Sometimes when you search at one of the major search engines, you’ll see an extra set of links showing up under one of the listings in those search results. Referred to as either quicklinks or site links, most often those will show up for the listing at the top of the search results like in [...]
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How a Search Engine Might Choose Text for Quicklinks or Site links
Have you ever heard the statement – “Write for People not Search Engines“?
It’s a teaching that many bloggers have heard that encourages bloggers not to compromise the quality of their blog posts in order to get search engine traffic.
The temptation that some bloggers fall into is writing the kind of content that ranks well in Google – but which becomes increasingly unreadable to real people.
I’ve long thought (and taught) that there was a better way. Using a well optimized blog theme (like Thesis) and knowing some basic principles of SEO so that as you write your quality content you naturally use them to improve your SEO. Having the basics of SEO in mind as you write and tweaking your content as you write it is great – however it requires you to know some of those basics.
Brian Clark has just released Scribe – a WordPress Plugin that analyzes the content that you write on your blog at the click of a button and then reports back from within your WordPress dashboard on how you can improve your search rankings.
As Brian writes in on the about page of Scribe – it’s like having an SEO expert as an editorial assistant.
I’ve seen and tested a number of SEO type tools previously and Scribe beats them all on a number of levels. Most importantly – it takes what you’ve written (for real people) and uses THAT as the basis for what it recommends instead of starting with some keywords that you want to rank for and creating something that doesn’t really help anyone reading your content.
I’ve been playing with this plugin for a week or so now and it’s really good.
You don’t have to use all the suggestions that Scribe gives you if you feel that you don’t want to make all changes but many of the things it recommends are things that will definitely help your SEO and which SEOs would recommend (that the rest of us might not naturally think of).
The great thing about Scribe is that you can go back to any of your old posts that you’d like to see ranking higher and get it to optimize them too.
As an extra bonus I’m finding that simply using Scribe is giving me a great refresher in SEO and I’m starting to do some of what it recommends more and more as I write.
Scribe syncs beautifully with themes like Thesis, Headway and Hybrid as well as the All in One SEO plugin.
There are three options for buying Scribe but for the next 4 days you can lock yourself in at the most advanced package for the price of the starter package (a saving of 72%).
If traffic from search engines is something you want to tap into more, without compromising the usefulness of your content, Scribe is an option worth investing into. Learn more about it here.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
Rank Higher in Search Engines Without Compromising The Quality of Your Posts
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Rank Higher in Search Engines Without Compromising The Quality of Your Posts
Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?
Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.
His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.
One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every ‘rule’ us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.
Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I’ve been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.
Last year I came up with a list of ‘debates’ in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of ‘debates’ to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.
All in all I’ve come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.
Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they’re in and the type of audience that they’re attempting to connect with.
Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.
I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for ‘the formula’ might see that there’s a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
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29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
Are you up on all of the SEO changes of the last year? It’s a new year and the SEO industry isn’t one to stand still.
Move ahead of the competition with knowledge of powerful new SEO tactics, and steer clear of penalties by avoiding tactics that violate the search engines’ ever-changing guidelines.
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At SEOToolSet® Training, Bruce Clay shares the search engines’ latest guidelines and recommendations as well as findings from Bruce Clay, Inc.’s continuous testing and analysis of new search engine features and ranking factors.
The next SEOToolSet Training course takes place February 15-19 in Simi Valley, CA. Both the standard course and advanced certification course are being offered.
Register for SEOToolSet Training today and be confident of your SEO strategy in the year to come.
Refresh Your SEO Knowledge for the New Year was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.
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Refresh Your SEO Knowledge for the New Year
Mike Blumenthal is running an annual series of posts that involves a variety of people writing guest articles about important things that happened in local search during the previous year. I sent in a short piece a few days ago as my contribution, but the series started today with an excellent set of information and links about local search patents from Bill Slawski:
Loci 2009: Bill Slawski’s Important Patents of 2009
It’ll be quite technical reading, but highly worth it if you care to sort out what the search engines are doing re: local search. And then check back in the coming days for additional posts, or just subscribe to Mike’s RSS feed (which is a no-brainer of a decision).
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This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.
Local Search Reading Suggestion
Related posts:
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Local Search Reading Suggestion
Continuing our tradition, the third annual Best of Search Conferences 2009 is upon us. Over the last year there were five search engine marketing conferences that Bruce Clay, Inc. covered live on the blog, including SMX West, SES New York, SES San Jose, SMX East and SES Chicago. In the Best of Search Conferences 2009, you’ll find the most popular liveblog coverage from those five shows, as well as some other special posts and features.
Search marketer Marty Weintraub, founder and president of aimClear, guest posted on the blog, sharing his takeaways from PubCon Las Vegas 2009. You’ll also find BCI’s director of Eastern region operations, Christopher Hart, sum up his presentation from IM Spring Break. Plus, you can close out each day of the Best of Search Con by kicking back with a podcast of live broadcasts from search conferences this year. Here’s the agenda of what will be presented during this year’s Best of Search Conferences, coming to the blog all this week. Enjoy! And happy holidays!
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Day 1: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 |
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Session |
Basic/Intermediate SEO |
Basic/Intermediate PPC |
Basic/Intermediate SMM |
Basic/Intermediate Branding |
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Session 1 |
SES New York |
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Session 2 |
PubCon Las Vegas |
SMX East |
SES New York |
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Session 3 |
SMX West |
SMX East |
SES New York |
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Session 4 |
SES New York |
SMX West |
SES San Jose |
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Session 5 |
SES New York |
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Search engines have evolved tremendously since they first started appearing on the Web more than a decade ago.
I thought it might be fun to take a look back at some of popular search engines of yesterday, and spent a little time at the Internet Archive traveling back to the earlier days of search. [...]
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What Did Search Look Like a Decade Ago?
On today’s episode of SEM Synergy, Bruce Clay, Inc.’s weekly podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm, I interviewed the CEO of a newly launched search engine and aggregator that seeks to bring search up to speed — at least to a pace that’s as fast as the Internet evolution.
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LeapFish is a Web search aggregator that has been designed with the new Web in mind, culling content from traditional, social and real-time Web sources into a customizable interface that acts as a dashboard for the Web.
The recent public launch of LeapFish boasts a number of features that help users search and share content across popular sites, locate real-time content and create a custom search experience fitting of online life today.
Founder and CEO Ben Behrouzi was our guest and I had a chance to ask him about LeapFish and what benefits can be found in a customizable Web dashboard that integrates social, real-time and rich-media content.
As Ben explained, significant changes have come about thanks to social networking and community platforms. We can receive breaking news as it happens. Everyone has the power to be an online publisher. Rather than rankings calculated by machines, our trusted contacts, colleagues and friends act as information filters, sharing only the highest quality content that strikes a chord with like-minded friends and followers.
Add to all that the ability to feed social media content, along with traditional search and rich media, directly into a search engine or aggregator through APIs and other technologies, and it’s clear why a robust Web search and aggregation experience is the next logical development for search.
There’s no doubt that we’ve become increasingly dependent on our online social networks to provide us with breaking news, product or service recommendations, and the most worthwhile opinions and analysis. But what’s on the flip side of our info consumption?
There’s a weak link in the honor system that real-time content sharing relies upon, and this point was highlighted by last week’s tragic events at Fort Hood. In NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth, TechCrunch blogger Paul Carr uncovered the dark side of real-time content: the lack of accuracy and the sensationalized nature of unverified reports from the scene. Carr writes:
Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative [BS] that was hitting the wires.
There was just one problem: Moore’s information was [BS] too.
While the Internet has ushered in new means of communication and commerce, the unreliable nature of word-of-mouth communication is nothing new. It’s gone by other names: gossip, rumor, hearsay. The risks of trusting flawed info are familiar and something we deal with everyday. The Internet simply magnifies the issue.
Sure, misinformation can be written off as something easily corrected down the line. But our brain power is a limited resource.
With so much information available at our fingertips today we find ourselves spending additional time and resources to consider the source of content. There are incredible technologies now available and we can decide what to engage with, but the heightened access requires us to be ever-more discerning of our information intake.
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Super brain Frank Schirrmacher raises the comparison of information consumption to food intake (among other heady, enlightening ideas):
I think it’s very interesting, the concept — again, Daniel Dennett and others said it — the concept of the informavores, the human being as somebody eating information. So you can, in a way, see that the Internet and that the information overload we are faced with at this very moment has a lot to do with food chains, has a lot to do with food you take or not to take, with food which has many calories and doesn’t do you any good, and with food that is very healthy and is good for you.
When it comes to the object of our attention and brainpower, learning is a lot like eating. Culture, experience and personal taste play a big role, though through the Web and progressive technologies, the whole world is now our oyster. With increased access to the expanding Web, we have a dual opportunity to broaden our taste buds and to be picky connoisseurs. As the saying goes, you are what you eat.
Thank you to Ben Behrouzi and LeapFish for joining us on the podcast today. You can read more from Ben on his blog benbehrouzi.org and follow him on Twitter, @benbehrouzi.
More here:
Information Consumption and the Real-Time Web - SEM Synergy Extras
When visitors to search engines use abbreviations or expand abbreviations in their searches, it’s possible that they might be missing out on some pages worth visiting.
For example, use Yahoo to search for [NASA Moon bombing] and compare the results to a search for [National Aeronautics and Space Administration moon bombing] and you’ll see some very [...]
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How Search Engines Might Expand Abbreviations in Queries
If you subscribe to the adage “Lies, dang lies and statistics,” maybe numbers aren’t worth much to you at all.
If you’re a search marketer or business owner, numbers likely hold a major stake in the decisions you make every day.
For the sake of this post, let’s assume the latter, shall we? That numbers — be it click through rate, conversion rate, total sales, and so on — contribute to the information we use to make informed decisions when marketing a business or managing a marketing campaign.
And so I present to you the following studies, one on searcher behavior and one on search advertising trends.
  Wag those tails, pups! |
Word on the street is that longer searches are on the upswing. During August, the number of six-word queries increased two percent. Seven-word queries saw a three percent bump while queries of eight words or more increased six percent. Queries using five words or less held steady.
There are several causes for this new searcher behavior that come to mind. I’ll share my thoughts here, and I hope you’ll add your interpretation of the findings in the comments below.
Expansion of the content pool: With more and more content producers entering the arena every day, the pure generation of content is on an exponential incline. A searcher who is trying to find a single fact or story in an ever-growing pool of content may be unable to find the exact content they’re looking for with shorter, generalized queries. Faced with irrelevant results, a searcher may refine their query with additional words in order to narrow down the results pool.
Increased savviness of Web users: Alternately, a searcher may forgo the shorter queries altogether. Experienced searchers may realize that the chances of finding the content they’re looking for increases when queries are qualified by additional descriptors and long-tail searches. Searchers have moved beyond a familiarity with search to become advanced-level searchers, not content with having to search several times to find what they’re looking for. So, savvy searchers end up using every possible descriptor they can think of to find the right information on the first search.
Increased adoption of optimization practices: It was suggested to me by Anand Srinivasan of Tech Crunchies (thanks, Anand!) that long-tail query growth may be attributed to businesses’ mounting adoption of search engine optimization. Armed with the methodology and tactics for increasing Web visibility through targeted content, businesses and brands are optimizing their sites for a range of relevant topics. Knowing the value of providing useful information to their consumers, commercial Web sites are being built as a resource on their topic of expertise. Similar to the first point, the greater availability of content may cause a searcher to refine their search and use a long-tail query to filter out content that doesn’t meet their exact needs.
Judging by the evidence, the long-tail represents a growing opportunity for highly relevant search engine visibility and for avoiding the back clicks of searchers who end up on a page deemed irrelevant by them — which brings us to our next study on the maturity of the search marketing industry.
  From blossom to full bloom |
According to an AdGooroo study, the search marketing industry has reached the third (of five) stage of the high-tech maturity cycle. In the first stage, new adopters discover a new technology and that technology is adapted for commercial uses. In stage two, the technology becomes a product leveraged by an “early majority” of commercial organizations. During stage three, growth slows down, and from that, success is redefined from percent of growth to percent of market share.
If AdGooroo’s theory is sound, we’ve reached this third “late majority” stage. As a result of the maturing marketplace, we’re seeing the search engines actively seeking to differentiate themselves from one another. Indeed, the strengths of Google, Yahoo! and Bing are clearly differentiated today.
Google is the volume leader. Attracting roughly 70 percent of U.S. searches (according to the Hitwise study linked to above), the engine can afford to charge a premium for its ad space. Competitor Yahoo! offers less expensive clicks and higher conversion rates than Google, but at a lower volume (more than 16 percent).
Bing, meanwhile, captures just below 9 percent of U.S. search volume and boasts a better conversion rate than both Yahoo! and Google. Consider as well the exceptional performance in the categories that Bing has focused on, such as comparison shopping and travel.
There seems to be a definite momentum shift in the trends around searcher behavior and the search marketplace. Queries are getting longer while we marketers are getting older — ahem, more mature. With maturity comes wisdom, and if numbers are knowledge, what do these findings mean to you?
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Searcher Behavior and Search Marketplace Mature
En esta parte podrás poder cualquier cosa sobre ti ó sobre tu sitio, una pequeña introducción ó algo que desees hacerle saber a tus lectores. elsonar.es
SEM Synergy this week will be live, and Bruce Clay will be talking to callers and answering questions on the show! People that hang out in the WebmasterRadio.FM chat room during SEM Synergy each week (and really, why aren’t you there?) know that I’m asked “Is this live?” about once per episode. How excited am I to be able to say “YES!” this time around?! SEM Synergy , our weekly radio show and podcast here at BCI, is actually going live for a very special reason: our 100th episode! (Pay no attention to the episode count on iTunes. It’s a little thrown off because the episode from SES San Jose 2008 was eaten alive by technical issues…) In the 99 episodes that have happened since the first show came together in April 2008, we’ve been privileged to interview some of the SEM industry’s most respected authorities — privileged not only because our industry’s experts are fun, witty and beyond bright, but they’re also exceedingly generous with their time and knowledge! (And if you needed more proof of the SEO community’sgenerosity …) I mean, I’m always amazed when I consider the SEM Synergy library is chock full of brain nuggets from the likes of Avinash Kaushik, Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox, Danny Sullivan, Bryan Eisenberg, Tamar Weinberg, Michael Gray, Marshall Simmonds, Dr.
Look out, Big Apple. Search Engine Strategies is coming to town
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner , President, Find Me Faster Speakers: Meagan Rochelle , Search Solutions Specialist, Microsoft Nicholas Ward , Product Manager, Range Online Media How many people are using Bing Cashback, Matt asks? About a quarter of the audience raises their hand. The rest are interested to find out how it might work for them.
The first big search conference of the new year, Search Marketing Expo West , is just around the bend. SMX West takes place March 2-5 in Santa Clara, California. Bruce Clay, Inc.
I’m a day late in climbing out from under the ever-piling heap called my feed reader — but hey, if Punxsutawney Phil can claw his way to the surface today, I can too. Here’s the search news from over the weekend through today, with a special focus on local and mobile news. Local Events Added to Bing Maps The Local Events application in Bing now features event listings