Google has announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog that in the “coming days” they will be releasing a new tool to help debug your site’s JavaScript issues. Specifically, Google is going to show you if they have issues crawling and indexing your site because of JavaScript implementation mistakes. Google said: We have been gradually […]
Perceived download time is more important to searchers than actual download time. So why do SEOs focus on technocentric optimization strategies?
It’s been big news recently about major brands and Google penalties, and the floodgates feel open on people spotting even more brands possibly hit out there. Some new crackdown by Google? No. It’s the rise of hyperactive attention in this area, and that’s turning into a problem. Hence this open letter, on how we’re planning […]
At SMX Advanced, I moderated a panel about technical SEO. Google’s Maile Ohye spoke about SEO best practices for technical implementation of mobile sites based on how Google crawls, indexed, and ranks mobile content and presents it to searchers on mobile devices. She also talked about Google’s recent announcement that the mobile user experience is […]
Yesterday, Google announced more changes to the Google mobile search algorithm, which we can expect to roll out shortly. This update is intended to improve the search experience for mobile users by “address[ing] sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users” — presumably by improving mobile rankings for sites that have been optimized according to their […]
Bing has announced support for HTML5 pushState as a way to implement AJAX on a site in a way that enables Bing to crawl and index the URLs and content. As Google has supported this implementation since early 2012, site owners finally have an AJAX option that can be crawled and indexed by both major […]
Google announced the Apache HTTP server module they released to help webmasters speed up their sites about two years ago is now out of beta. Google said that after eighteen releases they are now “taking off the Beta label” off mod_pagespeed, an open-source Apache HTTP server module that helps improve load times, speed, and server […]
Yesterday, Google webmaster tools launched Index Status (available under Health) that charts the number of indexed pages for your site over the last year. Total Indexed Count Google says that this count is accurate (unlike the site: search operator) and is post-canonicalization. In other words, if your site includes a lot of duplicate URLs (due […]
Today at SMX Advanced during the iSEO panel, Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced clear guidelines and recommendations on mobile SEO. In short, Google recommends you go with a responsive design when possible, otherwise you can use device-specific HTML but Google asks you to take certain steps to communicate when you are using device-specific […]
In previous posts in this column, I’ve covered the intricacies of multinational search from a technical SEO’s standpoint. Leveraging multinational markup while clearing up in-site duplicate content and avoiding multinational homepage calamities is no easy matter to coordinate for big site SEO. Bringing all of those strategies to bear, and then also attempting to integrate […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Says Panda 3.4 Is ‘Rolling Out Now’ Google has announced the latest in its ongoing updates to the Panda algorithm that targets low-quality websites. And they’ve taken the somewhat novel […]
Search Engine Friendly Web Design [flv:https://searchengineland.com/video_assets/bootcamp/se-friendly-design.flv 364 264] “I’m not designing my site for search engines,” is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, how can you afford to ignore how they interact with your site? Search engines are like the […]
Not too long ago, the article Mobile SEO is a Myth got a lot of people fired up about the foolish notion that mobile SEO is a construct developed by salesmen to sell more SEO services. I responded in the comments to the author’s points, and have addressed this point in multiple articles over the years, so […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Product Runway: Livestand And IntoNow Yahoo held its second now annual “Product Runway” event, mc’d by product chief Blake Irving. Irving was assisted by some younger executives from companies that […]
Google announced they are starting a new service named Page Speed service. Essentially, this service will be Google fetching the content on your web site and then serving it up with speed improvements of 25% to 60% to the rest of the world, including Google’s bots. Google will eventually charge for the service but has […]
Everyone ready? Because the big day has arrived! Google’s “Inside Search” event begins today at 9:30am Pacific Time. OK, reset your expectations. It might not be that big. But I’ll be live blogging it, so stay tuned. The event was only announced a few days ago, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what’s happening. I’m […]
Is your website’s URL structure based on the perceived logic of your boss’ teenage son? Or even worse, a software engineer? Search-engine friendly labeling systems are critical for long-term search engine visibility.
It’s day two of the Google I/O developers conference. Call it “Chrome Day,” because yesterday was all about Android. What to expect? How about a Chrome computer for $20 per month? That’s what’s likely to be revealed during the keynote. Techmeme is buzzing with the headlines of details that have leaked out so far. The […]
An amazing amount of great information came out of SMX West this week. Below is a summary of some of what I found to be the most actionable and useful. Google’s Own Words About the Farmer/Panda Update Google’s Matt Cutts said that while the change isn’t 100% perfect, searcher feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. He […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Hot At Sphinn: Google Favoritism In Search Results, Eric Schmidt Steps Down & More The idea that Google might be favoring its own properties and content in search results was a […]
Google TV is here! It includes a full web browser, so if you have a lot of video content, you might want to optimize for larger screens and audiences who are sitting on their couches. Fortunately, Google has published some optimization tips. In a blog post, they suggest optimizing for the “10-foot user interface” and […]
Dear coders: please write your HTML/XHTML code to be standards-compliant. Yes, I know — we’ve been down this road before. Folks have tested compliant versus non-compliant code, and it doesn’t help with search rankings, so why bother, blah blah blah. Just use the damned standards, OK? Standards compliance does impact rankings, albeit indirectly: Standards compliance […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets Google announced they have acquired Metaweb. Metaweb is a search company that figures out entities and not just words. I […]
SEO professionals often confuse information architecture (IA) with website development. Here are fundamental IA skills every SEO should know, and how SEOs can in turn contribute their knowledge to a successful site architecture.
On May 11, 2010, Google was granted a new patent that basically states that all links on a page do not have to carry (or pass) the same weight. The concept is that the value a link should pass to a target page will be largely based on the probability that a user would click […]
Judging from the tweets I’ve seen, people are loving Google’s version of Pac-Man that’s playable on the Google home page today and tomorrow. They also have questions about it. Has anyone reached the end? Will you be able to play it in the future? Answers to these and more, below. Why’s Google Doing This? To […]
It’s Google I/O, Google’s annual developers conference. The morning keynote gets underway at 9AM Pacific. Let’s see what surprises Google has in store for today. My liveblogging begins, below. For those at home, you can also watch along live — I/O sessions are being broadcast here on YouTube. Due to traffic, I arrived 15 minutes […]
After the 2009 Super Bowl, I monitored how the commercials drove searches and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn’t go so well. The primary problems were: Microsites – Microsites aren’t inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external […]
From Search Engine Land: Yahoo’s Q4 2009 Revenues Down Only 4%, Search Ads Down 15% YoY Yahoo announced their fourth quarter 2009 earnings just minutes ago. They reported better than expected earnings, with a decline in revenue of only 4%, year over year. Most of that decline came from a 15% drop in search ad […]
Collecta has announced the availability of a new widget that allows any webmaster/blogger to show real-time search results on a web page. The widget builder is available now at widget.collecta.com, and includes several customization options including widget title, header background image, and even use of an external CSS file. It appears that the size of […]
After last week’s “Does SEO = Spam” debate erupted, I had a number of follow-up emails where I explained privately more about why SEO has such a bad reputation in some quarters, as well as what SEO is and isn’t, from my perspective. I wanted to share some of that below. Bad Advice Sucks: From […]
Search conferences are an excellent opportunity to connect personally with representatives from Google, as well as Yahoo and Bing, for advice and assistance with SEO issues. With our SMX East search engine marketing conference starting tomorrow in New York, I thought it was a good time to list my personal thoughts on the right and […]
Search engine optimization involves a lot of moving parts. Audience analysis, content optimization, rankings factors — it can be hard to pinpoint concrete, actionable data. But technical SEO is a little different. It’s certainly not any easier than the other components, but at least the data can be a bit more straightforward. You can check […]
In five weeks, our SMX East search marketing conference arrives in New York City from Oct. 5-7. The show features four to five tracks of sessions spread across three days and covers all aspects of search marketing. Below is a personal tour from me on what attendees can expect. Our SMX Advanced conference that sells […]
The “Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Governor Official Website” put up by “Texans for Kay Bailey Hutchison, Allan Shivers, Jr., Treasurer” over the weekend in support of Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Texas governor was briefly in Google but now appears to be completely missing. Huh. Odd since Bing seems to have indexed it just fine, although […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Conversion Tracking: How To Optimize Your Account 10x Quicker Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could get data 10 times faster so you could make your bid & ad decisions […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Book Search Adds Seven New Features Today, Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Books, announced on the Inside Google Book Search Blog, seven, that’s right seven, new features and tools for […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Analytics Now Considers Bing A Search Engine As promised, Google Analytics is now logging traffic from Microsoft’s new Bing search engine into the “search engine” traffic source category, rather than […]
This week at Google I/O, Google talked a lot about the evolution of the technological capabilities of the web. HTML 5 is ushering in new era of browser-based development and applications. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, kicked things off with, “My message to you is that this is the beginning of the real win of cloud […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.