Search Engine

Moving from Feedburner to Google Feeds and Why?

If you are running your feeds through Feedburner, you should know that Google bought that service in 2007.
Now they are making the next step, moving the feeds from Feedburner.com to feeds.google.com.

And you have to follow… and you should do it before the end of February 2009.
How? well there is nice instruction written by Michel Martin from Pro Blog Design on How to Move from Feedburner to Google

I just moved my Feeds over to my Google account and it is really easy and you cannot !! go back!

The analytics are nice, although I cannot click on the time line anymore to go to the statistics of my readers, you now have to use a drop-down menu to choose that date.
But you can see the mail addresses of the people who subscribed via the Feedburner email option.

So that is nice, there are however also a few drawbacks…

Even with the Smart-feed options active, you now just get a limited number of options if you want to subscribe to my feed:

So it seems Google is now cashing in on the Feedburner service and using it to promote their own services and adverts.

Why the move from Feedburner to Google feeds?

Here are some ideas that are on my mind that might be the reasons for Google to force this move upon us Feedburner users:

Getting the feed data into the central Google index would mean easier and faster integration into the search results pages (well that would be nice:-))
Monetizing the feeds by adding an easy way to integrate adsense adverts (lets see if that works?)
Getting more grip on spammers that use a lot of feeds via Feedburner to spam the search index
Promoting their own feed reader instead of giving people the choice of their favorite feed reader service
Promoting the use of Google personal page to integrate feeds instead of offering the option to using services like Netvibes
Taking away the second email subscription option and instead driving people to wards Google mail.

All these reasons will have a large impact on some of the services and companies that where integrated or build on the Feedburner service…

Can you think of any other evil and non-evil reasons, please post them in the comments.
I would love to read your ideas on the reasons for this move.

Ranking on Google is going to change in 2009

Filed Under: Search Engine, SEO

If you keep an eye on things that are happening on Google, you will find some interesting things going on at this moment.

Ranking and Google Changes

First I want to point you to two video’s from webpronews.com, the first one is an interview with Bruce Clay about this presentation Ranking is Dead where is looks at how Universal search is going to effect your Search Engine Page results.

The other one is at the same site, but now an interview with Matt Cutts on some of the Changes at Google were he talks about some of the things that Bruce Clay pointed out.

From both interviews you can see that Universal Search is going to target your search result pages based on previous searches and Local Search results based on IP address.
The latter is af course already in place where Google will use IP country ranges to lead you to other Data Centers and gives local and country language specific results.

Universal search is mostly referred to as showing results based on your previous searches , but this time even if you are not logged into your Google mail account!
That might scare some privacy concerned people… take into account that Google, Live and Yahoo already have a lot of information on your search history, be it via cookies, or via your DSL Provider that gives you a nice IP address.
That IP address wil stay the same for a loooong time,which is great! For Search Engines that is…

Actually listening to Bruce Clay I find a lot of things he is predicting for 2009 are already in place, it is just the flick of a switch for Google to turn them on.

Searchwiki

One other new thing you might have seen if you are logged into your Google account and you do searches is the new Searchwiki function.

Next to each Title in the result-page there are two little icons, one for UP and one for Delete, well the last one is to actually remove that result form your own search page.
So now you can get those old or not relevant results out of your own search results, but how will this effect the total results in the long run?

I can imagine Google using those results of up and delete actions to improve results in general.
If you look at large enough numbers of people “voting” on search results you could clean up the total results and make them even more relevant and up-to-date as they are now.

Afraid of your competition “voting” your site out of the results? Don’t worry, as you heard before ranking is dead anyway.
But in fact I guess Google will have some algorithm in place that will show that people are trying to play the system.

The effects on SEO

Both Bruce and Matt mentioned it in their interview, as smart SEO is looking no longer at Search Page results rankings but at Conversion and is deep into analyzing his server logs.

A smart SEO is already working on Blogs, News, Images and Video to keep up with the new upcoming personalized search results and to provide your visitors with the quality content they are looking for.

But one thing I am really looking forward too is that importance of links to your site is going to be downgraded and real quality content is getting a more prominent place in the results pages.
This time driven by your own visitors that don’t have spam sites but are really liking your content.

Google Insights use for analysis and upcoming trends

Filed Under: Search Engine, SEO

My Google Alert on Joomla SEO just brought me this link to an Google Insights Article that also discussed the use of this new tool in conjunction with the previous mentioned report in Open Source CMS Market shares.

What interested me even more was how these figures where on a regional level, so I did some comparisons between Worldwide, USA, UK and the Netherlands.

The outcome did somehow surprise me…

Below the graphics for the Worldwide search, showing clearly the search for Joomla as the biggest one…

Now for the Dutch searchers, Joomla is also looking great with extreem high search levels.

When it comes to the UK, you see that Joomla and WordPress are almost level, with WordPress here as the rising star.

But here is the really BIG surprise, Joomla is loosing big time to WordPress when it comes to the United States.

So where does this big difference come from? Are there more Bloggers in the US?
Is WordPress so much more popular in the US for use as a CMS as well?
Is the installed base of WordPress bigger in the US, and are there more questions on using WordPress?

But that is just one way to look at this tool….

Most interesting are the screens just below the Worldwide search, that will show you the regions that are the biggest searchers on that specific keyword.
Which is great information if you need to target a certain region for your SEO Customer.

Also the results below that field, which gives you related searches, but also Rising searches… which means that this is a tool to use in the future to see what keywords are hot and what you should be writing about!

I like the tool! How about you? can you work with this information or are you skeptical about the numbers shown?

The Big Four Search engine features compared

Filed Under: Search Engine

Well not a comparison as for the results pages, but one about which Search engines are giving which functionality in search, or specialized search.

First off, the links to the overview pages of the big four and their offerings:

The mean reason for this comparison was in the post Is Ask.com going for Web 2.0 Search.
I wanted to find out what kind of search results are offered by all the big four search engines and how this would possibly effect your Search Engine optimization efforts and directions.

Because a Blog optimization is different from a Shopping site of course
I wanted to give you an overview of the special search features that all four have in common.
And to show you how to find that extra possibility for your site in that special niche you are looking at…

Little did I know this was a greater challenge then I imagined, but what a great ride!

Not only did I found out about all the crazy search possibility’s already in place, but also some great informational sites to point to for future reference in search engine optimization, like the Top Searches of the Week from Ask.com

But to get you up to speed, here is the Feature table:

ask.com	Live.com	Yahoo.com	Google.com
web	web	web	web
images	images	images	images
video	video	video	video
news	news	News	news
maps and directions	maps	Maps	Maps
city / local	local	local
shopping	classifieds	shopping	products
RSS Feeds	feeds		reader
Smart anwsers	QnA	Answers
blogs			Blog search
	books		Books
	academic		Scholar
Stock			Finance
Special Search results
weather	MSN	Directory	Blogger
Dictonary	health	Jobs	Photos
Conversions		Mobile	Groups
Famous people search		People	labs
		travel	Okut
Movie		Subscription	Patents
White pages		creative Commons	Documents
		Audio	Calender

So as you can see in this table, there are Six search functions that are in all the engines:
Web, Images, Video, News, Maps and Shopping

But if you looks closely, there are a few items that are worth looking at because they might be the next special search for all, like RSS Feeds and Blogs.

Over the next weeks you might read about all these from a Search Engine Optimazition point of view.

Finding Your Niche Competitors and Authority Sites

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Search Engine, SEO Optimization

Last time you could read about finding related keywords to incorporate in your website, know there is a nice tool to find the websites to link to…

Why Links out? Because it shows the search engines where to position your website in the large scheme of topics on the Internet.
As Matt Cutts stated several times, also on the paid-links discussions, Links should be as relevant as possible and should be off benefit to your visitors.

Learning from Problogger

Reading the post from Problogger about “Graphing your Blog Connections” is tried the Tool myself.
You have to read the Getting started on the website off http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html to get it to work, but it was a pretty straight forward experience.. works great!

But as I tried some queries to see how is linking to my sites, it suddenly hit me…. this is great!
If you out in the keyword your are planning your niche in, you instantly get the mayor players in that field!

For instance I tried “Joomla SEO” (go figure..) and this is what came up.

Notice the Big Rounds, those are the Mayor players in this field!

Linking out to those site right in the middel of the biggest cirkels shows Google that your website is related to that topic.

On the site off TouchGraph your can read the following: “The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites.”

And I guess this Blog is doing oke on the Topic its setup for..

Now go and try it yourself for your Keywords and find out who to link to !!
And look at there site to learn…

How Search Engines Help finding Keywords

Filed Under: Optimization, Search Engine, Search Engines, SEO, SEO Optimization

You now how to find keywords for your website, right? You know about Google external ad tool, WordTracker, trillian and seobook.

But there are more easily and very targeted keyword suggestions to be found.
The Search Engines themselves will show you what they think are the most relevant keywords…
It is like looking into their database and finding what they think is relevant for you visitors.

You just have to now how and where to look.
I did some research for a new page of a new site to check out the Singer Anastacia

Google Suggests

First Google, as this is one of the biggest engines, their you can use Google Suggests to find extra keywords.
You just type in you target keyword and you instantly get a drop-down box that shows you related search suggestions.

Yahoo homepage

You have to use the search box on the Homepage of Yahoo to get the next items to show.

here it works the same way as with Google Suggests, just type in you search word and you get a related items drop-down box.

Live.com Search

Microsoft’s Search engine Live.com also has suggestions for your keywords, but the just show up after you did the search.

In the results page you will find a nice listing on the right hand sidebar.
And they throw in some songs suggestions to take into you list..

Ask.com Suggestions

Yes, you can find the best suggestions on Ask…
They give you a complete left sidebar with all kind off suggestions, even other related items…
You can find extra words to target in the “narrow your search” items.
Find other artists to include in extra pages to build somewhat of a themed site with “Related Names”
Find extra keywords in the “Expand your Search” items.

Af course you will have your own favorite, but for my the Ask results pages was on of the best to use…
You could try the more.. link as well….

Naturally you have to combine the results from all the resources you can get to come to what you think are the best keywords to target, but that’s what makes it so nice to do Search Engine Optimization.. finding new ways to get relevant visitors to your websites!

Holiday Thinking and Optimization

Filed Under: Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEO, Webdesign

I got back from a short Holiday a few days ago.

You might have the same problem I had to get started again with work and business, and getting through ton’s of E-Mail.
Not even all off them where spam.. but there where some nice ones that made it OK.

One of the Things I did on my vacation was to read a book.. yes I do sometimes, especially if you have NO Internet connection on you holiday address.

But was it relaxing, yes and no, the reading first was somewhat hard to get into the subject, but once the basics were done, the good stuff showed up.
And now I have to work on the subjects and insights I gained… so should you!

It was an eye opener and pleasing to read as well, this book will definitely by my site if I am going to evaluate my sites and that of my customers.

But there where also some chapters that luckily confirmed my ideas and give not only insight in how to make a site more usable for the visitors, but also for search engine spiders!.

What book? Well of course the book that does make you think!

How Joomla helps with LSI and SEO

Filed Under: Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEO, SEO Articles, SEO Optimization

Oke, you know what SEO means, and what Joomla is.. but this LSI?

Well, if you really are into Search Engine Optimization, you have come across this term “Latent Semantic Indexing” or in short LSI.

So, is this going to be such a long an technical post about algorithms and how they are build… no, its not..

But what you should know about LSI is simpel, it is all about related keywords!
Yes the ones you are so desperately seeking to improve your visitors numbers, but it goes beyond what you normally do.

To explain the term in a more down to earth manner, you should know that you are using it the whole day through en you didn’t even realize it.
Say for example you are thinking of Joomla, what comes to mind? Components, Templates, Modules, Plugins, Content etc, all of these terms are related to the Content Management System Joomla.

Another example, you walk into an unknown supermarkt and want to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, what do you do?
You look for a sign in the hallways marked “Soft Drinks” because you know it is related to your search.
But you don’t have to think about it, you just know.

Latent Semantic Indexing

Google and other search engines use an algorithm that does something similar, it looks at the structure and words used on a website to determine the basic topic, on main subject of a website.

But is uses this related terms also in their personalized search results!
Lets look at the results a musician will get, someone who searches for Music, MP3, Records and sheet music and song lyrics in Google.
If he/she would now uses the search term “mambo”, the results will point him to websites about the Dance “Mambo”.

If I would use the same term “mambo” the results are highly focused on the Content Management System “Mambo” and there will be results about Joomla sites as well..
But that is because the main part of my searches are all about Internet and Content Management Systems.
You see these are all highly related results for both persons.

How does Joomla Help with LSI

One thing that the search engines look for to identify the subject and relevance of your website for your Keywords is the way your website is build , or structured around the topic.

Now this is where Joomla has its strength, although some may hate it, and that is its structure for content.
You can have one, or more sections, but each section is build with categories that holds the content pages.

And to name and sort these categories, you look for, and use the structure that you see fit for your topic!
So for a Joomla Information website, you have categories about Components, Templates, Modules, Plugins and sometimes extend into Joomla SEO :-)
You see that the categorie structure forces you to think about your subject and use the most related and relevant words?

So in this case the so called weakness of Joomla becomes one of its strengths.
And yes I know, WordPress is great for Search Engine Optimization, but the use of Categories only becomes useful if your tightly restrict the use to just some categories.

Drupal is also great for Websites and Blogs, but you still have to come to grips with this Taxonomy thing..
And If you don’t get it, how are you going to explain it to your customers?

Joomla is a great Content Management System, that has its pros and cons, but I really think it is one of the best for a Small or Medium Business website to start out with and has te potential to grow with the Company.
And because of the rigid structure it will help you to keep your content and structure in focus, and thus relevant for Search Engines as well as your websites visitors!

If you liked the content of this article, please subscribe to the feed to keep up-to-date.
One word of warning though… I am off to a two weeks vacation, so you won’t see any update for that time.

But after that, I hope you will read some nice Search Optimization things I have thought up during that time, happy holidays!

P.s. One way to find these words, is to go to the Google Keyword Tool and use the Site-Related keywords tab and fill in the nr One website in your Niche.. you will find some great related terms you did not think off before.

What Title to Use in Joomla or WordPress

Filed Under: Blogging, Joomla, Joomla Seo, Optimization, Search Engine, SEF, SEO, SEO Optimization, WordPress

If you run a Joomla or WordPress Based website, you are of course constantly creating quality content for your users.
Writing the best Titles like www.copyblogger.com told you how to do.

But there are several options in Joomla, and with the right Plugin you get something similar in WordPress.

If you create new content in Joomla, you find yourself with two Title options:

The Title and the Title Alias.

The first option is what is going to be the title of you page and is show as a content header.
The second option is not shown anywhere on the page.. so what’s the use of this option?

Most SEF Components have the possibility to use this alias as the base for there URL rewrite.
So you can have an Title that says:
“The best Content Management System, Joomla or WordPress”
but the alias is written “Joomla or WordPress CMS”
With the use of the alias, you URL is going to be http://www.example.com/joomla-or-wordpress-cms.html
instead of the longer title based version
http://www.example.com/The-best-Content-Management-System-Joomla-or-WordPress

But with the paid version of Joomla SEF Patch by www.joomlatwork.com you get a second title option:

The HTML Title

Now this title is the one that gets indexed by Google and other Search Engines… this is (after good content) the number one Search Engine Optimization tool.

With a standard Joomla installation, you content title is also the HTML title.
But you might want to keep the content titles short, and the HTML titles extended with some extra keywords…!!

This functionality is also integrated in the latest version of JoomSEF, in the edit URL section.

The Title Options in WordPress

You may not be aware of it yet, but there are similar functions in WordPress.
Just start writing you post, and you are editing your Post Title, which (if you have permalinks enabled) becomes the content of your URL as well.

But there is this nice option in WordPress that is called “Post Slug”

Here is where you can change the URL that is used for you Post, especially useful if you have a long post title..
Just shorten you Post slug and the URL will be much shorter and easier to pickup.

And with the right Plugin you also have the possibility to change your HTML Title, or as some call it, you SEO Title.
There are two Plugins that can do that for you:
The SEO Title Tag Plugin which is great for rewriting titles in bulk, and for page titles rewrites, and the best part is, you can use it in combination with the next Plugin.

This Plugin not only gives you the HTML title rewrite option, but also the best way to insert Metatags like keywords, and with the use of the “Optional Excerpt” to fill the MetaTag description.
This Plugin is really the All in One SEO Pack for WordPress and this one is a must have for Search Engine Optimization.

It does even more than just the Title rewrite as you can see.
It can even fill your Metatag Description automatically with the first words from your post…

If you want to use it with the SEO Title Tag Plugin, just untick the Rewrite Titles and the Titles from your other Plugin are used.
So if you are starting a WordPress Blog, go for this Plugin form the start and you will do allright.

Title use Conclusion

The HTML Title tag is very important for your Search Engine Optimization.
Not only should it be written to draw people to your website, it also should contain your targeted keywords.

With the options I mentioned above, you have now the possibilities to extend the power of the HTML Title tag beyond your post title and keeping your URL short as well.

Make good use of it, and don’t forget to write some keywords, but even more important, write very good excerpts of you post and content in you description tags.
Because in essence they are small adverts for you page that show up in the SERP Pages of the mayor Search Engines.
So work extra hard to create those descriptions.

Google Referrals 2.0 for Publishers

Filed Under: Affiliates, Blogging, Search Engine

Just a quick post to complete the Google goes Global with CPA links…

The Google Adsense group just posted an article on line about Google Referrals 2.0 for All Adsense Publishers and that answers my question in the previous post.

However, at this moment the Referrals 2.0 is currently only available in Referrals-supported languages…
So I guess it will take a lot longer before I can see any Dutch referrals

I just wonder what these new “bought” links from Google will do for the ranking of the referrers website…
Guess we have to wait and see how these paid links are working out.