Organic SEO Articles by SEO Speedwagon

July 01, 2008

Javascript Redirects = Risky Business

I've run across a few Javascript redirects lately, so I thought I would share a quick reminder with everyone.

If you use a Javascript redirect vs. a 301or 302, don't forget that search engines generally cannot access Javascript, so it's likely that the search engine spider will not follow or index links within the Javascript.

It's also very risky business according to Google. From Google Webmaster Help Center:

"When a redirect link is embedded in Javascript, the search engine indexes the original page rather than following the link, whereas users are taken to the redirect target. Like cloaking, this practice is deceptive because it displays different content to users and to Googlebot..."

Matt Cutts from Google calls Javascript redirects "sneaky" and follows with "Your domains might get rained on in the near future." Yipes!

All very good reasons to avoid Javascript redirects.

Is it time to do a quick audit of your site to see if Javascript redirects are in play?

Javascript Redirects = Risky Business
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June 13, 2008

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?

Sean saw it coming yesterday, and little more than a Month ago I thought it a Yang Threat to balance the Microsoft yin of bluster.

Yet here we have it, and have you ever read anything that made Yahoo suddenly seem more insignificant?:

If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.

Let us all give a collective search way of goodbye to the once great king.

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?
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May 23, 2008

Client Hits Home Run With: URLs Matter!

On this Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend, I thought I would share something very smart that a client recently said to me and a group of his colleagues.

In a nutshell, the discussion was about potentially rewriting dynamic URLs.

He said:

"One thing we can't forget is that URLs are marketing assets....they matter....they need to be friendly to both users and search engines."

For a moment, I felt like I was at Progressive Field, about to rise out of my chair and high five complete strangers around me after a Grady Sizemore home run.

I couldn't have said that better myself. Bravo!!!

Client Hits Home Run With: URLs Matter!
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May 21, 2008

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update

This is from much earlier in this fleeting year, admittedly, but with most focusing on the average words per search query increase angle of the story, I wanted to make sure and dig out a fine morsel from the very mouth of Google that may have been lost had I not:

14% of Google clicks come from paid search and 86% of clicks are organic.

True in court it may only qualify as hearsay, having come from the Google mouth of Avinash Kaushik to the ear of beu blog before finally being transcribed into print; yet, as you may remember from my earlier quest for a documented source behind that most mythical of numbers in all of SEM, the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, hearsay here surely now trumps unattributed there.

And the alleged statement is said to have come from Google's Analytics Evangelist, folks, so I think we are getting closer...

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update
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May 02, 2008

Implementing a 301 (Permanent) Redirect - Part Two

Back in September 2005 I wrote a post discussing how to 301 redirect in .htaccess. In that post I did not mention two important points:

1. Always re-upload your modified .htaccess file in ASCII mode. FTP programs generally transfer files in Binary mode. The modified .htaccess file will not work if it's transferred in Binary.

2. When you edit the .htaccess file in notepad or other text editors they tend to add .txt file extensions on the end. You have to go ahead and upload the file with the extension and then rename it once it's on the server (remove the .txt).

Quoting myself from 2005 (2005?)

There could be many reasons why you may need to use a 301 server-side redirect. Usually having to do with a site redesign, pages that no longer exist, branding issues, marketing campaigns and/or a new domain name.

Server-side redirects are the safe way (as opposed to the meta refresh technique) to transfer your traffic to the new site while still retaining your search engine rankings.

The Moved Permanently directive in the HTTP header tells the spider that the page they crawled has permanently relocated to a new URL.

It will take usually 6-8 weeks to see the old site drop from the rankings and the new site indexed. In the meantime you will probably see fluctuations in your rankings and/or traffic until things settle down to a comfortable level.

How To Implement a 301 Re-direct

Permanent Redirects using .htaccess:

Download the .htaccess file from your server's root directory. If there is no .htaccess file present then go ahead and make one in notepad and save as .htaccess (just as it appears, no extension). Upload it to your root directory after you've made the changes (in ASCII mode).

Place the following code in the .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /index.html http://www.thenewsite.com/index.html - to redirect a single page
or
redirect 301 / http://www.thenewsite.com/index.html - to redirect a whole site


The initial command must be the path to the file name of the old page (/index.html)
That’s followed by a space
The final command must be the full URL of the new page (http://www.thenewsite.com/index.html)
If there is already code in the .htaccess file, place the new code at the bottom.
Upload the file to the server's root directory (in ASCII mode).

Here are a few other ways to redirect using your .htaccess file. These methods require the Apache Mod_Rewrite URL Rewriting Engine to be in place:

-Are you planning to move from an old domain to a new domain? There are many different reasons why you would need to do this. Place this code into your .htaccess file (modify to your URL):

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.thenewsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

-Do you want to redirect from a non-www version of your URL to the www version so you can avoid the possibility of duplicate content? Try this code in your .htaccess file (modify to your URL)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^thenewsite.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.thenewsite.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Permanently redirect using IIS:

Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/Internet Services Manager

Click on the -Home Directory- tab.
Click the -A Redirection to a URL-.
Enter a URL in the -Redirected To:- section
Check the -A permanent redirection for this resource- to make it a 301. Leave it unchecked and it becomes a 302.
Click –Apply-

Implementing a 301 (Permanent) Redirect - Part Two
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April 24, 2008

Foundational SEO: Branching Out With Best Practices Keyword Research

In a recent interview with Top SEOs , I was asked a question about the continuously changing SEO environment.

I replied, "I believe there are some foundational things about Search Engine Optimization that have not changed much over the last 10 years. Staying true to some of these core, foundational concepts of best practices SEO has played a significant role in the success of Intrapromote."

I encountered a very good example of this while reviewing one of our client campaigns.

We have an ecommerce client with a robust store offering a little over 500 products. With a list of specific product names in hand, I tasked our keyword research experts to dig deep into keyword research to see how people are currently searching for all 500 of their products.

When I say "dig deeper", I often use the word picture with clients of keyword research being like a large tree. Comprehensive keyword research starts at the base of the tree with broad keywords, then considers every single major branch of the tree and (here's the comprehensive part) every single large, medium and small branch connected to these major branches.

Our specific search behavior questions in this case:

1. Are search engine users searching for variations of these product names?
2. If so, what are these variations and what is the potential of driving additional traffic to the client's site by targeting these variations?

The end result of our comprehensive keyword research? Going down every major and minor tree branch revealed exactly 224 variations of the 500 product names being used at search engines. We estimate that these 224 variations account for over 2,000 user searches every single day at search engines. Since traffic is what we're after, each of these variations have now become new targets for our SEO, Link Building, and Social Media Marketing efforts for this client.

So, done correctly and regularly, comprehensive keyword research is a great example of a foundational SEO activity that has not changed very much. We even found that for one major brand utilizing various cartridge add-ons, search engine users don't search for "[product name] cartridges", they search for "[product name] software". Good to know that inquiring Googlers may be headed to a competitors site if our client's site is not optimized and performing well for variations of this product name along with "software".

Bottom line reminders:

1. A cardinal sin of keyword research is to not look for every possible variation of your product names.
2. Never, ever assume how people search for your products or services.

Foundational SEO: Branching Out With Best Practices Keyword Research
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March 04, 2008

SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors:

1) Knowledge Is Power

It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!

It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.

Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed.

2) Link Popularity

With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.

3) Flexibility To Site Changes

We always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly. If you are considering SEO, I would suggest you rate your flexibility to site changes on a scale of 1-10. Bottom line, if you are below a 5, you may want to consider Paid Search along with Natural SEO.

SEO Success Factors
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February 20, 2008

Search Engine Marketing Myths

One of the questions we get asked is about myths in the field of SEO or Search Engine Marketing. Here are three of the most current SEO/SEM myths:

1. SEO is done once, then you sit back and enjoy the fruits forever.

Running a successful SEO campaign is not like launching a missile. It's more like driving a car. You see you're starting to veer to the shoulder, and you compensate. You make turns when necessary. When we explain upfront to a client that during a campaign, we're going to work, then observe, then work again if the results aren't what we want, most understand it, and it paves the way for a smooth relationship. Often, people think SEO is a two-party vacuum -- the client site and the engine. They don't typically realize that their competitors are also working hard, and that every time the client moves up a spot, someone else moves down -- and typically isn't too happy about it.

2. Flash (or AJAX, or any technique) is universally bad.

Upon starting a campaign, we're often greeted by some pretty hostile and defensive IT and design departments. They've read article after article about how a certain technique spells certain SEO death, and they assume we're going to preach the same doom-and-gloom sermon and tell them their techniques are forbidden. Certainly, we have our coding preferences, but we're not here to dictate look, feel, or overall visual design. Instead, we work very hard to suggest changes to supplement existing site techniques, not replace them. We study all sorts of sites, and we can cite examples of Flash pages that lead their industry with almost no text on the page. So balance is critical. What you lack with one SEO factor you need to make up with others.

3. Search engines love blogs.

This really isn't a myth as much as it is a misapplication of cause and effect. What search engines love is content in its best forms: unique, frequently updated, easy to link to (and from), and easy to access from the root domain. It's merely a coincidence that most blogging platforms meet many of these criteria with minimal tweaking. To say that certain content performs better than other content because it's on a blog is like saying that certain people have lower blood pressure than other people because they frequently park near the fitness center. This misses the bigger picture. Search engines loved news sites long before blogs became popular, because well optimized news sites have the same characteristics. The difference today is that content platforms enable this type of site much more readily than they did 10 or even 5 years ago.

Search Engine Marketing Myths
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February 08, 2008

Tracking Local Press Release Syndication Performance

If you are a PR professional and looking for a way to track your newly syndicated press releases across a local platform then you've got to check out "Google's News" new local search feature. Now you have the ability to look up your news via zip code, city, or state and see what's showing up in your local market. You can use this information to see how well your local PR campaigns are doing online and get a better feel for other places to possibly syndicate your news.

To check out the new Google News local search feature go to news.google.com and scroll down the page, look for the "Local News Category", and enter your pertinent information into the search box. You will then be presented with the latest local news that reflects whatever region you are searching for online.

Your news results will look like:

Then to monitor your local news with ease on a daily or weekly basis create a Google Alert with your local news preferences are you are good to go!

Tracking Local Press Release Syndication Performance
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November 28, 2007

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!

We are sticklers with our clients when it comes to issues of content duplication, sometimes to the point, I think, of being viewed as Canonical Fascists. This can be annoying, much like fascism mostly can be annoying, so it is gratifying to see Mr. Google himself lay out just why such annoyance is worthwhile advocacy, even approaching the subject of PageRank Splitting in the process:

When I did a wget from the Googleplex, I eventually got a 301 from the seomoz.com url to the seomoz.org url. But look at the timestamps: " --09:28:33-- " was the initial fetch and "--09:32:41--" was when the 301 came over the wire. Assuming that I'm reading right, that means almost a four minute delay on getting the 301 from seomoz.com to seomoz.org. Googlebot will wait around for several seconds for a page, but it won't wait four minutes. Instead, the connection will time out and we'll treat those urls as separate (and think that we couldn't fetch the seomoz.com url). So if a bunch of people are linking to your article, and some link to seomoz.org and some link to seomoz.com, that PageRank is getting split between two urls, and the long delay on the 301 response can cause Google to believe that the urls are separate and therefore cause dupe issues.

Hat tip to Randfish for calling forth such manna in his heavily commented comments area.

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!
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November 15, 2007

Tagging The Site Organic

We spend a great deal of time on site structural issues with our clients, and one of the first things we usually do with a new client is try and transition them from thinking of SEO as a page-level concern to more of a holistic, organic discipline, one where we must try and understand the site architecture in its interdependent relationship between the whole and its parts. After all, organic is ultimately the moniker that won the day.

Almost invariably the large sites that we recognize are not living up to their potential are what we call top-heavy architecturally, in that the TLD so dominates all things search that even the main folder levels are all but invisible, let alone deeper, longer-tail-rich pages. As we explain the phenomenon we often find ourselves referring to blog structure, and how we might borrow some of the structural characteristics of a blog in discovering how to flatten out the top-heavy site. There are reasons blogs are so eminently crawlable.

One of those reasons is tagging, and I was pleased this morning to find a fellow tag-appreciator in Stephan Spencer, explaining his tag appreciation more eloquently than I have yet seen done to date:

Tagging isn't just a tool for usability (even though it's typically mostly thought of in those terms), it's also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That's because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.

Bravo, Stephan. Long live tag conjunction!

Tagging The Site Organic
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November 01, 2007

Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?

Search Quote of the Day from He of the Great Name:

Search is utilitarian. Search is constantly accused of not being sexy. That drives me nuts. The irony is that in pigeonholing search as being boring and utilitarian, all these brilliant advertising minds are missing the biggest idea of all: search works because it’s the customer driving the process, not the advertiser.

I'm with you, Gord. In our industry, conversions are sexy.

Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?
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October 17, 2007

The Art of Honest SEO

Next month I will present a webinar on "What is SEO?" Instead of talking about key phrases, links and code, I will talk about what matters to my audience most: They want to know how online marketing can help them sell more widgets than their competitors. I can get into the nitty gritty explanations later. And to be honest, there are very few people out there who are totally unacquainted with the subject. This is my chance to show them a wholistic viewpoint; what my company is all about and how we can partner together to achieve the customer's goals.

I always like to start these presentations with a definition of what we're shooting for: I want the audience to understand that the goal is to improve the site's usability for human beings, along with its search engine friendliness. A no-tricks, no-spam approach delivers the best results over time, as Bruce Clay explains so well in his excellent article "Search Engine Optimization Standards and Spam Discussion."

What we do is part art and part science. I fall fairly heavily on the "art" side myself, and have always believed that creating content with human users in mind also reaps rewards on the search engines. Jill Whalen in her recent article "The Art of SEO" reiterates her longstanding belief that there is no magic SEO formula; in fact being too stringent with SEO "requirements" may likely trigger search engine spam filters. I'd rather get to know my customer and his business so I can apply my SEO knowledge to improve his website, instead of just overloading it with SEO elements.

All of this said, I won't pretend that I don't want to persuade prospects to work with my company. But I want them on board from the start for all the right reasons. Explaining "the art of honest SEO" has always proven to be time well spent.

The Art of Honest SEO
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October 13, 2007

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers

I have been scoring the Internet the last few days trying to find resources related to Web 2.0 and/or Social Media Optimization and I came across the idea of “Memetracker Web Sites.” From a Web 2.0 perspective these sites are geared towards collecting information about “hot topics” or things that create a “buzz” in the news or Blogging communities and make this information readily available to the masses. Wikipedia defines the word “Memetracker” as “a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe Web sites that either: A) Analyze blog posts to determine what Web pages are being discussed or cited most often on the World Wide Web, or B) Allow users to vote for links to Web pages that they find of interest.”

The first Memetracker site was most likely Gabe Rivera’s news and politics site called “Memeorandum.com,” which used an algorithm to collect top stories from a plethora of news Web sites and Blogs.

Here’s a list of the top old school Memetracker sites online:

1) Blogniscient
2) BlogRovr
3) Blogrunner
4) Blogsnow
5) Buzzfeed
6) Chuquet
7) Daily Rotation
8) Feedable
9) Megite
10) Newroo
11) Slashdot
12) StrategicBoard
13) Tailrank
14) Techmeme
15) Technorati Kitchen
16) Tinfinger
17) Topix.net
18) TruthLaidBear

How do I benefit from visiting these sites?

Although these sites are viewed as old school Blog news aggregators, they can still be utilized from a “Reputation Management” standpoint. These Blog sites will enable you to see exactly what is being said about your company products, services, complaints, etc. Use these sites as monitoring resources and be proactive in terms of reputation management – don’t get caught being reactive!

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers
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October 08, 2007

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology

I was quite humbled to see via Link Spiel heute morgen that yours truly unwittingly birthed the SEO Virginia genre long, long ago, circa Summer 2001.

And while they say everything changed after September 11, really the only thing the genre lost in the aftermath was the Really Is convention I thought was authentic at the time. Turns out while I had invented Really completely out of thin air, but not the all-important Is, what we really lost in exactly half of the genre along with our innocence was the comma after the introductory Yes I had faithfully inserted at the time.

SEO Virginia genre history buffs will note Danny Sullivan took less than a year to catch, and correct, his own mistake, the only such self-correction on record. He really is that good.

UPDATE: Reader Brainmuffin e-mails to suggest the genre be officially known as The SEO Virginia Monologues.

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
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October 01, 2007

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles

Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!

The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:


As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.

Ya think?

LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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September 17, 2007

PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA

Via Chris Zaharias via MediaPost via Piper Jaffray, we get this stark contrast:

Search advertising has proven to be fertile ground for customer acquisition. A recent study by Piper Jaffray & Co. entitled, “The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting,” indicated that the average CPA for search was $8.50, considerably lower than the CPA for the Yellow Pages ($20), online display ads ($50) and direct mail ($70).

Could you imagine how low the Organic CPA would have been in comparison, had they found a way to incorporate that into the study?

PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA
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September 05, 2007

Boost Visibility With XML Sitemap Submission to Ask.com

We have been keeping a close eye on Ask.com and are seeing traffic increases from Ask.com for some of our clients. In fact, one e-commerce client over this summer has seen transactions more than double from Ask.com referrers. A 100% increase in transactions - now that really gets our attention!

We've shared with Wagon readers about submitting an XML sitemap to Google, to Yahoo and updated readers about the potential of submitting to MSN this Fall. I thought I would remind readers that you can also submit your XML sitemap to Ask.com and provide some simple how to's.

There are two ways to submit your XML sitemap to Ask.com:

1. Use the auto-discovery directive in your robots.txt file:

SITEMAP: http://www.yoursitemapurl.xml

2. Submit your sitemap via Ask.com's ping URL:

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.yoursitemapurl.xml

Lastly, make sure you're using the accepted sitemaps protocol.

Boost Visibility With XML Sitemap Submission to Ask.com
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August 30, 2007

New MSN Tools Coming Includes Sitemaps

Back in April, I updated Wagon readers on the latest in Sitemap and Sitemap Protocol news and now it's time for a quick update.

Last week on MSN Live Search's blog, MSN trumpeted their new Webmaster Portal that will allow sitemap creation and submission. A beta program has been started and the Wagon has applied for a test drive.

Along with these sitemap features, MSN also announced that the Webmaster Portal will also include crawling and indexing tools as well as statistics about web sites. As we've said in the past, these statistics can be very helpful.

Stay tuned for news on the beta program. Official launch of the Webmaster Portal is expected in early Q4.

New MSN Tools Coming Includes Sitemaps
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August 21, 2007

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II

Article or Press Release?:

It's always seemed strange to look for information on a brand, and to see it appear both in the organic search results and at or near the top of the paid listings. Why spend money on a brand term that's going to deliver a top five organic result for the same query anyway?

If this sounds eerily similar to what many Wagon Riders thought yesterday was a lede of questionable intelligence, then your parotid attention may have kept you from swallowing full gulp. For those caught in the act of mastication, though, it's good to know that the above meme is being pushed by Atlas, owned by Microsoft, neither of which are owned or own or like Google, beneficiary of the great majority of the branded ad spend currently under PR assault.

Here at The Wagon we get the same strange feeling the Talking Point pushes in the quote above when we fix our eyes on a graph like the below:

With search behavior like that, why in the world would you want your brand to appear more than once, let alone a single time, in the same screen space above the fold? Good advice from the originator of democracy of screen space.

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
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August 20, 2007

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks

We sure did have fun with this Quote of the Month while taking The Wagon for a spin this morning. From the magazine that takes itself so seriously it demands all caps, ADWEEK, we are treated to this breathless lede:

New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.

Wasted, indeed. Heard while The Wagon pulled up to fill itself up with coffee:

It's like saying Applebee's doesn't need specific signage or identifiable markings on its building to show out-of-towners where it is, because people are going to go there for dinner anyway. That is exactly how stupid this is.

Isn't this also an argument against any brand advertising of any kind?

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
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August 15, 2007

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade

As you probably know, the NY Times has been the most prominent experiment in the paid content-behind-a-firewall-yet-at-least-partially-indexable model, and they are indeed now, finally, announcing via trial ballooning they are no longer going to put their most popular columnists behind that magic curtain one has to pay to sweep aside. After the magic show ends and the same fingers which initially drew the curtain are finished being pointed this way and that, this failed experiment will have had much to do with the principles of Link Building.

A party-goer cloaks her content as Maureen Dowd. Found on Flickr. Copyright 485i

First a great quote that helps explain the decision's relevance to our industry:

But the truth of the matter is that you get far more eyeballs when you're not locking away your content from the general public. The reality of Web 2.0 news is that people a rising tide raises all the ships. If you've got good content, and the Times does, people will link to it. When people read a technology blog like Engadget or a political blog like Daily Kos and find links to articles at the New York Times, everybody wins. Keeping your archives, op-eds, and other content locked up means that blogs and news sites won't link to you, won't give you credit for finding a story first, and won't drive up your traffic.

This lack of inbound links to the content-behind-the-firewall damaged traffic to the site not only through a paucity of visitors being able to click on these links to the columns themselves...:

...the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.

...in having to rely far too heavily on the parent site rather than third party links for traffic, but also in the residual effect such had in these columns' search engine visibility. With few third party inbound links accumulating with each new column, in fact from a deliberate online community decision not to link to content-behind-a-firewall, it is also very difficult for each new column to be judged more relevant than similarly themed columns emerging on the same topic that immediately acquire inbound links in the form of the same online community recommending them. It's no wonder the Times Select had to rely so heavily on clicks from the parent site for visits, as a great many of those visits were likely already subscribers. In that situation it is difficult to grow at the rate of the internet. Try these two simple searches for Frank and Maureen alone: nary a column to be found. Haven't they written quite a few?

I think everyone likely to read this blog knew this would happen. But to say we knew it would happen ultimately is not to say we are not happy to see even giants felled by an algorthm rejected, not select(ed).

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
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August 08, 2007

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)

I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:

What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
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July 17, 2007

An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined

This is one of those few demonstrably true things. Even though it might actually be more accurately described as a symbol, in our character-challenged world of SEO Title tags we are more likely to view it in the same manner we view the disappearing punctuation mark.

But Google knows it is a logogram, and treats it as such, differently from the mere punctuation it eschews.

Try each one of these searches yourself and tell me which one is the outlier: [!], [@], [(], [)], [-], [;], [:], [“], [‘], [,], [.], [?], [/]—and—[&]!

& is also so well respected as to have its own eponymous magazine. Now what punctuation can also claim that?

An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined
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July 11, 2007

SEO Tools: SEO For Firefox

One of the tools I'm using more often these days is the "SEO For Firefox" extension/add-on created by Aaron Wall. SEO For Firefox provides site information including:

* Google PageRank
* Google Cache Date (date Google last cached the page)
* Cached (number of pages indexed at Google)
* Yahoo Links (incoming links from other domains according to Yahoo)
* Google Supplemental (number of pages in Google's supplemental index - see Erik's last post for an update on GSI)

One way to use it in Firefox is by selecting Tools > SEO For Firefox > Lookup Tool and entering a URL. Here's what the result looks like (click thumbnail image):

I use SEO For Firefox more often when searching at Google or Yahoo. Under each site listed in the search results, site information appears directly below each search engine result. Here's what it looks like (click thumbnail image)::

Each of the individual site "info blocks" are clickable if you want to dive in deeper and each can be turned on or off via the Options Menu. I recommend only turning on the info blocks that you are most interested in analyzing or monitoring since the more you have turned on, the longer it takes the program to pull all this information for every search engine result.

Also, when you're not needing this comparative site data, you can click the button in the lower right corner of Firefox to turn the program off.

SEO Tools: SEO For Firefox
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July 06, 2007

Google Weighs in on Image Replacement (sIFR)

On the rare occasion when an engine expresses an actual opinion on a real technique, It's a welcome, welcome sight. So imagine my glee when I read Google Webmaster Central Blog's take on dealing with Flash.

While John lamented the mixed signals just last month, we've been asking the question internally for years: From a best practices standpoint, does image replacement stand safely in the DMZ of glorified CSS, or does it boldly encroach the characteristic of "showing engines one thing and users another"?

And that's just the beginning. The real problem, when you're using image replacement, is not the insertion of stylized copy, but instead, what you do with the HTML text you're replacing. Some systems simply let it lie underneath the script-spawned Flash layer, while some use "hidden" status in CSS, while still others pull it off the visible screen and hard-code it somewhere in the -5000px range -- each of which is detectable and grounds for a good spanking if your motives are anything but pure. Traditionally, that left us with the worries of trusting the algorithm to detect our motives.

But forget all that, because today we know, and we know it based on the way all such things are Known -- because it's mentioned in an official Google blog, midstream in a list of "practical suggestions" about how to deal with Flash:

sIFR: Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML -- it's just displayed by an embedded Flash object.

This proclamation, coming on the heels of Independence Day, is fitting, because no longer are we bound by the tyranny of not knowing on whose side of the fight sIFR truly sits.

Google Weighs in on Image Replacement (sIFR)
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June 14, 2007

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold

Wagon Rider Pat Fusco penned a great primer this Month on the issue of Google’s Supplemental Results as they are tied to duplicate content, if you’d like to orient yourself first. Our own Wagoneer Doug offers some points on Getting Out of Hell Free (that is, at least, without requiring direct payments to Google), the last method of which involved examining backlinks, and the fact that a great number of pages in the GSI we have examined across the massive sites we spend time with each day seem to share the commonality of zero inbound links.

We are finding, increasingly, that the distance from zero to one in terms of inbound links to a page seems to be much more of a threshold for exiting the Google Supplemental index than, say, 2 to 100. This is not to say that 1 gets you out, bada bing, but that there is a great more deal of love granted from Google on that single giant step from nil to 1 than there seems to be on the next link steps a page takes out of infancy.

A baby’s first steps are much more exciting and remarkable than the subsequent toddling around the room that follows, and it may be helpful to think of Google watching a page with no links in the same manner.

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold
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June 01, 2007

Flash, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, sIFR, and Textual Image Replacement... Oh My!

Not just because I am somewhat easily confused, but a