Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

With the anticipated launch of Google ’s Caffeine in the New Year and the focus on real time  and personalised search, 2010 is promising to be a nail biting  time for webmasters.  Here are a few tips to maintain your rankings in 2010:

1) Website load time.  In 2010 website load time will be a critical factor in determining which sites rank at the top of Google’s search results.  Ensure your site loads quickly and that it does not have any broken links.  Use tools such as  this and check against the top sites ranking for your keyword.  Ensure that your site’s loadtime is better than theirs.

2) Brank visibility.  2010 will also take into account your brand’s visibility on the net.  Make sure you optimise your social media assets such as your Twitter profile, your Facbook page , Flickr , LinkedIn and YouTube.

3) Real Time search.  Google and Bing recently paid 15 and 10 million dollars to index Twitter.  This was done primarily due to the fact that real time search will be an important factor in 2010.  Ensure that you produce enough content that can keep your social profiles active.

4) Universal Search.  Universal results or bleneded results will become even more prominent in 2010.  We’ve already started seeing the effect of Universal results in 2009 but 2010 promises to be the year when these results will become more of the norm.  Ensure you invest in multimedia content such as images, videos and news.

5) Personalised Search.  Google recently announced that it has switched it’s default search results to “personalised”.  With this being the case, ensure that your site is optimised to rank for the various keywords in your consumers buying cycle.  Also ensure that your site is user friendly in order to decrease bounce rates.  Google will be keeping an eye on bounce/click through rates in 2010.

In addition to the above, make sure that you follow all the basic SEO best practice techniques as recommended by the main search engines.

Happy Holidays!

So Google recently announced that it has defaulted it’s search results to “personalised”.  What does this mean in terms of the future of SEO?  I’ll try to explain.

Before I do, let me explain how Google’s new personalised results work. 

Google personalised results have always been available however previously, these results could only be viewed when a user was logged into a Google account.   Google has now defaulted to an opt out  if you don’t want personalised personalised results, ie they will serve personalised results unless you opt out by clicking on “Web History” in the top right hand corner of the results pages and opting out.

How do personalised results work?  Basically, Google stores a cookie on your computer and tracks your search behaviour including which sites you visit for up to 180 days.  Now, when you search for a certain keyword, Google queries your past search history and comes back with sites that match your past searches.

Here’s Google’s official video announcement

YouTube Direkt

For instance if you’re searching for “golf” in the past Google could either serve you a site related to Golf the car or Golf the sport.  Now, with personalised search, Google knows if you’re a sports fan or a car enthusiast and would serve you results based on your preference.

Now that you’re clearer on what personalised search is (I hope), how will these results affect SEO?

To put it mildly, the rules of the game have changed!  In the past, SEOs were able to follow basic SEO best practices such as code optimisation, keyword usage, site architecture and link building and have a very good chance of ranking for target terms.  This is still the case today however another factor has been pushed into the mix, personalisation.

This means that by following SEO best practices, you might rank for your target keywords but this is not guaranteed to be the case on every computer.  Some computers with Google web history enabled and a Google cookie residing in the hard drive might get results based on the user’s web history,  This web history as mentioned above is based on some of the sites they’ve visited before.

So while the rules of the SEO game have changed, SEOs can still achieve results by taking into account a user’s journey when purchasing a product or service (for instance) and ensure that a client’s site appears for searches at various parts of the journey.  

As an example, if a user is interested in purchasing a car and your client is Golf,  you will need to ensure that your client’s sites is visible not only for buying stages of the purchase cycle, but also during the research stage.  If Google registers that you’ve clicked on the Golf site early on in the process, then there is a good chance that the Golf site will outrank any other site in this niche.

I hope the above explains personalised search and what SEOs can do to ensure they do not lose out from this fundamental change in Google’s algorithm.

On July 1st 2009 Google’s new algorithm kicked in much to the confusion of webmasters around the world.   Some even compared it to the now infamous Big Daddy Algo change back in 2006.  In this post I’ll summarise the different factors that could have changed and analyse their impact on rankings.

1) Internal Links and the “Nofollow” attribute.

Internal links are any links found within a website such as navigational links, breadcrumb trails and contextual links.  Internal links have always been used by Google to determine the importance of all pages within a site.  Internal links also played a major  role in funnelling pagerank throughout a site and using the “nofollow” attribute, savvy webmasters were even able to tell Google which pages to channel pagerank to and which pages not.

On July 1st, this is officially no longer the case. Google’s has made the nofollow attribute redundant (for pagerank sculpting at least) by allowing pagerank to flow to internal pages with nofollow links. 

2) External Links

Following on from  the point above, prior to July 1st webmasters rarely linked to external websites for fear that these links would leak much needed pagerank to external sites.  When they did link to external sites, they added a nofollow.  Again, July 1st saw a change in this and it now seems that linking to external sites has risen up the agenda for Google.  Google now looks more favourably upon sites that link to relevant authoritative sites and rewards them for this.

3) Link Popularity vs Authority

Last but not least, link popularity.  Google has always valued link popularity (the amount and relevancy of links pointing to a site) however with the July 1st algo change, it seems that Google has decreased the importance of the quantity of links and is now focusing soley on quality.  Examples of non-quality links include forum links, social links and blog comment  links.

In a nutshell, Google is now increasing the importance it places on editorial links from authoritative sources such as major online publications, newspapers and niche bloggers, very much how it is in the offline world.

In summary, Google’s July 1st algo change has decreased the importance of traditional onsite SEO and is placing much more focus on external factors.

A recent statement by Matt Cutts at SMX advanced has caused confusion and anger among webmasters regarding the use of nofollow tags for pagerank sculpting. 

It was previously believed that the use of a nofollow tag on links would prevent the pagerank flow from going to these link and instead preserving it for more important pages on your site.  Well it seems this is no longer the case.

To further confuse the issue, it seems that Google is now indexing links found in Javascript which it previously could not find.

What does this mean in terms of SEO?  well in a nutshell lots of wasted Link Juice flowing down a black hole!  Danny Sullivan explained it the idea of link juice flow perfectly:

“Consider it like this. Imagine authority is money, and a particular page has $10 in “authority” to spend. It links out to 10 pages, so each of those pages gets $1 ($10 divided by 10). If it links to 20 pages, each gets 50 cents ($10 divided by 20). If it links to 5 pages, each page gets $2 (you get the math by now).”

If this issue is not officially clarified by Google and soon, webmasters could unfairly face penalty consequences as a result of losing rankings in the search results and worst yet, the possibility of getting completely banned as a result of their advertising links found in Javascript tags across the net.

Update

Matt Cutts from Google has officially shed some light on this topic:

On PageRank Sculpting

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting

Thanks Matt!

SEO is a fast changing industry and keeping up with the latest SEO news and techniques is paramount to a successfull SEO career.  Thankfully, the internet has provided the means to stay on top of the industry through various technologies including RSS feeds, email lists and now…Twitter! Below is a list of 10 of the best SEO consultants  to follow on Twitter:

1- Bruce Clay is a professional search engine optimization consultant. He was interviewed by Wired Magazine in their 2004 feature “The Complete Guide to Googlemania!” and cited by USA Today in their article “Gunning for search engines” from August 20, 2003 .  His website is referenced to by NARA – ALIC – User’s Guide to the Internet at The National Archives as resource for “Web Site Promotion Tactics and Tools” .

2- Barbara “WebMama” Coll is a search engine specialist a pioneer of search engine marketing (SEM), and an internationally recognized leader in search engine optimization (SEO).  Coll founded WebMama.com Inc. in September 1996, and in 2003 Coll established the global, non-profit Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).  She is also a veteran (6 years) speaker at the Search engine strategies conferences  and is a past member of the advisory board of the Internet marketing conference Ad:tech.

3- Vanessa Fox (born 1972) is a search engine optimization expert, writer and consultant best known for her work creating Google Webmaster Central and as a Google spokesperson.  Google Webmaster Central is a set of tools, educational materials, and community to advise webmasters on on how to have their sites listed in Google, and to help solve problems they might have with the way Google indexes their pages.  Vanessa is a prominent technology blogger, and a frequent speaker at industry events.

4- Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker (born May 31, 1974) is a web entrepreneur, founder of ShoeMoney Media, and co-founder of the AuctionAds service.  In March 2007, Schoemaker and his business partner David Dellanave launched AuctionAds, an eBay affiliate marketing service that serves eBay auction ads on contextually relevant sites. The service won an eBay Star Developer Award (it was named the “eBay Most Innovative Application – Buyer”) at the eBay Developers Conference.  In July 2007, performance marketing company MediaWhiz purchased Schoemaker’s majority ownership in AuctionAds ShoeMoney won the SEOLogs.com-sponsored SEO contest that ran from January 1, 2006 to March 1, 2006, and carried the term “redscowl bluesingsky.” He donated the prize money to the number 2 winner.

5- Barry Schwartz (born 1980) is a blogger and reporter who writes about search engines and search engine marketing. As of January 2007, Schwartz is the editor of Search Engine Roundtable, an online news site covering the search engines and search engine marketing. He also is the CEO of RustyBrick, Inc., a New York based web development company, and a news editor at Search Engine Land, a search engine news site founded by Danny Sullivan (technologist). Previously, Schwartz was a news editor at Search Engine Watch. He also moderates online and offline panels at Search Engine Watch, Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld’s PubCon.[2] Schwartz hosts the Search Pulse podcast on WebmasterRadio.FM.

6- Danny Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a blog that covers news and information about search engines, and search marketing.

Search Engine Land is owned by Third Door Media, of which Danny Sullivan is partner and chief content officer. Third Door Media also owns and operates other search related companies, including Search Marketing Now, which provides webcasts and webinars, both live and on demand, about web marketing; and Search Marketing Expo, a search engine marketing conference.

7- Brett Tabke is an American programmer and SEO professional. He is the founder of WebmasterWorld, an online search engine and internet marketing forum that often receives over 1 million pageviews per day.

Tabke started working with computers at a young age, developing software for Commodore home computers. He then worked for companies like Epyx and Berkeley Softworks (later renamed to GeoWorks, and makers of the GEOS operating system). In 1984 Tabke started his first BBS using a 300 baud modem on a dialup line.  In 1996 he made the transition to internet and web technologies.

8- Aaron Matthew Wall (born 1979) is a Oakland, California-based blogger and search engine optimization expert who writes the popular blog SEOBook. He is a frequent speaker at the Search Engine Strategies and PubCon conferences.  In 2005 Wall was sued by Traffic Power for defamation and publication of trade secrets, and the case was closely watched because it addressed the legal question of who’s liable for comments posted on websites and blogs  The case was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Traffic Power failed to appeal within the allowed time.

9- Jill Whalen is a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant, speaker and writer. Whalen is CEO of High Rankings, and co-founder of Search Engine Marketing New England (SEMNE). She is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies Conferences. High Rankings includes a top-rated SEO discussion forum.

10- Matt Cutts Although not an official SEO consultant, Matt works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam. Cutts also advises the public on how to get better website visibility in Google.

* Information on the top SEOs to follow on Twitter was provided by the Wikipedia