Decoding GoogleSpeak
There's often a lot of confusion surrounding quotes made by Google representatives, but there doesn't have to be. Columnist Jenny Halasz discusses how to effectively analyze and interpret such statements.
Jenny Halasz is the President of an online marketing consulting company offering SEO, PPC, and Web Design services. She's been in search since 2000 and focuses on long term strategies, intuitive user experience and successful customer acquisition. She occasionally offers her personal insights on her blog, JLH Marketing.
There's often a lot of confusion surrounding quotes made by Google representatives, but there doesn't have to be. Columnist Jenny Halasz discusses how to effectively analyze and interpret such statements.
Jenny Halasz | Oct 12, 2015 at 10:41 am ETContributor Jenny Halasz recaps highlights from the "Ask The SEOs" session at SMX Advanced 2015, where veteran SEOs answered questions about search engine optimization.
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Jenny Halasz | Apr 13, 2015 at 9:41 am ETJenny Halasz recaps the most noteworthy tidbits of the "Meet The Search Engines" panel at SMX West 2015, where representatives from Google and Bing fielded all manner of SEO questions.
Jenny Halasz | Mar 9, 2015 at 1:45 pm ETColumnist Jenny Halasz loves the SEO community enough to administer a slap on the wrist when she thinks things are going awry.
Jenny Halasz | Jan 15, 2015 at 11:31 am ETSEO is almost 20 years old. Can you believe it? There’s some argument about when the practice started, as well as when the term itself was coined, including a failed patent attempt from 2007; but most industry old-timers put the birth of SEO at around 1995. So, after almost 20 years, what do we have […]
Jenny Halasz | Aug 2, 2014 at 11:30 am ETRegular expressions (regex) are one of the most powerful tools we have in our SEO arsenal, but they’re incredibly intimidating! Here are some tips and tricks from one SEO to another that I hope will help you dip your toes into the powerful world of regex. I must begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a […]
Jenny Halasz | Jun 9, 2014 at 9:50 am ETOnline marketing is dazed and confused. Not in the “dry herbs” style, but in the deer-in-the-headlights style. Or maybe both… to each his own. To begin with, I must state that I am an old curmudgeon by online marketing standards, having been in the field for over 14 years. I identify myself as an SEO […]
Jenny Halasz | May 12, 2014 at 9:20 am ETIn case you didn’t notice, we are waging a war over links. Some would say that SEOs are at war with search engines, but I disagree. Search engines and SEOs have a symbiotic relationship; and without meaning to, we’ve killed the value of the link. The link, once a simple connector from one site to […]
Jenny Halasz | Apr 14, 2014 at 9:15 am ETChecklists of how to get out of a Google penalty abound. Five things you should do, five things you shouldn’t do, etc. But the number one thing you shouldn’t do is ignore it. I want to tell you the story of a two-year long penalty, the steps we took and how something we never thought […]
Jenny Halasz | Mar 17, 2014 at 9:05 am ETI’ve been struggling with a particularly difficult link cleanup project lately. On the occasion of my 100th reconsideration request (4th for this particular client), I thought it might be helpful to share five not-so-common problems that you might run into during your own link cleanup project. [Editor’s note: Since this post was originally published, it’s […]
Jenny Halasz | Jan 20, 2014 at 10:10 am ETThe basics of SEO haven’t changed much in the last 15 years. If you followed the mantra of creating good content and obtaining quality links, they still haven’t changed… or have they? Here are five SEO “foundations” that were absolutely torched in 2013. If you are still counting on any of these, stop now and […]
Jenny Halasz | Dec 23, 2013 at 10:23 am ETI recently put forward the concept that we should rename SEO to “Subject Experience Optimization,” and I want to explain why I think all marketers should be on board with this. Google has made a lot of updates to their webmaster guidelines recently, and the common thread in most of these updates is to say […]
Jenny Halasz | Nov 20, 2013 at 9:00 am ETI have glimpsed the future of search, and it is not keyword-driven. While I have long been an advocate of using keywords as an indicator of a searcher’s intent, I am about to eat my words. The truth is that search is heading in a direction that most of us could not have foreseen… a […]
Jenny Halasz | Oct 14, 2013 at 9:00 am ETAt SMX East yesterday, during the Google Enhanced Campaigns: What We’ve Learned So Far session, a collection of the best and brightest PPC professionals came together to discuss insights and lessons learned from Google’s “new” approach to managing ad campaigns. Larry Kim from Wordstream was the most positive on the pro-enhanced campaigns side. He reminded […]
Jenny Halasz | Oct 2, 2013 at 6:28 pm ETFor those of us in SEO (or aspiring to be), there are a lot of little details that fill our days. Server architecture, 301 redirects, 404 errors, title tags, and various other things. Sometimes, we forget to sit back and figure out what it all means. Add to that the fact that most SEOs were […]
Jenny Halasz | Sep 16, 2013 at 9:10 am ETFindings from a recent Google Webmaster Hangout on Air (video) demystify link disavowals, penalties and more. Read on for the official word from John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google and friend to webmasters everywhere. First, Some Background Last month, I introduced Five Steps To Clean Up Your Links like A Techie. The commenters on the […]
Jenny Halasz | Aug 19, 2013 at 9:05 am ETYou’ve been in business for many years. You may have done it all on your own, or you may have enlisted the aid of unscrupulous SEO “services” to built links for you. Either way, you may be wondering whether you need to conduct a link clean up. This column contains a five-step process outlining how […]
Jenny Halasz | Jul 22, 2013 at 9:01 am ETGoogle has a PR problem. No, I don’t mean PageRank. I’m talking about the original definition of PR – Public Relations. And, it’s maybe less Public Relations than it is Webmaster Relations. You see, Google hasn’t done a good job of balancing content about problems with content about successes and improvements. They haven’t really needed to — with 70% […]
Jenny Halasz | Jul 1, 2013 at 9:05 am ETYou may have heard that content is king, but the truth is that informational content is king. It’s estimated that approximately 50-80% of search queries are informational in nature (pdf). Most websites have very little informational content on them, preferring instead to focus on driving a conversion. These websites are missing an excellent opportunity to […]
Jenny Halasz | Apr 23, 2013 at 9:37 am ETHave you ever had a formal content strategy for your website? Are you considering a website refresh? During the process of website redesign is the perfect time to renew your content marketing approach; we’re leading several of our clients through this right now. As they’re all at various stages and have various requirements for the […]
Jenny Halasz | Mar 26, 2013 at 11:35 am ETYou may see a drop in rankings or traffic and immediately panic. Have I been Panda-slapped? Even now, as we look at the two year anniversary of Google’s Panda Update, the likelihood is that you have not. Rankings and traffic fluctuate for many reasons, most of which are not related to penalties from search engines. […]
Jenny Halasz | Feb 26, 2013 at 3:17 pm ETI’m back to writing my own controversial thoughts this month; although, if you didn’t check out the interview I did last month with Andrew Goodman and Matt van Wagner, you should, those are smart guys. Since I was thinking about PPC and how incredibly mixed up and difficult it has become, it seemed like a […]
Jenny Halasz | Dec 24, 2012 at 11:44 am ETRecently I had a chance to sit down with two veterans of the search industry, Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media and fellow Search Engine Land contributor, Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster, after their session “From Keywords to Buy Words” at SES Chicago. The conversation started with keywords, but took on a life of […]
Jenny Halasz | Nov 20, 2012 at 1:16 pm ETIt’s said that keywords are a proxy for a customer, right? So let’s talk about the customer. Schema this, canonical that, and black and white zoo animals… if you don’t have a search expert on payroll, you’re already behind the Joneses. I get emails like the one below all the time, this one being from […]
Jenny Halasz | Oct 23, 2012 at 2:51 pm ETA client asked me the other day why we were optimizing his software for Los Angeles, when he’s located in Raleigh, NC. In explaining the reason to him, I realized that a basic guideline for optimizing pages is long overdue. I’ve developed the following flow chart and explanation in response. Theming Content The first question […]
Jenny Halasz | Sep 25, 2012 at 12:29 pm ETOften when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go […]
Jenny Halasz | Aug 28, 2012 at 11:11 am ETThe difference between intent and content is what Google is missing. Keywords at their most basic level are what we use to communicate, and if you think back to those COM 101 days, you’ll remember that the way it works is our thoughts are encoded in our brains into words, those words are spoken or […]
Jenny Halasz | Jul 31, 2012 at 12:16 pm ETOne of the hardest things to do in keyword research is to uncover related keywords. With that in mind, the tools I’m reviewing today all help identify related keywords that you may want to search in more detail. These tools are not a substitute for detailed keyword research like I talked about in my first […]
Jenny Halasz | Jul 3, 2012 at 12:34 pm ETKeywords are important. I’ve heard from several potential clients recently who have talked to other “professionals” who told them keywords are no longer important for SEO, and that good content is all you really need. Here’s the thing. Keywords are language. They’ll always be important because words are how we communicate with each other. So […]
Jenny Halasz | Jun 12, 2012 at 12:23 pm ETIf you’ve been following the series on Keyword Seeds and Keyword Research over the last couple of months, I’ve been writing about how to perform really good keyword research through a series of tactics that I call the “Keyword Seed Method”. Don’t bother to go look that up in Google, as I think I’m the […]
Jenny Halasz | May 8, 2012 at 9:16 am ETSince last time, you’ve been busy growing your keyword seeds into little seedlings, using those handy Excel tricks I wrote about. You’ve likely got thousands of keywords now, and may have no idea what to do next. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll continue the planting analogy for categorizing and mapping keywords. It seems appropriate, with […]
Jenny Halasz | Apr 3, 2012 at 12:12 pm ETHave your seeds germinated yet? Last time, we talked about keywords as “seeds” of ideas; a single keyword to represent an entire keyword cluster. Now it’s time to make our seeds grow. Using the example of Artisan Construction Services again (thanks!), we’ll walk through the process that I use to grow a single seed. In this […]
Jenny Halasz | Mar 13, 2012 at 2:50 pm ETA few weeks ago, I wrote about how to use your first meeting with a client to understand their business and collect information that could later inform your keyword research. Now, you’re back at your desk and wondering what to do with all that information. To begin with, you should have three lists of keyword-types […]
Jenny Halasz | Feb 14, 2012 at 9:51 am ET