Matt Cutts just clarified something I noticed the other day, in his post about changes in URL queries. It used to be that if you went to Google and searched on “www.stonetemple.com” you would see something like:
The Highest Paying AdSense Keywords
9/18/2006 by 3 Comments
The folks at Xendant did an excellent analysis of the best Adsense keywords. Their post/article makes one simple point. It’s not just about the cost per click, but its about the cost per click times the number of clicks you can expect.
They present two tables: one that sorts keywords by highest CPC, and the other is sorted by CPC * number of expected clicks. Boy do these two tables tell a different story.
Of course, there are other things to consider. Many people have been aware for a long time where to make the most money, so the most profitable keywords outlined in the Xendant tables are also the most competitive. You don’t want to leap into promoting an insurance, travel, or education site on the web lightly. The competition is very, very tough, and it’s backed by money.
So you do need to pick your spots. You need to figure out how a table like this relates to unique value add that you can bring to the table. Fortunately, if you bring a significant amount of unique value add, you should be in good shape. Much of your competition is crap, and will eventually fall by the wayside.
However, you need to anticipate that this will take a long time. If you are building a site from scratch and want to build an SEO empire for one of these categories, it’s a minimum of 6 months after launch before you get to interesting traffic, unless you somehow come up with a killer idea. Patience, intense focus on the long term goal, and determination to stay on course will all be needed.
30 SEO Tips from the Matt Cutts Videos
9/15/2006 by 7 Comments
In this post, we are going to provide an SEO’s summary of all the Matt Cutts videos. This is done in rough chronological order. Note that we are going to itemize only those items that might affect your site implementation in a direct way.
This means that we are going to include little information on Data Center updates, Supplemental Results, and updates from SES, even though these are discussed by Matt in various videos. We are also leaving out advice such as “develop good content”, even though we agree with it heartily. This is just the stuff that affects implementation.
Release Date: 7/30/6
Qualities of a Good Site
1. Make your site fully crawlable. One idea is to use a text only browser (such as the Lynx browser) and make sure you can crawl the entire site.
2. Google decides what description text to display for a search query at query time, and picks the description that best matches the query.
3. If you want to disable the DMOZ description for your site, use the “NoODP” metatag.
4. Stated that they favor the bold tag slightly more than the strong tag. This was recanted in a later video.
7/30/6
Optimize for Search Engines or Users?
5. Google does not penalize sites for coding errors, as they are too common.
7/30/6
Some SEO Myths
6. OK to operate more than one site, provided that the content is substantively different. This is true, even if there are common code elements, such as Javascript elements, and CSS.
7. Sneaky Javascript redirects are a problem.
8. Launching Sites will millions of pages will raise a flag and likely be a problem. Launch more softly, perhaps with thousands of pages at a time. That this is an issue was later confirmed in the Robert Scoble post on Matt’s blog (make sure you read the comments too).
7/31/6
How to Structure a Site
9. It’s OK to acquire a related domain, and simply 301 its existing links to a new site. Emphasis is on related. Don’t try this with unrelated sites. Note an example of this is the Amish GoKarts site.
10. Google takes a hard stance on cloaking. Don’t do it for any reason. This includes re mapping pages with too many parameters to simpler URLs. Solve this in your code.
11. In addition, if you want to do A/B Testing, do this on pages that can’t be seen by Google.
7/31/6
Static v.s. Dynamic URLs
12. Your URLs should have no more than 2 or 3 parameters on them.
12. Keep your parameters short. Long numbers may be interpreted to be Session IDs.
13. Geo targeting using IP delivery is OK, because you are treating the crawler the same as the user.
14. Official cloaking definition: Delivering different content to the Googlebot than the end user.
7/31/06
Does WebSpam Use Google Analytics?
15. The Google WebSpam team does not look at any data from Google Analytics.
16. If you run a porn site, and you want to be filtered out so you don’t show up in Safe Searches, the best way to flag this is in the keyword metatags.
17. Putting links in an option box is a bad idea.
8/1/6
Lightning Round
19. Google treats the strong and the bold tags the same.
20. Google treats the em and italics tags the same.
21. Google considers content to be duplicate if it’s an exact copy, or “too similar”.
22. Translated versions of content are not considered duplicate.
23. In the case of Canadian and US sites with minimal differences, they will pick one to show in the results.
24. Google does not weight blogs differently than web sites.
25. .gov and .edu links to not provide an inherent boost. They are weighted the same.
8/5/6
Reinclusion Requests
26. The best way to do a recinclusion request is through Google Webmaster Tools.
27. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to identify some of your problems, such as sneaky Javascript redirects, Doorway pages, and hidden text.
28. Get clean (fix all your sins) before submitting a Reinclusion request.
29. Include in your Reinclusion request something that reassures Google that you will sin no more.
8/7/6
Google Webmaster Tools
30. You can use the “Preferred Domain” feature of Google Webmaster tools to indicate whether you prefer that Google represent your site as http://www.yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.com. It also will pass link credit for link to the non-preferred version of your domain to the preferred version automatically. However, Matt says it takes weeks to take effect and you should leave your canonical 303 redirects in place.
Matt also recorded several other videos that cover other aspects of the search space for which we extracted no hard core implementation tips. These are:
- 7/31/6: Supplemental Results
- 7/31/6: Google Data Centers
- 8/7/6: My Tips for SES
- 8/23/6: Data Center Comments
- 8/28/6: Recap of SES San Jose 2006
- 9/6/6: Crawl Dates in the Google Cache
- 7/31/6: Google Terminology
SEO is Evolving Fast
9/14/2006 by 1 Comment
I have been sitting here this morning staring into space and pondering the changing face of the world of search. It can really be difficult to get your arms around at times, because so much is going on at times. One of the more recent things that caught my eye are the Intuit – Google partnership that you can read about in this post by Barry Schwartz at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Barry rightly tags this as a significant deal for Google. It should extend Google’s already significant reach into small businesses. It also marks a new level of integration between search engine sevices and significant software providers. Of course, Microsoft gets this type of integration at no cost, so it’s critical for Google to do these types of deals.
I also saw this morning a post at Search Engine Watch about Yahoo Local Becoming more Social. Yahoo has extended the functionality, which previously included ratings and reviews, to now allow users to create and maintain their own personalized lists, tag the content in the lists, and share it. This move should make the functionality appealing to more users, so more people will do it, and it will create a wealth of additional user generated content.
Yahoo has been pushing in this direction as part of its Find, Use, Share, Extend strategy for some time, and this is just the latest step. Google has been making similar moves to extend into social search as well. One of Google’s recent initiatives is the Google Co-Op program. This program has not received much promotion or push, but it allows webmasters and users to tag content and get subscribers to their tagged lists. The beauty of the Co-Op program for Webmasters is that it’s a slick way to turn visitors into repeat visitors. You can read more about it in our latest post about Google Co-Op here.
I also spent some time today investigating Google Base. This seems to be another one of these hidden gems that Google has rolled out that you just don’t hear about on a daily basis. But it appears to provide a new way for publishers to distribute and promote content. I currently don’t have a clear idea whether or not as to how this will bring extra traffic to a web site, but I smell something here for people with large databases of information.
The above items are just a few samplers of the constant change in our business. What all this means for the practice of SEO is that it becomes increasingly complex. While content development and marketing (thought of by some as link building) remain a staple of building your site’s traffic, there are more and more hidden opportunities to leverage the activities of the search engines themselves. Matching the right opportunity to your business, or your client’s business can be the latest “trick” you use to win the game.
Making a Living at Organic Listings
9/13/2006 by 2 Comments
There is a current thread at Webmaster World that asks the question: Is it Realistic to Base a Business Around Free SERPs?. Interesting dialogue. You can see my post under the user ID of “stonecold”. Basically, what I say is, this is what my company does for a living.
Of course, you can make a living pursuing organic listings. It’s a matter of approach. When you focus all of your energy on outstanding content and high quality links, your business will grow. No question that there will be peaks and valleys. Search engines do update their algorithms and data on a regular basis. This affects your rankings and your traffic.
But good content and high quality links is what the search engines want you to concentrate on. Take it on faith that their objective is to provide the highest quality web sites in response to a user’s search query. If they get a reputation for doing this, their market share grows.
The way they succeed in doing this is by identifying the best content. They use 2 major methods:
- Analyze the content on your pages (including its links)
- Analyze the number, quality, and relevance of links to your pages
What this means is that ongoing changes by the search engines are likely to reward you if you truly focus on these things. Their changes are also likely to screen out the competitors that are relying on the latest tricks.
However, this is not for the faint of heart. Building a brand new site in a competitive market, and bringing it to a level of prominence is a 2 to 3 year process.
Danny Sullivan Keynoting WebmasterWorld – Not Dead Yet!
9/12/2006 by Leave a Comment
The news just broke that Danny Sullivan has signed on to provide a keynote speech at Webmaster World in Las Vegas on November 16th. You can read the announcement on Danny’s blog, or read more about it on the Webmaster World forums. You can get more info on attending Pubcon here.
This should come as no surprise to industry insiders. Danny has been the face of the SEO industry for some time, and it’s really unlikely that he is going to disappear from the scene anytime soon. I for one am excited by this turn of events.
Now that Danny is about to be separated from Incisive Media/SES/SEW, he can begin to build on his role in our industry without the restrictions of an employer. It reminds me of the last SES, when Danny took a moment to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of Matt Cutts blog. Apparently Matt had announced that he was going to launch it with Danny and Brett Tabke in the room. Danny quipped about the two of them (Danny and Brett) tripping over themselves to get the announcement of Matt’s blog out first.
So now the stampede is around Danny. This will be a big boost for Webmaster World. I bet the sign-ups will see a significant boost because of this. As for Danny, the man who never really left is back, and (I suspect) here to stay.
