Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
A new technology in development by Cisco Systems could provide additional refinements for search engine optimization (SEO) by helping to improve the web crawlers that the major engines use to index pages.
The new technology would use “routers, multilayer switches, and any other suitable device” to capture the URLs of websites that traditional web crawlers may be unable to access because they are unconnected to the crawler’s previously known network of sites. The patent was originally filed last year, but was published by the U.S. patent office on December 17.
BNet describes the technology as an “elegant solution” to one of the central problems with traditional web crawlers. “Any page receiving any amount of traffic would seem to be one whose location should be known,” writes Erik Sherman on that website.
Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals should be aware of the possible implications of the Cisco technology, which could have an effect on their carefully crafted SEO campaigns, experts say. Some speculate that the technology could improve the comprehensiveness of search engine results.
Foundering search giant Yahoo is said to be looking to offload its “Hot Jobs” employment listing service for “the right price” in the wake of declining search performance and a pending deal with Microsoft to have that company’s Bing search engine take over search functions on Yahoo’s still-popular internet portal.
Reuters reports that company insiders say that Hot Jobs – in addition to Yahoo’s Small Business unit – was on the block for a hoped-for fee of anywhere between $350 million and $500 million.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, speaking at an investor’s conference earlier this week, joked that Yahoo owed a great debt to Tiger Woods for the revelations about the golfer’s personal life that spiked search traffic across the internet. She also confirmed that Hot Jobs was not central to the company’s strategic vision moving forward and could be sold.
Bartz also blamed the company’s declining search numbers – and consequent diminution of relevance to the search engine optimization (SEO) market – on the failure of toolbar deals with HP and Acer that would have seen Yahoo toolbars pre-installed on PCs manufactured by those companies.
Specific queries, for which the competition is less fierce in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), can drive truly impressive conversion rates, according to Search Engine Land columnist Eric Enge.
Enge writes that, despite the fact that the benefits of long tail search engine optimization (SEO) having been obvious for years, many clients are still unaware of the potential upside to targeting highly specialized queries. He uses the example of a camera retailer, which, by tailoring SEO to specific camera makes and models, brings in more customers who are ready to purchase their products.
The basic assumptions from which Enge works in making his assertions is that roughly 70 percent of search traffic comes from the long tail, 20 percent from what Enge calls the “chunky middle,” and only 10 percent from competitive “head” search terms. The latter can be useful for driving traffic, but conversion rates are usually low, and the investment is frequently not worth it.
Seach engine optimization (SEO) campaigns that carefully target the long tail should see a spike in ROI, according to Enge and numerous other SEO experts.
The world is only getting bigger. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division estimates the world’s population to be as of May 27th, 2008, 6,670,328,109 (source) – that’s almost seven billion souls roaming this earth. And how can seven billion people on one tiny little planet possibly communicate with one another? Language in its written and spoken forms has been the pinnacle of human achievement and has made our ability to connect with one another possible (I know some of you believe that your wife’s stare after you refuse to do the dishes communicates volumes, but that’s an entirely different language all on its own). In 1999, the Ethnologue cataloged 6,500 living languages and currently only 6,000 of them are still in practice (“Languages of the World”). Of those 6,000 languages, the top-ten languages used on the Internet today are as follows:
- English
- Chinese
- Spanish
- Japanese
- French
- German
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Korean
- Italian
(*source)
To master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the English language is difficult enough, but what to do with sites that cater to English and Spanish-speaking visitors? And what happens when you have a site in both languages that targets multiple countries (i.e. America and Mexico)?
To begin, you want to find a hosting company that is native to the country the site was designed to primarily serve. This is imperative. Furthermore, you need to ensure the domain name is properly registered for that country. If you have a primarily English site dealing with real estate in Denver, Colorado, it is best to have yourdomainname.com (or .net or .org). In Canada use .ca and for the U.K. use .co.uk (same goes for Australia – .com.au)
If you want your Spanish-speaking friends to view condos in downtown Denver, then you would create a Spanish subfolder on the site, such as yourdomainname.com/spanish/ and put the identical content that is now translated into that folder.
Now, there is some debate between setting up subfolders and creating an entirely new site completely in Spanish due to better search engine results when using the two separate sites scheme. However, if the site is hosted in America (or another host country with the content bearing the host country’s language), and is relevant to that country, it is not only quite appropriate to use the subfolder approach – it is recommended.
On the contrary, If we are building a site in which the content is not country/language specific, the recommended course of action is to build separate sites. Host one site in America with the English language content and the other site in Mexico or Spain with the Spanish language content. You would then build links to each site and almost treat them as separate entities. Should someone wish to visit the Spanish site (or vice versa), provide a link between the two sites as a translation.
One word regarding translations: when translating your site, do not – I repeat, DO NOT – rely on mechanical means of translation. Spend the money to hire a person to translate your site, preferably one that lives and works in the language-speaking country so they may be familiar with the native cultural dialects and norms. One mistranslated word and your site could easily go from selling real estate in Denver to insulting someone’s mamma. It is just as important for a website to communicate correctly as it does effectively.
This article is just a brief beginning to a tumultuous topic. The thoughts and reasoning of the SEO community-at-large continue to change on a pretty regular basis when dealing with multiple languages and optimization. Ultimately, it comes down to what the visitor needs.
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Cyveillance says that it has uncovered a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that has affected more than 260,000 websites.
The scam targets Google search by getting browsers that are linked to sites that attempt to download malware onto their machines. The company said that the common string albums/bsblog/category has been posted in many URLs of several blogs. This inputs several results that lead to malicious sites.
“Readers can simply copy and paste the destination URL into your browser to direct it to the desired Website; you would be taken to [a] boring but otherwise harmless blog posting like those pictured earlier in this discussion,” the company explained. “The attack only happens when the compromised blog site determines that you arrived by way of Google by checking the HTTP referrer.”
Cyveillance said that the infected sites utilized rogue blog publishing to automatically generate new posts with titles like “las vegas rental no credit check” or “uninvited song lyrics alanis morrissette morissette.” These poisoning campaigns are detrimental to legite SEO operations.
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A tech startup calling itself Leapfish has thrust itself into the search engine market, billing itself as an entry portal into “the living web,” potentially shifting the ground under the feet of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals.
Leapfish’s flagship product is a customizable homepage, which Search Engine Watch describes as being similar to iGoogle. Users can create their own startup pages using a simple graphical user interface to arrange and position various pre-set widgets, predominantly those offering access to Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social media networking tools.
The new search portal has drawn widespread interest from all corners of the world of search marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO). Leapfish adds a new variable into the way in which web users view social media content, and could hamper Google and Microsoft’s expected moves into the social search market.
The two internet giants recently signed separate deals with Twitter to index the popular microblogging service’s content. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals are still trying to figure out exactly how the “real-time web,” as Leapfish calls it, will affect SEO campaigns.
Lost in the widespread hoopla over Google’s acquisition of mobile phone advertising firm AdMob was the company’s concurrent purchase of VoIP provider Gizmo5, which Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling says will make Google Voice a stand-alone service.
Sterling writes that this could put the search giant into direct competition with VoIP market leader Skype, which boasts a worldwide user base of 480 million people. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals must monitor Google’s move into the VoIP market closely, to ascertain what sort of SEO opportunities present themselves once Google Voice goes public.
Google already offers a Goog-411 service, effectively extending parts of its search functionality onto the mobile platform. This, coupled with the increasingly rapid adoption of Google’s Android cell phone OS, could give the company a solid bridgehead into the mobile market, creating new fields of opportunity for search engine optimization (SEO).
In another article about Google Voice, Sterling notes that consumer privacy advocates are troubled by the further expansion of Google’s data indexing, saying that the extent of the data collection raises questions about the security of personal information.
Business search engine optimization (SEO) is not, according to experts, a simple series of goods that can be purchased for increased performance, but a long-term investment whose benefits are often present but difficult to see.
Writing a guest column at Search Engine Land, Damien Bianchi says that some companies have trouble understanding the costs and benefits of search engine optimization (SEO) because the results are frequently not immediately apparent in the bottom line. Bianchi compares the process to implementing a new content management system: It can be bought, but it might take years for the benefits to become fully evident.
Bianchi says that a good search engine optimization (SEO) program depends on corporate infrastructure, design, localization and content, as well as a thorough understanding of the target search engines. Analytics software and close cooperation with IT departments can also help demonstrate the value of well-crafted SEO to skeptical executives.
Bianchi – among many others – also notes that the world of the search engine is constantly changing, and that successful search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners must always be on their toes for the latest developments.
Experts say that the most successful search engine optimization (SEO) efforts should begin before a character of code is written for a website. Every step of the way, SEO considerations must be addressed.
Keyword research, strategic planning, and a careful eye kept on web development tools are all part of the game for web designers hoping to successfully integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into their project, according to Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch. Enge also warns prospective webmasters that sites with effective SEO will require large quantities of quality content, or at the very least, smaller quantities of superlative content.
Enge recommends that two basic questions be answered before any work is done on a new or revamped website: First, what is the purpose of the website? And how does the firm that owns the website plan to market it? Poorly-planned and optimized sites are one potential consequence of a failure to answer these questions, according to Enge.
Search giant Google recently released an array of helpful tools for web developers, which could ease web design and make for more effective search engine optimization (SEO).
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While the concept may sound simple, it took some of the best brains at Google to come up with it, and it’s valuable enough to warrant a U.S. patent. Google’s recent associative search algorithm groups results based on past search behavior and will change the way in which search engine optimization (SEO) professionals go about their business.
Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea uses the example of multiple searchers for “banana,” “apple,” “pineapple” to explain the functionality of Google’s new algorithm. Google will now recognize that a series of such queries means that users are searching for “fruit” and will adjust the results that it displays accordingly.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is likely to be changed by this development, according to experts. Pushing a result higher or lower on a results page could have a number of effects, both positive and negative. A company trying to recover from bad press, for example, could wind up grouped with unrelated companies. On the other hand, a newly-launched website could luck into an association with a wildly popular search term.
Google was granted the patent last week, after a roughly five-month review by the U.S. Patent Office.
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My name is Kyle Kazak, I am the founding partner of a local internet marketing and web design firm called Kazak Media, we are located in Petaluma, California.