Google added a feature to Webmaster Tools yesterday that I hope will find its way in to Business Listings and other services. Now, if you are verified owner of a website, you can simply add additional users to the Webmaster Tools account (through the verify link). This means site owners can add individuals that do development, marketing or optimization, without having to upload additional files or edit pages. This greatly simplifies things, giving owners a simple way to remove this access.
More on this from Google here
SEO SEO, webmaster tools
I am attending the search optimization and marketing conference SMX West in Santa Clara next week. If you will be at the conference and would like to get together, drop me a note. For my customers, this is one of the larger industry events. While I follow in the neighborhood of 20 blogs on marketing and optimization all year, this show does a lot to pull all the information together. Confirming trends and many times is the launching point for new techniques and information.
SEM SEM, SEO
I couldn’t resist posting this Dilbert cartoon strip from February 19. I am not sure if its the recognition that SEO has become mainstream enough to merit a Dilbert strip, or the fact that Scott Adams understands that sometimes sacrifices must be made to keep Google happy.
Enjoy:
SEM SEO
Last year Google said that load times would become a factor in determining your page rank. I have been toying with Joomla load times trying to speed things up and found two things that are very effective (and easy):
- In the >Global Configuration panel under >Server, enable gzip compression (duh!)
Using this, the content the server send the info to the browser compressed so bandwidth isn’t as big of an issue.
- Install a CSS/Java compression plug-in. I used a plug-in CssJsCompress to great effect, be sure to configure Css/JS compression and enable the plug-in after you install it.
Using this, the CSS and Java scripts are compressed.
The sites I have on godaddy have had no issues with these changes and I have measured significant improvements in load times.
More technical details can be found here: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
To test performance, I recommend using a combination of Firebug and Page Speed plug-ins in Firefox.
I am still investigating ways to speed up WordPress, if you have some recomendations let me know!
SEM Joomla, page rank
I have written several posts on Quality Score, but I recently found two articles on the subject that make it worth revisiting. Quality Score is Google’s way of assessing how relevant your paid search keywords are to the searchers you’re targeting.
This article by by Craig Danuloff discusses in monetary terms what the real costs of a low-quality-score are and this recent article, also by by Danuloff suggests 5 Steps to Improve Your Quality Score.
SEM ppc, quality score, SEM
This is very cool and while it wouldn’t be appropriate for every ad, there are places were this could be very helpful. Sitelinks enable you to link to multiple services within a single ad. Imagine company listings for a business like My SEO firm with direct links to services like Search Optimization, Internet Marketing, and Website Audits. I am not sure how this will play into Google’s quality score algorithm, but I am sure this aspect hasn’t been overlooked. The downside, it only works when your ad is in the top-most spot:
This image from RustyBrick:
Here’s where the sitelinks are added in the campaign settings:
SEM
Increasingly people are going on-line, not only for phone number and addresses, but for reviews and recommendations. Website’s not only give you the opportunity to list the standard phonebook info like you’re address, when you’re open and years in business, but also detailed information and photos about your products and services. You can explain who you are and why someone should do business with you. You can post videos not only about your company, but about the work you have performed and of happy customers.
Even my wife, who shunned the digital world including email until a couple of years ago, now spends many hours on-line. As for me, the only time I go to the phonebook is for an older company that I think might not have a web site, and even then, I will go to an online phonebook first.
This article lists the results of a recent study and highlights where people are going for local business information, The article also chronicles the shifts that have occurred over the last three years. http://searchenginewatch.com/3635350
If the phonebook isn’t dead, it is fading fast.
SEM
Yahoo announced at the SMX East conference yesterday that they were no longer using meta keywords. In the report Yahoo stated that they had announced this earlier in the year - but apparently no one outside Yahoo got the memo. While none of the major engines now support meta keywords, I still recommend using them in all your pages. There are a lot of spiders crawling the web that still use this information to categorize your content and can result in back-links to your site.
SEM key phrases, keywords, Yahoo
