Archive for November, 2008

It was a short week with Thanksgiving, but there were lots of SEO blog posts out there. I continue to find the most useful information on the Sphinn site, but I like to follow specific bloggers instead of reading what goes ‘HOT’.

After ‘browsing’ (hard to get motivated on Black Friday) through over 200 blog posts, here are a few I would like to share through our SEO White Hats blog.

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/keyword-trends-google-analytics-greasemonkey/
Firefox add-on that shows referring and keywords trends in Google ANalytics

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/footer-link-optimization-for-search-engines-user-experience
Randfish SEO for footer links. There are some good SEO tips here including the use of nofollow and the fact that footers are de-valued by search engines, particularly Yahoo!

http://searchengineland.com/sempo-to-ring-nasdaqs-bell-15612.php
SEMPO will ring the NASDAQ bell on December 1st. Congrats SEMPO!

http://www.saadkamal.com/google/bloggers-best-practices-guide-by-google/
Google releases Best Practices for Blogs

http://searchenginewatch.com/3631829
I usually don’t read lists or follow web design threads, but here is 25 Design Best Practices for Your Small Business Web Site

http://seo2.0.onreact.com/searchwiki-power-to-the-people-great-news-for-seo-20
How GoogleSearchWiki and SEO2.0 might change the algorithm from links to people.

http://www.1stsearchenginerankings.com/2007/06/08/google-bounce-factor-research-data-is-in/
Does Bounce Rate affect SEO? Google Bounce Factor Research Data.

http://www.newedgemedia.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/seomoz-toolbar-a-review/
Review of seoMoz Toolbar. I did install it, but I am not currently running it. Randfish quickly responded to the review reminding everyone that LinkScape is in beta.

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2008-social-network-analysis-report/
A stats heavy review of leading social networks showing users and traffic of sites like Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Plaxo, and more. Good post if you are asked about current user and traffic levels of a particular social network platform.

Obtaining links to your web site on other sites is an important part of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Links help achieve the success of SEO efforts in several different ways, although the first two are most important:

1. The text used in links will help define relevant search keywords for your site or blog. This is why a link with anchor text (the visible, clickable text in the link) like “Read more” or “Click here” isn’t as valuable to SEO as one with less generic wording. For example, an inbound link titled “Seattle, WA Cleaning Service” would be especially beneficial, because it improves the linked web site’s ranking in search results for each of these words (and the entire phrase).

2. Regardless of their anchor text, links help SEO by improving the search engine rankings of a web site in general. Search engines consider linking to a site as an indication that it is more highly recommended and/or credible. Google’s PageRank (PR) system, which plays a major part in determining the position in results different sites receive, is largely based upon the quantity and type of links to each site. Other major engines use similar criteria in determining rankings.

3. Obtaining a link on a popular site often enables a web page to get indexed by search engines more quickly than it would otherwise. This will particularly help SEO efforts when time-sensitive material must be promoted, such as a news article or short term special pricing. One way this is accomplished is when a link is posted to a social bookmarking service, and is highly rated by users to the point that it appears on one of the main pages.

4. Links also help SEO indirectly by increasing traffic to web sites (when people click on them). As more people use a web site and see links to it elsewhere, there is a better chance that more voluntary linking to it will occur on other pages, directories, blogs, and social bookmarking systems. This will additionally help SEO efforts, reducing the need to buy links or manually request that they be added. This factor is more relevant to entertaining or informational sites.

Basically, links help SEO by increasing the speed of search engine indexing, defining keywords which are related to the sites they link to, improving search engine rankings in general, and encouraging the creation of additional links.

If you are considering moving your hosting from one country to another, you should definitely consider the impact it will have on your traffic. While search engines are becoming more knowledgeable about geography, the technology does have its flaws. This will most likely lead to some changes in terms of search engine traffic, especially when someone is using a country specific search option.

The reason behind this is that search engines work to direct you to your country’s version of that engine. For example, if you live in Denver, CO, you are taken to the USA’s version of Google, which is simply www.google.com. However, if you lived in Perth, Australia you would be directed to www.google.com.au - the Australian version of Google.

This also means that Google wants to return results to you from the same country you are searching from. So, Google tends to give more weight to sites that have either a domain name ending in the same country (.au in you’re in Australia for example) or are physically hosted on a server within that country. Google determines the hosting location via an IP address.

So, ultimately, if you’re going for more traffic in the U.S. then having your server hosted there may benefit you. But, if you are trying to drive traffic in another country, hosting your server in the U.S. could be a disadvantage. Overall, though your domain extension has the most impact on how traffic is channeled from various country specific Google search pages. And most experts believe the difference will be so small that it will be practically unnoticeable.

Being the model of consistency, I have already ‘broken’ from my plan of providing a Monday morning recap of the SEO blogsphere.    I had a chance to catch up on my blog reading tonight and here are some interesting posts from the 15 SEO Blogs that I follow:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html
Google launces SearchWiki, the ability to make search your own.

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/11/14-competitive-intelligence-tools.html
Competitve Intelligence slide deck Andy Beal including his Trackur.com tool.

http://www.shimonsandler.com/structuring-a-link-campaign/
Shimon Sandler is promoting his link building service.  Good insight into what is current working for effective link building.

http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/link-advertising-program-inlinkscom-text-link-ads/
Michael Gray discusses a new service from Text Link Ads and recaps his well known stance on paid link advertising.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/11/17/facebook-internally-seoing-brand-pages-wants-more-traffic-and-google-juice/
Facebook add new links on public profiles…this matters for SEO.

http://www.ninebyblue.com/blog/is-pagerank-the-ultimate-measure-of-online-influence/
Vanessa Fox discusses Page Rank and Online Influence on her new website…I wonder what the significance of nine BY BLUE.  Vannessa provides an SEO overview blog post with her best SEO posts at http://www.ninebyblue.com/reference-articles/seach-engine-optimization/search-engine-optimization-the-beginning/

http://www.seobook.com/art-seo-proposal
Great post about SEO proposals, a follow-up to http://www.seobook.com/how-be-seo-service-provider. Follow-up post -> http://www.seobook.com/how-keep-seo-clients

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/must-have-seo-tools
A list of 6 must have tools for SEO…I can’t seem to pass up a SEO Tool list.

When it comes to build links targeted to specific keywords, you need to keep in mind the relevance of the overall keyword phrase.  For example, let’s talk about a keyword phrase like ‘Credit Card Offers”

The Google ranking algorithm does use relevancy for its search results.  There are 3 main components - Technical, Content, and Links.  The first two items - Technical and Content - are primarily based on your website.  The third - Links - is the basis for Google PageRank, which is collective the most dominant of the 3 components.

You can find more information regarding PageRank here - > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

In this example, I might build links for “Credit Cards” and “Credit Card Offers”, but not “Offers”  This is because you can build relevance for ‘Keyword Phrase 1′ and ‘Keyword Phrase 2′, if both are relevant to your website.  However, the content and the linking will be harder to establish relevancy for “Offers” as a stand-alone phrase.

In addition, once you rank for a particular keyword like “Credit Cards”…Google will watch the behavior of its users to see if they like to visit your site after typing this keyword and it if seems like a majority of users are happy with the result, this also confirms relevance.  All of this is done by algorithms, Google states in several public releases and their methodology supports that ‘hand-editing’ doesn’t occur for top rankings.

http://www.seobook.com/googles-relevancy-algorithms-change-keyword
A good overview of how SEO strategy and optimization is different for competitive keywords versus long tail keywords. When there are many matching search results for a given search query, Google places a lot of weight on core domain age & authority and on external signals of quality like link quality. If you are starting a new site and have built little to no offsite signals of quality you can expect to rank for longtail phrases first. As your site builds authority you can compete for some of the head keywords.

http://www.webuildpages.com/blog/sem-events/how-to-buy-links/
Lisa Barone live blogging from Pubcon in a Paid Links session with Rank Fishkin, John Lessnau and Aaron Wall. Todd Malicoat will moderate. Lisa metions the room is packed, paid links is usually one of the most attended sessions. Where is Matt Cutts and Michael Gray?

http://www.webuildpages.com/blog/sem-events/reputation-monitoring-management/
Another live blogging session post by Lisa Barone. Todd Friesen will moderate this one with speakers Jessica Berlin, Andy Beal and Lee Odden. Good information if you want to learn more about Reputation Management.

http://www.seobook.com/social-media-marketing-waste-time2
A rant by Aaron Wall at SEOBook regarding Social Media Marketing. If you are considering Social Media Marketing or trying to compare it to the more established Paid Search Marketing model, this is definitely contains some good thoughts for you to consider.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/is-the-googles-yoyo-effect-the-evidence-of-a-new-algo-
Speculative article of a possible Google algorithm update based on recent yo-you of rankings.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-we-help-track-flu-trends.html
I actually saw this on CNBC(??) earlier this week. While I’m not sure that Google Trends can actually predict flu outbreaks, I think they produce an interesting ‘real-world’ correlation that can potentially grab the attention of the everyday internet user. While the statistical data model might be flawed, you have to hand it to Google on doing something interesting with its’ data.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/blog-carnivals-link-building/7999/
Amy Smarty writes about Blog Carnivals. Carnivals??? Fun is usually dangerous when it comes to link building. Group Writing Projects…that sounds a little safer strategy even though I think it is the same thing. More information on this concept available at http://groupwritingprojects.com/

It is beneficial to start taking SEO into consideration even while a web site is still under construction and other types of promotion have yet to begin. Here are a few tips on how to begin applying SEO during this process…

1. As soon as possible, complete, optimize, and make available the smallest portion of the site which is useful. For example, upload just the home page and ordering page first, but include a notice that more information is under construction. This way, search engines will find and index the site earlier, but your non-SEO promotional efforts can wait until all construction has been finished. Then you can have a “grand opening” (perhaps using a press release) to show users all that your site has to offer. Keep in mind that it typically takes months after a website is first indexed in Google before it has a chance of gaining high search result positions there.

2. Work on SEO keyword targeting, META tag creation, and search engine “spider” accessibility while the site is under construction, not later. This will save time when you don’t have to rewrite or update pages for SEO in the future. Be sure to incorporate a Site Map into your design. It is also good to learn about proper internet promotional techniques during this process, so you aren’t deceived into applying any detrimental practices like posting to FFA pages or trading links with completely unrelated web sites. Don’t hurry to finish all of the pages immediately or to start promoting the site in any way possible.

3. Don’t submit the incomplete site to directories or try reciprocal linking until it has been finished. Otherwise, the operators of directories or other sites will be less likely to find your site impressive enough to link to, and your chance to be listed will probably be lost. However, it is generally acceptable to send free link submissions to major directories which take months to approve them, as long as the construction process is expected to finish in under a month. Make a list of any directories you submit to, as it can be difficult to remember, and it’s best not to submit to the same directory more than once.

Following these SEO tips will help your site attain higher rankings in search results at an earlier date, with fewer changes needed when it is no longer under construction. This will also prevent mistakes which could undermine the site’s success.

http://www.seobook.com/seo-spring-clean
Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com discusses a Spring Clean for SEO, even though it’s winter where he reviews 8 items that you should review as you do an SEO audit.

http://www.copyscape.com
One of Aaron’s 8 tips discusses Duplicate Content. I have made it regular practice to check for duplicate content on every site continuously by either searching an exact long phrase with Google directly or using the Copyscape service.

http://www.majesticseo.com/search.php
This tool was recommended by Aaron Wall in the previous blog post. It is an interesting tool to check for backlink patterns of anchor text, deep links, and unique ip addresses.  You initially only get basic information, but you receive a full report once you verify your site.

http://www.SEMRush.com
A new competitive research tool by the same guys that did SEO Digger.  It seems to compete directly against SpyFU and Compete.com.  I will check it out in more detail later this week as I don’t like the SpyFu.com interface and Compete.com is a little expensive for my tastes.

http://www.ViralConverstions.com
Micheal Gray - Graywolf has launched a new website that connects business owners with bloggers who want to do product reviews. The difference is that bloggers are not paid for links but might possibly get free products like a free book or other interesting offers. Interesting concept as it is definitely a way around ‘paid links’; will ‘bartered links’ be next on the horizon for the big G?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/445594376/whiteboard-friday-whats-pagerank-got-to-do-with-it
SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday covers Page Rank and What It Has To Do With SEO.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/onetime-or-ongoing-seo-is-it-a-yes-or-no-question
An interesting SEO Strategy post by IgniteMedia about whether One Time or Ongoing SEO Is Best? User contribution from http://www.ignite-media.com/

http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/smx-london/
Powerpoint presentation from “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques at SMX London.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2008/11/sizing_up_the_long_tail_of_sea.html
Dustin Woodard does a guest post at the Hitwise blog which shows that the Long Tail of Search could actually be 90+ % of natural search traffic–meaning the tail could be without much of a head or body.

If you look at the top of your browser window, above the address bar and menus, that’s where you will find the page title. It is specified to search engines by a title element, which is the TITLE tag.

The reason so much importance is placed on the page title is that it helps search engines understand what a web page is all about, thereby increasing the relevance of search results. However, recently there has been some question as to whether longer page titles rank better or not. Here are some thoughts on that topic:

Many experts wonder if there is a downside to having title tags that match a popular search query exactly. The reasoning behind this train of thought is that these types of title tags will be seen as an advertising attempt to trick the user into clicking rather than true content to help searchers.

So, this may be one reason a longer page title could rank better than one that includes only the searched term or phrase.  We have found that a 5-6 phrases followed by the company seems to work best.  Here is one example of a page title we have done:

Another thought is that the end user experience is better with a longer page title. This would be because it’s generally easier to understand a page’s content with a longer title.

If you do decide to go with a longer title, though you don’t want to make it overly long. Keep in mind that Google only displays the first 63 characters in search results so the searcher won’t see more than that.

While Yahoo and MSN show more characters it’s best to go with a title that can be displayed fully on all 3 major search engines. You also only want to use your best, or most important, keywords. Typically pages rank better when there is more than one keyword in the tag.

So, it seems as though the answer may be that medium page titles work best. You don’t want a title that seems spammy to the search engines or the end user on one hand. But, on the other hand you don’t want a title that will be cut off so that your topic isn’t clearly shown to the search engines and end users.

We see many sites that go over-board and place 100 - 125 characters in the title tag.   While not confirmed, Google is always looking for ’signs’ of a spammy site and a long, keyword rich TITLE.   Our recommendation is to use the full 63 characters for the page TITLE without going over and place your most important keywords first.   In addition, if you are going to put your company or website name into the title, we recommend doing that at the end of the page title.

Here is a fast way to see how your rankings are working in other countries.  You simply have to add the string &gl=XX to the end of the URL in your browser. XX is the 2-letter ISO country code you need, i.e. RU for Russia, AU for Australia

http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+marketing&pws=0&hl=en&num=10&gl=au

This is a quick way to check Search Results in other countries as well as average position for Google Adwords campaigns.  Here is a list of ISO country codes from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1