July 28th, 2008 admin
Cuil launched today with some pretty decent coverage from the SEO press. However, today’s launch didn’t go according to plan as the server fell over itself due to high traffic! Not a great start to something being touted as a Google beater. I’m sure it will be back soon.
Danny Sullivan has written a good article testing the relevancy of searches compared to Google. Check it out here.
UPDATE: The site is now working but www.cuill.com with the two ‘l’s doesn’t even redirect to the main domain: www.cuil.com! Talk about branding issues! It seems Cuil does have its fair share of domain problems, being the unforunate spelling error could lead you to a hardcare porn site. FAIL AGAIN!
UPDATE01/08/0: www.cuill.com now redirects to www.cuil.com
Posted in Google, Search, cuil | No Comments »
June 30th, 2008 admin
Google has since launched the idea of ‘Universal search’ over a year ago and was detailed in a highly specifically by the chaps at Search Engine Land. So to re-cap, Universal Search was effectively a way of Google blending more search information in to its SERPs. By adopting this new feature, a user can access vertical areas associated to their search query, such as Book searches, video news or Maps . For instance, when a person types in “Star Wars”, he’ll not only get a few website links as expected but a whole raft of links to YouTube and News results as well. If a person types in a location like “New York”, the location map turns up at the top o fthe first page.
Now that Universal search has matured over a year what have the benefits been and what insights can SEO consultants gain from Google’s experiment on delivering for their cilents? Without doubt the changes last year has made search a richer experience for users of Google. It certainly helps that maps and news have blended in to the results. However, for SEO it means so much more. Let’s take on some examples. Back to “Star Wars” example; as an SEO consultant, we have to work out why some listings achieve greater ranks then some. Other considerations have certainly become more paramount in online marketing. Youtube listing ‘Lego Star Wars’ appears mid page with a nice thumbnail and make no mistake, Google favours its own products and would prefer you to see video from YouTube. Evil, I know and I’ve certainly never seen any other video networking site appear in this way. If we tap in a location like “New York” again, the local map will always appear at the top for 98%. Some movement in the rank maybe experienced but that is not the point. Google deems that the location map is the number 1 thing people will look for. Again, what does this mean to SEO-ers. Well, geo-targetting your website has been a buzz word for the past few months. Google has been known to take into account the ip address and references to physical ‘bricks n mortar’ addresses. Certainly people listing businesses on Google Maps helps in getting some exposure for your website in the SERPs.
Newer additions of Universal Search were launched earlier in the year. With vertical search expanding into product searches, a search result may include listings from Google Shopping section. Blog search listings were also blended this year into the SERPs, however, surprisingly the search “Star Wars” brings no such results considering the fanbase associated with the topic and neither do product searches appear. Perhaps it possibly could mean that Google considers the websites listed already are far more informative then any blended listings they provided? Odd behaviour anyway.
Posted in Google, SEO Blog News, Search | No Comments »
May 14th, 2008 admin
Occasionally, there are times when you learn a thing or two regarding SEO. This post here: http://tinyurl.com/5rb58g reveals some top tips to help keyword analysis for those times you get those pesky KW mental blocks!
Posted in Keyword research, SEO Tools | No Comments »
May 12th, 2008 admin
If there wasn’t any further proof that domain names have a major impact on rankings, check this out:
Look! No optimised title or relevant description tag.
Posted in Google, SEO Blog News, Search | 1 Comment »
May 9th, 2008 admin
Everyone with some reasonable computer knowledge has downloaded torrent files before. Rocket science it ain’t! One thing that was noticed when trying to download films was that when a user activated the .avi file a message came up saying that this movie clip had to be viewed by a certain program. “Download program here” the page announced! Now the lure of seeing the latest movie isn’t that strong with me and it certainly isn’t strong enough for me to trust some weird HTML page telling me to download a dodgy viewer program I have never heard of. But unfortunately it is for some, in fact, 530,000 computers according McAfee, the security company which says that the number of computers infected with Trojan viruses. These viruses are not malicious as in stealing data. They simply serve advertising. Could there be more than meets the eye here?
According to the Guardian, last year Media Defender was exposed as deliberately placing thousands of dummy media files into the path unsuspecting downloaders. They did this on the instruction of the big media corporations. This of course, simply changed the way Torrent sites operated with many now putting a ratings system on files so users can give the thumbs up or down (also can be manipulated though it’s something of a fight back). Hmm, dummy files and now possibly virus hit files?
Big Companies can take even more drastic measures. The MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America) recently successfully sued TorrentSpy for $110m on grounds of Copyright infringement. They are now actively targeting Pirate Bay now for $15m of lost revenue. The Torrent Spy case has effectively opened the door for companies to go after Torrent portals. I predict that a few of these sites will eventually disappear but the internet is a big place and there’s always somewhere to hide in most cases.
Now, lets look at this in a different way. Despite, companies crying foul of Peer-to-Peer torrent wares destroying their businesses, we still have of plenty of success stories. The latest Grand Theft Auto game generated a staggering £255 million sales worldwide and the latest Iron man movie took $98m worth of ticket sales over three days. This isn’t pocket money for the big companies. At the end of the day, if the product is good, we’ll want to see it, play it, listen to it. However, the torrent sites are only the tip of a big iceberg. The big corporates will always have tricks up their sleeves but Torrents are here to stay.
Posted in My Web World, SEO Blog News | No Comments »
May 9th, 2008 admin
Semantic search has been the focal point of some intense blogging and opinion of late. What is semantic search? Essentially, it disseminates meaning of words and their context within the text to determine whether it is relevant to the search query or not. This is different from the approach given by Google which uses link authority to determine higher ranks.
As widely reported in the tech media in March, Yahoo has begun adopting some of the key aspects of semantic search into their engine: . Amit Kumar explained the shift in the Yahoo! Blog: http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000527.html. Through supporting microformats and a variety of web standard friendly practices, Yahoo! Search intends to to use this to increase the quality of information given to the user. An interesting note which I noticed was that fact that Yahoo! will embrace the Dublin Core initiative which has been discounted by myself as just code padding and superfluous to the crawl process given that the HTML meta tagging are already well established. I could be wrong there but now that Yahoo! Search has been opened for third party development anything is possible to improve its search services. Before we know it, the ability to tag and label content on a page will be widespread and will have to factored in on any optimisation process.
Google has recently been noted to have improved their own semantic search routines with stemming (e.g. run vs runners vs running) becoming more sophisticated. Also, recently Google group members noticed that synonyms (e.g sprinter) are now capable of ranking for sites. These observations bode well for the future of semantic search but will Google ever dump its PageRank formula? Unlikely given that PR has been a lynchpin of Google since day 1. Certainly we’ll expect the handling of semantic search to get much better over time
Posted in Google, Search, Web 3.0, Yahoo! Search | No Comments »
April 18th, 2008 admin
Remember days before social networking as we know it today. Well, forums are still very much alive a well and us SEO marketers still find them a source for our information and amusement. But fourms by nature must evolve and although the basic premise of a forum has not changed, it’s governing rules certainly have. The typical forum owner is well aware of flaming but also spamming. Any whiff of porn or commercial linking with no intention of furthering the conversation thread, then in comes the moderator and the post is gone within the next ten minutes. It certainly isn’t an outright tool for SEO link building. It is certainly rare to see forum posts ranking highly
However, there are a few tricks which a modern SEO-er can employ to get the most out of forum linking. Take for instance a great site called money saving expert set up by Martin Lewis back in 2004. He’s managed to build a very authoritative and quality website helping people manage their finances better. Over the past few years studying client’s analytics I have noticed significant spikes in traffic to their websites which can be cultivated just by having a link on money saving expert forum. These links come through totally legitimate reasons ie. people wanting to talk about latest ads or products they have seen. However, a forum like this would probably see spam coming a mile away. I have devised a way to approach forums:
Thread Baiting
Firstly take your website (or whatever) and take careful consideration about related themes. For example; a competition about how many keepy-uppys (football term) you can do in a minute. This competition is organised by a famous brand. The direct approach for a link would kill off any interest and alert moderators to spam. I’ve seen the direct approach crash and burn time after time. In this instance, firstly, I would go and post a link to a YouTube video of a professional footballer performing this skill. I would go in the forum and post the youtube link and say how fantastic it is. This should start the ball rolling so to speak.
Posters take up the thread and then respond. It doesn’t matter if they say the Youtube vid you posted is good or bad. Although, I’ll have to say mildly negative is better as you can go back in with another YouTube video. Don’t worry at this stage, just keep the thread growing.
The point where you have to move in is a tactical one. You don’t want to kill the conversation and you don’t want to reveal your purpose too late when everyone has gone. When the time comes, go in with your sales pitch although never, never ever sound formal. A forum is like an informal chatroom. Play innocent and always sound upbeat. At the end of the day you’ll have a popular thread and people clicking on your link. Lovely traffic into your intended website.
Posted in Link Building, Online Brand Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimisation | 1 Comment »
April 10th, 2008 admin
There’s an excellent article about social media marketing here written by young Tibi Puiu which outlines all of the basics in regard to this new online phenomenon.
My first experience of the Web 2.0 version of it was I came across Del.ici.ous during its infancy in 200. To be honest, I didn’t know what to make of it. I was then getting to grips with SEO and did not know where this website could fit in to my tasks. It certainly couldn’t improve my SEO directly and I was left stumped on who precisely would want to occupy their time on this site. It was until the phrase: social media marketing was first coined to me in an article in 2007 when I realised its significance as a powerful tool to draw in traffic. I immediately sort out MySpace and then Facebook. Signing on these services was easy enough but the main process of setting up a profile and then contacting people was where the attraction was.
All of a sudden, I was contacting friends about what I’m up to and joining groups and discussions about my favourite bands. My personal MySpace profile became my place to express my devotion to my football team. That then branched off into a full blown blog which I now actively write news and optimise today.
Nowadays, there are approximately over 200 different SMO applications available online ! That’s a staggering amount of personal comments, blogs, news, reviews and everything. The term Social in Social Media certainly lives up to its name.
Posted in Social Bookmarking, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimisation, Social Networking | No Comments »
April 10th, 2008 admin
Link building is a laborious, slow and sometimes painful task of contacting webmasters and bloggers for that elusive link back. However, it’s not as easy as it seems as many people are looking at your website and thinking: “What’s in it for my users and my website?”. Many people have suggested ways of approaching linkbacks. Jai Nischal Verma suggested the ten commandments of link building:-
- Link Exchange
- Social Bookmarking Websites
- Link Baiting
- Web Directory Submissions
- Article Submissions
- Press Releases
- Blog Commenting
- Forum Posts
- Link Programs
- Creating Contests
If we examine the list , I’ll be critical of Link exhanges as we well know reciprocal linking is not beneficial for your SEO. It can bring traffic but won’t bring the desired boost needed. Blog commenting only works for some that do not implement the no follow tag and forum posting also has its drawbacks. It’s not a list that could be easily implemented as a solution for all websites.
Depending on your website theme, the ten commandments of link building is helpful but should only be followed in part. For example, I have a client that specializes in parking solutions(!). I would certainly have a problem going about blog commenting or social book marking into the website without usable content which would excite a reader!
Let’s have a look at Google’s own take on Links:
- Avoid Me-too or irrelevant content that gives users no reason to visit your site.
- Avoid broken links and incorrect HTML.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.
- Avoid valueless links from unrelated websites
- Avoid links from low PageRank pages with many outgoing links
- Avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.
The most interesting point is #9 which states that people should avoid links from pages with low page rank with many external links. Obviously this is referring possibly to the practice of link farming. However, it is interesting that Google emphasizes its own PageRank measurements as a yardstick to a good or bad site. It is still a controversial point amongst SEO but I have taken more notice of PR of late ever since Google began dropping sites which engaged in Pay per linking. Not to say I’m completely won over by the whole PR argument but I do take notice of it when sourcing potential websites. The main thing I look for over and over again is the quality of the website (authority), how recently it was updated and of course, theme relevancy.
Posted in Link Building | No Comments »
April 10th, 2008 admin
I was recently posed a question regarding directories and their usefulness in today’s SEO armoury. Directories unfortunately belongs in the past now although I still find that there are a very select few which work on non competitive terms. I did a few directory submits for a client recently and they did rank on that term but to be honest it was unsustainable as they had not implemented my on-page recommendations.
As far as I know, you can’t get banned from having many directory links however, I’d always be careful with submitting directory links by bulk. The trick is to stagger submissions so not to arouse suspicions of unnatural linking from the search engines.
Someone mentioned to me that a competitor has many links from directories and still rank well. Obviously, link popularity isn’t fully maintained on backlink numbers alone. Check if they don’t have backlinks from authoritative sites as well. Look at PR, Domain age and relevance as usual. Also, check if they are listed on DMOZ (Despite some of DMOZ’s shortfalls). Many directories are weird these days as you have to be aware of the nofollow tag or if they javascript redirect to website. These two methods are worthless to your website. I also rarely find myself paying for directory listings either.
Posted in Link Building, SEO Blog News | No Comments »
