SEO Best Practices – Correlation Testing
Hi everyone,
This post is about the latest correlation testing done by the great folks at SEOmoz in regards to search engine ranking factors. Presented below is a list of the best SEO practices with some startling revelations. It is not exhaustive but covers the crucial factors.
SEOmoz has been indexing the web with their killer app Linkscape and they have been analysing the data to arrive at solid results. Even though the SEO field has lots of grey areas, good evidence in the form of solid data proves that search engine optimisation can be a definitive science in certain areas rather than a skillful craft.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/28/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Search Engine Optimization blocking content from search engines, correlation testing, google search wiki, negative links from bad neighbourhood, parameter driven urls, relationship between traffic and rankings, seo best practices, title tag, use of 301 redirects, use of alt text in images, use of javascript and flash, use of meta keywords, usefulness of canonical tag, usefulness of footer links, usefulness of h1 tag, usefulness of nofollow
Microformats Hit Mainstream!
Over on SEMClubhouse I’ve written up a post on “Why Use Microformats?” which is a mild criticism of Michael Gray’s recent post on “HCards, Microformats and Address Data does it Matter for SEO“. Essentially, Michael suggests people should prioritize implementation of hCard into local info webpages as a lower-priority, back-burner project. I not only believe that Yahoo’s SearchMonkey developer platform and Google’s new Rich Snippets display are proving that the search engines consider the Microformats protocol to be important, but anything presented as a back-burner or rainy-day project for many major corporations pretty much relegates that work to never be done at all.
With the advent of Rich Snippets in SERPs, I think I can safely declare that Microformats have now hit mainstream! (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/20/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, Local Search Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, hcalendar, hCard, hproduct, hreview, Local Search, local-SEO, microformats, microformatting, rich snippets, Search Engine Optimization, searchmonkey, semantic code, semantic markup
Key to Relevance: Title Tags
I recently penned an article at Search Engine Land on Leveraging Reverse Search For Local SEO. In it, I describe how in certain exception cases, one may benefit from adding the street address into a business site’s TITLE tag. It’s not the first time that I have mentioned how TITLE tags are key to relevance in Local Search — I’d previously mentioned how critical it is for local businesses to include their category keywords and city names in the TITLE as well.
Yet, a great many sites continue to miss this vital key to relevance, and they wonder why they fail at ranking for their most apropos keywords. Keywords for which they’d otherwise have a very good chance at ranking upon!
W3C calls the TITLE the “most important element of a quality web page” (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/10/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, General, Google, HTML Optimization, Keyword Research, Local Search Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks key relevance, Keyword-Positions, Keyword-Rankings, page-titles, SEO, title-tags, w3c
Yellow Pages & Blog Payola
Ed Kohler, outspoken critic of YP industry, “outed” DexKnows.com for using Pay-Per-Post to increase links and associated PageRank for their site.
As you may know, Pay-Per-Post involves paying bloggers to write articles endorsing products, services or companies, and in this flavor it also involves using those posts to link back to the company’s site in order to help build PageRank.
The blog post is very thinly disguised payola – as Kohler points out, the blog is purportedly belonging to someone in Arkansas, while this post appears to be all oriented around providing keyworded links involving Pizza in Minneapolis through DexKnows. The blog has a large “payperpost” ad badge on it, too, and if you read through the articles, every single one seems to be engineered to sound like someone writing about random daily life incidents, but always with a couple of injected keyword links.
In context, it’s glaringly obvious that the blog is a paid posting. Kohler posts a comment below it, asking if it’s a paid post for Dex, and the author replies that she doesn’t “know who’s Dex”.
Kohler further pokes fun at Ken Clark, a yellow pages industry advocate, (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/03/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Blog Optimization, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Worst Practices, Yellow Pages dexknows, paid blogging, pay per post, Yellow Pages
Why avoiding meta keywords tag may be best
Around a year ago, Danny Sullivan did some great research on the Meta Keywords tag to determine which search engines are using it. He found indication that Google and Microsoft Live Search ignore it for keyword ranking (retrieval) purposes, while Yahoo! and Ask are apparently using it. With Google having the bulk of the search marketshare, and Yahoo possibly only using the tag to a limited degree, it would seem rather extraneous to continue using it for search optimization.
Although his research was really pretty definitive in my mind, there are so many search marketers that have some sort of nostalgic devotion to the tag and who continue to obsess over it and insist upon using it. There is a sort of mentality that “if it might help, then I’m damn well going to use it.” (See this recent thread at WebMasterWorld where quite a few express this viewpoint.)
However, I see some compelling reasons to avoid using it altogether… (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/15/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, HTML Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Worst Practices meta keywords, meta tag, metatags
Privacy Policy Could Be Site Quality Signal
Search engines have increasingly gotten involved in protecting endusers from hostile and intrusive elements on the internet, and they’ve also become more active in internet privacy issues as consumers are getting more educated about issues surrounding data privacy. Ask.com has tried to differentiate themselves by being progressive about communicating their data retention policy and by enabling users to define how long data is retained, for instance, while Google has revised their data retention policy as well as worked to aggressively block or warn endusers about websites containing adware, spyware, and other exploits. Yahoo! even recently paired up with McAfee to assess and improve the safety of sites displayed in their search results.
One aspect of search rankings I’ve written about before is the theory of a site’s quality — a “quality score” very likely is applied by Google (and to lesser degrees, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search) to quantify how much they may trust a site for ranking purposes and for users’ safety. There are a number of factors which might feed into a site’s quality score (including Google’s human quality auditors’ scoring), and one major factor that could be used might be a site’s Privacy Policy. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/23/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, Security, SEO, Worst Practices data privacy, p3p, personal data, privacy, privacy policy, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, web spam
Should Businesses Rename Themselves For Better Search Traffic?
Mike Blumenthal has a great article this week, going over some aspects surrounding how businesses may opt to rename themselves for purposes of local search engine optimization within Google Maps.
As he mentioned, I’d previously listed this idea in my somewhat tongue-in-cheek post on “Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics” some time back.
While my Tactics were intended to be a bit over-the-top, the tactic is indeed likely to work to varying degrees in different search engines and internet yellow pages directories, as Mike outlines. I should note that I only endorse the engineering of business names for purposes of branding and for purposes of targeting business-category/product/service terms for which the company involved is actually providing. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/04/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Keyword Research, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages
Corporate Blogging: Too Legally Dicey To Allow?
This article at CNET, “Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen?“, caught my eye. Large corporations definitely feel nervous about allowing all their employees to have a public voice, but I think it’s now something that must be allowed, and good common-sense management can be used to help avoid some of the risk of lawsuits such as the one mentioned in the article involving Cisco.
Some companies’ legal departments think that blogging is just too risky to allow, and that it’s not worth the time and administrative headache to try to manage. The problem that I see with this is that it causes a company to be stuck in a Business 1.0 world of the past, disallowing the grass-roots-level public relations that employees can provide — blogging allows a big corporation to have a human face and can help explain and communicate what the company is up to. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/26/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, General, News blogging, corporate blogging, employee blogs
Network Solutions Guarantees Search Engine Rankings
I received a note from Network Solutions today with the subject line of “Good Luck Isn’t a Guarantee – Getting Found Online Is”, promoting their search engine optimization services. Nothing remarkable in that, since lots of large hosting companies and related firms are pushing SEO to small businesses as another line of value-add services. However, what is remarkable is that they push this promotion out with a guarantee of top 10 rankings in major search engines:
“Guaranteed Top 10 Rankings on Major Search Engines”
Now, if you’ve been around the search marketing industry very long at all, you’re probably aware that most of the guides for “picking the right SEO firm” or “how to choose an ethical SEO” recommend staying away from companies which guarantee rankings. For instance, check out the advice from Shari Thurow, David Wallace, MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit, and Chris Sherman. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/03/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Worst Practices Keyword-Rankings, Network-Solutions, search engine rankings
Online Reputation Management Through Search at SMX West
I was interested to hear the presentations in the Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search session at the SMX West Conference yesterday in Santa Clara, and the five presenters didn’t disappoint.
First up was Andy Beal, who I was particularly interested in hearing since this presentation came just after he announced his new online reputation management monitoring service, Trackur, and he also announced he’d have a number of free copies of his book at a booth in the exhibit hall later.
Additional speakers included Chris Bennett, Veronica “Niki” Fielding, David Wallace, and Jonathan Ashton. (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 02/28/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, brand names, Conferences Online Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring, reputation-management
