Have you heard of PubSubHubub? Well you'll soon feel the effects of it in your searches and your rankings. It is a new realtime publishing protocol that Google is working on to index the web. This is a major game changer. Eh? I hear you say... basically content publishing is going real time.
Do you use sidewiki? Well it's now available in Webmaster tools. If you use it I'd love to know why & how.
Has your Google local business listing been hacked or is it just busted?
A florist received 100 hours of community service last week for
hijacking someone's listing.
Ranking is easy. Ranking for the right phrases is the hard bit. I answer
a viewer question about keyword analysis.
The Social Media/emerging technologies conference of the year is
happening in Sydney in April. See @garyvee @missrogue @servantofchaos
@debs @simonmainwaring @briansolis @problogger your's truly & more
at Connect Now
Getting the right keywords in your links on your site can really boost your rankings. If you sell baby gifts, why link the word 'product' when you could link the phrase 'baby gifts' ?
How will the Australian Government Secret Blacklist Filter affect your business? There's been a bit of chatter this week that it will affect SEO, the problem is a tad larger than that.
Woohooo! You're no.1 ....or are you? How to double check your results and why they may differ.
Ever had the feeling that Google hates you? You're not alone! It can be very frustrating when you think you are doing everything right but you still can't get ranked, yet sites above you are no where near the "quality" of yours. It could be that Google is seeing something completely different. Today I look at an important technique that can save you a lot of time & heartache.
The owners of stephen-conroy.com were directed to our show last week where I showed how their site could benefit from a better redirection. Talk about networking :) They've done half the work & it's already had a positive effect.
I don't know about you but my Google news alerts are busted. One of our other viewers is getting news alerts with links sending him to hacked sites. That's not real helpful Google. Is Google broken?
Is Fairfax digital doing blackhat SEO? @krigsi was looking at wedding.com.au today & I asked him to check to see what H1 formatting they had on the front page. This is what he found.
A Blackhat technique
I've replaced < & > with --
-- h1 --
-- a href="/" --
--span--Wedding - Wedding Supplies, Wedding Dresses, Wedding Flowers & More --/span--
--/a--
When he examined the CSS he found this
div#header #header-content h1 span {
clear:both;
content:"";
display:block;
height:0;
line-height:0;
overflow:hidden;
visibility:hidden;
}
The first think that jumped out at me was that the font size and the line size were 0. The visibility was also "hidden". Basically they are showing keyword rich text to Google & hiding it from the users. As I understand Google's terms of service, this would breach them.
The code above serves no purpose in the structure of the page. It exists purely for search bots to find. The reason this is probably hidden is that they do not want to have it as part of the design. However Google doesn't want to see it either if it's not there for the users.
In 2007 Google booted BMW Germany & Ricoh Germany for employing a cloaking technique that showed design heavy sites to users but keyword rich text & links to Google. The Fairfax technique is no where near that deception but it is still something Google would not be happy with. @iSamith then found that Fairfax owns 30,000 domains. We checked a couple. concreters.com.au, business.com.au etc etc were all using the same technique. Fairfax owns a lot of generic URLs which rank well for generic phrases i.e. wedding.com.au ranks no.1 for "wedding". When you consider most of these sites' revenue model is advertising which relies on impressions coming from organic search, this could have a major impact on their bottom line should they get booted from the index.
Whether this technique was employed innocently by a designer I have no idea but Google won't care given its past form.
What would you do if it was your search engine? Would you boot them?
Is News Ltd doing local iPhone apps? I would like some sort of hybrid
of the local newspaper with events calendar, roadworks alerts, local MP
& Councilor contacts etc. Where are all the Christmas fireworks in
your area this year? We have a large Hindu Temple near us and it would
have been great to go to the Divwali fireworks. What's happening in my
local community is important to me but I don't want to have to search
through a newspaper full of catalogue inserts to find the news that may
be of interest to me. I'd also like to connect with more people in the
local community.It's difficult to do that with a local newspaper these days.
News Ltd has a long history of giving news away for free. Given Rupert
Murdoch's recent protestations in which he referred to Google et al as
content kleptomaniacs & plagiarists,
I would have thought this would be a great opportunity to repurpose
existing assets and capitalise on an existing customer base.
Google Local Search
This is a customer base that Google
is having trouble penetrating.
The local fish & chip shop (fush & chups for our NZ readers)
is unlikely to take out an adwords campaign or employ an SEO firm.
However, if their brand is front of mind within a useful local
community news & social networking environment & includes
coupons etc then conversions will be high.
News already has the sales force that talks to the fish & chip shop
owners. They know who the sponsors of the local footy club are. This
sort of local knowledge Google doesn't have.
They can't go to the key
movers & shakers at a local level because they don't have the
history of the local paper. News also have existing content
producers with networks of local contacts.
Local iPhone advertising
The advertising options could vary from context keyword sensitive to branding sponsorship of things like footy clubs contact pages, gig guides etc.
I would love to go to a new town or even the next suburb and quickly get a feel for what's happening in the community.
The key to an app like this is the local journos. The local content is what will promote discussion and involvement. Keep the content free Rupert. Provide the service and get local business to sponsor it. I'm pretty sure it's a model you're familiar with. Your model is right, it's just in the wrong medium.
I mentioned back in August that I would not be surprised if Google started punishing forum spam, according to attendees at a recent SEO conference that's exactly what is about to happen. You need to watch how you get your backlinks.
Do you host in your own country? Are you having trouble getting found in "pages from" your country? Here's the technique that makes sure Google delivers your site to the right geographic audience.
This week I take a look at veteranschildren.com and pass on some SEO advice.
I've discussed our approach to social media marketing & why we think it so important. In response to a tweet by Chris Brogan I also illustrated why I felt SEO was more important than ever and how SEO & Social Media work together.
Has anyone ever said to you, "I think I just googled..." or "Just do a search for..." ? They say it to me all the time. Maybe that's just a reflection of the company I keep.
How good is your memory? Can you remember this URL? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY It's the Susan Boyle video. Why should I walk back to my desk and copy and paste & send you that link when you can just Google her name? Or how about "Saw a funny video on Youtube the other night, I think I was searching for...." ? Whilst I spend far too much time online I often say those things to people in the real world. I talk to people I meet all the time, (most of them don't appreciate it). There was a bloke at Sydney Airport last night who I overheard say to a mate "Nah can't download music on my Mac there not much software around for them being a Mac" . I just told him to Google Cabos or opensource mac. There's a heap of stuff.
That is why SEO is more important than ever. We are connecting more, we're sharing more & search is the gateway to new discoveries.
The more you are involved in Social Media the more opportunities you have of others connecting with you via the replacement of the Yellow Pages. The Search Engine.
