Yesterday Google announced a new markup to support multilingual content. This is an interesting move for Google, and one that I think I really like since International SEO has often been a source of questions for SEOs, and to be honest Google pretty much sucks at ranking the correct geo-targeted URL in the correct country-specific search engine.
Archives For Search Engine Optimization
All of the articles contained in this category are about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the practice of helping websites appear more prominently in search engines such as Google and Bing. Most of these articles are around the more technical parts of SEO, especially SEO for Wordpress, but you will also find articles about linkbuilding, social media for SEO, and Microsoft Excel for SEOs.
Listen up search marketers. Listen up good. I’ve got something to say.
The goal of social is to drive traffic, conversions, and brand loyalty, NOT rankings.
Many of the most socially shared posts on SEOmoz are focused around social and how social affects rankings. Just look at this graph, showing you the disparity in sharing between the social and non-social posts (with outliers removed that skewed the data unnecessarily):
Posts having to do with social get 63% more tweets and 61% more Facebook activity on average. WOW.
I am often needing to create wireframes for clients during technical site audits. Maybe you’re an SEO consultant or analyst as well, or you want to have a site developed and need to show your developer how you would like the site organized.
I’d like to share a couple of cool tools with you that I find extremely useful when building wireframes of existing sites as well as creating new wireframe mockups for sites to be developed.
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There seems to be a lot of confusion in the world of SEO today, especially in clients minds and with their technical teams, about when to use a 301 redirect and when to use the rel=canonical tag. My goal with today’s post is to explain the differences and talk through some of the nuances to help you think through which one pertains to your situation. Every situation is different, so take the time to read and figure out which is better for you.
A few weeks ago, I was reading through some posts on the official Google blogs, such as InsideSearch, WebmasterCentral, and the GoogleBlog. I was taking notes and sharing a few links via the Tweeters, and while doing such I noticed a link like this:
Search queries data is....what?
We hear frequently that “content is king”, which I am coming to believe more and more, but the more that I come to believe that Content is King, I realize that content is nothing without other stuff done right. If you have a site with incredible content that deserves to rank, yet your site is terrible, you don’t deserve to rank. This is a waste of awesome.
I recently made a mistake with my Google Analytics, so in the interest of transparency and a teachable attitude, I want to show you exactly what I did, what happened, and why you should not do it. Then, we’ll set one up correctly.
This ought to be fun. Let’s roll.
Arguably one of the worst mistakes that can be made with a website is hiding content (inadvertently, not in a cloaking way) from search engines. Since on-page SEO and quality content have become larger ranking factors in the past 2 years (and especially since Panda first rolled out in February), we have to make sure that content is quality and visible.
For optimal SEO benefit, do not develop a site in Flash. And, do not hide content behind Javascript or other code.
Sometimes when SEOs run tests, we find hacks and workarounds for ways to get things done. I’ve recently been running some tests about rel=author, to try to get it to show for my site and others.
I now have conclusive proof that rel=author is not algorithmic. Rather, it is manual by site AND author. And I bet that the authority of the site has something to do with whether or not it shows as well. So we have a combination of who the author is as well as the specific site. If your photo shows for one site, it will not necessarily show for another.
Allow me to demonstrate.
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*If you haven’t read it, check out the Searchlove Day 1 Recap before reading this post*
Searchlove New York day 2 started out with a bang. People rolled in looking a bit bedraggled, but mostly none the worse for wear, from the previous night’s Halloween party. If you want to see pictures of some of SEO’s finest looking great in Halloween costumes (we had Steve Zizzou, Buzz Lightyear, a cowboy with a horse, and Waldo, just to name a few), check them out here:
Chad Burgess (Harry) and Rand Fishkin (Steve Zissou)
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