Google Takes RSS & Atom Feeds out of Web Search Results
Google just announced this week that they have started reducing RSS & Atom feeds out of their search engine results pages (”SERPs”) - something that makes a lot of sense in terms of improving quality/usability in their results. (They also describe why they aren’t doing that for podcast feeds.)
This might confuse search marketers about the value of providing RSS feeds on one’s site for the purposes of natural search marketing. Here at Netconcepts, we’ve recommended using RSS for retail sites and blogs for quite some time, and we continue to do so. Webmasters often take syndicated feeds in order to provide helpful content and utilities on their sites, and so providing feeds can help you to gain external links pointing back to your site when webmasters display your feed content on their pages.
Google has removed RSS feed content from their regular SERPs, but they haven’t necessarily reduced any of the benefit of the links produced when those feeds are adopted and displayed on other sites. When RSS and Atom feeds are used by developers, they pull in the feed content and then typically redisplay it on their site pages in regular HTML formatting. When those pages link back to you as many feed-displayed pages do, the links transfer PageRank back to the site originating the feeds, and this results in building up ranking values.
So, don’t stop using RSS or Atom feeds!
Popularity: 11% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 12/19/2007 | Permalink | 
Email
| 
Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Blog Optimization, Google, URLsATOM, Feeds, Google, PageRank, RSS
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
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (2) | Comments RSS |
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
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
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Best Practices, Dynamic Sites, Google, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, URLsCanonicalization, duplicate-content, duplication, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Now MS Live Search & Yahoo! also treat Underscores as word delimiters
So, I earlier highlighted how Stephan reported on Matt Cutts revealing that Google treats underscores as white-space characters. Now Barry Schwartz has done a fantastic follow-up by asking each of the search engines if they also treated underscores just like dashes and other white space characters, and they’ve verified that they’re also handling them similarly. This is another incremental paradigm shift in search engine optimization!
I’ve previously opined that classic SEO may become extinct in favor of Usability, and announcements like this fluid handling of underscores would tend to support that premise. Google, Yahoo! and MS Live Search have been actively trying to reduce barriers to indexation and ranking abilities by changes like this plus improved handling of redirection, and myriad other changes which both obviate the need for technical optimizers and reduce the ability to artificially influence rankings through technical improvements.
I continue to think that the need for SEOs may decrease until they’re perhaps no longer necessary, so natural search marketing shops will likely evolve into site-building/design studios, copy writing teams, and usability research firms. The real question would be: how soon will it happen?
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 08/02/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Link Building, MSN Search, URLs, Yahoo
To Have WWW or Not To Have WWW - That is the Question
Over time, I’ve become a fan of the No-WWW Initiative.
What is that, you might ask? It’s a simple proposal for sites to do away with using the WWW-dot-domainname format for URLs, and to instead go with the non-WWW version of domains instead. Managing your site’s main domain/subdomain name is one basic piece of search engine optimization, and this initiative can be a guide for how to decide which domain name will become the dominant one for a site. Read on for more info…
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/28/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (1) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Best Practices, Domain Names, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, URLsCanonicalization, Domain Names, SEO, subdomains
Subdomains for Local Directory Sites?
Earlier this week, my column on “Domaining & Subdomaining in the Local Space - Part 1” went live at Search Engine Land. In it, I examine how a number of local business directory sites are using subdomains with the apparent desire to get extra keyword ranking value from them. Typically, they will pass the names of cities in the third-level-domain names (aka “subdomains”). Some sites doing that include:
- CitySearch
- Craigslist
- Local.com
In that installment, I conclude that the subdomaining for the sake of keyword ranking has no real benefit.
This assertion really can be extended out to all other types of sites as well, since the ranking criteria that the search engines use is not limited to only local info sites. Keywords in subdomains really have no major benefit.
SEO firms used to suggest that people deploy their content out onto “microsites” for all their keywords - a different domain name to target each one. This just isn’t a good strategy, really. Focus on improving the quality of content for each keyword, founded on its own page, and work on your link-building efforts (quality link-building, not unqualified bad-quality links). Tons of keyword domains or subdomains is no quick solution for ranking well.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/26/2007 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Local Search Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Site Structure, URLsDomain Names, Local Search Optimization, local-search-engine-optimization, local-SEO, SEO, subdomaining, subdomains
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
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (1) | Comments RSS |
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
Hey Digg! Fix your domain name for better SEO traffic!
Hey, Digg.com team! Are you aware that your domain names aren’t properly canonized? You may be losing out on good ranking value in Google and Yahoo because of this!
Even if you’re not part of the Digg technical team, this same sort of scenario could be affecting your site’s rankings. This aspect of SEO is pretty simple to address, so don’t ignore it and miss out on PageRank that should be yours. Read on for a simple explanation.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 10/04/2006 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (2) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization, URLsdigg, Google, PageRank, SEO, url-canonization, Yahoo
Putting Keywords in Your URLs
Recently Matt Cutts blogged that:
doing the query [site:windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com] returns some urls like windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com /Blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!174.entry . In general, urls like that sometimes look like session IDs to search engines. Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page.
He then clarified his statement above, in the comments of that post:
Tim, including the keyword in the url just gives another chance for that keyword to match the user’s query in some way. That’s the way I’d put it.
What does this mean? It means that from Google’s perspective, keywords in your URLs are a useful thing to have. It’s another “signal” and can provide ranking benefits.
How should you separate these keywords? Not with underscores, that’s for sure. Matt Cutts has previously gone on the record to say that Google does not treat underscores as word separators. Use hyphens instead. Or plus signs would be okay too.
Also, I’d avoid too many hyphens in the URL, as that can look spammy. Try to keep it to three or fewer. Unless your site is powered by WordPress, in which case Google probably makes an exception for that, given how popular it is and how many legitimate bloggers have loads of hyphens in their permalink URLs. By the way, you can trim those down using the Slug Trimmer plugin for WordPress.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts on 09/20/2006 | Permalink | Email
| Print
Possible Related Posts
Trackback | Comments (2) | Comments RSS |
Filed under: Google, URLskeywords, SEO, URLs
.MOBI Top Level Domain Names Have Misguided Rules
Well the “Sunrise Registration” period for the new .MOBI top level domain names just started up about a week ago, and I have to say that the rules that have been imposed with .MOBI are irritating. The company that serves as the registry for it, “mobile Top Level Domain Ltd” (”mTLD”), has required that anyone who is delivering up content on a .MOBI TLD must deliver up at least the root level page in XHTML-MP format.
According to their mandatory registrant rules, you could just own the .MOBI domain for your site and not publish a site on it — just sit on it, to keep others from hosting stuff on your trademarked name. Once you publish content on the .MOBI domain, at least the root response must be in XHTML-MP flavor, and they will police these domains to insure compliance. Sites not in compliance will be warned, and if they aren’t fixed, their zone file entries will be deleted until the sites are corrected!
Now, I understand that they idealistically want to make the internet world a better place, and they’re seeking to insure consistency by imposing this standard. However, I think they’re misguided and this is a pretty bad business decision. I don’t see anything wrong in having generally thematic rules associated with TLDs, like using .EDU only for educational institutions and .MIL only for military sites. My beef is with having a registry now take on additional powers of setting a required protocol for the content on the site, policing it and checking for validity, and unplugging sites that don’t comply. (more…)
Popularity: 24% [?]
Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/20/2006 | Permalink | Email
| Print