Google Quality Scores for Natural Search Optimization
Google made big waves in the paid search marketing industry when they began introducing a Quality Score which impacted cost and rankings of AdWords advertisements. Similar quality scoring methods are likely in use as ranking criteria for Google’s natural search results as well, and Google’s Webmaster Tools may hint at some of the criteria. Here are some details of that quality scoring criteria and some ways for you to improve rankings with it.
Google provides a very rough “formula” for their AdWords Quality Score:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/02/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, google-webmaster-tools, Quality-Scores, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spamscore
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…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/28/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Domain Names, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URLs Canonicalization, Domain Names, SEO, subdomains
Advanced Search Engine Optimization for College & University Websites
I earlier posted some basic tips for SEO of University & College websites here on Natural Search Blog. I’m now circling back around to post some advanced tips for optimization of .EDU sites. Some of these tips are more along the lines of helping out with overall marketing, though using the college’s or university’s web presence to accomplish it. Even those ancillary efforts can contribute to the overall online marketing and natural search optimization success.
I wrote those tips after getting a number of interested questions from educational professionals attending the AMA Hot Topics seminar that Stephan and I provided in San Fran a few weeks ago. Read on for the details of my .EDU secret sauce!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/24/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO College-SEO, EDU-SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, University-SEO
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.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/18/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure, Spiders, URLs duplicate-content, Duplicate-Content-Penalization, Jill-Whalen, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URL-Optimization
Tempest in a Local Teacup
Okay, so in the ongoing minor brouhaha sparked from my “Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics“, Dave Naffziger has posted a rebuttal of my recent post.
Just to clarify, if there was any doubt, and to steer the unwary newbies of search engine optimization from bad practices, I’m posting another follow-up rebuttal of the rebuttal of the rebuttal. Terribly recursive, I know, but bear with me and you might find this entertaining and informative. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/05/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Yellow Pages black-hat-seo, Local Search, local-search-engine-optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, SEO
Questions for SEOs
A few weeks ago Stephan invited me to their motley crew and though I start with great enthusiasm, I’ve had many sleepless nights considering how to make a first impression. I’m Paul O’Brien and while I, as do many, write a blog of my own at seobrien.com, I am grateful for the opportunity to share, amongst the tremendous SEO experience that Chris, Stephan, and Brian bring to the table, my natural search perspective and experience from Yahoo! and HP. My background lies in advertising, paid search, comparison shopping, and brand and demand gen advertising; SEO is only a part though it consistently remains the most beneficial. I’m a practical SEO, heavy in analytics and science, dependant on resources and support, and light on the technology; hopefully, I can share with you something of value.
At the risk of not delivering to your expectations, or perhaps merely my own, I thought I’d start simple. I noticed that over a year ago Stephan posted a great series of questions for SEOs, questions about the industry, the practice of SEO, and our future. Missing from NaturalSearchBlog is a discussion of the appropriate questions to ask an SEO when seeking support. Here are my thoughts:
- What techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
- Avoid companies that focus on getting you links or promise you top placement
- What risk is involved with the methods you suggest?
- Every technique has risk, get an answer and weigh it against the benefit. Consider that risks include a wide variety of hurdles and challenges such as IT intensive projects, adverse impacts on your brand, or withdrawal of your site from natural search results.
- What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?
- They should be able to get in, do some work, and get out, leaving you with the experience to maintain your optimized site
- Yes, you might want a full time, ongoing SEO but you don’t need one
- Can you show me examples of past work?
- You bet they can
- What was the client’s ROI?
- Sure, SEO is “free” in that it doesn’t have a marketing cost but good SEOs know the cost that went into their service, IT/engineering resources, copywriting, etc. Don’t be sold on just the improvements in traffic, position, or the growth in revenue, what was required to deliver that?
- What increases in traffic are reasonable to expect?
- This is tough because it depends on your site, but that’s why you should ask, expect an answer that is relative to your site and details that show how your experience is unique
- How long until I start to see results?
- What would you expect from OUR end to aid your work?
- Important because the answer is NOT ‘nothing’
- What were some of your top search ranking achievements?
- Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?
Look for a company that understands your business, marketing, technology, and the internet extensively. Most importantly, do not shop around based on price. You don’t want a deal as you need expertise while at the same time, SEO isn’t really expensive rocket science (it is alien for most people but not rocket science).
Find a professional that meets your needs, start with these questions, let us know what works for you, and what you look for from an SEO.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 11/29/2006
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Filed under: Best Practices, General, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tools, Worst Practices agencies, black-hat-seo, choosing-seo-firms, SEO, SEO-consulting, SEO-worst-practices, SEOs, support, vendors
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…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/15/2006
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Filed under: Best Practices, Design, Google, PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yahoo Google, IndyRank, SEO, TrustRank, usability, User-Centered-Design, Yahoo
Plenty of Traffic
Plentyoffish.com was recently reported to have over $300k in AdSense revenue per month, according to an exclusive interview with the creator, Markus Frind.
In a forum on WebmasterWorld, one thing Markus Frind suggested for those wishing to be successful as AdSense publishers really stood out for me:
“Do not enter markets with a lot of competition monitized via adsense. Try and undercut paid content markets by offering a free service, or better yet create your own market.”
So, there you have a great formula for success: choose an industry that charges fees for access to info/content, and offer it for free, paid by the contextual advertising.
Newspaper Industry: are you listening?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/09/2006
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Filed under: Best Practices, General AdSense, Google, Google-AdSense
Retailers and Catalogers: Sign up for this free webinar from Catalog Age on SEO
If you’re interested in practical, no B.S. advice on how to achieve higher rankings in the natural search results, this is the webinar for you: Wednesday, March 9 at 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific. It’s brought to you by Catalog Age magazine. I’ll be the main presenter, with Joan Broughton, VP of Multichannel Programs/Online at REI, presenting a case study (Disclosure: yes, REI is a client), and Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems expounding on keyword research tools and tactics. At the reasonable price of FREE, you’d be a mug to pass this up! Sign up here, and do it now.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 03/08/2005
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An objective approach to choosing an SEO vendor
In the midst of choosing an SEO vendor to advise or implement search engine optimization for you? Don’t base your decision on just a ‘gut feel’. Effectively separating the wheat from the chaff requires that objective rather than subjective criteria be used. These include:
- PageRank scores
Review PageRank scores of your candidate SEO firms’ home pages and their clients’ home pages. PageRank is Google’s scoring system for importance; it’s logarithmic like a Richter scale. Check PageRanks with the Google Toolbar. If you don’t have the Google toolbar installed on your browser, it’s probably easier just to use the free service at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/. Probably more enlightening however is to use the Google Directory to check PageRanks, because then you can see where they sit in comparison to a bunch of competitors in that same category, since the sites on each category page are listed in order of PageRank score. To do so, go to http://directory.google.com and type in the name of the business into the search box (e.g. “Netconcepts”), then when you find its listing in the search results, click on the category name (e.g. “Computers > Internet > … > Designers > Full Service > N”). Look for that company’s listing on that category page. Hopefully it’s near the top, and hopefully the little green bar in the left column is more green than gray. - Rankings
Get a list of keywords from the SEO firm that they consider important to their business. Get a list of keywords from them that are important to their clients too. Check where they rank in Google for those keywords. If you have time, check rankings in Yahoo too (Yahoo has 32% market share, Google has 45%). Then, and here’s the important bit: check how popular those keywords are with searchers, using the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool at http://inventory.overture.com (or better yet, on WordTracker.com if you have a paid subscription to it). If the keyword is searched on infrequently, then a high ranking for that keyword is not so impressive. - Evidence of thought leadership
Everyone claims to be a thought leader. A true thought leader, however, demonstrates this through such things as:- known reputation in that topic area by other thought leaders you know and trust
- number of published articles written in that topic area
- the caliber of those articles
- number of conference presentations given in that topic area
- the caliber of those presentations
- number of books written that adequately cover that topic area
- the caliber of those books
- the extent to which they are quoted in the media in that topic area
- a well-read, well-linked, and oft-quoted blog (web log)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 01/11/2005
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Filed under: Best Practices
