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Locating SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Joseph Baker in Featured

As we all know, SEO is evolving by leaps and bounds every day. As we all chase after Google’s meticulous algorithm updates, we continue to find ways to help companies increase their Internet profile, though some of those methods often go under even our radars. Here are a few advanced techniques for SEOs looking for innovative ways to secure links for clients.

LOCATION BASED SEO
The key tenet of SEO is always and has always been relevance. How is your content relevant to the searcher? In the nebulous wilderness of the Internet, it can be hard to find relevance that goes past identifying a searcher’s interest and presenting them with information about that interest. What becomes important is location.

The explosive growth in smartphone sales and innovations in location-based search have led to an expansion of location technologies. Companies like Groupon have capitalized on this by offering street-specific deals through their mobile application Groupon Now. SEOs can also utilize this powerful metric in developing content for clients.

Specific location adds relevance in the eyes of Google. If you were creating content about what to do in Chicago, it would behoove you to mention actual locations within the city. Reference places like Navy Pier, Millennium Park or any of the numerous museums, as long as you do it by name. Not only does this deepen the topic for potential searchers, it increases the amount of searches in which your content will place.

AUTHOR STATUS
Author clout is becoming increasingly important in Google’s SERPs; the more a certain author has written about a topic, the more clout they will get in search engine rankings. For example, if you and Paul Krugman both write posts for the same blog about economics, he will be ranked higher because he has a long web history of writing about economics (not to mention innumerable links and comments). However, if Krugman and I both wrote posts about Tamagotchi I just may come out on top; my expertise and cataloge of writing about digital egg friends goes back to the early days of the Internet.

Successful SEOs will look at the potential of author clout and begin cultivating relevant experiences in order to build that up for future results.

FACEBOOK COMMENTS
In a shocking twist of events, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that the search engine Now has the ability to execute AJAX/JS to index some dynamic comments. PC World states: “Google bots can now see comments you’ve posted in public forums, which include websites that use the Facebook commenting system, as well as public pages on Facebook itself. Remember–these comments were public to begin with, just not easily searchable.”

Because these comments are now more easily searchable, they can be used as forums to discuss clients and thereby build links to their sites. Webmasters using Java-based commenting systems will likely see a boost in their rankings thanks to user comments that will now be a key element of PageRank. Since comments are indexed, so are commenters, and so active users who comment often will be instrumental in increasing rank as well.

There’s a lot of interesting activity taking over SEO in The Year of the Panda, and it’s all looking like it will lead to the most relevant search results for users and better placement for clients.

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Joseph Baker is a freelance writer living in the Midwest. He enjoys working on his novel and drinking large amounts of Earl Grey tea. He writes this article behalf of American InterContinental University.

Google PageRank: SEO Treasure or Fool’s Gold? What the Experts Say…

By David Jackson in Featured

One of the most controversial, misunderstood, confusing and debated topics in the SEO universe is the importance of PageRank. But let me be specific here. When I use the term “PageRank”, I’m not talking about Google’s 0-10 logarithmic toolbar PageRank, which is nothing more than a “superficial beauty contest” vanity tool – very much out-of-date, and does NOT have a direct impact on a site’s ranking. That fact was established long ago.

Google Removed PageRank Data From Webmaster Tools

In fact, Google removed PageRank data from Google Webmaster Tools back in October, 2009.

Here’s what Google Webmaster Central’s Susan Moskwa said about that move:

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it [from Webmaster Tools] because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.

Personally, I would love to see us remove PR from the Toolbar, but mine is not the only opinion in Google.” (Source: Google Webmaster Central)

Masters Of The Google Universe: How To Achieve Top Google Rankings

By Bill Platt in Featured

For years, it has been well known that Google’s search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).

But in March of 2007, Google’s mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website’s ranking in Google were over.

URL Canonicalization – Should You Do It?

By Titus-Hoskins in Featured

Canonicalization was a big topic a few years back,
which had concerned webmasters worried they were dividing
or diluting their Google PageRank. Should you still use
it or not? Read to find out…

URL Canonicalization – Should You Do It?

Canonicalization was a big topic a few years back, at
least in SEO circles, which had concerned webmasters
worried they were dividing or diluting their Google PageRank.
Was their site’s PR and Link Popularity being messed up by
the old (www.yoursite.com vs. yoursite.com) argument – search
engines were reading those URLs as separate domains although
they were pointing to the same site and content.

Basically, canonicalization was a somewhat strange word
attached to this discussion and process of directing all
your PR/links to one URL – most webmasters prefer the
www.yoursite.com model, although it doesn’t matter as
long as you pick one and stick to it in all your link
building and site construction. Wikipedia uses the words
URL normalization as a way to “determine if two
syntactically different URLs are equivalent.”

Since, unfortunately, we sometimes don’t have control
over how other sites link back to us… many webmasters,
including myself, found they have a lot of backlinks and
PR pointing back to their site’s URL in many formats.
This was not only confusing to the search engines but
the main concern was PageRank dilution. Was this causing
a lower PR rating in that all-important Google Index and
ranking system?

Important question with serious outcomes for those
professional webmasters earning a full-time living
from the web where missteps can prove very costly.

Enter Matt Cutts stage left!

Most readers of this blog will know Matt Cutts is a
Google spokesperson on many SEO issues and canonicalization
is no different. He posted a very informative blog post
on the subject here: Matt Cutts SEO Advice On Url Canonicalization

In a nutshell, if I can be so bold as to summarize such
an enlightened one:

For those webmasters who want all their “ducks in a row”
they should use one style of writing their URL and consistently
sticking to it on all their pages and links. Now if you pick
www.yoursite.com as your “preferred root page” – then you should
make sure you do a permanent (301) redirect for yoursite.com to
the preferred www.yoursite.com.

Matt Cutts points you to Michael Nguyen for how to do redirects
in Apache: Cleaning-Up-Canonical-Urls-With-Redirects/

And to Beyond Ink for 301 redirect in several other platforms.

Matt Cutts also suggests if you want to be extra safe,
you should use the Google’s webmaster console in Webmaster’s
Tools to specify your preferred root page of your domain
either www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com.

Check with the sites listed above to find the full instructions
on how to properly do “.htaccess redirects.” But a simple way
to do this is to add the following code to your site’s .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You’re basically telling the search engines to “rewrite”
or “redirect” all your yoursite.com links to www.yoursite.com;
the [NC] tells them your url is not case sensitive.

Be extremely careful about changing your .htaccess file;
if you’re unsure of what you’re doing – get your webhost
to do it for you or leave it alone.

Mainly because there is a big question – should you use
canonicalization at all? Should you redirect your URLs
to one perferred www.yoursite.com?

As a webmaster with many profitable Google Keywords,
I thought long and hard on this issue. You don’t want
to mess with something that’s working for you – why
change it?

It was also extremely puzzling why Matt Cutts, who
discussed this whole canonicalization issue in detail,
does NOT redirect his site: www.mattcutts.com like he’s
suggesting other webmasters should do if they want to
“make sure that all their webmaster ducks are in a row.”

You can check this out for yourself by testing the
following URLs:

http://www.mattcutts.com

http://mattcutts.com/

The http://mattcutts.com/stays the same when you type
it into your browser. No canonicalization.

Matt Cutts said he may use canonicalization at a later
date but is there really a need? If you do a Google search
you will find only 384 listings (not necessarily live
links) for “http://mattcutts.com/” and 13,000 for
“http://www.mattcutts.com/”.

Likewise, 453 for “http://mattcutts.com/blog”
and 45,400 for “http://www.mattcutts.com/blog”

Yahoo! gives different results but we won’t go there!

In any case, results for a PageRank check doesn’t show
any difference in URL formats:

http://www.mattcutts.com/ PR6
http://mattcutts.com/ PR6

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog PR7
http://mattcutts.com/blog PR7

You should probably check your own site to see how many
links are pointing to the different URLs of your site.
If there’s a large number you might want to consider
canonicalization.

For me it is not a matter of PageRank, but I have several high
ranked keywords in Google which are bouncing from the 1st and
2nd spots – most of my competitors are not using canonical URLs
so I want to test to see if using it will give my home pages a
slight advantage. No test, no glory.

I am gradually switching all my domains to “redirect” to the
www versions. There is no marked difference (one way or the
other) yet in my other keyword/PR rankings but it’s probably
too early to tell. Will keep you posted on the outcomes of
these URL canonicalizations…

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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