Page load time (speed) is a factor currently in the AdWords quality score. But soon it may be coming to Google's organic ranking algorithm. If you have a really slow site, it may impact how high you rank in Google....
Page load time (speed) is a factor currently in the AdWords quality score. But soon it may be coming to Google's organic ranking algorithm. If you have a really slow site, it may impact how high you rank in Google....
What appears to be a newbie, posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help asking why his site is not ranking yet. He also asked if he had something to do with the URL https://internal.google.com/spamteam/users/cutts/matt/ban_list/ showing up in his log files....
Every month we give you a Google specific update on what webmasters are talking about at WebmasterWorld, complied with the past month of changes we reported, specifically at Google. To see last month's report, see the October 2009 Google Webmaster...
Historically, Google treated the 404 (page not found) and 410 (gone) server header page status codes as the same. Both meant, the page no longer exists. Well, that has all changed now. Google is now treating the 410 as "more...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who was trying to figure out why his site was not coming up for a search on its own name. After some review, Googler, JohnMu, said the site has recently shown a...
A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion on how useful the breadcrumb trail / navigation is for your SEO strategy. Most people agree that having them from a usability standpoint, makes total sense. So, for users, it makes sense. But does...
There is a really long thread at Google Webmaster Help on the topic of the .GB.COM TLD. Some are of the belief that Google is penalizing or banning these domains. Of course, to you and me, that sounds ridiculous. There...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who noticed Google indexed his site with the server port in the URL structure. So instead of Google ranking the http://www.domain.com/ it ranks the site, and every page within the site as...
One of the key topics I have heard being discussed in the speaker room last week at the SMX East conference was that the Google results were not good. It rarely came up in the sessions, except for Greg Boser...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has confirmation from Google on an old topic in SEO, the trailing slash. Here is the quick answer: seroundtable.com is the same as seroundtable.com/seroundtable.com/page is not the same as seroundtable.com/page/ I believe the last time...
During the CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO at SMX East yesterday, Bruce Johnson and Kathrin Probst from Google announced a new proposal for search engines to index AJAX. Let me explain the proposal in a very simplistic way, that...
A Google Webmaster Help thread once again confirms that Google ignores the geo-meta tags. Those tags somewhat look like this and use to serve the purpose of telling search engines where the site is based: <meta name="geo.placename" content="United States" /><meta...
A Google Webmaster Help thread asked if he should include fragments (i.e. the # signs found in some URLs) in the new parameter handling feature in Google Webmaster Tools. Again, parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools gives you a way...
Back in the old days, referrer spam was a way to get quick rankings by spamming other site's referrer logs. Wikipedia explains it pretty well: Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves...
The question of having valid HTML and would it help your rankings in Google or other search engines is not new. Most SEOs believed that it made no impact on your rankings, unless Googlebot has serious issues crawling your site....
There is a featured WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how Google treats affiliate links and if there are ways to hide your affiliate links from Google. There is discussion that Google will lower your rank of a web page,...
It seems that Google has finally gone on the record that longer domain name registration has no impact on your search engine rankings, at least not at Google. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a post from Googler, JohnMu, who...
It has been a somewhat slow start to our typically monthly report based on a WebmasterWorld thread that tracks day-to-day changes with Google's web results. Overall, it seems like people are discussing two main things. (1) The Caffeine preview, Google's...
Two days ago, I ran a poll asking our readers how accurate do they find the SEOMoz ranking factors survey. We have over a 160 responses in less than two days, so I thought I would post the results now....
Two threads at Google Webmaster Help report that .ME ccTLDs (domain names) can now be geo targeted in Google Webmaster Tools. Typically, Google doesn't allow you to geo-target a ccTLD (country specific top level domain). Google assumes that if you...
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of promoting the fact that you rank number one in a search engine for an important keyword. Does it make sense, in some cases or any case, to promote the fact that...
A WebmasterWorld thread has new discussion around how important it is to have keywords in the URL. This is a very old SEO topic, but new chatter in the industry is saying how keywords in the URLs actually make more...
A thread at WebmasterWorld has a webmaster who is getting a bit nervous that the 301 redirects he set up for a site won't be the best bet in the long run for his end goals. In summary, his original...
SEOMoz published a revised version of their Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. They had 72 contributors complete a long survey, including myself, answering questions specific to ranking in search engines. I am not going to bother summarizing all the details...
Many sites feature a way to print a page of your site in a printer friendly view, by removing many of the ads, removing a lot of the navigation and so on. The issue with this, in some cases, is...
A/B testing is the process of setting up two or more styles for a page, for the same piece of content. For example, let's say you had a page where you sold blue widgets and you wanted to try using...
A couple weeks ago, I asked our readers how feasible it was to rank in the number one spot in Google.com and at the same time rank #1 in a regional flavored Google search space. We have just about a...
A few weeks ago, we ran a poll asking Will You Remove The NoFollow Attributes From Your Pages? Why did we ask SEOs and webmasters this question? With the recent update from Google on how they handle the nofollow'ed links,...
A HighRankings Forum thread asks if it is possible to rank number one in Google.ca and Google.com, if the site is using a .ca ccTLD and is hosted in Canada. As you can see, the question has a lot of...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has a new topic that I never covered before in my (almost) 6 years of covering SEO forum threads. A Webmaster was using a server response code of 300, which is a response of "Multiple...
It is that time of the month again and we have your Google webmaster update, brought to you by a WebmasterWorld thread. The July '09 report complaints and issues linger on. Including those issues found in the small Google July...
There is some discussion in the forums about a potential Google update underway. Keep in mind, the Google results are always in a state of fluctuation, so updates have to be more about how many people are noticing a major...
One person posted a rant in the Google Webmaster Help forums about the "Top Contributors / Bionic Posters" in that forum. In short, Top Contributors / Bionic Posters are given the title by Googlers, who believe that these people are...
About a month ago, we reported that Google slapped the porn industry with a Google penalty of some sort. Soon after we reported the issue, Google seemed to have reversed the penalty on that industry. But we all thought it...
I have been tracking the WebmasterWorld thread on the July Google changes and a lot of people are now discussing how Google is treating location specific queries differently. By that I mean, the consensus in the thread is that there...
With the latest on how Google handles the nofollow attribute, I know of many webmasters who are removing them completely from their sites. Instead, they are either not linking out or linking out without the nofollow attribute added to the...
Jill Whalen started a fabulous thread at HighRankings Forums asking if there is any formula or calculation being used to figure out how competitive she or any SEO can go with a specific client. Jill explained that when it comes...
Title tags in the search results are very important, they drive clicks, which drives sales. It now appears that Google is pulling the title for some listings from Google Maps and not from the title tag in the page's source...
There is only so much CSS can accomplish with making headlines pretty. If you want to give your headlines a pretty font that not all computers support, then you need to go with graphics. But as an SEO, you don't...
In August 2008, Google released what was called the enhanced 404 widget that allowed webmasters to easily create custom 404 pages. In fact, we still have a sample of this in action at advertize.html. But for some reason, I think...
We are a few days into July and the WebmasterWorld thread that covers Google changes from month to month has been getting a lot of traction over the past couple weeks. The overall theme is that there is a lot...
Shaun, aka Hobo, has released a 157 page PDF guide on SEO. You can download the book over here. There are many SEO books out there, some free, some at a price. I would list some that I recommend, but...
On Monday we reported that Google spanked the adult porn industry by penalizing many of the sites. There were many theories as to why those sites were penalized. It wasn't all the adult sites that were penalized but a nice...
I rarely cover how Google is treating the adult online industry. But I have noticed a thread at Google Webmaster Help forums that is pretty heated on the topic of Google penalizing hundreds of adult and pornographic web sites over...
There is an interesting conversation taking place at WebmasterWorld on the topic of page one results versus page two results. Senior member, Whitey, asks the question, should webmasters begin preparing their sites to rank well on page two over page...
A couple weeks ago, Google made me and many SEOs very happy by adding a verified change of address feature that allows you to tell Google you are moving domains. Today, I learned from a Google Webmaster Help thread that...
SEOmoz has released their best practices guide on SEO. This time, they used actual data to back up the best practices and have changed some of their previous best practices based on the data. The post goes over the follow...
Richard at SEO Gadget showed how Google seemed to have penalized specific pages of his site from ranking in the Google index. The penalty seemed to be fair, in that there were nasty comments that slipped through his comment spam...
Yesterday we covered the news that SEOs are wasting PageRank by using the nofollow to sculpt their PageRank. In short, if you had 10 links on a page, and nofollowed 5 of them, the 5 that are followed only get...
An interesting Google Webmaster Help thread discusses the old and new way of handling duplicate content. In the old days, you either 301 redirected page A to page B, when there was duplicate content. But if that wasn't possible, you...
Last night at SMX Advanced Matt Cutts of Google reportedly dropped a bombshell on the SEO community when he said that using the nofollow to PageRank sculpt might not work like you (SEOs) thought. Danny Sullivan explained it well: If...
A Cre8asite Forum thread has discussion around the topic of updating a web page that does really well in the search engines. The member asked, would you dare change your best producing web page? The reason the SEO wants to...
An interesting WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that for some sites, Google may give that site higher ranking based on what day of the week it is. The SEO has been tracking the traffic from Google to the site for...
Many local SEO experts came together to publish the second version of the Local Search Ranking Factors. This guide grades how important each factor is in ranking well in local search. The survey polled 27 local SEO experts on 49...
I often see threads at the Google Webmasters Help discussion forum of people who have sites that were penalized for having issues with their site in the Google Webmaster guidelines. But it is not often where you see a thread...
Gab Goldenberg from SEO ROI posted a thread at Google Webmasters Help discussion forums when he noticed Google began to drop his rankings for all his pages. I have been tracking the thread for about three weeks, but held off...
In August 2005, Matt Cutts, the head of search quality at Google, launched his blog at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/. Notice, if you click on that URL, you are redirected to http://www.dullest.com/blog/. Why? Well, Matt explained that he was to switch things around,...
Like every month, we try to provide you with a Google webmaster report on what is going on with Google over the past month, in terms of the SEO perspective. You can read the April 2009 report, in case you...
A WebmasterWorld thread has a documented case of one webmaster forgetting to renew his domain name after a day or so. Then after the domain name expired, he renewed the domain and got things back up after maybe two days....
A Google Webmasters Help thread has a webmaster upset that he lost his rankings in Google. He switched web hosting companies and days later, his Google rankings plummeted. On typical server move, you should not really lose rankings, if done...
There is a pretty funny thread for anyone who is somewhat familiar with the SEO industry. A thread at Google Webmasters Help has this SEO who goes on a rant about the nofollow and what have happened to links. In...
Over the past day or two, I have been hearing reports from webmasters and SEOs that Google's geo targeting technology has changed in a big way over in their international or localized search engines. I have one, possibly, two threads...
SEOMoz created the first and second comprehensive search ranking factors document. We now have a new one, a shorter one, from HuoMah.com. Dave lists out dozens and dozens of factors and adds commentary around them. Here are some of them,...
A detailed Google Webmasters Help thread has discussion around how Google perceives affiliates and how they need to go above and beyond to warrant ranking well in the Google search results. Googler, JohnMu, answers one affiliate, as to why he...
A HighRankings Forum thread asks if one should host videos on their own server or host them on YouTube. I do a lot of videos here in my Search Buzz Video Recaps, which are weekly digests of what we covered...
Every month we report on a monthly WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the current state of the Google web search index. This month, the WebmasterWorld thread has very little to report. If you want to see last month's report click here....
A very helpful WebmasterWorld thread shares insights from a long time SEO who decided to pin two sites, competing in the same industry, with each other. He took two different strategies for each site. One site was pushed using old...
Google continues to say that Google searches are "always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ]." But since February 2008, we have been reporting cases where Google...
Google typically cuts down the display of the title tag in the search results to no more than 65 characters. A WebmasterWorld thread asks does that mean Google won't look beyond the 65th character to determine what that page is...
There is a big misconception out there that to make a site rank well in search engines, you need to make your site look ugly. SEO (search engine optimization) does not have to look ugly. Yes, having a lot of...
A week ago, we polled our audience asking How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google? With over two-hundred responses, I thought it would be a good time to share the results with you all. How Long Does...
Reverse search engine optimization - unranking for keyword or keyword phrases you work well for. Why in the world would you want to rank less in the search engines? Well, people have their reasons. We actually covered this topic twice...
Throughout my many years (makes me sound old) in the search industry, I have heard about many filters and penalties, including a filter or penalty to prevent a site from ranking well for a specific keyword phrase. For example, if...
A HighRankings Forum thread asks an interesting question. If I add links to my web page and nofollow them, does Google still read the anchor text of the link and use that in part of how they determine what my...
We all know that Google ignores the META keywords tag on pages, or at least that is what we believe and what we are told. This does not mean Google ignores other meta tags, such as the meta description, but...
Over a year ago, almost two years ago, there were rumors that Google would treat underscores in the URL the same way they treat hyphens in the URL, as word separators. Matt Cutts squashed the rumor back then, suggesting that...
There is an old WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how many header tags (i.e. H1, H2) you should have on a page and how you should use it. The thread was revived yesterday when Matt Cutts of Google answered...
There are way too many sites out there that have their "Page Not Found" web pages return a 200 header status code, instead of a 404 code or a 301. The issue with showing a 200 code to spiders or...
In a Google Webmaster Help thread, Googler, JohnMu, might be stating the obvious, but it is always good hearing it from someone who is in the know. JohnMu, answered a question about links, but in his answer, he confirmed that...
Googlers know they have to be very careful what they say in public forums when I am watching. In a recent Google Webmasters Help thread, Googler, JohnMu replied to a thread, and I am going to beat him up for...
A WebmasterWorld thread has several different webmasters reporting seeing huge spikes in Google referrals recently and then those spikes dropping down. The first post was on February 28th, but the spikes continue to happen on random days for several webmasters....
Sometimes we forget or forget to look after basic SEO topics. The other day, I caught one of my programmers allowing both capitalized URLs and lowercase URLs result in having the same destination page. Let's take Twitter as an example,...
There are different levels of search spam. Some search spam involves creating spam on sites you control. Some spam involves injecting links into third party sites, hacking sites, infecting computers, phishing attempts and so on. Where does search spam cross...
It appears Craigslist, the very popular and old school directory listing site, has added the nofollow meta tag to most of their pages. If you view the source of the listing pages, you should see <meta name="robots" content="NOARCHIVE,NOFOLLOW"> in the...
Two days ago, I ran a poll asking if SEO companies implement SEO changes or just recommend changes to be implemented. Meaning, does your SEO company normally start with coding changes and upload files to the web server. I now...
The other day we wrote about being your own SEO client isn't easy, but clearly that doesn't stop the bulk of you from working on your own solo projects. We ran a poll, asking which would you rather do? Either...
In August 2005 was the first time I saw "According To" Google results show up in the search results. Since then, they show up for very specific queries. I spotted an interesting thread, where a webmaster asked why is his...
Some SEO companies that I know of either offer recommendations in written form, to be handed off to the developers to implement, while others actually get their hands dirty and make the changes for the client. I was hoping to...
There is an interesting thread at WebmasterWorld that Google may be biased towards showing more and more "big brands" in the top Google web search results. Yea, yea - big brands have more links, more trust, more pages and bigger...
The SEO industry is a conflicted industry to work in, in many respects. Much of the public still thinks this is a form black magic, some feel the industry is packed with scam artists and some just totally don't get...
Yesterday, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced together a new way to handle internal duplicate content issues with a new "canonical" header tag. Vanessa Fox does an excellent job explaining what it is all about in her piece at Search Engine...
A common but difficult question was asked at HighRanking Forums about the issue of targeting different countries. My advice for when it comes to targeting different countries is almost always to have two different sites on TLDs (top level domains)...
A HighRankings Forum thread has a very interesting topic just getting started. The thread creator asks, "What Has Changed In Seo In Last 2 Years?" This is a great question. People think that SEO tactics are always changing. You need...
A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that folks are noticing that Yahoo Site Explorer has updated the link counts for the tool. I do not typically track these numbers, but many do. So if you do, definitely take a look and...
David Harry has an excellent write up on the SEO implications of page segmentation. In short, the piece goes over how search engines can, and probably do, look at each web page and segment the page into components. For example,...
An interesting WebmasterWorld thread discusses the phenomenon of redesigning a site, with brand new URL structure, 301 redirecting the old URLs to the new, and seeing an almost immediate boost in rankings at Google.com. In fact, WebmasterWorld moderator, minnapple, has...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks for tips on how he can get his site indexed and crawled faster by Google. The thing is, most, if not all, of these tips apply not to just Google, but any search engine, such as...
There is a nice old school SEO thread at HighRankings Forum on the old topic of ranking well for singular cases, when you are already ranking well for the plural version. For example, you are in the tops of tops...
Sometimes I seriously wonder where some of these SEO theories come from. One that caught my eye this week was found in a Google Webmaster Help thread, asking if it can hurt your SEO efforts if you do not alphabetize...
Ever since Universal Search hit Google, we have been noticing flavors of video thumbnails and static images left aligned on the Google search results. A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around this latest format and some are happy with it, while...
A Google Webmaster Help thread points out an interesting bug of some sort in Google. A webmaster asks about a particular site that seems to have flooded Google with tons and tons of subdomains. Since the site is already "outed,"...
If you're about to take on a prospective SEO client and they start taking the initiative on their search engine optimization (in ways you hadn't even thought of), should you proceed with the client -- especially if you're going to...
A Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a webmaster who noticed Google is treating his mobile site as a duplicate site to his main site. This user has his mobile site on a subdomain of m.domain.com, where his main...
Every web page should have a HEAD and BODY tag, but some people, erm, forget them. What happens if your BODY tag or other significant tags are missing? Will search engine spiders ignore the web page? Both tags are optional....
An updated WebmasterWorld thread has new reports of changes at Google.co.uk and Google.com.au. Senior member internetheaven, who keeps an eye on the Google UK results said: Google.co.uk is all over the place. The results for one of the more competitive...
We recently covered a comment from Googler JohnMu on if click data is used in Google for ranking purposes. Of course, John gave the typical Google response. But now we have a comment from Matt Cutts of Google at a...
A couple weeks ago, we ran a poll asking SEOs and link builders where they would prefer their external links show up on a page. Well, the results are in and as expected, most SEOs would like that link in...
In response to an upset webmaster's post in the Google Webmaster Help forums, Googler JohnMu wrote down four things that some people suspect Google of doing, which he says he has never seen since working at Google. These include: Googlers...
A few weeks ago I ran a poll asking does the alt tag improve rankings in search engines. We have now received over a hundred responses from our readers, who I assume are mostly SEOs. About 80% said, yes, using...
A Google Webmaster Help thread asks, can Google read links in Flash files or JavaScript? The simple answer is yes, they can. But it is not that simple. Some people want to know the answer to this question because they...
I found a fun but serious SEO mistake in a Google Webmaster Help thread that I wanted to share with you all. But I felt it would be fun, if you had the time, to share at least one of...
There's a Google Groups thread that is discussing the ways webmasters can tell that their site is penalized by Google. In case you wanted to cover all your bases, you might want to try the tactics that they suggest you...
If you had no regard for your website and wanted it to be penalized or not ranked well, what would you do to make that happen? A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the potential issues that may relate to penalties, and I've...
A Google Webmaster Help thread discusses a unique issue to a few niche sites that have no choice but to block all users from the United States while also wanting to allow GoogleBot to access the site. Since GoogleBot lives...
SEM Insights posts results of a survey that included 254 SEM professionals on all levels. Who are our SEM colleagues? How many years of experience do they have? What is their job title and income? After tallying all the results,...
In our continued coverage of the a WebmasterWorld thread started by senior member CainIV, we learn two more things. These two items are likely obvious to most, but have been confirmed (at least to CainIV) that they are true based...
The question over Google using click data, such as how many people click on your site from a Google result, how many people click click the back button and so on, as it relates to ranking web pages in Google...
Yesterday I got upset that Yahoo Search Still Not Listening to 301 Redirects. Sometime yesterday afternoon, we were getting reports that this is now resolved. An updated WebmasterWorld thread has the individual upset with how was handling those redirects in...
This is crazy already, we reported this time and time again. Yahoo Search is not always listening to a simple 301 redirect. We reported this in September and the issue continued to linger on month to month. In fact, many...
For many many cases, when people are having issues with their site's doing well in the search engines - they sometimes overlook the obvious. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen or heard that webmasters are complaining...
The topic of does domain registration impact your search engine rankings is nothing new. We have covered this topic here at least a handful of times, especially since Google became a registrar. But a new WebmasterWorld thread has several case...
We know Google recommends using alternative text for your images. But does that mean your rankings will improve in the search engines if you use the ALT attribute? That is the question at WebmasterWorld. Forget about what is "best practices"...
This is a topic we covered in the past, but I had the opportunity to remind you all, that Google prefers you use a server status code of 503, when your site is going down for maintenance. Googler, JohnMu, reminds...
I so love finding these gems in the deep areas of forum discussion. That being said, let me share with you what I found. A Google Groups thread has a response from Matt Cutts of Google, basically explaining their was...
A Cre8asite Forums thread discusses the ramifications of giving out SEO for a fee on a one-time basis rather than having a long-term consulting project. Not all individuals are equipped to handle lengthy engagements nor do they really have the...
Senior WebmasterWorld member, CainIV, has been running an experiment for just about two months now. The experiment is to test to see how changing your navigation links from "home," to a keyword, to another keyword, can impact your rankings. Yes,...
Many SEOs use the site command to see how healthy their site is in a particular search engine. So you plug in site:www.mydomain.com in a search engine and the search engine will return the number of pages they have indexed...
A Google Groups thread has a webmaster asking if it helps for him to rotate content on his site. He believes it might help for three reasons: Revised content will encourage GoogleBot to recrawl his pages more often.Revised content makes...
NetworkWorld reports that the State of Washington has sued an SEO firm for a variety of infractions, including making claims that they can increase traffic to clients' websites, falsely claiming affiliations with other marketers, making claims that customer service representatives...
Over the course of the past few months, I have hearing buzz from the forums and from people in the SEO industry that Google is dropping pages out of their index. How do these people know? Well, when they do...
Scott Hendison has a dilemma: one of his clients won't take any of his advice. I'm sure many SEOs have run into the same sort of scenario in their lifetimes, where the SEO gives good strategies -- and many of...
Lisa Barone writes a great piece at the We Build Pages blog about how you'll become a good SEO by actually doing SEO, not by reading SEO strategy on all those blogs you subscribe to. It's simply not good enough...
A Google Groups thread discusses a classic SEO challenge, passing link popularity for tracking URLs. Honestly, I cannot sum up the issue better than the original poster: Our site uses query string variables in our URL's to track traffic and...
The Online Marketing for Marketers blog has a goo blueprint that you should adhere to if you're looking for a successful search engine optimization campaign. Your blueprint should include: * Defined goals * Keyword and competitive research * A content...
There has always been this myth that Google and other search engines cannot crawl or process more than 100 links on a single web page or document. That truth is that Google and other search engines can and do crawl...
There is a discussion on Sphinn about WordPress, probably one of the biggest blog platforms on the Internets, and meanwhile, it doesn't even rank in the top 10 for "blog" or "create a blog." Does Google not like WordPress since...
Raise your hand if you're a religious SEO. I'm sure you've faced battles and challenges that were hard to overcome, especially since your site is religious in nature and the traffic and links don't appear to be there -- for...
US law requires an age verification page for when someone visits a web page about pornography, alcohol or other adult oriented pages. But this comes with a challenge for webmasters who want to make sure those pages are accessible to...
I'm inventing a whatchamacallit device that will enable me to run in circles, cut a chicken, and light up a lamp... or not. But what happens if you were enlisted to help someone optimize a website that performs activities that...
A HighRankings Forum thread has discussion around an old patent from IBM named Prediction of query difficulty for a generic search engine. In short, the patent describes ways to determine how difficult a specific keyword is. Now, the patent was...
A High Rankings Forum member questions the actions of current SEOs and wonders if the real SEO "doers" are actually working behind closed doors. He says that the SEOs who consistently tell secrets are putting themselves in danger -- the...
Stoney DeGeyter has written an insightful piece on Search Engine Guide on what you should expect from your SEO consultant. Obviously, depending on your goals, this may differ, but the ideas are the same. He explains that traffic is something...
In August of 2006, Rohit Bhargava coined the term SMO for social media optimization. Now search engine optimization has been around a little longer than that, but where did it come from? According to Bob Heyman, in a guest post...
A WebmasterWorld thread shows how a webmaster is sad that his competitor out ranks him. This webmaster is upset because he feels his competitor is outranking him due to the number of complaints his competitor has. Since he has so...
The topic of Google Still Showing Different Results Base on Case Sensitivity seems to still be an issue every now and then. Again, Google says they do not differentiate results base on case sensitivity: Google searches are NOT case sensitive....
Yahoo Site Explorer seems to have pushed out their beta design to everyone now. The new look, is not just visual, it also contains these new data points: + Site URL + Number of pages known + Number of pages...
On one Crea8site Forums thread, Barry Welford asks if size is a factor in SEO success. It seems from the results that bigger sites (1000+ pages, according to him) have biggest (45%) success. Smaller sites could still be improved upon,...
Andy Beard started a Google Groups thread asking why Google seems to be handling tagged pages (tag cloud results) in a "fairly random fashion." Andy goes through examples of how Google sometimes indexes these pages, sometimes shows a cache page,...
The Google blog has officially said that they prefer that in most cases, you should not use rewrites to change your dynamic URLs to static looking URLs. In my opinion, this is a major 180° on basic SEO practices. SEO...
Patricia Skinner is a hard working SEO with a dilemma: she has run into a few clients who never paid her for her services. She spent hours working on website development, design, and SEO strategy only to be promised fees...
So, you have been penalized by Google. You think you cleaned up your site and you submitted a reinclusion (reconsideration) request. But you have not heard back from Google. Do you submit another reconsideration request? If so, how soon? That...
WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld discussing an updated Google patent named Information retrieval based on historical data. This is one of the more popular Google documents over the years, where much of the Sandbox theories came from....
Last year, Matt McGee wrote the 2007 version of 21 reasons why you need a break from SEO. This year, Matt shares 21 more reasons why you may need to take your SEO break. Reasons include: * searching for social...
There's a big problem in the SEO industry and that's the fact that people are not using SEO terms correctly. Jill Whalen has written a great post on Search Engine Land to this effect -- she says that due to...
You're an SEO. You are tweaking client pages and billing your clients at the end of the month. Is there a standard industry practice of what you should actually put on your client bills, such as work completed? There is...
Friday, Google posted a blog post named Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty". The blog post basically describes what many of us have been saying for a long time. Google does not typically penalize for duplicate content, but duplicate content can...
Elections are at the top of mind in the United States and that means campaigning. Search Marketing is now a proven and important avenue for politicians to work in, to promote their brands, name, campaign and ultimately win the election....
Let's say you have a very dynamic web site and you also generate your meta keywords dynamically. Could you be penalized (or receive a warning) if those meta keywords are very similar? In a nutshell, yes, though there's a 'debate'...
A common issue for e-commerce sites is what to do when an item goes out of stock. Do you delete the page? Do you redirect the page somewhere else? Do you just tell the user the item is out of...
Sometimes it's better to do SEO for a site before it's launched. Such is the case for a High Rankings Forum member who is looking to build up his site's presence before it's actually live for the masses. How do...
A High Rankings Forum member who has been working on a yearlong SEO agreement is now facing new management with his client and they're requesting a refund for services (mostly because some project deliverables weren't actually delivered). Should this SEO...
A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Yahoo Site Explorer has done a major update to their linkage data reports. Most webmasters are reporting huge drops in the number of links reported today versus the days before. The linkage drops are...
A Google Groups thread asks if Google can crawl and index UTF-8 encoded URLs. The quick answer is yes, Google can crawl and index these URLs. Google's JohnMu provided a link to the Google search results as proof, showing Google...
A High Rankings Forum member has run into a bit of a rut with one of his clients who was "'brainwashed" by an SEO that editing the meta tags (and repeating keywords) would result in great rankings. The original SEO...
Tamar wrote a piece named Do Search Penalties Worry You? I had her add a poll asking SEOs if they are scared of search engine penalties. The 98 responses are back and it is about split. 56% are afraid of...
A WebmasterWorld thread has early discussion on the topic of what to do about a penalized site. Should the webmaster destroy the domain and start on a new one or should he/she clean up the site and wait for Google...
Black Hat/White Hat: Playing Dirty with SEO Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008 Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:15p - 5:30p Speakers: Jill Whalen, HighRankings.com Bruce Clay, BruceClay.com Dave Naylor, Bronco.co.uk Todd Friesen, "on sabbatical" Greg Boser, 3 Dog Media Moderator:...
You can clearly search and find that many people think that SEO is dying a painful death, but do you know exactly how that will happen? Well, Ian Lurie decided to speculate how the SEO bubble will pop and proposes...
Michael Gray writes an interesting post about that teaching advanced link building and PageRank will never die. In the article, he explains that everyone who learns about optimization techniques are at different levels; some are more advanced and may consider...
Over the past couple weeks, we reported about two issues: (1) Did Google Stop Crawling Blogger Blogs on Personalized Domains? (2) Google Bloggers Having Sitemap File & Continued Crawling Issues? Google seems to have resolved both issues. The Google Groups...
There is a very large discussion at Sphinn around a Search Engine Journal post named How to Get Rid of Multiple Subpages & Not Get Penalized. The discussion is around the topics of using different techniques when removing or redirecting...
At WebmasterWorld, a forum member is baffled by the fact that his homepage isn't ranking for a relevant search term; instead, one of the internally-linked pages rank. According to the forum member, the homepage has the right keywords within the...
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around the topic of title tags. Now this title tag discussion is not a typical boring thread. In this thread, some webmasters and SEOs have been observing that longer title tags are returning higher rankings...
There are threads at Google Groups and DigitalPoint Forums with multiple reports of Google not crawling Blogger hosted blogs, that are on custom or private domains (i.e. not on blogspot.com domains). Many have reported that the Googlebot crawling has stopped...
In a High Rankings Forums thread, forum members discuss whether they meet with their SEO clients or not. It must depend on how the business is structured (and if the client is local), but in the latter case, if the...
In May I ran an informal poll asking Would You Buy a Link With a NoFollow Attribute? In short, a nofollow attribute is an HTML attribute you add to a hyperlink that tells the search engines that you do not...
There is a world of SEOs who continually search Google to track how their keyword phrases are ranking. But they do not just search the main Google.com page, they search each and every Google data center by IP address. A...
Google Webmaster Tools is now reporting "too many redirects" within Sitemaps files. A WebmasterWorld thread has reported the warnings back last week. I have finally hunted down a screen shot of such an error: The only way to see this...
How does one who may sell SEO services in the future give away information without giving away too much information (and fearing that the client will run away with the proposed strategies and implement them himself/herself?) That's a difficult situation...
A Cre8asite Forums forum member asks the community about their biggest pieces of advice as it relates to search engine optimization. What are those tips? When you start doing SEO, write down every thing you do and monitor results closely....
Shimon Sandler wrote a controversial post about the options available to sites who cannot actually make code changes to optimize their site. He explains that you can build links, and that's perfectly legitimate as it's called "off site optimization." The...
About 15 days ago, I reported on the Google Yo-Yo Effect. This yo-yoing is a lot different then the typical ups and downs of Google's rankings. I know many of you are going to say, Google's results always differ. Trust...
SEOAly, an up-and-comer blogger who has been writing some really great blog posts lately, has shared the reasons why "SEO consultation" is ruining the reputation of an entire industry. In the piece, she explains that SEO is not about implementation...
Would linking to your landing pages be bad for your organic rankings? This is the question posed on Cre8asite Forums, where a webmaster wonders the benefits of possibly linking to a completely different type of page (in terms of layout,...
A Google Groups thread has discussion around a site that was hacked and because of it, now has many broken (dead) hyper links. The question then came up, would Google penalize a site that had broken links? The simple answer...
The very smart Sarah Bird at SEOmoz has recently blogged about the importance of managing client expectations when working in this area. She says that it's normal for people to overpromise and underdeliver. If you run into a client who...
Everyone emphasizes that content is king. But does the amount of content make a difference? This is the issue that is currently being discussed at High Rankings Forums. Well, contrary to what they usually say, size doesn't matter this time....
A Google Groups thread has discussion on the topic of dynamically creating pages to target localized searches. For example, this particular webmaster wants to be able to target 28 different zip codes for his client's A/C business. He summarizes what...
I've personally found a number of people who consider that because SEO seems like "optimizing title tags, doing keyword research, and adding a little extra to a website," they can be search engine optimizers too. In the past few weeks,...
Michael VanDeMar wrote an interesting post on his blog about the uselessness of the Google Keyword tool for SEO. He explains that while we reported that the tool is showing keyword numbers, it still isn't helpful. His rationale is that...
Part two of the WebmasterWorld thread on the July 2008 Google update discussion is virtually all about how Google is yo-yoing the results. Meaning, one day a site can have top positions for a keyword phrase in Google, the next...
Recently I have been reading and hearing a lot of webmasters complain about a huge drop in their Google traffic. There are just too many threads to reference, so I thought I reference one valuable post by JohnMu of Google....
Google's sitelinks, which we have covered extensively are the little links you see under a search result in Google, typically between 4 and 8 sub-links. Here is a picture of our Sitelinks: A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about the importance...
I think it is about time I revisit a post I wrote in 2006 named In SEO, What Changes Should You Track. We have a new thread over at Cre8asite Forums talking about what logs you should keep when making...
I really enjoy threads that get into the details of such small details, which in reality, can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts. The topic is which anchor text counts, the first found on the page, all found...
Jill Whalen (whose birthday is today -- wish her a happy one!) wrote a very logical article at High Rankings about the problem of SEO plagiarism. She explains that numerous not-so-established SEO types are regurgitating a lot of articles online...
The Google Webmaster Central blog announced that they recently rewrote an article about whether Google recommends SEOs. To summarize, the article says that there are benefits, but there are also things you should look out for in an SEO and...
While SEO becomes more and more important, people try to find angles that they can exploit or take advantage of so that they can achieve good rankings. In one specific instance, High Rankings forum post asks if there's a minimum...
At SEO Refugee, Skitzzo talks about how the SEO blogosphere is starting to shift drastically and people are giving their opinions as fact. Instead of using jargon like "in my experience" or "as far as I can tell," they think...
In response to Andrew Goodman's summary of SES Toronto, The Lisa wrote a really great and informative post about how white hat SEO has evolved and "advanced SEO" is really traditional SEO. She explains that traditional SEO still works, and...
A High Rankings Forum member has an interesting question about a website he maintains. In the particular example, he is selling a niche item within a broader category. I'll use an example for illustrative purposes: he's basically selling "children's books."...
Yesterday, USA Today published an interview with Google's Matt Cutts about how webmasters can optimize their sites for Google. In the article, Matt provides five tips on improving visibility. They are: Figure out what people are searching for and put...
Last year, we looked at the impacts, if any, of negative SEO on websites, a discussion which arose from a Forbes article on the saboteurs of search. One year later, we're still discussing the consequences and seeing if negative SEO...
We have talked about URL length issues and SEO and if long URLs are spammy in the past. But now we have a Google Groups thread with a Googler, JounMu, actually commented on a specific URL as being a bit...
A Cre8asite Forums member contends that optimizing for certain keywords isn't desirable any longer. The reason given is that people aren't ever searching for those keywords (even though it looks like a logical search term). He adds that there's no...
A WebmasterWorld thread asks if it is normal to see a downgrade in rankings soon after conducting a link building campaign. In other words, a webmaster builds links to a site that ranks average. The next few days, the webmaster...
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...
There is an outstanding subscriber (paid access required) WebmasterWorld thread that discusses the topic of short term versus long term phrases. These are the types of threads that make me feel, hey - that $150 subscription pays for itself. Without...
There are many SEOs spilt on the topic of the value in submitting a Sitemap to Google. In my opinion, it is clear that if a site has very poor navigation and on-page SEO, submitting a Sitemap might be your...
Marketing Pilgrim recently published a prophecy that onsite SEO is going to die. The writer says that "[a]s the search engines acquire more revenue, their pool of professionals is also drained with best brains" and that new technologies like OCR...
There is an interesting Google Groups thread discussing how Google handles the <base> HTML tag. The base tag specifies a base URL for all the links in a page. But how does Googlebot or Google handle indexing this tag? Google...
A weekend WebmasterWorld thread is reporting dozens and dozens of webmasters noticing a major traffic drop due to Google. Some of these webmasters reported traffic declines in the 90% range. Many of the issues seem to be that Google has...
Search Engine Journal writer Ann Smarty talks about how exploration of competitors' backlinks can give you an idea of your competition's link building strategy and help you with keyword research among other things. She provides some tools for how to...
A common question in the SEO space is should I use absolute or relative URLs. Absolute URLs are when you link a URL by using the domain.com portion as well, so linking to my authors page would be a link...
Jonathan Hochman wrote a very good checklist on Search Engine Land about 12 ways to write search engine friendly code. Some of the tips he outlines are: Don't repeat yourself -- use SSIs and other code snippets instead of being...
A couple months ago we reported on an SEOMoz post that was debated at Sphinn on the topic of which anchor text counts? Is it only the first anchor text on the page linking to a specific URL or is...
Last night, I had a nice chat with Googler, JohnMu. I joked around with John, asking if he has messed up yet, in terms of Google communication with webmasters. He said not really - which I agree with. But he...
The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a blog post named How Google defines IP delivery, geolocation, and cloaking. They cover topics such as making sure to treat Googlebot as a California resident with the Geolocation section, they go over IP...
A new WebmasterWorld thread has complaints that Yahoo removes the trailing slash from the URLs, possibly causing 404 errors on the receiving site. This is not new, I complained about this issue back in 2004 and it is still an...
Beu posted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread after noticing that Google has changed the definition they used for what a doorway page is. On the Google Page, it now reads: Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages...
Search Engine Journal's Loren Baker reminds us that if we're building links, the basic rules of SEO should not be overlooked or forgotten. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of links, SEO basics are critical to achieve better rankings....
Talk about theories! A WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that was posted by senior member, travelin cat, who noticed that his top ranking pages tend to have related YouTube video's embedded on them. The YouTube videos are not his videos,...