SEO News and Information - The Topositionseo Blog

Interviewing Matt Cutts

Some excerpts from Aaron Wall’s interview with everybody’s favorite GoogleGuy, Matt Cutts:

Is all SEO spam?

Absolutely not–I need to do a post about this on my blog sometime. Lots and lots of search engine optimization is white-hat and not spam at all. Things like making a site more crawlable, tweaking the words on a site based on what users type in or what you see in your server logs, and gathering links by coming up with creative ideas or services that make people link to you naturally. To me (and Google), spam is search engine optimization that is outside our quality guidelines–things like hidden text, hidden links, doorway pages filled with gibberish words that do a sneaky JavaScript redirect, and so on.

Some SEO firms cold call saying they can rank people in first place. Can they guarantee this?

Not on Google. No one can guarantee this, not even Google, since our ranking algorithms are often updated.

As a webmaster how do I minimize the chances that my site may be the baby thrown out with the bathwater in the updates?

Make a great site, and try to make sure that site is recognized and thus earns organic links. To be safe, pick a stranger and ask them whether the site is great–sometimes you’ll be surprised. If Google doesn’t return a reputable, great site for a query, then we’re going to be working to figure out why and fix it.

What would be the best ways to integrate the link popularity [between a main site and a blog]?

I think having a main site with a large feature like a blog somewhere near the main page is actually a pretty good structure. If you run a blog, it’s good to spend some effort to have one main url for each post so that there’s a single well-known permalink. I haven’t been as nitpicky about that on my own site, but if you do SEO for a living I’d pay a little more attention to that.

When does it make sense to use one site or multiple domains?

If you’re a whitehat, I’d almost always go for one site. Promoting multiple sites and keeping them distinct is a lot more of a challenge.

If I got a site banned what is the procedure to get it re indexed?

This is boilerplate that we’re sending out to some site owners as a pilot program if we detect spam, but it’s the most current info:

“If you wish to be reincluded, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When you are ready, please submit a reinclusion request.

You can select “I’m a webmaster inquiring about my website” and then “Why my site disappeared from the search results or dropped in ranking,” click Continue, and then make sure to type “Reinclusion Request” in the Subject: line of the resulting form.”

Do most sites that ask for a reinclusion get reincluded? If not, what are the common problems?

We don’t discuss the reinclusion ratio, but if you’re a mom/pop site with a single domain compared to an SEO site that had industrial-strength spam, I would request the reinclusion. Check your own site for spam before you request reinclusion! Look for hidden text on the home page. Do a site: query and check a few random pages. If you were doing a weird link scheme, stop it. That’s the biggest problem we run into–the site isn’t really cleaned up.

Internet Marketing for MSN - An SEO Q&A

If you’ve been following MSN lately, you know that the MSN team is busy tweaking things lately. To this SEO, it seems as if links are starting to play a greater role in their algorithm, whereas on-page factors have to-date ruled.

Reading a recent interview at SEOmoz, it does seem to be this way:

Rand: What would you consider to be the most important factor in determining the relevance of a website besides who links to that website?

MSN: The most important factor is ultimately users. Do your users rave about your content? Do they point to your content as a definitive source? MSN is working to ensure that the most relevant content for a particular query is returned to users. If you build what users think is highly relevant then MSN Search will work to reflect that.

Rand: This question comes from a University professor who has been involved in webdev for several years. He asks:

I would like to hear how they describe what it takes to make a successful site. Not a site that is out to game the engines but given that I have a site with superb content that I want to share with others what advice do they have for me as a webmaster so that my site can get the level of attention that it deserves. I’d like to hear straight from the source what they efforts they think that a webmaster should employ. Where should a webmaster spend limited resources? The role of SEO, the role of advertising on other sites, the role of content creation.

MSN: If you already have great content (maybe everybody thinks they have great content :)) then your focus should really be on getting people who are relevant to your field to link your pages. For example, if you are the world expert in quilting then find sites that talk about quilting and see if they will link to your site, where it makes sense.

Rand: How does a brand new website get respect (rankings)? Even with fantastic content, it’s hard to stand out without many, many links. What should I do to get exposure for my long efforts and investments?

MSN: The focus should be on high quality, organic link building as described above.

Emphasis mine. There’s also a few other nuggets:

Rand: Does the MSN Search Engine measure, index and/or weight the meta keywords tag, Hx tags, alt tags in images or the “title” attribute in links?

MSN: Yes, we do use all of these tags with the exception of the meta keywords tag. We do not index data from the meta keywords tag because it is not visible to the user in a standard browser. Additionally, it has a long history of being spammed.

Rand: Can MSN read and crawl Javascript, CSS and/or Flash files & links?

MSN: We are currently not indexing flash; however, this feature is on our radar based on customer feedback.

Rand: In the MSN guidelines it says that static pages are best, but MSN has been indexing url’s including sessionid’s successfully, so is this still important to being indexed?

MSN: We emphasize the use of static URL’s wherever possible primarily to help ensure that the pages that site owners create get linked to. If you create a dynamic page the chances that someone will link to it are probably a bit lower than if you simple static URL.

Rand: How does MSN handle blatantly spamming sites/pages – is there manual removal when spam is reported?

MSN: There are two approaches that we take. First, we explicitly disallow certain techniques that are often used by spammers – stuffing pages with a lot of keywords, doorway pages. If we identify pages using these techniques we will remove them the index. Second, we have an algorithmic spam detection tool that looks for pages that appear to be of low value or be the likely result of being spammed.

Rand: Is it possible to hurt a site’s rankings by pointing too many links to it too quickly or by pointing too many low quality links at it? Is there concern that these techniques could be used maliciously against a legitimate site?

MSN: A good analogy here is you want to play in good neighborhoods. If you have a lot of spam sites point to your page then, well, your page starts to look like spam. On the other hand, if you are endorsed by many high quality sites then there is a good chance that your site is also high quality.

Head over to SEOmoz to read the entire thing.

Search Engine Web Site Conversions

Over at SEOmoz, 2K has a few tips to increase SERP conversion, or what he terms ((real traffic from search engines) divided by (predicted traffic)) times 100:

a) Focus on quality – make your title and meta/directory descriptions samples of top quality copywriting. Titles like “widget widgets” are easy to make, but they are about as attractive as a pair of white sport socks.

b)Target your audience - provide only the necessary and interesting pieces of information in title and meta/directory description. Only then when a user pays a visit to your page can you (subtly) start selling / promoting other suitable products and services.

c) Observe and test - time and patience are of the essence in here. The better work you do, the more increased traffic and sales you should expect.

Remember, these are little mini-advertisements out there. And you only have a split-second to convert. Yes, position is important, but so is not appearing spammy.

Web Site SEO Ranking - A Revised List

Rand has posted an update to the original 93 search engine ranking factors list. Of note is the new Top 10:

1. Title Tag - 4.57
2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
4. Accessibility of Document - 4.3
5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69

He’s also added a clever “disagreement factor” to the list, whereas at a glance you can see whether or not a select group of SEOs agree or disagree on a certain factor.

Project Management Best Practices

If you do any sort of project management, this post from Threadwatch is an excellent read. In part two of this series, Chris Garrett writes about thinking through your exit strategy, understanding the scope of the project, breaking it down into manageable sections and conquering the work, all while managing client expectations:

When I say the end, I mean the real end. everyone needs to agree when you are finished. In business I believe this is called an “exit strategy”. When are you finished and what is the final deliverable?

Say you were an engineer who has been asked to build a bridge. Is the bridge finished when it stands up on its own? When traffic can move from one side to the other? When they can collect tolls? Is there an inspection? Do they have a warranty period? As you can see it is quite important for everyone to be in agreement where you are going in a project and how you will know you are at the destination.

[…]

In real projects you might also have a deadline, you might also have a fixed budget. The one part I find best to negotiate on is the scope. My preference is not to have a deadline, I would rather have a good quality deliverable, or rather deliver often small releases and bump functionality to other relases.

Good advice.

301 or 302 to Your New Domain?

There’s an excellent thread at SEO Chat about how to avoid the Sandbox when changing domains. For my money, the most informative post is from ModemMike, where he outlines just what happened to a site of his after 301ing old to new:

Back in July 05 I was forced to make a name change based on a legal threat of copyright infringement in the my domain name (1000’s of other websites doing the same thing but that’s not the topic) so I promptly did a 301 redirect from OLDDomain.com to NEWDomain.com changing nothing except the domain name itself, all URLs etc stayed the same. The 301 was implemented in IIS as a site wide redirect and within a few days I got 90% of my IBL’s changed. A couple of days later POOF, gone from Google were I had once been ranked in the top 5 for many relevant keywords. I thought maybe I had a penalty so I did what any reasonable webmaster would do and asked Google to which I got the standard reply “we suggest 301’s, no there is no penalty”. Here is what has happened since then.

1. The old domain has lost all PR (finally) but still has over 3,000 pages in the index (mostly supp)
2. The new domain has not received any PR in the toolbar but is listed nearly first in the Google directory based on PR.
3. A search for the old domain shows results for the new domain
4. BL’s have been credited to the new domain (138 to be exact)
5. A search for any of my more popular keywords does not show the site anywhere well, at least not in the first 1000 results
6. A search for www.OLDDomain.com and www.NewDomain.com both show the new domain as #1
7. A search for the “NewDomain” results in #1
8. allinurl, allintext and allinanchor show the site in pretty good positions and climbing weekly
9. The NEWDomain.com is not new (registered March 04) and was never spidered before this nor has it ever been registered.
10. Sandbox tool shows a score of about 30 (nice work on that randfish).
11. Google bot is by daily showing a fresh cache everyday for the home page and currently has an indexed count of 10300
12. The site uses (well used, I removed them) only a few affiliate links (like under 5)
13. The site does have a good amount of AdSense but is used really no different than anyone else.
14. The site has loads of original content, is what you might consider a vortal with active forums and daily updates
15. Totally went over the site with a fine toothed comb using Link Sleuth (very nice tool BTW, would suggest everyone try regardless… turned up several links I didn’t even no about in the forums and few pages that had gone server side error)… cleaned up the code, html, navigation about links etc…

Today October 5, 2005, still in the sandbox, lost all hope for a Google recovery over a month ago… domain name changes are a snadboxer for sure, no doubt, would wager a lot more $100 if I had any income these days… I have never used black hat SEO but I have to say that when white hat webmasters start getting slapped by Google as they have since 9/22 the dark side is looking very tempting.  I realize I will get flamed for this last comment but I’m being honest… I now own a dedicated server were I can age domain names like fine wine and wait for them to come out of the sandbox before spending any real time on them (simple portals, with a little content, build links but nothing more).

Emphasis mine. Earlier in the thread, Bernard states that he successfully escaped the box by “aging” the new domain:

The site did not get sandboxed. I should state that I had owned both domains for years. In fact, the “new” domain used to be DNS aliased with the “old” one. I did not change anything in the domain registrations for either domain except for the DNS settings on the “new” domain when I was ready to go live.

More discussion on 301s and 302s here and here.

SEO Press Release Optimization for Google News

One of the best ways to get a ton of links quickly is to write a press release and have it distributed by a newswire syndicated in Google News. A couple of the best are:

• PRWeb
• PR Newswire

Of note is Eric Ward’s URLwire.

There’s also a few things you need to do to succeed in optimizing your press release:

• Decide on a keyword phrase that ties in to the product or service you are promoting and that people actually search for.
• Place this phrase into your press release headline and repeat it around three times within the body of your press release.
• Unless the proper name of your product or service is already well-known, emphasize its generic description rather than its name.
• Likewise, substitute keyword phrases for pronouns like "it" or "its" to increase their overall frequency in the release.
• Include a subhead, which in turn includes your keyword phrase, if your release goes on for more than three paragraphs.
• Post your release at your own Web site on its own page, linked from your home page, in addition to submitting it to your favorite press release distribution service.

Those of you that have seen a press release make its way into Google News know the potential of this method and the amount of traffic and links it can subsequently bring.

Keyword Mining When Keyword Research Fails

2K has a nice post over at SEOmoz about keyword mining when Overture and Wordtracker and your other assorted keyword research tools just don’t cut it.

1) Know your industry. Make use of marketing and financial information already available on other sources. For example, the rental apartments industry in Finland is very limited and well known in terms of size and turnover.

2) A long time ago Googleguy said: “Check out your logs to see what users are typing.” I recommend the same. I study my log files on a daily basis, and each and every day I learn more and more about my industry and their interests. And yes – this information helps me to estimate and find new keywords more efficiently than any of the tools mentioned above.

3) Check out industry specific sites as well as local search engines for possible top-lists. Go to Google and try out what search “Top 50 keyword searches” on your industry/language brings up.

4) Knowing thy enemy is the first rule of practically any business. The oldest trick in the book is adapting best practises they can offer. Estimate your competitions website and find out possible keywords they aim.

5) Have you ever tried googling log file reports? A simple search phrase “Web Server Statistics for” brings up over 400,000 reports made with Analog or some other software. Limiting this search to your specific information niche should not be too hard for any professional SEO.

The most important in that list is the log file mining, IMHO. There’s gold in them logs.

How to get listed and indexed in Google

Made some changes to your site (moved folders, URLs) and need to have those indexed quickly? Try this:

• Download GSiteCrawler
• Create your Google sitemap with GSiteCrawler
• Upload it to your root WWW or HTML folder
• Ping it here: www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Other ideas include:

• Visiting the new pages with the Google Toolbar
• Buying AdWords
• Using AdSense on those pages
• Submit it to Google

Have suggestions of your own? Feel free to send ‘em in for inclusion.

Free SEO Tools - Find Backlink Anchor Text

Jim of We Build Pages has a new free SEO tool up that checks backlink anchor text. Sort of buggy at this point, but it’s a new tool so give him a break. And if you haven’t checked out his other tools, do yourself a favor and do so.

While I’m on the topic of tools, Todd of Stuntdubl fame posted an excellent guide to bookmarklets yesterday. Much of these are available as Firefox extensions, but the bookmarklets are useful for those pesky IE users.