Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing Search Engine PageRanking by Using Dynamic 301 Redirects

Those seo-savvy web programmers and search engine optimization specialists are familiar with the problem caused by changing a previously ranked url to a new url. For example, a page that a search engine has ranked on page 1 may be www.domainname.com/about/default.aspx . For a variety of reasons, it may be necessary to change the url to www.domainname.com/about-us/ . The new url will be identified by search engines as a new page, even though it is the same page. The PageRanking will be lower for ...

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Joanna Smith 1/26/2010 9:16:00 AM Comments(4)

Page Title Length Test Results

As an Internet Marketer who spends a lot of time in optimizing web sites, I have to keep testing search engine ranking methodologies to keep abreast of the latest changes by the search engines. In this test I wanted to try and debunk the whole "60 character maximum" for page titles. What I did was to create two new pages with two totally different page titles that varied in length. Each page had a meta description tag, but did not contain the targeted keywords. The pages also did not have any co...

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Brent Nau 12/30/2009 8:35:00 AM Comments(0)

Search Engine Optimization in 2010

Search engines are always changing their algorithms, sometimes as often as twice per day, but lately there have been some major changes that will affect the way search engines produce results: Recently, major engines like Google and Yahoo introduced a real-time search feature that scrolls recent Tweets from Twitter containing the searched keyword. With Twitter's explosive growth this year, this change now exposes the millions of conversations happening on Twitter, especially when it comes to a b...

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Jon Negrini 12/29/2009 11:02:00 AM Comments(1)

Google Implements Personalized Search Based on Browser Cookie

Google announced an extension to personalized search on Friday. Google noted that they will now provide customized search results based on past search activity for users not logged into their Google account. Google will set an anonymous cookie in your browser that will store up to 180 days of "signed-out" search activity, including search queries and results you click. How will you notice the change? Google has been nice enough to place a "View Customization" link on the search results page. Cli...

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Brent Nau 12/7/2009 8:24:00 AM Comments(0)

Google Sidewiki - Steps To Claim Your Site

Google recently launched a new product called SideWiki. Google's Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that allows users to add comments and information about a particular site. There has been some controversy about this new service already. Some of the issues brought up: The Sidewiki content is hosted on Google Taking comments /content from site owners and centralizing it Lack of comment filtering, open up for spam Some equate it to bathroom wall graffiti With that we want to talk about getting a "Page...

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Brent Nau 9/29/2009 11:33:00 AM Comments(0)

Image Link Test Results

I performed a small test to see how image links pass keyword relevancy to pages. I wanted to see if the search engines would rank a page merely based on the keywords used within the image link. I first researched five made up words and made sure that no search results showed for each word. I then created five images with just the word in the image. I wanted to see if the search engines are starting to use optical recognition for images. I then created five new pages for each link. Each page had ...

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Brent Nau 9/1/2009 10:41:00 AM Comments(0)

Dual Authority – Dual Inline Site Links

We have seen for a few different searches today where Google has begun showing multiple sites on the same search with site links. It appears as if Google is splitting the 8 site links it normally gives high authority sites to 4 inline site links each if the two sites both qualify as high authority for the search. The example below is for the search – Search Engine Update 4/2/09: Brent Nau noticed another form of inline site links today, using the search for Internet marketing blog , Hubspo...

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Dennis Dornon 4/1/2009 4:51:00 PM Comments(2)

Implementing 301 Redirects on Legacy URLs

The implementation of 301 redirects for legacy URLs is a crucial step in website redevelopment and URL optimization projects. It seems that web development companies that are not strong in Internet Marketing often make the mistake, out of ignorance more than anything, of not properly taking care of legacy URLs, that is of URLs that used to rank on the previous website version but whose content has been assigned a new URL. For example if the details page of a product is now on http://www.domain.c...

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David Ajoy 3/4/2009 8:53:00 AM Comments(1)

National SEO Day

National SEO Day is approaching! Approximately 28 more days until the first annual National Search Engine Optimizer’s Day! It all came about on June 26, 2008 through Dana Larson’s Twitter page and through word of mouth and intense viral marketing techniques this annual celebration might be a start of something big! The National SEO Day website does a very good job at keeping tabs on the event and actually nominated me to wear the first National SEO Day Badge. Thank you National SEO D...

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Jonathan Crowe 7/11/2008 8:30:00 PM Comments(0)

Google’s Ranking Philosophy

Today Amit Singhal a Google Engineer in charge of the ranking team introduced Google’s three core ranking philosophies. 1 Best locally relevant results served globally. 2 Keep it simple. 3 No manual intervention. He then took the time to break-down each one. Best locally relevant results served globally What he goes on to say is that if they run into a problem with a query they use that as method of improving the algorithm or as Amit says it “no query left behind” K...

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Dennis Dornon 7/10/2008 5:23:00 PM Comments(0)

National Search Engine Optimizers Day - August 8th

National Search Engine Optimizers Day is coming so mark your calenders! I first came across it on Dana Larson’s Twitter page. All I know thus far is it will be acknowledged on August 8, 2008 and will be the first of hopefully many of celebrations to come. Do search engine optimizers get the day off for this holiday? Probably not, but if it grows legs we can cross our fingers for a lunch to honor us. Tags: national search engine optimizers day , national search engine optimizers day augu...

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Jonathan Crowe 6/26/2008 12:54:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Universal Search Now Including Blog Posts

I just noticed today that Google is incoporating blog posts into their Universal Search results. Now I know Google has been including blog posts into the search results, but they are grouping related blog posts below the 10 organic listings by matching the keyword search to related blog postings. The “Blog posts about…” is grouped just like their Shopping results. I have only noticed this at the bottom of the search results. This is a great example of why companies should be bl...

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Brent 5/2/2008 4:32:00 PM Comments(0)

What is URL Canonicalization?

Search engines can see variations of the same domain as different pages and this can cause confusion and possible ranking reductions. For instance, domain.com, domain.com/default.asp, www.domain.com/default.asp, and www.domain.com can all be seen as different pages, even though they are actually the same page. Typically a server-side redirect can be implemented to point all of these domain variations to one main domain. You may, do search engines care which domain variation I should use. The sho...

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Brent 4/18/2008 12:42:00 PM Comments(0)

NoFollow - What is it?

The nofollow is a HTML attribute for links. The nofollow attribute supposedly excludes links from search engine ranking calculations. This attribute was first introduced by Google’s Matt Cutts and Blogger.com’s Jason Shellen . Example: Ancor Text It has been found that Google still follows these links, but if the page was not in the index previously they will not index the page, will not show the link as a back link , and will not associate any keyword relevancy from the anchor...

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Brent 2/8/2008 2:09:00 PM Comments(0)

MSN Buys Yahoo

If you MSN does get their hands on Yahoo this will definately open up the market for another player. Although MSN may try and keep the brand seperate, in the online world, this is very hard. It is a big move for both companies, but based on the huge shareholder incentive for Yahoo holders, this may just go through. ...

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James 1/31/2008 7:34:00 PM Comments(0)

Open Search Forum with The [Search] Engines at Pubcon 2007

Late Tuesday night tonight at Pubcon was the open forum with the main public figures from each of the major search engines; Google , Yahoo , MSN , and Ask . This was moderated by Guy Kawasaki one of the best speakers I have had the pleasure of learning from! . So, what was learned from this forum……well: Google Cutts is very defensive about their position on user feedback about their organic search results. It is clear they are not only relying on their algorithms to determine results...

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James 12/5/2007 3:48:00 AM Comments(0)

KeyWord Expectation, How Do You Rank?

Keyword Expectation - Simply meeting the expectation of the person performing the search request based on the meaning of the keyword or keyword phrase. And the closer you are to meeting users "Keyword Expectation" the most likely you are to close a sale, a lead or have a subscriber to your blog or newsletter. Why this is a simple concept, many of our new clients are often surprised to learn that they have been trying to mislead users and often disappoint visitors. The result is high web site...

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Brent 11/29/2007 11:19:00 AM Comments(0)

The Importance of Domain Name Extensions - .com Vs. .org and the others

Domain name buying, selling, and brokering is big business. People will scoop up the good-ones and hold them ransom or auction ‘em off to the highest bidder. Your whole business model may be cut down when you are forced to buy i-wanted-this-in-a-dot-com-but-they-only-had.org. But how much will it effect business? Well, luckily, from an SEO perspective there is no difference. All domain extensions are created equal. The same onsite and offsite factors integral to good rankings apply acros...

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Brent 11/13/2007 3:14:00 PM Comments(0)

SEO Problems with Pagination

Organization of content on a website is very important for search engine index-ability. It can be a challenge to create a system that is friendly to both human visitors and search engine bots. A common example is a list of articles. Even with categories, over time there can become a huge amount of articles within any given category. Then what? You don’t want an enormous page with 1000 article titles on it…do you? So, of course, you use pagination. The most common way is to have multi...

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James 10/30/2007 6:14:00 PM Comments(0)

SEO For Flash Only Websites

I was reviewing a website today that was a flash only website and needed to know if the company that built the site was smart enough to include a HTML version of the site for search engine indexing. The short answer…no. At SMT we do use Flash, but only as elements within a website. As any seasoned SEO expert will tell you, search engines have a hard time indexing sites that are totally developed in Flash. This is not to say that Flash sites can not get indexed, but when is the last time ...

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Brent 10/29/2007 7:07:00 PM Comments(0)

Flash and Search Engine Optimization

There seems to be a misconception that flash is bad for search engines and overall website rankings. This is simply not true. What is true is Flash, to date, can not be properly indexed by search engines. This means that any Flash on a website is essentially non-existent to search engines. The misconception most likely came from websites that are entirely created using Flash, since these website are invisible to search engine spiders. Without a massive amount of on topic incoming links, it is al...

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James 8/31/2007 6:59:00 PM Comments(0)

YouTube Poised to Lose 25% of their Traffic

From bloggingstocks, Google to add 30-sec ads to YouTube videos , blog post: “ Google was testing the concept of offering people and companies that post videos half of the ad revenues, if they agree to allow a 30-second spot to run before the video.” From BurstMedia’s Online Video Advertising PDF study: “…one out of two 52.7% say they typically continue watching video content once they encounter an advertising unit; 40.4% say they typically stop watching. Inte...

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Brent 4/26/2007 8:33:00 PM Comments(0)

Greatest Living American Google Bomb Defused

With the recent Google Bomb denoting Stephen Colbert as the “Greatest Living American” we have discover that Google Bombing still exists. The ColbertNation.com homepage ranks #1 for “Greatest Living American” without any reference to the specific term or any of the individual keywords on page. We took a sample of the pages that link to the site and noted that they were directing their links to the http://www.colbertnation.com/cn/letter-from-stephen.php . This page does no...

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Brent 4/19/2007 9:13:00 PM Comments(1)

NOYDIR Meta Tags and Weather Update

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo recently began supporting a new value for your robots meta tag that would prevent them from forcing your DMOZ Open Directory Project title and description to be used in your search engine results. DMOZ is the source Google uses to populate it’s own browseable directory of websites and Yahoo as well will pull information from it for listings from time to time. The issues that would result from this often would be that an old outdated name or descripti...

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Terry 2/28/2007 7:04:00 PM Comments(0)

Importance of a Good Internal Linking Structure

A website’s internal linking structure is simply how each page links to other pages on the site. Seems simple enough, but surprisingly, many internet marketers overlook how important it is to search engines such as Google to properly display and name internal links. Each page on a website should link to many other pages on the site. The most common place to accomplish this is in the footer. It is out of the way, yet if users get lost on a site they will often look in the footer for the l...

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James 2/15/2007 5:01:00 PM Comments(0)

What’s a Title Tag? Why Does It Matter?

A “title tag” is coded into each page of a site and is meant to define what a page’s content is about. It appears in the title area of a browser window and will be the default name when you go to bookmark a page. It’s defined in the underlying HTML coding of each page. Title tags are a critical part of SEO. While not as important as the content of a page in gaining rankings in the search engines, it does get heavily factored by the search engines. However, arguably its ...

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Terry 2/7/2007 9:00:00 PM Comments(0)

The End Of Google Bombing?

So what is a Google bomb? Basically, for fun or spite, a large amount of webmasters link to a particular page using a specified word. They did this for the George W. Bush page on www.whitehouse.gov using the word failure. This in turn “pushed” relevancy to the Bush page for the word failure and up until today the page ranked #1 for it on Google. Google claims not to hand edit their results and say the change was to the algorithm, not to just one site. And since they certainly could n...

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James 1/26/2007 2:40:00 PM Comments(0)

Using NOODP Meta Tag

What exactly is the NOODP meta tag? It is a meta tag that tells MSN and Google not to display your site’s OPD directory title in the search results. Google went a step further and will not display the description either. This can have a hugh effect on your click-through-rate since now you are in control of how your page title and description show up in Google and MSN. You can add to <meta content=”NOODP” name=”ROBOTS” /> your source code. If you want to just...

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Brent 11/2/2006 10:36:00 AM Comments(0)

Yahoo Site Explorer

The Yahoo! Site Explorer is a great tool for analyzing the depth of your crawl in Yahoo!’s search index. If anything, it’s good to see search engines taking an active role in helping marketers do their thing. Instead of just assuming spam and junk listings are the only goal of site promoters, this kind of stuff sends a positive signal that the role of search engine promotion is being recognized and the relationship between search engine and marketers is taking a much less adversarial...

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Terry 10/24/2006 4:33:00 PM Comments(0)

ModRewrite for Apache and IIS

There’s a lot of ModRewrite tutorials out there, but I always had a hard time finding a pretty clear cut explanation for the most common uses: redirecting and making search engine friendly URLs out of query string dynamic ones. Finding a simple laid out example was always a bear as well. A friend recently asked me for a rundown on using ModRewrite for both Apach and IIS servers and I wrote out a pretty good email explanation and thought, hey, perfect blog post. So here goes: “Rewri...

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Terry 9/19/2006 4:23:00 PM Comments(0)