Posts Tagged Google
Too Much Buzz?
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on February 12th, 2010
People ask all the time, will we get tired of so much social? Social media, social networks, social business, social marketing…
I don’t really think that’s the right question, especially because sites like Facebook have shown us that people like social, even if they tend to be slow to the uptake at first. I would ask instead, in what manner will social become completely intertwined with all online activity?
How to Announce and Promote Your Blog – Best Practices
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on January 12th, 2010
OK. You’ve set up your blog, in a subdirectory of your primary domain, you’ve implemented a well considered “taxonomy” for categories and tags, and you’ve begun to blog. You’re very pleased with the posts you’ve created (you should have at least 4 or 5 posts published) and want to begin promoting your blog.
In promoting your blog, the most important thing you must remember is don’t overdo it!. In the community of bloggers and social media, patience is the key. Make sure your primary objective is adding value to the Web. Be sincere, relevant and informative.
Three Things You Should Know About Blogging
- Check your facts, your grammar and your spelling!
Remember, you are your brand. Your posts represent who you and your brand are to the world. Your reputation — your expertise and your attention to detail — is on the line with every post. Poor writing, erroneous facts, and spelling errors scream “Amateur!” First and foremost, take that extra bit of time to get it right before publishing. - Make Sure Your Blog is Properly SEO’d!
These SEO steps are essential in maximizing your search engine rankings for each post:- Your posts should be search-engine-friendly, and this is more than just incorporating keywords into your content. Your posts’ URLs should be natural-language, keyword-rich: “/your-blog-directory/the-title-of-this-post-keywords/”, not “/your-blog-directory/?p=123″ (in WordPress, use “Permalinks” to accomplish this).
- Your category “taxonomy” should be well organized with keyword-aware category names.
- Each post should have a unique, descriptive and keyword-rich title tag and “description” meta tag (Read my post on SEO Best Practices for your WordPress blog).
- Again … Don’t Overdo It!
Remember, you’re entering an established community. Take time to introduce yourself, get to know the conventions and etiquette of the blog space, and be patient. If you make contributions of value to the conversations, you will get value in return. Here is an excellent list of suggestions of what NOT TO DO to promote your blog!
Blog Hosting for Best SEO: External, Subdomain, Subdirectory?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, WordPress on October 25th, 2009
Where and how you host your blog is as important to your search engine rankings as what plugins you use and how you optimize your blog posts. I have previously discussed the best WordPress SEO plugins, but here I want to discuss the importance of how you set up your blog’s hosting: 1) separate domain; 2) subdomain; 3) external hosted solution (WordPress.com, Typepad, Blogger); 4) subdirectory.
I won’t go into the separate-domain issue, but you can read Mark Jackson’s Search Engine Watch post about this option. Needless to say, the benefits to your primary domain in this case would be nil, except for backlinking from the new, blog domain to your primary domain. But because this blog domain will have likely been recently activated, you will have to wait at least a year before Google assigns it any meaningful TrustRank to the new domain.
As all SEOs know, a business should almost always host their blog under their own domain, rather than the other options mentioned above. When other websites link back to your posts or other pages of your blog, you want the backlinking credit to go to your domain, not to Blogger.com or Typepad.com.
Recently, a client asked us about setting up a blog for them and we told them what we tell all our clients:
- Use WordPress as the blogging platform: We love the incredible number of plugins and themes that are developed by the very large and active WordPress community. And we really like WordPress as a blogging platform (and Dan Cederholm agrees!);
- Install WordPress in a subdirectory: Install the blog under your own domain, in a subdirectory that has a keyword-rich name, eg /widget-sales-usa/) rather than “blog” (we actually use “blog”, but there’s a reason…) or “wordpress.”
HubSpot Business Blogging?
Not long after this conversation, our client informed us that they had purchased the HubSpot “Business Blogging” package, and they asked if this would be as beneficial to their SEO as having a WordPress blog. I decided to do some research.
Read the rest of this entry »
Google’s Sidewiki – Evil or Awesome – The Jury’s Out
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on September 28th, 2009
A lot of us Web folks were surprised to hear about Google’s new Sidewiki service last week, which Google announced from their blog on Wednesday, September 23. Sidewiki is a universal commenting service that allows users to associate additional information or commentary with any webpage, thus expanding the “social” aspect of the Web exponentially. Although this service certainly opens up many possibilities for open commentary on websites (Google touts medical applications — doctors commenting on health sites, for example), a method of annotating the entire Web, the announcement was also greeted with a lot of skepticism about Sidewiki’s usefulness and longevity, and a lot of handwringing about its implications for opening new spamming channels and opportunities for competitors to badmouth each other on their websites, and accusations of Google being Evil.
Google has taken a number of precautions to assuage the above-mentioned worries:
- If you have a Google account and profile, your comments have a better chance of being published. And the longer you’ve had the account, the better;
- Your comments will be scanned for inappropriate language;
- Your commenting history will be taken into account, in terms of the priority given your comment or if it’s displayed at all.
Optimizing Your Website for Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on August 9th, 2009
Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, has done quite well out of the gate, gaining 3% market share in June 2009. And from this Mashable post we learn that analytics and research firm StatCounter reports the July results are showing the same trend: Bing is gaining traction, having gained 1.24% market share, up to 9.41%. In June, Bing’s increased market share came at the expense of Yahoo!, but in July it seems that 1% of the increase came at the expense of Google. According to StatCounter, Yahoo and Bing combined now control more than 20% of the search market, up from 19.27%, although comScore indicates that their combined market share in June was 29%, indicating disagreement over the actual numbers.
With this increased and growing market share, the fact that Yahoo! search will be taken over by Bing, and because Bing’s search algorithms differ from Google’s, SEOs will have to factor Microsoft/Bing into their approach to optimizing Web pages. The question is, How? Read the rest of this entry »
Trending Topics Search: Google was then, Twitter is now
Posted by Analisa in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on May 21st, 2009
This morning I was annoyed to find three spam messages in my Facebook inbox, all from friends (victims) and all containing a link to “areps.at”. I was smart enough to not open the messages at all, let alone click on the evil little links. My first thought was, am I the only one? I went straight to Twitter to investigate…
First I sent out a tweet asking if anyone else had experienced the same problem, but that was really unnecessary. My second step should have been my first, which was simply searching “facebook” in the Twitter search (that now sits conveniently in the right hand-side toolbar). In the results I saw that the most recent tweets that contained my keyword ALL related to the scam! My question was answered immediately, by complete strangers. Some tweets looked like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Google’s Wonder Wheel – Search Concept Mapping
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on May 13th, 2009
Google has just rolled out some new features recently and the standout, from a wow-factor POV, has to be Wonder Wheel which displays search results as a series of spoked hubs, with the search term in the hub and related terms at the tip of each spoke.
Just do a Google search on, say, Thomas Pynchon. You will see the results displayed. Click on the “show options” link just beneath the Google logo.
All of my search engine results in one aggregated basket
Posted by Analisa in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on April 17th, 2009
Leapfish, a new search engine aggregator still in beta, called HyperArts the other day, selling ad space similar to Google Adwords. They have, however, come up with a unique take on the concept of search engine advertising. They sell a string of keywords, but instead of paying per click, the advertiser buys ad space for those keywords permanently. Only three advertisements appear on each results page, and the top spot is sold for more than the second and third. Like buying real estate, or stock in the company, you are investing in that location, one of only three ads at the top and bottom of each search results page. The idea was intriguing, not enough to buy the ad space (since we do so well in Google’s organic results already 
, but enough to make me curious to explore Leapfish and their site a bit more thoroughly.
Google PageRank – How important is it, really?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on April 5th, 2009
I’ve been a student and practitioner of Search Engine Optimization – SEO – for a number of years. And I have to admit that the Great SEO Pastime of trying to figure out Google’s search algorithm is both frustrating and endlessly fascinating, like reading a Thomas Pynchon novel.
As we know, PageRank (“PR”) – the metric Google uses to assess a Web page’s “popularity” – was the central innovation of Larry Page (where apparently the name comes from) and Sergey Brin when they were at Stanford back in the 1990s. It was at the time a very effective way to assess the relevance of a page by measuring how many other Web pages linked to that page, the content of the linked text (the “anchor text”), and the PageRank/popularity of the linking page. More recently, it is thought that the “theme” of the linking page and its relevance to the theme of the page linked to is also a factor in assessing PageRank.
Of course, all of this is surmised, as Google protects the secrets of its search algorithms as ferociously as Thomas Pynchon protects his privacy.
Do keywords in directory and file names help rankings?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on March 1st, 2009
Of course, no one but Google knows how much weight is given to keywords found in the directory and file names. My own anecdotal experience has been that this does help with rankings. And it certainly seems to be the case that keywords in your domain name (TLD) provide more weight to your keywords.
On a Google SERP, we see search terms bolded in the anchor text “headline” (which is the title tag content), the description beneath the headline (usually the content of the description meta tag), and in the full URL (usually green text beneath the description. This indicates that Google is parsing or “noticing” the presence of the search terms. However, this bolded text in the URL doesn’t indicate how much weight those keywords are given by Google.
All the evidence I’ve seen indicates that if the title and meta tags, and the content of the page (using solid semantic markup) support the keywords in the domain, directory and file names, this correlation will result in a minor improvement in rankings.
I would certain invite others to offer their own opinions regarding this.
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