Advice on Subdomains vs. Subdirectories for SEO
Matt Cutts recently revealed that Google is now treating subdomains much more like subdirectories of a domain — in the sense that they wish to limit how many results show up for a given keyword search from a single site. In the past, some search marketers attempted to use keyworded subdomains as a method for improving search referral traffic from search engines — deploying out many keyword subdomains for terms for which they hoped to rank well.
Not long ago, I wrote an article on how some local directory sites were using subdomains in an attempt to achieve good ranking results in search engines. In that article, I concluded that most of these sites were ranking well for other reasons not directly related to the presence of the keyword as a subdomain — I showed some examples of sites which ranked equally well or better in many cases where the keyword was a part of the URI as opposed to the subdomain. So, in Google, subdirectories were already functioning just as well as subdomains for the purposes of keyword rank optimization. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/12/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Domain Names, Dynamic Sites, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure, URLs, Worst Practices Domain Names, Google, host crowding, language seo, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, seo subdirectories, subdomain seo, subdomains
Google Hiding Content Behind an Image on their SERPs
Tamar Weinberg at Search Engine Roundtable reports that in a Google Groups forum, a Webmaster Central team member stated that you could use something like the z-index attribute in DHTML styles to hide text or links behind an image, so long as the text/link being hidden is what’s represented in the image.
I think it’s a good thing that they do allow this sort of use, because it appears to me that they’re doing this very thing on their own search results pages! If you refresh a search page, you can see what they’re hiding under their own logo:
…a text link pointing to their homepage.
Now, the interesting question I’d have for the Google team about this would be: this is straightforward if the image itself contains text, but what would be allowable if the image doesn’t contain text, but say, an image of a lion? There’s many different ways to express what that lion is from “lion” to “tawny, golden-furred lion king”.
Or, should we be assuming that images that are written over text and links are only allowable when the image contains text?
The Google Webmaster Tools contributor states that you could be using image’s ALT and TITLE attributes to essentially do the same thing. This is sorta funny, because one could say the same thing of Google’s use of this on their own page — why are they doing it?
One immediately wonders how Google polices this, since they’re apparently not frowning upon pages drawing images over text/links in all cases. They can detect text written over images, but would they have every instance checked by a human? Or, are they using optical character recognition algos to automatically check the text within images against the text being hidden?
In any case, the fact that Google is doing this on their own site could be taken as more confirmation that they don’t consider the technique to be bad in of itself — as long as the practice is conservative and the text/link just describes the text content within the image.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/19/2007
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Filed under: Google, Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, z-index, zindex
Google’s Advice For Web 2.0 & AJAX Development
Yesterday, Google’s Webmaster Blog gave some great advice for Web 2.0 application developers in their post titled “A Spider’s View of Web 2.0“.
In that post, they recommend providing alternative navigation options on Ajaxified sites so that the Googlebot spider can index your site’s pages and also for users who may have certain dynamic functions disabled in their browsers. They also recommend designing sites with “Progressive Enhancement” — designing a site iteratively over time by beginning with the basics first. Start out with simple HTML linking navigation and then add on Javascript/Java/Flash/AJAX structures on top of that simple HTML structure.
Before the Google Webmaster team had posted those recommendations, I’d published a little article early this week on Search Engine Land on the subject of how Web 2.0 and Map Mashup Developers neglect SEO basics. A month back, my colleague Stephan Spencer also wrote an article on how Web 2.0 is often search-engine-unfriendly and how using Progressive Enhancement can help make Web 2.0 content findable in search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search.
Way earlier than both of us even, our colleague, P.J. Fusco wrote an article for ClickZ on How Web 2.0 Affects SEO Strategy back in May.
We’re not just recycling each other’s work in all this — we’re each independently convinced of how problematic Web 2.o site design can limit a site’s performance traffic-wise. If your pages don’t get indexed by the search engines, there’s a far lower chance of users finding your site. With just a mild amount of additional care and work, Web 2.0 developers can optimize their applications, and the benefits are clear. Wouldn’t you like to make a little extra money every month on ad revenue? Better yet, how about if an investment firm or a Google or Yahoo were to offer you millions for your cool mashup concept?!?
But, don’t just listen to all the experts at Netconcepts — Google’s confirming what we’ve been preaching for some time now.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/07/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO AJAX, Google, Mashups, Progressive-Enhancement, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Web-2.0
Search Engine Optimization through Yellow Pages
There’s an interesting thread that appeared on Greg Sterling’s blog on Using IYPs as an SEO Strategy.
Some of the commentators pointed out that yellow pages ads are pretty costly, compared with those of the search engines. So, is using yellow pages as part of a search marketing campaign worthwhile for traffic and good for ROI? My answer is: Yes, yellow pages can and should be used as a major component of local search optimization. Yellow pages can be used for SEO, and here’s some details on how to approach it.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/24/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, SEO, Yellow Pages
Yes, you can automate SEO – we’ve done it!
Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal wrote a post highlighting Commerce360’s stated intention to build automatic optimization software, using a lot of venture capital they raised for this purpose. Loren asks, “Can SEO Be Automated?”
Inspired by this thread, Lisa Barone at Bruce Clay, Inc. responds with “You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization” (which is just the tiniest bit ironic, since Bruce Clay’s Dynamic Site Mapping tool arguably provides a level of automated search optimization).
While Commerce360 is looking to create search optimization automation, we’ve already been accomplishing it for quite some time here at Netconcepts, as I outlined in an earlier article on Automatic Search Engine Optimization. So, do I think SEO can be automated? Hell, yes!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/21/2007
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Filed under: HTML Optimization, Marketing, Monetization of Search, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, technology, Tools Automatic-Search-Engine-Optimization, Automatic-SEO, GravityStream, Netconcepts, SEO, SEO-Web-Services
Dealer Locator & Store Locator Services Need to Optimize
My article on local SEO for store locators just published on Search Engine Land, and any company that has a store locator utility ought to read it. Many large companies provide a way for users to find their local stores, dealers, or authorized resellers. The problem is that these sections are usually hidden from the search engines behind search submission forms, javascripted links, html frames, and Flash interfaces.
For many national or regional chain stores, providing dealer-locator services with robust maps, driving directions and proximity search capability is outside of their core competencies, and they frequently choose to outsource that development work or purchase software to enable the service easily.
I did a quick survey and found a number of companies providing dealer locator or store finder functionality: (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/13/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Content Optimization, Dynamic Sites, Local Search Optimization, Maps, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure chain-stores, dealer-locators, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, store-location-software, store-locators
Double Your Trouble: Google Highlights Duplication Issues
Maile Ohye posted a great piece on Google Webmaster Central on the effects of duplicate content as caused by common URL parameters. There is great information in that post, not least of which it validates exactly what a few of us have stated for a while: duplication should be addressed because it can water down your PageRank.
Maile suggests a few ways of addressing dupe content, and she also reveals a few details of Google’s workings that are interesting, including: (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/12/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Dynamic Sites, Google, PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure, URLs Canonicalization, duplicate-content, duplication, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Resurrection of the Meta Keywords Tag
Danny Sullivan did a great, comprehensive examination of current status of the Meta Keywords tag, and his testing showed that both Ask and Yahoo will still use content in that tag as a relevancy signal. Both Google and Microsoft Live do not. His clear outline of the history, common questions, and contemporary testing of the factor were really helpful.
However, I think there’s still a case where Google may be using the Meta Keywords tag… (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/07/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks, Worst Practices black-hat-seo, Google, Meta-Keywords-Tag, meta-tags, metatags
Target Universal Search via Image SEO – SES San Jose 2007
I’ll be speaking at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose later this month, on the “Images & Search Engines” panel on the second day. The topic of my presentation will be on using Image Sharing Sites for SEO, and I focus particularly upon optimizing through Flickr. I’ll again be speaking with Liana Evans, and Shari Thurow, and we’ll be joined this time with Cris Pierry who is Director of Web & Multi-Media Search at Yahoo!, as well as James Jeude who is Senior Product Manager at Ask.com.
If you’ve missed this session previously, I’d encourage you to consider attending it. The advent of Universal Search at Google has resulted in the integration of top results from other areas of Google’s various vertical searches, smashing together their previous “siloed” sections. Clearly, top placement in each of those silos can now improve your chances of having content appear on the first page of the core web search results, so tips on top placement in Image Search may now be a vital strategy for you as you work upon improving and maintaining rankings on various keyword terms.
I’ve previously written and spoken on optimizing for Image Search, and using images for SEO purposes, and I recently wrote some tips on using images for local search optimization – another of the top three most-popular vertical searches.
Even if you’re working on a site that you don’t feel really lends itself to an image optimization strategy, I’d challenge you to rethink that! Even if you’re in a particularly “dry” industry, you likely could take photos of your products or your employees performing your services, and you could be using those photos for the purposes of SEO. How about even photographing portions of your fabrication process? Not only could those pix get you placement in Image Search as well as with the images component of Universal Search, uploading those pix into some of the more popular image sharing sites out there could result in improving your inbound links, helping to build your overall PageRank. Industries which don’t immediately seem compelling subjects for images may enjoy even greater potential in this area, because the competition might never clue into the advantages of integrating images into the site and into an overall search marketing strategy.
Also at SES San Jose, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, one of the core inventors of their Universal Search design, will be participating in the keynote conversation with Danny Sullivan on Day 3 of the conference – a session I’d highly recommend as “not-to-be-missed”!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/06/2007
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Filed under: Conferences, Google, Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Image-Sharing-Sites, Images-&-Search, Marissa-Mayer, Search-Engine-Strategies-Conference, SES-San-Jose, Universal-Search
Yelp opens API for developers
Michael Arrington reported today how Yelp has released their API, allowing developers to dynamically query and display their yellow pages listings, reviews and content for display on any websites. The terms are fairly generous, allowing developers to have up to 10k of queries per day, and relatively few restrictions on display.
This is a really cool thing for an IYP site to do…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/02/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, SEO, Yellow Pages APIs, iyp, Online-Yellow-Pages, Yellow Pages, Yelp
