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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. 

How to use the All-in-One-SEO-pack plugin

Filed Under: Seo Basics, WordPress Plugins

Using the All-in-One-SEO-Pack plugin is one of the best plugins to use if you want to optimize your WordPress installation for better Search Engine results.

Installing All-in-One-SEO-pack

Installing the plugin is simple and straight forward like any other WordPress plugin.

  • Download
  • Unzip
  • Upload via FTP to wp-content/plugins
  • Activate the plugin and you’re off

One thing to be aware of, make sure your template uses the code in the header.php of your template.

This is where the All-in-One-SEO-pack will write your Metatags Description and Keywords so they will show up in your code.
Check this by looking at the source code of your blog post to see if it works!

There are a lot of options in the general options of All-in-One-SEO-pack and you should check the ones you want to use.
Personally I don’t use the Title rewrite option because those are handled by the SEO Title Tags plugin.

Using All-in-One-SEO-pack

After the installation, you will see a new field way down below the article and page editing fields.

The All-in-One-SEO-pack plugin in use

if you use the Title rewrite option, you can write longer Titles with more keywords, this title is the one that Search Engines Pick-up and is the one shown in your browser Title bar.

Description can be used to write your Metatag description, but might I suggest to use the Optional Excerpt for this?

Keywords are of course the metatag keywords…

Benefits of Using the Optional Excerpt field

Using the Optional Excerpt for better ranking and Click through rates

The All-in-One-SEO-Pack plugin uses this field to get the metatag description, so if you use this field, you don’t need to fill the description field.

But this Optional Excerpt field has two major benefits over the Description field:

  • It shows up as content on your Category pages if your Theme uses the excerpt tag.
    Is also will show up on your archives pages as the intro text to your full page.
  • You can use images in this field that will only show in the pages I told you above.

How to put images in there? Use the full Html code for images and insert it on the place you want them to show up.

Tip: Upload and place the image you want into a post or page, set the right options and then look at the code field.
Ther you can cut the code and past it into the Optional Excerpt field.

Putting image code into the Optional excerpt field

After that, save the page and look at the results of your category and archive page… the images don’t show on the post, just in the excerpts…

A great way to improve and pimp your archive and category pages!

Here is one of the results:

Putting an image in your category and Archive pages

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.

Finding Authority Websites
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.

Google suggestions for Keyword Anastacia

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.

Yahoo search and keyword suggestions

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..
Live.com search and keyword suggestions

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.

Aks Keywords and Related search sidebar

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….

Ask and More related searches

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!

Working with Feedburner options to Brand your Feed

Filed Under: Optimization, Search Engine, SEO

You might have seen the test post…

Did not work out the way I planned, sorry.
I hope this one does, you see if it works once you get the feed of this post.

Some time ago I did a post on the evil part of Feed scraper sites.

So I thought I would check out some features of Feedburner to see if there was a way to post a standard image with each post, just to let people see where the post really came from.

Turns out that there is an option to include something just like that!
Under the optimize tag of your Feedburner Feed there is this thing called “Feed Image burner”.
Standard there is the Feedburner image, which makes sense, they want to promote them selfs of course, so because I am doing that already here.. I will use it for myself…

Seriously, you can link to your own image, give it Metatag description en point it to you own Blog, so I did.
I created an image 144px width and pasted the text URL to this Blog on it.
Set up the parameters, and hope it will work.

Spamming the spam sites

What I always like are favicon.ico files… did you know that every time a browser opens a URL it also looks for a favicon.ico file? Don’t believe me? Check your error logs…
If you don’t have one, I suggest you create one and upload it to your root directory.
Don’t know how? Use this link to create a favicon from an image.
And then tell Feedburner you have one on the “Optimize” “Publicize” tab and the option “Buzzboost”.

So I am hoping that will work as well..

And I am looking for the payout of this feature on those scraper site, or will the ban my feed if it does?

P.s. is this spamming the spam-sites ?

No Need to be Concerned, Little Fly

Joomla Templates for SEO

Filed Under: Joomla Templates, Seo Basics

Search Engine Optimized Joomla Templates

Joomla TemplatesIf your are looking for Joomla templates that are already build with Search Engine Optimization in mind, this website of http://www.joomlashack.com/ is one of the best places to start.

And a good Search Engine Optimized Template is really one of the key factors in your quest for Good Ranking in the Search Engines.
If the site is ready to be read by search engines without any difficulties, your are already half way there.
Don’t forget the other technical stuff you need to do, but that is on another part of this website.

SEO Optimized Templates

Here is one I really like Element Template which has some CSS style options already build in:

  • Optimized for Search Engines
  • Display Font Changes for Bigger or smaller text
  • Possible Fixed or Fluid width change
  • RSS Feed icon instead of the Old RSS Syndication images
  • Validation for W3C XHTML 1.0
  • Validation for W3C CSS

Why Validation matters

The last two may sound a bit strange to you, but for the best performance in loading time of your website W3C validation makes the pages load faster.
This is because of the fact that Spiders like Googlebot and Inktomi slurp can read the code faster and can easily find the Real Content on your page.

But that is from my point of view, as I focus on real SEO for Joomla sites.

The templates you will find at Joomlashack also stand out because of there easy customization and visitors appeal.
And that is also Important…..

Visitors Appeal

The longer visitors stay and read and roam your site…. because if they really like your website and its layout, the better you will rank in Google.

Google also tracks the time and number of pages you visit after a search.
The longer you stay on that site, the more relevant it must be for you!
That is one of the factors Google takes into account in his ranking.

So You should try to do is build a website that is, af course loaded with good content, but with a Search Engine Optimized Template that is attractive to visitors.

If you want visitors, build your site and check out the Joomla Templates over on http://www.joomlashack.com/

P.S.

If your want a Special Custom Build Joomla Template or Your old website Layout converted for your own very special website, they can do that for you as well.

P.P.S

They have some fine Joomla tutorials also!

Images for Search Engines

Filed Under: SEO for Your Website

Let images help you to Improve your rankings

Images will bring some life to your site so it’s nicer for Your Visitors, but can also be a major asset for improving your Search Engine Rankings…

But You have to pay attention to the way You handle those Images.
Search Engine Spiders cannot index the content of an image (yet).

So what can we show the then You ask?
For starters put on the images itself so Your ..jpg, …png or …gif files
Yes, but that is not an improvement is it.

That’s right if you just place your images it is NOT an improvement.

Making Images work for You

What would happen if You would first rename your images to match the basic keywords of your site?
Now that is a possibility for optimization!
So the first thing You do is rename Your file like the one below, which is called improve-your-ranking-with-images.png

And then you must use the HTML “alt” tag for images.
This tag gives you a text, with most browsers, if you hover with your mouse over the image.
This is also done for text readers to give them an impression of the image.

If You use these text markers en renaming the right way, you are giving the spider some more keywords to index your pages.

Improve Your SEO and Rankings with Images