WebProNews - rand fishkin

SEO Ranking Factors for 2009

Mike McDonald — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:31:30 +0000

Search Engine Marketing and SEO have always been very dynamic fields. Search engines make changes all of the time. Sometime they announce their changes, sometimes we are left to guess at them. In either event, more often than not, we are left largely to our own devices in terms of assessing the impact of these changes and what to do about them - if anything.

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This makes sessions related to ranking factors pretty popular at shows like SMX Advanced. This year was no exception and I was able to get a few minutes with one of this years speakers, Rand Fishkin, to chat about the state of SEO ranking factors.

One of the more interesting things Rand and I agreed on was the fact that it’s 2009 and a lot of today’s fundamental ranking factors, are very similar to the same stuff that worked in 2005, 2006, 2007 and so on. In other words, a lot of the basic things have been pretty consistent.

That said, I thought it might be useful to run down a quick list of some of the things that matter most and least in terms of ranking in 2009. We’ll start with the Important Things:

Title tags - This one is a no brainer. Good title tags have long been recognized as one of the single most important on page SEO elements of any web page. What makes a good title tag? A good title tag specific to each individual page is absolutely essential. Beyond that, as Rand pointed out, having your ‘important terms’ appear early in your title tag also has a significant impact.

Anchor Text - Anchor text is the visible text of a link. Having inbound links is the overriding number one search factor but not all links are created equally. Say you have people linking to your page about blue widgets. If the text in their content reads “Fantastic Blue Widgets can be found here!” it makes a big difference in which words they link to your page. If they link the words ‘Blue Widgets’, it’s going to do you a lot more good than if they just link the word ‘here’.

This is important to keep in mind with your own internal linking too. Avoid using generic, nondescript terms like ‘home’ and ‘here’ and ‘main’ when you link to your own pages.

Quantity of Domains Linking - This one is interesting. if you have 10,000 inbound links and your competitor only has 7,000 inbound links but still seems to outrank you consistently, this could be the reason. Number of links is important, but the number of unique domains those links are coming from is also very important.

You may have 10,000 inbound links but maybe your links all come from 5,000 unique, separate domains. Your competitor may only have 7,000 inbound links but if they have 6,000 coming in from separate domains... they will get you most every time.

Social Media/Mobile - we talked a little bit about social and mobile. Social and to some extent mobile too can be hard to quantify. The fact of the matter is though, these are absolutely 2 hugely explosive categories. Facebook, Twitter and other social giants are continuing to grow in users and usage. Effective social media management can be a tremendous source for generating buzz, those all-important inbound links and just plain direct referral traffic.

Those are a few ranking factors Rand and I discussed as important, so what are some things people might be spending too much time worrying about? Here are some of the things we talked about in terms of being ‘not so important’:

H1 Tags - A couple of years ago, making use of H1 and H2 tags on selected areas of your HTML code kind of came into vogue. The rationale was the search engine spiders interpreted H1 tags as a signal that ‘hey, this text is important because it’s bigger’. Of course the proliferation of .css meant that you could throw H1 tags pretty much anywhere and everywhere on your page and just take care of how things looked to people with stylesheets.

That this was ever an effective ranking tactic or strategy is somewhat debatable. However, currently, while H1 tags aren’t going to hurt you, they don’t seem to be much of a factor.

Keyword Density - This one might surprise you a little bit. Keyword density is kind of a joke. It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target keyphrase into the text of your target page. I know this seems counter intuitive to some, but I for one was very glad to see this claim supported by some data in the Ranking Factors session.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms ‘blue beach widgets’ in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have ‘blue beach widgets’ repeated 50 times in the description. I know you have seen these pages... they look like:
“Bob’s Blue Beach Widget Emporium has the finest selection of blue beach widgets on the web. Our blue beach widgets are so much better than our competitor's blue beach widgets, that all of our blue beach widget customers all think our blue beach widgets are the best blue beach widgets ever. So if you need a blue beach widget, or have a friend that needs a blue beach widget, tell them to visit the blue beach widget emporium to find the best blue beach widgets in the blue beach widget business”

This has to stop people. It makes your site read like a bad skit on the Muppet Show. This kind of thing makes me cringe, and it’s ruining the Internet. Well maybe it isn’t ruining the Internet like MTV ruined America, but it does make for some horrible web pages. I still hear SEOs talking keyword density to site owners. If you are a site owner and some SEO comes talking to you about increasing your keyword density, do everybody a big favor and throw something at them. Please.

W3C Validation - Ah, my old arch nemesis W3C Validation. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times... but I’ll say it again: if you want your site to validate W3C, by all means... do that. If having code that passes W3C validation makes you sleep well at night, then, my friend... you go get that done. I am all for people having W3C valid code, if that’s what they want.

That said.... in terms of SEO and search engine ranking, the simple reality is: IT DOESN’T MATTER. It never has mattered and I daresay it never will matter. Can it hurt you to have valid code? Certainly not. Should you pay a designer and extra 30% to design your webpage to be 100% W3C compliant and valid? That’s up to you. But before you do, consider this: of the top 100 websites online, MAYBE 8 (and I am being exorbitant in that estimate) of them pass W3C validation. Amazon doesn’t pass, eBay doesn’t pass, Twitter doesn’t pass, heck neither do Google, Yahoo or even Microsoft’s new Bing.

If your page renders in all the browsers, if you don’t have a bunch of broken links, in other words if your webpage looks like a webpage and can be read... that’s all you need here folks. Search engines could not possibly care less, in other words if “document type does not allow element "div" here”. They just don’t. They never will. W3C might help get you listed in some directories (maybe?), it has some practical applications in terms of accessibility, and you could maybe argue that it can help you diagnose some page render/load time issues. Personally I think it’s most common application however is to inflate the bottom line estimate for web designers that can talk you into a cup of the W3C Validation Kool Aid.

So there are a few things Rand and I discussed that matter more and matter less in regard to search ranking factors in 2009. I’m sure we left plenty of things out, so if you want to add your opinion to either list, feel free to do so in the comments section.

Are Your Online Marketing Efforts Breaking the Law?

Chris Crum — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:31:12 +0000

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has a fascinating (and probably startling to some) post up discussing some new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding online marketing. The post stems from SEOmoz's COO Sarah Bird, who is an expert on legal matters pertaining to marketing, and some things she revealed in a recent interview. WebProNews readers will recognize her from these WPN videos on various legal topics.

I will not regurgitate Fishkin's post here, but if you're concerned about laws pertaining to disclosure of paid endorsements, it's a must-read. He does offer the following takeaways to sum it up:

1. Most social media marketing is legal without disclosure.

2. Link builders don't have to disclose their relationships.

3. Google & the FTC have very different requirements about paid links.

4. Linkbait, viral content and microsites don't require disclosure (most of the time).

In the online marketing world, does not always cross our minds that there are legal boundaries that are being stepped on or even crossed in some cases. For the protection of your business, it is really an important thing to make sure you are abiding by federal regulations. These are only US guidelines though, so if you live in a different country, you will probably want to do some digging of your own to find out what the regulations are in your own government.

Read the FTC's guidelines here.

Will Twitter Replace Google in Search?

Derek Vaughan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:08:00 +0000

Has Google's model of spidering and indexing web pages in an ordered list become obsolete? Is the old static model of search about to be replaced? Does a real-time online conversation (a la Twitter) make for a more relevant and compelling search experience? These are the questions that I recently posed to a group of search and Internet experts. To say that these guys know their stuff would be a complete understatement. It's more like these are the professionals that have defined the modern science of search and search marketing. You'll see what I mean when you read the quotes below.

My premise started when I read a UK Techcrunch story about a Google / Twitter mashup. This was in February and there was a major snow event blanketing the UK. But if you were to try to get a satellite image of the snowfall in real time, you couldn't. That's because the cloud cover prevents the satellite from seeing the ground. So this genius named Ben Marsh comes up with the mashup. In brief, the idea was to get the general UK Twitter population to report on the snowfall at their location in the UK. Respondents reported their postcode and then selected a number from 1-10 to rate the snowfall amount. Ben's mashup then graphically displayed the results on a UK Google map. Then it hit me - this Twitter data is yielding superior search results for the amount of snowfall in the UK than any other source. So will this type of real-time data stream become a rival to Google in search?

Daniel Foster is the co-founder of 34SP.com - the website hosting service that kept Ben Marsh's mashup online during peak bandwidth usage during the February snowstorm. I asked Mr. Foster if he thought that Twitter could overtake Google in search, based on his experience with the Ben Marsh mashup site. Mr. Foster replied, "While this use of Twitter was certainly unique at the time and created a superior data set for UK snowfall for that time period, it is still a long way from a true search product. Google clearly has a corporate mission that drives search-related activities. Twitter just asks "What are you doing?". I don't see Twitter search overtaking Google unless the business directives change."

Here is what a few of the other Internet and search experts I contacted had to say in answer to the question: "Will Twitter Replace Google in Search?".

Rand Fishkin is a legend in search marketing. As the founder and CEO of SEOmoz.com, Mr. Fishkin was recently included in Newsweek's list of Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2009. His involvement in search marketing began in high school, and he is now generally regarded as one of the world's authorities in search. Mr. Fishkin commented, "No. Twitter is not a search engine and cannot answer the vast majority of queries sent to an engine like Google, Yahoo! or Live. Twitter searches a single stream of user created data in 140 character slices. While searching this database of information can be fascinating and even relevant (particularly for those who are interested in what Twitter users are saying about a particular topic or person), it is not even an attempt to replicate the functionality or application Google provides. Google answers an inherent need that has existed since the web's inception: users must navigate to web sites and pages that contain desired information. Twitter cannot achieve this function and therefore cannot be a replacement for Google in search."

Michael Gray is President of Atlas Web Service, a full service website and Internet marketing company. Michael has worked in website development and marketing for over 10 years, and shares his thoughts regularly on Graywolf's SEO Blog. Mr. Gray opined, "Twitter is never going to replace Google for searches there simply isn't the breadth of information available there. For example say you need to know: "Who was the 3rd Vice President of the United States?". Unless you happen to have a history buff in your stream - very few people are going to know it's Aaron Burr off the top of their heads. It's simple and easier for you and everyone else to type the question into Google and have it spit back the answer. However, if I have a tech related search like: "How do I backup my Firefox profile?" chances are I'll get a few answers from my users. One way that Twitter is better than Google is if I know my followers and trust them. I might not trust Yelp or CitySearch when they tell me what a good seafood restaurant in San Francisco, but if someone who follows me gives me a recomendation, if I know who they are, I'm much more likely to trust their response. The one caveat is the trusted relationship of the person giving the response. 20 people I don't know telling me someplace is good is never going to outweigh the 1 person I really trust telling me it's bad."

Danny Sullivan is often regarded as a true pioneer in search. His seminal 1995 work published as "A Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines" laid the groundwork for his career as an often cited expert in search. Mr. Sullivan he has been quoted in all the major media outlets such as The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline. Here are Mr. Sullivan's comments, "No, Twitter won't replace Google search because it simply doesn't cover enough of the topics out there. It can be used for question answering, but that's largely limited to the number and quality of your followers. I do think it's an excellent additional search tool, however, http://searchengineland.com/how-we-search-with-twitter-16920 has much more on this."

Andy Beal is an online reputation management consultant, award-winning blogger, and professional speaker. Mr. Beal shares his expertise via his blog at www.andybeal.com, and he is also the founder and editor of Marketing Pilgrim, an award winning news publication that covers internet marketing news and trends. Mr. Beal added, "Twitter's real time data certainly compliments Google's search results, but I don't see it ever replacing it. Twitter's data stream should be looked at in the same way as Google News or Google Blog Search. There's tremendous value in tapping into a fresh, up to the minute content, but people still rely on the structured, ranked data that Google's web index provides."

Neil Patel's email identifies him as a 'professional web surfer'. I know him as an incredibly charismatic, smart and friendly Internet, social marketing and search expert. He has also been named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, and was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. His current company is KISSmetrics, and Mr. Patel shares his insights in his blog - QuickSprout. Mr. Patel offered these thoughts on Twitter overtaking Google in search, "Twitter will not replace Google in search. You can use Twitter to find up to date information, but I doubt you will ever use Twitter to find products to buy or figure out how to fix a technical problem. Just the other day I had to search Google on how to program my router. I don't think I will ever be able to do that on Twitter."

Todd Malicoat is a Marketing Consultant and on the SEO Faculty at MarketMotive.com. Mr. Malicoat is an Internet entrepreneur who has spent "near obsessive amounts of time on Webmasterworld.com, and Threadwatch.org. Here is Mr. Malicoat's response, "I think Twitter definitely has an opportunity to swipe a bit of market share from Google on certain TYPES of terms. Anything very time sensitive, Twitter gives very good results for. I think Google will likely be a suitor, but they likely don't want another youtube over-valuation debacle. Twitter has definitely raised some eyebrows, and what it does do is fill the need for 'guided search' that several companies including trexy.com, mahalo, and even yahoo answers (to an extent), and many others have been trying to do for years. Twitter has done this with a different model of getting the guides first with the critical mass of people, and the organization will come later. Most search results, however, don't NEED a search guide or expert, so for now, Google is perfectly safe, but has the potential to lose out on some niche expert traffic to the new kid on the block."

By way of fairness, I did contact the PR department at Google requesting a comment for this piece. As of the writing of this article, they have not responded.

So there you have it. Practically no one thinks that Twitter will overtake Google in search. At best, in very time sensitive events - perhaps Twitter can be a good companion reference to Google. Of course things can change quickly - and if they do, I'm sure we can all check in with Twitter to learn about them. My thanks to all the experts who participated in this article.

The Most Important Domains and Pages on the Web

Chris Crum — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:04:29 +0000

SEOmoz has a couple of very interesting charts showing the top 500 domains and the top 500 pages being linked to from different places. This paints a pretty good picture of what sites are held in the highest regards by content producers.

"The sorting is done in order, not of raw link counts, but of linking root domains - a metric that we've found incredibly valuable both for identifying broad popularity (vs. sites that simply earn lots of links from a few sites with many pages) as well as filtering spam (it's easy to get lots of pages linking to you, and even easy to get lots of subdomains linking to you, but getting a diverse set of root domains is considerably harder)," explains Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.

I'm not going to replicate both lists of 500 here. You can view them at SEOmoz, but I will provide a quick glance at the top ten of each:

Top Domains

1. Google.com
2. Yahoo.com
3. Blogspot.com
4. Adobe.com
5. Wikipedia.org
6. YouTube.com
7. W3.org
8. MySpace.com
9. Wordpress.org
10. Microsoft.com

Top Pages

1. Woredpress.org
2. Google.com
3. adobe/products/acrobat/r...
4. miibeian.gov.cn/
5. validator.w3.org/check/referer
6. statcounter.com
7. jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/chec...
8. phpbb.com
9. del.icio.us/post
10. yahoo.com

Graph by SEOmoz

You can get a look at all of the stats like linking root domain count, external link count, mozRank, mozTrust, PageRank, and change on the charts. Fishkin also provides some interesting highlights from the lists like top gainers and losers here.

Internationalizing Without Duplicate Content Worries

Chris Crum — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:56:40 +0000

The SMX Confernece was in Sydney Australia last week, and one topic discussed by representatives of both Google and Yahoo was that of duplicate content filtering across international domains. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz notes that while the subject has been discussed in the past, many people including experts in the field have been in the dark.

He highlights what Yahoo and Google (respectively) search engineers Priyank Garg and Greg Grothaus had to say about the matter:

Priyank, when asked about best practices for "localizing" English language content across domains, noted that Yahoo! does not filter duplicate content out of their results when the works are found on multiple ccTLD domains. Greg confirmed that this is also how Google's engine behaves and, with the exception of potentially spammy or manipulative sites, reproducing the same content on, for example, yoursite.com, yoursite.co.uk and yoursite.com.au was perfectly acceptable and shouldn't trigger removal for duplicate content (assuming those sites are properly targeting their individual geographic regions).

Fishkin also notes that for usability and conversion reasons, it's best to localize languages anyway, just to create a better user experience. Vanessa Fox (formerly of Google) has a very in-depth article on "Making Geotargeted Content Findable For the Right Searchers," which also discusses the issue. She recommends the following:

- Putting content for each country on a subdomain or subfolder. (Either is fine; but if you’re starting from scratch and have a choice, I’d generally suggest going with a subdomain.)

- Ensuring all content (including title tag and meta description) is localized.

- Focusing on regional link-building efforts. For instance, make sure that your PR team is targeting newspapers in local regions, not just near the corporate office.

- Including location-specific terms in internal anchor text. For instance, you might want to create an HTML site map that links to each country’s “home page” on the domain.

Fox's article contains a ton of additional useful information on international SEO, an important topic for any business looking to expand their customer-base around the globe.

Country-specific TLDs can contribute to relevancy factors that potentially make your site rank higher according to Fox. While there are exceptions, the subject is something definitely worth giving some thought to.

Train Your Own Staff to Save Money on SEO

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:14:19 +0000

In-House SEO has been a big topic at SMX West. This is because many businesses are moving their SEO in-house to save money because of the economy. With in-house SEO comes training the staff.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz discussed "igniting the SEO training fire." He says companies have to create a "culture of SEO." They need to test campaigns.

He notes that 88% of all clicks take place on organic (not paid) results. He cites the following as important metrics to keep track of:

- visits from search engines

- # of pages drawing at least 1 visit

- time and human resources spent on SEO

- total lifetime value of customers acquired from SEO

- trend lines of search traffic and conversions

Melanie Mitchell of Folio Investing spoke after Fishkin. She says, "Everyone in the company plays a role in SEO." But not very many companies are set up to do SEO in a good way. You have to make sure everyone knows their role. She says to do the following:

- Set up training
- Define your goals up front
- Tailor training sessions based upon people
- Define intended audience
- Define documentation objectives
- Ask: What's relevant to each department? (Ex. design team, advertisers, etc.)
- Develop a course, outline and track it

She says it requires ongoing training. You have to set internal standards, provide tools, and have a measurement track -- pages indexed, search referrals, user behavior, etc.

Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts spoke after that. He says to consider visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. Custom training is needed because everyone learns differently.

Spencer's own company starts with the 3 pillars of natural search optimization:

- site indexation
- content optimization
- link building

Educate your staff on technical areas. Spencer says that even if you work with an agency, you should know what they're doing and how they're doing it.

Dave Lloyd from Cisco adds that the aim of your training should be behavior change. Possible topics of training include keyword research and landing pages. He says you should invite and engage with bloggers.

If you're struggling with budget cuts, this is all advice that could save you a good amount of money in some hard times. Abby Johnson contributed to this report from SMX West. See what other experts had to say on the topic here.

Changes and Significance in Search: Looking Back on 2008

Chris Crum — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0000

I initially intended to piece together a retrospective article about the happenings in the search industry and SEO from throughout the year, based on our coverage of it., much like what I did with online video and online music. I quickly realized this would be a monumental task given that something like 90% of what we cover is search or SEO related. We have articles numbering in the thousands from this year alone covering these things.

So I decided to go down a slightly different path for this article. For this, I wanted to get the opinions of some big names in the field about what they thought the most significant things of 2008 were with regards to search, and what the biggest changes were from 2007 to 2008. I figured it would make for a more interesting article and certainly a less time-consuming one not only for me, but for readers as well.

Editor's Note: It's been a very interesting year for search, and the coming year promises to be even more so. This article looks at how some of the most recognizable names in the industry view the everchanging industry. Where it has gone and where it is going. What do you think?

And while we're on celebrating the year coming to the end and the holidays, we'd also like to share this holiday greeting video with you:

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Semantic and Intent-Based Search

I decided to start in-house and find out what our own Mike McDonald thought the most significant thing to the search industry was in the year 2008. "I think the biggest POTENTIAL event of '08 was Microsoft's purchase of Powerset," he told me. Now keep in mind (in case the emphasis wasn't enough), he said potential, meaning it could have big implications for the search industry's future. Powerset is all about language analysis and semantic search. "Semantic search and interpretive queries based on semantics are going to be big. Language and implied intent is a major direction for search moving forward," Mike said. "So, in my opinion, 2008 marks the start of the real race to a more language/intent/semantic approach to search."

There is no doubt that how we receive search results is in for some change. There has certainly been a lot of talk about it with regards to Google, and Yahoo too for that matter with their whole "open" strategy, but we haven't heard as much about Microsoft on this. Mike may be on to something here. Microsoft no doubt hopes Powerset will be its ace in the hole to gain some search market share.

Personalization, Universal Search, and SearchWiki

Search Engine Roundtable Editor Barry Schwartz had this to say: "I think one of the most significant changes in 2008 was just about a month ago with the launch of SearchWiki in the search results. Although I think the average searcher is not ready for it, it is here and there are no signs that it will be going away any time soon. Not only does this give a searcher the ability to boost or remove search results, Google has admitted that they may be using data gleaned from SearchWiki to change the search results for everyone else. So, I think that this, along with Universal Search, will have one of the most significant impacts in early 2009."

The mere fact that it is Google changing the way they deliver results is enough to make this significant. Google is obviously the top dog in terms of search market share (though not in every country), and most of us use it over its competitors. No matter what Yahoo, Microsoft or anyone else is doing, what Google is doing is going to have a tremendous impact just because its the one more people use.

"The biggest change is the SERP itself. With more universal search, more personalized search, and now SearchWiki, Google is training users to expect 'more than 10 blue links'," says Atlas Web Service Owner and President Michael Gray. "Other search engines that don't provide rich results are seen [as] behind the times."

"I'd say that the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008 was the advent of more personalized search, and even more so, the new addition of SearchWiki showing up in Google," says High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen. "It's too soon to really know what will happen with that, but my guess is that it will cause some reputation management nightmares for many companies."

This is a point that has crossed my mind, and one I intend to explore further in the near future. I think it will be quite interesting to see what kinds of reputation management changes will have to come into play as a result of the changing SERP strategies of the major search engines.

"The biggest change from 2007-2008 was the advent of Universal/Blended Search results which came out in May of 2007," added Whalen. "It has caused some urgency in companies to create multimedia content in order to have their images and/or video snippets show up in the search results."

The Economy and SEO

"In terms of the biggest changes, that might go as far to worry me a bit, is what is going on in the economy," says Schwartz. "We all know about the financial trouble Yahoo is going through to compete with Google and Microsoft. Yahoo is struggling to survive, as opposed to struggling to even compete and that is scary. Google, for the first time, is cutting back big time. They even have decided to not give out holiday gifts this year - which is significant, in terms of Google. What type of impact will the economic turn down play in 2009 and search? Will this impact SEO jobs? I have seen more and more SEMs loose their jobs recently. Will this stifle search relevancy? These are my concerns."

These are certainly valid concerns. Changes in how search results are going to be delivered are going to be challenging for SEOs as it is. 2009 will definitely be a crucial year for SEOs in terms of staying on top of their game.

Community, Professionalism, Clients, and Browsing

"I would say the single biggest change in the field of SEO is the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency in favor of self-promotion at any cost - where people promote spam reporting each other even when their own past reports were both damaging and inconsistent with search engine editorial policies," SEOBook Author Aaron Wall tells me. "The next biggest change would be Google launching a browser. They still have limited market share, but as they gain market share that gives them yet another dimension to view the web through, and gives them even more search market share."

Google's Chrome browser could really turn into another big thorn in Microsoft's side not only by dominating more search market share as a result of increased Chrome use, but obviously by cutting into Internet Explorer use, a browser that already had its fair share of competition from the likes of Apple, Mozilla, and Opera.

As far as the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency, this is no doubt directly related to the growth in "social media marketing" and the lack of understanding of the goals of such on the part of many of the people engaging in it.

On the other hand, Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization CEO Dave Davies says, "The biggest change has got to be in the clients. Clients are coming to us [SEOs] far more informed as to what they want and what the limitations of SEO are. No longer are people asking for top 10 results for competitive phrases and disappointed when we tell them 3 months just isn't going to happen. They understand a lot more about what we're doing and how long it takes."

Competition and Google's Increased Domination

"I think 2008 might go down as the year Google moved into complete market share domination, not completely through their own doings, but because Microsoft and Yahoo! failed to reach a deal to combine efforts and because the market has been so tough on Yahoo! while both engines (and other tertiary engines like Ask.com) lost share to Google," says Wizard of Moz (SEOmoz) Rand Fishkin. "In 2007, I held out hope that together, these three - Ask, Yahoo! and Microsoft - along with the possible newcomer, Cuil.com, would have some positive impact in preventing or postponing a Google monopoly, but after 2008, I'm very skeptical that we'll see anyone keep Google from reaching 90%+ search share in the next few years."

That doesn't mean the competition won't continue to try. Yahoo seems to be doing all it can with it's open search strategy to bring new forms of relevancy to its search results, though its ability to steal away a remarkable amount of Google users remains to be seen.

"The Yahoo-Microsoft Merger That Wasn't was the most significant thing, as it caused both companies to be weakened against Google and remains as the biggest doubt about their success, as the off-again, on-again rumors continue," says Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan. "Search marketers need healthy competition among the search engines, and the competition ain’t healthy."

Dave Davies also cited this. "Refusing a deal at $33/share and now sitting at around $13 has got to go down as one of the big 'tragedies' of 2008 in the search industry," he says.

Adjusting Focus

"The biggest change was probably more awareness that it's not about getting more traffic but how to better convert the existing traffic you have," says Sullivan. "I hear more and more people paying attention to metrics, these days." I suspect this type of mentality will continue to increase as changes in SERPs render some traditional SEO tactics obsolete.

Another thing SEOs and Internet marketers are going to have to watch out for is what happens with regards to net neutrality. This issue isn't always brought up in the search engine marketing discussion, but as Cindy Krum discussed with Abby Johnson) in the following video from SES Chicago, it should be.

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"The victory of a Net Neutrality supporter in the Presidential race is also a significant event though many may not know it," says Davies. "If I had to say what will have the biggest long term affect on the search industry (and in fact the Internet as a whole) it will be this win by Obama. No matter where you stand on the issue, the victory itself paints the picture of the future of the Internet."

Mobile Search

"In 2008, we finally witnessed mobile search go mainstream," says MordComm Co-Founder Boris Mordkovich. "With the arrival of the much anticipated Apple iPhone, followed by a collaboration between Google and T-Mobile on the G1, it is becoming clear that mobile devices are going to a whole new level - and taking the Internet and the search experience, as we know it, with them. The SEM marketing community has been anticipating this for quite a while, so I think that we are well prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead."

Wrapping up

In concluding, I would like to thank all of the people mentioned in this article for providing their opinions and insight into the everchanging search industry. I am very pleased with the variety of answers, and I feel it has made for a well-rounded outlook on where the industry is heading. 2008 has been an interesting year for search, but 2009 promises to really shake things up, and you can bet we'll be there keeping an eye on it. Then, this time next year, perhaps we can reflect on how it all really went down.

What do you think was the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008? What was the biggest change from 2007 to 2008?

Paid Links Go Underground

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:28:27 +0000

For every abolition an underground emerges. Google’s not exactly the law, and bootleggers during Prohibition didn’t exactly offer seminars about avoiding the revenuers. Todd Mailcoat, Rand Fishkin, John Lessnau, with six middle fingers between them, offer no such discretion and invited PubCon attendees under the table in a session titled Linkfluence: How to Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk.

(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)

About this time last year, Google issued steep ranking penalties to paid link directories, making very clear to webmasters wanting to benefit from the search engine that reaches two-thirds to three-fourths of the market that paid links without nofollow commands to drain them of their link juice were officially taboo.

Most of the paid linking world either tried to hoof it out there without Google or reluctantly complied. But guys like Fishkin, Lessnau, Aaron Wall, you could call them outlaws, but really they are the leaders of the paid link underground that was a certain eventuality.

Besides the juice, why would someone still be interested in buying links after all the Google strong-arming? “You get the anchor text want,” began Lessnau, “you get on the page you want, you get the location on the page you want.”

People have reasons other than Google for not buying links he continued, like the upfront cost, the time, effort and salesmanship, the “hoping for a wave of natural links miracle.”

Apparently, that’s just silly. Lessnau then provided an outline of “safe” paid links, which includes:

A link that is relevant in the text of a webpage
A link that is the only link on the page or one of very few on the site (this is important)
Links with varied anchor text
Links from inside pages
Links that are long term.

Lessnau recommends moderation. It’s always greed that gets people.

Which type of site should one seek out? Lessnau recommends a site with good rankings and lots of natural links that is not a major link seller. He described a cautious process that involves searching for the keyword phrases he wants to rank for, finding websites and pages that would be a good fit, verifying the potential partner does not link to major link buyers, and then making a fair offer to the webmaster.
Not only should a webmaster “know when to quit buying links,” she should also keep an eye on websites where links were bought to make sure the webmasters “stay clean.”

Fishkin followed Lessnau’s presentation with less advice that sounds like the sort you’d hear on “Intervention.” His “How to Buy Links Without ‘Buying Links’” segment involved more roundabout (read: untraceable) methods of link exchange. Less drug lord, more money laundering, then.

“It pays to have alternatives,” he said.

Fishkin suggested the nonprofit route, acquiring links via event sponsorships and online charities. Buying food for an event, or supplying t-shirts, etc., and thereby earning a sponsor’s link means “essentially you aren’t directly buying a link.”

Bullet points for this process:

Find nonprofits/charities online
Locate sponsorship pages
Check to see links pass juice, then get in touch
Avoid the standard donation forms and personally check with the webmaster about listings

Another way of buying links without buying them is indirectly bribing bloggers with free stuff and then following up with an email. “Don’t ask for a link. Ask if they liked the product.”

Yeah, slick right?

SEOMoz Dishes On 'Give It Up' Secrets

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:59:30 +0000

Rand Fishkin blogged about the little bits of secrets discussed at a session of the recent SMX Advanced conference; the session centers on some of the tips and tricks that aren't widely known in search marketing.

Part of the deal with the 'Give It Up' sessions require attendees to keep silent on the talk for a period of time before blogging about it. That time passed for the latest edition of 'Give It Up' at SMX Advanced.

Fishkin said virtually all of his tips were of the 'white hat' variety, though other speakers talked about the grey and black hat tweaks available to webmasters who choose to take on their associated risks. He started his wrapup post with a look at link acquisition, and ways to track down links with various operators at search engines.

Searching links is not all about Yahoo's excellent Site Explorer, though it is the best out there. He noted other tools like Google Blogsearch, Exalead, and Technorati "Reactions" as ones to look at when tracking down those links.

Our readers in the small and medium business world should appreciate his list of Google Local ranking tips. Fishkin's list, one he compared to a later effort by David Mihm; both editions merit SMB attention, especially with major search sites presenting local results in universal search pages.

Reputation management occupied the wrapup of his presentation. Regular queries about one's brand at resources like Google, Technorati, Blogpulse, and Twitter's Summize all deliver what could be valuable and actionable intelligence about how others perceive a brand online.

The post comes at a good time, with another major conference, SES San Jose happening August 18-21, and the rapid approach of the fourth quarter holiday shopping season. It's a perfect time to review those tips and plan strategies to capture revenue during the all-important end of the year period.

Is the SEM Industry Headed Toward Hostility?

Kimberly Krause Berg — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:52:48 +0000

Some time last year I realized my association with the search engine optimization and marketing industry might change because the atmosphere was getting partisan. Bad feelings between leaders were festering and it didn’t take much of a nudge to start a rumble.

The situation isn’t improving and I wonder why. Case in point is a recent bit of flap over an article that went out by someone well respected, which in hindsight was an error in judgment. Apologies have been made but it won’t end there because something has drastically shifted in the industry.

More and more people are unforgiving. There’s no room whatsoever for any slip ups.

I remember a friendlier time.

A few years back someone didn’t make it home from an SEO conference. A website called Threadwatch lit up with members putting out a global hunt for him and offering support for his family. He wasn’t even widely well known, but that made no difference. It ended well and showed that when one of their own is in trouble, the industry rallies.

However, if someone in the industry has an unpopular opinion, or defends something, or otherwise causes negative publicity to their company or self, they may as well be walking around with a scarlet letter branded to them for life.

Hypocrisy abounds. How is it that Rand Fishkin was slaughtered last year and taken to task for writings in his company blog and possible business practices, and yet the industry voted him the “Most Giving SEO”?

Today, I read a comment that he and his company are a “cult”.

Is it really possible to be the most generous person in an industry and be the most despised at the same time? What does this say about the people in the industry? What messages about the search engine marketing industry does this send to companies looking to hire SEO’s?

Marketers must market. This, too, I’ve come to see. You simply will not be noticed for your good deeds unless you talk about them, show them off and bombard everyone with your humble greatness because by tomorrow, no one will remember what you did.

Or is it that nobody really cares? I’ve been trying to figure that one out.

If you make personal sacrifices for the industry, or support it in ways that have nothing to do with promoting your business, this will not be recognized as a valuable contribution. If you provide a living example of ethical, smart problem solving in the face of a threat to your livelihood, this too isn’t acknowledged. Personally, when someone can show proof of their marketing skills in action, this speaks louder than how popular they are.

I can probably get away with writing and sharing my thoughts because I straddle two industries. I originate from the SEO industry however. It’s been far more friendlier and open than the usability industry. But as the months of getting unsolicited “advice” from people about who I should associate with or not went by, I began to suspect that true divisions exist and now recent events show that battle lines are drawn.

I don’t wish to take sides. There are those who leave comments in heated discussions who admit to loving the entertainment value. I don’t. I dislike the hostility. I’m having trouble understanding its purpose and value to the search engine marketing industry as a whole.

Is this where the future of search engine marketing is heading?

And if so, why is that?

Comments

Utilizing Social Networks to Make Your Posts Viral

Janet Meiners — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:56:06 +0000

This article talks about how social networks can make a post go viral - or spread like crazy.

It focuses specifically on the biggest social networks - MySpace and Facebook. Facebook tends to be a bit more technical - allowing you to utilize apps to spread the word. They also attract different types of people.

Social networks and related sites can be an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog. Twitter alone has sent a lot of traffic my way and I think it’s the easiest to use. Once you build a network of friends, just craft a compelling headline and link to your post. It takes a bit of dedication (time) but it can build your trust, visibility, and reputation along with links to your blog.

5 Ways to Make your Blog Posts Viral with Social Media.

1. Contribute, don’t Spam.

Warning sign: if you’re pushing your story or product rather than sharing it then you’re stepping over the line. Also, send the post to your network (or friends), not to everyone everywhere (that’s spam). I liked how I heard this explained.

Avoid thinking that because there is a crowd gathered it’s a good time to promote yourself. This is applicable in the offline world too. Once I heard someone announce their store’s grand opening at a church meeting, which was in very poor taste. We can probably all think of our favorite network marketer who manages to weave information about their products into every conversation. Keep it relevant.

Remember this, from Rand Fiskin of SEOmoz:

“…People are more likely to be your friend [when] they believe you are offering them good, trusted content from which they can benefit.”

2. Create your own Facebook Application.

I haven’t heard of this but there is a new Facebook App Creator for Bloggers from BlogFuse. It walks you through the process of creating an app that feeds your blog posts onto your profile. It’s not free though - prices start at $5/month, but it has a free trial.

3. Join Related Networks & Groups.

If your product or blog is regional, make sure your Facebook network is set to the city you want to target.

For example, I know someone who owns a web site for tourists in Wisconsin. Even though he doesn’t live in Wisconsin, his Facebook page could be targeted to Door County. He also found a group of people from Door County so he introduced himself on the group’s wall with a link to his site. This way you can leverage an existing network of like-minded people and it will help expand yours. MySpace also has groups.

4. Create a Profile Page for your Blog.

Then promote the page on your blog or web site. Here’s yours truly - Marketing Pilgrim’s MySpace profile.

5. Create Quality Blog Posts.

Brent Csutoras suggests these ideas for creating posts that everyone loves to share:

Top 10 lists

How-To tips

Current events

Offbeat or Extreme content (make it edgy)

Humor

Tools

Here are more ideas for creating quality posts. If you want even more, download Brent’s slides about creating great blog posts, from the SMX Social Media conference this past November.

Comments

Google Sending More Than Its Share Of Search Traffic

Doug Caverly — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:39:47 +0000

Some people want everyone to like them, and this, to be honest, can be a bit pathetic. But businesses may need everyone (or at least a whole lot of folks) to like them, and so Rand Fishkin has addressed the issue of why Yahoo and MSN/Live don't always send much traffic.

After all, Google dominates the search market, but it doesn't yet own it; Hitwise puts the Mountain View-based company's October market share at 64.49 percent, not one hundred. A person might imagine, then, that traffic from Google would equal about 65 percent of the total search stream, and not 70 or eighty.

Said person, according to Fishkin, would often be wrong. With the help of a friend at Hitwise, he found that Google's responsible for almost 78 percent of search traffic to "IT Media" sites, and a little more than 69 percent of search traffic to "Internet & Technology" properties. "All Sites" receive around 72 percent of their search traffic from Google.

Chalk it up to the user base, the search experience, or whatever you like, then, but there's no need to worry about seeing high numbers from Google and low amounts of traffic from everything else.

7 Questions About Professional Blogging

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:09:38 +0000

At PubCon in Las Vegas, the Search and Blogging Reporters Forum fielded questions about an array of topics, from blogging to SEO, to videos and RSS feeds.

Blogger Reporter Panel

The expert panel consisted of SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin, Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal, TopRankResults' Lee Odden, and WebProNews Managing Editor Mike McDonald.

On Blogging vs. Journalism:

The panel saw little difference between blogging and journalism. Even if journalists criticize bloggers for not always getting the story right, members of the panel were quick to point out that the mainstream media often makes mistakes as well. For a newspaper, this is handled via a correction box.

On Starting an SEO Blog to Promote Yourself:

Rand and Lee agreed that people trying to break into the SEO industry tend to get a little too open with their blogs. Though the idea of a blog is to showcase your skills, you don't want to give away the cow. Andy disagrees. "Personally, I don't hold anything back," he said.

On Whether a Blog Should Mix Business and Personal Elements

Andy uses Robert Scoble as an example, who blogs about both personal and business topics. "I don't think there is a certain rule you have to follow. But I would recommend separating them." Beal says to be consistent; if you start out as business only, stay business only.

Lee recommends having multiple RSS feeds, one for personal posts and one for business posts.

Corporate blogs done right can get more links and traffic than personal ones, but nothing says people within the company can't have personal blogs linked to from the main page.

On Using Full or Partial RSS Feeds

The panel was split on this subject. On the one hand, a full RSS feed can help more people to be aware of you and your content without them having to visit the site. But a partial feed helps ensure more people visit your site, so it may depend on what your goals are.

On Videos:

Rand says people aren't consuming as much video as they are text, as it's more difficult to access video from a mobile phone or without headphones at work. The interaction video provides, however, is good for branding.

Lee says videos are very good at drawing attention and creating relationships with other people.

Mike says that video can be complicated or simple. It depends on the amount of time and effort you want to put into it. Editing is the hardest part, with the audio, rendering, etc. He agrees video also helps the branding aspect, as long as your icon or logo are there to remind people where the video came from.

On the Pitfalls of Bloggers Taking on Advertisers:

Rand said, "I felt like taking on the advertising was hurting my ability to write about those companies. It is very effective to monetize blogs, but you have to have the audience first.

Andy advises that bloggers have a disclosure policy for readers, and that they should let advertisers know there is a line between editorials and advertisers. He recommends charging on a flat-rate basis. There are no expectations of set numbers of impressions or click-throughs.

On How Many Social Media Buttons Are Needed:

The panel recommends beginning with an array of social media buttons, measuring to see which ones are most popular and then narrowing them down. People will become blind to them after a while, so one tactic to combat them is to put them up only every so often so that people will pay more attention. Or, you could add a button when traffic starts to pick up for a specific article.

The Paid Link Stages Of Grief

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:44:25 +0000

Let the bargaining begin. It's a natural stage of mourning. As Google shuffles loose the paid links from its algorithms, SEOs are cycling past their initial denial, their outrage, and have begun negotiating. Stay tuned; depression and acceptance are likely to follow.

The Paid Link Stages Of Grief

On his blog this morning, SEOMoz.org's Rand Fishkin gave a sneak peak at the presentation he has intended for PubCon in Las Vegas. It's topic: A solution to the paid links debate.

Fishkin introduces (I'm using a looser sense of this verb, which I'll get to later) his solution/compromise as "Sponsored Editorials." If this strikes you immediately as similar to pay-per-post, you might be right, but Fishkin has put some idealistic stipulations on an admittedly imperfect model without actually outlining how it differs.

Instead of selling a link, Fishkin suggests selling reviews with links in them. In essence, webmasters are paying for the review, not the link. The reviewer is paid whether or not he or she posts something positive. The link is designated "nofollow" if the reviewer is not offering an endorsement, or the nofollow attribute is removed is the reviewer does offer endorsement.

"The marketplace has to exist," he writes, "and search engine have to fight against what they perceive to be manipulative, non-editorial votes. But, what if there was a solution that could make both sides happy? A place where money changed hands between parties, but editorial decisions still came into play?"

Commentators are quick to point out that while it as at least a step in some direction, it seems only a matter of time (and perhaps very quickly) before this system is also gamed, before money under the table is exchanged for the removal of nofollow tags, before reviewers run unscrupulous review systems. One suggests a more complicated system of credibility ranking, to help control for that.

Or the kind of credibility system like the one Google's been working on for years. Fishkin's proposal comes with unfortunate timing. Over the weekend, Google's Matt Cutts, in a lengthy post, intimated that paid reviews (paid posts) are also on the webspam team's radar.

Cutts reiterates Google's commitment to assuring quality information and utilizes the sobering example of brain tumor treatment research. A person researching such a horrifying diagnosis would most likely be aghast, or at least potentially ill-served (if you'll forgive the pun) if sponsored reviews of medical treatments like radiosurgery influenced the patient's research results.

Especially if they are reviews like the ones Cutts exhibits where reviewers have bad spelling or demonstrative lack of knowledge about that which they are reviewing.

"For this very important (potentially even life-or-death) medical topic," writes Cutts, "we saw paid reviewers admit that they knew nothing about a treatment before getting paid to post about it, or who didn’t research the subject enough to know that a treatment was decades old instead of brand-new. We saw people writing about brain tumors who didn’t even spell 'tumor' correctly, and we saw people who got the name of the sponsor wrong."

In short, things aren't looking good for the paid post. At least, where one is openly or obviously paid.

A cynical contributor to Aaron Wall's SEObook, though, makes a fair point that Cutts' example (that it was fear-based notwithstanding) denies the reality of medical research and the big money behind it. Wall questions whether paid posts are worse than sponsored research, and calls on "RFK" to drive it home:

"The irony is that most/all of the articles that he would prefer to see on the Google SERPS are researched, assembled and ghost written by pharma companies. Having worked with a number of clients in the medical field it's become more and more apparent that the 'studies' published by well-known academics are most often based on research by the drug companies, scripted by a hired copywriter and given to the academic to sign off and publish under their byline."

Surely, and one is also reminded of recent accusations that certain FDA commissioners rejected experimental cancer drug Provenge because of their investments in chemotherapy, a competing treatment.

Though Wall's post switches direction and delves into the more esoteric concept of "the googlization of reality," the point that no industry or topic is without its vested interests and stakeholders rings a resonant (and perhaps more deeply frightening) bell.

For even the purity of Wikipedia, which Google loves to champion, is not without its soiled fringes – what with secret mailing lists and editor witch hunts gumming up the gears from time to time (watch out for "free range sarcasm").

On to the next stage of grieving then, which is depression for SEOs now looking to bargain with Google about (overtly) paid anything – and that general malaise that comes with the cracking of an ideal that anything, even within Google's gleaming search rankings, is pure.

And acceptance? Well, if it ever comes, it will be accepting that our porcelain ideals are chipped in practice, are borrowed eventually from the realization that the Behaviorists were right (nothing is without prior motivation), and are never without a dark mirror of an ideal to contradict. But that's no reason not to have them, now is it?

SEOmoz Takes Cash, Plans Changes

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:18:13 +0000

Rand Fishkin disclosed he is giving up a small percentage of SEOmoz in exchange for a venture capital investment of $1.25 million from a pair of investors. Rand said in a recent post to SEOmoz that they have decided to seek outside investment for his popular SEO site and services.

"We literally have a hundred different ideas for tools, search analytics, tracking, guides, resources and more and we're in a position to recruit help from the best and brightest the industry has to offer... but, we can't do it alone," Rand said in his lengthy discussion of the news.

Ignition Partners and Curious Office will be the entities partnering to infuse SEOmoz with venture capital. Rand promised to discuss both VCs in future Whiteboard Friday posts.

The various investment processes, including due diligence, should be over by October, according to Rand. During that time, SEOmoz will formalize, with a board of directors that could include former Google Webmaster Central guru Vanessa Fox, now part of real estate tracker Zillow.

Prior to starting the VC process, SEOmoz's site architect Matt Inman decided to leave the company. Rand said his departure and the forthcoming venture investment were unconnected.

By the numbers, Rand noted SEOmoz has over 1,200 premium members who access the kind of content the investment should help the site continue to develop.

"While we're planning to be conservative with the investment (none of the standard, blow-through-the-money-in-6-months then ask for more), we will be able to take some risks and invest in projects that don't have a guaranteed outcome," Rand said.

Seven More Questions About SEO

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:06:36 +0000

Rand Fishkin followed up his original ten questions (plus bonus) on SEO knowledge with the answers, and some new questions from Danny Sullivan for everyone's perusal.

Seven More Questions About SEO

If you knew about the big four search engines, the concept of the 'long tail', and Alexa's fatal flaw, you got through the easy questions without a problem.

Rand provided a follow-up as promised to his original SEO quiz. He answered the original questions, like listing the three most important elements in the <head> section of a typical HTML document (and listing one that really isn't that important):

Title, Meta Description and Meta Robots are the big 3. Although Meta Robots isn't essential to have, it's certainly able to control spider and search activity. Meta keywords is another common answer, but it would rank as a distant 4th, as our experiments show that none of the major engines will rank a page for a keyword that is listed only in the meta keywords tag.

Danny offered some suggestions for another quiz. His seven questions proved taxing enough to drive Rand to the Internet to find a couple of answers. Here's the seven questions Danny posed to the audience:

How do you seize control of a local listing on Google? On Yahoo? What fields can you change? How do you add a picture?
What elements are important to ranking well in Google Video and YouTube?
How do you get into Google News? In particular, what unique structure do your URLs need to reflect to even be considered?
Google Blog Search -- full text or indexing off whatever you put out in feeds?
How do you submit to Google Product Search? Yahoo Product Search?
Do you have to have a mobile web site to be in Google Mobile? Yahoo Mobile?
How do you know if Google is personalizing your web results?

Think of it as a warmup to SES San Jose coming up this month.

NYT Gets The Goods On Google

Doug Caverly — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:48:48 +0000

When SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin calls something “quite possibly the best mainstream media article about Google, or modern search technology, in the last 5 years,” it’s pretty much our duty to cover it. When Rand Fishkin writes 800 words about said article, well . . . we know better than to condense and summarize.

Here’s the original article, then, straight from Saul Hansell of the New York Times. Fishkin calls it “informative to even those . . . most deeply inside the search industry . . .”

Matt Cutts gave his opinion about the piece, as well; though he was “a little worried” about having Hansell hang around the Googleplex, Cutts feels the article “does a good job of describing search quality at Google.”

Interested? Well, summarization just isn’t practical, but hitting the highlights might be. Fishkin begins by noting, “It’s nice to hear . . . that the current competitive advantage is primarily about the relevance of results.” Furthermore, “The Google bug system reminds us that behind all the magic, human beings toil to ensure quality, compare individual results and make tweaks based upon the best aggregate changes.”

There’s also some fairly straightforward talk about the freshness of Google’s results. “It’s nice to get confirmation and feel the vindication of this transparency, but there’s also a lesson to be learned - Google isn’t perfect and they often look inward,” writes Fishkin. “The note that this problem wasn’t addressed until the query ‘Google Finance’ didn’t show ‘Google Finance’ is strong evidence that Google is like many other companies. Things don’t get fixed unless the folks internally feel the pain of the problem.”

Then, at the very end of Fishkin’s coverage, comes another rush of information, which he describes as “a lot of confirmation about what many have only theorized until now.” At stake are “200 signals of quality . . . a classification system that attempts to determine query intent and an automated system to determine diversity.”

Again, this write-up is meant as more of a heads-up than a substitute for reading the real thing. When you’ve got time to read and process about 4,000 words’ worth of text, Saul Hansell’s original piece is definitely worth a look.

A Conversation With Google's Vanessa Fox

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:57:16 +0000

Nobody stands up Mike McDonald. Nobody, not even Google's Vanessa Fox. Back on a cold December day amid the howling Chicago winds, poor Mike sat alone, waiting for Google's Webmaster Central product manager. Alas, but all is vanity, and SEOMoz.org's Rand Fishkin stole the show (and the interview).

Well this time, it's payback, and it's for real. Vanessa agreed to an interview with Mike at SES New York, and guess who didn't show up this time. And since Rand already proved that video interviews were so easy a caveman could do it, Mike got his absent revenge and Rand got another shot at pinning her down.

Ahem. Pinning her down on Webmaster issues, I meant. Meanwhile, Mike looks for his lost Nokia N93 digital video camera phone…in New York, where it's probably already been sold out of the back of someone's truck.

Some quotables you'll want to listen for:

Vanessa: Is Mike gonna come over and kill you?

Rand: I should have tied those ropes tighter.

And there was something about Rand and pole dancing, just so you're warned.

Otherwise, Rand brings up some great questions, and Vanessa has some great answers. One of the most useful tips is deep into the video, so it's a good idea to highlight it here.

The burning question: When a webmaster moves an entire site, what's the best way to handle the dip in the search engine rankings while that transition is made?

The (suddenly) common sense answer: Fox stressed that it was a bad idea to simultaneously move a website to a new domain and redesign the whole thing. Instead, she says, take the pages from your old site and put them on your new site exactly as they are. Redirect the pages one at a time, carefully mapping on a one-to-one basis.

"What I see people do a lot when they do this move," she said, "is that they restructure the content of their pages instead of having this one-to-one mapping."

It's easier for the folks at Google and the robots working for them to know that this is the same site as before, just in a different place.

But it's also easier for the Webmaster if he or she does approaches moving by doing it one thing at a time. When the inevitable dip in ranking comes, the one-thing-at-a-time approach makes it easier to pinpoint what's causing it.

Other Important Questions To Listen For:

Is there a way to use Google Base to increase visibility in the main search engine results pages?
What's the secret formula to get my headline or image into Google News?
Is there going to be additional functionality in Webmaster Central?
Will Google try to compete with Alexa?
What about that pesky alphabetized link sorting in Webmaster Central?
How does Webmaster Central impact supplemental results?
Are supplemental results as bad as we think they are?
Is there a penalty for buying links from well-known link networks?
What is Google doing about comment spam and "parasite hosting" on .edu domains?

Yahoo Search Apologizes To Rand Fishkin

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:43:05 +0000

Rand's fiancée was none too pleased to see a Yahoo search result that brought back the name of a well-known Googler bearing Rand's last name. Congratulations are not in order for Rand Fishkin and Vanessa Fox, best known for her role at Google's Webmaster Central. Rand may be getting married, but the esteemed lady (referred to as Mystery Guest) isn't one of SEO's favorite Googlers. Yahoo Search suggested an alternate option when searching for Vanessa Fox. One of their options told the searcher to try "Vanessa Fox Fishkin." It seems Rand had some 'splainin' to do at home:

Just a short one that Mystery Guest pointed out to me in a huff tonight - Yahoo! search team, I think you owe her some apologetic flowers after this one. Her exact words after showing me this search were "do you love her?"

Yahoo Search didn't send flowers, but they did deliver a mea culpa for the pre-marital storm:

It wasn’t our intention Rand, but we appreciate the humor (and awkwardness) of your situation. So please accept our apology and our peace offering – an olive branch

We have to apologize too. The reason why "Vanessa Fox Fishkin" shows up in Yahoo Search has to do with a WebProNews Video Rand and Vanessa did in December 2006 during SES Chicago. So we're sorry too, Rand. As people can see from the video, Rand and Vanessa provided an informative, fun look at some search-related topics. It was all very proper, and our Mike McDonald was on hand as chaperone behind the camera the whole time. ---

Should SEOs Avoid Sitemaps?

Mike McDonald — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:53:38 +0000

Rand Fishkin recently posted an interesting concept on his SEOmoz.org blog about sitemaps. For those of you keeping score at home, a sitemap is a document (typically xml) that sits on your server and helps search engine spiders crawl and index your site. Sounds great, right? Maybe… maybe not. Rand theorizes these sitemaps may actually be bad for your SEO efforts.

Should SEOs Avoid Sitemaps?

Consider this: what if this content - that would otherwise go unindexed- is now indexed but still suffering from whatever problems caused it to not be indexed in the first place. Is it a good idea for content with problems (index-preventing problems) to be indexed just because it was listed in the sitemap? If it’s indexed, how is the webmaster to know it had a problem?

So I suppose question then becomes, once it's indexed, does it matter? Whether by natural crawl or sitemap-assisted crawl, the content is now indexed, so where is the downside? In other words, if your problem is no longer a problem… is that a problem?

Now, Rand isn’t someone I’d categorize as a tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist loon (well not all of those anyway) and he has had a fair share of supportive comments on this issue from SEO luminaries like RustyBrick and David Naylor. Nonetheless, I still have a problem thinking of a sitemap as a negative thing. Unless there is some sort of value differentiation between naturally indexed and sitemap-assisted indexed content (which I doubt), the argument falls a bit flat I think.

As such, I figured I’d just go right to the source and ask a Googler. So, I fired off a quick email to Vanessa Fox, Product manager for Google’s Webmaster Central. Though she’s still overseas in Dublin after attending SES: London, she was able to weigh in on the issue stating (in no uncertain terms); “there's no difference in indexing based on how we found a page (either by links or by a Sitemap).”

Unless... these SEO folks are thinking about optimization beyond search engines. In this scenario, perhaps the motivation would be hunting down and addressing problem content/pages that were, for whatever reason less than ideal or flawed. This is certainly noble and good of course… but at the expense of having content indexed in the search engines? I really just can’t get my mind around taking the SE out of SEO. Sure some page may not be perfect, but can’t you just tweak it however it needs tweaking after it’s been indexed?

As for the issue of a sitemap possibly preventing or making it more difficult for webmasters to identify problems, Vanessa didn’t see that as a problem. She maintains that (sitemaps) “won't mask anything for a webmaster who is looking at potential site problems.”

Further to this point she added the following:

"If the pages aren't well-linked and have low PageRank, they are unlikely to rank well for queries, so that problem should also be obvious to the webmaster, even if the pages are indexed. I always encourage webmasters to continue doing all of the things we recommend in our guidelines (ensuring the site is crawlable, well linked, has quality, unique content, etc.). A Sitemap doesn't replace all of those things. It simply is an additional tool for webmasters."

Sitemaps are supposed to make things easier for everybody – search engines and webmasters. As Vanessa observes: “Most site owners aren't experts on optimization - they simply want their pages indexed. Sitemaps help all site owners -- from the very small mom and pop to the very large company tell us about the pages of their site and provide input to us.”

Vanessa added that a sitemap might actually help a webmaster find problems with their site in some cases. She points out that: “If the site has pages with errors that prevent us from crawling, the pages won't appear in the index and those pages will be listed in the Crawl Errors section of webmaster tools. We may not have attempted to crawl some of these pages if they weren't in the Sitemap, so in this case, a webmaster might be alerted to problems not otherwise known.”

I asked Vanessa if future enhancements to sitemaps might include additional means of identifying and reporting issues to webmasters. She said she liked the idea and they were “always looking to provide as much information as possible to webmasters about potential issues”.

In the end, Vanessa said; “I don't see any reason for webmasters to avoid submitting Sitemaps. It enables them to give us a comprehensive view of the site and provide input to us about the site. And more information is always better.” While I can see the logic, to some extent, behind Rand’s post – namely wanting to be aware of problems.

While I am certainly not an expert SEO (disclaimer for Diggers), I don’t think the sitemap is going to somehow keep you from identifying these problems. Maybe you have to look for problems beyond: ‘is the page indexed (yes/no)’ but I just don’t buy into the concept of the sitemap as a negative for SEO in all but the wildest of exceptions.

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