SEO for Bing
October 13, 2009
I don’t know too much about Bing.com’s relevance ranking algorithm. The last time I invested time in Bing.com was three months ago. I did find “5 Simple Steps to Optimize Your Website for Bing, the New Microsoft Search Engine” more evidence for following Google’s guidelines for Web sites. Regarding the point about outbound links, in our tests, outbound links are useful because such outbounds may result in a reciprocal backlink. The rest of the tips seem to come straight from the Google playbook.
Stephen Arnold, October 12, 2009
Why SEO Experts Ruffle Goose Feathers
September 25, 2009
I am not an SEO enthusiast. In fact, I am worse than old fashioned. I am absolutely ossified. I believe that Web sites should be focused on solving a user’s problem. That means clear information, useful functions, and no “aren’t we smart” tricks to spoof my 88 year old father. When I read “Experts Offer Search Marketing Tips to Quickly Boost Sales”, I knew that most of the observations were made in a sincere attempt to help people with Web sites that don’t pay the bills. I even agreed with some of the observations. A case in point was the suggestion to include user generated content on sites. But some of the recommendations and the approach taken in the article troubled me. I did not like the phrase “quickly boost sales.” Web site changes may produce some immediate pay off, but the notion that taking Action A will lead to instant cash (Outcome B) is misleading. For some sites, Action A may produce an unexpected event such as dropping in a Google results list. There are a couple of hundred factors in the Google PageRank algorithm and with smart software doing the heavy lifting, not even Google’s wizards can figure out what may have caused an unexpected event. Even more annoying was the lack of qualification in the experts’ statements. If these folks knew exactly what to do to hit the Google home run, would these folks be giving lectures at SEO conferences or would they be sitting home watching the AdSense money roll in?
Stephen Arnold, September 25, 2009
SEO Takes Liver Punch from the Google
September 22, 2009
Google needs people to create Web sites that contain content. Google needs Web sites that do not have coding errors. Google needs people to improve their Web sites in order to keep the gerbil wheel spinning. What Google does not need, according to Google itself, are gratuitous metatags. A “metatag” is shorthand for index terms inserted in the code behind a Web page. In fact, Matt Cutts—one of Google’s wizards—reported in the Google Webmaster Central Blog that Google does not use metatags. Search engine optimization experts have sometimes made a big deal about metatags. Google has pulled the plug on the metatag game. I can speculate about the reasons why, but the fact is that the SEO crowd seems to be in the slaughter pen, herded towards substantive content and well-crafted code. SEO conferences are like multi level marketing conventions. Pretty wild and crazy stuff. My speculation suggests that more constraints will be imposed on the SEO mavens. It is a step long overdue in the addled goose’s opinion. How about an SEO certification program, Mr. Cutts?
Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2009
Connotate Tag Line
September 20, 2009
A reader sent me a link to a Web site because it contained the phrase “beyond search”. We checked. The Beyond Search’s goslings were delighted to find the Connotate logo and its tag line, which was new to us. the screenshot below presents the logo in context. The tag line is “Beyond Search”.
Here’s a larger snap of the logo and the tag line:
My recollection is that Connotate’s use of the phrase “beyond search” is nothing new. But at our Saturday morning meeting (yes, I know, Saturday morning, sigh), some lively honking took place about the “ownership” of this phrase. Since my use of the phrase is a marketing ploy, I can’t get too excited. One of the goslings did quack at me about this. Boring.
I know that I did not think up the phrase “beyond search”. My recollection is that someone reviewing the draft of the study I wrote for the Gilbane Group suggested the phrase to me. My hunch is that the idea came from Ulla de Stricker, my long time wonderful colleague and unrelenting critic in Toronto. Anyway, the title “Beyond Search” appeared on my January 2009 monograph. The full title of that study is “Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn’t Work”. Believe me, quite a few enterprise search systems do not work. Licensees have limited options to get out of the swamp. Buy the book to find a route to safety. You can get information about the analysis of a couple dozen vendors’ next-generation search systems on the Gilbane Group Web site.
Prior to the publication of the book in 2008, I decided to use the phrase “Beyond Search” for this Web log, diary, and digest of my opinions / thoughts about search, content processing, and related subjects. I am delighted with the persona of the addled goose, the feathered friend whose voice dominates the more than 3,000 Web log posts.
In fact, I wrote a profile Connotate in my Beyond Search study. I found the firm’s system potentially useful, but the company had a low profile and was, in my opinion, navigating in the rough waters of real time business intelligence, a Bermuda triangle for some firms. That particular segment is a tough one. Within the last month, two services I used—TechFuga.com and Doggdot.us—seem to have sunk. The quality of the hits in other systems I monitor has begun to be affected by the increasing noise in the real time streams.
If you run the query “beyond search” on Google as I did a moment ago, you will find that this Web log is the top hit. I canned the listings on the first two pages of results and did not see a link to Connotate. My hunch is that the Connotate Web site is going to have to beef up its SEO attractiveness. Their site does not appear high in the Google results listing for this particular query.
The goslings checked out the Connotate Web site and noticed a blog and a podcast. The most recent posting was interesting because it touched upon Twitter. The content, however, focused on using Twitter as a tool, not as a content or intelligence source. This puzzled me. Connotate is in the business of processing streams to extract information. My hope was to read a blog post about how Connotate could make the Tweet stream immediately and directly useful in business intelligence.
That’s how one moves beyond search in my opinion. A company’s technology needs to wrestle the streams of content to the ground and put them in a Rear Naked Choke.
One cannot win in the information processing wars by writing about uses of streams; one wins by converting the streams to actionable intelligence at a low cost, in near real time, across multiple languages. That’s how one moves “beyond search” in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2009
Microsoft and SEO Optimization
August 23, 2009
Whilst poking around for the latest Microsoft search information, I came across a Web site called Internet Information Services at www.iis.net. I was curious because the write up on the Web site said:
The Site Analysis module allows users to analyze local and external Web sites with the purpose of optimizing the site’s content, structure, and URLs for search engine crawlers. In addition, the Site Analysis module can be used to discover common problems in the site content that negatively affects the site visitor experience. The Site Analysis module includes a large set of pre-built reports to analyze the sites compliance with SEO recommendations and to discover problems on the site, such as broken links, duplicate resources, or performance issues. The Site Analysis module also supports building custom queries against the data gathered during crawling.
The word “experience” did it. I zipped to whois and learned that the site is Microsoft’s. The registrar is an outfit called CSC Protect-a-Brand. Microsoft does not want to let this url slip through its hands I assume. You can download the tool here.
What interested me was that Microsoft has written the description of the tool without reference to its own Web indexing system. Furthermore, the language is generic which leads me to believe that this extension and the other nine in the category “Search Engine Optimization Toolkit” apply to Google as well.
If you are an SEO wizard and love the Microsoft way, you will want to download and experiment with these tools. Testing might be a good idea. If the tools work equally well for Bing.com and Google.com, has Microsoft emulated the Google Webmaster guidelines? If not, what will be the impact on a highly ranked Google site. With 75 to 85 percent of Web search traffic flowing to Google.com, an untoward tweak might yield interesting effects.
Stephen Arnold, August 23, 2009
Foundem Gets Lost in Google
August 20, 2009
I find newspaper stories with quotes like this quite amusing:
“Google is just too dominant for any of us to feel entirely comfortable.”
This statement appears in the UK Guardian’s story “Search for Answers to Google’s Power Leaves UK Internet Firm Baffled”. I have been asked to examine Web sites that have dropped or disappeared from a high ranking in a Google results list. I can’t identify these companies, but I can share with you three reasons that my team identified.
The first Web site was a financial services firm. The Web site with the ranking problem indexed its page using terms like “financial” and “services” and “enterprise”. The notion of substantive content, concrete nouns, original content, and inbound and outbound links were non existent. My recommendation to this outfit was to dump its present Web site development company, recruit a couple of writers, and get indexing help from a librarian. The company did not and it still is nowhere in the Google rankings. These missteps were news to my client. The problem was that the client was confident that she knew how to make a Web site pay. Wrong. Arrogant and stubborn. Attractive to some but not too helpful in getting a Web site indexed in a way that warrants a top ranking by the GOOG.
The second Web site was a company that made some sort of email add in. My recollection is that the software snagged email addresses. This outfit disappeared completely from the Google results list. We looked at the old Web site and the new Web site. There were metatags with hundreds of words, long page descriptions, and content that was essentially brochure prose. The problem we learned after doing some poking around was an “SEO expert” whom I shall not name. This expert fiddled and the unexciting site disappeared. The person who hired this “SEO expert” had some spiel about the brilliance of the “SEO expert”. My suggestion. Dump the crazy indexing and spend a weekend reading Google’s Web master guidelines. The company fired the person who hired the “SEO expert” and followed Google’s rules. The site is now back in Google’s good graces.
The third Web site experienced double digit decreases in traffic over a period of four months. We looked at the site and found hundreds of 404 errors, thin content, repeated service outages, and an interface that was tough for a human and pretty much a mess for an indexing robot. We turned in our report. The company’s management buried it. The site is up and unchanged. The problem was not Google; it was people who thought they knew something and did not.
Now what about the poster child in the Guardian news story–http://www.foundem.co.uk/
First, running a query for pages indexed by the Google, I learned that Googzilla had 29, 600 hits for this site. This means that Google is indexing the site and that the site is in the index. In fact, ArnoldIT.com has a miserable 782 pages indexed by the Google. I am not complaining. This means that on the surface the site is not generating enough “Google glue” to warrant a high ranking.
Second, I ran the site against some validators. Errors were returned. Not good. Before grousing, one should make certain that the code is clean. Google’s automated system thrives on data. Bad code is, well, bad.
Finally, I ran some queries and looked at the results. Yep, a dynamic site. Now the Google has some nifty technology for dynamic sites. Dynamic sites fall into the province of Google’s Programmable Search Engine and its mostly ignored dataspace technology. Foundem is obviously not hip to Dr. Guha’s methods of working with dynamic sites’ data.
You can see this in action when you navigate to the US Google.com and enter the query SFO LGA. Notice that the Google has some partners like Cheap Tickets, Expedia, and five others. My thought is that this “top site” should get Googley and try to work with the Google. I know this take work, but the effort may pay off.
Blaming Google for not indexing and providing a high ranking to a site may be good for the Guardian I suppose but not so helpful to Foundem. Google is a great many things, but the company is not set up to focus on a single Web site. Fix the code. Read about the Programmable Search Engine. Talk to the vendors who are listed as top dog in the SFO and LGA query. The Guardian’s reporter may not know about these nuances. More work is needed on the Foundem end of the deal.
Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, August 20, 2009
SEO Mavens Embarassing Themselves
June 29, 2009
I am not sure if search engine optimization is as fraught with risks as hooking up with Nigerian email scammers, but SEO may be getting close. I am not sure what business www.absoluteSEO.net is in, but the addled goose plans to steer clear. Two reasons:
First, navigate (at your own risk, please) to Prudent Press Agency (great name that). Read the story “Addition of Advanced SEO Services in AbsoluteSEO.net”. The article was stuff with silly generalizations and claims that struck this addled goose as wacky. But, hey, that is what makes SEO such a tasty sector for those with a good nose for an easy buck, euro, or eek. Consider this passage:
In AbsoluteSeo there has been made addition of advanced SEO Services to beat up the competitors. In this era of stiff competition every big or small company wish to have a website of its own which helps in boosting up the business. But only having the website does not solve the purpose, but it need to be perfect in every aspect as only then it will top in the search engines and consumer will be able to reach the site easily. For this, AbsoluteSeo has introduced the latest SEO Services which will help to optimize the website in each and every way.
Well reasoned for some but not the addled goose.
Second, the browser I am using flaged www.AbsoluteSEO.com as a reported attack site. Here’s the message I saw when I poked around this online offering:
I received a call from a journalist working on an SEO story. I mentined that I thought SEO was mostly baloney sold to those who could not create substantive content or who lacked the insight needed to provide surfers with useful services. He thought I was in the minority because some of the high profile “search experts” were on board with various methods, statistical tools, and proprietary techniques.
Baloney. In this goose’s opinion, as the economy declines, the cream of the scammers rises like the nasties in the Harrod’s Creek mine run off pond.
Stephen Arnold, June 29, 2009
New Social Search Service from Goebel Group
June 9, 2009
Search engine optimization advisor Goebel Group made available its free social search service On June 8, 2009, according to dBusiness News here. The dBusiness story said:
This Custom Search Engine allows users to see what others are saying about them, their products, their brand, and more. Available at www.mysocialmediasearchengine.com.
We ran several test queries and found the results useful. The connection to SEO was not obvious to this addled goose. Too old. Blind to the beauties of SEO too.
Stephen Arnold, June 9, 2009
Google and Good Search Engine Optimization
June 2, 2009
I loathe search engine optimization wonks. I am on the fence about Google’s “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know” here. The title is ambiguous but the content is not. Think SEO the Google way. If you want to pump up your PageRank or goose (no pun intended) your site in a Google results list, this slide show is for you. After scanning the deck, I concluded that Google in a semi official way is trying to put some white lines on the information superhighway.
Stephen Arnold, June 1, 2009
Firm Promises the Moon and Stars: SEO Magic
May 25, 2009
In case you missed this interesting article about instant SEO experts, you will want to click here and read “SEO Companies Springing Up Like Dandelions”. The Search Engine Roundtable includes some useful links, including one to a write up about how an instant business can be grown.
My approach to search engine optimization is to rely on content. But as the economy craters, organizations are desperate for their Web sites to throw the firm a sales lead and revenue life preserver. Some clever folks scent fear and are ready to offer services that promise a good night’s sleep, a high Google ranking, and a life of bliss and joy. Some SEO mavens focus on such basics as a site map and clean code. Others emphasize content. Some like Search Engine Partner shift to the moon, stars, and magic approach. Here’s an example of the firm’s explanation of its services:
In partnering with you, we will ensure your web site will be more accessible on the Internet in terms of first page rankings for specific keywords across the major search engines, specifically Google. We as team members of SE Partner along with our consortium of SEO firms look forward to taking your business to the next level. In considering partnering with us, please keep in mind that we also specialize in seo 2.0, first page rankings, and top ten placement (rank) in Google. We will be available at a moment’s notice! We guarantee to never outsource any of our work in any respect and promise that all of our work will be done in-house, in an ethical white-hat manor per Google’s webmaster guidelines, and in one of our offices in the United States, the UK, Israel, or South Africa. Nothing will be outsourced to India, China, Poland, or anywhere else, where they may not understand where your business is coming from and needs to be! The Bottom line is to get your small to medium business site on the first page of Google!
You can read more here. Bold stuff.
Stephen Arnold, May 25, 2009
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