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’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today answering the question, “are Facebook and […]
Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, caused an uproar in the SEO community yesterday when he published a blog post on his personal blog claiming guest blogging for SEO purposes is dead. In his post, Cutts offered a history of how guest blogging has moved from being a reliable source of high-quality content to now […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 2014 SEO Playbook: Off-Page Factors Are you ready for 2014? Today’s column marks the third and final entry in my annual SEO Playbook. Part 1 primarily focused on what Hummingbird will […]
On the heels of a very recent iOS Maps update, Google has further updated and optimized its search app for iOS 7. Some of the changes are cosmetic: “iOS 7 styling and true full screen browsing” for example. There’s also improved image search for the iPad and better integration with Google Maps. Google Now also seems more […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Test Begins: Do Google Shopping & Other Shopping Search Engines Give You The Best Deals? It sounds pretty damning. Two recent surveys suggest that Google Shopping isn’t leading searchers to […]
The nofollow tag is a way publishers can tell search engines not to count some of their links to other pages as “votes” in favor of that content. Why would publishers need to block such votes? Doing so can help them avoid problems with search engines believing they are selling influence or are somehow involved […]
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 Launches Hashtag Search, Shows Google+ Posts On Search Results Page The integration of Google+ across Google properties continues in a big way today with the launch of hashtag search. Simply […]
In a video published today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts – Google confirmed that they do not penalize sites that have broken or invalid HTML. Matt Cutts said, “so Google does not penalize you if you have invalid HTML, because there would be a huge number of web pages like that.” Cutts […]
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 Brings More “Now” To Search With New Quick Answers Google is bringing more of the capabilities of Google Now to the search box and providing a range of personalized “quick […]
When we updated our Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors last month, we came very close to adding a mobile element to it. Now we’ve actually done so, in the wake of Google giving explicit advice that sites with issues for mobile devices might not rank as well, in the future. We were close, so […]
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 […]
Two years ago, we released “The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.” Now we’re back with an update. We’ve introduced some new elements, adjusted a few rankings and given the table a more encompassing name, The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors. Clicking on the image above will take you to the permanent home of the […]
Google announced today a new, fun and useful tool to help webmasters markup their webpages with schema structured data. Structured data markup can help a webpage enhance its search listings by adding rich snippets to the search results page. Google announced two upgrades here to the structured data tool. Google added a new tool to […]
Google doesn’t always use the HTML title tag of a web page, choosing instead to make its own title for a page, if it thinks it can do a better job. Here’s an example of it getting this completely wrong. I was searching for Dana Point Jet Ski, which is a real business in Dana […]
Google’s Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog a new annotation designed to help communicate redirects and languages to Google for multilingual and multinational web sites. The annotation is designed to work with homepages of multinational and multilingual sites that are configured to point users to localized pages, either via […]
Just over three months ago, Google launched the news keyword meta tag designed to let news publishers have a better chance of ranking for words they might not have included in their headlines. Adoption rate so far? Only about 5% of the sources within Google News use the tag, according to new data provided by […]
SEO site audits should all be at least a bit unique. Everyone has their own process for pricing and conducting SEO audits, but one of the important things to keep in mind is the different needs of different types of sites. The core issues and focuses in auditing a twenty page B2B lead gen site […]
It’s been about two months since Google launched a “news keywords” meta tag for news publishers. How’s it going? Why didn’t Google the standard meta keywords tag? The company’s not saying, but it did shed a little more light on how to use the tag. Google launched the news keywords tag in September, designed as […]
Google has announced details on the search algorithm and quality changes made over the past two months – August and September. In total, Google lists 65 changes over the past two months. The previous announcement covered two months as well, and was for June and July. This time the key changes include Panda updates, improved […]
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 Removed The Pirate Bay From Instant Search TorrentFreak reports Google has removed The Pirate Bay from showing up in Google’s search suggestions within Google Instant Search. Google Instant Search will […]
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 […]
Google’s latest batch of search quality updates is online, and offers some insight into a variety of search- and SEO-related topics. Though some of Google’s monthly updates have included more than 50 items, this one comes in at 39. But it looks like there’s still plenty to digest. Here’s a look at what stands out […]
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 […]
It’s unlikely to impact Google or Yelp in any way but Wolfram Alpha is getting into local search. According to a blog post today users can now search online or on its mobile apps for nearby businesses in a range of categories (chains only right now): Wolfram|Alpha now knows the locations of some 2.4 million […]
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’s Cutts Explains How Google Search Works Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, posted a 8 minute video on how Google search works. From crawling, indexing to ranking, he gets […]
Google Rich Snippets are an outstanding way for webmasters to get more exposure for their pages in the Google search results. Using them, you can add add images, review stars and more to your listings. But for some webmasters, that is not enough. Back in November I noticed HTML entities working in Google’s breadcrumb rich […]
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 Q1: Revenue Beats Expectations, Search Up 8 Percent A short while ago Yahoo released Q1 earnings, which exceeded financial analysts’ consensus estimates. Total revenue was $1.22 billion, up 1 percent […]
Google announced two updates to their rich snippets features yesterday. HTML Input For Rich Snippet Testing Tool: The first is they have added to the rich snippets testing a way to input your HTML and test the HTML before you make the HTML live. In the past, you always had to upload your changes and […]
I have to say, given that this is a competitive industry, and that while we’re sharing best practices on optimization we’re also competing with each other in search results, it doesn’t make me feel that bad to see the rest of the industry seems to embrace a one URL strategy, in spite of my argument […]
Keyword Research and Copywriting [flv:https://searchengineland.com/video_assets/bootcamp/keyword-research.flv 364 264] The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience. And though it sounds obvious, it helps to actually use those words in your web pages! This […]
Get up to speed on the basics of search marketing with our special training videos that cover the fundamentals: Keyword Research and Copywriting Search Engine Friendly Web Design Link Building Fundamentals Paid Search Fundamentals Keyword Research and Copywriting Christine Churchill The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With […]
Wolfram|Alpha (W|A) is launching a new fee-based service named Wolfram|Alpha Pro. In today’s highly competitive environment, you may wonder why W|A would ask people to pay for what many think should be free. Read on: you may decide to willingly open your wallet when you see what’s available. Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, I’ve often […]
Google has confirmed that they are rolling out a new look for their one line sitelinks. The new look has a small arrow on the left side of where the sitelinks begin. Here is a picture: A Google spokesperson confirmed that these are indeed new and are “currently rolling out everywhere this week.” Google has […]
SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience. And though it sounds obvious, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SEO Best Practices For HTML5: Truths, Half-Truths & Outright Lies During a panel at SMX Advanced 2011 in Seattle, I remember hearing a question about Schema.org tags. More specifically, I remember […]
Google just posted about ten new algorithm changes it has made to how it shows and ranks search results. These include showing rich snippets more often, improving the quality of snippets, a better way of showing page titles for times when Google ignores the HTML title tag itself and a ranking boost for “official pages,” […]
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 Webmaster Tools SEO Reports Now Available In June, Google released a limited beta of Webmaster Tools integration with Google Analytics, where you can view search query data from Webmaster […]
If you only had 30 seconds to explain search engine optimization (SEO) to others, how would you do it? Would your explanation be different for user experience professionals? Here's how I explain it.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Twitter Announces Analytics For Tweets, Traffic & Buttons This week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Twitter announced Web Analytics to webmasters (and Tweeters) see how their content is being shared and how their […]
It appears Google is testing a new type of rich snippet for displaying real estate and other types of business listings. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable and included a few pictures from various sources. The rich snippet, which is not yet confirmed by Google, seems to show real estate listings as well […]