Go read: The Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year.

In the top of the list you’ll find articles by Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land), Aaron Wall (SEOBook), Rand Fishkin (SEO Moz), and Matt Cutts (Google).

The first session:

Matt talks about the anatomy of a search result, and gives some useful tips on how you can help improve how your site appears in our results pages. This talk covers everything you’ll see in a search result, including page title, page description, and sitelinks, and explains those other elements that can appear, such as stock quotes, cached pages links, and more.

I’ve always been a strong advokate for meta descriptions in order to get precise results in the SERP, but the meta description is often disregarded due to it’s shaded past as SEO-dumping ground. Well, next time this debate arises, I’ll have Matt’s words to back me up

Read more: The anatomy of a search result

…or watch the video:

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index. Some examples of cloaking include: * Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users. * Serving different content to search engines than to users.

Here’s how Cloaking System describe their method: (from IP-delivery @ Cloaking System)

IP-delivery is the type of cloaking we use at Cloaking System. IP-delivery means that content is delivered, based on different IP-addresses. IP-delivery based on country IP’s is used by Google. When you type in www.google.com in your browsers address bar, you are automatically shown Google’s page in your own language… At Cloaking System we use IP-delivery a bit differently. We take the IP-addresses from the search engines and search robots and show them the content of one page, and show a different content to the visitors – your visitors. They are shown the page on your website that you want them to see.

The observant reader will notice that Google’s guidelines and Cloaking System´s method have some discrepancies. Now, openly admitting to corrupting Google’s search results can be compared to entering a the arena for a bullfight. Somehow, these two images remind me of each other… So… expectedly, Google blocks Cloaking System from their index – but our heroes are not duped at all. Like true heroes, they stand fast on their right of way, defending their points of views. On SEO Ninjas some of the central people from Cloaking System have a say: Google Promotes Cloaking. Impressive! True bravery. They are almost on par with Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. Now, putting ourselves in the place of the bull/Google, what course of action can be taken do when their first attempt to still the rebels has failed? But of course – find customers who have bought services from Cloaking System – and if unsuccesfull – find out where the rebels work and kick them out of the index too. And so ReFocus, the white hat-chapter of Cloaking System, was also booted out of Google’s index. That’ll teach them… Maybe someday we will see ReFocus back in Googles index – but until then they’ll have to follow the wise word of the Bible: “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.” (Luke 6:29) And so it seems this time round, the bull won…

Vil du læse mere om ‘verdensmesterskabet i SEO’ og søgeordet ‘globalwarming awareness2007′, så er det her det sker.

Update:
Der er kommet en dansk deltager i konkurrencen. Det drejer sig om www.globalwarming-awareness2007.dk. Så der er hermed givet lidt link-love til projektet herfra

Info til menigmand:
Hvis du undrer dig over tekstens høje gentagelsesfrekvens af frasen globalwarming awareness2007, så er et helt bevidst træk fra undertegnedes side for at illustrere et tiltag de de fleste deltagere i konkurrencen nok vil arbejde ihærdigt med: høj koncentration af søgefrasen ‘globalwarming awareness2007′ i hele teksten. Dette giver nemlig sammen med mange andre faktorer de bedste muligheder for at opnå placeringer blandt søgemaskinernes øverste resultater.

Info til SEO-guys:
Det er interessant at Google allerede 2 dage efter offentliggørelsen af søgefrasen globalwarming awareness2007, er 12700 resultater i Google. Som nedenstående skærmprint viser, er de øverst rangerende domæner allerede registreret og indekseret samme dag som offentliggørelsen af søgefrasen. Og så er det jeg tænker – hvordan hulen kan det lade sig gøre? Er det Google Sitemaps, der er bøffet op? Er alle deltagerne, der har gode forbindelser? Eller er det Matt Cutts, der egenhændigt har fundet alle deltagerne og indekseret dem?
Og i samme omgang er det ret interessant at se forskellene på antal indekserede sider hos Google, Yahoo og MSN. Google har som sagt 12700 sider efter 2 dage. Yahoo har 128 (og her er med globalwarming-tag-arkivet på del.icio.us på 1-pladsen). MSN har 0, zip, ingen, none.

Hvis man hellere vil beholde sine W’er, kan man bruge dette plugin. Under alle omstændigheder bør man I et SEO-perspektiv vælge om man vil det ene eller det andet.

En ting er at et website ofte både vises med og uden www. EN anden ting er når et website ikke lader folk se indholdet uden www. Det har jeg brokket mig over for lang tid siden.

Enter Tags in the head. Basically, you gain same results using the two plugins – Tags in the head is just soooo much easier to use…

If you must know all possible solutions – go to Google.

I started using Google Analytics last week, and until now I am very happy with the detail of the data, although the interface is not as intuitive as Statcounters (The interfaces of pay-to-use tools, Traceworks and Webtrends are also better).

More thoughts on Google’s motvation for offering free web statistic tools:
Search engine Journal

more to come…

Update:
Heureka!!!

If only the meta description was added at the top of the source I’d be completely satisfied – but then again it is only cosmetics…