Google updates

...now browsing by category

 

Google Bug and Your Useless Page Two Result

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

2As if you needed yet another reason to get your business to the top of search engines, check this out.  Some Google users are complaing that they are unable to get to page two of any Google search.  The numbers, normally clickable at the bottom of each SERP, are not working.

I’ll tell you who these complainers are not – the people that are on page one!

Putting Stock in One Keyword/Keyphrase

It does make me wonder, though – how many businesses are focusing on ranking for one or two huge keywords, all the while missing the thousands of long tail crumbs that are out there?  Nearly every call I get for potential SEO work goes something like this:

Customer: “How long before I rank for widgets?”

Me: “While I can’t tell you how long it will take, we can certainly put some effort towards helping you rank for that keyword.  However, the real gold is in keyphrases like blue widgets and left-handed widgets.  Both are phrases that are much more specific, thus bringing in a much warmer lead/customer. “

They’re missing the big picture, trying to put all their efforts (and budget) into ranking for something they may never be able to attain, while missing out on the thousands of customers just begging for their products.

Posted in Google updates, keywords, SEO | 1 Response »

Google Instant Launch Notes

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

If you love Google, but hate your Enter key, you’re in luck.  Today Google rolled out a new ‘tool’ called Google Instant.  While it’s really nothing groundbreaking, it is kind of cool to see your results immediately as you type.

Try it yourself: Go to Google’s homepage and start typing in a query

So what’s the big deal? Nothing, really.  It’s results without the Enter key.  I assume over your lifetime it may save you a minute or so of wait time, but really? A minute over a lifetime? That’s some savings.

Also noted are the posts I’m already seeing on Google Instant meaning that SEO is dead.  Really, SEO is dead because someone doesn’t have to hit enter? How does that work? The results haven’t changed.

Lastly, something cool – type in ‘w’ and you get the weather from your location.  Or at least from your IP address’s location.  Kinda cool, I guess.

Overall effect on business owners? Trivial. Carry on.

Posted in Google updates, SEO | 1 Response »

Google Just Increased My Revenue

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

News came out today that Google has officially removed the 7 pack for search queries related to SEO. Of course, these queries have a geolocator and used to feature seven companies related to the query. It still works for other industries, plumbing for example.

Some people in the SEO community are freaking out about it, but I’m all for it.

There are ways to ‘game’ the 7 pack, such as purchasing a UPS box close to the city center that you want to be featured for, etc.  Some say that doesn’t even work, but I’ve got several clients who think it is worth the $100 or so yearly investment.

Nonetheless, I think it’s great.  No longer will 6 incompetent SEOs be listed alongside my name.  Now they’ll have to work for it – showing that they can actually rank for the term that is what they do.  I started targeting St Louis SEO years ago, so I’ve got a nice advantage already.  I was showing up in the 7 pack as well as the organic results.

Some other industries seem to have been hit as well, including web design, ad agencies, web hosting and graphic designers.  Some of these have been confirmed, but others haven’t.  Do a few searches for IT-related industries and you’ll see which have been removed.

So thanks, Google, for removing 6 competitors from the SERP I’m targeting.   I appreciate it.

Posted in Google updates, SEO | No Responses »
Tags: , , , ,

Take a Ride on the Wonder Wheel

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Last month Google quietly launched a new and very cool tool called the Wonder Wheel.  The wheel is a great way to find in more detail just what you’re looking for.  Problem is, they hid it pretty good, so most people will probably never use it.

It does have some great SEO benefit, though.  Think about it.

To get to the WW, do a search for anything.  I chose “Saint Louis Coffee”.  Once that SERP comes up, look above the results for a text link that says ‘Show Options’.  Click on it, then scroll down the left column until you see ‘Wonder Wheel’.

The wonder wheel is a wheel that spits out other suggested searches that you may want to try.  If you’re unsure about what you’re looking for, this is a great tool to give you that ah-ha “Oh! So that’s what it’s called” moment.

It’s also a great tool for small business owners that are trying to do their own SEO and are unsure where to start doing keyword research.  Sure, it’s going to be a slow painful way to get keywords, but if you’ve got no customers, you might as well be researching, right?

——————–

Meet me at the Look at Me SEO seminar in Saint Louis on August 27th.  I’m speaking on “What is SEO and How Can it Help my Business?“, along with several other SEO experts during the one-day event.  Be there.

Posted in Google updates, keywords | No Responses »
Tags: , , , ,

Google Announces Longer Snippets

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Google announced today via their blog that they will now be showing longer snippets for long queries.  This is good for everyone.  The longer the snippet, the better chance you have of the person clicking on your website.

The snippets are generated from your meta description tag, one of the most important tags on your website when it comes to SEO.  If you haven’t got around to creating those meta description tags yet, or if every page on your website has the same stinkin’ tag, nows the time to get that fixed.

By the way, Derek Chew actually found the snippets several weeks ago.  So the announcement from Google is really more of a confirmation.

Posted in Google updates, metadata | No Responses »

Let’s Rename PageRank as EgoRank

Monday, January 19th, 2009

I’m still surprised at the amount of people that continue to use Google’s pagerank as a means to judge their website.  It’s surprising to see all kinds of websites listed for sale, and one of the main ‘benefits’ the seller menitons is the pagerank.

Let’s be honest.  Pagerank is nice.  Its fun to watch the little green bar grow as your website gets older.  The further it climbs, the more your ego swells.  But does that little green bar pay any of your bills?

Consider this: If you build a website full of rich information that helps your customer base, and you are a pagerank of zero, does that mean your website is useless?

Google makes major updates to their pagerank only about 3-4 times a year.  That means you could literally have a good quality website with a PR of zero for several months.

On the other hand, if you’re a good blackhat, you can swell up that pagerank number to a number higher than what it should be through manipulation of links, etc.  These are usually the people that are building and selling websites by referencing the PR.  It’s inflated, and they are demanding a price higher than the real website’s value.  Tsk, tsk.

I think the little green bar is fun to watch, but I wouldn’t put too much value in it.  If you are a business owner, and are watching for that to grow, quit wasting your time and invest it into a profitable link building plan or SEO campaign.  Provide quality content and the customers will come.

After all, customers are the ones with the real green.

Posted in content, Google updates, lemmings, pagerank | 1 Response »

You Can Now Modify Google’s Organic Results

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Today Google released a new tool called SearchWiki, which allows users to modify the organic results they see for some phrases. The users, when logged in, can now ‘vote up’ or ‘vote down’ results when they do a search on the popular search engine’s website.

How will this affect SEO?

Personally I think it’ll have a bigger effect on very large and high-volume websites such as travel sites, news sites, etc. Smaller-trafficked websites probably won’t see much of a change IMO.

Look at it this way. If you are creating quality content for your customers, and you are doing it all honestly, not spamming, not keyword stuffing, not cloaking, etc, you’ll probably be fine. People will come to your website, see what they were looking for, and have no reason to vote you down.

If, on the other hand, you’re running an affiliate poker or viagra website, be prepared to see your rankings tumble for these custom users. That is, unless you’re providing quality content. Have I mentioned quality content yet?

Keep in mind that at this time, Google is not using these modifications for their ‘normal’ search that John Doe off the street would use. This only changes the results if you are logged into your Google account, and you do a search. Voting up your favorite websites won’t affect the overall organic results (at this time, according to G), so don’t waste time voting up your own website to the top of every possible keyword. You’ll just have skewed results that you can then fool yourself into believing are really organic.

While some people are saying this will have a major impact on search overall, I don’t see it happening yet. Now, will Google at some point take this data and use it towards their algorithm? Very possible. We’ll have to wait and see.

Posted in content, Google updates, site ranking, trending | No Responses »

Stay Up with Trends in Your Industry

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Here’s a couple quick ways to keep up with the latest trends in your industry.

Set up a custom news feed with Google

Go over to http://news.google.com and type in your phrase. This will bring up all the latest news that mentions that subject. If you need a specific phrase, make sure you put it in quotes.

Then click on the RSS button in the lower left corner and sign up for this custom news feed. Now every day you’ll have the latest news about your industry right there in your RSS reader.

Over time, you’ll see mentions of related items that you don’t want to read about. I suggest you go back to the Google News page and rewrite your query, using delimiters such as the plus and minus.

Get Google Alerts

While the Google news thing is cool, it’ll only give you updates on actual news items that have been submitted. Since many people are publishing items in formats besides press releases, we want to be able to capture these additions to the web, too.

To do so, we’ll set up a Google alert with our same phrase(s).

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and you’ll see this page:

In the “Search Items” box, put in your same search criteria that you used on the news site. You can use quotes and other delimiters just as you did above.

Depending upon how often you want these alerts, choose the correct option in the “How Often” area. If you’re running a news site, you’ll want to put the “How Often” to “As it happens”. That way you can get that info onto your website as soon as possible. If you are just trying to keep up with trends, leave it at “once a day”.

Now plop in your email address. Now every time Google indexes a new page on the Internet that includes your specific phrase, you’ll get an email.

You can use these same methods to keep an eye on your competition as well, your own business name, or even mentions of specific products that you carry. Watch for bloggers that are mentioning your business and drop a comment on their site. They’ll be blown away that you visited their blog and you’ll have an even stronger chance of getting future referrals from them.

By the way, this should not be confused with Google Trends, an online way of watching search trends over time. That’s a nice tool too, but not what I was going for here.

Posted in Google Alerts, Google updates, trending | No Responses »

Who Said the Pagerank Update from Google was Related to Paid Links?

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon saying that the PR update is directly related to paid links. Yet, many sites that clearly do not have paid links are also suffering from a PR drop. So who’s to say the message is clear?

There could be umpteen reasons why there’s another update. Maybe the engineers over at Google fucked up the first time. Maybe its a plethora of reasons. Maybe there really is no update.

Welcome, lemmings.

And since when are you so concerned about your PR anyway?

Posted in Google updates, lemmings, Marketing, pagerank | No Responses »