Archive for category Google

SEO outdated factors – any proofs?

I read in lots of forums and articles that a few SEO factors are outdated. (post based on this article). Let’s take a look at some of them:

Keyword Stuffing comes back often in SEO discussion. My answer to that is:  you should not have waiedt for keyword stuffing to be an irrelevant SEO factor to stop doing it. You shouldn’t have done it in the first place! Yes, content is King and yes, having some keywords in the content can help, but there is a big difference between using some keywords in the content and keyword stuffing in every possible way. (how about a nice giant tag cloud at the bottom of each page?)

Reciprocal link: This one comes back often as well. Websites like this one say: “Google has publically (?) said that it does not like reciprocal linking“. I beg to differ. Google has said that they don’t like people exchanging links just to gain some link juice and skew the rankings. That’s different. They don’t want you to mess with their precious algorithm and instead of trying to fight people doing it, they just announce that it does not count anymore and hope most people will stop doing it. In this case, common sense prevail again. I don’t see anything wrong with exchanging link when it makes sense for the user. I would actually recommend it. You will not get penalized for it. (the famous “Google Penalty”). Here is a video of Matt Cutts expressing this idea:

Paid links: In the article I mentioned above, they do say that in some cases, it could be okay to have a paid link. But most articles out there say: “No paid links could ever help you with SEO”.  How do they know that? Yahoo Search Directory is still considered a value directory and it is a paid one. Moreover, how can Google know whether you paid for that link or not?  Lastly, you can’t get penalized for incoming links because it would make Google’s algorithm way too easy to manipulate. Worse case scenario, you won’t get anything for your link (reciprocal or paid) so why not give it a try?

I am not really a big advocate of paid links. There are much better ways to get some links but every once in a while, a paid link might bring very relevant traffic. SEO needs to be turned around and companies need to do what makes sense for the user, not only the search engines. If exchanging links with a website makes sense, don’t worry about search engines and just go ahead.

In the end, it’s the people who buy your products and services, not the search engines.

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Google uses synonyms in their results

I found this article from the Google Blog and wanted to share it here as it is pretty instructive.

In a nutshell, it says that Google is slowly teaching English to its computers.  Computers can do a lot of things, but are also limited for some very easy tasks. For example, ask a 7 years old which 2 words are synonyms out of this list:  Photo, Apple, Picture, Pencil and Plane. It’s a very easy task for a human, but extremely difficult for a computer.

Well, Google’s computer are learning English and starting to use synonyms in their results. For example, if you run a query with the words “pictures”, results with words “photos” in the title and description tag and content will appear, even if they don’t have the words picture in it. Even better, the word Photo will be bolded in the results as if you typed “photos” and not “pictures”.

It’s going to be a long process to teach the computers which words are synonyms.  Google shows some counter examples that explain why it is a difficult task: arm and arm.  Google says that “arm reduction” could mean liposuction or arm amputation as “arms reduction” talks about fire arm usage reduction.

This is a very interesting article, especially if you optimize websites and/or write content for websites and blogs.

For more details, check the original article: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/helping-computers-understand-language.html

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The Right SEO Company!

There are several self proclaimed SEO specialists in the market but only a handful know the intricacies of implementing a good SEO strategy. Having a non-reputable SEO service can negatively affect your brand name and could lead to complete removal of the site from search engines (not to mention a waste of valuable marketing dollars) Some of the most commonly used bad practice involve:

  • Stuffing keyword metatags. It was a popular method used three years ago, but with so many advancements and different approaches used by search engines, this is an obsolete approach.
  • Keywords in invisible text – a solution used by companies to quickly implement SEO, but this will get your site banned.
  • Purchase links – Why would you buy links to promote your site? The links get flagged and deleted, and poof!!!!  a portion of your business disappears
  • Overloading with JavaScript (i.e. codings) and content – Search engines work primarily by identifying text, and companies sometimes load the page with JavaScript’s and redundant information.
  • Cloaking – its pretty simple, posing as something that it is not i.e. throwing out different content while the search is done but when you log on to the page, it’s actually not that information that you saw on the search results.

Not everyone can be an SEO expert, but it is important to be educated enough to select a company that will give you the desired results. Some important facts to know:

  • SEO implementation takes time, you need at least 6-12 months to achieve a solid and stable ranking.
  • There is quite a bit of investment required. If you are being told otherwise its either they are not going to do a good job or have no profit motive (which I find hard to believe)
  • SEO does not end; there is no finite time within, the moment you stop investing in it, there will be a drop in the rankings because we all know that others are doing the same as well.

SEO is a proven strategy to improve web traffic so spend some time to do your research and find the company that offers guarantees and uses respectable methods.

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Woman Sues Google for Bad Directions

Lauren Rosenberg, after looking for directions on Google Maps from her blackberry ended up walking in the middle of a highway and got hit by a car. She is suing Google for her medical expenses (Over $100,000) and she is suing the driver who hit her.

To read the full story click here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/197618/Google_Maps_Error.html

When technology replaces common sense…

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Google Pacman logo wasting 550 years of work in one day

Last Friday, Google redesigned their logo to look like a Pacman game for the famous game’s anniversary. It looked like this:If you missed it, don’t panic! You can still play it at www.google.com/pacman

According to this article from the CBC, internet users all over the world spent almost 5 million hours playing this game.

Typically, Google users conduct 22 searches on the website per day, with each taking up about 11 seconds, on average, Rescue Time said.

A study of 11,000 of their own users that day, however, showed an average of 36 more seconds were spent per search. Extrapolating that across the 504 million users Google gets every day, a total of 4.8 million more man-hours were spent on the page. That’s the equivalent of 550 years.

“I’d wager that 75 per cent of the people who saw the logo had no idea that you could actually play it. Which the world should be thankful for,” he said.

In dollar terms, assuming people are paid an average of $25 US an hour, the total cost was $120 million in “lost” productivity fleeing or pursuing Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, Rescue Time said.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/05/25/pacman-google.html#ixzz0p4lWWVSg

The button I’m feeling Lucky was replaced by “Insert Coin” which mostly triggered more than one person to click on it and play the game.

Have you played that game? Are you part of the 120 millions loss of productivity?

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