We all know Google. And we all use Google when we search. They have become the most powerful Internet company of this moment. But how does Google work?

There have been written a ton of articles about how Google works, but most of them are explanations from people outside of of Google. There’s nothing wrong with that, because those people are likely to be unbiased. But those people do not have the complete picture.

How Google’s search engine works

Google is giving basic information on how their search engine works. But on a rare occasion people are allowed inside Google’s headquarters to see a glimpse of how Google works.

This month Wired journalist Steven Levy has been allowed to join the Google Search Quality team. They are responsible for the development and improvement of Google’s algorithm: the heart of Google’s search engine.

Wired managed to get some inside information and comments on how Google works. I highly recommend reading the article which extensively describes how Google’s search engine works:

“How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web” (wired.com)

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

How does Google work?

Don’t worry. I’m still here. It has just been “a little” quiet here lately

The main reason would be my new job, in which I enthusiastically invested a lot of time since I started last December 1st.

So I am struggling to find the time for writing. Both on this blog and my Dutch blog (EdWords.nl), as well as other blogs I write for. I apologize for the quietness here and hope you’ll understand.

But please know that I’m actively using my Twitter account to post stuff I find interesting and worth sharing. So please head over to http://twitter.com/EdWords and let’s stay in touch!

And thanks for still being here

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

Quiet here? Follow me on Twitter

With great enthusiasm I like to share with you that I am going for my next challenge outside of Outrider (GroupM/WPP).

Starting December 1st I will be joining my buddy and great SEO Joost de Valk and other talented and skilled people at OrangeValley! (Dutch site)

Developing SEO

I will be responsible for developing the SEO services alongside their on-site optimization services like web analytics, multi-variate testing and conversion optimization.

I am really looking forward working with a great team and developing an unique and high quality SEO proposition!

Thank you, Outrider!

I had a great time at Outrider, where I had the luck of learning from and working with a lot of talented people. I like to thank everybody at Outrider and within the GroupM network for this experience! Thanks for all the opportunities!

On my Dutch blog EdWords.nl I wrote an extensive post why I left, what OrangeValley is and what I will be doing there. Of course it is in Dutch

http://www.edwords.nl/2009/11/19/mijn-volgende-uitdaging/

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

My next challenge

It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re asking yourself “Where have you been, Eduard?”. I completely understand that. And I’ll tell you where I have been.

Except for the post I just wrote (“Why there is no Europe with Search Marketing“), my last posting here was 6 weeks ago. So you I owe you an update!

First of all, great you’re still hanging around here

Micro blogging

For the record, I have been blogging actively for the past couple of weeks and months. Well, Micro blogging that is (on Twitter as you might know).

There you will find me sharing articles and other Search related stuff at least once a day!

SEO Course

The main reason why I have not been posting a lot on this blog (and on my Dutch blog EdWords.nl as well), is because I have been writing an SEO course (for Dutch home study provider LOI).

And because I have a full-time SEO consultant job already, I have written the SEO course in the evenings and weekends. So you might understand the time to write blog posts regularly has been rare.

A bright horizon

But the good news is that the SEO course is finished, so I will have more time to start writing my thoughts down again! (I’ll let you know when the SEO course is available)

However, on the short term I am still busy with some new challenges (on which I’ll update you later), so don’t expect a weekly update here immediately

Thanks!

So for now I really appreciate that you are still subscribed to my blog or that you took the time to read this. Thanks!

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

“Where have you been?”

Search engine marketing is one of the marketing activities, which in most cases, is relatively easy to expand to other markets. But don’t make the mistake expanding uncarefully.

Search Marketing in Europe is one of those cases where it’s not so easy. Why not, you ask? The answer is because there is no Europe when applying basically any type of marketing strategy.

Search is pull driven

Why is this important? This is important because it outlines the central and key approach of search engine marketing. Search stands out as one of the most pull driven media.

Therefore, search engine marketing is most effective when you adapt to your target market in the best possible way.

Read the rest of this article at SearchFuel, the Search Marketing blog of the company I work for:
“Many Countries, Many Markets: SEM in Europe“

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

Why there is no Europe with Search Marketing

Real-time Search is hot. Ever since Twitter came along, they took and dominated the real-time search space.

Especially with their new search engine like homepage. Can Google keep up with them or not? Will Twitter beat Google at its core? At least it is keeping the industry busy.

Google into real-time search more than ever

Of course Twitter still has a valuable database of tweets and conversations which Google and other search engines do not have. But do not make the mistake thinking that Google has lost the real-time search game. They’re into it more than ever.

Yesterday the Omgili blog highlighted how you can tweak Google’s new Search Options to filter results by minutes and even seconds. That seems close to real-time search, doesn’t it?

Read the rest of this post at SearchCowboys: “Can we stop the real-time search debate now?“.

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

Can we stop the real-time search debate now?

I stumbled upon a short but really important post by Steve Rubel in which he gives us an insightful graphic:

He names 2 learnings out of this graphic which I think we all should remind ourselves frequently:

• There will always be shifts in media
• One format never supersedes another

At first sight this has nothing to do with Search, but understanding this shift in media definitely helps understanding the development and future of Search.

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

There will always be shifts in media

Sometimes a simple piece of information is more valuable than a long and decent article, especially in a time where attention span is decreasing due to services like Twitter.

From this article I found a simple but valuable table outlining what a landing page should contain for SEO, SEA (PPC) or both, regarding informational, transactional or navigational searcher intent:

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

SEO or SEA (PPC) Landing Page?

As you might know from my tweets I attended SMX London this week.

I really enjoyed the conference which had some good sessions and speakers. The London SEO networking event with all the local SEO’s was great fun as well.

I wrote down my top 20 SEO quotes and take-aways from SMX London, which I posted at SearchCowboys:
“Top 20 SEO quotes from SMX London” – SearchCowboys.com

And if you like that post, please vote for it at Sphinn!
“Top 20 SEO quotes from SMX London” – Sphinn

Ps. I also attended the previous SMX London last November. My write-ups can be found here:
- How to do International SEO?
- The Global Search Universe

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

My top 20 SEO take-aways from SMX London

Link building is a vital part of SEO ever since search engines started using the link structure of the web to capture the relative importance of web pages.

The link building economy especially took off since Google introduced PageRank, their algorithm for prioritizing the results of web keyword searches based on analyzing the citation (link) graph of the web.

Link Building in 2009

But is relying on PageRank still the way to go with link building in 2009, 10 years after Google introduced it? I don’t think so.

And what about these link building tips from 2002 for requesting a link (see the “131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies” article, which is worth a read anyway)?

• Always have a link already put on your own site before you ask for a link in return.
• Always give them the exact link text to use.
• Make sure they actually have a links page.

I neither do think this is the best way to go with link building nowadays.

How to find and get those real juicy links?

I think link building these days is fundamentally different from link building as it has been done for years now. I could tell you why I think that right now, but instead I like to point you to an excellent presentation of Christoph Cemper which he gave at the A4Uexpo Europe conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago.

In his presentation “Advanced Link Building in 2009 – How to find and get those real juicy links!” (embedded below) Christoph Cemper succeeds in pointing out what link building is about these days. My summary and a resume of what he added to his slides in his presentation.

What did matter in link building?

Christoph starts his presentation naming what used to work in link building, being:

• Precise anchor text
• Google PageRank
• Alexa Rank
• Google backlink data
• Google cache date

Google PageRank

Precise anchor text is discussed below. Talking about PageRank, that did matter a lot in achieving high rankings through link building. But its weight in Google’s algorithm has decreased, as SEOmoz illustrated.

There’s a lot more to search engine rankings than PageRank nowadays. Even pages with little or no PageRank at all are making it to the top of the search results.

Alexa Rank

The accuracy of Alexa Rank has always been discussed. Leaving aside the possible value of Alexa, it is clear that Alexa Rank is not a data point to trust determing the importance of a web page.

Google backlink data

The same goes for Google backlink data using the link: search operator. Google’s Matt Cutts recently confirmed again that the link: operator returns random sample data, so please do not use this in anyway for link building purposes nowadays.

Google cache date

The Google cache date of a page is often used to conclude when Googlebot last indexed a page. However caching and indexing are not the same processes, so be careful drawing your conclusions on Google’s cache date.

What does matter in link building?

Cemper proceeds his presentation with naming what does matter in link building these days. It comes down to 2 key elements: relevance and trust. To explain this, he names his 7 golden rules of link building.

7 golden rules of white hat link building

Christoph Cemper defines his 7 rules of link building from a white hat perspective (being to work in line with the search engine guidelines).

1. Relevant page & in-content links
2. Domain trust
3. Natural anchor text distribution
4. Nofollow
5. Juicy page
6. Don’t spam
7. Don’t buy links for PageRank

1. Relevant page & in-content links

The most important thing in link building these days is to have relevant links to relevant content. A relevant link means a link on a relevant page within the content. So a link in the footer or sidebar of a page is not the way to go anymore.

Think like a user, not like someone performing SEO. Therefore relevant external links are good as well. Don’t worry about wasting PageRank, but think about adding value for the user.

2. Domain trust

Second to relevancy comes trust when performing link building activities. You need links from trusted sites to become trusted. And this trust is important for both links from and to a page. When it comes to trust the domain age of a site is a strong indicator.

But Christoph Cemper also coins an important term: “co-citations”. This basically means that a page is part of group of unlinked pages that share the same inbound links, and are thus co-citated.

Co-citations and SEO

In 2006 link building expert Jim Boykin wrote an article on co-citation in relation to SEO. There are 2 basic lessons that can be learnt here. It is important…:

1. Who you link to with and
2. Who is linked with you.

Build trust

Think about this for a second or two (and read Jim Boykin’s article). Then you’ll understand how Google can algorithmically determine if a link is relevant or not and if the link is within a “bad neighborhood“.

So it is important to build trust through relevant domains, not only links. Because trusted domains respond differently and more quickly in search engines than ‘regular’ web sites.

Authority and PageRank

Trust is often referred to as authority, which is becoming increasingly important in Google’s algorithm. A recent comparison of PageRank and SEOmoz’s mozRank indicate that PageRank started weighting in authority as well.

3. Natural anchor text

A natural anchor text (or link text) means that not all links have the ‘perfect’ anchor text. But search engines can detect this and devaluate your site. So make sure you realize a natural anchor text distribution.

The problem is that there are too many companies (SEO companies too!) that fix on PageRank and precise anchor text, but even big companies (trusted sites) can get in trouble with it (see Christoph’s case study in his presentation below).

A natural anchor text distribution is reached by doing link building as follows:

• Vary the anchor text
• Add nofollow to some links
• Add useless anchor texts (brand name, site-url, read more, click here)

The important thing here is that regular users don’t care about anchor text. Therefore ‘useless’ anchor texts make sense. So vary the anchor text and don’t worry too much anymore about a precise anchor text.

Basically you’re in trouble if all your links look like they were built by an SEO. If a lot of the links to a certain web page have the same precise anchor text, search engines can figure out that is not a natural link profile.

4. Nofollow

Did you ever build nofollow links, on relevant pages that is? Sounds strange for SEO doesn’t it. But yes, you should! Because you don’t care about PageRank that much anymore (do you?). Also realize that normal users don’t care about nofollow either. They do of course not see or know if a link is a nofollow link.

Turning this around: if you don’t have any nofollow links that could be a footprint. But don’t overdo it. Based on data, from the SEOmoz’s index built for their Linkscape tool, 2.7% of all links on the web are nofollowed. Another interesting fact is that 73% of those are internal, so nofollow is actually far more popular as a link sculpting tool than a spam prevention device.

Remember the 2 key elements of link building nowadays: we want relevant and trust, not a ‘filled green bar’. It needs to look like it is build by users.

5. Juicy page

A juicy page is actually simple to define: it ranks. And therefore a juicy page is a page that passes value to you.

How do you check if a page is juicy? If we follow the definition that a juicy is a page that ranks, check if a page is juicy as follows:

• Pick unique phrase from the page
• Search Google for this phrase (with “quotes”)
• Check if the page is on position number 1

If the page does not rank on position number 1, it’s not that much of a juicy page. In that case competitors probably stole the content of that page and, even worse, Google thinks that page is more relevant (or is the page you’re checking a copy?).

How to find relevant pages?

Extending this approach you can follow the next steps to find a relevant page for link building purposes:

• Search the keyword phrase you are targeting and look at the top results
• Use combinations of the target keyword
• Filter commercial, duplicate, etc. web sites
• Check if the page is juicy
• Are there any spammy looking links on there?

6. Don’t spam

This is not a surprise, especially from a white hat perspective, but you should not spam links. Practices which do not look natural (= built by users), and therefore could be marked as spam, are:

• Links on duplicate content pages
• Adding links into pages which are years old
• Links within a bad neighboorhood (see Co-citations above)

7. Don’t buy links for PageRank

Especially since Google started manually adjusting the PageRank of web sites that buy or sell links for ranking purposes only, it’s not a smart move to buy or sell links for PageRank only.

Besides that paying for links is against Google’s guidelines, it doesn’t align with the 2 key elements of link building these days: relevance and trust.

Not all paid links violate Google’s guidelines. As Google states: “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.” [= adding a nofollow tag to it]

By the way, the PageRank value and weight in Google’s algorithm is deflated anyway. So you don’t look at PageRank anyway. (do you?)

Conclusion

So what works best doing link building these days? A summary of the learnings above:

• Do not look at Google PageRank or Alexa Rank
• Do obey the 7 golden link building rules above
• Do not worry about wasting PageRank or anchor text
• Think like a user! (not a SEO)

This is a post from: Eduard Blacquière's Search Marketing Blog

7 golden rules of link building in 2009