e. online) marketing industry. HubSpot’s 2010 report gives us some good insights into what’s going on.
The bottom line is this – inbound marketing techniques cost much less, around 60% in fact, than traditional media (outbound marketing) techniques. Therefore, considering the economic climate in 2009, social media and blogs in particular saw tremendous growth over the course of the year.
As you will see in the webinar, the cost per sales lead for inbound marketing channels is much lower. To illustrate, 63% of survey respondents say that the cost for generating a lead through blogs and social media came in lower than expectations…compare that to only 34% of respondents who say the same regarding telemarketing.
Results from HubSpot’s study also indicate that 51% of companies plan to spend more on inbound marketing in 2010. Much of this is due to the poor economy, as companies look to get more for their marketing dollar.
Another trend you will notice – smaller companies spend a higher proportion of their marketing budget on inbound marketing channels like blogs, social media and SEO.
The next section of the webinar focused on changes in business blogging and social media. One graph in particular illustrates the importance of good business blogging. As you will see, the more a company posts something on their blog, the higher the chance they will snag a new customer.
In the end, all inbound marketing channels have to work together in order for your efforts to be successful. You can’t simply focus on your blog without ensuring it is crawled and indexed by the search engines, for example. And you can’t simply focus on SEO without providing timely and valuable content to your readers.
Check out the webinar from HubSpot here – it takes about 30 minutes to watch the presentation but it’s well worth your time.
Communicating information using charts and graphics provides a useful and fun way to learn about new things.
Search engine marketers now have a handy resource they can use to maximize search engine rankings and online conversions. These easy and fun charts from ProspectMX provide an easy-to-use reference for creating great websites.
Their original chart, “Link Building 101,” has some great insights into how you can get other sites to link to you. Examples of link bait, how to find good sites to link to and the most beneficial social media/news sites are just a few of the things you will find here – all presented in a fun environment that’s sure to pique your interest.
Prospect’s newest chart, “Universal Search Optimization,” gives some great tips on mastering the web’s newest way of ranking web sites, etc. Learn about ‘local search’, image/video optimization, press releases and more. Going forward, search results will increasingly include photos, videos and news, not just individual websites.
Take a look at Prospect’s charts today…print one out and post it on your wall!
Quick and easy reference materials like these are great to have when you’re stuck trying to get your website to the top.
Other sites linking to yours are one way search engines evaluate your site to determine where it should be displayed in a search engine results page. The more incoming links a site has, the more important the search engines see it.
But it depends on the type of links too – simply having a bunch of links pointing to your site isn’t going to pass muster.
It’s possible to go out and pay lots of money and do other nefarious things to get links to your site. Search engines like Google and Bing can see this, as they can differentiate between sites that have natural links to it versus ones that have artificial links.
So what’s the difference between the two?
First, the anchor-text, or the keywords that contain a link, is very diverse with natural links. One link to a site may contain “search engine optimization firm” and another may be “online marketing experts” for example. Artificial links though will have more uniform anchor-text…all of the links pointing to a site will only have one or two terms for its anchor-text.
This is one red flag to the search engines that you have an artificial link structure which in turn, causes your site to lose the rankings battle.
Another difference between natural and artificial links is the rate at which links appear. Sites with a natural link structure will see consistent increases in their link count while sites with an artificial link structure will see sudden and dramatic increases then a lull in activity.
Sites designed around a natural link structure do not have reciprocal links. Meaning, the site linking to them did it voluntarily and does not expect a link back in return. Almost all links in an artificial environment are reciprocal.
And finally, natural links point to resources that can be of further use to the reader. Artificial links mainly point to link farms and other places that serve no purpose in making the site more useful for its visitors.
Remember these differences when thinking about your site’s link structure. You should strive to create the most natural looking link structure as possible. From a search engine’s point of view, the best links are those that are unrequested…search engines reward those pages and sites that get voluntarily links for great content.
We’ve been discussing over the last few months changes in the online marketing world that can possibly have an effect on how search engines rank and display websites.
Things like the unveiling of personalized search as a standard feature of Google to the rise of social networking applications are just a couple of examples of such changes. It’s fair to say that based on our research and experience, social networking and bookmarking utilities have gained a big foothold in the online marketing equation.
Take all of this, along with the release of Google Buzz and some proposed partnership agreements between Google/Bing and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and you’ve got some indications that a major shift is underway in how the search engines rank and display search results.
Over the years, search engines have evolved a lot from their beginnings. For example, keywords were the only consideration in ’95 but by ’97, search engines began looking at a site’s links. Next, around 1999 and Google’s inception, the PageRank algorithm was introduced. By ’02, anchor-text links were important and by ’05, temporal data, or when links were obtained and the age of the content, became important ranking factors.
But with the events of the last couple of years, it’s becoming apparent that a site’s “social graph” is becoming as important a ranking factor as its “link graph.” Search engines, primarily Google and Bing, are relying more on social networking sites to gauge the popularity and usefulness of a website’s content.
Take a look at SEOMoz’s newest Whiteboard Friday video for more insights into the changing world of search.
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.
Just what is the best way to unveil a new or vastly expanded site to the world? What I mean by “best way” is the best method for achieving high search engine rankings quickly.
There’s no universal way to answer that question. Every SEO/SEM has their own strategies that they implement, test and tweak. Simply throwing something up there and forgetting about it is a terrible idea.
But an interesting way of rolling out a new or renovated site was explored on a recent WebMasterWorld discussion thread. A senior member of the community, Wheel, is expanding a site he manages from 21 to approximately 5,000 pages. He’s looking to take a new approach to rolling out his site – let Google index all of it up front then go back and use Google and the site command to determine which pages to internally link to.
A popular SEO tactic is linking to other pages in a website from popular keywords. This gives you added boost in the search engines for that keyword phrase.
What’s different about Wheel is that he’s going to post all of his pages once and let Google go ahead and index them. He says he’s doing it this way because he has so much content that it would be impossible to sort through it all. Therefore, he will go ahead and get it all indexed then use his site command with keywords…[site: wheeldomain.com keyword+here]… to find the pages that contain that specific word(s) he wants to rank for. He will then choose the strongest pages and link to other pages on the site with that keyword.
Interesting method indeed, which drew mixed response in the forum since this method may initially seem backwards to most search engine optimization professionals. Some say Google will degrade his site outright while others think it will be wise to unveil the site in bits and pieces rather than all at once.
One reply to Wheel’s question at the bottom is pretty interesting – I suggest taking a look at it.
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 19th 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.
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.
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.
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 5th 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.
I’m pretty sure I’ve used the phrase “best practices” here on the search engine optimization e-blog a time or two and now feel like kicking myself for doing so.
Intuitively, best practices don’t make any sense in the SEO profession.
Best practices grew out of organizational management techniques that became popular in the mid-to-late ‘90s. The idea was that certain groups who achieve “best practices” could then teach those practices to the entire organization.
From a practical point of view that makes sense…but in order for “best practices” to work in a strategic sense, the environment must be relatively static and homogenous…two characteristics online marketing & SEO don’t have at all.
Something that works today may be obsolete by the middle of next week in this business.
Instead of working under a static rule set that’s worked in the past for something (old) and has been popularized (is average), which is what best practices essentially are, use metrics to experiment with what works and what doesn’t.
It’s appealing to think there’s a magic formula of best practices you can employ and then just sit back and watch the sales come in.
But the Internet, you and your competitors are constantly changing.
In the end, “best practices” can offer the value of a good starting point to begin experimentation but nothing more. Establishing a good feedback loop and basing your decisions on results of your experimentation means you will go much farther than just re-hashing someone else’s “best practices” plan.
Focus on your business and be ready to constantly modify what works and what doesn’t.
One question that those of us in the search engine optimization profession constantly wrestle with is whether to provide prospective clients with a ranking guarantee. Many firms will not budge without that guarantee, which makes a SEOs life even that much more problematic.
Forum discussion at Crea8site illustrates the dilemma.
As optimizing websites for the search engines becomes more complex and personalized search options from Google and Bing gain more popularity, viewing success through the prism of search engine rankings alone can be disastrous. The science of SEO has evolved way beyond simple keywords and listings.
Actual traffic and conversions are the important considerations but traffic is the only thing the SEO can realistically do. Without traffic and conversions, your clients will eventually become frustrated and stop investing in their website.
In order to make a SEO firm/client relationship work, each party needs to work in tandem on pricing, rankings, content, service, etc. to get maximum yield from their investment.
Of all the online marketing channels – organic search/SEO, referrals and PPC – where does the majority of traffic to a site originate from?
Does someone do a search on Google using keyword phrases to search for the products and/or services you offer online?
Or, are they referred to your site from an online directory like YellowPages or Google Maps? Or, do they see your PPC or social network ad?
Data recently compiled at HubSpot definitively proves that organic search is the primary driver of traffic to websites – which underscores the importance of them being search engine friendly. From the survey of 2,100 of its customers, the company shows that site traffic coming from online searches is 67.2% greater than from referral sites and 156% greater than PPC.
They further break the data down by industry – traffic from search engines is much higher in manufacturing, medicine/health services and retail. Referrals play a more important role in other industries like technology, software and online marketing but still does not exceed online search as a primary source of traffic.
So from this data, it really depends on your industry in determining what you allocate to each of these online marketing areas.
In terms of organic search and SEO, Google is by far the most popular search engine still, handling 71% of online searches this past November according to Hitwise. The two closest were Yahoo! at 15% and Bing at 9%.
It’s clear though – having a website optimized for the search engines is key to driving traffic.
As the Internet has evolved over the years, websites have grown more complex. You don’t need me to tell you that many websites contain a wealth of information on their respective niches.
And with the advent of social networking and other means of finding and disseminating information, web users are growing ever pickier about the websites they visit. That’s why installing site search on your site is an important step in building search engine rankings and boosting conversion rates.
There’s many reasons why more site visitors are immediately going to a site search to find information on a website. These include confusing navigation, cluttered design and even pure impatience. In fact, studies suggest that a person will leave a site if the search function is poor or not there around 80% of the time.
But site search has even more benefits for webmasters and SEO professionals. With the proper analytical tools, site owners can get a lot of information about their site visitors and how they navigate around their site. You can transform your site into a “customer centric” from a static “one size fits all” approach.
Take a look at our newest article in the search engine optimization knowledge center regarding the benefits of site search and stay tuned to the SEO-e blog for recommendations on good site search tools you can easily purchase for your website.
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:
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.
It’s a common building block of optimizing websites for the search engines – links to your site are an important part of a search engine’s algorithm and thus, where your site appears in a results page.
So suffice it to say that link building is an important part of optimizing a site for the search engines.
But how do you track sites that are linking to you?
Many webmasters and SEO professionals use different tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and others to track link building. Sadly, many of these tools are inaccurate and provide different results as expressed in this HighRankings Forum thread. The undependability of these tools is best stated by Rosemary, who says “one month Yahoo would show 10,000 inbound links and the next month only 300.”
Needless to say, it is difficult to rely on tools that you don’t know much about and have no control over fixing bugs and other malfunctions. And none of them are 100% accurate.
Especially if you do SEO work for other people, you need a way to track who and how many sites are linking to you…spreadsheets are one way to do this.
Many replies in the thread focused on spreadsheets and their usefulness in effectively communicating link building efforts to clients. Many SEOs, including us, use spreadsheets to track where and when someone links to a site we’re working on. Spreadsheets also provide accountability, which is impossible with online tools like Google Webmaster Tools.
One more thing to think about that was mentioned – one webmaster in the thread said they don’t focus much at all on link popularity but simply compare their site’s position to others in that niche. Perhaps this is a good way to think about link building since you’re shooting for high rankings in your niche keywords anyway.
Let us know your experiences with link building and tracking who’s linking to you and when.
It’s been fun and a pleasure contributing to SEO-e over the course of the year. I’ve certainly learned a lot researching and writing posts on optimizing websites for the search engines and online marketing in an all-encompassing manner.
Along with our search engine optimization library, SEO-e communicates news, tips and best practices in a range of areas – SEO, copywriting, site architecture, current events at Google affecting webmasters, social media and more. We take a lot of pride in bringing you important information to optimize your site for the search engines in an easy-to-understand fashion.
We look forward to bringing you the best in 2010…now on to what we’re all here for!
Naturally, we all look forward with anticipation to what next year will bring. Our industry is constantly evolving so it’s absolutely necessary we look forward and see where we’re headed. Certainly in any effort, being malleable in adjusting your strategy to changing circumstances is a critical component of success.
Our friends over at SEOMoz recently compiled their 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010 where they share their insights into where the industry is headed. Some things are out – like real-time search at Google and Bing. Since its hastened introduction last month, reaction to it has been mostly negative. SEOs are concerned about the quality of content searchers bring up for instance.
But other things like personalized search are here to stay. It’s not clear what affect this will have on optimizing your site for the search engines but we’ll be sure you know when we learn something new.
There’s other developments in the search engine business world that’s going to affect us in 2010 as well, especially if the feds approve Bing and Yahoo’s proposed merger. We just might be referring to it as “Binghoo” this time next year.
But take a look at the 8 predictions and see what’s expected for 2010. And of course, check with us into the New Year for the latest events and tips on optimizing your site for the search engines.
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.
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.
Choosing a domain name for your new website is the first step to developing your online brand and building rankings in the search engines.
But in addition to the domain name, you need to choose the domain extension as well – the .com, .net, .org, .biz or .info at the tail end of a web address.
In terms of ranking high in the search engines, .net or .org extensions are given equal weight. Plus, you are likely to find more domain names available with these extensions which can be purchased from their owners for a cheaper price than .com extension domain names.
.com extensions hold some advantages, mainly because of most web users’ familiarity with that domain extension. Not controlling the .com version of your domain means you could perhaps lose out on what’s called type-in traffic, or traffic that comes when a searcher types their query directly in their browser’s address bar.
Also, if someone else owns the .com version of your domain name, they can possibly bleed traffic from your site if people type in your domain with the .com extension. This is okay if your main goal is to rank high in the search engines but if you think this diversion of traffic will be a problem, be sure you can at least control the .com version of your name or choose another name altogether.
If you’re based or your target market is outside the United States, you can also consider country-specific domains like .co.uk (United Kingdom) or .co.in (India) for example. You will certainly garner an advantage in the search engines for people in the respective country performing search queries.
.info extensions are generally very cheap and abused by spammers, which is why they’re not recommended for building rankings in the search engines. The other domain extensions you’ve probably seen, .gov and .edu, are reserved exclusively for recognized educational institutions and agencies of the U.S. government.
Links from these sites though are extremely valuable.
As we know from here and our search engine optimization knowledge center articles, websites linking to you is a signal to the search engines that your site is important. The more links you have pointing to your site, especially from sites with higher PageRank, the higher your rankings in the search engines will be.
Creating great content for the purposes of getting links isn’t a new idea – search engine optimization experts have been talking about it for years but many small commercial sites still haven’t jumped on the bandwagon.
Why not? We could speculate all day long bit I imagine it probably has a lot to do with the fact that creating valuable content is a daunting task that requires a lot of research and time. But unless you offer a well known brand or have pics/videos that draw a lot of interest, you’re not going to get very far without it.
Fortunately, there are places on your website you can spruce up to get other sites linking to you. Four places you can reinvent on your site to get more links include:
Product pages
Product pages typically are not fertile link building grounds – most only contain prices, specs and not a lot of content. They’re usually contained on pages that have a dynamic URL – one factor that prevents search engines from even crawling the page!
Make product pages more linkable by focusing on 1 or 2 products at a time. Change them over to a static URL with unique content promoting your “featured product” of the month of something like this. Contact bloggers and other people in your niche market and ask them to write about your featured product and link to the page.
Company news page
Unless you’re a part of a big brand that’s unveiling a revolutionary product, most people don’t care what’s going on at your company. Stand to reason you’re not seeing much progress if you’re simply using your blog to write about internal company news. You need to engage your target audience!!
Use press releases and other avenues like blogs to announce company news that impacts people outside your company. Contests, awards the company is giving out, new products and services, etc. And don’t be shy – if you’re company has a good human interest story to tell, by all means do so.
Have a new job opening you’re trying to fill? Create a job openings page on your site and contact blogs, job sites and other social media networks to let them know.
Links page(s)
Most link pages you come across are simply thrown together…they welcome just about anybody to put a link there. Compiling a comprehensive list of useful resources for people or simply re-arranging what you already have can bring you hundreds of links.
Articles or Sales Pitches
If you have great content or articles purely for educational, reference or entertainment purposes, good for you!
But if you’ve never promoted it, then it’s still one step away from linkable. Share articles you’ve invested a lot of time in researching and writing. Research other sites in your niche and see what they’re putting up. Do you offer something new to the conversation?
If you don’t, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to re-write everything but maybe all you need to do is add a different perspective or an analogy to make a complex subject more understandable for laymen.
While it takes time and a lot of work to build links to your site, it can pay off with persistence. But taking your old site, dusting it off and adding some shine can take it from static to a useful, and linkable, resource that people will follow.
It’s been a little while since we’ve reported on anything involving Bing and how it’s functioning for webmasters and SEO professionals.
While Microsoft’s newest search engine has been gaining market share in online search since its inception, webmasters and SEOs have had to deal with some glitches. Here are two of the latest.
A few days ago, webmasters were reporting in Bing’s forum that the search engine’s webmaster tools utility was not accepting URLs with hyphens in them. This caught my attention since our URL for this blog has a hyphen along with our SEO firm’s homepage (http://www.seo-advantage.com/).
Fortunately for our homepage, if you enter the URL without a hyphen, you end up at the same place.
Technicians at Bing are working on the problem and may have resolved it already.
The other glitch causing headaches for webmasters and SEOs is the crawler for the search engine is crawling a page twice – once for its compressed version and the other time for the uncompressed version.
Comments in the Bing forum complain that this is a waste of bandwidth and defeats the purpose of HTTP compression. An older thread from WebMasterWorld discusses image indexing by search engines and that possibly being a cause of the problem.
While Bing says they are working on the problem, there is no confirmation on when it will be resolved.
Stay tuned for any further updates to these issues or any technical issues with Bing.
Here we’ve got a new and interesting development out of Google…one we reported before that could be a revolutionary date in online search. And that is real time search – integration of “tweets” from Twitter, Facebook postings, etc. in search results on Google, Bing, etc.
Google is partnering with several social media outlets to post real time results for users. Go to Google and type in any popular search term or story of the day. After a few seconds, you will see it constantly update with users’ postings from social networking sites in real time. From my experimenting, you need to click “show options” after you enter your search terms and click latest for the time range.
As you can see in Google’s promotional video below, this utility may be very useful for learning about things currently happening that have an immediate impact on people’s lives – like the search for traffic update in a large city.
Many search engine optimization experts conversing about this in a couple of forums – WebMasterWorld and DigitalPoint – seem a bit concerned about this – and I can understand where they’re coming from.
The consensus is that this clutters up search results and it runs the risk of pushing their hard earned rankings farther down the list. One questions how Google will filter out useless postings that happen to contain the keywords the user searched for.
In any event, SEOs can adapt by using Twitter and Facebook to ensure their results show up in that area when applicable.
How will Google’s change affect you? Let us know in the comments field!
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.
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.
SEO keyword phrases are one of the main factors in ensuring your site ranks well in the search engines. But in a generic sense, you’re limited in the amount keywords can appear on a page without the copy looking ridiculous and getting you in trouble with the search engines.
Fortunately, there are techniques you can employ to increase the amount of keywords in your copy which can boost your site’s rankings without your readers even noticing it.
Customers searching online for the types of products or services you offer are using these words, so having a strong presence for your phrases is an important step in bringing in high-quality traffic for your site.
Continue reading for 11 steps you can use to increase keyword saturation without destroying the flow of your copy.
1. Break keywords up into different sentences and/or paragraphs
2. Form quotes from “personal” key phrases
3. Develop more effective bulleted lists
4. Break copy into sections
5. Offer a “more information” link
6. Include “opposite” key phrases
7. Consider “stop” words in choppy phrases
8. Create keyword specific pages
9. Combine key phrases
10. Add words
11. Use keyword phrases in testimonials
For more detail and some examples, read our newest article in the search engine optimization knowledge center at SEO Advantage today and begin using these techniques to easily boost your site’s rankings.
Just what are the factors Google uses in their algorithms to rank sites in the search engines?
No one knows exactly of course – search engine optimization professionals have been trying to do this even before Google was born.
At the recent PubCon conference, Google software engineer Matt Cutts commented that there are over 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. So, SEOs on WebMasterWorld are starting to write down what these factors may be. There are only a few on there now so they have a long way to go.
Of course, determining the significance placed on each of these is a whole other kettle of beans. Search engine optimization pros have been trying to do this for years now. But as time drags on and more websites come online, this has only gotten more difficult.
Some of the major ranking factor categories include: domain, architecture, content, linking, penalties and more.
A list like this can be useful on some level…but knowing which elements carry more weight is what’s more important and where you need to focus your effort.
