Just put a new post up on Searchengineland on some advanced Newspaper SEO strategies as a follow up to Chris Silver Smith’s piece from a few weeks ago.
On November 30, 2009, In SEO, by Andrew Shotland
Just put a new post up on Searchengineland on some advanced Newspaper SEO strategies as a follow up to Chris Silver Smith’s piece from a few weeks ago.
On November 27, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
Google News SEO is a fun topic for me because we are included in Google News. Two recent interviews were published on how Google News ranks articles and yes, it is very different from rankings in Google Web Search.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and Eric Enge at Stone Temple both ask the tough questions with Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News.
I suggest reading those interviews and then joining the WebmasterWorld discussion on the topic. Some really good analysis is going on there on these interviews.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Google News SEO is a fun topic for me because we are included in Google News. Two recent interviews were published on how Google News ranks articles and yes, it is very different from rankings in Google Web Search.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and Eric Enge at Stone Temple both ask the tough questions with Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News.
I suggest reading those interviews and then joining the WebmasterWorld discussion on the topic. Some really good analysis is going on there on these interviews.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
On November 26, 2009, In SEO, by great scott
Posted by great scott!
Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)!
This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight. Since it’s now officially the "Holidays," I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light 
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!
There’s still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago’s not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).
You’ve also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.
Posted by great scott!
Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)!
This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight. Since it’s now officially the "Holidays," I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!
There’s still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago’s not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).
You’ve also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.
On November 26, 2009, In SEO, by Jeffrey Smith
If you ever wanted to make your organic preferred landing pages rank like PPC Landing Pages, this tutorial is for you. If you understand the implication of this invaluable, long-term SEO tactic, you could free-up thousands of dollars from your marketing budget by relinquishing your dependency on pay per click marketing.
What if each page in your [...]
If you ever wanted to make your organic preferred landing pages rank like PPC Landing Pages, this tutorial is for you. If you understand the implication of this invaluable, long-term SEO tactic, you could free-up thousands of dollars from your marketing budget by relinquishing your dependency on pay per click marketing.
PPC Landing Pages or Natural / Organic SEO Landing Pages?
What if each page in your website ranked specifically for the group of primary keywords it was crafted for? Essentially, this is the advantage of PPC. However, with virtual theming and internal links you can tell search engines which pages you would prefer to rank for specific keywords.
Dilemmas such as paying for click fraud or paying for low conversions from lackluster broad match terms could be replaced entirely with organic / natural results as through aligning specific landing pages with specific keywords and optimizing them to appear in non sponsored rankings.
This tactic works well for content-rich websites that have a history of adding content frequently. If you have a robust website, then multiple pages in your site can inherently be used as supporting pages to provide buoyant ranking factor when consolidated.
Follow the link to read the rest of this landing page tutorial…
On November 24, 2009, In SEO, by rustybrick
An SEO from DigitalPoint Forums is celebrating a birth day. What is so special about his birthday? Well, his sister baked him a cake, but not just any kind of cake, a Google cake.
He explained:
Hey, it’s my birthday today and I just wanted to share with my DP friends what kind of birthday cake my sister made for me!
I didn’t think I was that crazy but I guess she did!
Here is a picture of the cake:
I thought I was bad when I dreamt about Matt Cutts of Google, okay, maybe I am worse?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
An SEO from DigitalPoint Forums is celebrating a birth day. What is so special about his birthday? Well, his sister baked him a cake, but not just any kind of cake, a Google cake.
He explained:
Hey, it’s my birthday today and I just wanted to share with my DP friends what kind of birthday cake my sister made for me!
I didn’t think I was that crazy but I guess she did!
Here is a picture of the cake:
I thought I was bad when I dreamt about Matt Cutts of Google, okay, maybe I am worse?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
On November 22, 2009, In SEO, by randfish
Posted by randfish
I’m a big Google fan – my wife often sleeps in their t-shirts, I speak on panels with Googlers all the time and I’ve even got a Google water bottle for working out (which happens all of once a month these days). However, I am NOT a fan of the Google link command, and I’m shocked by the number of folks who operate in and around the SEO, webdev and technology industries who haven’t realized this.
Here’s what Google themselves have to say on the matter:
You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.
To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.
Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.
Here’s what Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webspam team) had to say in a video on the subject:
The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of backlinks because web search was the main part and we didn’t have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of backlinks that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It’s a relatively small percentage. And I think that that’s a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of backlinks for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone’s rankings.
Google themselves is telling us not to pay too much attention to the link command, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping folks. Let the myth busting commence.
Myth #1 – The Google Link Command Returns Accurate Numbers
Nope. Not even close. Google themselves say the numbers aren’t accurate and that they’re showing a small sub-sample. The numbers show this as well. Check your link counts with the Google link command vs. the number inside Google’s Webmaster Tools (when you verify your account, you’ll see them shown). Here’s the stats for SEOmoz, for example:
Google’s link command claims 1,590 links. Let’s see what Webmaster Tools says:
Hmm… 381,403 seems slightly larger than 1,590. In fact, the link command is showing me 0.4% of what Webmaster Tools says exists. Running this analysis on another few domains that we have access to in Webmaster Tools, I saw numbers ranging from 0.1% to 4.4% (meaning there’s not even any consistency between in the percentage of links from the two counts).
Myth #2 – The Google Link Command Returns Important Links
Tragically, a long time ago (pre-2004), Google did show only important links via the link: command, which created the myth that exists to this day. In fact, the links shown in the link: command have no particular importance or relevance. They are truly a random sample, including links that are nofollowed, links from pages that have had PageRank penalties applied to them as well as links that do pass link juice and value.
Myth #3 – The Google Link Command Returns Links in Some Kind of Order
No one in SEO has been able to show any ordering of any kind in the Google link: command’s results. Important, well-known websites may be listed on page 2 or page 20 of the results, and it is likewise with spam, scrapers and low quality sites that Google’s likely not counting. In Site Explorer and the web results, Yahoo! appears to do some type of ordering, tending to show more important links, pages and sites before less important ones (though not with great consistency). Unfortunately, many SEOs suspect that, should Microsoft’s deal to power Yahoo! with Bing results go through, Yahoo! is unlikely to maintain their own web index (and thus, link, linkdomain and site explorer will be gone).
As exemplified above, Google appears to be very random indeed when showing link: results.
Myth #4 – The Google Link Command Returns a Numerically Representative Count of Links
This is possibly the myth that’s most disturbing of all, primarily because so many operators in the SEO field belive it and track the link: command count as a reliable, useful metric. Nothing could be further from the truth – and here’s some data to help back it up:
|
Root Domain |
Google Link: # |
Yahoo! Linkdomain # |
Linkscape Count |
| Yahoo.com | 3,650 | 331,000,000 | 201,681,667 |
| Recovery.gov | 7,550 | 328,000 | 155,780 |
| Facebook.com | 165,000 | 567,000,000 | 116,748,934 |
| Real.com | 11,400 | 4,600,000 | 5,596,165 |
| Adobe.com | 51,200 | 124,000,000 | 78,550,468 |
| Reddit.com | 18,300 | 128,000,000 | 29,071,291 |
| Twitter.com | 224,000 | 515,000,000 | 132,528,763 |
| Salon.com | 12,300 | 3,420,000 | 1,535,342 |
| SEOmoz.org | 1,590 | 957,000 | 486,405 |
| NYTimes.com | 7,990 | 21,200,000 | 12,884,758 |
| TurkeyDayRun.com | 3 | 68 | 22 |
| Ninme.com | 539 | 42,000 | 3,149 |
| Burgerking.com | 942 | 106,000 | 23,761 |
| Alaskaair.com | 1,010 | 44,000 | 38,358 |
| Smashingmagazine.com | 8,730 | 1,130,000 | 592,054 |
| Smithsonian.org | 4,860 | 25,700 | 14,545 |
I collected the data above spur of the moment, so I won’t try to claim great statistical integrity. However, looking at Google’s link: command results, the best I can say is that Google has some relationship to the others within 1-2 orders of magnitude, though they may be directionally inaccurate much of the time as well. Just look at the NYTimes.com for example – Google claims they have 2/3rds the links that Salon.com has, yet Yahoo! and Linkscape agree that, in fact, NYTimes.com has 6X+ Salon.com’s link total.
These are not numbers you want to hang your hat (or any crucial business decisions) on.
Myth #5 – The Google Link Command Tracks Accurately Over Time
Unfortunately, I don’t have data points I can show, but our observations over time indicate that Google’s link count in Webmaster Tools might rise, along with the Yahoo! and Linkscape link counts, yet the Google link: command will show lower numbers. The reverse is sometimes also the case. Without directional consistency, even when compared against their own counts, it’s very hard to take the Google link: count seriously.
Myth #6 – The Google Link Command is Up to Date
Most SEOs & webmasters have noticed that the Google link: counts update infrequently, inconsistently and most often in correlation with toolbar PageRank updates (another data point I’ll need to takcle in a future post). These updates from Google occur every 2-10 months with little warning about when they’re coming or have happened. If you watch sites like closely, they’ll report many of these as they occur.
The next time someone tells you their Google link: command numbers as a metric for SEO, competitive analysis or anything else, make sure they read this post. Google’s not nearly as up-front with the information as they should be (honestly, removing the link command would save so much time and effort for poor site owners who get needlessly confused), but hopefully as a community, we can help build more awareness around this issue.
Posted by randfish
I’m a big Google fan – my wife often sleeps in their t-shirts, I speak on panels with Googlers all the time and I’ve even got a Google water bottle for working out (which happens all of once a month these days). However, I am NOT a fan of the Google link command, and I’m shocked by the number of folks who operate in and around the SEO, webdev and technology industries who haven’t realized this.
Here’s what Google themselves have to say on the matter:
You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.
To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.
Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.
Here’s what Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webspam team) had to say in a video on the subject:
The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of backlinks because web search was the main part and we didn’t have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of backlinks that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It’s a relatively small percentage. And I think that that’s a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of backlinks for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone’s rankings.
Google themselves is telling us not to pay too much attention to the link command, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping folks. Let the myth busting commence.
Myth #1 – The Google Link Command Returns Accurate Numbers
Nope. Not even close. Google themselves say the numbers aren’t accurate and that they’re showing a small sub-sample. The numbers show this as well. Check your link counts with the Google link command vs. the number inside Google’s Webmaster Tools (when you verify your account, you’ll see them shown). Here’s the stats for SEOmoz, for example:
Google’s link command claims 1,590 links. Let’s see what Webmaster Tools says:
Hmm… 381,403 seems slightly larger than 1,590. In fact, the link command is showing me 0.4% of what Webmaster Tools says exists. Running this analysis on another few domains that we have access to in Webmaster Tools, I saw numbers ranging from 0.1% to 4.4% (meaning there’s not even any consistency between in the percentage of links from the two counts).
Myth #2 – The Google Link Command Returns Important Links
Tragically, a long time ago (pre-2004), Google did show only important links via the link: command, which created the myth that exists to this day. In fact, the links shown in the link: command have no particular importance or relevance. They are truly a random sample, including links that are nofollowed, links from pages that have had PageRank penalties applied to them as well as links that do pass link juice and value.
Myth #3 – The Google Link Command Returns Links in Some Kind of Order
No one in SEO has been able to show any ordering of any kind in the Google link: command’s results. Important, well-known websites may be listed on page 2 or page 20 of the results, and it is likewise with spam, scrapers and low quality sites that Google’s likely not counting. In Site Explorer and the web results, Yahoo! appears to do some type of ordering, tending to show more important links, pages and sites before less important ones (though not with great consistency). Unfortunately, many SEOs suspect that, should Microsoft’s deal to power Yahoo! with Bing results go through, Yahoo! is unlikely to maintain their own web index (and thus, link, linkdomain and site explorer will be gone).
As exemplified above, Google appears to be very random indeed when showing link: results.
Myth #4 – The Google Link Command Returns a Numerically Representative Count of Links
This is possibly the myth that’s most disturbing of all, primarily because so many operators in the SEO field belive it and track the link: command count as a reliable, useful metric. Nothing could be further from the truth – and here’s some data to help back it up:
|
Root Domain |
Google Link: # |
Yahoo! Linkdomain # |
Linkscape Count |
| Yahoo.com | 3,650 | 331,000,000 | 201,681,667 |
| Recovery.gov | 7,550 | 328,000 | 155,780 |
| Facebook.com | 165,000 | 567,000,000 | 116,748,934 |
| Real.com | 11,400 | 4,600,000 | 5,596,165 |
| Adobe.com | 51,200 | 124,000,000 | 78,550,468 |
| Reddit.com | 18,300 | 128,000,000 | 29,071,291 |
| Twitter.com | 224,000 | 515,000,000 | 132,528,763 |
| Salon.com | 12,300 | 3,420,000 | 1,535,342 |
| SEOmoz.org | 1,590 | 957,000 | 486,405 |
| NYTimes.com | 7,990 | 21,200,000 | 12,884,758 |
| TurkeyDayRun.com | 3 | 68 | 22 |
| Ninme.com | 539 | 42,000 | 3,149 |
| Burgerking.com | 942 | 106,000 | 23,761 |
| Alaskaair.com | 1,010 | 44,000 | 38,358 |
| Smashingmagazine.com | 8,730 | 1,130,000 | 592,054 |
| Smithsonian.org | 4,860 | 25,700 | 14,545 |
I collected the data above spur of the moment, so I won’t try to claim great statistical integrity. However, looking at Google’s link: command results, the best I can say is that Google has some relationship to the others within 1-2 orders of magnitude, though they may be directionally inaccurate much of the time as well. Just look at the NYTimes.com for example – Google claims they have 2/3rds the links that Salon.com has, yet Yahoo! and Linkscape agree that, in fact, NYTimes.com has 6X+ Salon.com’s link total.
These are not numbers you want to hang your hat (or any crucial business decisions) on.
Myth #5 – The Google Link Command Tracks Accurately Over Time
Unfortunately, I don’t have data points I can show, but our observations over time indicate that Google’s link count in Webmaster Tools might rise, along with the Yahoo! and Linkscape link counts, yet the Google link: command will show lower numbers. The reverse is sometimes also the case. Without directional consistency, even when compared against their own counts, it’s very hard to take the Google link: count seriously.
Myth #6 – The Google Link Command is Up to Date
Most SEOs & webmasters have noticed that the Google link: counts update infrequently, inconsistently and most often in correlation with toolbar PageRank updates (another data point I’ll need to takcle in a future post). These updates from Google occur every 2-10 months with little warning about when they’re coming or have happened. If you watch sites like closely, they’ll report many of these as they occur.
The next time someone tells you their Google link: command numbers as a metric for SEO, competitive analysis or anything else, make sure they read this post. Google’s not nearly as up-front with the information as they should be (honestly, removing the link command would save so much time and effort for poor site owners who get needlessly confused), but hopefully as a community, we can help build more awareness around this issue.
On November 22, 2009, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Many webmasters, business owners and marketing folks are sometimes more concerned about saving money than making it. Ever heard the expression, “Penny wise, pound foolish?” Save a buck today, lose two or three tomorrow. That’s what happens when you try to optimize your own website and don’t know what you’re doing. You’re likely going to [...]
Many webmasters, business owners and marketing folks are sometimes more concerned about saving money than making it. Ever heard the expression, “Penny wise, pound foolish?” Save a buck today, lose two or three tomorrow. That’s what happens when you try to optimize your own website and don’t know what you’re doing. You’re likely going to fail or you won’t be patient long enough to wait for the results you hope to get. Often many times I have seen people that don’t take the time to truly understand how search engine optimization works, try to rush it or have unrealistic expectations and then vow that SEO does not work. I can assure you that search engine optimization is one of the most cost effective and best return driven mediums to drive targeted visitors to your website. But is there a time when you can, and should, optimize your own website? Yes. There may be times when performing the SEO work on your site is to your advantage.
The obvious time to optimize your own website is when you have taken the time to learn it on your own and have ample time to perform the on site optimization and ongoing link building and reporting efforts. You’ve studied it long enough and you’ve experimented enough with the tools that you can make it happen. I’m not talking about having read one e-book written in 1995. I’m talking about having actually tested some of the things that you’ve learned and you understand SEO well enough to employ its mysteries without giving up when things don’t go right. Because, inevitably, your first efforts are going to appear to fail; they actually may be succeeding, but you just won’t see the results for a while.
