Some two and a half years ago (May 21, 2010), Google introduced encrypted search which they took a step further last year (October 18, 2011) to default logged in users into encrypted search.

This would changed the way we measure organic search moving forward:

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query.
- Official Google Blog

So, Google determined that if you have the keyword referral data for visitors to your site, then others could encroach on your privacy and security. Even though I disagree with this assertion based on this principle and I still believe that Google is using this as leverage against the broader Internet community.

Now, I am not of the mindset that limited data is ever a good thing, but in this circumstance I think it is ideal.

Why Google Secure Search is Good for SEO

It is really difficult to work with partial data because you have to make assumptions (not ideal) to accommodate for the unknown information. Because you only have part of the picture, you might be missing something that is really important.

I know this much more that most as 57% of my traffic comes from natural search of which, some 92% of it is from Google. In the full year following this change, 32% of the traffic from Google ended up as “not provided” making up 18% of the total traffic here. Working with a number of clients, I have yet to see an impact this great, but it has climbed since inception.

So, if I am working on making a decision about my strategy, I am missing almost one third of the picture. However, I still think that this is a positive thing for me and for everyone that is affected by the change.

Why?

If a person is logged into a Google account, your search results are being modified by your search history, behavior and even your social network. Now, the search results are also modified based on your location, but this happens if you are logged in or not.

Because search results are being modified, the keyword referral data is tainted, meaning, if you make decisions on your SEO program based on this modified data, you might be making the wrong changes. For once, I think limited access to data is better for your SEO Program.

I would love to hear about your view on the past year of Google SSL Search, feel free to leave comments below!

Google Secure Search
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Google Secure Search
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

The road less traveled
On the long journey where we have been exploring the question, Where should I start with SEO?, our sixth post is all about the things that are possible with SEO that you might want to consider because of the results, but you might not know the risks.

No matter if you realize it or not, but you can just as easily limit your website’s ability to rank for competitive keywords as you can show up in search engine results. This is all through what you do and how you do it.

First, I would like to present the topic of whitehat, greyhat (or grayhat) and blackhat SEO. There are so many definitions of these three words and most tie them as a descriptor of tactics. Not getting into the philosophy of SEO, I will provide my view. I don’t think that there is a grey area when it comes to SEO and I also don’t think that they should be tied to tactics, rather, I tie whitehat and blackhat to intent. If your intent is to artificially influence search rankings (i.e. you didn’t earn the improved rankings) then I call it blackhat. If your intent is to improve a website to increase your website’s rankings (i.e. earning it) then I call it whitehat. Ok, with that being said, we are going to focus on tactics that are attempting to artificially increase rankings, so it would be classified (at least by me) as blackhat and I will organize them under the three major components of SEO, technical, content or relevancy development and link or authority development.

Technical
Delivering a different experience to a search engine (i.e. different content) than you would when a person requests a page would be considered cloaking and an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.

Content Development
Using technology to build a large number of pages that are specifically designed to rank for particular keywords automatically that wouldn’t normally be accessible to visitors through navigation. This has become something over the past few years that are being pitched and implemented but I contend that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing it right.

Link Development
The greatest area where blackhat SEOs are in their element and it is also the area that can get your website into the greatest risk organically. The best example of what not to do (in my professional opinion) in link development is getting links that you paid for. Paid links look simple, don’t typically cost much and are likely being leveraged by your competitors. They are typically difficult for search engines to determine and they can deliver rankings, but I don’t feel they are worth the risk.

There are a number of things that you have likely considered that would help you improve your rankings, but just like an athlete considering using steroids, you could increase your performance but only for a period of time and there are other costs associated with the increased performance. Focus on what will improve your visitor’s experience, great content with a purpose, clear paths to information and conversions while ensuring search engines can understand that content is key to ranking as well as performing competitively.

Do what’s right, for the right reason… you might not always be #1, but you will always perform well for a long period of time. I would rather continue to perform rather than just have a great year or two, but that might just be me.

One post left in the series, Steady as she goes – How to Set Goals for Continual Success, expect it in the next month or so.

Cheers!

Why Some Tactics are not Worth the Risk
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Why Some Tactics are not Worth the Risk
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Google introduced their Knowledge Graph back in May with the intent of providing information that is related to people, places or things that is related to the search and attempts to answer questions that you intended or didn’t intend to ask. Pictured at the right, is the knowledge graph for the search for “Chicago Cubs” and it provides a logo, basic description, team info, posts from Google+, players, location information for Wrigley Field, reviews, events and other information regarding the team.

You probably have seen this appear for a number of searches you have made over the past few months on Google, but why is this addition to Google’s universal search a good thing for you and why might it also be a bad thing?

Let’s explore:
From a user perspective, this is very valuable information that is relevant to the search query. The information provided in the extra information provided defines what was searched for as well as relevant, current and even historical information, limiting the need to click through to a website, minimizing the effort required to find basic information.

This is also valuable to Google, they actually accomplish a number of things with one move.

The first, they get the opportunity to provide the user with information they are looking for without having to click through to a website, keeping them on a Google property.

The second, they actually determine what sources will provide the information, so they glean this information from other sources (aka, they don’t have to take credit or source the data) and actually limit the sources’ ability to gain a visitor and make a conversion.

Third, Google fills the page above the fold with information that is relevant to the search term, even when paid advertisements are not fully leveraged and don’t fill the page.

Fourth, Google can cross promote other properties that they own or have a direct relationship. Including YouTube, Google+, Google Maps/Places/+ Local, Zagat, image search, news, Google Shopping, Google Books and more.

Finally, Google also gains the ability to train users to look to the right rail for pertinent information and this will help their advertisers gain impressions for other terms as users are more likely to scan the full page prior to scrolling down or modifying their search.

This isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong. As a marketer, I want engaged visitors that are looking for more information than simple data points, but I also see the value in providing valuable information as a means to introducing them to my brand and what services or products I offer. Without the websites producing and hosting this information, where would Google gain this information to provide to visitors?

Google Knowledge Graph – Good or Bad?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Google Knowledge Graph – Good or Bad?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

I am sure you are aware of the notifications that began showing up in Google Webmaster Tools (Google Sending Notifications) and how they appear to be penalties but, after clarification from Google via Matt Cutts (Google Updates Link Warnings). Now, one of the most recent conversations that have been happening in the industry is how to proactively identify and address removal of these links.

There are two things I have a concern with:
First, you don’t have control of the links pointed to your site, so how could Google or any other engine penalize your site because of shady links pointed to your site? They shouldn’t and not likely to penalize your site either. However, that doesn’t mean you should be trying to get as many links as possible, if you have too many links from junk websites you are likely going to be considered as junk (the old birds of a feather flock together bit).

If this was the case, your competitors could target your site with negative links to bring down your reputation.

Second, if you are spending time trying to figure out what bad links are pointed to your site and trying to get them removed, are you spending your time on what matters most? Namely, are you focused on improving your site for your visitors, because that is where your time is best served.

This doesn’t mean that you might not need to do some damage control if you have trusted your site to someone or an organization that has a short-sighted vision for your website or if you are working to improve your online reputation. One more reason that who you entrust to help you improve your website’s performance should have the same passion and desire for your website, like you. You get what you pay for…

What are your thoughts?
Have you experienced or know someone that has seen a negative impact to your rankings from the recent notices from Google?
What are you doing to address these concerns?

Don’t forget to check out Eric Ward’s post on the topic

The New Politics of SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

The New Politics of SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

I am sure that many of you are aware of the happenings of the past few days regarding the outing of Dun & Brandstreet Credibility Corp. for buying links through leveraging the services of iAcquire. What you might not be aware of is the fact that Google delisted iAcquire.com, suspiciously looking like a reactionary measure that appears much more like censorship than a penalty.

There is a good bit of information out there regarding the whole ordeal, here is the quick breakdown:

Josh Davis author of LLSocial.com originally broke the story about being reached out to by someone on behalf of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation to purchase a link from his website. He did some very effective research and identified the agency/service working for D&BCC (iAcquire) and many, if not all, of their companies/websites that they utilize to reach out to sites to secure links for their clients.

The second step taken was done by Google, they deindexed iAcquire.com and all of the domains identified by Josh Davis. At the time of this post, I am not aware of Google presenting a case or providing any information regarding the intent or purpose of the response. It does not appear that iAcquire has done anything particular to have Google remove these sites from their index, besides the information that was released. More information from Search Engine Round Table.

Was this type of reaction justified or an overreaction from the search engine?

Ok, to be clear, I certainly do not condone the actions of D&BCC nor do I condone the actions of iAcquire or Josh Davis, however, the actions that Google has taken I feel is well beyond what was justified in this case.

I don’t think that buying links is the most valuable thing you can do with your money, nor do I think that it is the right tactic to employ, rather, I believe your time and efforts would be better suited in building valuable content that will support good inbound links. There is a reason for the old mantra “Content is King.” Put simply, good content earns good links.

If you are going to do something stupid, you should be smart about it!

The fact that D&BCC didn’t know what their agency was doing I either don’t agree with or at least they should have known more. The fact that iAcquire did this and specifically identified that they did not want the link or page to contain any disclosure of the fact that the link was sponsored was not good either. However, the alleged action by Google was not well played either.

Similar to what happened with JCPenney.com last year, Google took manual action because of a clear violation but didn’t drop the site out of search results, rather, lowering the rankings. This is similar, seeing that iAcquire was the one that violated Google’s guidelines, I would understand if Google reacted by dropping their rankings but not by removing the domain from the index.

I certainly don’t agree with the actions of John Davis’ actions in calling out these practice other than for his own benefit. I would consider myself a good steward of the internet, focusing on building value that is intent on providing a better experience for users and earning top listings rather than trying to buy them and I don’t condone these types of actions by others, however, even though it isn’t in the best interest of users, I don’t see that I should report them to the general population. If I wanted to do what was good for others I would have contacted D&BCC and iAcquire, not published their dirty laundry across the internet.

I am not perfect, by any means, but this isn’t justified in my mind.

Postscript – The Official Word from iAcquire

iAcquire – Did Google Overreact?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

iAcquire – Did Google Overreact?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to SEO there are a number of things that impact our abilities to provide true business impact. These are typically linked to whatever new or exciting thing that happens within the search space. With this in mind many of these new concepts are great opportunities for someone, not necessarily you or your site.

In recent years it has been highlighted by nofollow, blogs, XML sitemaps, local search, algorithm updates, mobile, blogging or even social platforms like facebook, twitter and even pinterest.

The important thing to remember is that all of the shiny objects may or may not help you support your online presence and increase your opportunity to rank for competitive keywords or even maintain your existing rankings. To maintain your sanity and keep your eyes on the prize you will need to have a strategy secured and aligned with your efforts.

Your strategy is the only thing that will help you see your way through all of these shiny objects and identify when tactics that are helping your efforts or hindering your performance. A true strategy will be supportive regardless of the new tactic, platform or algorithm change. If you aren’t testing new things and analyzing them to understand their impact, you are missing one of the most valuable aspects of SEO.

Testing the new additions to the digital landscape will help you find out when you should respond by entering into expanded tactics in new areas.

Ultimately, your strategy shouldn’t focus merely on particular areas, meaning you shouldn’t focus only on Google or another engine, as well as facebook or twitter specifically. Your strategy, to be effective will platform and sometimes even tactic agnostic. This is the only way to ensure your setting up your online marketing on solid ground, efficient and maintaining your sanity without too much caffeine with little or no sleep.

Cheers!

Driven to Distraction
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Driven to Distraction
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

People are constantly moving and they are bringing the web with them.

According to Google, by the end of 2011, 50% of Americans owned a smartphone and reportedly 89% of them use their smartphones throughout their day.

Is your website ready?
People have begun to use mobile devices as never before, supporting their offline research when shopping, enhancing their experience while reading, eating, watching television and even while in the loo (or in the head if you prefer a nautical term) highlighting the opportunity and threat that businesses are now facing: consistent and coordinated experiences during simultaneous interactions.

Google recently launched GoMo to provide support with tools and information to support businesses developing websites that are more mobile-friendly as well as keep abreast with mobile trends and Google’s mobile best practices. This goes beyond just merely providing a great user experience but also incorporation of best practices for indexation, accessibility as well as marketing to mobile users leveraging Google AdSense and AdWords.

Consumer Expectations
Consumers’ expectations are changing, they expect your website to load as fast as desktop versions and not only seek competitors’ sites, but it also significantly negatively influences their decision to recommend the site to others. Compuware Survey: What Users Want from Mobile

Mobile is Local
For retailers and those businesses that have physical locations, the implications are much greater as 89% of smartphone users use their devices throughout their day and 95% of mobile smartphone users have searched for local information while 61% call and 59% visit the location after searching for them through mobile devices with 90% of these people act within 24 hours of their search. Google: The Mobile Movement

What about Apps?
Mobile applications are great but consumers prefer mobile websites to their application based counterparts by more than 4:1 and prefer them more than 3:2 when purchasing as well as prefer using mobile sites for product reviews by almost 4:1. Adobe Mobile Experience Study: What Users Want from Media, Finance, Travel & Shopping

With the overwhelming growth of the mobile web and its impact on consumer behavior, it is more important than ever that your websites’ mobile experience is as good as desktop versions as well as coordinated with other marketing channels to ensure you are not losing your existing customers while it is quickly becoming another way to gain market share from your competitors.

Web on the Run – Why Your Website Should Be Mobilized
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Web on the Run – Why Your Website Should Be Mobilized
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

If content is king on the internet, and we generate content, then who truly rules the internet?

I don’t typically make it a point to write about things other than online marketing and SEO, but the idea that your body of work is constantly at risk when you write and publish online is a burdensome concept and one that I don’t think about enough, as I am pretty sure many of my readers don’t spend the time and energy to protect their thoughts either.

Google has determined a way to identify the owners of unique content on the web earlier this year with the addition of the Panda Update as well as refined this algorithm change to improve their results by attempting to deliver the authority or at least the originator of content online. The challenge that we have as publishers is ensuring that we receive the credit for the content we produce.

So what should search engines do if a piece of content is published on a website that has limited or no authority and also published on a website that has a great deal more authority than the original publisher? As the engines try to figure this out, there are few ways to try to protect yourself and your content.

One of the best ways to protect your content from scrapers and other unscrupulous types is to copyright your material, however, this has sometimes been a difficult, laborious and expensive task that can take time and experience to get done.

As you may know, I have a tendency of looking to those who have gone before me for direction and a great resource from an organization that has done this was brought to my attention. This is a perfect situation, as I have little experience personally. However, Houston Neal provides a great step by step process to filing for copyright protection as well as an easy to understand synopsis of what copyright law is in the US, as well as why it is important to copyright your content and protect your interests. It is also one of the best ways to proactively protect your online reputation.

I have not gone through the process of filing for copyrights on my material, but I would appreciate your stories and comments if you have gone through this process or been caught on the other side if you haven’t filed for protection. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.

Cheers!

Do It Yourself Copyright Protection
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Do It Yourself Copyright Protection
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

The Internet has long been a source of research for finding or learning about products. It has always been a way to find things and even purchase something that you don’t have access in a local store. Many have stopped looking at local stores and only purchase what they need online.

Now, Google has combined their Shopping search functionality with Local search, bringing in availability in local stores into what you are researching online.

This presents a challenge to retailers that have no presence online and it also presents a challenge for those retailers that have no presence offline.

There are a number of ways this is impacting search results:

Google Universal search results with a geo-modifier and Google Maps
This is a typical listing that you will find in regular search results when you put in a zip code or city location with a keyword. The teardrop icons marking positions on the map. This remains relatively unchanged.

Universal search results without a geo-modifier and Google Shopping
This is a typical listing found in universal search results within Google when a specific product or product category is searched for. You can see the links “nearby stores” when a product listed is matched up in Google Shopping and Google Places Feeds that has been recently added.

Localized shopping results
This is new when a person is searching within Google Shopping and a product is available locally as defined by a Google Merchant Center Feed. This new feature helps to guide a customer online to a local store.

Earlier this year, the big three independently confirmed that over 20% of all searches online have local intent. Now, eMarketer is stating that this year, 46% of retail sales will be influenced by the web, moving to 53% by 2014 – but more than 90% of total retail transactions will occur in-store.

Local is one of many differentiators that can help Google and other search engines can use to provide more relevant results, but if you are not present in local search results or don’t have local stores, you need to have an extremely effective online marketing strategy to ensure you can weather the storm that is coming – Local Search.

Online Shopping Gets Local
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Online Shopping Gets Local
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

What is IP Address or User Agent delivery?
Both of these tactics are blackhat techniques to deliver different content to different visitors.
So, what’s so bad about that? Really, cookies and settings used to store preferences and such that make a website more user focused, right?

The difference between giving users a unique experience and delivering different content is that this is used as a technique to give search engine crawlers different content and even different URLs for ranking purposes. The easiest way I have found to determine the difference between blackhat and whitehat tactics, the intent behind doing something. If the intent is to artificially improve rankings, it goes into my blackhat bucket, if the intent is to improve user experience, I would classify it to be whitehat.

Stepping into the gray area:
So, what about building a unique site structure like URLs that contain the category names instead of id based URL hierarchy?

This is ideal, but there are enterprise level eCommerce catalog management software that gives crawlers (based upon their user agent) a generic or optimized version of the site so it can be easily indexed. Why would this be a concern? Because URLs are built based upon the catalog’s ids and pass navigation history as well, making it difficult for search engines to find unique content because the same category page is found through multiple ways of navigating to them. So, they change the way the category and URL structures are built when the user agent is a crawler and block the “user” version of the site from being indexed by use of the Robots.txt. Is this really that bad?

There are a couple of challenges that present themselves.
1) Cloaking
By the purest definition, the site is cloaking because it delivers a fundamentally different website to a search engine than it does to regular visitors.

2) Natural Authority
Natural or organic links come from users that find your content valuable and link to it. This can be as simple as posting something in twitter, Facebook or in a blog. When a link to another site is found by a search engine crawler the authority for that page is increased, but in the example above, this page would be blocked from search engines. This will significantly lower the ability for the page to rank competitively because the page is not visible to search engines.

So, what if the page isn’t blocked to search engines? Now, there are at least two pages that are visible to search engines, meaning, both of these pages are competing for the same keywords. The most ideal way is to build the website to perform the same way, no matter the user agent requesting the page.

How can this be done? Building the URL structure without the navigation path is the first step. This information can be monitored through a cookie. Second step, building the URL structure with category names instead of category ids by rewriting the URL.

This would be the same if your website does the same thing based upon IP addresses. No matter if you feel that this is blackhat or not, it does not follow SEO best practices.

Special Delivery – IP & User Agent
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Special Delivery – IP & User Agent
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

There is a lot of things that fly around about SEO but all of them can be easily summed up in three specific optimization areas:

1. Technical and Server Side
2. Content Development
3. Promotion and Link Development

Within each of these three areas are opportunities and limitations, but to have a great site, you will need to address concerns in each of these areas to ensure your website is performing well and it is easily understood by both search engines and users.

One of the most important things about performing well in any competitive space (no matter if it’s ones and zeros, the track or on an athletic field) is knowing how each part of your team is performing and what you can expect to happen given any circumstance. I am known for giving analogies but the stool relationship is more valid than others that come to mind, namely because if you fail to consider the one or more of these three competency areas you don’t have a really great product (if you are lacking all three, forgive the pun, you might not have a leg to stand on). Back to the understanding of your team, you may be counting on one or more of these items from your website and not knowing that you are being outclassed by your competitors and rightfully so not showing up in the top positions in the search results.

There are a number of tools that can help you assess the level or lack of performance in each of these areas and I leverage a number of them myself to find out what the server response codes are, how much content is actually present on a particular page or the anchor text of the links pointed to my website, but ideally these are tactical concerns and you may be focused on one tree while the rest of the forest might not be doing so hot either. Having a balanced or holistic approach is one of the most important ways to effectively compete and continually grow.

All too often, SEOs look at a particular area of opportunity, whether if be a new technical piece (example: canonical tagging) but miss the real opportunity (example: correcting your URL structure to only publish one URL per unique page). The core best practices that have remained relatively consistent during my tenure in online optimization (some ten years) are still the best practices today. Yes, there are new aspects that have cropped up (XML sitemaps, social networking, blogging, microformats, etc.) but these are all just flavors of the same core best practices (page identification, link development, content publication, content type identification).

In my last post (yes, it was a long, long time ago), I identified a tactical approach to correcting specific concerns, but before you can really delve into the details, it is important to get the full picture of your site. Review your technical, content and link development efforts, if you feel you are over your head, look for someone you can trust whether it be a interactive or SEO agency, a friend, colleague or even a community. Your website is more than just a group of electronic pages that can be read online, it is pretty close to a person needing direction and attention to grow.

I have always said SEO is not a destination but a journey, if you agree, I have a question for you, where was your last stop?

SEO – The Three-Legged Stool
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

SEO – The Three-Legged Stool
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

It might seem elementary, but there isn’t much study around the value of the various HTML page elements in search engine results pages (SERPs). For SEO professionals there are always discussions about what is and isn’t indexed and used as a value for search engine rankings. In fact, it has been discussed at length as to if Yahoo indexes the Meta keywords element and uses it as a ranking factor, then it was confirmed that Yahoo does index the Meta keywords, but that it has the lowest value for ranking purposes with this statement from Yahoo:

What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.

Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words. Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.

However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.

So, with this in mind, I started thinking through what elements are important on a page and what of these have the most value or may have none at all. I spoke to other SEOs and took an informal survey of what is thought of being the most valuable elements and which one’s are considered more important as the others. Here are the eleven elements that keywords should be used to rank well, in the order of importance based upon my own assumptions and links to each of these pages:

• Page Title
• Heading 1
• Heading 2
• Heading 3
• Body Copy (tied with all other versions of the body copy)
• Body Copy – Bold
• Body Copy – Italic
• Body Copy – Bold & Italic
• URL
• HTML Sitemap (no ranking value for anchor text)
• Meta Description (no ranking value but still important)
• Meta Keywords (no ranking value)
• XML Sitemap (no ranking value)

So, to find out what is real and what is assumed, I tested it. Here are the details of the test (here are all of the specific details):
- Choose a three word keyword phrase (methodical verbal induction) – none of the words could be contained in any other page on the domain
- Create a unique page with the keyword chosen and insert said keyword in the particular element to be tested (published on 12/09/09)
- Link the pages from only one source (my HTML sitemap)
- Wait for Google, Bing and Yahoo to index each of the pages
- Test the rank of these pages by using the site command with the keyword and variations of the keyword to find the most important element

Notes about the test
Google was the first engine to index each of the pages with Yahoo following right behind. Bing did index four of the pages pretty quickly, then four more of the twelve, but after monitoring it, Bing dropped the eight pages from their index, so now, I cannot test Bing for the ranking factors. I have lost my patience and executed the test across Google and Yahoo only.

So, before you loose total interest in this test, here are the results of the test (sans Bing):
Google
1. Title
2. HTML Sitemap (keywords are only in anchor text to another page)
3. Heading 2
4. Heading 3
5. Heading 1
6. Body Copy
7. Bold Body Copy
8. Italic Body Copy
9. Bold/Italic Body Copy
10. URL*
– Meta Description – Did not rank
– Meta Keywords – Did not rank
– XML Sitemap – Did not rank

notes
* Keywords in the URL has more value when only one word query is used
Meta details are not considered as a ranking factor
Does not index or rank XML Sitemap

Yahoo
1. Page Title
2. Heading 2
3. Heading 3
4. Meta Description
5. Meta Keywords
6. Body Copy
7. Bold Body Copy
8. Bold/Italic Body Copy
9. XML Sitemap
10. HTML Sitemap (keywords are only in anchor text to another page)
11. URL
– Heading 1
– Italic Body Copy

notes
Heading 1 is not indexed for ranking
Italic body copy is not indexed for ranking
Body copy variations are indexed and does not appear to have any priority (except italic only)
Meta details are indexed and valued for rankings
XML content is indexed and ranked in SERPs

Wow, what results. Here are the values of page elements in order of value based upon the average across Google and Yahoo:
Page Title
Heading 2
Heading 3
Meta Description
Meta Keywords
Heading 1
Body Copy
Body Copy – Bold
Body Copy – Italic
Body Copy – Bold & Italic
URL

XML Sitemap and HTML Sitemap are not elements that are controlled in the on page elements, so they shouldn’t be considered for this test, so they are not pulled into the list.

Here are some high level details:
The page title has the most value on the page
Meta elements are still important
The H1 tag is overused and has been lowered in value
Keywords in the URLs is not that valuable

With these results, it shows what everyone assumes is right (even myself) isn’t always the case, neither is what others say including what a Yahoo engineer claims. The most important thing that I found with these results is that you can never assume that everything stays the same and don’t assume get the results first and then make an informed decision.

Feel free to share your questions, cheers!

Measuring the Value of Page Elements for Search Engine Rankings
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Measuring the Value of Page Elements for Search Engine Rankings
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Sometimes it is easy to get lost in the details of SEO.

This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?
- Bull Durham

Don’t get me wrong, SEO does require some advanced techniques to compete in most of the top areas, but it does boil down to a couple of important aspects to be effective in performing in organic search.

Here is the easiest way I have found to explain the basics of SEO:
Content = Relevance
Links = Authority
Authority + Relevance = Rankings
Rankings = Market Share

This doesn’t address the foundation of online marketing which is the site and all of the technical concerns that need to be addressed, but most of the typical technical concerns only need to be addressed initially and monitored. Like baseball, SEO comes down to the fundamentals which are content and links, then it comes down to practice, practice, practice.

The other important thing to remember when playing baseball or optimizing a site for search rankings, you need a great team that knows how to work together to stay in the game.

The Pitfalls of SEO – SEO Simplified
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

The Pitfalls of SEO – SEO Simplified
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Link building has changed, specifically around the concept of Web 2.0.

Here is the definition from SEW:

Web 2.0:
A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.

Web 2.0 has had a profound impact on the way people use and interact with others on the internet. Since the root of link building is about the links to a website and with the more users having a voice online because of Web 2.0, it has had an important direct impact on link development. Due to this, search engines have been addressing the cascading number and effects of links from forums, blogs, social networks, social bookmarks and how they impact ranking algorithms. While this has given users a greater voice online, it has also increased the number of outlets to artificially impact search results more outlets.

So, how do you build a holistic approach to link development in a Web 2.0 internet without stepping over that invisible ethical line?
One of the most important thing to consider when working to build inbound links is the intention. If your intent is to get a link from any site then it is a method to artificially inflate rankings, then it is not truly holistic. Link development should be driven by one goal: deliver relevant users that actually want to visit your site.

The best way to encourage valuable links in a Web 2.0 world is to offer a means to aid users in delivering details of your information, product or service in the way or place that they want to deliver it. You don’t have to account for every new social platform that makes a splash, but knowing what platforms your visitors use will be a valuable piece of information.

What’s best: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Sphinn or something else?
It depends on what will drive the most valuable traffic to your site, plain and simple. Knowing your audience is the most important aspect of marketing a website, whether it be in a paid or organic arena.

So, what’s the best URL shortening platform?
It doesn’t matter… because the traffic is the most important thing, not the potential link value.

Link development should be more about being present in the places that your audience is. It isn’t as corny as it sounds, but if you have the right content then the links and traffic will follow.

There are a number of plugins for most of the content platforms that will help you give your users an easy way to share your information with others. You can even build your own. I would recommend that you look at where users are coming to your site from, where they are talking about you or ask your visitors directly. It is also good to provide a way fro users to access your information on their terms (namely RSS or XML feeds) and a way to share theym in archaic ways (like email).

Link building 2.0 is just like regular link building, not a means to push your links on users or search engines, but to deliver the best content and experience that users want and the links will come.

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

Link Building 2.0 – Link Development in Web 2.0
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Link Building 2.0 – Link Development in Web 2.0
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Direct requests for inbound links are a valuable way to build quality links to your website, however, the effectiveness of requesting links is directly linked (no pun intended) to the delivery of the request. For those who are looking for an automated means or a template that works can stop reading, because to put it plainly, in my opinion there is no such product that will accomplish this task.

Building links is just like building relationships… it is a give and take. I don’t mean an exchange of money either!

Just because your content is the best thing since sliced bread doesn’t mean everyone else will see it or agree, however, just like any other marketing effort (and believe me, link building is marketing) it takes time, energy, preparation, tact, skill and a perfect pitch. But before I get too far ahead of myself, before your pitch matters, you have to reach your intended audience.

This is where the marketing execution and the preparation are most important.

First, lets look into the preparation. Just like any other marketing campaign, a direct request campaign must include a call to action and a value proposition. Simply asking for a link is not an effective way of securing links to your website.

Know your audience and apply that knowledge to your presentation, namely your email. Similar to the pillars of effective email marketing, you will need to apply some of the best techniques so your message is opened. If your message is lost because you didn’t entice them to open it then you have wasted your time and energy. Here are some of the important things to take into consideration when crafting an email:

• Write an effective subject line – Similar to the importance of meta descriptions, the subject line is usually the first thing that a person identifies when looking at their inbox. If written effectively, is your first opportunity to get your foot in the proverbial door to present your pitch.
• Have a name behind the address – The second thing that most people use to decide to continue to the full message is the from address. Don’t be bland… I am sure that nathan65987@whatever.com is important… to you, but it might be perceived as pretty impersonal to the recipient. I suggest using your actual full name. You are trying to build trust, don’t fake it.
• Email is a conversation – Just like so many of the new waves in social media, email is the origination of online conversations. With this in mind, direct link requests through email should be a conversation and not another means of push marketing. Be receptive to remarks comments and feedback.
• Know your audience – Just like a regular communication, you need to know who you are speaking to and respecting their time, understanding and experience. Every email that you send to another web site owner should be unique, sure you can use a template to start from. In fact, I highly recommend building a few and testing their effectiveness. Just like other marketing efforts, measure your conversion rate and try to duplicate it. Do your homework and find out as much information about your audience as you can, just like you were doing research to find a job, if it is important, do it right!
• Follow up on your requests – Make sure that when you start a conversation, you are ready to respond to requests, comments and feedback.
• Why – What is the point? Why should someone link to your site, page or content. This is probably the most important factor in the success of your campaign, make it count!

Finally, understanding your competition may give you the best insight into finding the best sources to go after inbound links. For more information about understanding and analyzing your competition, you should have more insight as it should be a major part of your developed SEO strategy.

Link building is one of the most difficult aspect of search engine optimization because it is a difficult and tedious task, but it is also the hardest element to measure.

I must apologize to my readers for not continuing this series, but I will complete this link adventure! If you missed out on any of the previous posts in this series, feel free to click the links below to catch up.

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

How to Win Links and Influence Webmasters
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

How to Win Links and Influence Webmasters
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Yes, yet another test, and I will return to the rest of the link development series soon, but I have been sitting on this test for some time and I thought you deserve to see the results.

The last test on the value of image optimization was limited to Google and Yahoo only and utilized the title and alt attributes in image links. This is a bit different and only utilizes these elements when the image isn’t a link and it uses four different images with these elements so we have multiple sources to test on the same page. This will give us the opportunity to see if one of these elements might have no weight whatsoever.

So, let’s get to it.

Here are the details of the of the test:

1. Four pages have been built with the same four images.
2. Each page was given a non-descriptive name, unrelated to the any of the four targeted keywords or any topical relevance and a topically relevant H2.
• Alpha
• Beta
• Charlie
• Delta
3. Each of these pages have the same parent page, this was given a topical name, related to each of the targeted keywords by topical relevance only.
• Hotels – H-Parent
4. Each of these pages contain four images and they have been named for their respective keyword along with a H3 tag with the same keyword.
5. Each of the images contain the following elements:
• Alpha – no alt, no title
• Beta – alt, no title
• Charlie – no alt, title
• Delta – alt, title
6. The parent of these pages will be located on a rarely visited page (my html sitemap) by users and crawled regularly by search engine spiders.
7. These page will target the following keywords:
• Ramada
• Radisson
• Marriott
• Hilton
8. Each of these pages were set to publish at the same time in the future, schedule for: Feb 23, 2009 @ 00:01, to ensure each page was available at the same time.
9. When cached by all major engines, we will conduct a site search for the priority of pages in the SERPs across all engines for each of the targeted keywords. This will measure the impact of alt and title elements by seeing which of the pages ranks higher with no external impacts.

This being said, here are the results:

My initial assumption was that the title element has little, if not no value, however, based upon the results of this study, it appears that this is not the case.

Digesting the Results

First, one of the first things to recognize is that results were consistent for each keyword in each engine. This let’s us be sure (at least within this test) that each engine values each element and combination differently. Each use of alt and title element have a value (even if it is minimal).

Google

Ranking in order:
– Alt Only
– None
– Title Only
– Both

The alt element definitely has the most weight, but it looks like the title element might have a negative affect on ranking and it appears (to me) that use of both may get an over optimization penalty. Interestingly, Google ranked the use of both elements in the last test (which were image links) as it’s first result and alt only as second, so, it is reasonable to say that if you are trying to rank better in Google, then using the alt element for your images will be the best behavior.

Yahoo

Ranking in order:
– None
– Alt
– Both
– Title Only

The most interesting of all of the search engine’s results, Yahoo ranks the use of alt and title elements below the no use at all, but the title element ranked lowest. So, it is reasonable to say that the alt element has the most weight and the title element might have a negative impact on rankings. Even better, Yahoo ranked differently in the previous test, as did Google, using the title only ranked first before and fourth in this test; however, using the alt element ranked second for both tests. If you are trying to rank better in Yahoo, then using the alt element will have the best affect, ranking second in both tests.

Bing

Ranking in order:
– Alt
– None
– Both
– Title Only

Again, the alt element shows to have the most weight, and, once again, it appears that the use of the title element may have a negative value from Bing. Unfortunately, we don’t have details from the previous testing because Live Search failed to crawl and index all of the pages for the first test.

Outcomes

The first thing to consider is users, as it always should be. 508 Compliance is an extremely important thing to understand and adhere to, for more information go to Section 508. Basically, use of alt elements and accurately describing the image is the right thing to do.

Second, based upon the results of both tests combined, the alt element has the most weight in all engines. Using the alt element only will give you top rankings for non-linked images in Google and Bing and second in Yahoo. For linked images, it ranks second in Google and Yahoo.

If you are trying to get the most from your images, linked or not, here is the order of value:
ALT only – Average Position 1.60
None – Average Position 2.4
Both – Average Position 3.00 tie
Title only – Average Position 3.00 tie

If you are trying to get the most from your non-linked images, here is the order of value:
Alt only – Average Position – 1.33
None – Average Position – 1.67
Both – Average Position – 3.33
Title Only – Average Position – 3.67

If you are trying to get the most from your linked images, here is the order of value:
Alt only – Average Position – 2.00 tie
Title only – Average Position – 2.00 tie
Both – Average Position – 2.50
None – Average Position – 3.5

My thought is to include the alt element and forget about trying to add more value by using the title element, it looks like it is more effort than it is worth (which is little).

What are your thoughts?

Further Study on the Value of Image Optimization
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Further Study on the Value of Image Optimization
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Maybe you have heard some of the cliches about content:

If you build it they will come!
Content is King!

Really?
Yes, it is true.

However, what most of the people that use these and other cliches about content development and link acquisition fail to share the details about what content development can directly impact link building.

Great content is valuable to others and users and webmasters will link to content that is useful, but in a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg, how do these users and webmasters find your great content to link to, if they cannot find it?

Thinking outside of the box is extremely important to get momentum rolling for a website to start ranking and being found and this is especially important for link development. So, where do you start? Well, thinking outside of the box is extremely difficult, however, defining what the box is can be a great first step. Defining the box might be different for you than others because of the category or vertical you are in and what your competitors are doing. The second, and most difficult, is to do what isn’t being done. I know it sounds simple, but it can be the most difficult. This is one of the biggest reasons that businesses look to consultants to get advice about what they are not doing or didn’t even realize they could or should rather than doing it yourself.

OK, back to the the topic…

I have broken up the idea of content development for building links into two very broad categories, on-site and off-site. On-site contains some ideas around developing content on your site or domain, but actually, it is what you have direct control over. Off-site, on the other hand, is content that is published somewhere else, simply, you don’t have direct control over it and might be more difficult to manage for optimal user and ranking benefits.

On-Site Content Development
Since on-site content development you have full control over, it doesn’t carry as much weighted value, but has the most long-term benefit. Below are outlets to develop content that can attract inbound links. You may have heard of them previously, but how you approach them can have a huge impact in their success. Potential value assessments will also be covered to set the expectations for cost and benefit.

Resource Documentation
Do you know what you are talking about? This is a very valid thing for a search engine to try to understand about your site before sending their users to your site. The reason? Because they want to send the user to the most relevant page because this makes a happy user and a happy user is a returning user. So, how do the search engines determine that you know what you are talking about? Content. Plain and simple.

Building a catalog of information that is relevant to a user will do two things, attract search engine attention and user attention. Search engines send users and users send users, so the way to best accomplish this is by having enough content on pages that you want users to find. If this does not account for the aesthetics you are trying to deliver, my suggestion is to include this information in an easy to find place (global navigation is a great place for an entry to this information). Remember, a good rule of thumb to consider is “every page is a landing page,” so, if a user landed on any page within your site, would they know where they are and are they able to easily navigate to any other area.

Quality content is quite often overlooked when engineering a site for SEO. Test your site, if you don’t have the budget, get a couple of friends that don’t regularly visit your site and solicit their feedback. The other thing, difficult to do but valuable none the less, is to look at each page of your site and ask yourself the question, “if this wasn’t my site, would I link to this page?” If the answer is no, then rethink it!

Blog
I know that so many have hopped on the bandwagon of developing a blog for their site. For link development, it is a great tool to attract attention from users that are more likely to have an online voice. Bloggers read blogs and write about blogs, so this is a good group of people to target if you are looking for inbound links.

Four concerns with building a blog for your domain to attract links:
1. Is your content solid? In other words, will it stand on it’s own or is it just a different way to pitch your products or service offerings? If it is another attempt to pitch your wares, check out other ways to attract links in my opinion.
2. If you let the cat out of the bag, be ready to clean up after it! A blog is a great tool, but if you don’t put in the time and energy required it will show and might turn your greatest advocates (and link givers) away.
3. If you can’t commit to the time it will take to maintain, build content that doesn’t need to be updated and managed. Build your content on your site instead of adding a blog.
4. If you build a blog, the likelihood is that others will link to your blog, not to other important pages on your site.

Off-Site Content Development
Off-site content development outlets, of which some will be covered below, have varying degrees of difficulty to accomplish. Some require a financial cost, but all require some resource, usually time and patience. As with on-site activities, the following topics will contain potential value assessments to help set expectations for cost and benefit.

Press Releases
Press releases are a great way to make a splash and start the inbound link ball rolling, however, like so many other link building tactics, don’t overdo it. If it isn’t news worthy (be honest to yourself), don’t put it out there. The other thing to consider is the cost. Yes, you can put out releases for free, but you do get what you pay for… just a consideration. Press releases have a way of being a flash in the pan as well, they can attract some attention, but the goal of press releases for link development is not in the release distribution only, it is in the hope that it is picked up by other writers and capture links from these sources.

Distributing content that you already published is not a good idea either, so keep it unique…

Article Syndication
The thought of writing content and publishing it anywhere other than your own site might seem wrong, however, it may get attention from users that might not find your site through normal search activities. Articles can also be a way of taking an indirect topic off of your site and address it without trying to find a way of forcing it in your site. Like press releases, don’t republish content that you already have on your site, it should or will be disregarded by search engines because it is duplicate, if you are lucky. If you aren’t, the article might rank higher than your original page. Not a pretty sight.

Guest Posts
This is a great way of dipping your toes in the blog waters by working with a vertical blog resource and offering them something they are looking for, quality content. If you are looking for a tough judge of content, a good blog editor will provide the needed feedback!

Quality content is a great bartering chip to offer a blogger, it can be a win-win. Be careful and make sure you are respecting the blog’s owner, author(s) and especially readers. I don’t recommend paying a blogger to write a review unless you are prepared to allow them full control of the message, link(s) included or not!

There are plenty of other areas of online content to attract links, I am sure you can think of one or two I haven’t covered here. But circling back to the old cliches, content is still king. Building quality content that is link worthy is the best way to attract links. Be a quality resource and you will be resourced. We have a saying about promotions at Rosetta, “You have to do the job, before you get the job.” This can also be applied here, if you don’t link out to other sites, chances are it will be tough to get others to link to your site. No website is an island.

This concludes the link building via content development, for now at least. The most important thing to remember is that content is what drives the Internet, images and design are great but if the user doesn’t see it, did it even matter. Build quality content, it is the foundation of relevance. If your content is need of work, fix it first before looking elsewhere for inbound links.

Next, we will be covering direct link requests, so stay tuned!

Here are links to other posts in this series:

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

Link Building Via Content Development
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Link Building Via Content Development
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to the third post in my latest series, Holistic Link Building 101. When it comes to building a website for SEO success, link development is an extremely important part of an effective online marketing strategy.

Two important questions about link development regarding directory submissions:

1. Are directory submissions still a relevant tactic and worth your time and your budget to build quality links to your website for improved ranking in SERPs?
2. Are directory submissions still a relevant tactic and worth your time and your budget to build quality links to your website to get more traffic to your website?

Understanding what directories are, their purpose and how they are useful is what we will cover first.

History
Directories have been one of the most useful tools for users to find information on the Internet, in fact, prior to search engines, they were the best way to find what you were looking for online. Similar to a phone book, online directories allowed users to find out about websites around specific topics, and as with what 411 service did to printed phone directories, search engines ushered in a new age of finding what you were looking for quickly and easily.

There are a lot of correlations between phone books and online directories:

• Both are limited in the information they contain – phone books only have information for those businesses that are in a particular area and online directories are also limited by the amount of sites that are included in the particular directory usually not a constraint of geographical concerns but still limited.
• Traditional phone directories list phone numbers within categories based upon what the business does as well as online directories. In some circumstances they both can give multiple listings to a business/site that don’t fall into a single category within the directory.
• Both of these types of directories have constraints based upon time as well. Offline directories have to be printed and distributed which takes time and money. Online directories are limited due to the fact that a directory listing needs to be initiated and reviewed before entry into the directory.

What makes a good directory and what to consider when submitting?
As with offline directories, like phone books, an effective online directory will be useful because it has visibility and is used by the people you are trying to reach and has enough authority to be considered useful by the people and organizations that are often resourced when trying to find information. Basically, any directory that you submit to should be used by your target audience and considered useful by search engines as a quality resource for the topic of your site. Why the distinction for topical relevance? Topical relevance is an extremely important aspect of link building. Yes, a directory might have a high PageRank according to the Google toolbar you downloaded, however, it might not be the most relevant directory for your site.

Here is an example, if you have a website about computers & Internet, you might be very well suited to be listed in this category in the Yahoo! Directory, however, if you are an organization that offers search engine optimization services, you might be better suited to become a member of SEMPO and be included in the member directory. Both offer a valuable link to your website for $299 per year, however, you might get better visibility from the people you are trying to reach and more relevance from search engines that can improve your SERPs.

Don’t get me wrong, however, if you are considering a phased approach to directory submissions or have a limited budget to work with, go for the one(s) that will provide you with the traffic that makes you more dollars and cents! PageRank should not be a determining factor in link building (I don’t think I can ever say this enough!), but that doesn’t mean you should just submit to everything and hope for the best. Your website is more important than that, you wouldn’t just trust your house to anyone you found to take care of your house, would you? Everywhere your site is linked from says something about your site without saying a word.

Here are a couple of directories and what can be extremely valuable to be in (in most cases). I have included some details as to why it may be useful to be included in these directories:

Yahoo! Directory – Human Edited
Exceptional Quality, for a price. This is the most valuable general directory on the web and maintains higher, than most, standards to entry.

Best of the Web – Human Edited
Best bang for the buck! If there is a directory that could eventually knock Yahoo! from being the best general directory, BOTW is the front runner… and it doesn’t cost as much (I recommend the one-time review fee if you can afford it).

DMOZ – The Open Directory Project – Not Sure Who/If Human Edited
Even more value for the cost, nothing. However, this is the most difficult directory to gain entry into, unless you know someone, because there is a lack of volunteer editors to maintain the directory. This is a conundrum seeing that there is little to no communication to those of us who are qualified and ready to help keep it going. As much as I knock DMOZ, I have and would be honored to be an editor of any category, but have not received an acceptance or a rejection for that matter.

Business.com – Human Edited
Quality traffic if you are looking for b2b traffic, but the listings include nofollowed links… so what? The relevance is important and not being where your potential customers are means you are invisible.

Do I think you should be in each of the above directories? No, because they may not have a category that your site fits into. However, there might be more than one category that makes sense, so don’t limit yourself to just one category, if you belong in multiple areas go for it! You never get what you don’t ask for, so ask… and be ready to pay if necessary.

What are the most valuable directories?
I know, a lot of people are looking for a huge list of directories, paid and free, to submit to. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t maintain a list of directories for general consumption and what makes sense for me and my clients might not be valuable for your site either, but you can check out ISEDN if you want a list. My suggestion for you, is the same as anyone else: when you are researching your competitors, find out what directories they are in and start building a list of directories from there. Look for organizations that make sense for what you offer, like BBB, Chambers of Commerce, trade organizations and such. These will most likely have more value and get more traffic than some thrown together php directory that is a part of group of directories (usually owned by the same person) that is full of junk. Once you have a working list of directories, maintain it by revisiting it every couple of months and adding and deleting from it to get the best list for your site.

A quality directory can be easily picked out of a lineup, they have links pointing to them, they have a lot of relevant websites in the proper categories and are human edited. Rubber stamp directories are not worth the 2 minutes it takes to get to the proper category, hit the submit link and fill out the form. Remember, not all directories are created or maintained equally!

Next, I will be digging into content development’s impact on link development. Oh, and I don’t think that if you just publish great content the links will start rolling in either! So, stay tuned for the fourth post of the series and, as always, I welcome your feedback!

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

Directory Submissions for Success
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Directory Submissions for Success
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

In my last post, Holistic Link Building 101, the beginning of a series of post was embarked upon and the topic is very subjective. When it comes to building a website for SEO success, however, link building or development is an extremely important part of an effective online marketing strategy. Like other SEO tactics, holistic link building is not easily defined because there isn’t a single source for defining SEO terminology, so it is used more frequently than defined by those of us who use it. So, in an effort to be more transparent, I will give you my definition of what I believe and employ when developing a holistic link building program.

Holistic Link Building
Emphasizing the importance of the whole website and the interdependence of its parts.
(the parts: technical factors, on-site optimization and off-site promotion)

This can be understood to mean that the overall value is greater than the sum of the parts. Seeing that we are not addressing the technical concerns or on-site optimization (content development) directly, the off-site promotion or link building is interdependent upon the other two factors, however, looking at the importance of link development to the overall performance of a website in SERPs is what we are trying to accomplish here.

Let’s look a little further into what are the aspects of links.

What is a link?
A link is a specific function in HTML code, so it is bound by certain rules and must incorporate certain elements for it to be useful and perform its function. Here are the dynamics of a simplified HTML link:

<a href="destination">anchor text or image</a>

element 1 – <a> – open anchor
– defines the type of function that the HTML tag will contain an anchor
element 2 – href="" – hypertext reference
– expressed after the anchor but before the > closing of the open anchor element
element 3 – Text or Image Source – bounded element
– this is the text or image that is click-able to open the intended href and begins after the end of the opening anchor tag
element 4 – </a> – close the anchor
– defines the end of the HTML function

Now there are large number of additional elements that can be contained within the link function that can dramatically affect the way a link is expressed within a page and that can have an impact of the value passed by the link, however, this is the simplest form of the link function within HTML 4.0, so K.I.S.S., at least for now.

OK, so we have defined holistic link building and defined what a link is and how it functions, so why is this important? Simple, the link function has a simply defined use for users and how it passes value to them, but if you look beyond this simple functionality of a link, you are like the guy who gets the SEO nugget and rides it straight into the ground.

Simply put, a link is meant to be a reference and this function is intended to do one thing, send a user from one point to another. That is it’s purpose and will always be the primary purpose. The best link will send users to the appropriate page or reference, if a link placed on a page will not do this because no one ever goes to the page, I wouldn’t worry about getting a link on this page because it isn’t fulfilling it’s actual purpose. For that matter, if a link incorporates other elements to hide the link from the user, it is worthless as well, regardless if a search engine can find it.

So, why is holistic link building important? Because if you are doing it right, with the actual purpose of the link function in mind, you should look at building links in a different light, namely for the fulfillment of the purpose of the link: provide a relevant resource, easily recognizable to a user and lead the user to a relevant and appropriate destination. Holistic link building is about the user, not about search engine rankings.

Links that send users to your page/site that have a reasonable understanding or expectation of what is on the other side of the link is relevant traffic and when you look at it from a business perspective, that is the main purpose of your website anyway, isn’t it?

This concludes the second of what appears to be a seven post series outlining what the in’s and out’s of holistic link building. Here is the what you have to look forward to or click on previous posts to see those posts:

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

Holistic Link Building Defined
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Holistic Link Building Defined
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Link building is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO and it doesn’t appear that some people really get it, but that is no different than most SEO concepts.

A lot of people find a nugget of SEO wisdom, apply thought, reason and ride it like a horse until it can easily become apparent to a search engine (because they can assume your behavior based upon the fruit these efforts bring). This usually draws direct criticism through removal of any increased value, causing you to be relegated you back to your old SERP position or even worse, dropping a penalty or even going as far as removing your sight from the index.

It is easy for search engines to see and take notice when link building efforts step outside of what could be considered as natural.

What does this mean?
Search engines are frequently crawling websites to find new and updated content to ad to or update their index. Included in these content crawls is seeing links from this content to other pages, both internally and externally. So, it is reasonable to say that they see the links coming to your website from other sources, that’s the point of link building. They too, can apply thought and reason to see when and how these new links are being added. This helps the engines to determine you inbound link profile (ILP) which will give them insight into if the links pointing to your website are natural (user-generated, authoritative and such) or done in an unnatural manner (paid, exchanged or otherwise). It is this ILP that impacts the value the search engines give to the links pointing to your site.

So, if your ILP looks unnatural, as an example: because they have determined that you have purchased links in the past, they may apply reasoning that links, not paid for, might also be purchased and should not pass authority and/or value. This is the type of risk that you should consider determining if you should purchase and/or sell links. This doesn’t only apply for purchased links, it can also be reasonably applied to link exchanges and other unnatural behaviors.

This is a very large topic, so I am going to tackle holistic link building in a number of posts to follow this one. Here is the outline:

Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0

Stay tuned! You can find these articles by following in your favorite RSS reader or by coming back to this post, as I will update each of these topics in the outline with the post that will follow.

Holistic Link Building 101
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Holistic Link Building 101
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Sometimes not understanding why a website isn’t performing well can be a difficult thing to figure out. However, many times it is important to take a step back and look at what signals can be seen. When looking for technical concerns can appear to be a daunting task, however, we are going to review server responses and hopefully I can help you take a look at a website and not feel like you just pulled up to the intersection pictured here.

If you are like me, you like to leave the mechanics of pretty much everything important to those who know not only what is going on, but also how to fix the concern. But, if you are also like me, you really want to know what is going on and knowing what the outcome should be can ensure proper management of expectations, usually your own! To ensure accuracy you might need a tool and a couple of minutes to check things out, however, showing up at the desk of the person in charge of the web server with the right information is usually the first step in a speedy recovery if anything is wrong.

So, with that I will cover the most common classes and numbers of HTTP Status Codes, what they do and what they should do send the right signals to search engines.

HTTP Status Codes

• 200 Series – Successful
• 200 – The request has been successfully completed, aka “here it is.”
• 300 Series – Redirected
• 301 – The page requested has been permanently moved to the given page, aka “permanent detour.”
• 302 – The page requested has been temporarily moved to the given page, aka “temporary detour.”
• 400 Series – Error Request
• 404 – The requested information is not available, aka “can’t find it.”
• 500 Series – Server Error
• 500 – Internal server error resulting in inability to fulfill request, aka “too busy.”

I know, you are thinking, I know the lingo and what these mean to the engines but I really don’t know how or where to find these mysterious server responses. Here are a couple of tools that are easy to use and understand. The first is a plugin for Firefox called Httpfox and the other way, if you are using IE, Chrome or another browser, is to use a browser based tool like Web Sniffer. I prefer Httpfox because you can keep it running and check the server response code while you surf, bonus!

So, you know what to look for and you have the tool to check it out, what now?

Know when and why a certain server response should be used.

Every page you publish intentionally should return a 200 response, except your custom 404 page. This let’s the search engine crawler know that everything is good to go.

When you move or remove a page, intentionally or otherwise, a redirect should be in place to send the user and the crawler to the new location or to your custom 404 page. The biggest difference between a 301 and 302 is not just semantics of permanence when it comes to a search engine crawler. Search engines (speaking in generalities) do two things when they receive a 301 redirect, first, they note the new permanent location of the requested page while getting it on their list to crawl in the future and second, they pass the value from the previous location and drop it from their list to crawl in the future. This lowers the number of pages they need to visit plus it makes sense from a means of housecleaning. Now, a 302 redirect does something different, first, the crawler doesn’t necessarily not the new location because it is temporary and second, it doesn’t take the old page off the list and keeps the value for the previous page to be returned when that page comes back. This can impact the performance of websites in two big ways, it can trap value from flowing properly through your website and it doesn’t pull the old page from their crawl keeping them coming back for nothing. There are some theories that search engines only visit a limited number of pages when they visit a website, so keeping these old pages that don’t exist on the checklist keeps them from exploring deeper into your site.

OK, the 404 server response is one of the most misunderstood of all of the HTTP Status Codes, mostly because you return a page (custom “could not find page” is recommended, for instance take a look at mine) but you return a server response of could not find. This is important because it takes the page off of the list of pages to revisit and you the ability to track in your analytical package where these are coming from to either correct the link (internal) or request the publisher to correct (external).

Last, but not least would be a 500 response. This is an internal error at the server level and if this is the code you get, it should be addressed quickly by a technician.

What’s the big deal? Well, when you are building or optimizing a website you may need to affect changes like navigation, links and even page names. While doing this for optimal performance, many content management systems, or CMS, automatically change the name of a given page and set a redirect from the old URL, but this might pass a 302 response keeping all of the value the old page URL there and not passing through to the new name or location. This can also be impacted if you have made changes to address canonical concerns with the www or non-www and even http or https versions of pages that could be considered as duplicate content (bad) or dilute link value to multiple versions of the same page (worse).

Hopefully this will help you do a quick health check of your website and keeping it healthy, technically speaking, is the best way to ensure you are performing well in SERPs.

Server Responses – The What and Why for SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Server Responses – The What and Why for SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

In a recent post at SEOmoz, by Will Critchlow of Distilled, entitled Nofollow is Dying: The Impact of Micro-Blogging and Nofollow on SEO, is a review the overuse of the nofollow link attribute in online publishing by webmasters and 3rd party sites like WordPress.com, Blogger.com and Twitter and it’s impact on SEO for everyone. Before looking at what Will’s conclusion that nofollow is dying because of micro-blogging, let’s look at the purpose and reason Google, MSN/Live Search and Yahoo! adopted the nofollow in the first place.

So, why was the nofollow attribute adopted and used by search engines?

The whole point to instituting the nofollow relationship attribute to link tags was to address three main requests (according to Google Webmaster Support):

What are Google’s policies and some specific examples of nofollow usage?
Here are some cases in which you might want to consider using nofollow:

• Untrusted content: If you can’t or don’t want to vouch for the content of pages you link to from your site — for example, untrusted user comments or guestbook entries — you should nofollow those links. This can discourage spammers from targeting your site, and will help keep your site from inadvertently passing PageRank to bad neighborhoods on the web. In particular, comment spammers may decide not to target a specific content management system or blog service if they can see that untrusted links in that service are nofollowed. If you want to recognize and reward trustworthy contributors, you could decide to automatically or manually remove the nofollow attribute on links posted by members or users who have consistently made high-quality contributions over time.
• Paid links: A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word “Advertisement”). More information on Google’s stance on paid links.
• Crawl prioritization: Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’s index. However, a solid information architecture — intuitive navigation, user- and search-engine-friendly URLs, and so on — is likely to be a far more productive use of resources than focusing on crawl prioritization via nofollowed links.

Let’s take a further look at each of these:

Untrusted Content
The untrusted content, like the Twitter example in Will’s post, is that the 3rd party can’t reasonably verify all of the outbound links from posts/tweets/threads and many would argue that this would kill the medium that Twitter and others have become.

Paid Links
The paid links debate, we can look into further:

Paid links
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Two important aspects stated in this that can be easily disregarded at face value:

1. Google uses links to determine authority and/or reputation* (no where do they state that no followed links stop passing authority and/or reputation, just PageRank).
2. When specifically speaking of selling links that do pass PageRank, they state the concern as a “disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact…” However, if I were purchasing a link, I would consider the source, just like building natural links. You would want to buy a link that is either sending a lot of traffic or gives high visibility or passing value (each of these can be a concern).

Crawl Prioritization
Crawl priority is related to internal linking efforts, so for the given scenario we will disregard.

Conclusion
We see that Google says that they will not find pages if the only way they are accessible is via no followed links, however, there are so many other ways to find this content and get it into their index. Even a website that has nothing other than nofollowed links has a registration through ICANN and can be navigated to as well. Google has made it clear that they want to organize the world’s information:

Company Overview
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

So, with this being said, it makes sense that they want to index all of it to organize. They want the data!

How does Google handle nofollowed links?
We don’t follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it’s important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.

Andy Beal would like to see another link attribute be created that would notify Google to follow but not pass value and Will Critchlow speculates that nofollowed links are/may lead Google to find and index new sites that they may not have found yet.

IMO, Google may not pass PageRank value through a no followed link, however, relevancy and authority value is still passed through any link from the page that links out.* I think that this makes sense even if the author or the platform places (by default or otherwise) the nofollow attribute on outbound links. Even if you feel that this attribute is a link condom contraceptive, that doesn’t mean that the link isn’t there, it sends users and why wouldn’t it send crawlers? As far as Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms, many of the links from these sources are passed through another 3rd party like bit.ly or TinyURL and adds another level of complexity to passing authority, relevancy and even PageRank.

If you don’t want any value to pass through an outbound link, try a couple of the following options:

1. Don’t link to external sources (not recommended for usability)
2. Link to an intermediary page that tells your user that they are leaving your site and block these pages from being indexed through the Robots.txt file (users probably won’t like this one either)
3. Link out with the nofollow attribute for unverified sources and regular links that pass value to sources that you know anyway, keeping in mind that the only link (in my opinion) that can hurt you is the one you put on your site, so link to relevant pages (good for users and engines).

What are your thoughts?

Do you think that the nofollow attribute should be disregarded by search engines?
Do you feel that the nofollow attribute is still a valuable tool for webmasters?

*The theory that Google passes authority and/or reputation through outbound links is not currently supported by empirical research or self-submission of Google.

Long Live No Follow
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Long Live No Follow
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

]]> http://www.seopittfall.com/long-live-no-follow/feed 25 http://www.seopittfall.com/die-duplicate-content-die http://www.seopittfall.com/die-duplicate-content-die#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:41:51 +0000 pittfall http://www.seopittfall.com/?p=842

What does canonical mean?
According to a biology glossary from the University of Arizona it is “repetitive; repeating in different forms“.

So, what does it mean to online publishers?
Simply, duplicate content.

How does duplicate content exist, what is it’s impact on search engines and, more importantly, how does it affect online publishers in search engine results?

I know that many of you think that search engines are “all knowing” when it comes to understanding content on the web, but the simple fact is that they are bound by what can be determined by mathematical principles, equations also know as algorithms. Now, this mean that they determine things based upon these exact measurements, even when it relates to a query that is not mathematically based. The first level of complexity becomes visible… namely trying to determine a value for qualitative data in a quantitative means. This means that to arrive at a solution for a qualitative query they must convert the qualitative data (content) and the qualitative request (keyword) into a numeric value to measure them against each other, find the best answer (based upon their predetermined algorithm) and return the qualitative data to the user (results).

Now, we all know that there are a lot a metrics that are used in determining the quantitative value of a web page (domain, URL, location of page within the domain, relational or semantic value, inbound links, outbound links, domain authority, page authority, topical authority, content, domain age, content age and so on), but one of these has been a thorn in the side of the search engines and the publishers of said content, duplication of content.

How can that be?
Simple, publishers have wanted to make sure that the most relevant content is accessible to users, because when it comes down to it, users are the goal of every publisher. The same can be said about search engines. The user is the lifeblood of the Internet. Without them, this whole thing is pointless. The search engine want to return the most relevant results so the user will return when they are looking for something, and the publisher wants the user to find their products/services when they are looking for it.

This mostly affects publishers that use content management systems (CMS) to build dynamic websites from databases of product/page information (like WordPress). Now weather you are publishing pages with ids, tracking parameters, session ids and other forms of publishing a page with differing URLs you can “hint” to Google, Yahoo! and MSN/Live Search which the actual original page is without having to define 301 redirects or risk loosing your tracking so they are less likely to index two pages that are essentially the same page.

OK, in an effort to KISS (keep it simple stupid), me of course, the simple answer to the three questions posed at the beginning of this post:

1. How does duplicate content exist? Typically from parameters being passed in URL strings or from CMS’ that publish the same page in multiple versions
2. What is duplicate content’s impact on search engines? Pages with the same content and different URLs may not be recognized as the same page
3. How does it affect online publishers in search engine results? Duplicate pages can gain value diverting the total value to multiple pages

So, it’s a bright and shiny day for publishers wanting to let search engines know which page is the most important and the search engines stop wasting space by storing the same page over and over again, right?

Not so fast!
Sighting the presentation deck announcing the new link tag, slide 8:

• This is a hint, not a directive/mandate/requirement. Search engines choose when to use the suggestion
• Far better to avoid dupes and normalize urls in the first place
• If you’re a power user, exhaust alternatives first
• Be careful. Regular bloggers/websites may want to wait for their software to be updated
• If we see abuse, we reserve the right to react as needed

So, you will be best suited to find the answer to the real question, how can I accomplish what I am trying to do without impacting my rankings? Specifically, point two, avoid duplicate pages and normalize page URLs in the first place.

News about the new canonical tag
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Yahoo! Search Blog
Live Search Webmaster Center Blog
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Roundtable
Search Engine Journal
SEOmoz
Marketing Pilgrim
Matt Cutts
Yoast – WordPress Plugin to fix canonical pages
WebProNews Video – Interview with Matt Cutts

Die Duplicate Content Die!
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Die Duplicate Content Die!
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

]]> http://www.seopittfall.com/die-duplicate-content-die/feed 31 http://www.seopittfall.com/measuring-the-value-of-alt-and-title-elements-of-image-tags http://www.seopittfall.com/measuring-the-value-of-alt-and-title-elements-of-image-tags#comments Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:00:13 +0000 pittfall http://www.seopittfall.com/?p=735

Not a great title, I know, but accurate.

Recently, I began a test of the ALT and Title elements in the img html tag. Here is the breakdown of the testing:

1. Conducting the research by creating a page on the topic of “dogs” that has the same image of a Dalmatian that link to four separate pages. The parent page is only linked to from one page, the other four are linked to from the parent and the same location as the dog page. These pages will be further influenced by placing them into a deeper directory /dogs/.
2. These four links will have the following elements:
• Page One – Link – No Alt – No Title
• Page Two Link – Alt – No Title
• Page Three Link – No Alt – Title
• Page Four Link – Alt – Title
3. These pages will have unrelated but different names.
4. The parent of these pages will be located on a rarely visited page (my html sitemap) by users and crawled regularly by search engine spiders.
5. These pages will contain an H1, H2, H3 and page content. Lorem Ipsen will be used to incorporate the content with keywords added to the content in a consistent manner (same density, character count and placement of keywords).
6. These page will target the keyword “Dalmatian.”
7. When cached by all major engines*, we will conduct a site search for the priority of pages in the SERPs across all engines for “Dalmatian.” This will measure the impact of alt and title elements by seeing which of the pages ranks higher with no external impacts.

* Two notes to this research:
one > the pages within this study were originally published December 11, 2008 and adjustments were made to these pages the following day (due to my lack of spelling prowess) and the original pages were quickly cached by all three engines; and
two > despite returning cached dates of 1/2/2009 and 1/3/2009 MSN/Live Search’s index has failed to pick up the spelling changes that have been made, from “dalmation” to the correct spelling of the canine breed “dalmatian,” except for one of these pages that was reportedly cached on 1/25/2009.
These two notes being taken into account, the results for MSN/Live Search have not been included due to incomplete data. Ask.com was considered for this study, however, it has not, at the time of publication of this study cached any of the tested pages.

This being said, here are the results:


Position	Google	Yahoo!
1	4 – Alt + Title	3 – Alt + Title
2	2 – Alt + Title	2 – Alt + Title
3	3 – Alt + Title	1 – Alt + Title
4	1 – Alt + Title	4 – Alt + Title
5	dogs	none

click on the engine name to see the SERPs for the tested query

My initial assumption was that the title element has little, if not no value, however, based upon the results of this study, it appears that this is not the case.

Google

Looking at the results from Google, you can see that the alt element is clearly more valuable than the title element (noting that both pages with alt elements outrank the one with title only). It is also curious that the page with both alt and title elements is the highest ranking page of the four. I would have assumed that this page would have been considered over optimized, but the results differ. The fifth result is interesting, seeing that it only has the target keyword visible once and in the image elements.

Yahoo!

Looking at the result it appears that Yahoo! does not see that utilizing both of these elements are ideal (my assumption is that it appears to be a case of over optimization based upon the fact that the page without either alt or title elements outranks the page with both), however, they put more weight on the title over the alt element. Not having a fifth result was interesting as well, seeing that the targeted keyword was contained within the visible text.

Seeing the results of this study, it is clear to see that Google and Yahoo! assign different values for elements within an image tag, however, it is interesting to see the differences, an apparent over optimization ding from Yahoo! and an increase in ranking from Google. So, with the results in, it looks like if you are optimizing your images for improved performance, the only thing that you can do to positively impact your ranking across both engines would be to utilize only the alt element, however, if you are looking to improve your ranking in Google, you might utilize both alt and title elements to give your page the best chance for ranking better.

I have tried to be as patient as possible with MSN/Live Search to see the impacts, however, I was more excited to release the results of this test than patient. I would absolutely love to hear if you have conducted similar testing and have differing results. I also know that these results will undoubtedly be different after the publication of this post, seeing that additional links will be pointing to these pages and this may/may not skew the ongoing results.

Let me know what you think of my study.

Measuring the Value of ALT and Title Elements of Image Tags
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Measuring the Value of ALT and Title Elements of Image Tags
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

]]> http://www.seopittfall.com/measuring-the-value-of-alt-and-title-elements-of-image-tags/feed 25 http://www.seopittfall.com/seo-for-local-results http://www.seopittfall.com/seo-for-local-results#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:07:48 +0000 pittfall http://www.seopittfall.com/?p=785

Very interesting… recently I posted about the need for Google to focus on relevancy in search results to maintain their market share that led me to look at tying a geographic location to improve relevancy and my belief that it will be the next step to reinforce universal search results. As a professional SEO consultant, I know how difficult it can be to manage the efforts to get traditional store locations in the results of the major engines. Of course, as if I had some kind of inside information, here comes a consolidated answer: getlisted.org.

GetListed.org, the latest offspring from the creative minds of Pat Sexton and David Mihm. The concept behind this project is to empower businesses with the ability to monitor their exposure in local search results by giving them the ability and ease to verify their listings in the major local search products from Best of the Web, Google, MSN and Yahoo! by simply putting in their business name and zip code and the ability to monitor multiple locations. The first step to local search, just like regular search, is getting listed, getlisted.org is helping to do just that!

Here is a quick screen shot for Google:
click for a larger image

As you can see, after searching for a location (based upon the name and zip code of the location), you can quickly see the visual cues of what should be done to improve your local listings. It also adds the searched location to your dashboard (after logging in). Moving on to the Overview in the dashboard:

click for a larger image

This gives a good overview of listings, citations, reviews and photos. In this case, the listing:

Google Inc
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043

is not listed in anything… which I thought was odd, until I searched Google Maps for the Googleplex at the given address and low and behold:

Neither of the two listings were verified and both were without reviews. Wow, these two listings are on Google Maps, but have not been verified.

So, if a business like Google could forget something as trivial as managing their own listings, it makes sense to check up on your locations as well, doesn’t it?

Find out more about GetListed.org:
About
Launch Press Release – Post
Blog
Resource Center

Even if you have all of your local ducks in a row, the blog and the resource center devoted to local search marketing should become very valuable resources for staying on top of the ever changing local search scene.

What others are saying:

GetListed.org is an incredibly useful and easy to use tool to quickly see how your local search listings play in the local search space.
SEO Roundtable

Any business with a local focus will benefit for the rapidity with which this tool will show them how they are currently listed and what to do to claim or improve their data.
Search Engine Guide

SEO for Local Results
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

SEO for Local Results
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

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