Category: Search Engine Optimization

Your onsite search engine optimization goes well beyond meta tags, page titles, and article URLs. In fact, real onsite SEO has very little to do with the (meta) content you put on the page. You need to know the difference…

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The problem with sharing SEO tips is that when more people use them they tend to become abused and spammy. But there are technical things you can share that should not become too problematic. Well, it’s all on you if…

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From February 2005 through May 2005 Google went through what I have sometimes called the Google Awful Update. Their search results were characterized by many URL-only listings and they often displayed 2-year-old data in place of contemporary information that their crawlers should have been picking up. Danny Sullivan seemed unaware of the issue at the time when I mentioned it to him but I confirmed it was happening to many Websites. The only way you could improve your Google performance at the time (if your site was affected by the Awful Update) was to publish new content, which could not be replaced by 2-year-old data and was not shown in URL-only format. What I took away from that experience was that “Google remembers everything”. I have been telling people that Google remembers everything for years. At the SMX Advanced 2007 conference in Seattle, during the “You-and-A” session with Matt Cutts, this memory thing came up again with an example where Matt mentioned if you own 200 spammy sites your 201st site may be flagged for review. This was not the first time the issue had come up. At an earlier conference during a Website review session someone asked Matt why […]

We haven’t all changed our feathers. I still plan and execute search engine optimization the way I did ten, twelve years ago. Nonetheless, everyone who was once all about links is now all about content and they bring months of experience to the “new SEO”. It sounds like a brave new world, to me. Indulge me as I share some observations based on my years of experience with this “new SEO”. The SEO Cycle, the OLD Way Back in the day the SEO cycle was pretty simple, consisting of six steps: Keyword Research Content Production Link Placement Measurement Analysis Adjustment That all seems a bit mechanical but I’ve been following this pattern since 1998 (when I first started learning about search engine optimization). Last year I did concede that we can narrow the list to three points: Produce Content Place Links Measure the Results That’s still formulaic and mechanical but it allows for a little more freedom in thinking. Too bad people flew into panic mode and stopped thinking earlier this year. Let’s take a closer look at what actually changed, shall we? Keyword Research: Still Going Strong If You Do It Right In 2007 when I shared advice on […]

Search engine optimization doesn’t call for much in the way of due diligence. After all, the optimization process only requires that you improve your performance. As the search environment grows and becomes more sophisticated, more complex, the opportunities for optimization increase across every active Website. Hence, you’re more likely to ignore some really basic stuff because it’s just not sexy or interesting. Here is a quick rundown of things you should be doing but probably are not. Analyze Your Site Search Query Data Site search is the step-child of Website navigation. Most people throw a Google Custom Search Engine on their sites and forget about it. Problem with that solution, however, is that the free version doesn’t tell you much about what people are searching for. If you’re going to use a site search tool you should get the most out of it. People use site search because they cannot find what they are looking for. Another way to look at this is that people cannot find what they are expecting to find when they land on your Website. Put a decent site search tool on your site that reports all your queries to you and you’ll have a rich […]

I receive a lot of questions from people about SEO. Many of the questions are naturally of a very personal nature — about specific Websites, rather than general topics. Still, once in a while some interesting questions arise out of conversations I have with clients, or they pop up in my email, or they just bring in random traffic to the blog. Here is a selection of questions people have been asking over the past few months along with my answers to them. How Complex is Google’s Algorithm? What we think of as “Google’s algorithm” is, in fact, many algorithms — probably on the order of several hundred or several thousand, depending on how far from the search box you want to dig into the Google system. In computer science an algorithm is a set of instructions that are intended to provide precise guidance on how to execute a specific task. An algorithm might be used to return today’s date in a special format. An algorithm might be used to conjure up a relatively unique number for use in a database. An algorithm might be used to store data on a hard drive (or a group of hard drives). The […]

SEO tools are the much beloved First Children of the search engine optimization industry. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a favorite tool, a list of favorite tools, or who doesn’t have some anecdote about some SEO tool. Sooner or later everyone tries one or more tools. Many people fall in love with them. We turn to tools to save time, money, and frustration. Every tool vendor tells you they are solving a problem and giving you a critical advantage. Every tool tutorial is trying to sell you something. It’s the tutorials, reviews, and recommendations you have to be most skeptical about because people who write them are often looking for links, leads, or commissions. I can’t give you an unbiased review of SEO tools. I have enjoyed using some and I have often said that I think most suck. So here, instead, is my checklist of types of tools and what you should expect of them. What I hope you take away from this post is an innate sense of sketpicism. Just because 100 people write “Great post! I love this tool!” doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about. All the endorsements in the world […]

For people who are asking “what is the reason not to show cache of a website”, here is a brief rundown of possible explanations. Someone left the following comment a week ago. I have tried twice to send an email to the person but their mail service says the mailbox is unavailable. Normally I would leave matters at that but this question comes up from time to time so I thought I would write a brief article about it. To the original commenter, I hope you see this. Your site should be fine. This is off-topic, but I was wondering if you could lend me some of your SEO expertise. My website is not cached in google. The homepage and all inner pages are indexed, but none of them are cached. I was wondering if this affects whether my website is sent organic search engine traffic. Also, can you think of a few possible causes off the top of your head as to why my pages are not cached. My blog has some settings checked like “no archive.” I changed this and a few other settings yesterday, so I’ll have to way to see if that’s what’s going on. I […]