About a week ago I ran a poll that asked Can Someone Hurt A Competitors Google Rankings With Links? I ran the poll because there is a lot of debate around this topic. So I figured, why not ask you...
About a week ago I ran a poll that asked Can Someone Hurt A Competitors Google Rankings With Links? I ran the poll because there is a lot of debate around this topic. So I figured, why not ask you...
search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017091.htmlBack in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site,...
search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017077.htmlAnn Smarty goes through the conflicts of reporting competitors as spamming Google search results. Yes, this is a topic we covered many times here, including: Reporting Spam: Is It EthicalHow Can I Report Spam to Google?Google Spam Reporting WorkingDoes Google...
A WebmasterWorld thread has some interesting observations, which I thought would be fun to name the "Floating Four" symptom. In short, it seems like there are some pages that happen to float into the fourth position at Google's search results...
Forums have been buzzing and buzzing about the possibility of a competitor being able to hurt your Google ranking for the past few years now. We have covered this topic time and time again, just see here for some of...
Want to do some keyword research? Check out this cool tool that Cre8asite Forums member eKstreme found: Search Radar and take a look at it in action: The tool looks like it pulls a variety of resources, so there may...
The SEOmoz team released a two page PDF based SEO Web Developer Cheat Sheet that I personally printed out and gave to my RustyBrick developers. I did make a couple changes to it, nothing major. For example, as a matter...
If you were interviewing an SEO firm to see if they're for real, what questions would you ask them? A High Rankings Forum thread touches upon some of the must-know questions, and they're outlined below: How long they have been...
Now that Google admitted to crawling JavaScript and forms SEOs and Webmasters need to be aware of how to manage even more duplicate content issues. In the past, a good strategy was to build out filter pages (filter by color,...
A WebmasterWorld member asks if there's any penalty for adding H2 text (4 words) for the search engines because his logo is displayed in an image. The answer seems unclear. Tedster responds that he's asked Google twice about this --...
I would consider this Google Groups thread a "gem thread," since you don't always see a thread at this level - it is precious. A Googler, Wysz, discussed in detail four methods of hiding content and how Google may interpret...
A Google Groups thread has discussion about one webmaster that sees Sitelinks for his site in position 60. The search is for vacation realty and in the 60th position. While, I do not see the Sitelinks at that position, the...
WebmasterWorld moderator posted a detailed thread at WebmasterWorld claiming that he feels the proxy hijacks that Google has suffered from in 2007, and was getting better towards the end of 2007 seems to be 100% cleaned up now. IncrediBill concluded:...
Google has finally written a formal post at the Google Webmaster Central blog named Best practices when moving your site. It honestly is a nice place to send a client or webmaster when the question comes up. Does it give...
The SEM Insights blog discusses four reasons why big brands don't have good SEO. They are: Requirement: ease of maintenance: Therefore, they may not be using CMSes that are SEO friendly. Requirement: personalization and tracking: They need quantifiable results, but...
A Cre8asite Forums discussion pointed me over to a UK hosting company named UKFast that has a white paper on Server Speed and SEO. The paper makes the argument that server speed is a critical component to your SEO campaign....
I'll be honest, I keep watching the WebmasterWorld thread discussing the April 2008 Google update, code named Update Dewey. The latest thing that I noticed were recent reports from very senior members saying that Google is shuffling around the results,...
A High Rankings Forum thread is a perfect example of how people can misinterpret SEO terms. In this particular case, because a site has lost its rankings, an individual is looking to build a "link farm." Well, sort of. A...
A HighRankings Forum thread asks when did Yahoo stop grouping search results from the same domain together? We reported on an issue with Google not grouping certain results a few weeks ago, but it is rare to see Google not...
Kevin Heisler writes at Search Engine Watch that an "SEO agency" called Internet Advancement has been sued by Washington State and required to pay over $100,000 in fees for scamming its clients. Among the restitution includes penalties against offering services...
We should have seen this coming, based on the number of reports that Google was submitting GET forms. But often, it is hard to validate those types of reports, due to people spoofing Googlebot and similar tactics. In any event,...
I don't think this is exactly related to Google mixing up titles and URLs from yesterday (if you have examples, please comment, so Matt can address them at Google). But over at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, PPCBlogger showed us an...
There are reports from several sources including WebmasterWorld that Google is having a tough time mapping the proper URLs with the associated page titles for those URLs. One report says that Google is treating searches for portal A on a...
At High Rankings Forum, a member is looking to submit to web directories and wonders if it's worthwhile to submit the entire optimized website title to the directory. Will it go over well? Not usually, from what I've seen. In...
When you're in the hiring phase for an SEO expert, you should get to know a little about the potential candidate you're considering by asking the right questions. The SEOpranos blog has 10 questions that should be asked at every...
Juicy title, isn't it? Well, that is the topic of discussion at a WebmasterWorld. A senior member decided to post some generic, not specific examples, ways to hurt a website's Google rankings. Here are some of the methods you can...
Some great websites rank but have horrendous code. At Cre8asite Forums, a webmaster has been given the task of redesigning the website and cleaning up the messy code and adding standard SEO elements (robots.txt, sitemap, external CSS, etc.). However, since...
My BFF Lisa Barone wrote a really great post about what companies should look for when hiring in-house SEO consultants. SEO folks should have some sort of technical skills and a little coding expertise too. They also should have an...
A WebmasterWorld member has been applying regular search engine optimization and link building techniques and is noticing that the traffic hasn't improved as substantially in the latter months of the campaign as it did initially. Is this something normal? Actually,...
Less than a month ago, entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop, a site that combines the best of the best in an easy to read format. Over at Sphinn, Kalena Jordan acknowledges that a number of known SEO blogs made it...
On the last day of March, I reported on a major Google search index update which seemed to have impacted tons and tons of SEOs, as opposed to just a ton of SEOs (if you know what I mean). Yes,...
Aaron Wall has written a pretty awesome rank checker tool Firefox plugin that checks various keywords against results on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live. Here's a sample screenshot of what you're expected to see: While it looks like it's pretty...
The huge WebmasterWorld thread devoted to tracking Google changes over the course of March 2008 has sprung some late March legs. Reseller, well known at WebmasterWorld for tracking the slightest changes at Google, posted two data centers that are very...
Lately, we've heard a lot about the need for search marketing standards. Most people that I've encountered are overwhelmingly supportive of such a move. Not Jill Whalen, however. Over at Search Engine Land, she provides her four reasons as to...
At a Cre8asite Forums thread, a user is looking for guidance on how to compile a SEO strategic document. What would be contained in such a document? The first step in writing a document like this is determining your audience...
Julie Joyce writes on the SEO Chicks blog talks about the American Express believes that SEO is a waste of money. The idea is that there are snake oil salesmen (not all SEOs do this, though), but it ends up...
Ann Smarty has written a post at Search Engine Journal about how the mindset of webmasters who launch sites with and without SEO in mind. If SEO is a priority, choose a relevant domain name and think over website structure....
One of the oldest questions in the search engine optimization practice is on the META description. The META description is this little tag you include in the header file, that provides a machine readable short summary of your page. Many...
Some clients just need to know if their SEO investment is worthwhile. But how do you measure ROI, or rather, can you prove that there is a return on the investment? It's a hard question to answer. On the superficial...
What do you do when you have an SEO client but they refuse to give you access to their servers and do not act upon recommendations that you're giving nearly blindly since you have no access to their statistics? It...
Mid January I asked An image link is worth what percentage less than a text link? The question was probably not clear enough and I honestly don't blame the respondents. It is a hard question to answer, because there are...
Moving document and file locations on the web is fairly common. So what do you do when you have to communicate the move to your users and the search engines? You set up a redirect. There is no question that...
An interesting thread has been brewing over at WebmasterWorld with reports of an unusual Google query test. It seems like searchers in the UK, searching on UK based IPs at Google may see different results when they search first in...
I am very confused by a search result at Google Netherlands. Stay with me now, and search for internet publishing at Google.nl. What comes up in the second result for me is www.publiceren.net, which looks to be a video result....
A Google Groups thread asks about hiding content using AJAX and CSS. Google Webmaster Central rep, Wysz, said: If your text is temporarily "hidden" as part of your site's UI but is still intended for the user to see at...
Is changing content often good from a search perspective? This question is discussed at WebmasterWorld and a lot of good information is dispensed. First of all, "changing" content should be considered carefully. It could potentially hurt your rankings, according to...
A WebmasterWorld thread has a Webmaster saying that a site of his recently was removed from the ODP. He said, soon after he noticed his rankings drop in Google. He wants to know if it can be related to the...
Bill Slawski's Google Omits Needless Words (On Your Pages?) at SEO By The Sea has Google texts, patents and patent applications that discuss how Google may handle boilerplate content. Boilerplate content on a web page might be content that is...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks how long should he or she wait for after making a change to see if that change worked in Google. In this specific case, the SEO has a web site that seems to be penalized. He/she...
Over the weekend, in a WebmasterWorld thread that is tracking the Google February 2008 SERP changes, the recent discussion is around a new Google update. This Google update is reportedly impacting the search results in the position two, three, four...
Rhea Drysdale writes an interesting post on Search Engine Journal calling for the Death of SEO Transparency. She says that the successful SEOs are the ones who actually keep their mouths shut. In a post that is complete with interviews...
A couple weeks ago we reported seeing that Google.com's Country Specific Weights Getting Stronger. But some are seriously complaining about how much it has impacted them in the US search results at Google.com. The original WebmasterWorld thread is now 54...
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread reports that Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik spoke with webmasters last week and reported that, for the first time, the average number of keywords per query has gone from 3 to 4 words per...
A member at Cre8asite Forums asks how much the typical industry standard fees are for Search Engine Optimization services. Is there a set number to quantify services? As one person says, not really. You should look at ROI, but there...
A High Rankings Forum member is starting his own SEO consultancy firm and wants to know how to find clients. Where would you look if you're just beginning? You can try to go to your Chamber of Commerce and other...