Search Engine Optimisation News Blog ://XSEO ::

22 Feb07

How to.... check if your site is built for search engines.

With our recent exploits at Technology for Marketing (TFM) and at the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES) last week, it was surprising how many website owners, webmasters and web designers had no idea how to check their site for the simplest of accessibility to search engines.

So I've decided to put a series of "How to" documents together which will be run as a series over the coming weeks. How to ...check if your site is built for search engines.

15 Feb07

Matt Cutts At SES.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google spam, took on the challenge of show organiser Chris Sherman, of taking the Keynote at this years SES London.

After some discussion about how he got his position at Google, which is a story in itself, he went on to explain one of the more interesting aspects associated with Googles indexation and how it has changed. He confirmed the old "Google Dance" system has been replaced by an "everflex" system where results are changed gradually throughout the day. He went on to explain however there are other elements called "data pushes" which have an impact on search results every few weeks. Algorithm changes, however, do still happen but this occurs every few months.

There was one significant statement Matt made, that was if you want to appear in the top of search engines you need to build your sites for the future, stay away from anything that could be identified as web spam.

13 Feb07

The state of Web Design in the UK.

At the recent Technology For Marketing Show (TFM)at Olympia last week, with our colleagues at Periscopix, XSEO were running the shows Search Clinic.

This was a new feature of the show which was designed as a free resource to help visitors to improve their online marketing. Whilst Periscopix were assisting visitors in their paid campaigns, XSEO were providing advice and assistance for natural search engine optimisation. What became clear was that a great number of sites were being produced that could not be optimised because of poor basic web design. However it wasn't until we collated the stats that it really became apparent how poorly web designers, many of them agencies, had no understanding of how search engines work and how to get the design right for search.

8 Feb07

SES London 2007.

If you are in London in the February 13 -15, one of the biggest search engine marketing shows rolls into town.

The conference tickets are available online at SES(click below). Oh and if you are interested I'll be speaking at two sessions - "Link Baiting, Buying Links & Other Tactics" and "Putting Search Into The Ad Mix".

7 Feb07

Technology for Marketing 2007: Search Marketing Clinic.

For those of you that came to see us at TFM in Olympia, it was good meeting you.

What a fantastic show, we were fully occupied throughout the both days, for every session we had just as many people were waiting for our assistance. For those we didn't manage to get to see, it's not too late - send us an email to blog@xseo.com or come and see us speak at SES next week.

2 Feb07

Car vs Plane, the race home. part deux.

After the weather, on the 19th January, closed in and resulted in a cancellation of the second phase of Jem ( XSEO Director) and Martin's trip to collect Martins recently acquired 1941 Piper J3 Cub from Niort in France. The forecast is good for this weekend so part deux is on.

This time the plan is to do the trip in style, Jem won't be using his own car, he'll be battling the roads of France in a 1993 Bentley. Just to recap ( Car Vs Plane Part 1) the reason for Jem to escort the plane is the fact that the Piper has only a 10 gallon fuel load, at a consumption of approx 3.5 gallons per hour, and a top speed of 75 mph means it needs fuel every 140-180 miles or 2 - 2.5 hrs. However most of the airfields Martin and Adrian will be needing to land at won't have fueling facilities. So Jem, having filled a load of gerry cans and carrying them in the boot of his car, is going to drive the whole thing. Car Vs Plane - Part 2 starts this weekend!

30 Jan07

Google's new anti- Googlebombing Algorithm

Google is reported to have been playing with a new algorithm. Whether it is an algorithm or an just a new filter is immaterial, but the technique of Googlebombing would appear to be at the centre of it's impact. Since the beginning of Google their algorithm has been based less on the content of a site and more on the number of links pointing to a website with a particular piece of anchortext.

And indeed some progress has been made. For example one of the major demonstrations for this was the word "exit". If you put "exit" as a search into Google, in the past, Yahoo, Google, Crayola and Disney all ranked well...Google's new Algorithm

29 Jan07

Yahoo! Keyword analyser off-line.

We have been experiencing problems with the beloved Overture Keyword Suggestion tool for a couple of weeks now. On minute it is there and working fine, the next it's off-line. However over the last few days this recourse has been off-line completely.

The tool has been around for what appears to be, since the dawn of the internet. Whilst some of it's data was questionable with regard to accuracy at times, it was the best one out there. From an SEO point of view it has become core to building up a picture of user behaviour and competition. It is being muted around the internet that Yahoo! may be looking to dissolve the facility. This would be a great shame.

26 Jan07

Technology for Marketing 2007: Search Marketing Clinic.

The TFM show this year will be introducing a brand new Search Marketing Clinic, sponsors this year are Periscopix, to give visitors FREE advice and guidance on the increasingly complex world of Pay-per-Click advertising. XSEO will be in support providing FREE help and advice on Natural Search Engine Optimisation.

The show is on from the 6th -7th Feb. Drop-in sessions will be conducted on stand B51 throughout the course of the two days, but for those wishing for a longer more detailed consultation, appointments must be booked in advance by contacting Neema Patel at Periscopix on +44 (0) 20 7089 6439 or by email; neema.patel@periscopix.com

25 Jan07

Dupes - a serious problem.

Yet again this week, a client mistakenly created two pages of duplicate content. The response from Google was swift, one of the primary pages became completely de listed from the index - indicated by the fact that the page had no cache whatsoever.

This emphasises yet again that you cannot afford to allow any pages in your site to have duplicates, you also have to watch out for issues of copyright infringement and plagiarism. If you do need to have duplicate pages, make sure you use a noindex tag in the robots text.

19 Jan07

Car vs Plane, the race home. part deux.

Picking up the story from earlier in January, where Jem and Martin ( the Shaw brothers) head off once again to bring back Martins recently acquired 1941 Piper J3 Cub. Martin to fly with a second pilot, Adrian, whilst Jem battles the roads of rural France in an attempt to meet up with the plane at various airstrips for refueling.

Just to recap ( Car Vs Plane Part 1) the reason for Jem to escort the plane is the fact that the Piper has only a 10 gallon fuel load, at a consumption of approx 3.5 gallons per hour, and a top speed of 75 mph means it needs fuel every 140-180 miles or 2 - 2.5 hrs. However most of the airfields Martin and Adrian will be needing to land at won't have fueling facilities. So Jem, having filled a load of gerry cans and carrying them in the boot of his car, is going to drive the whole thing. Car Vs Plane - Part 2 starts this weekend!

16 Jan07

What is Spam and will you get caught using it?

A recent client received a exclusion message from Google. The offending passage was a layer placed by a previous SEO, the layer was placed -1000px left and -1000px up. This begs the question are Google's spiders able to identify such hidden content or does someone have to report it? It would not be difficult for Google or any spider to identify such practices. What is Spam and will you get caught?

15 Jan07

New year Google Backlink Update.

This morning saw the introduction of a new set of backlink results from Google. The results are not fully stable, so there is always a chance it won't stick. PageRank at this time has not changed. Google update history

Update: 20:15

PageRank has updated, we are seeing signs that the cut off for the PageRank was pages around the first week of December. This brings the index much closer in time than the previous 3 month cut off noted previously during 2006.

10 Jan07

Natural SEO is dead, again?

It never ceases to amaze me how many times someone in a forum or blog raises this one. This debate rears it's ugly head on a very regular basis, there are many points of view, I wouldn't say I agree with all of them but the doom mongers would appear to be more prominent.

So in a recent conversation with a marketing guru, the discussion of SEO (search engine optimisation- natural search) and SEM (search engine marketing- paid search) came into the conversation. Whilst SEM is more accountable, and the return on investment is more precisely measurable. The fact remains that as more potential advertisers realise they cannot get to the top of natural search, paying for their clicks is a real alternative. However as a result the bid prices are set to continue to rise. Does this not mean that if the paid prices continue to rise then the need to reduce the paid search costs will increase making natural SEO even more important. SEO is dead...not!

5 Jan07

Car vs Plane, the race home.

Slight departure from the normal blog. Today is the first day of the outward trip of my co-directors race home (Jem Shaw), he in a car his brother, Martin, in an airplane. Not quite a race really, Jem will be escorting his brother back because Martin has bought himself a new plane, which is currently sitting at an airfield down in the South of France.

The problem is that the little Piper aircraft isn't able to get back in one hop without refueling. However most of the airfields Martin will be landing at won't have fueling facilities. So Jem, having filled a load of gerry cans and carrying them in the boot, is going to drive the whole thing, meeting his brother at various locations en-route. Read how they get on - Car vs plane, the race home

2 Jan07

New Years Marketing Resolutions.

Now the holidays are over, for the most of us anyway, you are either all rested or all partied out - whichever category you fall in now is the time to be making the new years marketing resolutions. Don't allow the mistakes that you made last year perpetuate to 2007.

1.Clean up your html code
2.Write a new page on your site every day or at least several a week.
3.Fill in those meta headings, titles and h1's.
4.Write those white papers and get them syndicated to anyone who'll accept them.
more new years marketing resolutions

18 Dec06

It's official, reciprocating links is not PC.

For some time it has been clear that Google has been targeting reciprocal links. Adam Lasnik of Google waded into a discussion over at WebmasterWorld. He explained that Google has put a great deal of resources into its tools for crunching data, as a result they can identify linking structures, what is natural and what is not. Websites that partake in influencing Google's PageRank algorithm by using reciprocal links are therefore easy to recognise.

He went on to say that paid links are also in the firing line. Paid links are of course more difficult to identify, and one wonders how they will ever catch up with any such process. However according to Adam, Google has more people than ever before working on link-weighting. As such sites selling links are more likely to be identified and as a result any value they give in a link may be reduced.

With 8 billion websites reputed to be in Google's index, I can't help thinking Google has an up hill task on this one.

Adv