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
Flickr Starts Nofollowing
A couple of my colleagues, Brian Brown and Jeff Muendel, identified that Flickr has begun NOFOLLOWing hyperlinks in their photo profile pages. I’ve confirmed this and have a few more details to add. (more…)
Popularity: 36% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/21/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Link Building, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimizationflickr, image SEO, Image-Search-Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Double Your Trouble: Google Highlights Duplication Issues
Maile Ohye posted a great piece on Google Webmaster Central on the effects of duplicate content as caused by common URL parameters. There is great information in that post, not least of which it validates exactly what a few of us have stated for a while: duplication should be addressed because it can water down your PageRank.
Maile suggests a few ways of addressing dupe content, and she also reveals a few details of Google’s workings that are interesting, including: (more…)
Popularity: 11% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 09/12/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Best Practices, Dynamic Sites, Google, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, URLsCanonicalization, duplicate-content, duplication, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
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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Filed under: Content Optimization, General, HTML Optimization, Link Building, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, Spidershelp, optimization, review, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO-consulting, SEO-critiques, website-design
Google Employees Can’t Find PageRank - Must Search For It
Last night, I was comparing relative popularity of a few keywords in Google Trends, and I noticed that the term, “PageRank”, apparently has the highest number of searches in the US from people in the city of Mountain View, California:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=pagerank&ctab=0&geo=US&date=all
As you may be aware, Google headquarters is located in Mountain View (see map).
So the most likely reason that most US ”PageRank” searches happen in that little town is that Google employees are frequently submitting searches for info about PageRank. They may be searching for what people are saying about PageRank, or they may be searching for new research papers concerning the algorithm. But, they’re definitely searching for it…
For the one place in the world that has the most PageRank of all, you’d think they wouldn’t have to search for it. 
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/23/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, PageRankGoogle, Google-Trends, PageRank
PR for your PR: Publicity for Improved PageRank
After a company has engineered their website to enable search engine spidering, they may then graduate on to understand the importance of link-building. But, businesses often look for quick technical tricks to achieve those vital inbound links without looking towards classic offline business strategies. Press releases and similar types of publicity can significantly help with linkbuilding, and should be a major component of a business’s search marketing arsenal.
One question that frequently comes up in search engine optimization is “How can we get a new domain name to rank well and rapidly?” You may have heard of “The Sandbox” in relation to SEO — this is the concept that newer domain names will not be trusted by search engines, and so pages hosted on those domains may not rank as well as would be expected for unique keyword combinations. Getting good numbers of inbound links can break a domain out of the sandbox effect, but linkbuilding takes time. Most shortcuts won’t work in this area, and you should run screaming the other direction if someone promises otherwise, since participation in link networks can get you penalized with major engines.
But, there is one shortcut that not only can work, but is allowed by the search engines: publicity. While the sudden appearance of hundreds and thousands of inbound links to a new domain name could raise redflags with search engines, the exception is if those inbound links are coming from recognized news sites and blogs. The search engines recognize “burstiness” — the sudden influx of links — in cases where a site has attracted popular attention, and lots of articles and blog postings have come out on a particular subject.
Whether you’re trying to found a new domain name, or increase your site’s overall ranking in the search engines, publicity is one of the most effective methods around. Read on and I’ll outline some tips for getting good PR — both kinds!
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/23/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Link Building, Marketing, PageRankpr, Press-Release-Optimization, Press-Releases, publicity, seo-sandbox
Leveraging Wikipedia for SEO: it’s no longer about the link juice
Recently when I blogged about the SEO benefits of contributing to Wikipedia, I alluded to some of the complex strategies and tactics around creating entries, keeping your edits from getting reverted, etc.
One of the benefits that can no longer be gained is link juice. That’s because rel=nofollow has just been instituted across all of Wikipedia and its sister sites (such as Wikinews).
Does that mean you no longer need to concern yourself with Wikipedia? Heck no! It is still a valuable source of traffic and, just as importantly, credibility. To have a Wikipedia entry for your company show up in the top 10 in Google for your company name gives a nice credibility boost. Even better if the coverage on your entry is favorable!
Wikipedia is still key to the discipline of “reputation management.” By understanding the ins and outs of Wikipedia — navigating the landmines of notability criteria, not contributing your company’s entry yourself, disambiguation pages, redirects, User pages, Talk pages, etc. — you can potentially influence what is said about you on Wikipedia. Furthermore, if web pages that are critical of your company occupy spots in the first page of the SERPs, you can push them out and replace them with your Wikipedia entries. Because Wikipedia holds so much authority and TrustRank, it’s easy to get an entry into the top 10 for any keyword.
Back to the nofollowing of external links… I don’t think SEOs will leave Wikipedia any time soon due to this new development. Even though that was Jimbo Wales’ hope.
There is still significant incentive for SEOs to edit (and manipulate) Wikipedia so long as Wikipedia holds the top spot for important keywords such as “marketing” in Google.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts on 01/23/2007 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Link Building, PageRankLink Building, link-gain, PageRank, reputation-management, TrustRank, Wikipedia
SEO May Be Eclipsed by User-Centered Design
I’ve been seeing indications that Google has shifted their weighting of the ~200 various signals they use in their ranking soup over the past couple of years. It used to be that PageRank along with the number of keyword references on a page were some of the strongest signals used for what page comes up highest in the search results, but I’ve seen more and more cases where PageRank and keyword density seem relatively weaker than they once were. I see a lot of reasons to believe that quality ratings have become weighted more heavily for rankings, particularly among more popular search keywords. Google continues to lead the pack in the search marketplace, so their evolution will likely influence their competitors in similar directions, too.
So, what is my evidence that Google’s development of Quality criteria is becoming more influential in their rankings than PageRank and other classic optimization elements? Read on and I’ll explain. (more…)
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 11/15/2006 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Best Practices, Design, Google, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, YahooGoogle, IndyRank, SEO, TrustRank, usability, User-Centered-Design, Yahoo
A window into Google through error messages: PageRank vectors and IndyRank
There’s been plenty of speculation posted to the blogosphere on the recently discovered cryptic Google error message; my favorites being from Wesley Tanaka and from Teh Xiggeh.
What intrigues me most in the Google error message is the references to IndyRank and to PageRank possibly being a vector. In regards to IndyRank, Stuart Brown suspects it means an ‘independent ranking’ — a “human-derived page ranking scoring, independent of the concrete world of linking and keywords”.
In regards to a PageRank vector, Wesley hypothesizes:
“If page rank is actually a vector (multiple numbers) as opposed to a scalar (single number) like everyone assumes (and like is displayed by the toolbar). It would make sense — the page rank for a page could store other aspects of the page, like how likely it is to be spam, in addition to an idea of how linked-to the page is. The page rank you see in the google toolbar would be some scalar function of the page rank vector.”
Of course the Google engineers are probably laughing at all this.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts on 07/22/2006 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, PageRankGoogle, IndyRank, PageRank, vectors
Toolbar PageRank Update
Yep, it’s that time again.
I don’t usually care that much, but we had a little snafu with our PageRank readout on the toolbar for our netconcepts.com site due to a misconfiguration on our end (detailed on my post “Toolbar PageRank Update Is Currently Underway)”, and happily that’s now corrected.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted by Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts on 07/14/2006 | Permalink | Email
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