Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- The Link Theme Pyramid
WebmasterWorld moderator martinibuster shares some valuable link building tips in what he calls the "Link Theme Pyramid." In his post, he gives his opinions on some link building techniques that have worked for him. Roger says that anchor text should match the page it's linking to (where the page should contain the anchor text somewhere). He adds that hubs should be more than pages of links and that perhaps your home page should not be - Local Search Ranking Factors Guide Released
David Mihm spent a considerable amount of time compiling a great local search ranking factors guide where he talks about the various factors that influence local search. In the document, you can see the emphasis on a variety of optimization techniques, including how experts weigh in on the importance of city/state in title tags, address/phone number in contact page, location keyword in website URL, participation in local Pay Per Click, and more. It's a very - Matt Cutts Warns Against Lying in a Reconsideration Request
A lot of people whose websites get banned from Google eventually take the necessary measures to fix the problems on their site and then request reinclusion. Some, however, do not. They just submit that reinclusion request and assume everything is fixed. Matt Cutts isn't stupid, and you shouldn't think that's a way of getting around being deindexed on Google. In a Twitter message, Matt says that you shouldn't lie in your reconsideration requests. He says - Should You Optimize Your Phone Numbers for Search Engines?
A Sphinn discussion is currently underway about Andrew Shotland's SEO for Phone Numbers blog post. In his blog post, he argues that you should optimize for phone numbers for three reasons: (1) Displaying a phone number in your title tag might increase your click-through-rate for your search listing. That is if, the searcher is searching for your phone number. (2) You can take traffic away from the Internet Yellow Pages that list your business's phone - Google Defends Bad Link Theory & Repeats That Competitors Can't Hurt You
There is no doubt that Most SEOs Believe Competitors Can Hurt Your Google Rankings specifically with using link building tactics. But when the topic was raised recently at a Google Groups thread, Googler, JohnMu, pretty much denied it. Let me quote you John's post: In theory, I can imagine that there might be some borderline situations where that would be possible, however in all the time I have spend diagnosing website issues I have not - Google AdWords Insertion Tag List
Most Google AdWords advertisers are aware of dynamic keyword insertion (also, good info here), which is a way to dynamically insert the searcher's keyword phrase in your ad copy. But there are other insertion tags available to advertisers, outside of the keyword tag. A Google Groups thread lists the five available Google AdWords insertion tags for everyone, in one place. Here they are: {ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}{placement}{creative}{keyword} Each is fairly self-explanatory for any of you who are at - Will Google Crawl Your Site Without a Robots.txt File? It Depends
I found a very interesting tidbit from a Google Groups thread on unreachable robots.txt files. I always believed that a site does not need a robots.txt file. In fact, this site does not have a robots.txt file and yet we are very well indexed. Proof that you don't need a robots.txt file to allow Google to index your site. Right? Well, maybe not. Googler, JohnMu, said in the Google Groups thread that if your robots.txt
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- auto complete Email address book from Gmail in Google reader, Google Groups
- Client Changing Domain Name, HighRankings Forums
- Decent Link Checking Software, Search Engine Watch Forums
- Hosting & SEO, Cre8asite Forums
- Hyphens in long URLs, WebmasterWorld
- Microsoft To Open Search Technology Center (STC) In Europe, WebmasterWorld
- SEO and SEX - The Difference of the 'X Factor', Sphinn
- Who does Matt Cutts follow on Twitter?, Sphinn
- Why singular version has a lower "quality score" than plural version, Google Groups
- Yahoo Says It Reaches 600 Million Mobile Users WorldWide, WebmasterWorld
