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
PageRank Sculpting – The Nofollow Debate
At SMX Advanced in Seattle last month, Matt Cutts made his intentions clear when he advised SEOs not to waste too much time on internal page rank sculpting using the nofollow tag and instead concentrate on spending that time on creating useful content.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/21/2009
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Filed under: PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO domain rank, domain trust, flowing link juice, information architecture, internal page rank sculpting, nofollow tag, page crawling, page inclusion in google index, page level rank, page level trust, page rank evaporation, pagerank sculpting, pr leak, site architecture
60-Second Website Audit
While your mother may have taught you not to judge a book by its cover, she probably wasn’t an SEO. Mother’s logic is still pretty good to live by, but for as complex as SEO is or may seem, it’s pretty amazing what you can learn about a website’s SEO quality in 60 seconds or less.
Okay, you aren’t going to fully understand the intricate details and you’d obviously spend far, far more time (closer to hours than seconds) on a true site audit, but I’d venture that 60 seconds is enough for a good gut check and for identifying areas that need deep exploration. What may make this most interesting is to compare results that your “team” gets from this exercise since we all have our own approaches, hot buttons, etc.
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Posted by Brian R. Brown of Netconcepts on 06/19/2009
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Filed under: General, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks Audit, Best Practices, SEO
Google Wave – Online Collaboration And Communication Revolution
Google Wave was released at the recent Google I/O event as a demo product. It is an amazing real time collaboration and communication platform with email, instant messaging and heaps more combined to form an awesome product.
The demo product is an HTML 5 applicaion built using the Google Web Toolkit. Wave is being released as an open source product. Its open platform encourages developers to build other Wave clients, extensions and embed waves in other web pages and platforms. The product is characterised by the 3P’s namely product, platform and protocol.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/07/2009
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Filed under: Search Engine Optimization, technology, Tools google wave, google wave federation protocol, online collaboration, online communication
Power Searching With Google’s New Search Options Feature
Google introduced the all new Search Options at its Searchology 2009 event. This is a useful feature that lets users slice and dice search results in various ways.
Here’s an example:
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 05/27/2009
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Filed under: Search Engine Optimization Add new tag, Google Search Options, google searchology, reviews search, sentiment analysis, time period search, wonder wheel
Google Supports Microformats, Rolls Out Rich Snippets
The annual Google Searchology conference held recently revealed some interesting offerings in the search marketing field. Google had introduced personalised search and universal search through the same event in previous years.
Google has stated its support for rich microformats. Yahoo’s Search Monkey has already implemented them. But is still not clear if the search engines read them. Local search results have been rumoured to use microformats but there is no evidence to back this either.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 05/27/2009
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Filed under: General, Search Engine Optimization Google Profiles, Google Search Options, google searchology, hcalendar, hCard, microformats, RDF, rich snippets
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
AT&T Acquires YP.com for $3.85 Million
AT&T has acquired YP.com for $3.85 Million. I distinctly recall back when AT&T previously bought YellowPages.com in for $100 million in 2004. Does this make sense?!?
Back in 2004, I laughed and laughed and laughed, and I told coworkers that it was a huge waste of money, because, I said, “they won’t be able to buy themselves into the top position for searches for ‘Yellow Pages'”. SuperPages.com long held that distinction under my SEO direction, and I knew that purchasing the term in a domain name alone would not depose all the work we’d done to rank tops for it. As time passed, however, yellowpages.com has indeed deposed the Superpages forerunner. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/14/2009
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Filed under: brand names, Domain Names, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URLs, Yellow Pages AT&T, Domain Names, Yellow Pages, yellowpages.com
Flickr *IS* Good for Search Marketing – Despite Naysayers!
I’ve seen a recent article or two claiming that Flickr can no longer be leveraged for SEO purposes. As frequent readers here know, I’ve long been a proponent of using Flickr, both for its great Web 2.0 features, but also for its marketing/promotional value. I’m sure I’m one of the people that article writer was thinking of when he mentioned hearing recommendations for use from other articles and search marketing conferences.
Flickr can still be a valuable source of internet promotion, and a great tool for the purposes of Image Search Optimization. Read on and I’ll explain. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/14/2009
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO flickr, image SEO, image-search, SEO
