Office Hours-Answering questions on SEO, Analytics, Web Development

Google Panda 2.5 Flux; Navigational Path Structures

Daron Babin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:19:48 +0000

Vanessa discusses how people are both happy and unhappy with Google at the moment.
She offers a recap of Google Panda developments saying that they are using different algorithms to evaluate different websites. She describes this update as different from those of the past because instead of occurring once every 6 weeks there are 3 or 4 changes within a couple of weeks. Vanessa describes the bottom line of Panda as being focused on quality, content, usability of the site, and engagement. Vanessa then goes on to describe the qualities of a good navigational path structure.

Google News Standout Tag for Featured Content

Daron Babin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:41:51 +0000

Discussing the Google News Standout Tag for Featured Content, a new link rel attribute that news organizations can use to mark their best work. Also, Amazon Fire Android Tablet Undermines Google by not including the Android Market or Google branding, though Google-branded apps will be available on the device.

Handling Paginated Archives and Posts

Daron Babin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:22:39 +0000

At SMX East 2011, during the Pagination and SEO session, Google revealed their solution for one of the biggest issues in SEO , by using rel=next and rel=prev for handling paginated archives and posts. Vanessa explains.

More Panda As it Releases Across Europe

Daron Babin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:56:03 +0000

Vanessa fields questions about the newest changes to Panda as it’s released in Europe and more languages, as well as tips for using analytics to optimize your site.

Bing and Yahoo! Algorithm Update and How to Scare Away a Customer

Daron Babin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:20:51 +0000

Vanessa talks about the new update to Bing and Yahoo!, how it effects your analytics, as well as the perils of trying to purchase a new item and merchants taking all the wrong steps to get a sale.

New Method for Submitting URLs to Google

Daron Babin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:57:06 +0000

Vanessa discusses her recent Search Engine Land post that says Google has launched a new way for site owners to request that specific web pages be crawled. This leads the chatroom audience to discuss crawling and indexing for content.

Panda Algorithm Rollout Update

Daron Babin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:03:27 +0000

Vanessa fills us in on the latest of the Google Panda Update plus she directs us to a Stone Temple article where she discusses the philosophy that drove the Panda algorithm, and the implications of that philosophy going forward.

Twitter Technical Infrastructure Impacting Google Search

Daron Babin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:12:27 +0000

Vanessa discusses a recent Search Engine Land post entitled How Twitters Technical Infrastructure Issues Are Impacting Google Search Results where she describes how Technical infrastructure and architecture can make an impact on search.

Google Plus Status Report

Daron Babin — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:40:53 +0000

Vanessa gives her thoughts on Google+, their +1 metrics tools, and Bing’s new support for Google’s crawlable AJAX standard.

Facebook Video Chat, Google Plus and Unpersonalized SERPs

Daron Babin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:01:35 +0000

Facebook announces its new Skype-powered video calling along with a new group text chat feature. Vanessa discusses that, Google Plus and a listener question on Unpersonalized SERPs.

Panda 2.2, Schema, HTML5 and Keywords

Daron Babin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:25:21 +0000

Vanessa discusses the Panda 2.2 news that came out of the SMX Advanced 2011 conference, plus she gives her thoughts on Schema.org.

She also answers listener questions on HTML5 single page site modified with jquery to add URL hash-bangs and make multiple sections indexable, and keywords in brackets in titles.

Google or Bing, Search Globe and Matt Cutts on the Google Panda Update

Daron Babin — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:09:39 +0000

Vanessa discusses a Google survey that studied consumers on their choice of search engine between Google and Bing and a Google Webmaster Central blog post that tells us about their Search Globe, a new visual display representing one day of Google searches around the world.

She also discusses Facebook and their possible acquisition of Skype, plus Matt Cutts responds to the Google Panda Update.

Website Speed and the Google Solution for Newspapers

Daron Babin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:30:43 +0000

Vanessa gives her take on Google +1. She also discusses a Mashable post that talks about Why Websites Are Slow and Why Speed Really Matters, plus By keeping users happy and Facebook at bay, could Google fix the newspaper business?

Google Farmer/Panda updates from SMX West

Daron Babin — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:44:14 +0000

Vanessa tells us about the discussion of Google Farmer/Panda, and the updates coming out of SMX West about how low quality pages can pull a whole sites rankings down.

The First Link Counts and the Bing Bar Toolbar

Daron Babin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:12:10 +0000

Vanessa answers a listener question about the First link counts rule, which says Google will follow the anchor text of only the first link. She also discuss headlines that include the Redesigned Bing Bar Toolbar, Google Search Results Get More Social and the best approach for SEO optimization of website navigation links.

Scoring the 2011 Super Bowl Commercials

Daron Babin — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 05:20:28 +0000

Vanessa discusses Scoring the 2011 Super Bowl Commercials For Search Visibility and Visitor Engagement and discusses the AOL acquisition of the Huffington Post; Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis says it is Time To End The Content Farm Arms Race.

Google Algorithm Launch To Fight Content Spam Now Reality

Daron Babin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:57:43 +0000

Google Algorithm Launch To Fight Content Spam Now Reality; Google Voice Number Porting Now Available, Google Alleges Bing Is Cheating Copying Their Search Results; Review Sites Rancor Rises With Prominence of Google Place Pages; Google Will Drop Real Estate Search and Listings From Maps.

The Core to SEO is Good Content and User Engagement

Daron Babin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:26:45 +0000

Vanessa discusses her keynote address she gave earlier in the day at LinkShare Symposium West 2011. She explains how the core to SEO is good content and user engagement and raising awareness through different marketing channels.

Plus, discussion on SEO mentioned on the CBS-TV drama The Good Wife, Google Chrome, PDFs and changes at Google to simplify management structure and speed up decision making.

Which Search Engine Controls the Market Share?

Daron Babin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:50:18 +0000

Bing Powered Searches are Up 5 percent in December 2010, as Vanessa looks at how Google is dominating the worlds market share, plus how other search engines are faring worldwide. She also goes into a question on blog software installation and SEO myths like title tags, linkbuilding and more.

Bad Reviews and their Effect on Site Rankings

Daron Babin — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:50:33 +0000

Vanessa discusses Bad reviews and their effect on site rankings, plus copyright development and how it impacts news publishers who are legally licensed to use syndicated stories.

Google Instant Preview

Daron Babin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:22:12 +0000

Google Instant Preview is a new way that Google Now Lets You Preview Search Results Before You Click Them. Plus, Google Creates Source Meta Tags To Help ID Original News Sources.

Rich Snippets in Google Search Results

Daron Babin — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:07:56 +0000

Rich Snippets in Google Search Results. Vanessa talks about how Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds Rich Snippets to Search Results.

Also, news of Marissa Mayer changing her role at Google, plus Bing is now making use of it to show new Liked By Your Friends matches and Facebook-powered people search results.

Facebook Goes Down

Daron Babin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:29:41 +0000

Vanessa discusses how Facebook went down Thursday, impeding access to the web site from browsers as well as third-party apps. She also answers a listener question on microformats.

SEO Not Dead Because of Google Instant

Daron Babin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:25:46 +0000

Vanessa dispells the remarks made by Steve Rubel of Edleman Digital that SEO is supposedly dead thanks the new Google search enhancement called Google Instant. She describes what makes search engine optimization work and why Google Instant isnt the death knell for SEO.

Best Practices for Preventing Duplicate Content

Daron Babin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:38:39 +0000

Vanessa discusses a question posted on Google Webmaster Central on What is the best practice for preventing duplicate content issues with print versions of content? She also talks about backlinks and PageRank, and news of a revamp of their Bing Webmaster Tools.

SERP Brand Overload Effects

Daron Babin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:54:55 +0000

Vanessa discusses possible changes Google might have made to their algorithm, plus how SERP Brand overload is not likely harming other results for the most part given contextual.

She also discusses questions on click-through rates on organic search and URL site structure and more.

Bing Yahoo Organic and Paid Search Transition

Daron Babin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:00:02 +0000

Vanessa answers questions on language anchors and links, Google Webmaster Tools, crawl errors, and she discusses some information from the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog that gave out Important information about the organic and paid search transition, new Yahoo! and Microsoft editorial guidelines, mobile updates and more.

Bing Results Showing Up on Yahoo

Daron Babin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:32:59 +0000

Vanessa discusses the move by Bing to add their search results on Yahoo! She also answers questions on canonical links, 301 redirects, sitemaps and indexing and more.

Yahoo Testing Bing Powered Results

Daron Babin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:10:44 +0000

Vanessa comments on how Yahoo Begins Testing Bing Powered Results his Month, plus a Search Engine Land post entitled 5 Things Googles Latest Patent Tells Me About Links.

New Google Site Map

Daron Babin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:04:35 +0000

In this all new broadcast, Vanessa brings her search engine land blog to life when she talks about the SEO implications for the new Google site map.

Google Confirms Mayday Update

Daron Babin — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:37:09 +0000

Vanessa elaborates on her Search Engine Land post titled Google Confirms Mayday Update Impacts Long Tail Traffic and how they been affecting people differently.

Google I/O

Daron Babin — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:53:01 +0000

On location from Google I/O,a two day conference that features leaders and technical experts in web application, Vanessa interviews the open source and public sector programs manager at Google, Chris Dibona.

Microsites Pros and Cons

Daron Babin — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:19:43 +0000

Vanessa discuses why microsites are often not the best strategy to pursue. She tells us how they affect brand identity and audience engagement, as well as how they can confuse people and search engines.

Local Search and Page Indexing

Daron Babin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:45:21 +0000

Vanessa discusses a recent Nine By Blue post she made entitled Should Restaurants Care About Local Search? She also talks about how The indexed URLs report had been showing zero pages indexed for most sites who have submitted sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools.

Rich Snippets to Google Search Results

Daron Babin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:54:54 +0000

Google Senior Developer Programs Engineer Maile Ohye welcomes Vanessa into the Gogleplex, as they discuss Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds Rich Snippets to Search Results, plus Vanessa fills us in on the release of her new book entitled, Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy.

Removing URL to Avoid Penalty

Daron Babin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:39:10 +0000

Vanessa answers a question regarding the Remove URL Tool to quickly get out of a penalty. The listener asks if the Removal URL tool will help quicken the purge of white label pages in the link graph or are they shooting ourselves in the foot ignoring any SEO traffic those white label pages would have gotten them.

She also answers other questions while on location in Brazil following a speaking engagement.

Microformats and RDFa

Daron Babin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:03:44 +0000

Vanessa discusses Microformats and RDFa following her appearance at a monthly search marketing forum for the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association.

She also discusses a Vanity Fair Article written by Michael Wolff entitled Ringside at the Web Fight.

International SEO and Local Sites

Daron Babin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:00:22 +0000

Vanessa tackles one of the discussions this week at SES London about International SEO and what is recommended if you have local sites on different TLDs in the same language and if there is a need for a canonical URL.

She also answers questions regarding the Microsoft/Yahoo deal and its SEO implications, duplicate content issues, cross domain canonical tags , no index in robots and more.

Search Visibility of 2010 Super Bowl Commercials

Daron Babin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:31:02 +0000

Vanessa discusses Search Visibility of the 2010 Super Bowl Commercials, plus she discusses her thoughts on Google Buzz, and she answers listener questions on search engines are reading links in PDFs and if giving a PDF away instead of selling it will lead to more backlinks.

Google AJAX and News Sitemaps

Daron Babin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:03:12 +0000

Vanessa answers listener questions on short URLs, eBook publishing, and robots.txt files. She also discusses how Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now and How To Best Take Advantage Of It, and The Latest On Google News Sitemaps.

SEO Site Clinic with a Carnegie Mellon Student

Daron Babin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:00:17 +0000

Vanessa has just wrapped up guest teaching a class at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She does an impromptu site clinic with a student and she and the chat room audience offer the student some advice ion his website ThreadsForThought.com

Google Supports Cross-Domain Canonical Tag

Daron Babin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:52:57 +0000

Google Supports Cross-Domain Canonical Tag as they announced its support for using the rel=canonical link element across different domains. Vanessa also discusses several other headlines you might have missed over the holidays.

Real Time Search Results

Daron Babin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:13:37 +0000

Vanessa discusses the launch of Google Real Time Search and how search engines to try to show the most relevant results and in addition for Google, offering the latest results.

Google Labs Overview

Daron Babin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:15:43 +0000

Vanessa does an overview of the new Google Labs, an area reserved for Google products that are not yet ready for prime time, plus she answers some chatroom questions.

Are Paid Links Evil?

Daron Babin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:14:43 +0000

Vanessa talks with Enquisite CEO Richard Zwicky about their speaking presentations on location from Pubcon 2009, plus Richard takes over the show and brings on Todd Friesen who brings up a paid links debate and are they evil.

Social Network User Status

Daron Babin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:04:14 +0000

Vanessa discusses the results of a the Pew Internet & American Life Survey that say that almost 20 percent of US Internet users are on Twitter or updating their status with another social network. She also answers listener questions on load times, splitting PageRank, robots.txt and more.

PageRank Dropped from Google Webmaster Tools

Daron Babin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:11:18 +0000

Vanessa discusses the recent news about Google Removing PageRank Data From Webmaster Tools, plus she answers a chatroom question on how Googlebot message about too many URLs include URLs excluded by robots.txt, plus questions on sitemaps, indexing and more.

Session Ids and Google Product Search

Daron Babin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:27:08 +0000

Vanessa discusses session ids, plus answers questions on Google product search, subdomains when it comes to search engines passing link value , ranking with Google Caffeine and more.

Conference Chatter with Good ROI

Daron Babin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:33:33 +0000

From the tradeshow floor of SES San Jose 2009, enjoy some Conference Chatter with Good ROI Greg Niland. Greg and Vanessa discuss the IM Charity Party and how well it went, plus new projects Greg has been working on.

In House Corporate SEO

Daron Babin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:43:23 +0000

Vanessa is back from a Jane and Robot meetup at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, where she spoke with their in house SEOs about what its like to do SEO at a large corporation that also happens to have a search engine.

She also discusses getting adapted to her new Google Android after replacing her iPhone and answers chatroom questions.

Yahoo Microsoft Deal Effect on Owners, Developers and SEOs

Daron Babin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:18:28 +0000

Vanessa discusses What Site Owners, Web Developers & SEOs Should Know About The Yahoo Microsoft Deal, plus she answers questions like how much filtering or modification to the Bing feed do you think Yahoo will do for organic results.

Effect of SEO on the Bottom Line

Daron Babin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:47:45 +0000

Vanessa answers a question about if a competitor makes a sudden rise for highly competetive term best investigation tactics, plus she discusses a Search Engine Land post that says useless SEO parlor tricks have little-to-no effect on the bottom line.

Using Google Support Forums

Daron Babin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:29:04 +0000

Vanessa comments on a Search Engine Roundtable story entitled “SEO Company Caught By Client Using Google Support Forums”, and she discuss the positives of using forums no matter your amount of experience.

Website Ranking and Metrics Revisited

Daron Babin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:30:05 +0000

Vanessa comments on the New IT Dashboard on the redesigned USASpending.gov, plus she revisits her discussion on ranking metrics and how well your website is being indexed and crawled.

No Follow Links and Google Widgets

Daron Babin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:32:50 +0000

Vanessa is joined with guests to answers questions on using internal nofollow links and Pagerank evaporation, if Blogger is a good option for business bloggers, her thoughts on Google giving full value for a link just below an iframe for a widget and more.

Microsoft’s Bing Search Summit

Daron Babin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:37:15 +0000

On location from Microsoft’s Bing Search Summit, Vanessa discusses the newly unveiled search engine with former SEO Rockstars Todd “Oilman” Friesen and Greg Webguerilla” Boser.

Adobe Flash Improvements

Daron Babin — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:48:52 +0000

Ryan Stewart, Evangelist for Adobe’s Integrated Runtime project (AIR) speaks to Vanessa on location from the Webvisions Visionary Web Conference in Portland, Oregon.

Ryan goes into the technical issues with SEO and Adobe, and the improvements they have been making to make their Flash applications more crawler-friendly.

International SEO and Online Marketing

Daron Babin — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:04:30 +0000

Vanessa fills us in on her conference trip to Slovenia, which leads to her discussion about international SEO and online marketing, and how cultural differences play a part.

User Engagement

Daron Babin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:19:26 +0000

Vanessa answers a listener question on User Engagement and the kind of metrics you can use to measure it, fills us in on details of an upcoming Yahoo meetup, plus a question on rankings and re-listing.

Web 2.0 Expo 2009

Daron Babin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:33:17 +0000

Social Media and Unlimited Bandwidth for Spidering are among the topics Vanessa discusses on location from Web 2.0 Expo 2009 with guests Deb Schultz and Jonathan Hochman.

Google Webmaster tools API

Daron Babin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:53:33 +0000

Questions come up about Google Webmaster tools API and wanting to use the for crawling, reports and errors, plus questions on acknowledging errors in GWT.

Site Review Panels

Daron Babin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:08:15 +0000

Vanessa discusses site review panels following her presentation on “On-Site Insight! Technical SEO Advice from the Pros” at Searchfest 2009

Canonical Tag Adoption

Daron Babin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:02:00 +0000

A question on Canonical Tag Adoption news A listener asks whether to use Hyphens or Underscores in a long URL for SEO.

Audio Sitemaps and Search

Daron Babin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:24:31 +0000

Listener question on Audio Sitemaps and Search and how you can submit audio content to Google, plus a site review of Oddball.com.

Best Ways to Change Domains

Daron Babin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:33:37 +0000

Learn the best ways to go about changing domains, plus some advice to the whitehouse.gov webmasters, plus she follows up on her discussion of bounce rates as it relates to SEO, and the importance of ranking high for a query.

URL Structures and Dynamic URLS

Daron Babin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:42:27 +0000

URL Structures, Dynamic Urls, Navigation links Google crawling talk with Developer Programs Tech Lead fior Google Maile Ohye

SMX West 09 Panel Preview

Daron Babin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:38:52 +0000

Vanessa answers questions on Bounce Rates and Stumble Upon, plus she gives a SMX West 09 Panel PrevVanessa answers questions on Bounce Rates and Stumble Upon, plus she gives a SMX West 09 Panel Preview view

TeachStreet and Duplicate Content

Daron Babin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:36:43 +0000

A look at educational community site TeachStreet.com plus she answers questions on duplicate content including how blackhat SEOs are pulling down duplicate content from competitors, plus local search, and metrics.

On Site Issues Overlooked

Daron Babin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:30:30 +0000

Vanessa discusses the biggest on site issues that often get overlooked, plus she discusses how people lose sight about who their customers are, plus how theyre more worried about getting links