As Mike Fleming explains on Search Engine Guide, about 80 percent of web use starts with a search. The bottom line is that people are programmed to use search on the web whether it's a search engine or a business website, he notes. In short, visitors are less likely to click links on your website than they are to use your site's search box to find what they're looking for. You can use this behavior to your advantage. According to Fleming, the data from your site's search box will tell you what your visitors are looking for in their own words. I hope I don't need to tell you how valuable that...
I will grant that if your website appeals to a nostalgic or retro audience, you might be able to get away with certain turns of phrase. Websites focusing on steampunk, old bands, the 1960s and related topics can use older terms to good effect. Those are specialty sites, however. If your target audience lives in the twenty-first century, however - with all of the appropriate trappings - then you'd better make sure you're speaking their language. There are a lot of good reasons to make sure your keywords are up to date. Language changes over time, with new words entering the vocabulary and older...
Google's settlement with the U.S. Justice Department will cost the company $500 million. The search giant acknowledged that its ads improperly helped Canadian online pharmacies to sell controlled drugs in the United States without requiring a prescription, as well as counterfeit drugs. The amount of the settlement wasn't plucked out of thin air; it represents the gross revenue that Google received from the Canadian pharmacies, plus the gross revenue the pharmacies received from their sales to consumers across the border, during the period from 2003 to 2009. The Justice Department argued that G...
I admit, I'm coming to this game a little late; I hadn't even heard of banner exchanges as such until recently, although I'm familiar with the somewhat related concept of reciprocal link exchanges. So I needed to do a little research into how they work. If this idea is new to you too, let me give you a little explanation. Banner exchanges are typically a service offered by a central company that has built up a customer base focused on several general topics or categories (such as health, hobbies, shopping, sports, travel, etc.). Customers create a banner ad promoting their own website, and agr...
So if you're trying to contact Danny Sullivan via Google Plus, and you want to make sure you're touching base with the genuine SEO article, you're in luck. As shown by Mat McGee over at Search Engine Land, Sullivan has been verified. How do we know? His profile now sports an official verification badge. In appearance, the badge is very simple. Right next to Sullivan's name on his Google+ profile, on the right hand side, there's a little gray box with a blue check mark in it. If you hover your cursor over the box, it expands to a rectangle, with the words verified name in the same shade of bl...
To be honest, a lot of site owners don't think about this. According to Christine Churchill, writing for Search Engine Land, Many companies blindly select keywords and don't stop to consider the competitive landscape of that phrase on the web. If you're hoping to get any visibility in the search engines for your website, not considering the competition is a huge mistake. Fortunately, this mistake is easy to fix, albeit time-consuming. Most good keyword research is going to take some time, so you might as well get used to it. At least this part of your research won't be particularly hard. All...
There's a related phenomenon with an older name, as Alexander Zwissler reminds us: confirmation bias. The concept describes the all-too-human tendency to seek out information that confirms cherished opinions we already believe to be true, while dismissing any information that contradicts these closely-held beliefs. It's one of the reasons there are so many different news-related TV channels and websites in the world. Preventing confirmation bias is also the reason that one of the classes every would-be scientist is supposed to take in college covers proper experimental design, and another one...
It's worth noting that Google is acquiring only one of two companies with the Motorola name - but for the search giant's purposes, it's the one that counts. This year, Motorola was split into two companies. Motorola Mobility focuses on cell phones and TV set-top boxes. Motorola Solutions offers items such as walkie-talkies to corporations and governments. Google paid $40 per share for Motorola Mobility, an extremely generous offer considering Motorola's stock closed at $24.47 on Friday. This amounts to a 63 percent premium. In a blog post extolling the deal, Google CEO Larry Page notes Androi...
So what exactly is keyword misalignment? I'm tempted to quote from the cult classic movie The Princess Bride. When Westley, as the dread Pirate Roberts, continues to catch up with the trio of Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo (who have kidnapped Westley's sweetheart Buttercup), Vizzini shouts Inconceivable! every time they see that Westley has overcome the latest obstacle placed in his path. Inigo, getting a bit fed up with this, finally says That word...I do not think it means what you think it means. That is the essence of keyword misalignment. A word or phrase that you want to use for one p...
If you're familiar with many of Google's features, you know that Fetch as Googlebot has been around for nearly two years. Webmasters can use it through Google Webmaster Tools. Tell Fetch as Googlebot to crawl a specific URL on a site you've verified, and you'll see your page the way Google would see it. This is great for figuring out and debugging website issues that don't show up if you're simply looking at the site through a web browser. Now, though, Fetch as Googlebot lets you take things one step further. If it successfully fetches your URL, you can request that Google index it by clickin...
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