Binaryday.com has published their review of the leaked Google internal SEO report card produced for all Google assets. Its a nice find as it reaffirms some of the guesses that SEO’s have made as to how to best optimise a site.
Their review is great, but there’s some missed opportunities that could be worthwhile exploiting.
Google are playing up the importance of ‘descriptive’ title and meta description tags.
Make title tags 60 characters in length as this is the default size
Keep keywords to the front as later terms may have ‘less weight to words after a certain point’
Add in what the product does, who it targets and what the main features are
Use the noodp meta tag to override Googles default use and add in your own meta description snippet
Google advocate having your brand as the first part of a title – this may help with brand recognition and the implementation of Site Links with your listing?
Google reinforces the fact that meta keywords and descriptions do not benefit your search position, instead the meta description tag can be used to support your listing making it more inticing
To get Site Links…
Use a heirarchal site structure (is Google using folders to define Site Links?)
Use descriptive anchor text for links (I suggest keeping anchor texts uniform across all pages and inbound links with the exception of using plurals to further determine relevancy)
Avoid deep nesting of content behind many sub directories (keep your site structure 1 or 2 tiers deep)
Use Google Webmaster Tools to remove irrelevant terms
Google are highlighting issues with their multi-path site structure which sees google.com/foo google.com/foo/ google.com/foo/index.html www.google.com/foo www.google.com/foo/ www.google.com/foo/index.html foo.google.com foo.google.com/ foo.google.com/index.html all directing to the same page and all accessible in their own rights or being re-directed via 302 (temporary redirects). To combat this they suggest using 301 redirects on all non standard versions of the URL’s to either foo.google.com or google.com/foo.
Its also important to make sure your internal links and external links under your control follow this procedure to avoid further indexing of these ‘broken’ URLs.
Make sure any logo links back to your sites home page have descriptive alt text and not just a repetition of the brand name.
Remove all ‘click here’, ‘learn more’ and other generic links with more descriptive (keyword rich) texts.
Just downloaded the new Bruce Clay SEO Factors and Trends Report which acts as a great reminder of SEO issues we all faced throughout 2009. All in all it’s pretty well written and contains lots of hints at things that can/have been done in SEO over the last 12 months.
Heres a few of the takeaways from this excellent document.
Online Brand Presence
…the number of times a brand is used in conjunction with a keyword on pages…
Adding your brand name as part of your link building effort achieves positive results in google so now is the time to name-drop in blog comments, forum signatures, press releases, social media and articles.
Richer Search Listings
…one line site links, rich snippets, breadcrumbs and geo-location…
They mention using ‘named’ anchors to help achieve ‘one line site links’… I assume this is a turn of phrase and will be investigating whether they actually mean the name=”" attribute or whether they mean consistency of anchor text.
The use of Microfotmats such as hCard, vCard and hReview are encouraged to give more information and pull-out your listings from the crowd.
Folder structure is being used as an alternative to ‘one line site links’ so think folder structure people!
Engagement Objects™
…and will thus reward (rank higher) sites that include appropriate Engagement Objects™.
I have no idea what these are but they sure sound interesting. When I get a moment I will report back with my findings.
Contextual Links
Our research indicates that search engines have added more weight to contextual links and less weighting to links from the navigation, side bars and footer…
Hit articles, blog posts, guest posts, social media and other sources of in-content links to boost your rankings.
So there you have it. Just a few of the excellent points raised in the Bruce Clay document. There’s some new things for me to check out (what a novelty) and I am looking forwards to spending some time evaluating these techniques.
Just got an email from Will at Distilled letting me know that they’re setting up a USA office due to SEOMoz quitting the SEO consulting game :O
It seems that as the search engines reduce their tool set, SEOMoz think that they’ll be able to make more money as an ASP (Application Service Provider) selling SAAS (Software As A Service)… and by speaking at conferences and expo’s.
As some one who got out of the client services game I can appreciate that not having to manage demanding and often irrational clients is a mighty big attraction, however, unless they can bull some big hitters out of their hats, the current SEOMoz pro tool set just isn’t good enough to justify the price tag (I bought my subscription in their sale for 1/2 price).
All I can say is good look Rand et all… fingers crossed this works out for you and as for Will, I’m sure SEOMoz will pass you some leads – it might also be time for you to think about improving your brand and starting your own community… it worked for Rand.
Heres the official announcement:
I wanted you to be one of the first to hear our big news – we are opening an office in Seattle. Our US online presence is going to grow at DistilledConsulting.com (Twitter: US, UK).
Our long-time associates, SEOmoz, are quitting SEO consulting to focus on their world-leading SEO tools and resources. Distilled LLC was therefore created to take over their consulting responsibilities and to service the demand for bespoke consulting generated by their tools and services.
Over the last couple of years, we have worked together to deliver impactful SEO campaigns for household names including Microsoft, Real Networks and fast-growth VC-backed companies including Scribd.com, Avvo.com and Etsy.com.
To celebrate, we are opening up free access to a conference call we are running on 24th February for all our contacts. You can sign up to get dial-in details here. Entitled "how to get the most from your SEO" it will cover:
• the best tasks to keep in-house vs. outsource
• combining SEO effectively with PPC, PR and marketing
• integrating SEO into other processes (e.g. development, business development)
• how to get the most from your agency
• how to be a great SEO client and get even more out of your agency
Sign up now.
You can read more about the US announcement in my blog post – the summary is:
• Distilled Limited now has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Distilled LLC registered in WA
• Rob Ousbey, one of the lead SEOs at Distilled here in London is heading West to brave the frontier and begin the process of establishing our US office
• We will continue writing for SEOmoz, answering Q&A and contributing to product decisions and testing (in exchange for which we will get loads of access to powerful tools, data and expertise)
• We will manage the SEO consulting page on the SEOmoz website and handle bespoke consulting needs for any of the SEOmoz community who would like to work with us
• We will all continue to refer to the recommended list where appropriate
• We are now hiring in the UK and the US for a talented SEO and a great marketing administrator
• Yes, we are also wondering if we did this just to make ourselves into a case study in international domain strategy.
So, we are now open for business on two continents. Please get in touch if there is anything we can do for you – US contact form, UK contact form – or email our Business Development Manager: Caitlin Krumdieck.
Sorry if you hear this news via more than one route – we’re pretty excited about it all so we would appreciate any extra publicity you can help us out with on this big day for Distilled.
Don’t hesitate to give me a shout if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do for you.
At last! A feature ive been waiting for for an eternity (and had originally built into a previous in-house analytics package) has arived for Google Analytics – Annotation.
This is a great little feature that takes the hassle out of monitoring events on the timeline.
With Annotations you can add notes to the timeline which makes it great for:
Tracking PR activities
Promotional Sales
The effect of any high value link (purchases?)
SERPS changes i.e. Caffeine
The only issue I can forsee is that the notes wont go far enough. I’d like the ability to have different, user defined note types as I can see my Annotations becoming the dominent factor of the visual display.
This feature was originally mentioned in the Google Analytics blog post of December 7th, but has taken until now to be implimented on the UK analytics.
I love music and posted in the past about supporting Rage Against the Machine in their online campaign to bump Joe McElderry off his almost certain Christmas no1 spot… and I’m glad to say that they did!
I’m sure there will be some indepth analysis on how social media marketing played a key role in this outcome and contributed to the worlds first no1 hit based 100% on downloads and look forwards to reading it all.
…and before you have a go, yes I know theyre both property of SonyBMG so in the end Sony gets a boat load of cash extra!
Well, I have to say that the Xfactor final was a foregone conclusion and I for one think that Olly Murs had a close escape from the curse that is Xfactor rubbish singles/albums, you know that Joe McElderry is going to tank after the first album… but good luck to the guy.
If like me you’re loathing to hear Joe McElderry’s single throughout Christmas then you have an alternative… and its quite a feat of viral marketing that has put this opportunity out there and that is…
Get Rage Against The Machine to Xmas number 1
This anti-xfactor campaign has run around Facebook and a host of other social media. It’s even backed by other artists including the Prodigy who all seek to give Simon Cowel a kick in the nadgers by trying to bump the Joe McElderry single off the top spot. Its not a feat for the faint hearted as with 10′000 vites on last nights final and an army of women over 50 all rushing out to buy little joe’s single its going to be a mamoth effort to get Rage Against the Machne to number 1.
So if you’re up for a bit of fun ive stuck a couple of Amazon links below where you can spent a couple of pence and buy either single. I for one am stumping up the cash and backing Rage Against the Machine!
Just got this nice email from the SEOMoz team ammouncing a nice little discount voucher code that gives you 40% off the monthly costs of an SEOMoz Pro account.
Simply enter the code:
ROLLBACK12817261
On the payment screen and have the monthly fee reduced from $79 to only $49.
Offer expires 19th Dec 2009 so get it while its hot!
I'm happy to answer any and all SEO, web design, development and Internet Marketing questions you may have (and give you some free exposure for your projects). Just email your questions to markrush@gmail.com and I'll take a look through your site and post the answers here.
Mark Rushworth.com is a Do Follow Blog
All Comments are Do Follow and monitored so don't even bother using a keyword as your name or dropping links into the comments (unless appropriate).
– it might also be time for you to think about improving your brand and starting your own community… it worked for Rand.
