Blind Five Year Old

Bling Search Engine

Since the launch of Microsoft’s Bing I’ve received traffic from ‘bling’ keywords: bling search engine, bling paid search, bling search real time.

Search is funny that way. A small misspelling by the user is matched to a variant of my blog name. The one letter difference between blind and bling seems big to a person but doesn’t amount to much for a search engine. It’s yet another example of my blind five year old theory on search engines.

I don’t know, maybe they should have named it Bling.

Bling is catchy and has an established vernacular. They could have used all sorts of celebrity endorsements about needing to find their bling. I can see the tag line.

“Search for your Bling!”

There are a lot of bad SEO firms and consultants out there that make it more difficult for SEO to become a recognized and valuable part of every business. However, for the best SEO advice, you can see Web 20 Ranker LLC for seo press release service.

I recently conducted a search for a SEO Manager at Caring.com and was bombarded with pitches from SEO firms and consultants. Based on this experience and some research I’ve come up with a list.

11 Ways to Spot a Bad SEO Firm

Rank Promise

Any SEO firm that promises you a number one ranking for any term before doing any keyword research or competitive analysis should be avoided. You should opt for services that refer Local SEO courses

Instant Results

SEO isn’t about what you can do in 30 days but a long-term plan to match your content with user queries. That’s not to say that progress won’t be made in the short-term, but beware of the get results fast pitch. People can also check some best services – they provide local seo services for law firms and many other firms as well.

Network of Quality Links

A number of firms will claim that they have a “network of quality sites” that enable them to drive links back to your site. In general, these networks aren’t of such high quality and are often the target of web spam teams. Quality linkbuilding isn’t as easy as turning on a switch. It takes time and that’s why the links are valuable.

Submissions Bonanza

“We’ll submit you to over 500 search engine and directory sites!” Some of these engines and directories are valuable but most aren’t and may even wind up hurting you if it’s done in a zombie like fashion.

Inside Algorithm Knowledge

People at Google don’t hand out information about the algorithm. Anyone who says they have a ‘Deep Throat’ of search is likely wearning a tin-foil hat or running a scam.

Bad SEO

Visit the firm’s site and see if they’ve done a good job with their own SEO. Spot rudimentary SEO errors such as duplicate titles and you can write them off.

Adjectivitis

Throw a flag on the play if you see a site or pitch peppered with adjectives. For example: “Our talented optimizers use premiere methodologies to secure highly valuable links, elevating search engine presence and delivering targeted web traffic to your site.”

In my experience, the need to over sell your service is a sign that you’re not confident in your own ability.

Unsolicited Analysis

You might have received some of these emails. The firm has kindly done an analysis of your site and determined that you should be ranking higher for [insert term here]. Lucky for you, you can fix all that in no time at all by … [deleted]

Meaningless Statistics

Beware of statistics that have no basis in reality. “We outperform our nearest competitors 3 to 1 in the time it takes to get you ranked.” There are so many things wrong with that statement it makes my head hurt.

Bogus Testimonials

References and testimonials help sell many a service. Be on the look out for bogus testimonials on ‘neutral’ websites. It helps when they use their own name or do cut and paste with a fingerprint-like misspelling.

Repeated Robo-Emails

Sending the same email again and again based on a Craigslist ad is both annoying and a clear signal of desperation. Avoid these folks at all costs.

SEO isn’t about speed or automation. I’m not saying there aren’t efficiencies – there are. But the goal of SEO is to ensure that the content of your site is matched and being displayed to users for the right queries. That’s done in a myriad of ways – some small and some large.

Don’t be taken in by bad SEO. Use these tips and find firms and consultants who will give you a sound strategy and straight advice.

You’ll be doing yourself and me a favor.

Don’t believe me? Try a search for ‘search engine’ on … Google.

That’s right, it returns Google as the 7th result and the 6th search engine. And look at the snippet! Would it kill Google to craft a decent meta description?

In some ways it’s nice to see that Google isn’t optimizing and hasn’t manually altered the results in their favor. Yet, ‘search engine’ seems like a valuable term.

That’s over 4 million global monthly searches! Even on exact match you get nearly 400,000.

Yahoo seems to get it, putting themselves at the top of a ‘search engine’ query on Yahoo. I’m guessing that’s a non-algorithmic result. Sure it seems like a blatant promotion but I understand the reasoning.

Nevermind the oddity of searching for a search engine with a search engine. Search is Google’s business and, as such, it should want to be the top result for the term.

Even from a search quality perspective, are those the best results for the term ‘search engine’?

Google continues to build a synonym database to help deliver the best results for user queries. It’s not the most well documented or talked about feature but understanding synonyms can help your SEO efforts.

Use Synonyms to Increase Subject Density

Traditional keyword density revolves around the optimization for a specific keyword. A page on sofas would use modifiers or keyword clusters like ‘leather sofas’, ‘sofa beds’, ‘upholstered sofas’, and ‘sofa cushions’ as a way to increase density on the root keyword.

Using synonyms you can also increase the subject density of the page through supporting keywords like ‘couches’, ‘furniture’ and ‘chairs’. (Yes, chairs is currently a synonym for sofas.)

You’re not looking to make these synonyms the primary focus or most keyword dense words. Use them as supporting keywords to help Google to better understand the subject matter of the page.

How To Find Google Synonyms

You can use the ~ operator to perform a synonym search. Coupled with a negative search for the same term and you can easily see the highlighted synonyms for that term. Here’s an example for the term ‘reviews’ (~reviews -reviews).

You’ll notice that ‘opinions’, ‘guide’, ‘rating’, and ‘prices’ are all highlighted and identified as synonyms.

There are also a few tools (here and here) that provide greater insight into synonym sets. SEO success is accomplished through doing a lot of little things right.

Synonyms are just one more way to help optimize your site and pages.

The latest from Hitwise and Comscore show that the growth in paid search is slowing.

In the four weeks to May 9, 2009, 7.25% of search engine traffic to All Categories of websites was from paid clicks. This compares to 9.84% in the same four week period in 2008 – representing a 26% decline in the share of paid clicks.

According to Comscore query volume grew 68% in the last two years while paid clicks grew only 18%. Now, lets be clear, paid clicks aren’t going down, they’re just not growing as fast.

There are a lot of theories about why paid search is sputtering. Here’s my analysis of five reasons behind the slow down.

Advertiser Decline

One theory is that the economy has forced many advertisers to abandon paid search. This is a compelling theory given the number of bankruptcies and marketing budget cuts.

Yet, nearly every survey (here, here and here) is showing that the economy has pushed more dollars online. And those online dollars were going to search – a medium giving advertisers far more control and, more importantly, providing a clear return on investment through analytics.

Search has become a near necessity these days and as the leader in search Google’s AdWords is a default part of many a marketing mix. Yet, the Google Tax has been going up.

The Google Tax? Anyone who has been advertising for more than three years can remember ten cent CPCs. CPC inflation was and still is a considerable problem. Yet we were all like frogs in a pot. The heat was turned up so slowly we didn’t really notice … until now.

Budget cutting forced companies to audit campaigns and what they found might have surprised them. The water was scalding hot!

Verdict: Probable.

Words per Query Up

The number of words per query are up and continue to rise. Many surmise that the increase in query length is directly related to less advertising coverage and fewer paid clicks. This theory presupposes that most advertisers are running sophisticated campaigns on exact match and are heavily using negative keywords.

My experience is that sophisticated campaigns are still infrequent. Most have broad match and phrase match full bore. But, for the moment, lets say this is the case for larger advertisers. That leaves all of the other advertisers who are presented with an AdWords interface that encourages broad match.

Though there is some data that shows coverage is down, I’m unsure it is related to the number of words per query. The number of broad match and phrase match advertisers simply seems too great for query length – particularly of such a small magnitude – to have had an appreciable impact.

The graph is striking because of the scale. But it still amounts to a mere single digit percentage increase in words per query over two years.

Verdict: Unlikely.

Quality Score Suppression

Google has been using their Quality Score to ensure that relevant ads are presented for user queries. If Google determines your ad and landing page aren’t relevant you’ll be forced to pay more for the ad to be displayed.

The Quality Score isn’t always a reflection of reality. It is heavily influenced by the CPC your ad receives and overall account performance. Poor keyword research, account structure, copy writing and negative keywords could lead advertisers to pay more even though they have quality content.

Google’s implementation of Quality Score has weeded out poorly targeted ads. It has also increased the CPC for all advertisers. In this way, Quality Score may be contributing to the decline not through suppression but through making the Google Tax cost prohibitive.

Verdict: Possibly.

Better SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has improved. More and more sites have invested in SEO and have come to see it as a legitimate marketing strategy. ‘Why pay for it when you can get it for free?’ And that goes double when the economy hits the skids.

Search engines have also gotten better at SEO through algorithm tweaks and results presentation changes. From Yahoo’s SearchMonkey to Google’s Universal Search (local, video etc.), organic search results have become much more compelling.

What about Google’s Vince Change? The change to Google’s trust and authority algorithm resulted in top brands floating to the top of more search engine results. Could users be finding brands more often in organic search instead of clicking on branded ads?

Improving organic search has always been an odd balancing act for Google. Better search results improve retention and return rates. That means more ad impressions which should logically mean more paid clicks. But could organic search become too good and suppress paid clicks?

Verdict: Likely.

Mix-Shift of Queries

My own theory revolves around the mix of queries. What are people searching for and has that changed over time?

Look at the words per query graph again. What about those drops in December? Could commerce based queries be less diverse? We’ve already seen differences in transactional (left) versus informational (right) searches.

In tough economic times could the shift in searches be away from transactional or product searches? Instead, are people searching for information or (low cost) entertainment online? Those areas may have less advertising coverage than traditional product queries.

As CPM rates have declined and CPCs have increased the ability for content based sites to participate in paid search may have dwindled. The economics just don’t work out nearly as often as they used to.

Is this not also reflected in the Hitwise numbers? Travel, insurance and retail are getting fewer paid clicks. Travel in particular seems transparent. In a recession fewer people are taking vacations leading to fewer paid clicks. In addition, travel agencies may pull back on paid search as a result of decreased demand.

And what about search refinements. Earlier this year I wrote about a Yahoo! study on how users were refining their queries.

Could users be refining their queries more frequently with a greater understanding that refinement will lead to better results? If so, I’d hazard that refined queries likely have a lesser chance of garnering a paid click.  These users are highly focused on the organic results to determine if their refinement was successful. This dovetails nicely with the informational search eye tracking study above.

Verdict: Probable.

Hodge Podge

In the end I’d bet it’s a little bit of everything mentioned with a dash of the unknown thrown in for good measure.

How, why and what people search coupled with the failing economy and an online advertising model in flux is going to have an impact on paid search.

Search, as a business, is still rather young. We’re all trying to learn what makes it tick and how it’s going to grow in the future.

This is what draws me to online marketing and search specifically. The answers aren’t black and white and the territory is uncharted.

And with that, what are your thoughts? What do you think of my analysis? Why do you think paid search growth is declining?

Google adopts microformats. Finally.

What are microformats?

Microformats is a semantic markup that brings structure and meaning to metadata. In less technical terms it means you can tell search engines exactly what the content is versus having them guess. Google is supporting just two of the microformat standards initially – reviews and people – but seems committed to expanding their coverage in the future.

Why microformats matter

The upside to microformats is that search engines no longer have to guess. Remember, think of a search engine as a blind five year old.

A five year old may figure out that what they’re reading is a review by noticing the format or content of the text. (They can’t really ‘see’ a star rating.) A search engine might piece it together. You’d hope so but … they’ll often fail.

Microformats lets you put a big headline on the review that shouts ‘this is a review‘.

What are rich snippets?

If the search engine can understand and trust the metadata it can transform bland search results into something more robust and compelling. This is what Google calls a rich snippet.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo! adopted microformats long ago and Yahoo! has been using SearchMonkey to accelerate the display of robust search results. It was an area where I believed Yahoo! had an advantage and should have been seeking to exploit it more.

A rich snippet is far more attractive and will drive more clicks. It was rumored that Google was holding out because they didn’t want to create an inequity based on the ability to implement semantic markup.

Was Google trying to write an extraction program to interpret native code so everyone could obtain a rich snippet? Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t but they’ve clearly decided that rich snippets are important and microformats are the way to quickly deliver rich snippets in search results.

Microformats go mainstream

I’ve been a big proponent of microformats since being introduced to them by Chris Eppstein. I was so sure they’d go mainstream it was one of my 2009 Internet and Technology Predictions.

Does the adoption of microformats by Google fulfill that prediction? I think so.

In February I wrote about Did You Mean search results appearing above normal Google search results. This differed from the presentation of just a link to the Did You Mean search results.

Did You Mean search results

Did You Mean search link

While I understood the potential user benefit, from an SEO perspective, Did You Mean search results could make misspelling optimization far less attractive.

As luck would have it I was able to get an answer on this topic from Matt Cutts.

It’s about what I expected. The presentation is relatively new and is tied to an algorithm triggered by some threshold where Google expects a high degree of accuracy in the Did You Mean match. In the end, it probably does deliver value to the user.

I appreciate the response (thanks Matt) and am reminded that SEO is an ever changing endeavor.

One of the first things someone new to search engine optimization (SEO) will ask is whether it’s better to use dashes or underscores in URLs.

Dashes or Underscores?

The short answer is: dashes.

Read on if you’re interested in why and some history behind the topic.

Back in 2005, Matt Cutts wrote about dashes versus underscores. At that time he recommended dashes.

… if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″. That’s why I would always choose dashes instead of underscores.

To make it even more plain, the underscore joins the words together while the dash separates the words.

this_is_one_word

this-is-multiple-words

At WordCamp 2007 Cutts was reported to say that Google was going to begin treating underscores as separators. But Cutts clarified what he said in a follow-up blog post.

… I didn’t quite say that in the talk. I said that we had someone looking at that now. So I wouldn’t consider it a completely done deal at this point. But note that I also said if you’d already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn’t worth trying to migrate all your urls over to dashes. If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.

This made it seem like Google might be working on a solution to the underscore issue which impacted a number of blogging platforms and other developers who use underscores out of habit.

The WordCamp talk clouded the topic and confused many. Some, despite the clarification, thought dashes and underscores were interchangeable. Others figured the fix was right around the corner, so it was safe to begin using dashes and underscores interchangeably. They were wrong.

At SMX West 2009 I sat in on two sessions in which the dashes versus underscores topic, yet again, surfaced. In both instances the panel unanimously recommended dashes. In fact, Maile Ohye’s presentation in the Technical SEO session included a slide in which the dash or hyphen was a recommended best practice.

Stephan Spencer got it straight from the horse’s mouth.

When I spoke to Matt in February at SMX West, he confirmed that underscores were NOT treated as word separators. According to Matt, this change is still in their queue but unlikely to happen before summer. My interpretation: don’t hold your breath, it’s between summer and never.

I concur with Stephan on this one, in part because I think Google has better and more interesting projects in the queue.

In the meantime …

Use dashes.

Google recently announced that queries longer than three words would receive longer snippets. The theory being that the more detailed the query the more information necessary to provide context to the user.

This change comes right on the heels of research that shows that longer queries are becoming more frequent.

Do longer snippets change meta description strategy?

Probably not, but it’s a good time to review your meta description strategy.

First off, meta descriptions do matter. Even if they don’t have an impact on rank they will on your click through rate. The snippet, whether derived by Google or provided through a meta description, is where you ‘sell’ the listing.

Any PPC marketer will tell you that copy testing can have a significant impact on click through rate. The meta description is just a bigger block of copy. Use it.

Date prefix

Currently, most write meta descriptions that are between 145 and 160 characters in length. However, the date prefix Google uses often interrupts a well crafted meta description. (Note that date prefixes are not searchable but are solely there as user signposts.)

You might want to think about writing shorter meta descriptions if you are consistently getting a date prefix.

The date prefix takes up 17 characters (including spaces) which means your total two line meta description should be 128 to 143 characters. For the sake of rounding go for between 130 and 140 characters.

Length or characters?

This doesn’t mean you won’t get the dreaded ellipse (…) at the end of your listing. The wrapping of a long word could push the second line beyond the max length. While we talk about characters, evidence suggests it’s about length instead. (That’s what she said!) I’ve seen 87 characters in a line, which seems impossible, but with parentheses and other thin characters … it fits.

Character length is still a good proxy until a tool delivers the ability to measure the actual length of each line of text.

New meta description tools

I’m surprised an AdWords-like tool (aka plugin) hasn’t been developed that would show what the listing would look like on Google. This wouldn’t be limited to meta description, but would provide a complete visual of your listing as it would appear on a Google SERP.

The tool would let you toggle the date prefix on or off and might even crack the length issue by determining the maximum pixel (px) line length. Just like AdWords, you’d see an example of your listing as you type. (It turns out SEOmofo has developed a SERP Snippet Optimization Tool.)

Should you write longer meta descriptions?

This assumes that Google will honor and display the full meta description provided instead of searching out relevant text on the page to match the query.

Given the opportunity, yes, I would want to control what the user reads. I want the ability to market my content the way I see fit. I think know I can do it better than Google. Here’s Exhibit A.

A search for ‘bicycling lance armstrong mountain stage jan ullrich’ returns this four line snippet.

The longer snippet might display all of the keywords in my query but it doesn’t tell me a lot about what this page is really about. A longer meta description (even a regular one) might have done a better job.

Are longer snippets better?

Sometimes. If there’s no meta description in the first place then matching more keywords in the snippet would probably be an enhancement. If there is a meta description, I’d posit that the longer snippet degrades the experience.

The choppy nature of the snippet construction indicates that the keywords exist on the page but often fails to deliver the true context or topic of the page. A good meta description will do the latter.

Let the algorithm select the item based on the query terms but provide the human written meta description.

Will Google honor longer meta descriptions?

It doesn’t seem like Google will honor longer meta descriptions. If the longer meta description doesn’t contain the keywords from the query I’m guessing that Google will disregard the carefully crafted text and piece together its own snippet. In fact, it looks like they won’t even use the normal meta description.

But you know what they say about assuming. So I will test longer meta descriptions on this post and others and track what is displayed when searching with long queries.

When is an error not really an error?

The other day Google Webmaster Tools informed one of my clients that it had found over 1,000 404 errors. Numerous Google folks (including Maile Ohye) have told me that an excess of 404s will adversely impact SEO.

Supporting this thesis and to help in tracking down these renegade links, Google has relatively new functionality that tells you what pages a 404 was linked from. Thank you Google.

Very quickly I realized that all of the ‘linked from’ pages were cached pages. Pages with a discovery date of between four to six months ago. Internal pages. Pages that have since changed. In fact, pages that no longer have a link to the dead page.

No thank you Google.

Clearly it would have been nice if this client had 301 redirected all of these URLs. But when doing a major architecture change you’re often going to orphan a number of URLs. It happens. And if you’ve retired the links internally, and no external links existed, the pages essentially disappear.

Unless you’re crawling an out-of-date copy of the page.

Of course you can request a URL removal via Google Webmaster Tools. But am I really going to do this for 1,000 pages? It’s painful even if I can narrow it down using a directory or subdirectory.

Instead I can implement 301 redirects for the offending URLs. All for the sole purpose of ensuring that a cached crawl of internal pages doesn’t trip a 404.

Both of these options seem unnecessary.

If Google finds a 404 in a cached page why wouldn’t they seek out the original to verify that the problem currently exists? It seems like an easy business rule to implement and would likely reduce the volume of URL removal requests.

Is it that easy or am I missing something?