Posts Tagged Google
Facebook as a Search Engine
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on March 24th, 2010
We have been saying it for the last year, that more and more people use Facebook to search for things other than just friends, crushes and ex-boyfriends...like products and services...and a while ago Facebook made this type of searching much easier. When you search with keywords on Facebook you get results in different categories, like people, pages, applications and web.
That last one is key: now you can actually browse the entire internet via Facebook. A recent development, Facebook features their search results from Microsoft's Bing search engine:
And before you even click enter, when typing keywords into the search field at the top of any Facebook page, the top relevant results pop up, encouraging you to visit these most popular pages or profiles.
For example, when I type "shoes" into the search field I get these suggestions:
The most relevant page to my search term, and the page with the most fans, appears first. If I type in a brand name like Levi's, I not only get the Levi's official page, but other small fan pages, as well as a personal profile of a person with "levis" in her name. She and I have 4 mutual friends, so Facebook thinks I might either be looking for her, or could possibly be interested in connecting with her.
This drop-down menu of search results is new, and I am sure many people did not notice its appearance.
I wonder, does this have any SEO implications that might affect page developers? Will it change the way you use Facebook?
Link-Building Strategies for 2010 - Think Like Google
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on March 21st, 2010
During the past year my thinking about link-building best practices has greatly evolved, partially due to a greater immersion in social media marketing where the focus is on creating great content and an authentic engagement with the community, as well as to listening what Google has to say about how it assesses websites.
Increasingly, I've come to believe that the best backlinking strategy is a 100% authentic strategy, creating content that is of value to users — build it and they will come — and engaging with the community to share your knowledge and expertise and increase awareness of what you have to offer. To supplement this, there are a handful of directories where site submissions are human-reviewed and the directories themselves have a high PageRankGoogle's metric for how popular a site is on the Web, on a scale of 1-10 (higher is better). The biggest factor is how many external sites link to yours, and the authority, popularity and relevance of those sites..
Read the rest of this entry »
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 LINKS: WordPress, SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing 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.
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