SEO > SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Nov. 28, 2007 at 8:35am by Barry Schwartz
Google's Matt Cutts On Cloaking & Search Snippets
Matt Cutts of Google has written two posts on the topic of SEO: Detecting more “undetectable” webspam The anatomy of a search result...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Cloaking & Doorway Pages, SEO: Spamming, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Oct. 1, 2007 at 9:17am by Barry Schwartz
Google's Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description
The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Jul. 27, 2007 at 2:52pm by Barry Schwartz
Google's "Unavailable After" META Tag Now Live
Google's Dan Crow announced today that the unavailable_after META tag is now live and operational. Google To Add "Unavailable After" META Tag from about two weeks ago, explains in detail more about this tag and how it can be used....
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Jul. 12, 2007 at 9:30am by Barry Schwartz
Google To Add "Unavailable After" META Tag
Getting Into Google by Jill Whalen reports Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, saying that Google is releasing a new META tag named "unavailable_after." The "unavailable_after" tag will allow you to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page. Jill explains that this tag comes in...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
May. 16, 2007 at 4:41pm by Danny Sullivan
George Washington Did What According To Wikipedia???
Many have joked about how Wikipedia seems to rank at the top of practically any Google search that you do. Often, that's a good thing, as Wikipedia has lots of great information. But a search on george washington today shows a downside. Someone edited the start of the Wikipedia entry...
See Related Stories In: SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Search Engines: Wikipedia
May. 8, 2007 at 4:52pm by Danny Sullivan
Newspapers Amok! New York Times Spamming Google? LA Times Hijacking Cars.com?
Back in March, Google warned that allowing your internal search results to be listed in Google might be considered spamming. Today, there's some buzz that one of the top listings for a search for sex on Google turns out to be an internal search results page from the New York...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Spamming, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Apr. 30, 2007 at 2:36pm by Danny Sullivan
Google Checkout's Title Goes Missing On Google
Something look odd in the search results above for google checkout? Yes, that's the official Google Checkout home page listed first, but it's most definitely NOT the right title for the Google Checkout page. That's got folks at Digg wondering if Google Checkout has been hijacked, sparked from Jon...
See Related Stories In: Google: Checkout, Google: SEO, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Mar. 30, 2007 at 10:20am by Michael Gray
Top 12 Ways To Win Friends & Write Magnetic Headlines
As a consultant who specializes in social media, I've learned one of the most powerful tools in gaining readers is the title or headline of your stories. Crafting a title that grabs someone's eye, gets them to stop scanning and pay attention to your story rather than reading another one...
See Related Stories In: SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Social Media Marketing
Mar. 5, 2007 at 8:48pm by Danny Sullivan
Meta Robots Tag 101: Blocking Spiders, Cached Pages & More
Last week, I covered a new command for the meta robots tag -- one to prevent search engines from using Yahoo titles and descriptions. In doing that, a number of questions came up about the meta robots tag syntax itself. Google Webmaster Central has now posted "Using the robots meta...
See Related Stories In: Ask: SEO, Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, Microsoft: Live Search SEO, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Yahoo: SEO
Mar. 2, 2007 at 1:45pm by Danny Sullivan
The "About 260" Problem: Google Site: Command Glitch
Dave Naylor noted yesterday that Search Engine Watch appears to have largely disappeared from Google, at least when performing a site: command search. Today, Marketing Pilgrim notes a weirdly similar thing happening to another site and points to an interesting Webmaster World thread on what could be called the...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Duplicate Content, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Feb. 28, 2007 at 2:06pm by Danny Sullivan
Yahoo Provides NOYDIR Opt-Out Of Yahoo Directory Titles & Descriptions
Yahoo! Search Support for 'NOYDIR' Meta Tags and Weather Update from the Yahoo Search Blog covers how at long last, you can now tell Yahoo to not use Yahoo Directory information to make a title and/or description for your web page listings. It also cover how Yahoo's currently doing a...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, Microsoft: Live Search SEO, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Yahoo: SEO
Feb. 27, 2007 at 3:47pm by Danny Sullivan
Squeezing The Search Loaf: Finding Search Engine Freshness & Crawl Dates
A reader emailed me today noticing that Google was showing a date next to his listing, which made me think this was a good time to revisit how, when and where search engines show crawl dates for pages. These dates are a useful way for site owners to understand how...
See Related Stories In: Ask: SEO, Ask: Web Search, Google: SEO, Microsoft: Live Search, Microsoft: Live Search SEO, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: General, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Search Features: Dates, Stats: Freshness, Yahoo: SEO, Yahoo: Site Explorer
Feb. 27, 2007 at 9:41am by Barry Schwartz
Keyword Research Steps & Tool Update
Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research by Lisa Barone shares some of the basic steps to take when it comes to keyword research, which is the cornerstone of SEO. Complimentary to Lisa's article is an updated tool by SEO Book named New Keyword List Cleaner Tool....
See Related Stories In: SEM Tools, SEO: General, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, SEO: Writing & Body Copy, Search Marketing: Search Term Research
Feb. 16, 2007 at 10:01am by Barry Schwartz
Title Tags, An SEO's Most Trusted Friend
Title tags remain one of the easiest and most important on-page SEO factors you can use to gain traffic. Jill Whalen provides a helpful review of how to write your title tags with All About Title Tags at Search Engine Guide. She goes over her feelings on if company names...
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Jan. 24, 2007 at 9:10am by Barry Schwartz
Yahoo Fixes Lower Case Titles Bug In Search Results
A week ago, we thought that Lower Case Titles In Yahoo Coming From Anchor Text, and asked Yahoo about it. Tim Mayer of Yahoo has commented on original post at the Search Engine Roundtable saying that this has now been fixed. And, based on the examples in our post from...
See Related Stories In: SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Yahoo: SEO
Jan. 23, 2007 at 8:48am by Barry Schwartz
SEO Your Title Tags
Rand at SEOMoz has a Best Practices for Title Tags that goes over many of the simply fundamentals of a good title tag for both your users and search engines. Rand suggests that adding your brand name to the title tag is not a bad thing, but make sure it...
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Jan. 17, 2007 at 10:14am by Barry Schwartz
Are Lower Case Titles In Yahoo Coming From Anchor Text
At the last WebmasterWorld PubCon, there was a site clinic where one of the issues that came up was Yahoo not using the title tag for a specific site. Instead, Yahoo got titles for these pages in a place no one could figure out, and the titles were all in...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Yahoo: SEO
Jan. 15, 2007 at 9:53am by Danny Sullivan
Study Says Get In Top 5 Not Top 10 & Search Engines May Need To Highlight Official Sites
On Friday, we reported briefly on a new eye tracking study from Microsoft on how users interact with search results. I spent some time doing a deep dive into the survey, which is full of interesting information. Among the findings is that search marketers may need to be more concerned...
See Related Stories In: SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Search Features: General, Stats: Search Behavior
Dec. 29, 2006 at 1:32pm by Danny Sullivan
Of Disappearing Sex Blogs & Google Updates
Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google's Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, SEO: Duplicate Content, SEO: General, SEO: Spamming, SEO: Titles & Descriptions
Dec. 18, 2006 at 8:19am by Barry Schwartz
Yahoo Says No Directory Tag Coming January 2007
I reported this morning at Search Engine Roundtable that Tim Mayer from Yahoo posted in a WebmasterWorld thread saying support for a "No Yahoo Directory" tag will be coming this January. A No Yahoo Directory tag will enable webmasters to tell Yahoo not to use their Yahoo Directory title in...
