Another PR Nightmare for Google?

Perhaps this entry is a little off topic for the focus of Ranking Basics, as I don't blog about pay per click advertising (Adwords, Overture) nor politics, but this little piece note worthy non-the-less. I think this caught my eye, more to the point to see how GOOG will react and how the power of the blogosphere works, seeing all the hype lately political blogs have been getting.

It seems the conservative folks over at Right March have a gripe with Google because of an adwords ad of their's that Google said "No" to but yet the Democratic version (with just the name changes) is still being displayed on Google. Right March has documented the entire scenario and is now not only blogging about it, but getting the news out to a lot of media outlets. It's no doubt that Fox News will pick up the story soon enough.

But back to the blogoscope word and what seems like an ever growing way to deciminate information. Since this story broke this morning, I've already read headlines regarding it on quite a few different SEO/SEM Blogs, and here's just a sampling:
- Threadwatch: Google Accused of Political Bias (again)
- I Hate Google: Is Google Red or Blue?
- The Buzz Blog: Google Censors Conservative Ad
- Inside Google: Google Accused of Liberal Bias
- MarketingVox: Google ACcused of LeftWing Bias

I'm sure there's bound to be more later on today, as most the bigger name SEO/SEM Professionals who blog are at the Search Engine Strategies Event in Toronto till tomorrow.

Lately it seems that Google has been getting a lot of bad press - just look at the whole Autolink debacle, folks in the UK up in arms because they didn't "Doodle" St. George's Day, and the firing of Mark Jen for blogging. Just this morning even the president of SEMPO was discussing how Google Needs to Improve Relations with Agencies (thanks to Andy Beal of Search Engine LowDown).

Add this latest firestorm of political nature to the mix and Goolge's lack of addressing these types of problems in a positive manner -- it makes one ponder whether the tide is turning for Google being the "Golden Child".


File Under: Search / Search Engine Marketing / Blogs / PR / Public Relations / Google / Right March

Great Article On Link Building

SEO Professional Shari Thurow, author of Search Engine Visibility, has a great article out on Search Newz about the right way to go about link building. She addresses those wonderful spam emails people get requesting to trade links and why to veer away from them.

Check out - Successful Link Development Tips And Guidelines

And if you haven't read Shari's book and are curious about search engine friendly design - pick it up today!

File Under: Search / Search Engine Optimization / Link Building / Shari Thurow

Growing & Cultivating Blogs & Customers

Today I'm finding a treasure trove of nice articles - informative, well thought out and relevant to SEO/Blogging/Marketing.

Two more piece I've come across that I'd like to share, and don't scoff at their titles, they are chalk full of sound advice and wisdom!

Blogging as Farming - How to Grow a Bumper Blogging Crop by Darren Rowe over at ProBlogger.

and

Return Customer takes Darren's post a few steps further with Cultivate Your Business & Customers.

Both are good reads!

File Under: Search / Search Engine Optimization / Blogging

How Blogging Can Help with Search Engine Rankings

With any blog, building one is not necessarily a “If You Build It, They Will Come” scenario. There is some hard work involved in promoting your blog and getting the word out that your company has one and that subject needs an separate entry devoted entirely to it.

Now with that said, I’m going to focus on what happens once you’ve got a solid foot in the door of the blogging world. This means that your site is offering some sort of syndication (rss,xml, atom) for your blog and promoting it through word of mouth or through tools such as feedburner, del.icio.us or technorati. If you are doing these things you’re likely to experience a rise in the rankings for your area of optimization – if that’s the same area your blog is concerned with. Now you are probably wondering just how this is so. Well, there are several factors:

1. Relevant content. Your blog is going to provide the search engines with a lot of new, related content to the area of expertise that you’ve likely optimized your website too. This will also help your website in the area of latent semantic indexing (LSI). The use of industry specific key words and phrases are going to be abundant, relevant and very natural in their use within your writings.
2. Inbound Links. If your blog can establish your company or even yourself as an expert in your particular field, whether it be comic book trading, fly fishing or the manufacturing of microchips, you will get inbound links from others that find your information relevant and helpful. Not only are these going to be just inbound links, they are going to be the relevant, genuine kind that the recently tweaked Google algorithm loves.
3. Fresh, updated information. Search engines love new, fresh, updated websites. A blog enables you to simply and easily update your website with fresh, new content. Without the hassle of updating code or bothering your webmaster, you can easily update your website with a click of a button, once your have your entry written.

Let’s take the example of using blogs for search engine marketing, however, I’d like to add a spin on this – let’s add the focus on Lawyers/Attorneys. If you type in “blogs for lawyers” in Google (#1), Yahoo (#4) and MSN (#2) you’ll get Kevin O’Keefe’s Blog – Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs.

O’Keefe has become an established expert in his field – helping lawyers to understand how market their law firms through the internet, especially blogs. His blog is constantly linked to by professionals within his own industry, as well as within the internet marketing and blogoscope worlds. These are the type of links Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves all look for to give relevance to a website. A quick check on Google shows over 2400 links into Kevin’s blogs and Yahoo has tracked an amazing 65,000+ incoming links into Real Lawyers.

The Real Lawyers Blog is also updated frequently - usually once a day (sometimes more), which helps with that “fresh” content factor. After the infamous “Florida” affect, sites that do not update on a regular basis, loose their search engine rankings within Google, the same goes for Yahoo and MSN. Search engines want the most relevant, up to date information to serve to its users, that’s what keeps them coming back and using their search engines.

BusinessWeek even has taken notice to the importance of having a blog. Dedicating the cover of it’s May 2nd, 2005 issue, the weekly magazine even started its own blog, Blogspotting. The article also features quite a few prominent bloggers in various industries such as GM’s Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz (FastLane), CooperKatz’s Steve Ruebel (MicroPersuasion) and New York real estate king, Steele Lockhart(Curbed.com) all of which have recognized the importance to their own company’s efforts at marketing and promoting.

So the basic moral today is: Starting a blog can be another tool in your SEO toolbox!

File Under: Search / Search Engine Optimization / Blogs / Marketing

Linking: When Google Drops Your Site Into Oblivion

Normally I don’t like to single out just one particular search engine, however, for “basics” sake I’m focusing on a recent tweak in Google’s algorithm and what can happen to your site if you utilize “tricks” or “sneaky” ways of getting inbound or incoming links to your website.

Apparently, the time has passed where having thousands of inbound links to your website is a good thing, at least when it comes to obtaining the high rankings in Google everyone aims for. Now please keep in mind I’m speaking to the average website owner, not the Microsoft’s, Apple’s, Dell’s or Starbuck’s of the world. Those sites just by branding and customer awareness are going to have genuine inbound links and generally won’t have “inflated” linkage into their sites.

The incoming link is the most coveted of all links, as it is a “vote” by Google to say “hey this site is relevant”. Once the black hat type of search engine optimization folks figure this little tidbit out, up popped “link farms”. Links farms have become a place where you can submit your site for a certain fee and obtain thousands of inbound links to your site, pretty much instantly. This instant inflation of incoming links the link farm method offers, helps to boost the “relevancy” of website because it now has thousands upon thousands of “votes” for it.

A few weeks ago, Google applied for a patent for its algorithm that produces the results for searches done on its site. Not long after, it became apparent that the new “tweaking” Google had done has had a profound effect on the sites. Those sites which have employed the “linking” trick of subscribing to link farms, have now seen their rankings drop into oblivion.

Of course there comes the question “is there such thing as over optimization”? I believe the types of tactics utilized to optimize a site better clarify that question. If you or your SEO professional are subscribing to link farms, or spamming forums and blogs, or jam packing your page with a ton of key words or phrases, or have hidden text all over your site, well that answer is a resounding YES! If you are truly optimizing your content, your anchor text, acquiring inbound links at a “normal” rate and in general using white hat techniques, that answer then becomes NO!

Googleblogoscope’s Philipp Lenssen has recently pointed out a great example of what can happen by employing such tactics. Phillip wrote about The Fall of A Certain Search Optimization Company This particular search engine optimization company at one time held the coveted #1 ranking in Google for the search term “Search Engine Optimization”, however, since the recent “tweak” by Google, that company has fallen off of Google’s rankings. Lenssen speculates that this could be attributed the thousands upon thousand off what seems like “irrelevant” links (on what seems like link farm pages) coming into that company's website. These pages having the links into that company are from pages unrelated to their services and business.

So what’s the basic lesson here? Linking wise, don’t use link farms!

File Under: Search / Search Engine Optimization / Linking / Linking Techniques

Yahoo! and Google to Merge; Bring & Page to Depart ;-)

Brought to us by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch

Yahoo! and Google Consider Merger; Brin & Page to Depart







Ha! Ha! Yeah, it's April Fool's :)
File under: Search / Search Engines /April Fool's

April Fool's Day Search Engine Style!

Looks like the search engines are getting in on the fun!

Ask Jeeves has just introduced the new Jeeves 9000 (Beta)!
Google's quenching your thirst for knowledge with the Google Gulp!
MSN's got a great Search Spoof to send off to your friends (I've personally done this and couldn't stop laughing at the results!).
Still waiting on Yahoo's foray into April Fool's ... its only 6 a.m. there, so we'll cut them a break :)

Just goes to show, Search Engines like to have fun too!

File under: Search / Search Engines /April Fool's

Meta Tags – Why Should I Use Them?

“Google doesn’t use Meta Tags”, “Meta Tags are out of date”, “Meta Tags won’t get me ranked in the search engines” are all statements I’ve heard over the last few years when working with clients or conversing with other Search Engine Optimization Professionals. To a degree some of these statements are true, but taken as a blanket statement, and not using them could be costing your website a higher ranking in other search engines.

There are two types of meta tags that are important to Search Engine Optimization, the “description” and the “keywords”. These tags allow you to define and help the search engines classify your website when it comes to indexing in the Search Engines. Some Search Engines will use your site’s meta description tag as the listing to describe your website when results are returned to searchers.

So what about the “Big 3”? Its widely known throughout the industry that Google does not hold much weight to meta tags, however, to say that Google ignores them, would be a gross injustice to the tags. Granted there are tags and other factors that ‘weigh’ heavier in the whole “Googlesphere” such as Title Tags and Content, but Google does index the meta tags’ content.

Yahoo and MSN tend to give more “weight” to the Meta Tags. In fact in MSN’s site owner’s help page, they even encourage use of these tags.

“Excellent content design and effective use of terms that target your message are the best ways to affect the site description that MSNBot extracts from your site. Effective strategies include:

· Placing descriptive content near the top of each page.
· Making sure each page has a clear topic and purpose.
· Add a site description into the description meta tag, as shown here:
< equiv="Description" name="Description" content="Describe your site here">”

So with this in mind the thought that meta tags are on their deathbed is contradictory. Meta tags certainly won’t be “the” number one thing that will get you a top ten ranking, however, properly optimized description and keyword meta tags combined with other components certainly can only help you attain that top ten ranking.

Beyond the “Big Three” search engines, there are also hundreds of smaller search engines and directories on the Internet. A fairly new & growing area of search is that of “clustering”.

In a very basic explanation of what happens with a clustered search engine, the engine takes a general term and gives a list of suggestions with the results for that general term. Lets take the search term example, “windows”. Clusty (www.clusty.com), the clustered search engine by Vivisimo returns general informational sites about windows with a definition from Wikipedia being the first natural result followed by a link to a Window and Door company and then a link to MS’s Window’s update page. Along the left are suggested searches (with the number of results) of “Microsoft (60), Software, Shareware (33), Tips (14), Network (15), Laptop, Pentium (10), Reviews (12), Doors, Patio (9), Manager (7), Pope Appears (5) & Magazine (5)”.

Now just how did Clusty get this information from the sites and be able to classify them under these categories? Most of these sites have meta tags describing the purpose of the site and keywords related to them. Using that and relating it back to the text on the page, Clusty’s able to decipher and categorize that the page should fall under the “Pope Appears” suggestion as opposed to “Doors, Patio” suggestion.

Lastly, there are “Meta Specific” search engines, such as MetaCrawler which place heavy emphasis on the content found within the meta tags. Although with the advent of spiders and their technology to find your site without having to submit your website, there are also some submission services out there that require that there be a meta tag for both description and keywords on site pages being submitted to their services. In both cases you can see how having the meta tag will allow your site to benefit by including them.

In conclusion, do you need a meta tag (description or keyword) to get ranked in the top 10? If you were only paying attention to Google, probably not, but remember Google’s only 1 of 4 major search engines (if we include Ask Jeeves). If you also keep in mind there are hundreds of smaller search engines (English and other languages) and tack on directories, I think the conclusion is that although you may not “need” the meta tags, it’s certainly wise to include them in your website’s pages.

File Under: Search / Search Engine Optimization / Meta Tags

How Not to Run An Advertising Campaign

I've been working on a post about Meta Tags, their importance and do you really need them. Hopefully I'll have that ready to go in a day or two. With the immergence of MSN as its own search engine (no longer getting results from Google or Yahoo), there has been some change in whether Meta tags are useful.

Now, onto the reason for this post - What NOT to do if you are wanting to promote your site. That would be spamming forums and blogs with your ad campaigns, or hiring a "SEO" company that employs such campaigns. First, eventually this will get your site banned from the Search Engines. Second, with the recently invoked "No-Follow" tag on blogs/journals in the comment areas, these spammers are basically out of luck. At SES New York, Google as much as said "We ignore those links" (for now they are, in the future, I'm sure another tactic will be taken). Thirdly, it'll get your company banned from forums. Why?? Because it pisses the forum admin's off, and quite honestly, I wouldn't blame them one bit for taken the action of ridding a forum of a spammer.

Reading some threads on ThreadWatch.org tonight, I came across a thread that was about Acoona's Spam Postings and an Admin's response to it.

Why would a company such as Acoona revert to such, unrespected tactics to promote their website (which, btw, is a Search Engine) - in an SEO forum to begin with?! In the SEO/SEM community word travels far and wide, and I'm sure that there's more than a few of us sitting here scratching our heads wondering what they heck are they thinking?

Really - a Search Engine, spamming forums - how bizarre! I guess the mini cooper they were giving away at SES New York didn't create enough buzz? There's a lot better ways of getting press, buzz, media attention, rather than raising the ire of forum admins who can ban you not just at one site, but across quite a few.

So, if you are a newbie to this area of the web (Search Engine Optmization & Marketing), just a tip. Don't piss off the Admins of the forums! They can spot an ad a mile away (no, really they can, trust me!), and although you think "oh they won't know its me on this other forum". Think again! Really, you won't be fooling anyone but yourself.

up next.... Meta Tags.


File Under: Search / Search Engine Marketing / Forums / No Spam