by Ken Jones on September 8, 2008
So I’ve been kind of absent from the blog (and most of the Online Marketing Scene) for the last few weeks, it’s not the first time I’ve had to fore-go working on posts for SEOpsCentre in favour of more pressing concerns from the outside world and I can’t promise it’ll be the last, but after a much needed break I’m back and working on some new posts.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing more regularly again and launching a new series focussed on DIY-SEO for self-publishers and small businesses, where I look at things webmasters can do for themselves to help improve their site’s Search Engine Optimization.
One final note for now, I noticed today that my good buddy and the SEO world’s favourite Guest Blogger, James Duthie has been interviewed by Garrett Pierson over on his Your SEO Mentor site. James talks about how he got into Online Marketing and shares a few of his favourite resources for learning about SEO. He even gives little old me a shout out. Apparently I’m “really entertaining.” Who knew?
by Ken Jones on August 3, 2008
Just so you know, this post is going to be a bit more me-centric than most of the posts here on SEOpsCentre so feel free to skip it if you’d rather wait for one of my usual posts about Search Engine Optimization.
Having said that, there will be a lot of talk about SERP placements, some pretty useful link research tips and a look at what I did to rank on the first page of Google.com for an unintentionally competitive keyphrase. My own name.
So I don’t know, maybe you’ll want to stick around, y’know just in case.
But if you don’t find out anything interesting about SEO, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Where do I rank in searches for Ken Jones?
A few months ago, I wrote about trying to get this site to rank in search results for queries for my own name. Simple enough you might think, but if your name happens to be Ken Jones, it’s not quite as easy as all that. You see, there are a lot of other people in the world who are also called Ken Jones and a lot of them have websites. In fact, if you search for Ken Jones in Google.com you’ll see it returns over 930,000 results, but (at the time of writing) if you scroll down the results you’ll find SEOpsCentre listed right there on the first page of those results, which is pretty good going considering I wasn’t showing up anywhere in those SERPs just a couple of months ago. And if you perform an exact match search for “Ken Jones” I rank even higher, although there’s only about a quarter of a million pages returned with the exact match for “Ken Jones” so the competition isn’t quite as great.
I’m not ranking quite so well in Google.co.uk yet. At the time of writing, SEOpsCentre is floating around page 9 of the results for a standard search for Ken Jones and even lower for exact match “Ken Jones” searches.
Incidentally, I’m still ranking first for Ken Jones SEO and for Big Dumb Noob (I know there’s no real value in ranking for that one, I just think it’s funny ).
What signals am I giving Google that this site is relevant for searches about Ken Jones?
There are obviously a lot of on-page references to my name, with the by lines for every post I write and every time I reply to a comment from a reader, as well as the occasional post like this, where I mention the name Ken Jones several times over, which as time goes on has given Google more reason to see this site as being a relevant result when people search for Ken Jones.
There are also more links from other sites which now use Ken Jones as the anchor text of their links to SEOpsCentre. The majority of these are no-followed links from comments that I have made, so they aren’t going to be helping my cause, but there are also a few followed links within posts that reference some of the articles I’ve written and comments on do-follow blogs, which are passing value to this site with Ken Jones as the anchor text. There aren’t that many though, in fact after checking for links that use my name with the handy Analyze Backlinks tool, I could probably count the number of value passing links using Ken Jones without needing to take off my shoes and socks (i.e. there’s less than ten of them ).
Overall, my link profile is looking pretty healthy these days as well, with Yahoo! Site Explorer showing over 1700 links to the site’s homepage, and thanks to Joost De Valk’s Link Analysis plugin for Firefox I can see what the anchor text and follow status of all those links are. This reinforces my findings from the Analyze Backlinks tool; only a handful of these links use Ken Jones as their anchor text and in most cases they are no-followed links from comments I have left on other sites. However, the fact that the majority of these links are passing value, with SEOpsCentre as their anchor text, is still helping to light up my site for the search engines which is giving the site an extra boost, causing it to rise higher in the SERPs. One thing that’s become clear is that most of these links come from American and Canadian sites, which explains why my Google.com rankings are so much higher than my placements in Google.co.uk (so I guess the next phase of my plan should be to try and gain more links from my fellow Brits).
What’s next for Ken Jones the SEO from Coventry?
Well, that heading should give you a little hint. I’m still planning to try to build upon my current successes in ranking for just the phrase Ken Jones and for the more specific Ken Jones SEO queries, but I also want to add more focus to ranking for searches for my name + my location. I’ve lived in Coventry in the UK for nearly 20 years now (having grown up in Brisbane, Australia before that) so it’s likely that if anyone is specifically trying to find me among the the haystack of Ken Joneses on the internet, they may well use Coventry as a modifier to narrow down their search. In the circumstances, I don’t think I’ll need to go to the full effort of optimizing for local search (although it’s something that I’ve been meaning to practice anyway) but I will be trying out a few things to see if I start appearing in searches for Ken Jones Coventry. There are only a handful of results for that term at the moment, so I have a feeling that just using the phrase in this post will be enough to achieve the desired effect.
We’ll see how it all goes and I’ll post another update the next time I notice some significant progress in my placements in the SERPs.
by Ken Jones on July 28, 2008
Howdy sportsfans, hope you’re all having a great Monday. Don’t know about where you are, but it’s a crazy hot July day here in the UK. We had a brief thunderstorm earlier as well, so it’s really humid here tonight, which is why I’m sitting out on my balcony enjoying what little breeze there is as I try to get this latest Link-Fest finished up.
There’s been some really good stuff and some really bad stuff out there in the SEO blogosphere this week, but I’m not in the mood to dwell on the bad stuff (if you’re into SEO enough to be reading me, then chances are you’ve seen it all already and I don’t feel much like adding to the negativity). Let’s just get stuck into some of the good stuff that came out over the last week.
There’s a Cuil New Kid on the Search Engine Block
A new search engine made by a few people who used to work for Google went live today. It’s called Cuil (pronounce “Cool” apparently - although I’ve also read suggestions that it’s Gaelic for “knowledge”). I can’t say I’ve had a lot of time to put it through its paces, but a cursory inspection and a few quick vanity searches was enough to make it clear that although they’ve found plenty of places that mention SEOpsCentre this site itself is not yet included within the squillions of webpages they claim to have in their index.
Fine. Be that way. See if I care.
Who? Ma?
Dave Harry was the subject of today’s interview on Garrett Pierson’s Your SEO Mentor and the guys chatted about a few of Dave’s favourite things aboot Search Engine Optimization, eh (coz Dave’s Canadian, eh?). Dave also clarified the pronunciation of his blog’s name and gave shout-outs to some of his favourite SEO bloggers, including squeezing in a mention for James Duthie and the World Tour. But not me.
Fine. Be that way. See if I care.
Video Interviews with Matt “One-Pink-Shirt” Cutts
The Big G’s Spam-whacker posted a couple of videos on his blog this week. One is from his Q&A session with Danny Sullivan at SMX Advanced, the other one is an interview he did for Google’s German Webmaster Central Blog. Matt even makes a note to self in his post about making sure he doesn’t wear that shirt when there’s cameras around anymore.
The Positive Side to All That Negativity
I’m still not going to get into all the nastiness and name-calling that went around last week, but I am going to highlight a post that Rand Fishkin put out, on the YOUmoz section of the SEOmoz site, with his thoughts on one of the bigger controversies to flare up recently and his team’s place within it. Whatever finger pointing may have gone on, Rand deserves a lot of respect for standing up and admitting that, when it comes to content published on SEOmoz, the buck stops with him.
It was also nice to see this post from Michael Martinez a few days ago, which clarified why he no longer blogs on SEOmoz and, hopefully, dispels some of the rumours about a rift between him and Rand.
See, SEO’s can be nice to each other, even if they don’t always see eye to eye.
Farewell Fake Steve. Hello Real Dan
Fake Steve Jobs is no more. After a curtailed hiatus and a series of less than well recieved guest bloggers, Dan Lyons has hung up the Fake Steve Jobs blog and started afresh under his real name. He’s already hit the ground running as his phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from prominent Silicon Valley CEO’s all taking a leaf out of the Real Steve Jobs’ book and desperate to give him the “off-the-record” scoop on the latest non-events with their companies. And if you want a laugh, check out this Steve Jobs Opening Line Generator so that you too can start making off-the-record calls to journalists.
The Motivational Monday Bit
John Hewitt runs a great blog full of advice for writers at all levels and in addition to recently finishing up a series of posts about careers in technical writing he’s just started a new run, giving lots of really useful tips for writers who need help dealing with negative self-talk. Great help if you’re the kind of writer who tends to be your own worst critic (aren’t we all?)
So, there we go folks.
Enjoy your week and I’ll see you in the SERPs.
by Ken Jones on July 21, 2008
No, your calendar isn’t wrong. It really is Monday and this really is an SEOpsCentre Link-Fest. After giving it a lot of though, I’ve decided to move my regular link round-up posts from their old spot on Fridays to their new place here on a Monday.
Partly this is because work commitments have meant that I wasn’t getting a chance to publish the Link-Fests until very late on a Friday, by which time they just disappear into the crowd with everyone else’s link round-ups, potentially sitting unread in people’s feed readers until Monday anyway.
Publishing them on Mondays will give me more free time over the weekend to put the posts together and (hopefully) mean that more people will have a chance to check them out when they come up closer to the top of the list of new posts on a Monday morning.
Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling. Let’s get on with the linkage…
Some Great Big (Romantic) SEO News
Two of my favourite people from the SEO community got engaged on Thursday. Bill Slawski (he of SEO by the Sea) asked Kimberly Bock (from Learning SEO Basics) to marry him and, of course, she said, “Yes!” The SEO blogosphere lit up with congratulations for the happy couple and (even though I’ve already tweeted, plurked and otherwise congratulated them far and wide across teh interwebz) I want to tell Bill and Kimberly just how happy I am for them.
So long and thanks for all the Sphinns
One of my other favourite SEOs, Dave Harry, has decided that he’s had enough of the Social Media scene and announced that he’s going to be bowing out of sites like Sphinn as a result of a few issues that he’s had recently with the way even their most dedicated submitters are treated (read: ignored and left unthanked for all their efforts finding content and promoting the community). To clarify an important point which seems to have escaped many of the people who read Dave’s post, he’s not dropping out of Social Networking sites and will still be providing us with his usual brand of silliness on Plurk, he’s just decided to do things on his own terms rather than putting so much effort into Social Media sites which don’t appreciate their greatest assets, their contributors.
Ironically, Dave’s post was almost immediately submitted to Sphinn prompting him to plurk an enquiry as to who was “the smart ass that sphunn it?” And no it wasn’t me. But only because Zak Nicola was quicker on the draw
Sex and the Guest Blogger
My buddy Duthie’s been back on tour with an appearance on Tad Chef’s SEO 2.0 Blog where he explains why social media is a lot like sex. I’ll let you read the post and see how James makes his points for yourselves, but the short version is that getting someone to give your website a link is a lot like trying to get a girl to play with your dangly bits. Or something like that
WordPress Updates A-go-go!
If you’re a WordPress user, you’ve probably already noticed that WP 2.6 came out last week. Which means that the authors and maintainers of all those plugins that we love so much have been scrabbling around updating their plugins to work with this latest version. It hasn’t been without hiccups though, as Joost De Valk points out some issues that have occurred with some of his plugins. So if you’re reading this post in a feed reader and some of the usual information that appears in the footer is missing, it’s because of these issues and the fact that I haven’t had a chance to figure out how to get the plugin to work properly yet (but hopefully this will only be temporary).
The WordPress folks have been busy with other things as well. Last week also saw the announcement of a new and improved WordPress Theme Directory. It’s pretty spartan at the moment, with only a handful of themes available, but there are sure to be plenty more added to the directory very soon.
28 Ways to Make Your Blog Sticky
Darren Rowse started off by sharing 21 tips to make your blog sticky (i.e. to encourage loyal, repeat visitors), then he followed that up with 7 more things he thought of to make your blog even stickier. I guess number 29 should be, “Write a post to fill in the things you forgot to add in your previous post so that people will come back to read that as well.” Although I’m sure Darren would come up with a snappier title for it than that.
Motivational Mondays
As part of the switch from Fridays to Mondays, I’m dropping the time honoured tradition of the “Friday Funnies” and will instead be throwing out the link love to some of my favourite motivational posts to help get you geared up and in the mood for the working week to come.
Our very first “Motivational Monday” appearance comes from Dave Navarro (NOT the Jane’s Addiction and RHCP guitarist, in case you’re wondering) with his great post about overcoming the fear that prevents you from achieving the right work/life balance.
And (for the sake of providing a little extra balance) here’s a post from my old favourite, the Put Things Off blog, which is celebrating 6 months of putting things off but still managing to become an accidental problogger.
So there we go folks. Have a great Monday and enjoy the rest of your week.
by Ken Jones on July 15, 2008
In my recent post about how to explain link-theory to a layman, I used the analogy of torchlights shining on your site to illustrate the importance of inbound links when it comes to making sure that Google can “see” what’s in your site when they’re looking to see if you’re relevant to a searcher’s query.
Of course, it isn’t just a matter of being seen. You also want Google to know what your site’s pages are about and you need to convince them that your answer to the searcher’s question is more relevant than the millions of other websites that Google can see.
Shoemoney often advises people that the way to succeed in Google is to not make Google look stupid. They want to provide searchers with the “right” answers to the queries they make. Fooling Google’s algorithm into thinking that your site full of adverts and affiliate links is the best answer to a searcher’s query just so that you can pull in loads of traffic is a sure fire way of getting Matt Cutts to target your site for a smackdown. Actually making a site that is the most relevant answer to a query might require more effort on your part, but it’s likely to provide better, more stable, results for you in the long run.
Bob Massa (the SEO-Guru) espouses the theory that Google’s algorithm operates not by raising “good” pages above the rest, but rather by lowering “not so good” or even “bad” pages further down the SERPs. Essentially what this means is that Google doesn’t know how to tell what’s right, instead they work by finding the things that are “least wrong.”
So given that the objective of anyone with an interest in SEO is to gain higher placements in the SERPs, you’ve really got to ask yourself,
“Will It Float?”
(Or, because I’m British and as a nod to the David Letterman fans out there)…
“Is It Bouyant?”
You can divide the numerous signals that Google considers when ranking webpages into two main categories:
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On-page SEO Factors
These are the signals that Google looks for within the page itself and are entirely under your own control (or at least they should be).
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Off-page SEO Factors
These signals come from Google’s evaluation of external factors which are, to a greater or lesser extent, beyond your control (although with a bit of effort from a skilled SEO these can be managed to ensure your site is shown in a positive light).
These all add up to hundreds of individual factors that go into Google’s ranking algorithm and it would be way beyond the scope of a single post to try to detail all of them. For that matter, no-one outside of the Googleplex knows for sure what all of the factors used by the algorithm actually are, but experience and examination by SEOs around the world has helped to highlight a number of the most important factors to consider when optimizing a website for search engine visibility.
On-page SEO Factors
- URL Factors
There are plenty of factors that you need to take into account when designing your site’s URL structure. Some of the most important ones are…
Keywords in the URL - Either as part of your domain name, or within sub-directory or page titles. If your URL matches the keywords used in a searcher’s query you have a much better chance of being seen as a highly relevant result for that search.
Variables in dynamic URLs - For example, session IDs or product/post ID numbers, should be kept to a minimum. Although Googlebot can crawl sites with dynamic URLs, there is a greater risk that it will get caught in a loop, re-crawling the same pages with different URLs over and over again (especially if your URLs contain multiple variables).
Canonicalization - www.yourdomain.com can be treated by Google as a different page than yourdomain.com so it’s important to make sure that you have set up the necessary 301 redirection rules to ensure that either version will always resolve to your preferred URL. It doesn’t matter whether you choose to favour the version with or without the www. but it is important to be consistent. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tools account to tell Google which version you would prefer them to use.
- META Tag Information
There are plenty of META Data Tags that you can add to your website’s pages, but the most important ones to consider from an SEO perspective are:
TITLE - Technically not an actual META Tag (but this is as good a place to mention it as any), this is the line of text that appears at the top of your internet browser window and will be displayed by Google as the link to your page in their search results. Keywords placed in Title Tags are given additional weight by Google’s algorithm when determining a page’s relevance for a given search query. Note that only the first 65 characters of the Title will be displayed in the SERPs and that in addition to the SEO value of placing your target keywords in the Title, it is also your best opportunity to make a good first impression on searchers and entice them into visiting your site.
DESCRIPTION - This is another place where it can be useful to include the keywords that your page is targetting. Although it’s debatable just how much weight the Description Tag itself holds as far as search engine rankings are concerned, remember that search engines may well use your description tag as the snippet of text that they display for your page’s search result, so don’t just stuff it full of gobbledygook keywords. Use it as anonther opportunity to write something that will entice searchers to click through to your page by convincing them that you have what they are searching for.
KEYWORDS - The Keywords META Tag has largely been devalued in the ranking algorithms of modern search engines, because in the past it was abused by webmasters “stuffing” it full of irrelevant and repetitive terms. Google, in particular, now ignores this information, but other search engines, like Yahoo, may still make some, limited, use of it when evaluating your page. It’s unlikely to hurt you if you don’t bother to include a Keywords META Tag, but as long as you don’t go over the top and only include words that are actually relevant, it won’t hurt to put it in either.
- Header Tags
The H1 to H6 Tags are another HTML element which can help you to emphasise important keywords within your webpage. By using them to indicate headings for the various sections of your page’s Body Text, you are giving the search engines another way to figure out what is important about your page’s content.
- Body Text
This is what should make up the bulk of your web page. The most repeated phrase you’ll hear in SEO circles is, “Content is King!” It’s something of a cliche, but the simple fact is that it’s true. More specifically, TEXT CONTENT IS KING. Search engines may be getting better at crawling Flash websites and they’re even developing the (very limited) ability to recognize images, but it’s going to be a long time before there is anything more important on your webpage than the actual words in your body text. It’s easy to get caught up in metrics like “keyword density” when writing copy for your page, but the best advice I can give is just to write naturally. Do your keyword research beforehand, decide what your subject is going to be and then forget about your keyword targets and just write about your subject. You’ll find that doing this will automatically seed your keywords thoughout the piece without sounding forced and you’ll become a much better writer as a result. You can also use bold text or italics to add further emphasis to specific words or phrases within your body text. This may not do a great deal by itself, but in combination with the other on-page tactics mentioned here the cumulative effect can help to produce better results for your search engine rankings. Once again, the important thing is to not over-do it, or you risk triggering one of the filters within the algorithm which could negatively affect your ranking. Search Engine Optimization is definitely one field where too much of a good thing can be very bad for you.
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Site Architecture and Internal Linking Structure
The
layout of your website and its internal navigation is very important not just for your visitors to be able to find their way around and get to the pages containing the information they need and the goals that you have for them. It’s also important for the search engine’s spiders to be able to crawl your site effectively, so that they can find and index your pages. Make sure that you have standard HTML Text Links that the search engines can crawl in addition to any fancy Javascript dropdown menus (which might look nice but are basically invisible as far as Googlebot is concerned).
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Outbound Linking Profile
Another measure of your site’s “worthiness” is taken by
evaluating the kind of sites that you are linking to. Google and the other earch engines may not look to kindly on your fluffy kittens in funny hats blog if the majority of sites in your blogroll are about the other kind of pussy. Linking out to “bad neighbourhoods” is a surefire way of giving search engines the idea that you’re a “bad neighbour” as well.
Off-Page SEO Factors
In addition to the various on-page factors outlined above, the are also a wide range of factors external to your site which wil be considered by the search engines when determining your ranking for a searcher’s query.
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Competition
One of the biggest external factors that you have the least control over is the amount of competition you face within your query space. There may be thousands or even millions of other webpages out there that you will need to rise above in order to reach the top of the SERPs.
Conducting a thorough competitive analysis will not only help you to establish just how steep a hill you’ll have to climb, it will also allow you to
know what your competitors are doing to rank so highly and give you the opportunity to out-do them.
This list is by no means exhaustive and there are hundreds of other factors that advanced SEO practioners will point to as having an effect on search engine placements. What you see here are simply the primary factors that should be taken into account when trying to optimize a website for higher rankings. Once these are taken care of you can move your focus into more complex areas to really push your rankings higher.
by Ken Jones on July 12, 2008
The weekend has landed! So let’s not waste any time, here are my picks of the best/most interesting/funniest posts from the world of SEO, Internet Marketing and beyond.
Happy Birthday Sphinn!
It’s been a year since Danny Sullivan launched Sphinn and to celebrate Matt McGee posted this look back at Sphinn’s early days, highlighting some of the first posts to go hot and talking about the boost that comes from getting onto the frontpage. This week also saw the launch of the new Sphinn Blog. Of course, it’s not always sweetness and light over there…
The Great Second Link Anchor Text Debate ‘08
Last month David Eaves from SEOco.co.uk debunked the idea that if you have two links to the same place on a single page, only the first one will pass its anchor text to provide and relevance and ranking benefit in Google. Or at least it appeared that way from anecdotal evidence of pages ranked in Google.co.uk
Then, last week Neyne, the SEO-Scientist, re-bunked the idea, by conducting a series of alternating tests on a pair of undisclosed, test-bed sites and observing the ranking effects in Google.com
This inspired Michael Martinez to carry out his own short term test, in the open, on his own public sites (although now that his test is over he has removed the links). MM stated that his intention wasn’t really to prove the second link anchor text thing one way or the other, as much as he wanted to make his point that almost any SEO Test is inherently flawed.
Of course, all this back and forth bunking lead to some very lively and heated discussions in the Sphinn threads for some of the posts on the subject. All this bickering prompted Debra Mastaler to light up the Matt-Signal in the hope of getting a straight answer out of him and settling this once and for all. Well, at least he turned up and gave her an answer (of sorts - I guess he’s too busy with his viagra business these days).
Guest Blogging with Guess Who
James had a great write-up on his digital marketing blog this week where he quantified some of the benefits that his guest blogging world tour has brought him. And now Michael Gray has announced that he’s looking for guest posters to appear on the Wolf-Howl, so I’m sure James’ll be popping up there soon enough.
It’s like Toast with a Y
Everybody’s favourite WordPress tweaking Dutchman, Joost DeValk released a load of updates for his WordPress plugins, along with a new plugin that makes it easier to send emails to your blog’s commenters. Definitely need to check that out this weekend.
Jason Gambert - What a Douchebag
You know how Wikipedia has all those rules and moderators to try to maintain impartiality and make sure that entries aren’t edited for the sake of worthless self promotion? Well, apparently Jason Gamert doesn’t. Or at least, he didn’t until he got banned from Wikipedia this week. Yet more proof of Jason’s well deserved victory in Chris Hooley’s SEO Superlatives contest.
The Funny Pages
As a tribute to the recently departed George Carlin (RIP) Cracked.com published its list of The 7 Words You Can’t Say On The Internet (without starting a flamewar). I wonder if there’s a way we could make it look like Jason Gambert added them all to Wikipedia and then let him get flamed for it.
The Kensington Victoria blog shared this example of what the Twitter timeline would look like during a Zombie Outbreak. I’m not sure how accurate their representation is though, because there’s no sign of the Fail Whale.
That’s it for another week. I’ve got some changes for SEOpsCentre that I’ll be implementing over the next few weeks and one change will be that the Link-Fests will be moving from their current Friday slot to a regular place on Mondays from now on. I’ll also be bringing in a few other (semi-)regular posts as well, more news on them soon.
by Ken Jones on July 4, 2008
Today is Independence Day in America and that means that most of them are probably out partying and watching fireworks displays. Which seems like a good opportunity to talk about them behind their backs.
American Judges Are Dumb (or at least this one seems to be)
A US Judge, ruling in the case of media giant Viacom’s piracy law suit against Google and YouTube ruled that Google must hand over detailed information about the videos stored on YouTube along with additional information from their logs showing IP addresses which could subsequently be used to identify individaul users who had either uploaded copyrighted content, or even those who had simply watched it (which means pretty much everybody that’s ever been to YouTube). This in spite of the fact that Viacom didn’t actually ask for this level of detail and Google has argued strongly against giving up such sensitive information. The two companies have been in communication with each to try to clear this up before they both suffer under the weight of the public backlash against the decision. The problem seems to be that the presiding judge just isn’t that technically savvy. According to Danny Sullivan’s first article about this the court house doesn’t even have email (or at any rate, they’re not too sure about how to work it on their internet machines).
Of course, if it does go to the wire and the judge forces Google to give Viacom all this extra information that they don’t even want, TechCrunch has a great suggestion about the best way to deliver it.
Stupid SEO Tricks
Todd Mintz put together a collection of the best of the worst SEO scams. He got a lot of big names from the SEO world to weigh in with some of the dumbest/craziest/evilest (I’m not sure “evilest” is actually a word, but hey it’s Friday!) SEO scam tricks that they’ve encountered from the inept and shady to the outright wrong and illegal. Have a read and make sure you’re not guilty of any of the things mentioned.
Clever SEO Tricks
You might recall a few weeks ago there was all that fuss about the Give It Up session at SMX Advanced. Well now the embargo has passed and people are allowed to spill the beans about what actually went on in there. Lisa Barone was one of the first off the mark with her round-up of the session and Rob “evilgreenmonkey” Kerry was quick to follow up with his own post giving a more detailed explanation of his automated technique for creating a network of micro-sites. You can also read Tamar Weinberg’s write up of the session on SERountable.
It looks as though most of the chatter about how much of the session revolved around black-hat techniques stems from the stuff that Rob and Marty Weintraub talked about.
Rand Fishkin’s part of the proceedings was largely about sharing some of his more useful tips for using advanced query operators to find out useful SEO information from Google searches. Very handy (especially since I’ve been working on compiling a list of these kind of search modifiers for a new post) and not at all black hat either.
Duthie-watch: On the road again
The world’s busiest guest blogger was back in action this week with an appearance on Dazzlin Donna’s SEO-Scoop where he compared the differences in the quality of traffic from search engines to traffic from social media sites. It was a great post that went hot on Sphinn very quickly and even scored James a coveted 5-star link from Rebecca Kelley in this week’s SEOmoz Round-Up.
James also put up a new post on his own blog where he quantified some of the benefits he’s gained from his guest blogging world tour.
Shana Albert’s Avatar Adventure
Shana Albert, better known on the social media circuit by her nickname, TheNanny612, recently decided to get her trademark curly locks cut off, which left her with the dilema of what to do about the avatar picture that she uses across all her social media profiles. Shana’s now settled on a new picture, but it took a lot of experimentation to find the one that was just right.
Funny Things From The Search World
You know how there’s that cliche about how stand-up comedians want to be rockstars and rockstars want to be stand-up comedians? Well, it seems that it’s not just rockstars who want to be comedians, there are plenty of SEOs out there who seem to have missed their calling as well. And I’m not just talking about Brian Carter and his goofy dance moves.
Linda Bustos over at Get Elastic put together this collection of LOLcats to illustrate her points about ecommerce. It really is a very informative post and not just an excuse to show off lots of pictures of teh kittehz.
Dazzlin’ Donna got in on the act as well, with her comedicly toned rant about why SEO conferences aren’t worth the expense on the SEO-Chicks blog.
Another contender from the SEO-Chicks is this post from Julie Joyce, pointing out one of Google’s more offensive “Did you mean:” suggestions.
And as if that wasn’t enough, check out this equally strange suggestion that Quadzilla happened across while he was conducting a perfectly innocent search. Honestly, what is the world coming to?
And last but not least, the gang over at Search Engine People went with an Independence Day theme for their regular Friday Funny post.
So, there we go folks, that’s it for another Friday Link-Fest. Enjoy your weekend and, if you’re American, have a great Independence Day.
by Ken Jones on June 28, 2008
T.F.I. Friday!
And T.F.I time for another Link-Fest! Let’s dive right in.
It’s somebody special’s (blog’s) Birthday!
Hot on the heel’s of theGypsy’s two-year blog-iversary last week, we have another milestone to celebrate this week as Dazzin’ Donna marked four years of blogging on SEO Scoop. Donna’s not just a great SEO in her own right, she’s also a great supporter of new SEOs and new bloggers and she regularly plays host to guest bloggers, helping them to gain greater exposure for their own blogs. She even let me have a guest spot.
It’s somebody else special’s (actual) Birthday (tomorrow)!
It’s Lisa Barone’s Birthday on Saturday and the present she really wants is this although I suspect she’d probably be just as happy to recieve cookies.
Duthie-watch: The world’s busiest guest blogger
James didn’t actually do a guest post anywhere this week, possibly because he’s been too busy Plurking, but Steven Bradley (the owner of the Van SEO Design Blog where James guested last week with his post about the evolution of the modern SEO) presented his counter-point to James’ post, arguing that in fact geeks are still relevant in modern SEO. I’ve got a feeling James is probably working on ideas for a response right now.
A use for Google Alerts that isn’t just about finding out who’s talking about you
Patrick Altoft from BlogStorm.co.uk gave some really useful tips about how to use Google Alerts to find out if your blog has been hacked. Obviously, prevention is better than a cure, but if you are unlucky enough to get hacked Micheal VanDeMar tells us how to completely clean your hacked WordPress installation. Which is nice.
Google gets even chattier
Following the success of last week’s Webmaster chat (which you can now find a full recording of along with the presentation slides here on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog) the Big G has now announced that they’ll be holding a webinar on July 8th where they’ll cover tips for using Webmaster Tools, Website Optimizer and Google Analytics. Don’t forget to mark it in your diaries.
Oh, and in case you’re interested, Rand posted his own set of responses to some of the questions from last week’s Google Q&A.
On a (semi-)related note, TechCrunch gives us a look at the flashy techno-toilets they have at the Googleplex. The quality of the Big G’s cafeteria is well known, but it looks like they take just as much care of the other end as well.
The Anti-Social Network
The guys behind UK social networking site FaceParty decided that they’d had enough of all the complaining users on their site this week, so they suspended the site, told the Haterz to Fuck Off and went to the Zoo for the day. Can you imagine the uproar if Zuckerberg ever did this?
[Fake] Jerry Yang gets fired (by [Fake] Steve Jobs)
Looks like El Jobso’s had to cut his vacation short and return to the blog because his stand in just wasn’t working out. Poor Jerry, things are just going from bad to worse. Especially now that Yahoo! employees can use this resignation generator to speed their exit from the company.
Apparently Steve has another guest lined up to fill in on the blog. Now that Uncle Bill has officially finished working full-time at the Borg I wonder whether he and Steve will be able to put their differences aside long enough for him to make an appearance on the FSJ Blog.
by Ken Jones on June 26, 2008
Sooner or later every SEO practicioner is going to have to try to explain the value and importance of having links to a website in a way that can be understood by a complete layman, whether that’s a client (who is more concerned about their business) or a friend or family member (who will probably end up regretting asking what you do in the first place).
There are all sorts of metaphors and analogies you can use to illustrate various aspects of link theory, from the buckets full of link juice used to explain PR flow and sculpting, through to examples where Links=Votes.
If you’ve explained yourself clearly enough (and your audience hasn’t dozed off in the meantime) you’ll then need to expand on the simple starting point to bring in additional concepts, like the extra boost provided by a link from a site with a high Page Rank value. In the case of the Links=Votes example, you could say that a link from an average site is like a regular vote, while a link from an authority site is the equivalent of a vote from a Super-delegate.
But the analogy I’ve found to be most useful when explaining the importance of inbound links is this…
Links are like the light from a torch beam
Try to imagine that each link pointing towards your site is like a beam of light from a torch. A link from a small PR1 site could be equated to the light from a handheld torch, while a link from a large authority site may be more like the beam of a spotlight or the Bat-Signal.
The more links pointing to your site and the more powerful they are, the brighter your site will shine, making it easier for Google to “see” what’s in your site when they’re looking to see if you’re relevant to a searcher’s query.
The brighter the lights shining on your site are, the brighter your own site will shine, so links out from your site will pass more value to their destinations and cause them to shine brighter as well.
Explaining the effect of nofollow links
Adding rel=nofollow to a link can be likened to placing an Infra Red filter over the torch beam. Although the link is still there for visitors to use to click through to your site, like the beam from your TV’s remote control the IR beam is invisible to the human eye (i.e. Googlebot) so it won’t cause the destination site to shine any brighter.
The colour of my (link) love
You can also imagine that Google applies coloured filters to certain link lights when they are evaluating links, so for example, if they regard a site as being particularly bad or spammy they might apply a red filter to all of its outbound links.
Get enough of these red light links pointing at your site and it will cause your site to glow red as well, alerting Google to take a closer look at your site, possibly resulting in a penalty.
Similarly, there may be other coloured filters in use to indicated different factors, such as high levels of “TrustRank” passed from .gov and .edu sites (green light) or indications of adult content (I’ve already used the stereotypical “Red Light Zone” in the example above, so let’s say blue, or maybe even Electric Blue )
As you can see, this is a very flexible way of explaining the value of gaining as many links to your website as possible and the various factors that Google may consider when evaluating those links. It’s certainly proven to be very effective for me when explaining link-theory to non-SEO types.
What other sorts of examples do you use? Do you think there’s a better way to explain this more clearly without getting bogged down in jargon? Let me know in the comments.
by Ken Jones on June 20, 2008
Hooray! It’s the end of another long week and time for another round up of my favourite posts from the world of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.
Strap yourselves in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Happy Anniversary HuoMah
Dave Harry, better known in social time-wastingnetworking chat sites like Twitter and Plurk as theGypsy, celebrated two years of posting on his internet marketing blog at HuoMah.com on Thursday.
Congratulations Dave, here’s looking forward to many more years of your special brand of SEO comedy to come.
When does this guy find time to write for his own blog?
James Duthie continued his guest-blogging world tour with an appearance on the Van SEO Design Blog where he shared his thoughts on the evolution of the modern SEO. Apparently we’re a whole new breed of search geeks. Sometimes I feel like I’m still just getting the hang of having opposable thumbs.
How many of these questions can you get right?
Michael Martinez posted this list of 8 questions every SEO should be able to answer.
I only got 4, but apparently that’s still pretty respectable for a relative n00b like me.
And ‘coz it wouldn’t be a week in SEO without Micheal trying to convince everybody that PR sculpting is pointless, here’s this week’s entry in his ongoing series of PR-Sculpting-Is-Dumb posts.
Just a small selection of some of the silly crap that’s gone hot on Sphinn this week
Seriously, does a post that lists who Matt Cutts follows on Twitter really deserve to go hot?
Or what about the one that just quoted something Matt said on Twitter about hating lies in reconsideration requests. Surely it’s just a matter of time now until someone with nothing better to do submits a tweet about Matt’s cats.
Then of course there’s this submission that went hot pointing out someone else’s Digg submission of their own Sphinn submission of their own (two sentance) blog post that nobody sphunn. Yes I felt dizzy after that too.
I’m really starting to understand Lisa Barone’s point about making more use of the desphinn button.
Google gets chatty
Thursday saw Google host their second live webmaster web chat with Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnik and a bunch of other Googlers giving presentations and answering questions from a few hundred eager webmasters and SEOs from across the globe. There were some very useful tips about personalized search and the effects of case sensitivity in URLs, as well as plenty of reminders about sticking to the guidelines and using the spam report form to let them now about people being naughty.
Quick-thinking Barry Schwartz recorded the chat and posted it on SE Rountable along with all the text from the typed in Q&A portion as well. If you missed the chat it’s definitely worth heading over there and checking it out.
All Donations Gratefully Recieved
I’ve got a charitable shout-out I want to make this week.
First up I want to point you all towards the guys from Bamoko Bamopots. Their aim is to raise enough money to provide two fully equipped Land Rover ambulances to the people of Bamoko in Mali (which is a country in North-West Africa for the geographically challenged among you). It’s a really worthy cause and I’d encourage you to help out in any way you can, whether by making a donation or simply by helping to spread their links far and wide.
The Funny Pages
[Fake] Steve Jobs has announced that he’s going to be taking a little break over the summer, but fortunately Jerry Yang’s stepped in to cover the blog while Steve’s away (I bet Steve’s been reading ProBlogger’s series on the value of lining up guest bloggers when you want to take a break from your blog).
Jerry’s whining about Sergey constantly calling him “bitch” seems to have really tickled Danny Sullivan, so much so that Dave over at RentVine.com threw together this video of Sergey and Larry having a chat about it. Poor Jerry, the last few weeks must have been tough on him.
