SEO Rants and Resources

New Google SERP Features | WebProNews

Google has just announced 2 new improvements to Google Search. The first is an expanded list of related searches, and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions.

The company says its deploying a new technology that better understands associations and concepts related to searches. Google explains:...one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" are related terms that could help you find what you need.Google says its able to target more queries, more languages, and make suggestions more relevant to what users are looking for.

We've heard Google talk about wanting to get better with intent-based search, and it looks like they're now doing something about it."Additionally, we're now offering refinements for longer queries — something that's usually a challenging task," says a post on the Official Google Blog. "You'll be able to see our new related searches starting today in 37 languages all around the world."As for the longer snippets, users will see them when they search for longer queries (which users are using more of these days).

They will display more text to show more of the keywords used in the query and how they are used on the page.These changes may not be the final word in intent-based search.

The "java" example discussed by Bruce Clay late last year isn't addressed very well here. The related searches suggested when I search for that keyword do not include coffee or country related items.

Still, the features are an indication that Google is indeed looking in this direction.The longer snippets feature is not exactly delivering more relevant results than before, but it could go a long way toward helping users determine if results in fact are relevant by giving them more info to reach a conclusion.

New Google SERP Features | WebProNews

Tags: google, SERP features, google search, performance based SEO

Reputation Management Tools

On March 4th I wrote a post titled Reputation Management - Why you should be concerned. In it, I discussed the issue of removing negative press etc. What we did not cover is how to monitor your reputation and discover what is being said about you or your company. Following is a list of 34 online reputation management tools as published on the small business marketing blog at Duct Tape Marketing. 

Manage Your Identity

claimID.com - Works along with openID to verify your identity on multiple websites.

FindMeOn.com - Link all of your networks together and verify your identity so people know it’s your profile.

FreeYourID.com - Uses .name address to sign you up for sites.

Garlik.com - Searches the web looking for mentions of you that might involve identity theft.

MyOpenID.com - Use one username to verify your log in on sites that use OpenID - great for sites where you might otherwise have multiple log ins.

Spyshakers.com - Identity Management System that allows users to access their websites and passwords remotley.

TypeKey.com - Another provider of the OpenID standard.

WordPress.com - Sign up for a free account and use as OpenID

Manage Your Reputation

Naymz.com - Sign-up and invite your invite people to write reviews about you and your work.

Rapleaf.com - Look up your reputation, rate others, and they will be invited to rate you in return.

RepVine - Reference and reputation management combined.

ReputationDefender.com - A service that attempts to help you get things being said online about you removed

TrustPl.us - An online reputation service that ranks based on trust scores.

List of message board tracking services: BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, MSN Money

Places to find groups to track: Yahoo Groups, AOL Groups, MSN Groups, Google Groups.

Monitor This allows you to monitor and track keywords over multiple search engines.

Keotag.com A service that allow you to search for tagged blog posts across multiple blog search engines.

Manage Your Online Profiles

Comwat.com - Put your online identities in one place to make it easier to show and find profiles

onXiam.com - This site lets you link all your online identities into one account making it easier for people to find you across the Internet.

OtherEgo.com - Another way to display you online profiles.

ProfileBuilder.com - Very function heavy profile builder that shows off the parts of your profiles you select.

ProfileMat.com - Pull all you profiles together and allow commenting on your profile mat page.

SimplifID.com - One ID for all your online profiles

SocialURL.com - Simple URL to show all your profiles

Venyo.org - Lets you add all of your online activities, including blogs and comments to one page.

Zoolit.com - A landing page to show all your social networks

Tags: onlineidentity, reputation management, social networks

Poor economy effects Yahoo Minimum Bids

Yahoo has announced the lowering of the minimum bid in certain categories for their popular Pay Per Click service.

Quoting the official Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, "Given that certain business categories have been impacted by the current economic conditions, we’ve reviewed minimum bid amounts on a large number of Sponsored Search keywords and reduced the minimum bids on many terms. This review process is a part of our ongoing efforts to optimize our search marketplace."

If in the past you had bid on terms and had a lower than required minimum bid that was high enough to fall under the newly revised minimums your daily spend may be increasing as the amount of traffic would be increasing with your additional terms. What this means to you is that if you log into your account you may be able to lower the amount you are paying for each individual click.

Lower costs for Pay Per Click advertising from Yahoo combined with performance based SEO from Page Views gives you a great one two punch for both PPC and Organic rankings.

Writing Successful Copy For Search Engines

When developing or redesigning a web site, you must first discover what the goals of your site are: to make sales, build mailing lists for future sales, educate people about your product or service, support existing clients, build brand awareness, etc.  Although sites may have multiple goals, each goal affects the focus is to directly sell a product, your content may use wording that compels the reader to take out a credit card and make an impulse purchase: it is built to close. A site built for existing clients may include areas for customer support, product support, product updates, etc. Your goals directly effect the content and choice of words used to market your website.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make in search engine marketing is to create a site that cannot be indexed by the search engines. This happens for a variety of reasons no matter who is doing the development: an outside contractor or an IT employee of your own company.

Search engines can only read text; so Flash, Java Script and images on a web site are worthless to them.  They cannot find anything to read within computer language.  Search engines first read the text on your pages and then index the text that contains your keywords.  Some will also read the words in your title and Meta tags; which are the key words hidden behind the visible part of your page.  They crawl through your site like spiders, going from link to link, and store the information in their database for later retrieval when a search is conducted.  With no words on your page the engines can’t put anything into their database.

Many companies compete with other sites to see who can tell their story in the least amount of words.  Some sites are often nothing but bullet points or read like a power point presentation. With no text on a page, there is nothing for the search engines to read. Also, many have a “splash” page with a company name, logo and perhaps even an animation running on the page people see first. Your first page is the most important for a search engine to find out about you; without words they go away with nothing.

Including text at the top of the page and in headlines establishes a “theme” and identifies the most important points for the search engines.  By placing your keywords at the beginning of paragraphs and headings and by making words bold you are telling the search engines they are important and are to be used in establishing the page theme.  Use keyword phrases in your text as much as you can, but write copy for people first and then for the search engines.

Small Business Gets An Extra $100M

Link: Small Business Gets An Extra $100M | SmallBusinessNewz.

By David A. Utter - Mon, 03/17/2008 - 9:53am.

The White House wanted to eliminate a few programs

John Kerry's Small Business & Entrepreneurship committee wrangled over $100 million more on top of prior requests from the federal budget to support more small business initiatives.

The Small Business Administration received a boost from Senate Democrats last week with an assortment of gains above the White House's requested SBA's budget. Senator Kerry's committee announced they added funding for several initiatives, several of which the Bush Administration tried to eliminate.

Winners among the budget items included increased loan oversight and reduced fees, microloans, contracting assistance, Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers, veterans outreach programs, and technical assistance programs, among others.

"Small businesses create more than two-thirds of all new jobs, yet by refusing to fund important small business programs the Bush Administration has starved entrepreneurs of the resources they need to grow their firms," Kerry said in a statement.

The White House sought to eliminate microloans and the Microloan Technical Assistance program from the budget. The Committee said the $31 million loaned through the program in 2007 helped more woman and minorities in small business than any other program.

New Markets Venture Capital, and Technical Assistance, each received $5 million under the reworked budget blueprint. Both work with job creation and equity investment in low income areas.

Veterans' programs received a greater boost than the original budget offered, as those increased from $743,000 in funding to $2.3 million. With soldiers returning from overseas duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the change looks like a necessary one for helping them reintegrate into the private sector.

When the small businesses that take advantage of federal programs get to work on marketing themselves, they may be contributors to a big increase in local online advertising over the next three years.

A report from Marchex about local online advertising claimed the $8 billion local online ad market would hit $20 billion in three years.

When they do, Marchex suggested those ads should motivate an action locally. Major brand name companies in particular should be doing this for their local resellers, and those smaller businesses should engage the brand company to build their campaigns with this intent.

Flash Problems in SEO - Work-Arounds

Flash content can not be easily optimized for search engines so if you rely too heavily on it you are really putting yourself and your clients at a disadvantage using it. Of course like everything else, there are work-arounds and exceptions.

 As mentioned earlier in this tread the engines can only read words.  This means that any part of the site that uses flash is of no use to you in terms of organic listings in the engines.

 Here is my 2 cents worth about the subject.

 To be optimized properly, the site should be ADAcompatible and include keywords and phrases. Basically if the blind can read it, so can the engines.

 Don’t make the entire page flash.  Use a lot of content outside of the Flash file. Use it to animate just a part of the page. Even though they will ignore the flash file they will still be able to pick up on the page “theme” – they will know what the page is about.

 If you just have to create the page in Flash us the <noembed> tag. Put the html version of what ever flash you are using on the page. This gives the engines something to read and the dinosaurs who don’t have flash installed in their browsers.

 Here is an example of a local company that uses flash. They are not maximizing what they have. The page it’s self has a Google Page Rank of 4.

 The only words that can be read on the entire page are: twistique - web development with a twist

  They have inbound links. http://tinyurl.com/255abj

 This is what a search engine3 sees when they get to the page.

http://tinyurl.com/2ygge3

 So if you search for “twistique” they have a top ranking in Google.

If you search for “web development with a twist” they have a top ranking in Google. http://tinyurl.com/yps38j

 I think you will have a very hard time finding them under any other words or phrases even though they have several sections of the site. This is a great example of a site that is very nice to look at but just does not work for a business that would need to have organic traffic.