Google’s Ranking Advice in Blended Search at SMX West
Just a quick post here on some simple tips that David Bailey of Google advised in this morning’s session on “The Blended Search Revolution” at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara:
- Publish high-quality, well-captioned images;
- Have pages which already have good PageRank (use traditional SEO to achieve);
- Create a Google Video Sitemap;
- Update business listings in Local Business Center;
- Submit your feed to Google Product Search;
- Create a high-quality company blog;
Popularity: 54% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/26/2008 | Permalink | 
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Filed under: Conferences, Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, Image Optimization, Local Search Optimization, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimizationblended search, David-Bailey, Google, SEO, SMXWest08, Universal-Search
GravityStream Does Local SEO: Now Fixes Store Locator Pages
I’m pleased to announce that GravityStream can now optimize store locator pages for those retailer sites which provide search utilities for their local outlets.
As you may recall, I’ve written before about how dealer locators are terribly optimized and how store locator pages can be optimized. A great many store locator sections of major corporate sites are not allowing search engine spiders to properly crawl through and index all the locations where they may have brick-and-mortar outlets.
Most large companies seem fairly unaware that their store locators are effectively blocking search engine spiders and are making it impossible for endusers to find their locations through simple keyword searches. I’ve also listed out a number of top store locator providers which produce locational services like this for many Internet Retailer 500 companies.
Read on for details on our results…
Popularity: 23% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/08/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, ToolsAutomatic-SEO, dealer-locators, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, store-locators
Advice on Subdomains vs. Subdirectories for SEO
Matt Cutts recently revealed that Google is now treating subdomains much more like subdirectories of a domain — in the sense that they wish to limit how many results show up for a given keyword search from a single site. In the past, some search marketers attempted to use keyworded subdomains as a method for improving search referral traffic from search engines — deploying out many keyword subdomains for terms for which they hoped to rank well.
Not long ago, I wrote an article on how some local directory sites were using subdomains in an attempt to achieve good ranking results in search engines. In that article, I concluded that most of these sites were ranking well for other reasons not directly related to the presence of the keyword as a subdomain — I showed some examples of sites which ranked equally well or better in many cases where the keyword was a part of the URI as opposed to the subdomain. So, in Google, subdirectories were already functioning just as well as subdomains for the purposes of keyword rank optimization. (more…)
Popularity: 29% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 12/12/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Domain Names, Dynamic Sites, Google, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, URLs, Worst PracticesDomain Names, Google, host crowding, language seo, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, seo subdirectories, subdomain seo, subdomains
Dealer Locator & Store Locator Services Need to Optimize
My article on local SEO for store locators just published on Search Engine Land, and any company that has a store locator utility ought to read it. Many large companies provide a way for users to find their local stores, dealers, or authorized resellers. The problem is that these sections are usually hidden from the search engines behind search submission forms, javascripted links, html frames, and Flash interfaces.
For many national or regional chain stores, providing dealer-locator services with robust maps, driving directions and proximity search capability is outside of their core competencies, and they frequently choose to outsource that development work or purchase software to enable the service easily.
I did a quick survey and found a number of companies providing dealer locator or store finder functionality: (more…)
Popularity: 12% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 09/13/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Dynamic Sites, Local Search Optimization, Maps, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structurechain-stores, dealer-locators, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, store-location-software, store-locators
Automatic Search Engine Optimization through GravityStream
I’ve had a lot of questions about my new work since I joined Netconcepts a little over three months ago as their Lead Strategist for their GravityStream product/service. My primary role is to bring SEO guidance to clients using GravityStream, and to provide thought leadership to the ongoing development of the product and business.
GravityStream is a technical solution that provides outsourced search optimization to large, dynamic websites. Automatic SEO, if you will. Here’s what it does…
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/17/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Dynamic Sites, HTML Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, ToolsAutomatic-Search-Engine-Optimization, GravityStream, Netconcepts, Outsourced-Search-Engine-Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
When Google Changes Page Titles
As most webmasters are aware, the text put within a page’s <TITLE> tags appears in two places - at the top of the browser window when a user is viewing a page, and it appears as the link anchor text on Google’s and other search engine results pages. But there are some rare occasions when Google will display different link text on their result pages than what is used in the <TITLE> text. So, why is this happening, and could it be happening to you?
I was recently researching some problems that a client was exeriencing due to bad advice given to him by a prior SEO agency (they’d encouraged him to buy links and participate in link exchanges, I found, among other sins). While looking into the site’s problems which included various over-optimizations and bad usability design, I discovered that when I used a particular keyword to search in Google, his site’s homepage came up with a completely different title in the search results. Most of his other desired keywords brought up his HTML <TITLE> text like normal, but this one did not…
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/12/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, SEO, Search Engine OptimizationDMOZ, Google, html-title, html-title-tag, Open-Directory-Project, page-titles, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SERP-display
Images & Search Session at SES NYC, 2007
As promised, here’s the copy of my preso from the Images & Search panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York, April 2007.
Also, here’s the Image Sharing Sites Comparison Chart that I created while researching out the potential for improving sites’ traffic through integration with social sharing services.
I see that one blogger, Morpheus Media, posted a good bulleted summary of the Images & Search session.
My new company, Netconcepts, does SEO consulting and web development. As I mentioned, the area which I was hired to work upon is some software service that Netconcepts provides which I describe as a near turnkey SEO solution for dynamically generated websites. One area where I do research is in using image sharing sites like Flickr to improve rankings for sites such as online product catalogs which have lots of photographs. Contact me if you’re interested in these services, or if you have any questions about optimizing for image search or through photo sharing services.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/16/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Content Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimizationflickr, Image-Search-Optimization, Search-Engine-Strategies-Conference, SES-Conference
Upcoming Speaking Gigs
I have a few speaking gigs coming up for any of you who are interested. I’ll be speaking first in April at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York, on the Images & Search Engines panel on the topic of Optimization Through Image Sharing Sites:
The talk focuses primarily upon optimizing via Flickr, since my comparison research indicates that Flickr has the best potential for natural search optimization. You’ll notice that my postings here at Natural Search Blog increasingly have illustrations accompanying them, and I’ve typically hosted those through Flickr just for the SEO value in an effort to “practice what I preach”. 
I’ll also be speaking at the American Marketing Association’s Hot Topic Series on Search Engine Marketing in April (San Francisco), May (New York), and June (Chicago) on the subject of “Organic Search is All About Content”. These one-day conferences will have some other great guests such as Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts, Amanda Camp and Vanessa Fox from Google, Eric Ward the link-building expert, Paul O’Brien from HP, and others.
I hope to see you there!
Popularity: 14% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 03/25/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Content Optimization, General, Image OptimizationAMA-Hot-Top-Series, AMA-Search-Engine-Marketing, American-Marketing-Association-Hot-Topic-Series-on-Sear, search-engine-strategies, Search-Engine-Strategies-Conference, ses, SES-Conference
Dupe Content Penalty a Myth, but Negative Effects Are Not
I was interested to read a column by Jill Whalen this past week on “The Duplicate Content Penalty Myth” at Search Engine Land. While I agree with her assessment that there really isn’t a Duplicate Content Penalty per se, I think she perhaps failed to address one major issue affecting websites in relation to this.
Read on to see what I mean.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 03/18/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, Spiders, URLsduplicate-content, Duplicate-Content-Penalization, Jill-Whalen, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URL-Optimization
In other news, a new free Clinic
Search Engine Journal today opened free SEO Clinic for sites in need of optimization or with specific challenges that have not been overcome.
A group of leading SEOs including Carsten Cumbrowski, Ahmed Bilal, and Rhea Drysdale will review one submission per week delivering a thorough review of usability and site navigation, link building, and copywriting from the perspective of placement in the four leading engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask).
It’s clear though that “free” is as free as having your site criticized in one of the SEO clinics experts like to host at conferences. If chosen for review, the findings and recommendations will be posted for others to peruse. I’d do as much myself and appreciate their efforts to help others with these case studies but as a website owner, someone responsible for SEO, or marketing manager for a major brand, I might not be so inclined to have my successes and failures outlined in detail for everyone to see. That concern aside, I do hope they get some quality sites and develop a thorough library of reviews (perhaps I’ll sign up myself!).
To participate, simply contact the team here.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Paul O'Brien of seobrien.com on 02/27/2007 | Permalink | Email
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