Archive for the ‘Increasing Search Engine Rankings’ Category
Google Search Plus: 7 Things You Need to Know for Your SEO
My previous blog post about Google’s new Search Plus your world update was mostly critical – Having read a number of blog posts/articles and had a play around the new Google, I have now calmed down and come to the conclusion that: as a search engine marketer I should start thinking about how this beast actually works to best help our clients or our sites get found through the SERPs. So in essence, I am trying to be constructive here. Here are seven things you should know about Google Search Plus – they should definitely help improve your understanding and rankings on the new Google…voila:
SEO Hierarchy of Needs
I can’t remember where I stumbled on this diagram but I just found it in one of my archives. It pretty much sums up the SEO process for a new website or redesigned site from start to finish. Starting from Keyword research for content development, then matching your keyword research to the actual site architecture and other on page elements like title, header, and meta description tags. You can’t escape from good usability and web design when it comes to SEO – pages need to load fast, breadcrumb navigation is a given and good website design also improves the average time visitors stay on your site (Google apparently takes note of this). Finally link building is the crown jewel of SEO. We need to continuously build quality inbound links to improve our search rankings and authority….so here you go voila
Page Rank Update – October 30th 2009
Another PageRank toolbar update is in progress at the moment. I think it would take a few more days to fully update across the web. Although web page / website PageRank updates are not as important as actually ranking for your key phrases of choice, it is still a well accepted parameter of a good website in the webmaster community.
Some site’s of mine & my clients have had their PR increased, some other websites’ PR have remained static and others have actually dropped. I have however doublechecked their organic search referral traffic and their Google rankings; they all appear to be normal. It’s yet more proof that PR does not have a huge impact on traffic and rankings.
Lets just sit tight and wait for the update to propagate.
Photo credits: DannySullivan via Flickr
7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine
As you probably already know, Google announced not just an algorithmic update but an entire architecture re-write of its web search called “Google Caffeine” a few day’s back. The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts actually made a comparison of the Caffeine update to the infamous “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005.
The big question at the moment is what does the Google Caffeine update mean to SEOs? Here are seven things every SEO expert should know about Caffeine:
Matt Cutts Sheds More Light on the Google Caffeine Update
This is a WebProNews interview with Matt Cutts about Google Caffeine, an über major Google update that has meant a complete re-write of Google’s web search architecture. The Caffeine update means improved crawling, faster indexing and more relevant search results. I would be writing about its impact on SEO in a subsequent post. In the meantime, enjoy the video!
Check out Caffeine on: http://www2.sandbox.google.com.
A Quick Local Search Tip
I just wanted to share a quick but useful tip with you regarding local listings. Listing your business on Local search engines is not good enough – an added level of exposure is getting your listings reviewed.
Please encourage your customers to add reviews to your local listings (Google Local especially). This would improve your click through rate as not many businesses actually pull in efforts to get reviews on their listings. It would also add value to the overall search experience.
Have a great weekend guys 
Second Google PageRank Update in 2009 – May 27, 2009
Just wanted to let you know that the Google Toolbar PageRank update for 2009 is currently in progress. Although at the time of writing this post, it is yet to be confirmed by Google, folks out on twitter started reporting updates from May 26th. Some of our clients’ sites have been updated with PageRank increases
Google Search Has Changed Forever with Google Search Options
Did you think the launch of Google’s Universal search back in 2007 was revolutionary?
Well it looks like the introduction of Universal search formed baby steps to Google’s new search feature called Search options.
Google’s search options adds an extra layer of dynamic filters to the search engine result page (SERPs) – with a single click a search result has extra filters (on the left) that shows your search query results as Video, Forum posts or Review only results. You can also further filter your results by time or choose to display more text on the description area of the SERPs. Read More »
It is Ever More Important to Rank Number 1 & 2 on Google
The chaps at Google seem to be testing yet another feature that might affect your search rankings and business. This new feature has got to do with misspelled searches.
Here is what is happening, I intentionally ran a misspelled search on Google using the search phrase ‘oxford printerss’. As usual, Google suggests the properly spelled phrase – ‘oxford printers’ BUT the difference is that Google is also now showing the top two results for ‘oxford printers’ – the correctly spelled search phrase. See the screenshot below:
SEO Duplicate Content Issues – a Canonical Fix at Last
For owners and webmasters of eCommerce websites, the issue of duplicate content is all too common. Usually, for functional and usability reasons a site would have vastly identical pages that are accessible via multiple URLs. Take for example an online store selling sunglasses might have numerous URLs for listing their Ray Ban Wayfarer Sunglasses. They might have URLs specific to brand, price range, colour and style. On a well designed and laid out site, it would be easy for visitors to access product pages, but for search engine bots, it always usually a pain selecting the ‘preferred’ URL to reference in search results. For an SEO professional and for link building, the issue of page rank dilution crops in because a link that could have been attributed to a single page bears the risk of being attributed to one of many pages. Search engine bots tend to crawl less of a site riddled with duplicate content.
