Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Google Maps to Embed in New Magellan GPS
Barely one day in advance of the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show opening in Las Vegas this week, Magellan issued a press release about their next generation of GPS navigation devices, highlighting how they will come integrated with Google Maps to provide local search capabilities.
John Hanke, Director of Google Maps & Earth is quoted, saying, “We’re pleased to be partnering with Magellan to provide users with detailed, relevant local information while on the road. Magellan devices are powerful, interactive tools for navigation and discovery that serve as a cutting-edge platform for Google’s robust local search capabilities.” (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/07/2008
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps, technology CES, Consumer Electronics Show, Google-Maps, GPS, Magellan
Upcoming Appearances
I’ll be speaking on the “Local Search, and Blended Results” and “Online Retail and Blended Results” panels at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara, California, February 26 – 28, 2008.
Quite a few sessions at this conference are focusing on “blended results” — the new paradigm that has been affecting search results pages layouts and listing rankings. Each of the search engines have been looking into folding their various specialized, vertical search contents into the main keyword search results pages in order to better expose that content and facilitate usage of those features.
Google’s introduction of Universal Search during 2007 was probably the most attention-getting paradigm shift in terms of bringing search marketers to realize that they frequently need to achieve good placement in each of the specialized vertical searches like Images, Local/Maps, Video, News, and etc. to help guarantee rankings and ongoing market-share.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/04/2008
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Filed under: Conferences blended search, internet retail, Local Search, online retail, SERPs, Universal-Search
More on ISPs & Behavioral Ad Targeting
ClickZ has another good article on ISPs and Behavioral Ad Targeting today. Not only do they mention NebuAd which I wrote about in December, but they also list a few other companies that use similar NOC hardware for the same sorts of behavioral targeting, including: Phorm, FrontPorch, and Project Rialto.
My private individual half doesn’t like this sort of targeting. I pay for internet access, and I don’t particularly want people using my data to pigeon-hole me into a demographic for specific types of ads — and I’m mistrustful of how private/secure/anonymous these companies will keep my individual usage data.
My more public, professional half has to readily admit that for advertisers, behavioural targeting may be very advantageous in terms of communicating to a desired audience of buyers, and could also be very cost-effective in reducing wasteful ad impressions. I suspect that behavioral ad targeting may convert at a higher rate than other media if executed in a sophisticated manner. The only downside is that it likely also restricts the size of the audience share available to be exposed to the ads.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/03/2008
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Filed under: Advertising, Marketing, News behavioral targeting, internet ads, internet advertising, Nebu Ad, NebuAd, online ads, online-advertising
Hello 2008 @ Natural Search Blog!
Hi, all! As you may have noticed, I’ve been quite silent of late due to taking a lengthy time off for the holidays. I spent Xmas in Central Texas with my family, and then went down to Galveston to a vacation rental for the annual New Years reunion with a bunch of old friends from college (we choose a different location every year, with most being far away from Texas).
Even before the holiday vacation hit for me, I’d gone pretty silent/infrequent with my postings since I was heavily focused upon helping our major online retailer clients get shipshape for all the Cyber Mondays and we made little tweaks to help them maintain their juice as needed. (Oh, yeah — we were also targeted here by some malicious hacker, but that proved to be mostly an annoyance and it’s not really why I’d slowed down postings. Thanks to all of you who sent us notes of encouragement and offers to assist with that, btw!)
While the business sections of the newspapers have subsequently reported a mediocre-to-bad holiday season for retail sales at the end of 2007, it looked quite different from the stats that we watched pouring through our many servers for our GravityStream clients.
I’m pleased to report that this holiday season was very sunny for the majority of our GravityStream installations, and our automated SEO service made a significant difference for the retailers using us, resulting in many millions of dollars in sales. I’ll check and see if I can later circle back and share some actual performance figures.
I’m looking forward to this new year, and I’m now revving back up to blogging and article writing and such along with the usual analytic/consulting work I do behind the scenes at Netconcepts along with fantastic teams of other pros within our company. In the near term here on Natural Search Blog, I expect to write a bit about future developments I foresee happening in the search space — my little contribution to the many 2008 predictions that are globbing about in the blogosphere.
Stay tuned!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/03/2008
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Filed under: General Cyber Monday, GravityStream, Holiday Season
Google Takes RSS & Atom Feeds out of Web Search Results
Google just announced this week that they have started reducing RSS & Atom feeds out of their search engine results pages (“SERPs”) – something that makes a lot of sense in terms of improving quality/usability in their results. (They also describe why they aren’t doing that for podcast feeds.)
This might confuse search marketers about the value of providing RSS feeds on one’s site for the purposes of natural search marketing. Here at Netconcepts, we’ve recommended using RSS for retail sites and blogs for quite some time, and we continue to do so. Webmasters often take syndicated feeds in order to provide helpful content and utilities on their sites, and so providing feeds can help you to gain external links pointing back to your site when webmasters display your feed content on their pages.
Google has removed RSS feed content from their regular SERPs, but they haven’t necessarily reduced any of the benefit of the links produced when those feeds are adopted and displayed on other sites. When RSS and Atom feeds are used by developers, they pull in the feed content and then typically redisplay it on their site pages in regular HTML formatting. When those pages link back to you as many feed-displayed pages do, the links transfer PageRank back to the site originating the feeds, and this results in building up ranking values.
So, don’t stop using RSS or Atom feeds!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/19/2007
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Google, URLs ATOM, Feeds, Google, PageRank, RSS
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
NebuAd – New Twist on Behavioral Targeting for Online Ads
News stories this week highlighted Silicon Valley startup NebuAd, which recently unveiled their behavioral targeting network at ad:tech.
Behavioral ad targeting is nothing new on the internet, and I easily recall it being offered in one form or another as far back as about 1999. In fact, 24/7 Real Media currently offers behavioral targeting through their ad network as just one case in point. So what’s new with this incarnation is the way in which NebuAd collects data to base the targeting upon. NebuAd’s innovative twist on behavior targeting is based upon monitoring individuals’ internet browsing habits through their ISP, essentially seeing all the sites and pages that a user visits. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/11/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Paid Search, Research and Development, Security, technology behavioral targeting, internet ads, internet advertising, Nebu Ad, NebuAd, online ads, online-advertising
Google Requests Help Fighting Malware
This last week, I whined a bit about Google results containing many links to malware sites, due to them making use of well-known black hat tactics. InternetNews.com is now reporting that Google is asking for assistance from the altruistic public on fighting the malware offenders. Google’s Security blog requests more assistance on fighting the bad guys, noting that they’ve improved in the past year, citing the warnings they pop up when users click on a link where they’ve detected possible malware.
Here’s one suggestion I have: (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 12/02/2007
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Filed under: Google, Security black hat, black-hat-seo, Google, Malware, online security
Treat your Customers like Royalty and the Traffic (and Links) will Come
Have you heard the words, “reputation management” applied to SEO before? Well, if you haven’t, you certainly should. Where some corporations might argue that the blogosphere isn’t important, Zappos, the web’s biggest shoe store would, no doubt, disagree. If you have any questions about how positive the blogosphere can be for links (and traffic), grab a box of tissues and read this post entitled, “I heart Zappos.” The blogger bought a pair of women’s shoes for her mom. The post is currently ranked #12 in Google for “zappos” (and #9 in Yahoo). Want to learn how you, too can garner link love and traffic for your brand? Here are some great lessons we can learn from this story to help you manage your online reputation…
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 11/30/2007
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Filed under: Link Building reputation-management
Recent Google Improvements Fail To Halt Massive Malware Attack
Various news sites are reporting that a malware attack was deployed in the last couple of days, apparently based entirely upon black hat SEO tactics.
Software security company Sunbelt blogged about how the attack was generated: a network of spambots apparently added links into blog comments and forums pointing to the bad sites over a period of months in some cases, enabling those sites to achieve fair rankings in search engine result pages for a great many potential keyword search combinations. The pages either contained iframes which attempted to load malware onto visitors machines or perhaps they began redirecting to the sites containing malware at some point after achieving rankings. Sunbelt provided interesting screenshots of the SERPs in Google:
And also showed some screenshots of some of the keyword-stuffed pages which apparently got indexed:
I think it’s not at all a coincidence (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/28/2007
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Filed under: General, Google, News, Tricks, Worst Practices black-hat-seo, blackhat-seo, Google, Malware, spam, Sunbelt
