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
Domain Diversity – Key Metric For Higher Google Rankings
Domain diversity is an important SEO factor that is crucial for a site in order to rank well on the Google SERPs. This is achieved by the site gaining inbound links from a diverse set of domains. This is a daunting task as it is not easy to get inbound links. The best way to achieve this is for the site to contain top quality content that makes it a standout in the industry in which it operates.
Research done by the experts at SEOmoz indicated (above the 95% confidence level) that domain diversity is a key metric that helps a site achieve top rankings. The diversity here refers to the number of links coming from a variety of root domains to the site in question.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 07/12/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, SEO anchor text, auckland search engine marketing, blog integration, consolidation of links, domain authority, domain diversity, domain trust, inbound links, metric for higher google rankings, microsites, Netconcepts, topical focus
Search Engine Crawling and Indexing Factors
The post today is about getting a site crawled and indexed effectively by the major search engines. It can be frustrating for a site owner to find that her newly built site with bells and whistles is just not appearing on the Google SERPs for a search query relevant to her business.
It is a good idea to have some knowledge of the factors that influence the crawling of a site and its successful indexing before the site ranks on the SERPs. The site can be built in a user friendly way that allows the spiders to know what to crawl and how frequently to crawl.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 07/05/2009
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Filed under: Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spiders backlinks, content freshness, crawling factors, domain importance, duplicate-content, external links, Feeds, google-webmaster-tools, increase crawl rate, Links, PageRank, query deserves freshness, search engine crawling, search engine indexing, signals, supplemental index, technical factors, unique content
Natural Search Marketing is Just in Time Conversation
I had the extreme pleasure of presenting to some of the biggest brands around at the 2009 Brandworks University. This year represented 19 years that Lindsay, Stone & Briggs has put on this annual branding conference. Brandworks is very unique in many ways as conferences go: attendance is mostly done by invitation, but attendees still pay a fee to attend; rather than elective presentations running simultaneously, there’s one block and presentations flow back-to-back and are formulated to relate to and support each other as well as the underlying theme; rather than a typical podium setup, presentations are done “in-the-round;” and it isn’t hard to find attendees who are able to claim 5, 10 or more years of attendance. Needless to say, if you ever get the opportunity to attend or are invited to speak, I highly recommend it.
This year’s talk was around the core theme of the “conversation economy” and how marketing, branding, and business in general is being shaped by and around conversations. Not surprising, there was a fair amount of talk around social media. Of course, my portion was to focus on natural search as part of this conversation, which thanks to blended search, crosses over and intersects all marketing channels. While my view on natural search hasn’t changed much over the years, preparing my presentation for the conference helped me frame it up with the exact message phrasing that I’ve been looking for – “just in time conversation.”
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Posted by Brian R. Brown of Netconcepts on 07/01/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Conferences, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, SEO brands, natural search marketing, SEO
SEO Best Practices – Correlation Testing
Hi everyone,
This post is about the latest correlation testing done by the great folks at SEOmoz in regards to search engine ranking factors. Presented below is a list of the best SEO practices with some startling revelations. It is not exhaustive but covers the crucial factors.
SEOmoz has been indexing the web with their killer app Linkscape and they have been analysing the data to arrive at solid results. Even though the SEO field has lots of grey areas, good evidence in the form of solid data proves that search engine optimisation can be a definitive science in certain areas rather than a skillful craft.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/28/2009
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Filed under: Best Practices, Search Engine Optimization blocking content from search engines, correlation testing, google search wiki, negative links from bad neighbourhood, parameter driven urls, relationship between traffic and rankings, seo best practices, title tag, use of 301 redirects, use of alt text in images, use of javascript and flash, use of meta keywords, usefulness of canonical tag, usefulness of footer links, usefulness of h1 tag, usefulness of nofollow
Is Verizon Responsible for Idearc’s Bankruptcy?
My op-ed piece, “Idearc’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy: Who’s Really Responsible?” published today on Search Engine Land, and in it I put forth my position that Verizon is responsible for spinning off the company with an unreasonably huge debt load, and the people ultimately paying the bill are the stockholders.
I describe in the article how Verizon spun off Idearc Media (division which publishes print phone books and operates Superpages.com among other online yellow pages), and set that company up to pay back some billions of dollars for its worth. Verizon then turned around and resold those debt instruments to other companies, fully divesting itself of ownership in the new, standalone company.
This sequence in of itself isn’t remarkable – it’s the normal process a company might go through when spinning-off part of itself to form a new company.
But, my contention is that it was done so in a highly irresponsible manner. Verizon had to know beforehand that print directory business was going into shrinkage mode, and that the debt repayment structure would simply be too much for the new company to be reasonably expected to be able to handle. If so, then this could be expected to be a form of fraudulent conveyance, and Verizon could be culpable.
Is my contention outrageous?
Well, even Idearc’s Chief Executive, Scott Klein, has been paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal as saying “Everyone was aware that ‘$9 billion was really more debt than this business could bear'”. So, Idearc was spun off with a majority of this debt from Verizon from the start – clearly set up to fail.
So far, I’ve seen maybe three different law firms filing class-action lawsuits against Idearc and its executives, based on the premise that the stock tanked due to them secretly changing policies, resulting in inflated-looking sales on the books for businesses with higher likelihoods of not paying for contracted advertising. But, I think the real culprit in all this is likely Verizon – they pushed off a part of the company with an untenable debt load, in large part to pay off debts incurred by Verizon FiOS (Verizon’s fiber optic network) expansion.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/22/2009
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Filed under: General, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Yellow Pages bankruptcy, chapter 11, directories, idearc, idearc bankruptcy, idearc chapter 11, Idearc-Media, iyp, Phone-Books, superpages, telco, telecomm, Verizon, Yellow Pages
Speaking at Dallas WordCamp 2009
I’m speaking at this year’s WordCamp in Dallas again later this week.
WordCamp is a mini-convention for WordPress and blogging enthusiasts. Some of the content is WordPress-centric, but other content is applicable to bloggers in general, such as how to promote your blog and other stuff.
I’ll be speaking on how to use social image sharing services for promotion. Social media sites such as Flickr allow people to publish and share their photos with many other people, and the site is well-constructed in terms of search engine optimization, so posting images there helps get media distributed all over. Using Flickr can help one gain more attention, inbound links, and overall search rankings.
I’ve spoken on using Flickr for promotion and optimization before, and I’ve written on details of image optimization here a number of times.
I’d further recommend blogging to everyone – I first started blogging here on the Natural Search Blog as a guest, after Stephan Spencer invited me, and it eventually changed my overall career path. Be sure to check out Stephan’s articles on blog optimization, btw, since he’s pretty much the top authority out there on the subject.
There’s still a few seats left for Dallas WordCamp – sign up before they’re all gone!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/22/2009
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Conferences, Content Optimization, Image Optimization, SEO, Social Media Optimization Blog Optimization, blog seo, blogging, dallas wordcamp, flickr, Image Optimization, image SEO, Image-Search-Optimization, SMO, Social Media Optimization, Social-Media, word camp, wordcamp, WordPress
PageRank Sculpting – The Nofollow Debate
At SMX Advanced in Seattle last month, Matt Cutts made his intentions clear when he advised SEOs not to waste too much time on internal page rank sculpting using the nofollow tag and instead concentrate on spending that time on creating useful content.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/21/2009
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Filed under: PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO domain rank, domain trust, flowing link juice, information architecture, internal page rank sculpting, nofollow tag, page crawling, page inclusion in google index, page level rank, page level trust, page rank evaporation, pagerank sculpting, pr leak, site architecture
60-Second Website Audit
While your mother may have taught you not to judge a book by its cover, she probably wasn’t an SEO. Mother’s logic is still pretty good to live by, but for as complex as SEO is or may seem, it’s pretty amazing what you can learn about a website’s SEO quality in 60 seconds or less.
Okay, you aren’t going to fully understand the intricate details and you’d obviously spend far, far more time (closer to hours than seconds) on a true site audit, but I’d venture that 60 seconds is enough for a good gut check and for identifying areas that need deep exploration. What may make this most interesting is to compare results that your “team” gets from this exercise since we all have our own approaches, hot buttons, etc.
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Posted by Brian R. Brown of Netconcepts on 06/19/2009
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Filed under: General, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Tricks Audit, Best Practices, SEO
Harnessing The Power of Social Media In Business
Social media is an exciting medium offering tonnes of opportunities to you, as a business owner, to engage the masses in your marketing efforts and get great results for your efforts.
It is a double edged sword and if done right, you will glow on the winner’s podium with a great name for your product/service/company in the online space reaping rich inbound links to your site from a multitude of powerful and trusted domains. Done wrong, you could end up a social pariah in cyberspace with a bad reputation and poor record of integrity attached to your name and company’s product/service.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/14/2009
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Filed under: Advertising, Social Media Optimization hubpages, netconcepts new zealand, socail media websites, social media to enhance business, squidoo lenses, trust and integrity, twitter search, virtual real estate, web 2.0 properties
Google Wave – Online Collaboration And Communication Revolution
Google Wave was released at the recent Google I/O event as a demo product. It is an amazing real time collaboration and communication platform with email, instant messaging and heaps more combined to form an awesome product.
The demo product is an HTML 5 applicaion built using the Google Web Toolkit. Wave is being released as an open source product. Its open platform encourages developers to build other Wave clients, extensions and embed waves in other web pages and platforms. The product is characterised by the 3P’s namely product, platform and protocol.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 06/07/2009
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Filed under: Search Engine Optimization, technology, Tools google wave, google wave federation protocol, online collaboration, online communication
