Matt Cutts reveals underscores now treated as word separators in Google
After the recent WordCamp conference, Stephan Spencer reports here and here that Matt Cutts stated that Google now treats underscores as white-space characters or word separators when interpreting URLs. Read on for more details and my take on it…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/26/2007
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Filed under: Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, Keywords-in-URLs, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Is SEO Awareness Dropping? Google Trends Shows it May Be
Using Google Trends, I was noticing how searches in Google for “Search Engine Optimization” seems to be dropping over the last two years:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/24/2007
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Filed under: Market Data, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google-Trends, Search Engine Optimization, search-marketing, SEO
Image Sharing Sites & Search Engine Optimization
I just wrote an article on Search Engine Land on how to use image optimizations for local search engine optimization. Even prior to Google’s introduction of Universal Search, a number of us have been suggesting that improving one’s placement in various search verticals beyond the primary web search could help one’s overall natural search marketing program. I’ve written previously about optimization of image content and optimizing through Flickr — and optimizing for local search, while SES Conference sessions have covered optimizing video content, Rohit Bhargarva has written about optimizing through social media, Matt McGee has written on optimizing for Google’s Map Search, and Neil Patel has written on optimizing for blog search.
If you’re interested in a great overview of the convergence of vertical search in the newly blended Universal Search, check out this article by my colleague, P.J. Fusco on “Personalized, Universal and Optimized“.
If you’re interested in more details on how to optimize for image search and how to optimize through image sharing sites such as Flickr, Fotki, and 23, be sure to catch the panel session I’ll be participating in at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose in August. I’ll be joined again by my colleagues, Shari Thurow, and Liana Evans along with perhaps a couple of engineers from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/23/2007
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Image-Sharing-Sites, Images-&-Search, Search-Engine-Strategies-Conference
Automatic Search Engine Optimization through GravityStream
I’ve had a lot of questions about my new work since I joined Netconcepts a little over three months ago as their Lead Strategist for their GravityStream product/service. My primary role is to bring SEO guidance to clients using GravityStream, and to provide thought leadership to the ongoing development of the product and business.
GravityStream is a technical solution that provides outsourced search optimization to large, dynamic websites. Automatic SEO, if you will. Here’s what it does…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/17/2007
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Dynamic Sites, HTML Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure, Tools Automatic-Search-Engine-Optimization, GravityStream, Netconcepts, Outsourced-Search-Engine-Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Build It Wrong & They Won’t Come: Coca-Cola’s Store
I just wrote an article comparing Coke’s and Pepsi’s homepage redirection, concluding that Pepsi actually does a better job, though both of them did ultimately nonoptimal setup for the purposes of search optimization. Clunky homepage redirection isn’t the only search marketing sin that Coca-Cola has done — their online product shopping catalog is very badly designed for SEO as well, and I’ll outline a number of reasons why.
In this article and in the redirection article, I’m criticising Coca-Cola’s technical design quite a bit, but I’m not trying to embarrass them — like any good American boy, I love Coca-Cola (particularly Coke Classic and Cherry Coke). In fact, this could ultimately benefit them, if they take my free assessment and use it as a guide for improving their site. I’m doing this because Coca-Cola is the top most-recognized brand worldwide, and the sorts of errors they’re making in their natural search channel are all too common in ecommerce sites. I chose Coca-Cola’s e-store because they make such a great example of the sorts of things that online marketers need to focus upon. If such a juggernaut of a company, with huge advertising and marketing budgets makes these sorts of mistakes, you could be making them, too.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/16/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, brand names, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Worst Practices Coca-Cola, Coke, Etail-Optimization, Online-Catalog-Optimization, Online-Store-Optimization, SEO
Google Quality Scores for Natural Search Optimization
Google made big waves in the paid search marketing industry when they began introducing a Quality Score which impacted cost and rankings of AdWords advertisements. Similar quality scoring methods are likely in use as ranking criteria for Google’s natural search results as well, and Google’s Webmaster Tools may hint at some of the criteria. Here are some details of that quality scoring criteria and some ways for you to improve rankings with it.
Google provides a very rough “formula” for their AdWords Quality Score:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/02/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, google-webmaster-tools, Quality-Scores, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spamscore
To Have WWW or Not To Have WWW – That is the Question
Over time, I’ve become a fan of the No-WWW Initiative.
What is that, you might ask? It’s a simple proposal for sites to do away with using the WWW-dot-domainname format for URLs, and to instead go with the non-WWW version of domains instead. Managing your site’s main domain/subdomain name is one basic piece of search engine optimization, and this initiative can be a guide for how to decide which domain name will become the dominant one for a site. Read on for more info…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/28/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Domain Names, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URLs Canonicalization, Domain Names, SEO, subdomains
When Google Changes Page Titles
As most webmasters are aware, the text put within a page’s <TITLE> tags appears in two places – at the top of the browser window when a user is viewing a page, and it appears as the link anchor text on Google’s and other search engine results pages. But there are some rare occasions when Google will display different link text on their result pages than what is used in the <TITLE> text. So, why is this happening, and could it be happening to you?
I was recently researching some problems that a client was exeriencing due to bad advice given to him by a prior SEO agency (they’d encouraged him to buy links and participate in link exchanges, I found, among other sins). While looking into the site’s problems which included various over-optimizations and bad usability design, I discovered that when I used a particular keyword to search in Google, his site’s homepage came up with a completely different title in the search results. Most of his other desired keywords brought up his HTML <TITLE> text like normal, but this one did not…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/12/2007
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO DMOZ, Google, html-title, html-title-tag, Open-Directory-Project, page-titles, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SERP-display
Google Purchase of DoubleClick Under FTC Investigation
The NY Times reports that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has started a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, an industry executive briefed on the agency’s plans said yesterday.
Some consumer groups have raised questions about privacy issues involved in having companies which handle more and more of the end-to-end process in users’ clickstreams through the internet, since holding more of the links in the process chain inevitably means being able to ascertain individual’s actions, interests, motives and desires in their day-to-day lives. Read on for more info.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 05/29/2007
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Filed under: News, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Acquisitions, DoubleClick, FTC-Investigations, Google, Mergers, Search Engine Optimization
Advanced Search Engine Optimization for College & University Websites
I earlier posted some basic tips for SEO of University & College websites here on Natural Search Blog. I’m now circling back around to post some advanced tips for optimization of .EDU sites. Some of these tips are more along the lines of helping out with overall marketing, though using the college’s or university’s web presence to accomplish it. Even those ancillary efforts can contribute to the overall online marketing and natural search optimization success.
I wrote those tips after getting a number of interested questions from educational professionals attending the AMA Hot Topics seminar that Stephan and I provided in San Fran a few weeks ago. Read on for the details of my .EDU secret sauce!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/24/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO College-SEO, EDU-SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, University-SEO
