There are some practices which might be perfectly acceptable for a search engine but completely unusable by my visitors. Style is a prime example to put it into context. Google won’t really care how big my fonts are and in what colours (broadly speaking - most search engines care that I’m not trying to screw with the numbers by hiding content) my content is but my visually awae users will.

The other way around, I may use tables, images with text in them and my users may get an enhanced experience but the search engines will be unable to read and list some of that content, meaning that my search engine positioning could suffer for it.

Flash content was a real problem for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, Flash really isn’t “my thing”, I dislike using flashy, moving, whizzy stuff for a website design, which in my opinion is a book, not a cheap poster. That said, a lot of users like flash so I certainly don’t discount it as a medium - in its place. Now Flash content can be output via an SDK into html content with links and text readable by search engines which really plugs a gap. Great, a sort of happy middle-ground for all.

What about images? why can we not find a way of embedding the text used into the image itself?

This would be especcially useful for logos which incorporate the company name. Of course we can add alt text etc but I’m talking about something which is auto embedded at the creation stage, thereby more trustworthy. Image size would of course increase but I can see real benefits. MP3’s and Movie files have embedded tags which can be read, why not other file types, some image formats already store when and how the image was taken, SGML?

There are so many things that I wish I knew more about, to be able to influence them and develop them from creation to release. I do it with websites and applications but what about defining the code in the first place?  I simply follow the rules laid out by others to ensure that browsers and applications can process what I have written, to be someone who wrote the processes followed by others is a truly mammoth task.

I’ve digressed, which is nothing new.

There is almost always a play off between 100% SEO and 100% usability, bring into it that the site must look good and function well and you end up with a whole melting pot. The long and the short of it is that you need to decide what’s most important to you. For me it’s that the user has a good experience, search engines always come second.

Technorati Tags: Embedded, Fonts, Gap, Google, Image Formats, Image Size, Images, Incorporate, Incorporate Company, Logos, Long Time, Many Things, Movie Files, Moving, Mp3 Files, Mp3 Movie, Prime Example, Sdk, Search Engine Positioning, Search Engines, SEO, Text Images, Time Don

Nice, that means I can now say that my blog is owned by Google :D, well one of the posts anyway.

Apparently it’s a boilerplate text which should have been modified but wasn’t. It’s been updated to reflect that users “retain copyright and any other rights” that they already hold on the content they submit or display using the browser.

Be careful what you agree to, it’s all part of Google’s plan to take over the world (insert evil laugh).

Technorati Tags: Blog, Boilerplate Text, Evil Laugh, Google

It’s currently only available to Windows users, imports IE settings if you wish and allows a very configurable interface for your search.

I’ve included some initial screenshots:

 More to follow shortly:
Download link: Link1

Technorati Tags: Beta Download, Blog, Configurable Interface, Download Browser, Google, Google Browser, Hwd, New Windows, Open Source Browser, Screenshots Gallery, Windows Beta, Windows Download, Windows Users

Google Search

It was listed within a few minutes. In the post before the comedy one “Are you in it for the long haul” I said the indexing is getting quicker, I also believe that Matt Cutts said that in some cases, content is indexed within half an hour. I find it pretty incredible that Google has/is already:

a) Noticed i’ve made a change

b) Updated it’s index

c) Displaying the page in it’s results

Now I appreciate that this may not translate to it’s cache etc but it’s still a pretty decent feat considering how many sites are updating content at any one time and that in the grand scheme of things, my site is not important to Google.

It might warrant some more experimentation.

Technorati Tags: Comedy, Few Minutes, Google, Google Search, Grand Scheme Of Things, Half An Hour, Long Haul, Matt Cutts, Scheme Of Things, Warrant

1. You are not an SEO just because you “are good with computers”
2. You are not an SEO just because you visited the googlehack site
3. You are not an SEO just because you have heard of SERPS
4. You are not an SEO just because you run a blog and mention SEO once in a while
5. You are not an SEO just because you look like Matt Cutts
6. You are not an SEO just because you know someone who works at Google
7. You are not an SEO just because you ………………

Please do continue to add to these, the funniest may get a prize.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computers, Google, Matt Cutts, SEO, Serps

SEO is an iterative process. Whilst some search engines may publish their algorythms, many don’t. This means that it’s often a case of trying something to see what affect it has.

This dates back to times when your meta tags were deemed to be one of the most important factors of SEO (probably before SEO was even termed as a phrase). Making changes, watching for weeks or months to see what difference it made, then make more subtle changes in an effort to creep one step higher. Patience is key and that is as true today as it ever was.

I think that the time factors have probably reduced. As a test, I made a post containing a word that isn’t used too often, it was listed in google within a few hours, so it is possible to be able to assess the impact of changes quicker (albeit depending on the site and how often google/other search engines check it out).

The process of SEO also requires more thought than ever before, a set of requirements, a clear plan of changes to be made as well as a monitoring program are all key to success. This becomes more evident when dealing with the differences between what some search engines want and what others will penalize you for. Sometimes it’s a fine line which you have to balance to both get the rankings and keep them. I was reading a blog the other day (a female web developer - pink developer or something - let me know if you know the blog name as I forgot it), she was pee’d that at some point google had randomly decided that her site had failed to meet their “quality guidelines” but that icanhascheezburger.com was perfectly acceptable (a very funny site - particularly for geeks). HEr site was well written and with good content so I can see her frustration.

It just goes to show that even when you get it right - you can get it wrong without even knowing it. SEO can be a thankless task, more so when it doesn’t go exactly right. Ultimately, the people who make themselves a success at it, do so through many hours of constant trial and error. If you are just starting out, take your time, it won’t be a quick fix.

Technorati Tags: Array, Conversions, Female Web, Funny Site, Geeks, Google, Google Search, Important Factors, Iterative Process, Long Haul, Meta Tags, Monitoring Program, Other Search Engines, Patience, Pee, Phrase, Quality Guidelines, SEO, Subtle Changes, Time Factors, Truth, Web Developer

Theoretically, it could be argued that I have just declined an opportunity for my business to be more successful and could have left a negative impression on a prospective customer which could affect the business longer term. We have had to provide timescales in the past due to heavy workload and they have had time-based requirements that we couldn’t fulfill. In each of those situations in the past, they have greatly appreciated the honesty and awareness of our planning which has led (in some cases) to them coming back to us for other work in the future. This is however, the first time we have had to turn someone down for other reasons.

This company (we’ll call them ACME Inc) are a local company who approached us for some SEO work recently. We provided an honest appraisal of their current rankings, backlinks and SERPS as usual and talked them through some of the simple first steps before they started down the route of investing heavily in advertising. As is becoming the norm for sites we appraise, the biggest issue was that the site had been developed in frontpage using tables with no seperate stylesheet and a very distorted view of standards.

ACME Inc decided that although they would like to increase their search engine positioning, they would like us to manage a search engine portfolio for them with their current site design and that as this “obviously” meant less work for us, they would expect a decreased quotation. This was unfortunate and took some weeks of to’ing and fro’ing to explain. For those who don’t see the pitfalls of this…. A successful website is very much like building a house. The success of the build is almost entirely reliant on the foundations, these are the fundamental steps you have to introduce before you can worry about the roof. For SEO to be successful you really need to have a stable, well developed and focussed site, otherwise you are almost doomed to failure from the start.

So we moved on, until ACME Inc read an article online describing SEO’s as the devil and that all you need is a certain piece of software which will submit your site to eleventy million search engines and the users will come flooding in. To fast forward, I felt that ACME and I would ultimately struggle to work well together. I realise that posting this may further negatively affect future relationships with other customers but I think it is a really key point that must be made.

I didn’t suggest to ACME that they pursue their preferred design and SEO approach without us because they read something contradictory and asked questions about it, the difficulty I had was that despite strong evidence, many discussions around quality rather than quantity and even an offer to try it their way first before resuming our suggested ways forward, they maintained that we were wrong. This was really unfortunate and to that end, I have done everything I can to make sure that our door is decidedly propped open and that if they do go in another direction, we are always here to offer some advice and/or future services if they find that the route they have chosen is not as successful as they expect. This I think is the right approach.

So, to get to the point (I know it took some doing to get here), here are my thoughts on a successful relationship and some things that are needed to forge such a relationship:

• Good communications channels
• A good single point of contact (both ways)
• A basic level of understanding of the technologies/services OR someone able to pick up that understanding relatively quickly (Failing this, you really are relying on blind faith, which is dangerous for the customer).
• A clear plan, costs, resources and timescales
• Realism - Much as we would all like a top 3 result in Google for the most used keywords, it wont happen overnight and it will cost more than your daily bus fare.

If any of these things are missing, working together may be difficult or lead to misunderstandings over requirements, achievements, quality of work or value for money.

Have you had similar (or vastly different) experiences? How have you dealt with them? Ive been lucky not to have to ever deal with outright conflict in a professional capacity - have you? I’m genuinely interested.

Technorati Tags: Acme Inc, Backlinks, Building A House, Current Rankings, Distorted View, Economic Situation, First Steps, Foundations, Fundamental Steps, Honest Appraisal, Honesty, Local Company, Negative Impression, Pitfalls, Prospective Customer, Quotation, Search Engine Positioning, Serps, Stylesheet, Workload

http://www.googlr.com

Yep - owned and operated by Google. Googlr is a common typo as the QWERTY keyboard has E and R next to each other. The traffic it received prompted Google to run exactly the same search engine from it.

I have to say, it definitely seems faster too, I’ve not yet checked the A records but I would guess that it is running on different equipment and as it receives far less hits than the main site, it would explain it’s speed.

I’ve changed my homepage for the speed reason - that and because I found it funny. I’m sure it’s as old as the internet but it made me laugh because of how I found it…..yup - Big fingers/small brain, I typo’d it. Enjoy!

Apparently (source):

In English, Googlr is the fifth most commonly used misspelling/mistyping of the word Google. There are a lot of reasons for this and other types of misspelling. Some occur because you are in a hurry and your fingers are faster than your brain, or the other way around Omissions as in Googl or Permutations (e.g. transposed gl and lg) of two characters as in Goolge are a typical result of such processes. Other possibilities are related to the exceptional spelling of Google. The reason for the Googlr misspelling could be found very easy if you look at front of yourself. You will see a keyboard with it’s special arrangement of letters. As the letter e is surrounded by letter r and w some key presses miss it’s target and thus produce mistypings like googlr and googlw.

NB: gogle.com & googel.com also do the same and there are probably more.

Technorati Tags: Amp, Brain, Fingers, Gl, Gogle, Googel, Googl, Google, Googlr, Googlw, Hurry, Letter E, Misspelling, Nb, Possibilities, Qwerty Keyboard, Search Engine, Spelling, Target, Traffic, Typical Result, Typo

Pagerank (Google) has been operating for quite some time. At one point it was the de-facto success marker for any website. It’s been diluted over the years and for most people I know, it’s now a “nice to have” rather than a requirement for a successful website or blog.
Apparently, Microsoft are now including “time on site” to decide the importance of pages listed in its index. There are some clear benefits to this, if a users spends a great deal of time on a site, it’s likely to contain good content which was relevant to the original search. The most obvious downside is that habitual sites like social networking sites and auctions (Facebook, Bebo, ebay) will no doubt be weighted more heavily despite the content being of little use. Does it completely negate Browserank though? We’ll probably have to wait and see.

So how does Microsoft know how long it’s search users have stayed on my site? Google can get this through it’s analytics application (which we use here) to accurately graph user statics. I don’t yet know how they plan on doing this (or even if that information is released yet), I’ll be having a delve through the paperwork later and see if I can find out.

Microsoft Webmaster Tools

Live Webmaster Center

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Array, Auctions, Auctions Ebay, Delve, Downside, Ebay, Focus Groups, Google, Graph, Marker, Microsoft, Microsoft Tools, News Sites, No Doubt, Pagerank, Paperwork, Quite Some Time, Rival, Search Users, Social Networking Sites, Success, Webmaster Tools

http:/www.4hoursearch.com

It took him 4 hours to write it, 4 hours to go from 0 to 20 hits/second and 4 hours to get the domain name.

The astute amongst you will notice that it’s pretty much a like-for-like of Cuil.

You can read what Sam has to say about it here: http://www.javarants.com/2008/08/01/yuil-is-dead-4hoursearch-is-now-online/

The source code is being released by Yahoo and Sam has nicely kept the demo running and speedy it is too.

Read about the other top BOSS applications on the Yahoo search blog: http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000613.html

Here you can see the search term “Hungerford Web Design” with this blog #1 and the main site #2 - I’m liking Yahoo more today

Screenshot

Technorati Tags: Applications, Blog, Boss, Caption, Cuil, Demo, Domain Name, Google, Money, Party Developers, Running, Search Engine, Search Engines, Source Code, Speedy, Time Effort, Web Design, Yahoo, Yahoo Api, Yahoo Search, Yuil