Readers of this blog will know we went through this one when Google announced they had changed the way they viewed the ‘nofollow’ tag.

You can read these posts here:

PageRank Sculpting
Matt Cutts Answers PageRank Sculpting Question
PageRank Sculpting Phase Two

Also, here is a new video from Matt on this subject.

There are many (many…) sites on the web that still have a ‘nofollow’ based PageRank sculpting architecture. There is an element of ‘not broke, don’t fix’ about this, but it is worth baring in mind that if you have this environment you are burning a great deal of PageRank that you could be channelling more wisely.

I am not going to try to cover this huge topic in just one post… What an uninspiring start, eh? Still, now that I have got your attention, let’s see where this leads…

Firstly, what is ‘quality’ in regard to website content? Wholly subjective, isn’t it? Just like the daily newspaper you buy, the ‘quality’ factor is whatever you judge it to be. Far easier to judge ‘quality’ by standards, like a newspaper that is poorly printed, has bad spelling, etc. would be judge as ‘bad quality’. Likewise, a website with copied, badly written, badly formatted content would be judged as ‘bad quality’. Your website’s ‘quality’ is judged by whoever eventually may read it and, crucially, whether they feel it has served them what they wanted or is interesting, inspirational, informative, etc.

Now, frequency and quality with regards to website content can get somewhat blurry when mixed. Is it better to churn out lots of, at best, mediocre content or deliver something good and insightful whenever you feel it is appropriate? Even if you are passing on information, do you pass on everything or only that which has really merit to your readership?

These frequency and quality questions, mainly come down to what is your website for and what are you trying to achieve. Is it for your own interest? Are you trying to sell something? Are you delivering important information? Etc.

Simple stuff, so far? Well, yes until you bring search engines into the equation. Then these pretty basic assumptions change and break up into a fantastically silly guessing game. Does Google like lots of updates? Should I change my home page regularly? Can Google look at my content and see if it is rubbish? Does it care?

Now is a good time to bring in a recent video from Matt Cutts about this subject.

So, is it any clearer? Now, I don’t think for moment that Google or Matt Cutts will ever be transparent enough to tell you the whole story. However, I also think that the steers they give us are never too far away from the direction we should be heading. The information above all else that has been communicated over the past couple of years from Google is that ‘producing great content will give you the best chance of getting good links’ (except they don’t always mention the ‘good links’ part. The rider is that the great content needs to be known about in the first place, which is somewhat of the Catch 22.

Does Google know if your content is good? Well, no not really. It knows if you are on topic, it knows if you have copied your content, it knows if it is link worthy, etc. etc. But, unless they do a hand sort, it does not know if you content is good, even then it won’t be subjective and will only look at the ‘bad quality’ that I mentioned above, but in a search engine’s case they are looking for ‘bad quality’ that tries to cheat them or us. The algorithms will pick up most of the ‘cheating’ Google elements and a great deal of the semantics elements, but will never pick up if your post is fantastic, but then it doesn’t need to, the web will tell it if it is.

So will frequency help me rank well? Yes, it will. For all the reasons Matt says and many others. But will frequency on its own help me? Somewhat, but not in real terms and certainly not without the other ‘trust’ and ‘popularity’ factors that Google puts above all others. More than anything ‘frequency’, as long as it is aligned with good elements of appropriate diversity, will help your ‘long tail’ exposure. For ‘head terms’ there is a much bigger reliance on ‘quality’ mixed with ‘frequency’ to bring link weight to your site as a whole, which will then, in turn, help your site (and it’s targeted key phrases) rank better. Frequency, without quality and diversity will not help you very much and also thin and spread your PageRank/trust weight at the same time.

If you are looking for search engine spiders to visit your site more then, frequency does help, in the same way that individual page improvements help. But, frequency will not help if Google is not really that interested in your site and even though the ‘supplemental index’ has long been forgotten about, the principals still play a part in what Google will and will not index and how it indexes your content.

This post was really meant to look at bit harder at the ‘fresh content’ mantra of SEO, where some people have taken Google’s words and built there own theory. Personally, I agree with certain elements of the theory, but average at best content and average at best links will only get you so far, and there is still a lot of effort and money involved in taking this path.

So is content king? Not in my opinion with regard to better search engine exposure. Google’s fundamental principal has never changed and links and citations are king. However, without quality, popular, authoritative or crucial content, links and citation will always be contrived. And in essence, that can only take you so far and nowhere near far enough in a competitive search engine ranking environment.

Back in the day when Google updates used to cause panic and elation in equal measures, it was always pretty apparent what had happened. In some ways it is a shame that Google are now very much in the ‘law of diminishing returns’ phase where many of their algorithm changes go pretty much unnoticed. However, within the last month we have had the ‘May Day’ update which is a little bit more than one of the usual tweaks and is worth mentioning.

The phrase ‘long tail’ when applied to search engine listings describes the countless phrases that are used by us all that fit outside of the ‘head terms’. A ‘head term’ would be something that is used many, many times by lots of different searchers e.g. ‘pizza delivery’, ‘mortgage quote’, etc. The ‘long tail’ are the less used, but multiple search queries that often use more qualifying words e.g. ‘negative equity mortgage advice company’, wheat free pizza bases delivery’, etc.

The (very) basic premise of the ‘long tail’ is that roughly speaking you will get the most of your traffic (or sales if you run a ecommerce shop) from the ‘head terms’, but these head terms from a diversity perspective will be much, much less in number than the multitude of different ‘long tail’ queries. For different niches this weighting can be very different and in fact the ‘long tail’ can be your most important traffic source and the one that leads to most sales.

So how does the ‘May Day’ update relate to the ‘long tail’? Well, Google have decided to tackle this type of query in more of an isolated way and try to more closely match the needs of the searcher in relation to the page(s) that are delivered.

Here is a video from Matt Cutts that talks about this change.

So how does this relate to your site? Well, the best way to evaluate your ‘long tail’ exposure is to run a search query report on your analytics programme from a relevant month and look at all the individual searches that bring traffic to your site that are relatively low in number (but are many when all added together) and contain multiple words. Than you can run a report from around mid May onwards and see if this has changed either positively or negatively.

I am still evaluating what I think the triggers are for this change and how Google is making the judgment call on the relevancy and quality of the results it hopes to delivery for ‘long tail’ queries.

More on this in a future post, but in essence this could be a great directional change for Google. However, I am sensitive to those of you out there who have had a real and negative traffic hit from this change.

A nice new match type in Google AdWords called ‘Broad Match Modifier’ was launched in the UK this week.

Basically, it turns ‘broad match’ into something that is a lot more usable and less at the whim of what Google consider a ‘good’ match for your keyword.

With the new (ish) ‘search query’ reporting you can now get, using broad match has become a little more usable with the ability to modify (or turn off) the extent of your broad match keywords, after maybe using it during some of the initial stages of a campaign. This enables you to get ‘real’ keyword data with the ‘search query’ report and then use this to go after worthwhile AdGroups, etc.

However, some of the ‘broad’ match keyword grouping is somewhat dodgy and even the most scientific use of the match type always left me feeling a bit like I was donating money, relevancy and shedding quality.

Well, the ‘Broad Match Modifier’ really does help in many respects… how does it work? Well, you need to put a ‘+’ sign before one of your broad match words to ‘modify’ it. By modifying it, Google means that it will treat that word somewhat less broad than it used to. Here’s an examples…

The keywords ‘glass desks’ would result in:

* Broad match will probably show for ‘perspex desk’, ‘desk’, ‘black glass descs’, ‘writing table’ etc.
* The modified match ‘glass +desk’ would match all the above apart from ‘writing table’ (yes, including the misspelling and pluralising of ‘desk’
* The modified match ‘+glass +desk’ would match the words ‘glass desk’ (and misspelling and pluralisation) within a sentance e.g. ‘black glas desks’, ‘glass desks’, etc.

Both ‘exact’ and ‘phrase’ matching are not affected and still work in the normal way.

All in all a good addition to the AdWords PPC tool kit and will save a good amount of time and wastage it you need to use broad match for any set of keywords for a specific campaign.

Yes, indeed it has. Wow, was it really September the last time I posted? Tut, tut…

There are many and a multitude of excuses, ranging from busy to well… busy. But as I always say, if you are not going to update your blog, don’t have one!

Even worse is that I went to the trouble to get a (lovely) new theme done a few weeks ago and yet still (until today) have not updated the blog or informed anyone that I now have sheep (count them!) in my blog design. This occurred to me to be ‘procrastination on speed’ (copyright R Andrews 2010), if that is not too much of an oxymoron. As all my teachers used to say ‘Robert must try harder’. Point noted…

I must thank Dan from Baltic (http://balticblogdesign.com) for the creative inspiration for the wonderful new theme. You are a top man and I would recommend your services to everyone.

So, new day, new dawn and all that. I will add some proper pages to the blog that outline a little more of the services I can offer. I have not done much of the consultancy/training side for a while and I miss it a bit. I have been too wrapped up in some of my affiliate sites and I need to get out more…

Baa, baa…

Well, not really a shock, but good that Google has come out and said this finally.

We have know for a long time that the ‘keyword’ Meta tag was not being used by Google. There was also the suspicion that both Yahoo and Microsoft weren’t using it too. As we know the tag had been open to abuse since the early days of search engine importance and because it is hidden from the web viewer it was pretty much fair game for all sorts of SPAM and keyword stuffing.

Here is a video from Matt Cutts explaining the whole thing.

So until Microhoo come out with the same information, it pays to still use the keyword tag sparingly. It is not much of an effort to put the three or four keyphrases your page is trying to be optimised for in the tag. Any more than this is a waste of effort and also Google said ‘we don’t use the keyword in the tag’ it didn’t say that ‘we don’t use all the Meta tag information to help us gauge trust’. So, don’t stuff that Meta tag for old times sake and think it won’t be noted still!

Another video from Hal Varian, the Chief Economist at Google. Pretty straightforward stuff, but no one (and I repeat no one) presents this kind of thing better than Hal. Take time to watch.

Is it April 1st?

Check this out… BT Launch BT SearchSmart.

This is done with Latitude, here is the press release from them.

You’re kidding right?

Google has changed and revamped their Advertising Professional area. The new area will have a lot more features and I guess is part of Google’s way of actualising their theory on more emphasis on development and training to compensate for the withdrawal of ‘Best Practise Funding’ at the beginning on this year. Mmmm. Still, check it out.

One thing though. Why have Google ‘nofollowed’ the company link from the qualified company/professional profile pages? It wasn’t a nofollow before. Surely with the spend criteria and exams, etc. they can vouch for this link. Was it being abused? If so it wouldn’t have been hard to do a hand check now would it? Or put some rules around the destination of the link?

As a follow on from my last post, here is a link to Matt Cutt’s follow up on the somewhat strange and regionally challenged UK SERPs.

There is also a theory that this is a legacy thing from the Vince update. I am not so sure. I think Google just underestimated the difficulty in matching the .coms, .nets, etc. to generic queries (and some not so generic ones too… unbelievably) based upon region. However, I think the thought process from what Vince was trying to achieve has played a part.

Looks like they are now taking this a bit more seriously though, so normal service should be resumed soon(ish). I guess all you search marketers with affected sites and actual companies this is affecting will just have to sit on your hands until then! Frustrating eh?

There has been lots of talk recently about the UK search results and how they have been starting to show more results from outside of the UK region. Well, here is a partial answer to this from Matt Cutts.

I think that Matt got the wrong end of this question and answered it in a different way than it was possibly posed. I think what many people have been saying is “why are we getting lots of results that include companies who are outside of my region and can’t supply the thing that I have been searching for where I am?”. There are still a few of these knocking around (some have been fixed).

I think the answer here is in what Matt said in that they worked on a changed that expanded the search results to include more (relevant) .coms. Whilst doing this they obviously got the filter somewhat wrong in the first iteration.

As we know the only truly universal top level domain is .com, this means that even though .coms should be associated with America, it is just as likely that the company concerned will be based in another region. Google’s problem is that because of the universal nature of .coms they sit outside of its desired way or delivering regionally based results.

There are many factors that Google looks at for regional based results for generic keywords. To improve their delivery in this respect they have had to add another level of analysis to the algorithm to supplement their long standing geographical determiners (hosting location, top level domain, usage, contact information on site, ownership details, webmaster preference, etc.). This is because it is still possible that the best and most relevant site for your query will not show well in your region because it is a .com and it is hosted in the US for instance.

These changes to improve regional searching for generic keywords seems to have skewed the results and I guess they have had to reappraise their initial approach.

In essence, Google makes hundreds of algorithm tweaks ever year, some go way below the radar and some are a bit more overt. This one obviously fits into the latter category.

Lastly, do you think Google sometimes gets it wrong? Yep, they do. But hey it is their search engine. Also, (could be a very long time coming, if ever) until Microhoo get their act together, when Google do get it wrong, we just have to sit and wait for them to make it all better again…

Very eloquent title, eh?

Still, now I have got your attention, are they? Just a little bit stupid? Or redundant? Or boring?

Not going to go massively indepth here (it’s in the training course!), but I have just been doing some analysis for a new client and part of this was checking out the competition. Now I can understand if you have never paid any attention to your page titles (it is quite nice to walk into a project and know that you can make a big change that is totally under your control); but when you see some of the actually ‘optimised’ titles that have been put together, well… why bother and what logic are you using?

Here is a random list of things I have come accross this morning.

1. Title that are so unattractive that nobody would ever click on (you wouldn’t do this in your PPC, would you?)
2. Two word titles for a company’s home page (that that all you do?)
3. Fifty word titles on a company’s home page (no need to list ALL you do)
4. Company name on every title (that old chestnut)
5. Using the ‘|’ (pipe) to separate keyphrases (ugly, over used and because you need to use two spaces uses more characters than just a comma)
6. Site-wide titles (yes, they still do exist!)

There are lots more, but these are the ones that come to mind right now.

Your page title is a powerful thing. Use it well and it will improve your on-site SEO by a bigger percentage than almost any other element. However, always remember this is what will be the clickable link when you get listed. If you get to the top three you will get traffic anyway, but anything lower than that and your title will make the difference.

I have not really posted on Bing, etc. There have been so many false dawns with Microsoft on the search front that I thought I would wait to see if this was just another re-brand with no substance.

More to come on this, but my three thoughts are:

1. Bing is actually quite a decent search engine (shock!) and if they build on this solid base Microsoft will eventually have something (in some way) to rival Google. Apart from the fact that (more shock!) Bing is more than just a re-brand and Microsoft have actually got some thing right, this thought is based upon the law of diminishing returns (Google can’t make as many leaps and bounds in the search side of the business as Microsoft can at this point in time). Therefore if MS continue on this track they will eventually make enough ground to be a serious contender. Whether anyone (or enough to make it interesting) will use their engine is another matter (see item 2… they just have).

2. Today’s Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they will pair up on the natural search front gives them enough joint searchers to make this a distant but worthwhile contender to Google’s strength. UK wise they still have to make a lot of ground even jointly, but worldwide their combined power is now significant. Like item 1 they now need to build on this to make the alliance a good and seamless one, that way they can develop the offering and seriously market to entice users to switch them from Google.

3. A really little point this, but try http://pagehunt.msrlivelabs.com/PlayPageHunt.aspx. This is the first time I have found something from Microsoft on the search front that overtly tries to go the extra mile. As said it is a small thing (and the current version of this test, isn’t wonderful), but it does show a sign that they have got some people who will try to push things along. If they engender this spirit then the momentum may just mean that they get a group of people who want and believe they can upset the big guys (I know it sounds strange saying that about Microsoft, but in this instance it is very true). Mind set wise this is absolutely crucial and a really difficult one for Microsoft (bearing in mind how arrogant they can be).

So there you go. I will now start to take a bit more interest in Microsoft/Yahoo from a natural search side (PPC wise I always did). Who knows maybe this time next year we will have a slightly different story on our hands. A long way to go though but a least this time they have made a real start.

P.S. to celebrate this I have now added a ‘Bing’ category, who would have thought it!

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. What with one thing or another, I just haven’t had the time to get some done. Maybe it is the temptation to just micro blog things now. Still, no excuses.

As you will have noticed I put up a box on the top right a while ago offering a free SEO assessment (from a top UK SEO no less… self proclamation is it really needed or worthwhile?). Well, we have got to the stage now where I am getting about two or three enquiries per day for this; thank you! Every person who submits a request gets a personalised assessment back. Some are brief and some are somewhat longer (depending on my current time pressures), but all of them should add some insight and value to the SEO situation for the site concerned.

There were two reasons I started this service. The first was to keep myself fresh (you know what I mean) and ‘with it’ with new sites and situations to look at and analyse. The second was to, maybe, get some paid assignments out of it too. This is when the initial assessment is greeted with a ‘let’s talk further’. I am pleased to say that I have hit the mark with both of these goals so far.

So what has changed? Well, I would like to open these out a bit and maybe once a month use a particularly good (or bad) situation and write about it publicly. The good news here is that the public ones will be quite in depth (the ones that usually have a fee attached if the person/company wants me to go a lot further) and this (public) assessment will now be free. This will only be by agreement (if you ask for an assessment you won’t now suddenly find me dissecting your site in a live post) and also I will make sure the version that appears here is a little bit more truncated that the one you will get. Hey, we might even do some live video or screen cam ones.

Now, here comes my get out. If this takes off too much I may have to rein back on the amount that I can do and be more selective. But let’s see how it goes.

If you would like me to give you an SEO assessment overview of your site, just send your detail via the contact form. You never know you might be the first one to get an extended assessment for free and make it on to the site too.

P.S. as the name of the site suggests this site is (meant to) concentrate on the UK SEO scene. So, please don’t be offended, but I do ask for the sites submitted to be UK based (doesn’t need to be  hosted in the UK, but needs to be administered in the UK). However, if you have a site outside of this region and you think (or know) I couldn’t resist to delve further on the SEO side you are welcome to submit it and give it a try!

My goodness, I knew that Matt was making some videos about questions he has had regarding SEO, etc., but I didn’t realise how many he had made. Well done Matt, it must have been a hell of a session(s).

I found this video regarding checking for back links, etc. Matt also mentions the ‘link:’ search command. I did an article on the Google ‘link:’ command a few days ago and talked about its flakiness. Matt mentioned the Google stance that they only show a few links to give a small overview of the back link profile to protect the link data from prying eyes, etc. I am not saying that this is not on the money, it is just that the ‘weirdness’ of some of the results is puzzling. Also, how exactly do Google get a real randomness to this subsection of results?

Anyway, here is Matt’s video.

Let’s not put too much weight on this analysis. I am sure it is not going to lead us to the Google search holy grail or anything. I have just always thought that it was very strange for the best search company in the world to put its name to flaky results, no matter how they down play it.