SEO News and Information - The Topositionseo Blog

Directory Listings Changing SERPs

Another reason why I dislike changing SERP results based on directory listings:

The other thing to add is that what appears in the search engine report page (SERP) for the keyword search is important. The entry for a particular web page will have a Title and will also have a snippet either taken from the visible content or from the description. If the keywords don’t appear anywhere on the web page, then they can’t appear in the entry on the SERP. This could mean that the searcher may choose to click on one of the other entries in the SERP where the connection to his keywords is more obvious.

The Yahoo! directory is by far the biggest offender of this nonsense, but I would hate to see Google move permanently in this direction. For the benefit of the user, the engines should show the relevant content that was found from the search.

Using Wildcards in Your Keywords

If you’ve ever wondered if “[keyword] in [location]” is better than “[keyword] [location],” Ammon Johns provides an excellent answer over at Cre8asite.

The small insignificant words are called Stop Words and are still ignored in specific, but then again, Google does still know that there was a word in the middle. It searches for “construction * dallas” where *=wildcard insignificant word.

So you get the exact same results for each of the following:
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+in+dallas
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+of+dallas
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+the+dallas
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+a+dallas
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+who+dallas
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+which+dallas

but not the same as
http://www.google.com/search?q=construction+dallas

Because there was no insignificant word in the middle, nothing to match the wildcard.

Nice tip. I’d like to further expand that exact phrasing and proximity placement will go a long way towards helping you win the SERP wars.

The Google Labor Day Update

Follow the Google backlink and PageRank “Labor Day” update at WebmasterWorld.

CSS and SEO

The SEO benefit to using CSS is pretty well summed up in this Search Engine Roundtable post about CSS positioning. It’s why we do nothing but full CSS builds over here at Topositionseo intead of the antiquated table-driven builds. Well, that and cleaner code. A higher content-to-code ratio also has a nice SEO benefit. Furthermore, there’s also something to be said for code validation as the engines are able to more easily crawl through your pages - nevermind that they might in the future respect correct coding as a mark of skilled Webmastering.

Debunking a Few Google Myths

One does not have to go far to find a list of Google myths - Google’s Facts & Fiction page provides a listing of common Google myths debunked for you viewing pleasure. And strangely enough, many of these myths are perpetuated to this day.

Here are the facts, with commentary after:

• Advertising with Google neither helps nor hurts a site’s rankings in Google. - No brainer. Not much to say here.
• Linking schemes will often do a site more harm than good. Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value, but will distribute your email address without your permission, resulting in an increased volume of unwanted mail. - Here we have a statement that not only will linking schemes not work for you, they can actually hurt. In practice, though, there are plenty of SEOs that have had great success with linking schemes. But you should understand that you can receive a penalty or, worse yet, have your site banned. If your domain isn’t a throwaway, don’t risk it.
• Automated rank checking programs violate Google’s Terms of Service. They use server resources that should be spent on answering user requests. We strongly request that you not use rank checking programs to check your position on Google. - Violates the TOS, but they do not state that you can be penalized for it in any tangible way. They can block your IP for an amount of time, but they can’t penalize your site for the simple reason that no URL is sent to Google during rank checking.
• There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design. - Emphasis mine. The importance is in the bold.
• We don’t require submission nor do we penalize sites for “over-submission.” You’re free to submit as often as you wish. However, given the nature of our inclusion process, your time is better spent improving the content and links of your site. - Finally, we can lay that over-submission to the addurl form myth to rest. There’s even a nice bit of advice there about content and links.
• At Google, we’re able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions. A sampling of the file extensions we’re able to index includes: pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf, cfm, and php. - No comment. If Goog can crawl it, your extension doesn’t matter. Period. And no, the sheer number of HTML pages does not prove that HTML is favored. Well, that’s because there are more HTML pages in existence. Statistics, my dear Watson.
• Google does not distinguish between different web server types in our rankings; use whatever type of web server is best for your situation. - No comment. Though there is an interesting bit about MSN favoring MS servers. A simple php header can fix you there.
• How fast a page loads does not affect its ranking. However, if your web server or connection is down or causes a page fetch to fail, that page won’t be indexed. - Finally, smaller page size does not help you in the SERPs. And stating that the SEO benefit lies in that most of the results have small page sizes (SEOs perpetuating the small page size leads to a greater prevalence of small page sizes) is about as statistically valid as, well, it’s not. Simply put, there are smaller page sizes in the serps because there are a greater number of smaller page sizes out there. However, bandwidth, loading and other factors are real concerns. Stick with the smaller page sizes for those reasons.

However, it is important to note the author. Without a doubt, Google has an incentive to lie to Webmasters, to say the least. Take it all with a grain of salt. Though I do think for the most part that these are on the up and up.

Keyword Research Tools

There’s always a handful of keyword research tools that every SEO uses. Today, I thought I’d share some of the basic tools I use for keyword research:

• Wordtracker - The default professional keyword research tool. Allows you to see the real order of words and plural/singular differences over Overture’s tool.
• Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool - Worth a mention because it provides actual counts and is a useful comparison to Wordtracker.
• NicheBOT - Wordtracker for the cash-strapped.
• Search Combination Tool (another) - Combine your root keyword phrases with modifiers.
• Good Keywords - I use it for its keyword combination tool. You might find other uses in it.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool - Find similar and specific keywords that others are bidding on.
• Digital Point’s Keyword Suggestion Tool - Combines Overture and Wordtracker results.

Each has its own uses and after using a few for a while you’ll start to settle into your own method and process when selecting keywords for that next big SEO project.