TopRank
How would your team stack up if a potential client used Google's criteria for screening an SEO agency? The giant has posted a list of guidelines for site owners interested in organic search services, starting with asking for examples of previous work -- be it through case studies, testimonials, or even actual SERP screengrabs. Big G also suggests that site owners ask about goals and how they're measured from the onset. Meanwhile, when's the last time you brushed up on Google's Webmaster Guidelines? Do you have experience in the client's chosen vertical? What about their city? Do you …
PPC Blog
AdWords users who were also tapping Google's built-in Conversion Tracking no longer have to display the "Site Stats" logo on their tracked pages. Previously, a text block with the words "Google Site Stats" automatically appeared on every page where users had embedded the conversion tracking code. The info let visitors (who converted from an AdWords ad) know that they were being tracked and offered info about how to disable the cookies if they wanted. "For some websites, the logo from time to time could delay the loading of the conversion confirmation page which caused [the] bad experience for …
Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search
Tons of local businesses have sought to cultivate their online traffic through a Google Maps listing, and have been met with buggy spam filtering and relatively nonexistent live support from Google. The giant has taken one of its first steps toward combating the subpar merchant experience by laying out a set of "quality guidelines" for being included in Maps, as well as an automated form to fill out for getting reincluded (if a listing gets pulled). The guidelines include making sure that the business' online listing matches its real world contact info, providing users with the most direct …
Graywolf’s SEO Blog
Google dismissed the United Airlines-archived news fiasco as a fluke, but Michael Gray serves up more recent examples of the search giant indexing and displaying old news articles with current dates. First up is a New York Times post about investment firm HRJ suffering from the subprime mortgage crisis. The article is from August 2007, but it turns up during a search with a date of Sept. 14, 2008. "What if I'm in the financial market and as part of my job I have to monitor HRJ Capital, and I go to Google News and search for them," …
adCenter Community
As the golden rays of summer fade away, the best-prepped search marketers aren't thinking about Halloween or even Thanksgiving ads -- they've got their holiday-themed campaigns ready. Tina Kelleher offers some quick tips for setting up (and maintaining) successful PPC campaigns for the holidays. First, craft entirely new campaigns that you can pause when the holidays are over. This way you avoid the time spent tweaking existing campaigns to fit a Christmas or Hanukkah mold. You'll also be better prepared for next year's winter rush. Kelleher also suggests beefing up your budgets in preparation for aggressive …
Reuters
Bill Tancer has just released "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters," a new tome diving into some of the overarching search trends he's observed while serving as general manager of global research at Hitwise. One of the most provocative trends Tancer touches on is almost anything but -- more Americans are logging on to check their social media profiles than to watch porn. "As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased," Tancer said, particularly with users aged 18-24. "My theory is that young users spend so much time …
Natural Search Blog
There has been a sustained debate about the merits of the meta keywords tag, and Chris Silver Smith argues that the tags aren't even worth the effort it takes to create them in this post. In fact, in some cases, he says a poorly optimized meta keywords tag could actually get a site penalized. Smith's reasoning stems from an extensive post by Danny Sullivan that found that Yahoo and Ask are the only two engines that factor the tags into the ranking process -- albeit as a last resort. "If they can't find content matching a keyword search …
Live Search Webmaster Central
Jeremiah Andrick cautions against the practice of having dynamic robots.txt files, or using them to help manage server load as the engines come crawling throughout the day. "You may perceive a benefit from changing your file throughout the day as you may see less server load from some search engines on your site, but this behavior also works against you," he says. "When the crawler returns it does not retry fetching the content for URLs previously disallowed a few hours ago and the crawler may fetch content outside of your new directive as the crawler may be using …
Primary Affect
If you're stuck coming up with content for your (or your client's) blog, try perusing Yahoo Answers for unanswered or hot questions pertaining to your niche. Vince Blackham offers a few examples of how to mine the social media hub for content development. For example, Blackham isn't versed in triathlon preparation, but he was able to gather enough info from Yahoo Answers to develop a checklist. "I could create a simple "How to" checklist for running your first marathon or using a numbered list and say '10 Unforgettable Items for Your First Triathlon'," he says. Other suggestions include …
Official Google Blog
Google engineer Scott Huffman lifts the hood a little higher on the processes behind the search giant's algorithms and engine updates -- part of a series of blog posts aimed at shining more light on how things really work -- and explains that there's a ton of human intervention going on. "One of our tenets in search quality is to be very data-driven in our decision-making," he says. "We try hard not to rely on anecdotal examples, which are often misleading in search (where decisions can affect hundreds of millions of queries a day)." Still, humans need to …