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 

SEO Hierarchy of Needs is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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

Page Rank Update – October 30th 2009 is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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:

1. Test Caffeine

Caffeine is available for all to test on http://www2.sandbox.google.com/. This is a preview interface and is still work-in-progress. So expect changes in the SERPs as well as some downtime when it is under-going updates. You would notice it is a whole lot faster than the current version of Google

2. Do not Panic

SEO’s tend get into a frenzy whenever Google announces updates of any sort – be it PageRank updates or algorithmic updates. The advantage of Caffeine is that you can test it as well as give Google feedback. Just scroll to the bottom of the search result page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box in your suggestion or observation.

3. Link building – focus on quality not quantity

I ran some tests on a couple of the sites I manage with higher proportions of either high or low profile backlinks. Sites with a higher proportion of low profile backlinks in comparison to sites with a higher proportion of medium and high profile backlinks, I found were not fairing too well on Caffeine but getting still decent page one rankings on the current Google search.

My advice to SEO’s kicking off new projects or managing existing SEO campaigns would be to focus on link quality rather than quantity. Ramp up your acquisition of high profile backlinks to stand a chance of getting decent rankings on Caffeine.

4. Test Caffeine based on location & language

Although http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ is Caffeine’s URL, using query parameters, you can view results based by language & your geographic location. The parameters are as follows:

hl = language
gl = country code

As an example:

Viewing UK results you would need the “gl=uk” parameter: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?gl=uk

Viewing French language results in Canada, you would need parameters;
“hl=fr” and “gl=ca”:
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=fr&gl=ca

5. Fix all your site’s Crawlability Issues

Fundamentally, Caffeine is a re-write of Google’s indexing system. Improvements have been made on Google’s crawling, indexing speed and result relevancy. The fact that Google has improved each of these key indexing elements means it is ever so important for webmasters and SEOs alike to make their sites more crawable and easier to index. Ensure you check your crawl stats, crawl errors and XML sitemap stats on Google Webmaster tools. Also ensure your house is in order to get your site is fully indexed. This way you can focus on link popularity.

6. Speed – Your Page Load Times

There is no question that page load times are important for crawling and indexing. Ensure that your site has decent page load times to get the best of Caffeine and to maintain a high crawl rate. I have noticed a slight drop in the SERPs on Caffeine for some of my slower loading sites – this is speculative and might be down to some other factors but I have nevertheless noticed.

7. Real Time Search

With the current advances in the real time search arena i.e. Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed and Twitter search, there is no doubt that Google’s architecture overhaul via Caffeine is geared towards real time indexing and real time search. At the time of writing this post, Caffeine’s SERPs were not too different from Google’s, but I expect to see more news, blog and social media a.k.a. twitter results to feature upon its full release. If you have tested Caffeine, you would have noticed how fast it results are (at least for the time being).

On the whole, exciting times albeit challenging times lay ahead for SEOs. Social media is going to play a more important role in SEO campaigns and Google would rely more and more on quality links to determine relevancy. If you have been practising good SEO, then there is really no need to worry about Caffeine as you would have noticed when you checked your site out.

Photo credits: D’Arcy Norman via flickr

7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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.

Matt Cutts Sheds More Light on the Google Caffeine Update is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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

A Quick Local Search Tip is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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

Second Google PageRank Update in 2009 – May 27, 2009 is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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.

I think the most impressive features are the Wonder Wheel, which is a visual SERP that suggests similarly search queries visually, and the Time Line option that displays search results by time with a graph that shows search volume over time.

Here is an example:

• You search for ‘Nikon D90 review’ on Google
• Filter the search to display the mention of ‘Nikon D90 review’ from only forums
• Then further add a filter to display SERPs in the last 24 hours
• Finally arrange the results to display the by time using the Sort by date option

You will get this search result i.e. Nikon D90 reviews on forums only in the last 24 hours with the newest forum post display first.

Google want us to see its new search options feature as:

a tool belt that gives you new ways to interact with Google Search, and we plan to fill it with more innovative and useful features in the future.

It really makes things interesting.

Google Search Has Changed Forever with Google Search Options is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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:

This spells bad news for webmasters that have set up websites and web pages specifically to target commonly misspelled search phrases because the misspelled phrase now seem to start on the third search result.

Interestingly, this new misspelled feature does not display Google’s local search results.

See what happens when I search for the properly spelled search phrase: ‘oxford printers’ – the local search results are displayed.

Rank No.1 & 2 On Google

Notice that the first and second sites on the organic rankings for the correctly spelled search phrase appear on the misspelled search phrase results.

Ranking first or second for your most important search phrases with the highest conversions is very important and can now leverage your position on the misspelt search phrase arena.

It is Ever More Important to Rank Number 1 & 2 on Google is a post from: Fuzz One Media

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.

Thankfully, duplicate content issue from a multiple URL perspective is a thing of the past due to a long awaited collaboration of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The have announced a new ‘canonical tag’.

So what does the ‘Canonical’ Fix Mean?

With the canonical tag (see syntax below), you specify exactly what URL you want indexed in the event of multiple URLs referring to the same content. So if you have 5 URLs referring to the same content (like the Ray Ban Wayfarer Sunglasses), you can specifiy the canonical URL in the head section of that page as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.YourPrefferedCanonicalURL.com"/>

And that’s it really !

The canonical tag consolidates old URLs to new URLs in a similar way to a 301 redirect and give search engine bots vital ‘hint’ on exactly what URL to crawl and index.

A Few More Points to Note About the Canonical Tag

• The tag is allowed on a single domain or website – so subdomains and subfolders are permitted.
• Relative or absolute links can also be used, but Google recommends absolute links.
• The tag would only work with very similar or identical content, so spammers intending to pass some link value from one page to another should note this.
• If tags conflict by cross linking the canonical URL to each other, search engine bots with sort indexing and crawling to the way they currently do i.e. they’ll have to determine which URL is the best canonical version.

Further Reading

• Matt Cutts 5 minute explanation of the Canonical link element
• Google’s take on the Canonical link element
• Yahoo’s Take on the Canonical link element
• Microsoft’s take on the Canonical link element
• Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Unite On “Canonical Tag” [Search Engine Land]

SEO Duplicate Content Issues – a Canonical Fix at Last is a post from: Fuzz One Media

Did anyone notice the Google Toolbar PageRank update on New Year’s eve? The head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts confirmed it on twitter and on his blog. Most of our sites and clients sites have gotten updated…for the better with improvements

PageRank Update is a post from: Fuzz One Media