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| The SEO Blog |
| The SEO Blog is your source for the most current search engine optimization news. Run by veteran SEO's, Ross Dunn and Scott Van Achte, the SEO Blog provides tips and marketing techniques for anyone who wants their website to stay at the top of the search engine results. |
| Language: English |
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| Total Unique Visitors: 288 |
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| Recent Q&A from Google on Google Sitemaps |
| 2008-01-15 15:36:00 |
Susan Moskwa and Trever Voucher from Google's Webmaster Tools Team published a synopsis of the questions they received at Chicago's recent Search Engine Strategies Conference. If you have ever had a question about Google Sitemaps and the effect they may or may not have on your site, this is a helpful read.Get the answers to the following questions:I submitted a Sitemap, but my URLs haven't been [crawled/indexed] yet. Isn't that what a Sitemap is for? If it doesn't get me automatically crawled and indexed, what does a Sitemap do?Will a Sitemap help me rank better?If I set all of my pages to have priority 1.0, will that make them rank higher (or get crawled faster) than someone else's pages that have priority 0.8?Is there any point in submitting a Sitemap if all the metadata (, , etc.) is the same for each URL, or if I'm not sure it's accurate?I've heard about people who submitted a Sitemap and got penalized shortly afterward. Can a Sitemap hurt you?Where can I put my Sitemap? Does it have to be at the root of my site?Can I just submit the site map that my webmaster made of my site? I don't get this whole XML thing.Which Sitemap format is the best?If I have multiple URLs that point to the same content, can I use my Sitemap to indicate my preferred URL for that content?Does the placement of a URL within a Sitemap file matter? Will the URLs at the beginning of the file get better treatment than the URLs near the end?If my site has multiple sections (e.g. a blog, a forum, and a photo gallery), should I submit one Sitemap for the site, or multiple Sitemaps (one for each section)?Again here is the link to the Google sitemaps Q&A.
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| comScore Announces Top50 Properties for December |
| 2008-01-15 14:25:00 |
comScore released statistics of U.S. consumer activity for the December '07 holiday season. Included was the always interesting list of the Top 50 web properties:"Yahoo! Sites continued its reign as the top U.S. Web property in December with nearly 137 million visitors, followed by Google Sites (133 million visitors) and Microsoft Sites (120 million visitors). Apple Inc., which benefited from interest in popular holiday gifts like the iPod and iPhone, moved up one spot to capture position 10 with 47.7 million visitors. Holiday shopping also lifted Sears Sites, which jumped 10 spots to number 21, Best Buy Sites, which rose 5 spots to 22, and JCPenney Sites, gaining 5 spots to position 40. NBC Universal, iVillage.com: The Womens Network, and Weatherbug Property all entered the rankings this month capturing positions 48, 49, and 50, respectively."
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| How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings |
| 2008-01-11 15:19:00 |
Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.Retrace Your StepsWrite a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you ...
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| WPN Insider Interview with Microsoft Live Search |
| 2008-01-09 19:02:00 |
Mike McDonald of WebProNews conducted a great, very informative interview with Live Webmaster Tool's Product Manager, Jeremiah Andrick.Jeremiah discusses paid links, cloaking, the backlink function at Live Search and my special favorite - the incident where Adwords ads got indexed. Check it out, I think you will appreciate the frankness of Jeremiah's answers. You can certainly tell that Microsoft has finally figured out that Webmasters need to feel the love. Special thanks to Barry Schwartz and the SE Round Table for recommending this video. I am glad I fit it into my busy day.
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| Microsoft Acquires FASTer Search |
| 2008-01-09 18:05:00 |
The search world appears to have renewed its interest in Microsoft's potential in the search industry since the company reportedly put in an offer to acquire Norwegian search company Fast Search for 1.23 billion.So why all the hullaballoo? Well, Microsoft's Live Search has some good technology behind it but it has not exactly impressed those that want highly relevant search. The acquisition of FAST search technology, however, would provide Microsoft with an infusion of established processes light years more developed than its own.
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| Twitter's Usefulness Underscored During San Francisco Storm |
| 2008-01-04 18:18:00 |
Since I signed up with Twitter I have experienced a wide array of emotion while experiencing the lives of the people I follow; sad because someone I follow was struggling with depression, frustrated due to repetitive useless tweets, and amazed and excited by the timely news I am often privy too. Obviously I prefer to be excited and amazed and today happens to be one of those days.In this case, San Francisco and much of California is currently being rocked by a highly irregular storm that has raised severe weather alerts such as flash floods, and high surf/coastal floods. Well it just so happens that a few of the people I follow on Twitter are from this area and their tweets provide proof that Twitter (the community-based text messaging platform) has a value above my expectation.I caught a ...
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| Competitor Analysis Discussion with WebProNews in Las Vegas |
| 2008-01-04 16:39:00 |
The following interview was conducted at PubCon Las Vegas and it focused on StepForth competitor analysis/competitor intelligence services. In hindsight I didn't give much away in the terms of competitive analysis and frankly the interview could have gone better (what with the sun glare and a lil'memory loss). So feel free to view this and then follow it up with my notes below where I will provide a couple examples of the strategies/resources used in our basic and advanced competitor intelligence reports. Additional Competitor Analysis TipsWe provide a listing of our recommended competitor research tools which Mike McDonald kindly previewed the link to but let me give you a few more tips... it is the least I can do if you watched my interview ;-)Use Technorati to determine the networks tha...
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| MSN Displaying Google Adwords Ads |
| 2007-12-20 21:34:00 |
Years ago MSN stopped displaying Google AdWords ads in favor of their own PPC advertising platform, MSN Adcenter. So why, after all this time have they begun to display AdWords ads again?On Tuesday Jon Henshaw blogged an interesting find: A search for the phrase "colorations paint" brought up the standard MSN Adcenter ads at the top, a typical #1 & #2 listing for DiscountSchoolSupply, and a rather interesting third and fourth result. Sitting at #3 for this phrase appears to be Google. The URL indexed a link generated for DiscountSchoolSupply's Google AdWords account!Henshaw notes his assumption that this is most likely an unintentional bug, which I would have to agree with, but it could be a positive thing for those advertising with AdWords by purchasing the sponsored link, and finding your ad appearing in the natural SERPs, with the title www.Google.com. Many searchers may find your listing attractive and if your destination page is highly relevant to the search term this could generate some qualified attention and sales. Now that said, this is certainly not a common item, and I am sure it will be resolved quickly.I don't recommend clicking on the paid ad as I am sure the people at DiscountSchoolSupply do not want the extra charges to their Google account - but at least they have the top 4 results in MSN for the time being.Thanks for planetc1, for posting this article on Sphinn for me to find.
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| China Can't Spell Google |
| 2007-12-20 21:33:00 |
An interesting article posted last week at Bloomberg, noted that China can't spell Google, and that this may be playing a role in Google playing second fiddle to Chinese search giant Baidu."Internet addresses in China are based on the Hanyu Pinyin system that translates Chinese characters into roman letters. Sounds such as ``gle'' don't exist.""G-O-O-G-L-E is not a normal Chinese spelling and people don't pronounce it right," Kai-fu Lee, Google's president for Greater China, said in a Nov. 30 interview in Beijing. "Most people call us `go go.'"As a result Google acquired the 'G.cn' domain to help users who misspell Google's name.China holds the internet's second largest market with 162 million users, and Google only sees approximately 30% of this market, compared to Baidu with 61%. Credit Suisse Group estimated that in 2006 only 1 percent of Google's revenue was generated in China.
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| Your Logfiles May Be Missing Important Data |
| 2007-12-20 19:21:00 |
In this article I am going to explain logfiles and their importance in website analytics from my perspective as a ClickTracks user. Before I begin, however, I want you to know that although I offer essential analytic consulting, I am a certified ClickTracks Analytics Professional and have dabbled in books on analytics, I don't consider myself to be an analytics expert. In fact, I constantly find myself humbled by how much more there is to know. That said, I do know more than the average site owner and I hope that this article can shine a little light on this often confusing subject and save you some future headaches.As many of you may know I am a huge fan of the logfile version of ClickTracks Professional, a website analytics package that I find indispensable for myself and my clientele. C...
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