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September 28, 2006

The Site Map and Simple Link Building Concepts

The site map is the most basic way you can show a list of urls to the search engines, but that does not mean that your site map has to be basic. Below is a very simple approach for applying link building concepts to your site map.

• Add Link Text. It’s not good enough to show urls to the search engines. Tell search engines about those urls by placing each page’s most important keyword phrase in the link.

• Subtract Descriptions. Do not waste time and space with descriptions. Get rid of them so robots can focus solely on links.

• Divide Site Map into a Series of Site Maps. Spiders will only crawl so many links per page. A series of sitemaps allows you to (a) include all unique pages that you want indexed, and (2) increases the likelihood that each page will be crawled. Use as many pages as necessary.

• Multiply Sitemap Links. Depending on the number of site map pages, either link to all in your footer or just the main site map page. If you choose the latter, link to all site maps at the top of all site map pages.

Easier said than done, of course, but well worth it.

Posted by tom at 01:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 27, 2006

Revisiting the Many Faces of Nofollow

About a month ago, in my post about Del.icio.us cloaking its robots meta tags, I got into a great discussion about the relative functions of the "nofollow" robots meta tag vs. the "nofollow" link attribute.

Jason Dettbarn, in the comments, said

I know one is global and one is used for individual links. But end result, what is the difference? Both tell robots not to follow the links.

The reason I bring this up, is because del.icio.us still has the "nofollow" link attribute on the individual links, regardless if your user agent is "normal" or Googlebot or whatever. So the link juice still doesn't pass, regardless of the meta tag.

to which I replied,

As for the nofollow meta tag and the nofollow link attribute having the same effect, that's not my understanding. As I understand it, the nofollow meta tag tells the bot to literally not crawl the target page, while the nofollow link attribute does NOT instruct the bot to avoid crawling the link, but instead, tells it to merely not pass link popularity (or PR, or however you want to think about it).

So having a nofollow meta tag on a page does (or should) put a stop to indexing pages linked from that page, while having the nofollow link attribute enables indexing of links on the page but does not allow them to pass popularity.

Jason set me straight by pointing me to an earlier Cutts post that described the two as being similar in functionality. With that, I felt a little foolish, although it didn't negate the main point of my post, which remains that Del.icio.us is misleading its users.

Fast forward. I feel vindicated today, because while I still wasn't right (at least in terms of what Matt Cutts says, which I'll consider authoritative), I certainly wasn't the only one who believed that the two "nofollow" attributes have different purposes.

In an interview with John Battelle yesterday, Matt Cutts once again equated the attributes. This morning, Danny Sullivan asked for clarification, saying

Let's back up. You can put a meta robots tag on your pages with the value of "nofollow," as described here. This tag, about 10 years old now, long predates any concerns about link selling skewing search results or the nofollow attribute. It is supposed to tell a search engine not to follow any links on a page, for purposes of indexing those links.

...

Now on to the nofollow attribute. Created in January 2005, it was a way to flag particular links to search engines as those a site owner doesn't explicitly approve of. It was never defined as a means to telling search engines not to actually "follow" the link. It was more a way to say that you don't endorse the link. In fact, to my knowledge, Yahoo and perhaps others will still "click on" or follow links even if they make use of the nofollow attribute.

I doubt that Matt Cutts misunderstands Google's methodology in dealing with the two "nofollow" attributes, so I'm officially changing my beliefs on their usage. But I do feel better knowing that I'm not crazy, and that others (of significant influence and industry knowledge, no less) were lured into believing as I did.

Posted by erik at 10:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 26, 2006

Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Announcing The “Search Query Oddity of the Week�

Here at Intrapromote, the latest search behavior is very important to us and our clients. When I say “search behavior�, I’m referring to how people use search engines to search for client sites and their offerings. To do this, we have to be on top of all the different search queries, or keywords and phrases, people use when seeking out our clients’ sites.

We have clients with a list of 100 relevant keywords and phrases. We have clients with a list of 10,000 relevant keywords and phrases.

Many of our clients are surprised at some of the ways people search for their products, services, and site offerings. Some are quite different than they expect and often, some keywords and phrases are either much more popular or much less popular than expected. We even find some new clients have had their sites previously optimized for paticular keywords or phrases that we determine no one actually uses. Woops!

Since we are constantly researching the latest search behavior, we run across some real doozies – keywords or phrases that are shocking, gross, puzzling, and often LOLFOF (laugh out loud, fall on floor) funny. Makes for some interesting water cooler talk around here!

So, we’ve decided, it’s about time we started sharing some of these interesting search queries with our readers.

Starting next week, each of our staff will nominate one search query. We also welcome all our readers to submit oddities coming from their keyword research or search behavior tools. We will then decide which is crowned the Search Query Oddity of the Week. If one of our readers comes out on top, they will be rewarded with a link here on SEO Speedwagon. Finally, a new category will be added in our left column where each week’s winner will be archived for eternity.

This should be fun. Ready? Go.

---

Entry rules:
1. Keep ‘em clean please, this is a PG-rated blog.
2. Send entries to doug@intrapromote.com.
3. Mention the keyword research tool used.

Posted by doug at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 25, 2006

MSN adCenter Editorial Review, Review

I have noticed an interesting trend with MSN adCenter’s editorial review process. It appears that although keywords are accepted immediately upon entry, they go through a lengthy review process.

Now with lengthy, I don’t necessarily mean extensive. The only thing I’ve been able to confirm is that it can take 30-45 days for this process to take place. Whether that’s because it’s an extensive process or just because it takes them that long to get around to it I haven’t been able to confirm.

When I called in and inquired about this my question was not answered directly. I was able to find out that a computer or a human could be reviewing the keywords. If it’s a computer taking this long to do it, it makes me wonder about the backend infrastructure that they have in place at adCenter. Of course it could just be that a certain percentage of their servers are experiencing the ‘blue screen of death’ at any given point in time….

Okay, okay that was a low blow so I’ll move on and keep the focus on the editorial process.

The other thing I’ve noticed about adCenter review is the downright flood of ‘Editorial Action Notices’ that come in to my inbox during this period of time. It would be much appreciated if these could be aggregated for many reasons, not the least of which is trying to go through each one to track it down and remedy it individually.

Overall the editorial review process isn’t bad, I just think it’s showing it’s age. Or put into other words, it’s immaturity. Editorial review is a good thing, and a necessary part of our working environment. Let’s just try to keep the time focused on making quality revisions and not on tracking down each individual discrepancy 30-45 days after it was in the forefront of our minds.

Posted by brent at 10:31 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 22, 2006

Google Can't Do It? That's News To Me!

Google, Google, He's Our Man . . .

If Google can't disallow . . . we're all screwed!

Take a look at Google's robots.txt file. In the ninth and tenth position, respectively, you should see the following:

Disallow: /news
Disallow: /nwshp

Now search for either of those exact URLs. If you want to see a disallowed page on an actual serp, try [google news and resources]

Links can produce this effect. See that "News" link on Google's home page? That points to /nwshp. And the reason why /news is showing for [google news and resources]? Take a look at who has the most links pointing to it with Google News and Resources in the anchor.

I guess the link is mightier than the disallow, even if you're Google.

Posted by tom at 09:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2006

How Will Ask Profit? Should've Asked the Prophet

Our own Sean Bolton goes on a rant now and again, and more often than not, he's right.

Last December, he took Ask to task for not being particularly realistic in continuing with its homegrown PPC program. In particular, he had this to say:

Perhaps Mr. Jeeves should ask himself a few questions:

• Does it make sense for me to continue PPC when I can just earn similar or possibly better revenue by just leveraging the existing relationship with Google for AdWords rev?
• Will I do an effective enough job in PPC sales and customer service to some day kill my relationship with Google and keep all the green to myself?
• Why do I have less than 6% market share in the search engine war?

I kept this in mind when reading today's MediaPost article, Diller: Ask.com To Continue Outsourcing Paid Search, which specifically states that back when IAC purchased Ask,

...one of the company's priorities was developing its own paid search platform for advertisers. But Barry Diller said Tuesday that the company has since changed its strategy. Now, he said, IAC is focusing more on drawing consumers to the site than selling its own pay-per-click ads to marketers.

"Queries will build revenue," Diller said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. He said the company's goal is to capture 10 percent of search queries--up from around 2 percent on Ask.com now and 5-6 percent considering other offerings.

Sean's above saying he told us so, but I'm not. He told us so.

Posted by erik at 04:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2006

Search Engine Optimization as Defined by the US Government

When our former PPC Director, Adam Lasnik, took a job at Google working with Matt Cutts, we knew it was Google's gain.

But I'm not above making sure his time is well spent. Just yesterday, Adam was to have taught an SEO seminar at Catholic University. The target audience? Government employees.

But do government agencies really need SEO help? I decided to query a few .gov sites to see what they say about how to optimize their sites. (I fully acknowledge that many of these might be officially outdated, but they are still live pages.)

• Here are a few tips on search engine usage (PDF) from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office:
  • Use two or three search engines since no one will cover all Web sites
  • Keep up with information about the Web by surfing various sites and talking to friends

• The US Government's Export Portal (PDF) challenges you to keep a close, regular watch on your conversions:

  How will I know that my site is successful? Look at your goals every three to six months. Have you met them? If so, is it time to create new, more challenging goals?

• FirstGov reminds us (cached version of a PPT file) that "MSN and Yahoo! obey robots exclusion more often than Google." Ouch. Also, in case you were going to send it a Christmas card, "Google’s algorithm is called Page Rank."

I hope Adam had a full house (sounds like he did) and that the participants were able to take away a great deal of information. I'm considering hitting universities next to see what they're teaching about SEO. I'm sure Adam would love to head back to school to star in his own lecture series.

Posted by erik at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 18, 2006

The Difference Between Google and Yahoo

We're asked about this all the time, so when I saw the story on the wire this morning that so well symbolized the ideological difference between the two search giants I wanted to make sure to share a few telling highlights with riders on The Wagon.

Now, clients are sick of hearing me repeat, again and again, that Google's product is relevancy. No one has ever heard me say Yahoo's product is relevancy, and I likely will never say it, unless we are suddenly cast into Superman's Bizzaro World.

Such certitude is only aided by ironic ledes like this, from the wire I mention above:

As its rivals create a bigger buzz on the Internet, Yahoo Inc. is hitting television and radio airwaves to remind people that its website remains on the cutting edge of technology and culture.

Cutting edge indeed. At least using telegrams as the delivery vehicle for such a message would have been inspired, rather than accidental, irony. Inspired irony can capture the zeitgeist they are trying to lasso with money, yet spinning that lariat requires one self-aware cowboy, indeed.

The Google antidote, in the same article?:

"Instead of worrying about branding, Google is able to spend time and money on building better algorithms to help people find information and data," said Regis McKenna, who helped steer the marketing campaigns of Apple Computer Inc. and Intel Corp.

Ah, self-awareness. Vive la différence:

As an added promotion, Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts stores to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page Friday.

What besides a cup of coffeee will get you relevance?

Posted by john at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 15, 2006

Where's My MSN Traffic?

Just yesterday, MSN launched its new "Live" version of its search engine and of course, put it on an obligatory .NET platform.

There's one main problem with the recent relaunch of MSN Live however. It's not passing referrer data as discussed over at SERoundtable. So what are the implications you ask? Try, you won't have a clue what your traffic is looking like coming from MSN for the foreseeable future.

The good news is MSN is utilizing a 302 temporary redirect which provides hope that MSN is still working on some stuff prior to implementing a 301 permanent redirect that will hopefully include referral data for logs.

Posted by sean at 09:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2006

Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps

In the spirit of Doug's most recent post about Google Webmaster Central, I wanted to add a few notes about both it and its Sunnyvale counterpart, Yahoo Site Explorer's recently updated webmaster area.

Yahoo Site Verification. I spent about an hour this morning preparing to verify about 20 sites for a very large client. One thing that's REALLY annoying about Yahoo's site verification process is that each site requires a unique text file - complete with unique filename and unique 16-character text string within the file - uploaded to the root.

Now, of course you can't create all 20 verification files, dump them into an email message, and send them to the client for uploading, because the client won't know what file goes with what site. So I created a folder for each file and zipped all the folders into one Zip archive.

I also added an Excel sheet with columns for the site, filename, and character string, because more than once, I've sent Yahoo authentication files over and over, only to have the recipient complain that the attachment didn't make it through. Apparently, many zealous mail clients look askance at curiously named, 16-byte file attachments. With the Excel file, I had a failsafe record of each verification file's contents in case they needed to be recreated by the client.

I'm sure Yahoo has a reason for giving each user a different authentication filename AND character string for EACH site that needs to be authenticated. I'm just not sure what the reason is.

Contrast this with Google Verification. First, I have to be honest and admit that I'd verified about a half dozen sites through Google before I realized that each time the server spat out an authentication file, it was the exact same file each time. Few people understand that with Google, your unique verification file (tied to your personal Google account) is your backstage pass to any concert you want. You can view the stats for any site that hosts your verification file in its root, and a site can host verfication files for as many people as need access to the stats.

So verify one site, then keep that verification file in a place you'll remember. From then on, you don't need to go through the process of having Google spit out the same info again and again, each time you want to verify a new site. Just upload your file to the root and Verify.

Like Yahoo's verification files, Google's also suffer from Napoleon Complexes - in fact, with no recommended content at all (just unique filenames), email clients are even more suspicious of them, because at 0 bytes, they're infinitely smaller than Yahoo's 16-byte files. While Google doesn't specifically demand that your file contain text, it doesn't discriminate against files that do. So here's a tip: Add some nonsense text to your Google verification file, and I think you'll find it more easily passable through email.

Posted by erik at 11:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 12, 2006

Google Webmaster Tools Uncovers Missed Site Opportunities

We have many clients whom we’ve helped create and submit sitemaps to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.

Simply put, a Google sitemap is a special file that resides on your server that enables you to tell Google what pages are present on your site. Once this is done, you can login to Google’s Webmaster Tools console and manage your sitemap as well as view statistics and error information about your site.

Some of the most valuable data provided by Google is under the Statistics and Query Stats tab.



Here you’ll find:

Top Search Queries – this data shows the top search queries for your site within Google’s placement results. In other words, the most popular queries where you have some presence at Google. These are highly searched-for keywords and phrases where your site shows up in Google’s natural search results. Think of this as a VISIBILITY indicator.

Top Search Query Clicks – this data shows the top search queries that sent traffic to your site. In other words, these are the most popular queries for which people actually clicked over to your site. Your site is getting clicks from these specific keywords and phrases. Think of this as a TRAFFIC indicator.

Along with the data above, Google also provides the Average Top Position of your site which is the highest position any page from your site ranked for that particular query.

While this data took us a while to digest and analyze, over the last few months we’ve been able to create some very helpful reports for clients. The secret to this data is not necessarily the data within the two groups of data above, but rather in comparing both sets of data.

For example, if a search query appears in both groups, this means the search query is both highly searched and found at Google (visibility of your site is good) AND the query is also getting clicked on (traffic is flowing from Google to your site). You may find that these queries are very important queries to your site, while others may not be. A few of our clients have been surprised by some unexpected search queries that their site is highly visible for and is also getting traffic from! The ideal situation, and a good indicator of SEO performance, in this example is to find some or all of your major keywords and phrases in this group. For us at Intrapromote, this would allow us to meet our first and second goals in an SEO and Link Building campaign: Placements (visibility) and Clickthroughs (traffic).

Perhaps the most “SEO-affecting� comparison of the two data sets is where search queries are highly visible (they are a Top Search Query) but they are not getting clicks (they are not a Top Search Query Click). We see these as potential missed opportunities IF the search query is highly relevant to your site.

For search queries where this occurs, you should ask yourself a few questions:

A. Is the keyword/phrase/query not ranking high enough on page #1 at Google to get clicks?

B. Why is the page returned by Google not getting clicks?

1. Is the page title and/or description on Google unappealing?
2. Are there on-page factors blocking higher placement?
3. What else can be done to push the page higher on page #1?

Posted by doug at 03:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

Welcome to the Real Wiki, George Allen!

Allow me to play Oliver Stone for a moment. With the exception of the initial incident, I’m filling in the blanks entirely because I don’t care about the blanks. For the purpose of this post, my sole concern is illustrating how Wikipedia is impacting Election 2006, at least in one race (does anybody appreciate puns anymore?).

The initial incident is this video. Virginia Senator George Allen twice threw a racial slur at a gentleman holding a video camera. All else is conjecture.

Somebody at the Webb Campaign must have realized the power of natural search and the power of Wiki with respect to natural search. Perhaps it was the same person that realized the power of a blog. When the Webb campaign members got together and thought aloud about how to get this video in front of as many people as possible, somebody must have said, "YouTube!" Maybe those same people sat with Jim Webb and wondered how to get people to YouTube, and further, they just might have wondered if people would recognize this racial slur.

At this point, our conjectural hero would have gazed triumphantly over at Jim Webb, as theme music filled the room, and proclaimed, "You just keep talking about macaca. Wiki will tell people what macaca means AND show them the video." You see, our hero would know that search engines love Wiki, and our hero would also know that, although anybody can contribute to Wiki, it bears the authority and credibility of an encyclopedia. Get your story at Wiki, and trusting eyes will find it.

Now let’s see where google directs people that want to know more about macaca.

ADW: Macaca fascicularis: Information - Doesn't appear relevant. Move on.
ADW: Macaca fuscata: Information - Doesn't appear relevant. Move on.
Macaque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "For the slur see Macaca (slur)" I wonder who added that to Wiki.
Macaca (slur) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - that looks about right. And what do they see when they get there? A definition, and later "Macaca and the George Allen Campaign Incident." And what else is there? A link to the Washington Post article and the YouTube video. Funny, those are the 5th and 7th Google results, respectively.

Now allow me to play Mastercard for a moment.

George Allen's Campaign - Big Bucks, One Whammy
Jim Webb's Campaign - Smaller Bucks, No Whammies
Video Upload at YouTube and Contribution at Wiki - $0
Racial Slur Pointed Directly into a Camera - Priceless

Update: The Wiki Battle Rages On
One of the coolest Wiki features is the edit history for a given page. Do you want to keep your eye on this vicious cock fight (politically speaking, of course)? Click here. And after that, click here.

Update Update: Destiny Takes a Hand
Macaca is now redirecting to Macaque. The former Macaca page is still here.

Stay tuned to find out how our fearless hero responds . . .

Posted by tom at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 05, 2006

MSN Loves Blogs Too

We (and our ilk) often talk about how Google favors, at least algorithmically, the blog format. But MSN is right up there in terms of giving preferred treatment to blogs.

"Preferred treatment," of course, is a misnomer and a bit of a joke. After all, the preferential nature goes both ways. Well optimized blogs give engines what they like, and engines respond in kind.

A client started a blog recently that contains posts built of press releases, industry news, pointers to other articles across the web that highlight how his industry's technology is utilized around the world, and occasional links to new content on the main client site. All new material - nothing reprinted.

This client also retains the services of a very smart host/web dev consultant who wrote some nice code to query the blog database, pull the five most recent posts, and link to them statically from the main site's home page. (Often, a "syndication" technique like this would use scripted links to pull the blog's most recent entries.)

The blog began pulling long-tail Google queries within a couple weeks of its first post. But a month later, MSN was out-referring people to the blog. In fact, the blog had taken over MSN's very top spot for a two-word phrase that the client's main site had formerly held.

Too many times, site owners leave it at that - "Search engines love blogs" - and don't grasp that the logical next step is to treat all sites, not just blogs, like blogs. Constant content generation. Generous linking. Smart, keyword-based nomenclature. Be sure to give your "bread and butter" content - everything about your business - the benefit of an archetecture that gets the engines' attention.

Posted by erik at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 01, 2006

Speedwagon Knocks out Its 300th, Joins Elite Club

In a day game on the first of September, SEO Speedwagon put one to straight away center, punctuating its entrance into the 300 Home Run Club! This places the Wagon right on track for the Hall, were it not for those pesky Balco rumors. Although SEO Speedwagon passively denied use of the rub or any other illegal blog enhancer before the Senate Committee, its good name has been besmirched ever since its URL was discovered among Patrick Arnold’s bookmarks.

In a press conference following the game, the agitated player criticized the Intrapromote organization for not publicly acknowledging the 300th post, noting that its publicist had talked to the "head PR guy" prior to the milestone and that he "used an excuse" that they did not realize it was coming up. Intrapromote has since stated that they do not recognize individual achievements in such a manner.

More to come in this story, I’m sure.

Posted by tom at 10:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Google Keyword Association

As a reminder, try using the tilde search @ Google for a keyword or phrase? It's pretty cool and gives you some insight into how Google looks at various words.

Go to Google and type in [~cars]. What you will find is cars is highlighted in the search results along with other keyword phrases Google deems as relative to that word. You'll find phrases such as "autos" "car prices", etc. When conducting an SEO program with your sights set on Google, this is a valuable search function that allows for you to also target supporting keyword phrases when writing code and content for your pages.

Happy searching!

Posted by sean at 09:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack