Tag Archives: SEO

Digital Frontier – the doors are open

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A couple of months ago I sat down with a group of former colleagues from the SEO company formerly known as Notabene.net. While bemoaning the fact that a lot of the interesting news we shared with each other at our desks didn’t go further than sporadic messenger conversations and emails, the idea of a blog collaboration project arose.
As we were all thoroughly brain washed to believe that the world revolves around SEO, SEM, and ROI, it was an easy task to pick the focus of our blog. But as we have now branched out in different directions, our information intake will probably be mirrored by our respective jobs and activities.
So without further ado, I invite you to come see us at the Digital Frontier – read, comment, share.
Be warned though, that we write in danish and only about really interesting stuff…

Hooray for Clueray

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I made my first query on Clueray and waited for more than 20 seconds for the results – luckily I was warned that it might be slow – but it was a while worth waiting. Clueray challenges the way documents are served on the SERP by looking at the ‘document intent’:

One of the key insights leading to the development of Clueray’s unique intent-driven approach was to recognize that all of these different document types can be organized by intent: the intent to inform, the intent to facilitate a transaction, the intent to that serve as a “launching point” for exploring related topics, etc. Interestingly, these document intents map very nicely onto the types of searches people do which have been identified by researchers.

This means that you can filter your results according to your specific needs – and by the looks of the search results, the SERP has a range of additional features – one of which is a couple of new ways to display an the results.

Order from Chaos

Go play with the thing and tell me what you think :-)
(In return I’ll omit a rant about Clueray totally screwing up their blog…)

…and if you are in a hurry – you can just take a look at Cluerays own break down of their SERP:
Clueray result page break down

Agressive Affiliating Strategy with the SEO Book

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Here’s a rather interesting example of an extremely aggressive affiliating strategy from a SEO Book affiliate. I was about to purchase the SEO Book, and did a quick search just per habit. Being Danish and thus accustomed to somewhat prudent marketing strategies. We have several organs and government offices controlling and regulating marketing behaviour. On top of that – knowing that Google’s restrictions on the use of ‘trademark’ keywords I was surprised to see an ad in the results calling SEO Book a scam. The SEO Book is one of the most respected resources in this line of trade, and a couple of years gave me a lot of important information on SEO.

Of course I clicked through and found a salesletter that at the same time praises and scolds the contents in SEO Book, but also sports obvious SEO Book affiliate links along with efforts to sell of own SEO products…

So what does a clever man do? Well, being a lemming 2.0, I of course immediately signed up as an affiliate for use in this post… I’ll buy the SEO Book is the near future and as it is being incrementally updated, I actually hope to get my SEO knowledge refreshed.

SEO book affiliate

Matt Says: Use Alt-text

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The Google Webmaster Central Blog features videos with Matt Cutts sharing some of his points on good webmaster behaviour. I told about Matt’s walkthroug of the SERP Anatomy, where controversial meta tags got the thmubs-up from Matt.
Now the Webmaster Central has Matt in a video, where he tells us to use alt-text smartly. In the example he uses, he puts in 7 keywords in the alt-text to describe the picture.

Now, the videos are trivial in the sense that there’s nothing new under the sky here. But the fact that Matt Cutts tells us to use alt-text and meta descriptions could be a reminder to webmasters that Google hasn’t stopped paying attention to these elements (again).

Still – if one is going tooptimiz – take them from the top down from this list on SEOmoz: Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Google + Digg = Giggle?

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Several blogs have spotted that Google may be considering adding a social element to the search results. At Google experimental you can always play guinea pig with novel search technologies – and now it seems that a social approach to search results may be on the way:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.

Read more here Giggle Search.
Of course this only allows for manipulating search results in your own searches – but it isn’t hard to see Google using this data to refine general search results.

Via Googlified: Google Digg-Style Experiment

Giggle

1 hour from the Google SERP?

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I just made a little post on the al-gore-rithm. After realizing I wasn’t the first to come up with that pun I wanted to do a google search to see how unoriginal I really was. And the I saw my own post right there in the SERP – a mere hour after I posted the thing.

This is about the fastest I’ve seen anything go into the SERP – and one must wonder what injection needle this blog has to Google’s servers? I use Google Sitemaps (with this plugin)and have also submitted this blog to my own Google Reader. Are these fast tracks to the SERP?

Update:

Matt Cutts has already described this: Minty Fresh Indexing – where index entry times are reported as low as 18 minutes :-)

Update 2:

Rosenstand reports in the comments on ‘Time to Index’ as low as 3 minutes. And I’ve now documented a recent post with a TTI of 6 minutes :-)

Screenshot documentation

Clamp-down on Cloaking – the Google scattergun

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…and so the story goes that one day Cloaking-system.com came forth and boldly announced that they would violate Google´s almost canonical Webmaster’s Guidelines and more precisely the section about cloaking:

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. Brave Cloaker Happy Cloaker 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… Sad Cloaker

globalwarming awareness2007 – hvad er nu det?

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Som oftest når forskellige SEO-virksomheder sætter en optimeringskonkurrenve igang er det med fokus på et eller andet nonsensord – som oftest “[virksomhedens navn] er for seje” stavet baglæns. Der skal ikke mange timers erfaring i internetmarkedsføring til for at se at de fleste konkurrencer af den type blot er slet skjulte forsøg på at skabe opmærskomhed til virksomheden. Det er denne konkurrence utvivlsomt også, men jeg vil alligevel give arrangørerne et lille klap på skulderen/skuldrene for at sætte et søgeord med lidt mening i spil: globalwarming awareness2007.
Ideen er at man på en given dato skal ligge som en samlet nummer 1 på de 3 store søgemaskiner. Nedenfor kan du se resultaterne på de forskellige søgemaskiner:
Google: globalwarming awareness2007,
Yahoo: globalwarming awareness2007 og
MSN: globalwarming awareness2007.

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.
globalwarming awareness2007 screenshot