Spiders. The terrifying answer to how search engines know what is happening all over the internet all the time is that they have an army of millions of spiders. The internet is positively covered in spiders making their way into every nook and cranny and reporting back to their masters on what they find. The […]
Google continues to port features from the old Google Search Console to the new beta Search Console.
The judge's decision disregards existing law and if upheld could expose bloggers and publishers to potential copyright lawsuits.
You've worked hard to accumulate as much link equity as possible from external sources, but is your internal linking structure diluting that equity? Columnist Chris Long details how to reclaim your lost link value.
A recent interview with a Bing representative suggested links will be downplayed for rankings in the near future. But that is not currently the case.
A link study done three years in a row shows how links continue to be a powerful ranking signal and will likely remain that way.
Columnist Pratik Dholakiya shares the 16 technical SEO issues he sees most frequently. Even the most experienced SEO professionals can sometimes overlook these common issues!
The facts of the present case were egregious but the law created by the court is bad for the internet.
Many think links are a declining ranking signal in Google's algorithm, but this new study shows links are more important than ever.
Google testing going from blue hyperlinks to black hyperlinks, and searchers don't seem to be happy with the change.
Google's Andrey Lipattsev reveals links, content and RankBrain are the top three ranking signals in Google's search algorithm.
Link building looked different a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away). Columnist Winston Burton explains how things have changed and what works today.
Google has added a hyperlink to the brand's web site in the knowledge graph box.
After dropping links from their ranking algorithm for specific niches, Yandex brings back links as a positive and negative ranking factor.
Google quickly changes their keyword rich anchor text in a recent blog post to avoid controversy in the SEO industry around link spam and link schemes. Will this lead to Google penalizing themselves again?
Google Answers now shows action links directing to publishers sites. This was done previous for easter eggs and Google's own content but now it works for third-party publishers.
Four months after Google’s first link network penalty in Poland, Google has targeted an additional two Polish link networks this morning. Google’s Karolina Kruszynska, a spam fighter, posted on Twitter that the most recent wide spread manual action targeted two link networks in Poland: @rustybrick We took action on two link networks. — Karolina Kruszyńska […]
A former member of the Google search quality and web spam team, Pedro Dias, said publicly on Twitter yesterday that “Google is less likely to trust a link once it has changed from the first time it was seen.” So if you changed the anchor text or URL path of the link, the value and […]
In the latest video by Google’s Matt Cutts, he talks about how Google may determine the quality of a page of content without there being many links. By Matt’s expression, he seemed to give off the feeling that without links, it is really hard for Google to determine the quality of the page. He said, […]
Rubén Gómez reports that Microsoft is testing removing the underlines on the hyperlinks within the search results in Bing. The Bing search results still have the blue hyperlink look, but the underline was removed in this Bing test. Bing is constantly testing large and small changes like this to see how searchers interact with the […]
Yandex chose the Bynet Week conference in the city of Minsk in Belarus to announce that they have “Started to remove links gradually” from the Yandex MatrixNet algorithm for commercial queries in just the Moscow region. Alexander Sadovsky, Head of Web Search at Yandex, made the announcement yesterday following on from his original explanation in […]
Bing Ads announced today that it will complete the roll out of sitelink extensions on mobile devices in the US in coming weeks. In a post on the Bing Ads blog, Microsoft’s Eliot Li said they currently have enabled over 60 percent of the mobile traffic on the Yahoo Bing Network (YBN) to run sitelinks in […]
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 […]
In a recent Matt Cutts video, where the head of Google’s search spam team answered the question “Does linking my two sites together violate the quality guidelines?” The short answer is no; but, there is always a but. If you link hundreds of unrelated sites together, then it would violate Google’s guidelines. Matt Cutts explained […]
When Google introduced a new format last month for the definitions it sometimes shows at the top of its search results, something was missing. The source URL wasn’t a clickable link. That’s now been fixed. Here’s an example, the definition box that Google shows for a “define speed of light” search: The URL shown under […]
Google has added a new option for downloading your links in Google Webmaster Tools. You can now click on a “download latest links” button. The latest links download option will download your links that Google Webmaster Tools discovered but do so sorted by date. Google will have the link in one column and in the […]
Will social signals replace links as a primary SEO signal affecting Google’s rankings? Have social signals already replaced links in that way? That topic came up last month during the keynote conversation with Google’s Matt Cutts at our SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land’s Editor-In-Chief, asked a series of link-related questions […]
Many webmasters have been desperately trying to fix poor SEO work done to a site thanks to the recent Penguin update targeting webspam and the bad link warnings sent from Google. The only current way to discredit a link is to have it removed as reverse nofollow functionality for webmasters simply doesn’t exist. One recent example of a link removal request was particularly […]
Google has confirmed a new Panda update at the same time that it’s announcing 40 search updates that happened in February (or are in progress right now). It would be all but impossible to fully sum up the full slate of changes here, but there are a few that seem especially noteworthy and will no […]
If the answer to this question is stunned silence, your website could lose long-term search engine visibility. Archiving has always been an important part of the SEO process.
It’s a well known fact that links play a key role in search engine optimization. In addition to providing a physical connection between pages, search engines also use links to get advance notice of the content they’ll find at the other end of that link. While it’s true that search engines place the greatest value […]
At SMX Advanced earlier this year, a hot topic was the use of the rel=”canonical” attribute in conjunction with pagination. Maile Ohye of Google noted that the rel=”canonical” attribute was not intended to cluster multiple pages (articles, product lists, etc.) to page one of that series (although it can be used to cluster multiple pages […]
Ahhh, the strangeness that is links. This week’s column will hopefully spark some questions, answer a few others, and also point out some weird linking related phenomena, beginning with two examples: If this search is correct, Google indexes a little over (Use Dr. Evil voice) 1 billion pages from the Yahoo.com family of domains. But, […]
Blekko has expanded its publisher/marketer outreach with two new tools and a dedicated Blekkogear page for those and other publisher offerings. One of the new tools is the Live Link Roll (shown at right as a screenshot), which is a widget that displays a site’s most recent inbound links “as they happen in realtime,” Blekko […]
What is the best approach to utilizing keywords in site navigation? Balance is the key to successful keyword placement in a search-engine friendly website.
Webmasters build links for two reasons: to drive traffic and to influence search engine placement. Neither option is as cut and dry as I’ve stated here but when it gets down to it, that’s why webmasters deliberately build links. If you’re building links to support ongoing SEO efforts, there are a handful of key tips to […]
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 […]
Google is suing a small record company that previously sued Google over its links to copyrighted works hosted on Rapdishare. Google Inc. v. Blues Destiny Records, LLC was filed April 28 in a California district court. It’s a potentially important issue at hand: As Billboard explains, Google is asking the court to declare that the […]
What is the hardest task in search engine optimization? Whether the question is asked in a formal poll, on an online forum or over a cup of coffee, the answer most commonly given is “link building.” With good reason: an external link, by definition, is something outside an SEOs immediate realm of control. External link […]
Increasing the external links to your website is one of the most important elements of a successful optimization strategy. They can boost your rankings in the search results, drive traffic, and increase your presence across the Web. But securing external links can be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to explore every opportunity to acquire […]