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.

Last post on this one from me (famous last words…).

Great article from Danny Sullivan today on PageRank sculpting. Saves me a lot of work, thanks Danny. Also, included is a video from Matt Cutts from May (I will include below in any case), which unfortunately I missed the first time around (if I had seen this and really thought about it and combined it with the data I was seeing from some old JavaScript links, I might have been well ahead of the game on the big two recent developments).

So, it looks like sparse internal linking, not linking out, turning comments off and iFrames will now be the order of the day! I hope not. Here are a few (white hat) things that you might want to try.

1. Combining your ‘legals’ and ‘privacy’ pages in to one page and linking to it more intelligently. I have no idea on the legal ease of where these pages should be linked from on your site (maybe someone could comment), so do this at you own risk. I am also absolutely certain that Google has factored in some weighting to these pages already, so don’t sweat this one too much.
2. Think about your other navigational links and make them better for users and Google (how many ‘about us’ pages do you really need?). In this I mean think about if you really need to link to a page or if you really need that site wide link to an unprofitable area. As we know ‘nofollowing’ no longer works and in some ways this is a good excuse to get your house in order from a usability, ‘weight’ flow and ‘weight’ wastasge perspective.
3. Remember a good website should embrace what the ‘web’ is about. Linking to sites and pages is a good thing if done for the right reasons and well. So all you ‘nofollow’ addicts should think a little about the trust your site developes by being an authority site. Authority sites do link to other sites (and give PageRank away). Rather than delete all of your outbound links that you previously ‘nofollowed’, open some of them up and ‘dofollow’ the ones that add value.

There will be a million takes on this new news and I am waiting to see what the fall out is. Either way Google makes the rule and we have to follow (no pun intended) them. Didn’t you know that? If you were Google would you do it any other way? Remember they own the search engine and we choose to use it.

OK, I was a bit wrong. Not 100% wrong, but a bit wrong. Let me explain…

Firstly, here is Matt Cutts’ latest post on PageRank sculpting.

Now rather than write a whole new article on this, here is my comment on Matt’s blog.

*******

Matt,

Before I start this, I am using the term ‘PageRank’ as a general term fully knowing that this is not a simple issue and ‘PageRank’ and the way it is calculated (and the other numerous methods Google use) are multidimensional and complex. However, if you use PageRank to imply ‘weight’ it make it a lot simpler. Also, ‘PageRank sculpting’ (in my view) is meant to mean ‘passing weight you can control’. Now… on with the comment!

As I have always said, Google makes the rules and needs to make those rules fit with what it wants to do and also change them when needed to fit with the changes that happen on the web.

Just like the new structure on JavaScript links and them now carrying weight and being crawlable, the PageRank sculpting change is understandable. Google now can and wants to index more of the web (JavaScript link change). Google wants to reverse a method that can only help people in the know (PageRank sculpting change). Logically, all is very understandable.

However, where the JavaScript link change is evolution, the PageRank sculpting change in not. Let me explain.

Using ‘nofollow’ on untrusted (or unknown trust) outbound links is sensible and I think that in general this is a good idea. Like wise using it on paid links is cool (the fact that all those people are now going to have to change from JavaScript to this method is another story…). I also believe that using ‘nofollow’ on ‘perfunctory’ pages is also good. How many times in the past did you search for your company name and get you home page at number one and your ‘legals’ page at number two. Now, I know that Google changed some things and now this is less prominent, but it still happens. As much as you say that these pages are ‘worthy’, I don’t agree that they are in terms of search engine listings. Most of these type of pages (along with the privacy policy page) are legal ease that just need to be on the site. I am not saying they are not important, they are (privacy policies are really important for instance), but, they are not what you site is about. Because they are structurally important they are usually linked from every pages on the site and as such gather a lot of importance and weight. Now, I know that Google must have looked at this, but I can still find lots of examples where these type of pages get too much exposure on the search listings. This is apart from the duplicate content issues (anyone ever legally or illegally ‘lifted’ some legals or privacy words from another site?).

In my view there is nothing wrong with saying ‘hey Google, these pages are not important from a search engine perspective, let me not give them so much weight’. Regardless of how Google now views these type of pages from a weight perspective, doing the above as a webmaster should be logical and encouraged. You have said this yourself at least a few times in the past.

Likewise, ‘nofollowing’ your archive pages on your blog. Is this really a bad thing? You can get to the pages from the ‘tag’ index or the ‘category’ index, why put weight to a page that is truly navigational. At least the tag and category pages are themed. Giving weight to a page that is only themed by the date is crazy and does not really help search engines deliver ‘good’ results (totally leaving aside the duplicate content issues for now).

To finish, I guess I want to make two points (which do have some embedded questions too), namely:

1. Now that we know that weight/PageRank/whatever will disappear (outside of the intrinsic wastage method that Google applies) when we use a ‘nofollow’ link, what do you think this will do to linking patterns? This is really a can of worms from an outbound linking and internal linking perspective. Will people still link to their ‘legals’ page from every page on their site? Turning comments ‘off’ will also be pretty tempting. I know this will devalue the sites in general, but we are not always dealing with logic here are we? (if we were you (as head of the web spam team) wouldn’t of had to change many things in the past. Changing the PageRank sculpting thing just being one of them).

2. Was there really a need to make this change? I know all sites should be equally capable of being listed in search engines without esoteric methods playing a part. But does this really happen anyway (in search engines or life in general)? If you hire the best accountant you will probably pay less tax than the other guy. Is that really fair? Also, if nobody noticed the change for a year (I did have an inkling, but was totally and completely in denial) then does that mean the change didn’t have to be made in the first place? As said, we now have a situation where people will probably make bigger and more damaging changes to their site and structure, rather than add a little ‘nofollow’ to a few links.

All in all, PageRank sculpting (or whatever we should call it) didn’t really rule my world. But, I did think that it was a totally legitimate method to use. Now that we know the ‘weight’ leaks, this will put a totally new (and more damaging) spin on things. Could we not have just left the ‘weight’ with the parent page? This is what I thought would happen most of the time anyway.

Still, I guess all of this keeps us all in a job, so we should not complain too much! However, I think you guys have got this one wrong and we will see in the next weeks and months how people jump on this.

P.S. having turned on the ‘nofollow’ indicator plug in on Firefox a long time ago, I have seen some of the abuse on this. However, I still don’t think that this way is the best method to combat this. You could of just ‘downgraded’ the trust score on sites that had abused the ‘nofollow’ thing to silly levels.

*******

In essence, I think this is just the start on some changes on this and let’s see how this develops in the next few weeks. Four things are sure in my mind, namely:

1. The ‘dofollow’ tag will come to the fore (if I am going to lose the ‘weight’ you might as well have it!).
2. The linking to ‘legals’, ‘privacy’, etc. pages will now be more sporadic.
3. Google have made a change that will affect website structure. This is either what they intended or a by-product.
4. Sites will link less.

Fun times… things have been a bit boring or late and this spice things up quite nicely!

I didn’t realise this was going on. I am a bit behind with my reading.

In essence, Matt Cutts mentioned some things that has put some panic in the SEO community about ‘nofollow’ and PageRank sculpting.

Danny Sullivan puts together a good post on the two biggest things to come out of the SMX Advanced event. Namely, Google now following JavaScript and Flash links and the PageRank sculpting ho-ha.

Here is also a funny post and video from Dan Thies (who was at the event in the actual room) about the PageRank sculpting saga. Also, on this page is a complex (but worth reading) post from (PageRank sculting pioneer) Leslie Rohde about PageRank and what he thinks about it all.

In essence, do you really think that:

1. PageRank can disappear (maybe a little bit, I guess; nothing is perfect. But no way that lots of it will)
2. PageRank flows to ‘nofollows’ (nope, not a chance)
3. PageRank flows equally to the ‘dofollow’ links (no, not really. In the same way that I don’t think it flows equally to internal and external links. However, I am pretty sure the ‘dofollow’ links on a page will get more weight than they would if there were no ‘nofollow’ links on the page)
4. PageRank sometimes just stays with the parent page rather than leak, disappear or transfer (I think this will be the case on many occasions)

All in all, don’t have sleepless nights on this one all you SEO PageRank sculpters. PageRank disappearing en masse would be just plain daft.

However, Matt you really need to respond on this one and get this sorted out…

The semantic web is a totally logical concept. The web would be better and easier if meaning was intrinsic to each page and data source. Eliminating ambiguity would be less fun but more efficient (however, I am sure the spammers would lessen at least some of the upside). Happy days eh!

My thoughts on this have always been that most things on the web don’t even have good basic mark up, let alone microformat, RDF, etc. tagging. So, even though the train may be coming, don’t expect it to stop at a town near you anytime soon!

When I think about the semantic web I always wonder where Google sits with all of this and how they could help to push the thing that would change their algorithm more than anything else (think of Heinz changing their ketchup recipe and times this by infinity, and you still won’t get close). Well, here is an interesting one, Google using microformat and RDF tags to aid snippets in search results.

It is worth taking note of this one for lots of reasons. Let’s see how this develops, but in the mean time it is well worth thinking about how naked your snippets will look next to your competitors if you don’t take this on board.

Anyone want a click?

In my view Twitter is a pulse and nothing else. The beat can show that you/we are still alive, do stuff and connect us either passively or impassively. That is the attraction for us and the world that trys to sell us something.

Still don’t get it?

Well, laugh at this instead. As with most good comedy the hidden truth tells us something about us all.

Oh, for all you SEO fans out there, Twitter can be an information gold mine if you can cut through the rubbish.

A quick one that (if I get the time) I will expand upon and do some research on, etc.

I was running a ‘site:’ query in Google a moment ago and accidentally pressed the return key after I had typed in ‘site’. Try typing in ‘site’ into Google (I was using google.co.uk ‘the web’) yourself.

As you will see (well, for most of you I guess) the ‘Banksy’ site comes up as number one with some other sites like the ‘Keane’ and ‘Franz Ferdinand’ also appearing in the top 10. Now this is obviously because of the anchor text of the links coming into the site, but why these sites? Each site is popular in it’s own right, but I really can’t think of why the anchor text would naturally include the word ‘site’ to take them to such a high position for this word above many others sites.

Anyone got any ideas?

The link profile for these sites (particularly the Banksy one) is too deep to meaningfully go through. Also, the term ‘site’ is too generic to use many of the other ways that this result could be distilled.

So, I think I will pick some lower placed results and see if I can see a pattern.

All of the ‘top of the head’ stuff like ‘official site’, ‘web site (two words)’, etc. doesn’t really explain anything about these results for these sites (i.e. there are many other sites that out rank them for these terms).

One to ponder… I don’t think it is a Google glitch and these must I be some basis for it. But, why that anchor text particularly for those sites?

This update was named after the guy who worked on it. So ‘Vince’ it is…

Anyway, ‘Vince’ is a tweak to Google’s results that affects some pretty big terms like ‘mortgage’, ‘loan’, etc. The update seems to favour bigger brands and has pushed some of these sites further up the rankings.

The upshot is that in most regions you will now get delivered a set of results that will act as more of a roll call of all the ‘top of the head’ companies you can think of related to that particular keyword.

Here is a video from Matt Cutts about the change where for the first time ever he looks (very very slightly) sheepish.

Is this good? Well, certainly this isn’t good if you run a well positioned site that is about these subjects. So, if you run a comparison site, etc. in these areas you will probably already know if this has affected your traffic.

From what Matt has said this update is probably looking at the overall weight and trust of a site (and the big brands have spent enough marketing pounds to win here) and the theme of the site. This now looks like it will win for these keywords over anchor text based SEO work. Is this fair? Probably not.

I think the missing element here is ‘quality’. What I mean is that just because you go to a big brand site, it doesn’t mean that you are going to get what you want as a web viewer. I guess Google are working on the basis that if you type in the word ‘mortgage’ you probably want a mortgage and they are looking to deliver results like a phone directory would. Where as if you type ‘mortgage research’ you are browsing and want to see the full gamut of web pages that might help you.

Let’s see how this one develops. I think Google are (slightly) playing with fire here.

P.S. can you imagine the smile on the faces of the SEO companies who are looking after the major brands that have got the ranking jump? Claim that glory now boys and girls! Don’t let anyone tell you that it was just a Google update!

Do we really know what we are looking for? And if so can we be bothered to tell a search engine exactly what we want?

Semantic search has become something that we now know about and also something that search companies are genuinely trying to do. With Hakia, Cuil and alike (by the way can anyone imagin saying I am going to “Hakia them” or “Cuil them” in the same way we say “Google them”? Thought not) we now have a new wave of semantic based search engines that are trying to go a step further than what we now know as our way of searching the web.

Back in the day when Ask were Ask Jeeves and they started doing TV commercials the concept was “ask me a question, and I will answer it”. So we all turned in Bertie Wooster and started to (try) to treat our web queries in the same way we would treat a servant. Then we realised that search engines weren’t a form of artificial intelligence, but instead a database of the web. So we learnt to direct our searches in a more database driven sort of way; “hats london”, “boil on leg”, sort of thing.

Everything at this stage started to work fine. Google then came along and cleaned everything up, applied a relevance to the things we were searching for and pushed back much of the SPAM. All was (and is) well.

I am interested in semantic search and think that pushing this forward is a good thing. However, have we already learnt how we search the web? Are we happy with it? I think broadly speaking the answer is yes, which leads us to think about where the semantic engines go with their service and concept. They really don’t have enough money to push what they do into our consciousness. How many of us have used Cuil apart from when it was launched? Also, if any of these guys get really good at it won’t Google (or Microsoft) just buy them? Maybe this or a small slice of a big pie is what the game plan is anyway?

Let’s see how it pans out…

As a footnote this is not to be confused with the ‘semantic web’. There are (and will be further) cross overs here, but they still sit quiet separately at the moment.

No, not really.

Here is a nice article by Jill Whalen on a part of the reason for this.

However, the main reason is not terminology, it is genuine mistrust. Also, the main people that don’t mistrust search engine optimisation/SEM are usually the same ones who dumb the services down in an “I can do that” sort of way.

I will pick up this thread again, but for now it is worth thinking further about how we want out industry to develope. Search engine are not going away, so the need to market via search engines won’t go away either. Progress, positioning and further understanding are needed in order to take our industry to the next level.

For all of you SEO people out there, whether you are in house or work for an agency, check out this Google blog post.

Personalised (or customised) search is not new and Google have been doing this for a while now. This development mixed in with their use of Universal Search in their results means that the rules of (results tracking at least) in SEO have been changing pretty dramatically.

In essence, this post confirms a few things and also gives the searcher a chance to opt out of what Google thinks the searcher wants. However, the amount of searchers who will use this ‘escape’ button, I guess, won’t be more than 10%.

The main ways that Google have been personalising search and will be more and more are:

By Location – Basically, where your IP address is based. However, Google will also use your location information from your Google account if you are logged in.

Recent Searches – If you just typed in ‘france’ and then the next search is ‘holiday’ Google will slant the ‘holiday’ search towards ‘france’.

Web History – If you are signed in with you Google account and you have enabled Web History, then Google has a pretty good idea of the sites you like, etc. Google will also slant your search results towards this.

All of the above applied to natural search and (and particularly so) paid search.

Now, for many, many searches (and more searches from this region rather than the states), this won’t make a great deal of difference. In any case, different subsets of results, different cashes of results and different data centres have always served a slight variation of results from one person’s to another’s. However, (unless, Google changes strategy in a massive way) the trend has been set.

So, for a while now I have been using the term ‘traffic’ optimisation rather than ‘search engine’ optimisation (I am not suggesting we change the common term of reference any time soon though; life is confusing enough, right?) and this is certainly the way I have been communicating with clients.

Traffic optimisation is the whole deal. Everything that you do should try to bring targeted traffic to the site you are working on. From the comments on blogs, to relevant directory and resources entries, to content that is loved, read and linked to. If you know what you are doing then this will lead to better exposure on the search engine landscape. Ultimately, your web analytic will tell you which way the curve is going and your clients cash till (or similar metric; but remember you need to make them do this bit) will decide success. Just remember to set SMART objectives, or you are destined to fail either way.

So the next time your clients says “we are not number one anymore” or “fantastic, work we are now number one”, you probably need to do a bit more on your monthly reports to highlight what the ‘real deal’ is.

Nice article from Danny Sullivan on this, check it out here.

In essence the thing to remember is don’t treat Google differently; that is what gets you in trouble. You can still end up getting slaped by Google doing things the “right” way, so be careful. However, if you have done everything you can to improve the experience of the visitor and not been silly (or dumb), then the penalty won’t last (you can appeal).

IP delivery or cloaking is a reasonable complex subject, so don’t go jumping in without some good advice. But most importantly it is not “evil” and Google has been reasonably consitant in modifying their definition to underline this.

Good news for all web developers who create sites in Flash as Google (and Yahoo eventually, but probably not Microsoft) are working with Adobe to make indexing Flash sites nicer and more possible.

Now, this is early days and I wouldn’t get your “how to produce “flash” Flash websites” (not a real book just yet…) any time soon, but for all you devoted Flash developers, this may start to get you out of jail when you clients ask “no one can find me”.

Google would really like to index the whole web if it could and Flash (and JavaScript) are the biggest banes of it life in this respect. Also, because of the heavy incoming link structure for some Flash sites/sections, they do indeed end up indexing some of them relatively highly, but usually with the fantastically descriptive listing of something like…

[FLASH] Loading… Play Video Play Video Replay Copy to clipboard URL …File Format: Shockwave Flash
Loading… Play Video Play Video Replay Copy to clipboard URL: 0ß0å0ü0È MUTE 0ß0å0ü0È MUTE.
www.reuters.com/resources/flash/includevideo.swf – Similar pages

As you can image, Google has never been a fan of this as it messes up the relevance for the searcher from the results pages.

So what progress have they made so far? Well if you do a search for Flash SWF files in Google (click here to try) you still don’t really get a great experience as a searcher. I think the time when parity come between text based sites and Flash based sites from an indexing perspective will be a long time coming (if ever).

So, my cut on this for the short and medium term is make sure you still only use Flash as a part of your site (nice fading images, animation, etc.) and not the whole thing. If you do, then don’t expect to be top of the rankings any time soon. This initiative will help, but it is not a green light to carry on regardless.

Now I may move on to “Flash and accessibilty”… maybe not…

Thought I had better make the first proper post something deep and meaningful… not saying this is, but here goes…

Black hat, white hat… what does it all mean? Also, who makes the rules? Well, that one is easy, Google does. Even though I am quite sure that the good people of Google never meant to be portrayed as the police, that it what they have become. Why? Well, power (usually) brings responsibility and Google are the most powerful force in the most well used information retrieval system ever created. So, they make the rules and they get to say what is black (hat) and white (hat). This is altogether fine in the main (someone has to make the rules I guess).

So what are the rules? Well, you all know them really. You just decide if you want to play by them. Just in case you are unsure of the rules, here is my cut:

1. Produce fantastic websites that people will like, use, love and share.

2. Make the website friendly to search engines remembering that (sorry guys) they are glorified databases (I don’t mean that to sound harsh… I like search engines).

3. Market your site like no tomorrow, but don’t use tactics that your mother would not be proud of you using.

4. Make the biggest effort possible to continually improve your site and make it better, more usable, more commercial, etc. and use analytics (and user feedback) to do this.

Give or take the things I have omitted (forgotten), that is it really. The hard bit? Well, in the bad (good?) old days when you could SPAM your way to the top of the search engines, all it took was a little knowledge and a little effort. The main part about the rules of today is that Google makes you work hard, be cleaver, etc. and the good bit about that is that most people won’t bother. The sensible people who don’t bother just get someone great to do it for them. However, great people cost a lot of money and they are in short supply.

Can you still bend the rules? Yes, sure you can. Will it last? No. Search engine marketing is inherently a long term strategy. Think short term and be prepared to get short term results (if that it what you are aiming for then this may still be for you).

In essence, Google (sorry Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc. for not mentioning you too, you will be mentioned in the future, you just don’t set the rules, sorry) protects two main things, namely, the quality of its product so it can continue to make money and our ability to use search engines to enrich our lives, save us time. etc. (the two are completely linked).

Where does it leave all of us who want to have fantastic exposure on search engines? Quite simply (and boringly), THINK!, work hard, work smart and set your objective realistically. Most importantly, remember that Google (and Yahoo, and MSN, and Ask, et al) are (just) intelligent databases; people are people are people. The rules are really made by all of us, Google just set them.

Firstly… bold statement…

We aim to be the foremost website in the UK for Search Engine Marketing. There… said it…

How are we going to do this? Well, by providing everything you need in order to do your own SEM (the first of, no doubt, many abbreviations) or get some one else to do it, work in SEM, find out about all the things you need for SEM, SEM news and much, much more. Oh, and why just the UK you ask? Well, I think that a site of this type has been a long time coming. Of course, anyone in the world can use the information here, but the slant is towards what is happening in the good old UK.

Who am I? Well I am Rob Andrews and I have been working in the SEM industry for many years and (think!) I have a wealth of knowledge to share. Over time I aim to get a number of quality contributors to add to the site and in the meantime all of your comments are very welcome (well, not the SPAM ones!).

This site has been put together with the fantastic assistance of WordPress and the base template is from Chris Pearson (thank you). I have hacked it around so much that you might not recognise it, but it was from your original base.

Anyway, I suppose I now have live up to my claim and make this the best darn SEM site in the UK. Wish me luck.