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After the announcement last year that the 3 major search engines would adopt the canonical tag, it seems that Bing and Yahoo may be about to support it too, though not to the cross-domain level that Google plan to.
This tag helps solve the duplicate content issue, particularly prevalent when multiple URLs point to identical content eg when tracker URLs are used, or dynamic pages are created from search criteria.
If you are going to use it, make sure you don’t try to come up with methods to con the search engines and follow the guideliens carefully on its usage. It could help your SEO immeasurably, especially for top landing pages rather than similar product pages that just make your analytics task that much harder.
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Ah, this old chestnut! PageRank used to be one of the sacred mantras you would hear SEOs chanting. Your PR was of huge import and anyone with a PR of 5 or above felt they had the right to look down upon you. Some people lost sleep whenever their PR dropped, or if they had tried everything and still had a PR of zero.
PageRank came into being to help Google assess pages for authority, backlinks etc. It is never quite clear if the mystery surrounding how PR was calculated was solved, but over the years, PR slid down the ranks in algorithmic importance.
Until, on Oct 14th, 2009, Google finally said very clearly and in a manner that was not up for further debate, that SEOs could all sleep soundly again and PageRank, just as they had been trying to tell anyone who would listen for quite some time, was really, really not important. In fact, it had been removed from Google webmaster tools.
So, when anyone tells you to look for sites with a high PR, or to spend time trying to increase/gain PR, you will know better!
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Are you spending time worrying about SEO? Or worse, spending untold money trying to move up the search engine results pages only to find that for no good reason your website has vanished from the top 100 pages?
If you find your days and nights are haunted by keyword research, writing META tags, hunting down keyword density tools, aching over whether the copy is sufficiently optimised……
Then, STOP!
Open your website right now and ask yourself these simple questions:
1. Does my website look good?
2. Does it tell a prospective customer everything they need to know about my products and services?
3. Does it include useful, helpful, valuable, content about my products and services eg how to manuals, articles, links to other resources and so on?
4. Does it include full contact details that are easy to find from every page?
5. Does it sell? Or, from a customer point of view, is it easy to buy?
6. Have I recently added some fresh content for regular visitors?
If the answer to all of the above is “Yes”, then you do not need to keep worrying about SEO. What you need to do is find who your customers are and where they hang out – in forums, in blogging communities, on Twitter, in social networks, etc – and go and talk to them. Network. Socialise. Share your experience and help people out. Build your reputation as a good person to deal with and you will find that on its own will encourage people to check you out, remember you, recommend you.
When you are asked questions and can give a great answer, add it to the FAQ on your site to help someone else.
There is far more that will attract your target audience to your website than just SEO. Word of mouse is far more effective in finding your target audience. Think beyond the search engines.
If your answer to any of the above is “No”, then you need to resolve some very basic issues with your website before anything else.
And when you feel you have got enough customers from being social, then you may wish to have a look at your needs for SEO again. And you may find it is no longer required because satisfied customers and people you have met in your ’socialising’ are doing more than a little on-page SEO could do by linking to you, recommending you in blogs, on Twitter, to their networks and so on.
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In light of the fact there didn’t appear to be any public waves on SEO and internet marketing, Clickthrough decided to set one up!
SEO and Internet marketing Google Wave
We haven’t really publicised it yet, but feel free to tell others to come and join us in our new community.
The point of the SEO Wave is to explore what potential it will have for search engineers and marketers as we move forwards, to test some of the many applications that are being developed daily, and discuss amongst ourselves how we see it being used, what we would change and so on.
We are definitely not drowning, we’re Waving!
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Multi-variant testing (or multi-variate, multi-variable testing) is often used to discover how consumers, site visitors and so on react to different layouts, colours, and so on. A/B testing is testing two options against each other.
In the real world example, we know that supermarkets use different layouts and place products in certain positions to encourage people to buy the msot expensive goods, to make snap purchases and so on. And it works! How many times have you spontaneously bought something from the displays near the checkout? How often do you look above and below your eyeline to find the cheaper products rather than those the supermarket chain wishes you to buy?
Multi-variate testing for SEO and websites has infinite possibilities, but it is often ignored, except for landing pages and so on where it tends to get more attention. Whilst it is never a good idea to expend considerable amounts of budget testing for the sake of it, the impact on sales or enquiries of a simple change to website layout, or even the colour of a button, can be astounding.
Today’s great site is Which test won? which offers a wealth of results from tests conducted across a huge variety of the options available to website owners, site designers, search engine marketers etc.
Some of the past tests are worth examining to see what results can be achieved by changing the position of a button, using a different layout, experimenting with photos, landing page formats, multi-page forms vs single page forms, and much more.
If your website is attracting visitors but not converting to sales, A/B and multi-variate testing might be well worth considering. But remember, what works for another website’s audience may not work for your own. You need to test with your target audience not rely on the results from A.N.Other company.
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At first glance, the newly announced grants for Digital Britain innovation and feasibility studies would not seem to hold much interest for the SEO industry. But, looking deeper into the scope of projects being encouraged, it would seem there is a chance for some of the most innovative companies who are involved in next gen marketing to access the funding.
Digital marketing has gone way beyond just submitting to the search engines and performing a little SEO. Internet marketers are now reaching consumers through mobile devices, set top boxes and IPTV. Video is a growing marketing tool, and we are seeing more and more in the way of micropayments eg 59-79pp to upgrade your fave game or buy a song for your Ipod/Iphone.
If your company has an idea to enhance digital Britain from an internet marketing angle, this grant document is worth a read and a ponder. The deadline for applications is 1st October and the process opened today, 1st September. With £2m in the pot, it would be great to see some applications from the sectors who deal directly with consumers online and who understand many of the issues holding back e-commerce, content management, content creation and distribution, micro revenue streams and so on.
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SEOs around the globe are trying to discover the implications of the ‘under the hood’ changes that come with Google caffeine (which is currently down for a few hours maintenance, it seems).
There are already various tools to compare the old (decaf) version of Google with the new one.
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Google’s new version of the search engine, Caffeine, has been launched and is currently in beta (Isn’t everything from Google?!) and users and SEOs are being invited to give it a whirl.
This has obviously be in development for some time and is not therefore a new thing. However, the timing may well be a knee jerk reaction to yesterday’s announcement re Facebook and Friendfeed.
We may see more real-time results coming through with Caffeine, which is of course one of the main issues that Google needs to address. Much of the development is behind the scenes and many users may not notice much difference, but Google has said that SEOs etc will find there are more algorithms to play with.
So, roll your sleeves up. This looks like an exciting time!
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For those still mired in ye olde worlde of search engine optimision eg on page, off page, a dash of PPC, a smidgen of article marketing, some brief sojourns into forum marketing, and, of course backlinks and link marketing, yesterday’s announcement that Facebook have acquired Friendfeed means that it really is time now to take stock of this new social media world.
For those who don’t know, FriendFeed was set up by 4 ex-Google employees, and it operates as an aggregator of information from your Twitter account, blogs, social bookmark sites, Facebook, and more. For some eg @Scobleizer, FriendFeed is the ideal tool for bringing all social media activity into one pot.
There are, however, many others who just don’t get FriendFeed, but they are generally the ones who just don’t get social media marketing or engagement full stop. And it is perhaps those people who will now need to admit that they have missed the point, and are going to need to play catch up.
Many of the social media tools, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, have contributed to the creation of the real time web. This is the stream of information which sees breaking news, such as Michael Jackson’s death, being announced to the world at large long before the news machines can rumble into action.
But it’s not only news. All sorts of opinions, commentary, topics and content can go viral on Twitter within minutes or hours, giving marketers a chance to access a global audience with a mere 140 characters. The #watchitspread retweets gave a very interesting example of how this works.
SEO is no longer about optimising a website so the search engines can find it. (And hence the terms used by much of the industry need updating) Google et al have real problems indexing the real time Web and are playing catch up as more and more people use the real-time Web to find answers to questions rather than searching the indexes of the search engines.
If you are not engaged with the tools which allow communities of users, often strangers to each other in real life, to develop responses to questions, recommend products, damage or enhance reputations, and much more, within moments of the first query/comment/link being tweeted, you are going to find yourself stuck in a static world of archived websites found by search engine spiders. And not in the “now” world that is now the Web.
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Once upon a time, and sadly still, in many SEO eyes, off page optimisation was one of the two keys to online success. Off-page optimisation includes link marketing campaigns, article marketing, posting to forums and blogs, video content, podcasts, joint ventures, syndicated content, and so on.
What we have seen is a dramatic change in the effect these strategies have in driving traffic to your site, building brand awareness, quick wins and so on, as the emphasis moves to social marketing, and the search engines fail to keep up with this stream of ever-changing data.
We have seen companies forbid even their marketing teams from using Facebook and Twitter and so on; yet by doing so, they are removing themselves from the social web, with its amazing capacity for fast-moving, viral campaigns, that can not only result in bottom line results eg a boost in sales, reduced marketing expenses and so on, but also in long-term brand building that can bring results for years to come.
A satisfied customer will use word of mouse to pass on to friends, family and followers the great deal, fab customer service, friendly staff, even the free cup of coffee your business has just supplied. A grumpy customer may well do untold damage to reputation just with one tweet that is RTd multiple times by other also dissatisfied customers.
Anyone who dismisses social tools, such as Twitter and the many newly born apps that have come from that and other social applications, is going to find themselves with a historically useful skillset, which no longer delivers results. Off page optimisation will not die, because it willalways be the foundation of the archive that creates the majority of search engine indexes. But even those are going to have to change to adapt to this fast-paced world of real time information we now live in.
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