The Bulls Roar » Google

Internet SEO Lies Designed To Keep You Poor

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:56:09 +0000

This post is quite obviously going by the title a little bit of a wrist slap for all you people who think that old tired and ‘Black Hat‘ SEO and marketing methods are going to miraculously put your tiny site on the “first page of Google” which seems to be some hackneyed ideal that every one is still searching for.

The bad news: It WON’T!

Matt Cutts verified this himself: “NO-ONE can promise you the first page of Google any more!”

Unless, yes there is an unless… unless they are promising you to put you on the first page of Google under one keyword, in your locality (small defined area) with two adjectives that creates one long tail search term and most importantly you will be there more often on your computer not others because of Semantic Search practices.

Basically semantic search (and this is Google and Bing and all other search engines are following suit) where the search algorithms take into account your own search history on your IP including your locale, your previous search history and your keyword semantics – the meaning you put on those keywords or search terms e.g. if you search for fishing and your previous history shows you really mean fly fishing when you search the term fishing, your searches will be based around fly-fishing whether you want them to or not, until you show enough search history to Google to change the meaning placed on your ‘fishing’ search.

Please read the previous paragraph several times, enough times for you to fully understand the repercussions to your site and to your SEO practices!

There are heaps of SEO firms out there right now still trying to make promises they cannot keep. Read these vital posts I have collected for you over the past few weeks to validate what I am saying to you:

Don’t Get Google Slapped!

Link Farms – Link farms are a whole bunch of websites set up with one job in mind – to link to other websites and create backlinks. They have minimal or zero useable content and simply link out to other sites. You can usually purchase links from these farms (so as to increase your number of backlinks) for a price, but this is simply not worth it. As soon as the search engines recognize the site as link farm, they ignore all the links. It’s quite possible that you could get “blacklisted” for this sort of thing and end up ruining all your efforts.

When I was new to SEO, I bought 1000 backlinks from one of these link farms and anticipated huge results. Google Webmasters only picked up about 30 of them (out of a thousand!) and within a month or two they were lost (or removed). I was just lucky that I didn’t get banned!

Cross Linking – Similar to link farms, this is the practice of linking between a whole lot of websites that you own. Apart from being ineffective, the cost of this sort of practice is simply a waste of money (considering that you can easily get links from writing articles, etc).

Cloaking – Cloaking essentially involves having two different pages – one that your visitors see and one that the search engines see. This allows you to create a heavily optimized page for the search engines, and a very “pretty” page for users. This practice is strongly frowned upon by search engines and will in most cases get your site banned within a few months.

Duplicate Content – Whether it the same content placed on different pages within your website, or content copied from another site – the search engines don’t like this for one reason – there’s no value to the visitor.

From www.site-reference.com via clp.ly

Understanding Metaweb The Official Google Blog (Semantic ‘Entities’)

Google Buys Metaweb What this means for you!

Metaweb’s technology could change the way Google Search works.

Metaweb is a difficult concept to describe, although the video above does an admirable job. Essentially, it views keywords, the way we search now, as an inferior search method to what it calls “entities.” Words can vary in meaning, refer to different things, have different levels of importance or relevance at different times, and often return inexact results. So Metaweb has created a constantly growing database, or directory, of 12 million “entities,” which are really just persons, places, or things, and all the different ways you might refer to them. Wording isn’t so important with Metaweb, it’s the end meaning that matters.

Once Metaweb figures out to which entity you’re referring, it can provide a set of results. It can even combine entities for more complex searches–”actresses over 40″ might be one entity, “actresses living in New York City” might be another, and “actresses with a movie currently playing” might be another. Instead of searching through that jumble of keywords, Metaweb would just connect you to those three entities, and file down your results.

From www.fastcompany.com via clp.ly

and of course this excellent post on what Google thinks of your Squeeze or Landing Pages:

Google Slaps Squeeze Pages

It’s true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue – relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isn’t that relevant to many, if any, actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.

Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (”classic” squeeze pages, after

all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales letter – in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.

From www.sitepronews.com via clp.ly

The Death of Squeeze Pages

Google Buys Metaweb for Better Search Results (dailyfinance.com)
How has social media affected search? (simplyzesty.com)
Why Semantics Is Important For Search Engine Optimization – Semantic Web (semanticweb.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, Matt Cutts, Metaweb Technologies, Search Engines, semantic search, SEO, Web search engine

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Are You Optimizing for SEO 2.0 and 3.0?

AnnieInfinite — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:13:23 +0000

: Image by PubCon via CrunchBase

The truth is the internet is changing very fast and one of the ways it is changing is with Search Engine Optimisation and what works now as opposed to even just 6 months ago. If you are paying for someone to SEO your site there is one very important question you need to ask them:

“Are you optimising for Web 2.0 and 3.0?”

If they do not know what you are talking about it might be time to rethink hiring them and this is why:

“Many old SEO strategies have become obsolete, for example ranking for keywords that no one ever searches for – you know, those “ego boosters” that show your site on the first page of Google. Submitting your site to thousands of web directories to get links and submitting your site to the search engines to get indexed are two techniques no serious SEO even considers anymore. Webmasters still believe that exchanging links is the magic answer to higher rankings (they do still play a minor role in Google PageRanks), and many are still obsessing over duplicate content penalties. All these techniques are today used by the inexperienced SEO and by the “old school” DIY who fail to understand the dynamics of Web 2.0.

The New SEO 2.0 Trends

Web 2.0 is a social entity, and obviously SEO for Web 2.0 needs to be social.

Building social networks on Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, YouTube, FriendFeed, Twitter and the like, is only one aspect. If you build them, the followers will not necessarily come. You have to give visitors a reason to become members of your community, and more importantly, you have to give them a reason to click on the links you submit to their attention if you want to fully benefit from the “network effect” so many web marketers are talking about today. Twitter is the perfect example of how this “network effect” can be beneficial. For example, Dell managed to make $3 million in revenue using Twitter to announce special offers and to communicate with their consumers.” (flagrantly plagarised from the SitePoint Blog just for you)
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/The-Difference-Between-SEO-Web-2-0-and-Advertising.html )

DIY SEO Hints:
•   Make sure your phone listings also include your website link
•   List your business website with Google Local Search, add a map, links and description
•   Write articles, press releases, list with directories in your niche and local directories
•   Link your internal pages to each other
• Get a blog!
•   Use Social Media!

Notice the emphasis on the last two!

“Let’s Talk About Link Types

Link Reputation:
Link reputation is just that, the aggregate or culminating characteristic that an internal or external link has acquired.

Each link is viewed as a vote, get enough of them from the right sources and your website gains trust; that trust directly translates into link weight which you can invest into the page or pages of your choice via internal links.

Once a page reaches a certain degree of trust, all of the latent aspects of the (a) content (b) title meta data (c) H1 tag, bolded text, etc. and the various keyword combinations that exist on that page as well as the anchor text linking to that page are consolidated and that page can rank for (d) all of the above.

Authority / Trust:
To view the most trafficked and trusted websites online, just type in WWW into a Google search (with advanced filters set to 100 results). Every one of the sites listed there in descending order all represent the most authoritative sites online.

They are in such a lofty position since they are (a) linked to often (b) referenced often through citation or (c) visited frequently. This trifecta of link popularity and peer review augment the process of page and domain authority.

Getting a link from any website in the top 100 most trafficked or authoritative sites online (using the WWW keyword) could catapult your websites trust to a new level. The more authoritative pages your website has, the more trust, rankings and strength your overall domain can accrue.

How you spend that popularity (what we dub internally as ranking credit) and equity is up to you and ultimately determined by (1) the quality and topical theme of your content and (2) who you link to.

Once your website becomes a hub site (to other spokes in the wheel), each link is a valuable commodity which can be used to elevate other pages in your own website, pass traffic along to those who find that page (from search engines or through navigational means from other sites via links).

This is why it is particularly important to customize your website templates to prevent link loss through replicating too many shingles (text such as recurring navigation in the header, sidebar and footer).

By keeping the pages on topic and selectively using optimal anchor text, primary and secondary navigation and being selective with how you funnel the tiers within your website, you can sculpt link equity wisely within your website.

Trust is the last thing you get and it takes links from the right sources, quality content, popularity and time.

The real secret to link building is to start from within your website first, look for lateral opportunities to acquire links from trusted sources, use syndication wisely (RSS, Article Marketing, Directory Submissions, etc.), add a nice blend of social media, PR (press releases) and when possible get as many themed relevant links from others from within your own industry to balance your websites link profile.” (Again I have taken the best from another post on Site Reference here: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Link-Building-SEO-Link-Types-and-Tactics.html#ixzz0sJiuZ0x5 )

If you have been told that onsite SEO is more important than offsite SEO, that you must keep submitting your site to directories on a daily basis, that you must keep finding the best keywords and updating them weekly – you are talking to someone who has not upgraded their SEO education for a long time. These days SEO is more about what you do offsite than onsite, about 60/40 so get your site right, your keywords right and then get out there and be social!

Only submit to the newer directories which allow you to update all your information, add images, products and more, these are the backlinks that will count along with your social media linking. Facebook is the biggest site on the web, don’t you think this might mean that if you put a link back to your site on FB, it might carry a LOT of authority?

SEO is all about staying up with the times, I personally asked Matt Cutts (yes he answered me!) on Twitter the other day if anyone could really, honestly promise you first page of Google for your keywords, his answer was an unequivacle, “No! no-one can.” Paraphrased: Our newer algorithms are changed almost daily and semantic search is becoming more relevent by the minute.

What’s semantic search? Web 3.0 – where your past searches will influence your current searches for each persons IP address, how can anyone promise the first page of Google or any other search engine if all past searches that each individual person makes will influence their future searches? Think about it!

The people who are promising you this will not promise you first page of Google for your keywords, they do promise you first page for certain minor keywords in a local search, not the same thing at all! It is certainly time to be smarter with your time and smarter with your money, spend both wisely on what is working and what is going to continue to work.

How Social Media helps in getting good Google Rank (globalthoughtz.com)
Six @ Six: 6 Evolving Search Optimization Tactics from SMX Advanced (bulletproofblog.com)
Search engine optimization (SEO) (slideshare.net)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Google, Google PageRank, Matt Cutts, search engine optimization, semantic search, Web search engine

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A TZB Collection: Best SEO Advice

AnnieInfinite — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:21:47 +0000

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

There is a LOT of advice out there, some of it pure gold some of it ok and let’s face it – some of it pure drivel.

I have numerous RSS subscriptions to the ones I know are good to great and I thought you might like me to share the best of the best with you on certain topics each week, this week seems to be SEO week and here are the posts I thought were most relevent to you regarding your Search Engine Optimization:

Noone Can Guarentee #1 Ranking on Google
This first link is I believe the most important one as I had a (very short) conversation with Matt Cutts himself a couple of weeks ago and he verified that “..no-one can guarantee you the first page of Google..“, so please read this one carefully and do not be taken in by those emails that tell you they can. Let me tell you if they can, they can only do it for local searches and for certain keywords that will not necessarilly be the main search terms (keywords) you want to use.
The Problem with SEO Advice
Expect Change..
SEO Traits Your Strategy Should Contain
Headline says it all
Matt Cutts says: Give Each Store Its Own URL
Do Categories Matter for SEO
The Second Biggest Search Engine is
… wait for it….
Tips to Double RAnkings Traffic and Conversion
3 Search Types Every SEO Should Know
The Top 25 SEO Blogs
Now you could read these blogs yourself every day, or you could trust me to let you know the most relevent posts and get them here

The Zen Bull

More Meat, less potatoes..

The Basics Of SEO (ronmedlin.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, Matt Cutts, Promotion, search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine

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What Facebook’s new ‘Likes’ and ‘Interests’ Means for Marketers

AnnieInfinite — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:50:31 +0000

Unless your head is stuck in the sand you will have noticed that Facebook no longers allows you to ‘Fan’ a Page, but rather to ‘Like’ a page and while most people are trying to get their head around this new change and figure out what it means I can tell you one thing, it means that marketers are applauding.

Why, I hear you ask?

First of all go take another look at the ‘Info’ tab on your profile, if you’re like many FBer’s you hardly ever look at your own ‘Info’ tab, you will see that now all the information you filled out on that page concerning your interests both business and personal have been attached to new pages with their own Thumbnails, some of these thumbnails have no real pages – yet.

What this means for marketers is that you can now target your marketing according to all this new information which is being indexed and geo – tagged via Google!

Let me run that by you again – everything that you fill out on your Info tab is now not only indexable and targetable it is being used by Facebook to do just that! That’s why we do not ‘Fan’ pages any more, this is why we now like Pages – because we can now target those ‘likes and interests’ and market directly to the people who have clicked on them.

No longer are fans only targetable by their own pages, they are targetable via their own profiles and the ‘likes and interests’ that are catalogued on their profiles as well. Now every time you click you ‘LIKE’ something: e.g. a movie, book, music, a news story or an FB Page – this data is added to the general social search engine that is Facebook and this updates your permanent Facebook profile at the same time.

Now I want to make it clear Facebook does not expose your data to everyone – only to those people you’ve have given permission to as a friend will actually see your profile as always, but the collated data us now being used by Facebook Advertising to target marketing more specifically to those who have shown an interest via the ‘likes and interests’ including FB Pages on their profile.

This makes FaceBook Advertising rival Google and perhaps be even more influencial, FB are not relying on keywords but rather YOUR likes and interests, now that’s a step forward in the evolution of online marketing!!

For more information check out this Mashable post: http://mashable.com/2010/04/19/facebook-pages

and this one is a video from Mark Zuckerberg himself on Facebook Changes to expect: http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/zuckerberg-video/

Facebook’s New Ad Targeting Knows What You Read (hubspot.com)
Facebook Ads Will Use Your Web History (mashable.com)
What might Facebook’s new Link to Profiles and Pages mean for Bloggers? (socialmediatoday.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Business, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Social network, Target market

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Facebook for Business – Are You Missing Out?

AnnieInfinite — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:07:50 +0000

: Image by onebutan-iphone via Flickr

Facebook is now one of the most competitive sites on the web for marketing your business and if you have discounted social media as not worth your time – you might be in for a surprise!

Some statistics:

Facebook now has over 400 Million users (that’s the 3rd largest country in the world!)

Over Christmas it was THE most searched site in the world
It is the 2nd most popular site in the US and the world only surpassed by Google for popularity
Facebook is making changes to evolve its platform that suit businesses
Facebook ads and PPC are now more cost effective than Google
Facebook is the webs ultimate time sink
Facebook has its own Mobile site for mobile users

Can you imagine putting your ad or your business fan page in front of 400 Million active users?

Targeting those users with a refinement Google has never had?

Taking advantage of the time user spend playing on Facebook?

Take another look – it might be time to rethink it.

3 Serious Benefits of Social Media for Entrepreneurs Testing the Tools (successful-blog.com)
PayPal and Facebook Credits Will Play Nice After All (mashable.com)
Three Simple and Powerful Ways to Use Facebook to Grow a Following (icemanbaldy.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Advertising, Business, Facebook, Google, Pay per click, Social network

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Facebook’s Facelift has Ignition!

AnnieInfinite — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:24:14 +0000

Well I guess it’s not a total surprise we have been reading about it for a while…

The emphasis is now on search and it is a great search engine, however I know there will be folks like myself asking where are the status updates? Where are my friend lists? etc..

The new Facebook redesign will take some people by surprise and others will be just plain ticked off – we know that’s true, but just like in times past when FB made changes you will all have to get used to it.

This is the page that greeted most users this morning

and this is the guide to what’s changed and what’s new:

As you can see Facebook is changing into a new type of social site, really it’s becoming what I would call a social search site, which is an interesting tack to take – are they going to compete with Google for searches? It’s not out of the realm of possibility as over Christmas Facebook searches out weighed Google searches and that is a huge coup for FB.

Now is the time to get used to the changes and to change the way you use FB to compensate for those changes – how will you compensate for the loss of your easy to find friend lists which is one of the changes most users are upset about. The secret is they are still there, just click on ‘Friends’ and you will see ‘Status Updates’ right there under ‘Friends’ click on it to see all your usual folders or then click more and you will see them there and this is going to be the easiest way for you to find your favourite people and coversations in the future.

We have to ask the question “What’s next?” as Facebook as made major changes almost every 6 months over it’s history there is almost no time between redesigns to get used to them.

The Zen Bull

Is Facebook becoming a portal? Now 4th largest source of traffic to news sites (digital.venturebeat.com)
More Users Seeing New Facebook Home Page – a Birthday Launch Coming? (insidefacebook.com)
Live-blog: A rundown on Facebook’s new redesign (digital.venturebeat.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, Facebook, Google, Social network, Web search engine

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Using Posterous: Upping the Ante

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:57:19 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

First of all what is Posterous? you might well ask.

Posterous is a blogging platform with a difference! At it’s simplest it is a blogging platform that allows you to post via email. Yes! that’s right via email. Just create your blog post in your email or in word, add your images and post it directly to Posterous. When you do this the first time, it creates your account and once this is done you can login and change the look and feel and add in your auto-posting options (even to your wordpress.com blog) and from then on all you need to do is send more posts. Easy? simple? you bet!

Posterous even allows you to embed MP3′s, videos, audio’s and can turn images into image galleries and slide shows. What more? your PDF’s and word files are displayed as a Scribd embedded widget, so if you wish to avoid this you can send it straight in the email. However this does afford some good qualities, it means you don’t have to re-write all those articles and this means you can post those older reports as blog posts with changing a thing.

Posterous is the blogging platform for those who wish to blog the easy way and is great for beginners. It is also a way for those of us with multiple blogs and social media to aggregate our posting into one place. Yes I know I am going to here screams of “Duplicate Content” however you do have to ask yourself does one aggregator qualify as a downside to “duplicate content’ or does the added benefit of having your content on a site with such a high growth rate outdo the downside?

This is how easy it is:

Post to your social media service. Posterous can automatically spread your post to more than ten sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr. Click here to learn how. Here’s a list of Posterous email addresses and what they do:

post@posterous.com creates a public post and automatically shares to the social medias services you’ve set up.
private@posterous.com creates a non-public
post.posterous@posterous.com makes a public post that is not automaticallytweeted.
twitter@posterous.com spreads your post only via Twitter.
twitter+facebook@posterous.com spreads your post via Twitter and Facebook.

Post to different Posterous blogs. For example, twitter@jonesfamily.posterous.com will update http://jonesfamily.posterous.com and your Twitter account. The right side of the @ tells Posterous which Posterous site to post to, and the left side of the @ tells Posterous which external sites to update.

Customize the look-and-feel of your site. Posterous now supports customization. Select one of the built-in themes, and customize the colors. Or create your own custom theme. You can even port Tumblr themes to Posterous.

Use a custom domain. By default, Posterous assigns you a domain based on “posterous.com” However, you can change this to a custom domain like Holykaw.com. Click here to learn how.

Post pictures inline. Posterous automatically converts set of photos into a gallery view (where readers click from picture to picture), but if you don’t want a gallery, just put “((nogallery))” in the subject of the email. Posterous will post all the photos individually one after another.

Post from any site. The Posterous bookmarklet lets you quickly grab content out of the page you’re on. You can click and drag to select text and then click “Share on Posterous” in your bookmark bar. Or just click the bookmark without selecting anything and it will auto-detect all large photos, video and media on the page. Click here to learn how.

Create a group site. You can add contributors to your site, and they don’t need to create an account. They simply email post@sitename.posterous.com. All contributors will be notified of new posts and comments by email.

Post using links not embed code. If you want to post a video from Youtube, photo from Flickr, or TV show from Hulu, just send Posterous the URL. There’s no need to copy and paste the embed code. Posterous will take the url you send and convert it into an embedded video automatically.

Add tags. You can add tags to posts by putting them in the title of the email. For example, “((tags: food, New York))” will add those two tags to the post. This also works in the Bookmarklet and iPhone application.

Enable public postings. Turn on “Post by moderation” in your account settings, and anyone can email post@sitename.posterous.com to add something to your site. You just need to approve each post before it goes public. This is a great way to accept user-generated content.

Add a your location. Posterous can automatically add a Google map to your post to show where you took the photo. All you have to do is geotagg your photos..

Don’t include your email signature. Do you have an email signature that you don’t want posted? Either cut it or end your post with “#end” and Posterous won’t publish anything after it.

Posterous: A Cool New Tool for Developing Your Personal Brand (slideshare.net)
Posterous releases directory of themes (pheedcontent.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Posterous, Tumblr, Twitter, wordpress.com, YouTube

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Tracking Your Social Media Analytics

AnnieInfinite — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:08:51 +0000

: Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML via Flickr

One question I get asked quite a lot about is whether there is any way to track your Social Media Marketing success. The short answer is Yes! although in the next breath I have to explain that it is done in a different way to your ‘other’ marketing. Would you like to know how?

* Google Analytics: First of all, let’s not forget Google Analytics, this wonderful free tool by Google still has it’s place. by setting up some pages to be tracked and then only using those for your Social Media you can see what is working and what is not – yes you really can split test your social media. Try this and see: set up two pages with similar, but not the same content or even (of you have the ability two smaller sites), now set those pages or sites up in Google Analytics and use different types of social media – for instance only Twitter for one and Facebook for the other, or try different types of marketing content and posts to market those sites. Easy!

* Twitter Stats: Other than site stats try these Twitter trackers Twitalyzer, TweetStats, Twinfluence, Twitter Analyzer, Tweet Effect, and BackTweets. All of these work a little differently and give you different types of results, but the effect is an all round picture of your social marketing on Twitter. there is a new site called Klout.com which is also very useful for figuring out your reach and influence on Twitter, it is in open Beta right now, so give this one a go.
* Facebook Stats: If you market on Facebook and haven’t got a Facebook Fan Page you are missing out on your Facebook Insights which comes with every business profile/page. These have several views and some very noteworthy information for Admins, including how many people are interacting with your page, whether there are more male or females, how many people clicked your links and more..

* URL Shorteners: many of the better URL shorteners are now incorporating tracking your link stats for free when you sign up for an account. Most noteable are: bit.ly, budurl,and ow.ly from HootSuite. Not only will these shorten your links to a more managable size they will provide link tracking stats which are invaluable to check what kind of posts people are clicking on most. You can then change your comment and post strategy to take advantage of your insights. Personally I use bit.ly and ow.ly more often than not, as I like using HootSuite and bit.ly is available on Seesmic my Twitter App of choice. I have a new one I am testing out from Stumbleupon called su.pr and it seems to be working out as well and best of all there is a Worpress Plugin for it too.

Whatever you use, and I suggest for a complete picture you take a look at most of these, one way to track your social media influence and success is the conversations people are having with you. How much interaction there is, how many people comment on your links, or ask questions of your as the expert in your niche. Don’t forget that social media is social and understanding that this is a key component of your social media tracking and insights.

Have fun!

The Zen Bull

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, bit.ly, Google, Google Analytics, HootSuite, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

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Anchoring Your Pages in the Google Pond

AnnieInfinite — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:13:13 +0000

After th definitive announcement the other day by Google that their search spiders and bots take no notice of Metatags, Google has also given us a new way to create more page ranking and get more click-thru’s from our organic Google listings.

Page Anchors! Yes, page anchors. You know those links that take you from one piece of information to another on the same page. Those cute little links that save you from having to scroll through lines and lines of information on a page to find what you want, often used on FAQ pages and other pages with lots of information.

This is what was announced on the Google blog a couple of days ago:

“For most search results, Google shows you a few lines of text to give you an idea of what the page is about — we call this a “search snippet.” Recently, we’ve enhanced the search snippet with two new features that make it easier to find information buried deep within a page.

Normally, a search snippet shows how a page, as a whole, relates to a your query by excerpting content that appears near and around where your query terms show on the page. But what if only one section of the page is relevant to your search?

That’s where these new features can help, by providing links within the snippet to relevant sections of the page, making it faster and easier to find what you’re looking for. Imagine, for example, that we’re researching trans fats and cholesterol, and their effects on the body. If we start with a generic query like [trans fats], Google returns several results with lots of information about trans fats in general, including this result from Wikipedia:

Google Search Results using Page Anchors

Now, included with the snippet are links to specific sections within the page, covering different subtopics of trans fats. Since we’re particularly interested in what’s healthy and what’s not, “Nutritional guidelines” is probably where the most relevant information is. Clicking this link will take you directly to that section, midway down the page.

Now imagine we’re particularly interested in learning about good cholesterol and what levels of it are healthy, so we try a more specific query, [good cholesterol level]. The top result is from the American Heart Association and has tons of information about cholesterol levels. The specific information about good (HDL) cholesterol, however, is contained in one section titled “Your HDL (good) cholesterol level”‎. Since the query was more specific, the snippet for this result now provides the option to “jump to” just this section of the website.

Clicking on “Jump to Your HDL (good) cholesterol level‎” takes you directly to the most relevant information on the page:

Clicking on the title of the snippet (”What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean”) still takes you to the top of the page, as always.”

and

“We just announced a couple of new features on the Official Google Blog that enable users to get to the information they want faster. Both features provide additional links in the result block, which allow users to jump directly to parts of a larger page. This is useful when a user has a specific interest in mind that is almost entirely covered in a single section of a page. Now they can navigate directly to the relevant section instead of scrolling through the page looking for their information.

We generate these deep links completely algorithmically, based on page structure, so they could be displayed for any site (and of course money isn’t involved in any way, so you can’t pay to get these links). There are a few things you can do to increase the chances that they might appear on your pages. First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.”

This information is invaluable to anyone configuring SEO on their site, it just goes to show how important it is to keep an eye on and update your SEO every couple of months.

Now go take a look at your site, which pages do you have that you could use Page Anchors on, if none could you create some FAQ’s or some content pages just to take advantage of the latest Google update?

Anchors Away! Google Now Has Search Results Within Search Results (techcrunch.com)
Jump to the Relevant Section of a Google Search Result (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, PageRank, search, Web search engine, Website

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How to Use RSS, Readers and Feeds

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:09:24 +0000

“What’s a feed?” “What is RSS?” and” How do I set up a reader?” I get asked these three questions all the time!

So let’s get started with: What’s a feed?

Every site that has really regular updates like news sites or blogs should have an RSS feed so that site viewers have the option to ’subscribe’ to their updates, just like subscribing to any hardcopy magazine or newspaper. And just like any hardcopy magazine or newspaper the more subscribers the more viewers there are of your information and therefore not only do your site traffic stats go up, your SEO ranking rise, but your branding cannot help but get noticed and these are all very good things for your business. Creating a feed via Atom, XML or RSS is called burning a feed and my favourite feed burner is aptly called Feedburner.

Feedburner allows you to add a feed, opt in for all sorts of great options like email subscriptions for those viewers who do not have or do not like to use readers, the very important traffic and click stats and so much more in their very comprehensive dashboard. Best of all it’s free and run by Google themselves who bought it out recently.

What’s RSS?

Basically RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a special kind of code that allows your posts and information to be sent out across the web to those whose readers or emails have allowed this information to be sent to them via this code. For the more comprehensive Wikipedia explanation click on the link.

What’s a Reader?

The simplest explanation is that a Reader is a web application or widget that allows any blog or news syndicator you subscribe to, to collect in the reader for easy viewing by you. Google has one of the most efficient and easy to use readers, called again aptly enough Google Reader. If you already have a Google account you will already have it on your iGoogle page by default.

If not you will have to sign up for a Google account (a simple step by step that doesn’t really need an explanation) and then go to your Home Page. Once you have found your Reader, go looking for blogs or news sites that interest you, click on RSS or Subscribe and it will take you to a screen where you will choose your reader of choice. Choose Google, of course, or another reader if you have one already.

You can even tick the option to always use this reader to make it even easier from now on. Once you click on your reader of choice you will be taken back to your Reader home page to view the feed there. Easy!

Watch this easy to understand Vid for even more understanding:

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Atom, FeedBurner, Google, Google Reader, RSS

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