The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

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Today, I was over at Digital Point, checking out what was going on and there’s a big discussion of a page rank update. People are complaining that their page ranks went up or down for no apparent reason, and it’s freaking them out.

But you know, … Does it really matter?

Here’s what matters: Your site showing up in the results pages. That’s what matters.

I’ve said this before: Page rank is a way for Google to play with your head.

If you have PR6, Google decides it hates paid linking and BOOM! PR0. Happened last year.

If you have a PR3, it’s better than a PR2… why? You have no more listings today than you did yesterday. Who cares?

What you should watch and care about are these things: continue reading »

Unless you’ve had your head in the SEO sand, you know that there’s a new search engine to reckon with. It’s not really new. Bing is just MSN Live revamped in a very good way. And the new kid on the block is getting market share. Will it usurp Google’s top spot? Not likely, at least for a very long time, but you just never know. Who ever heard of Google before 1998, right?

So, Bing released a new article in its Community: Link Building for Smart Webmasters which talks about natural, organic link building. Hmm… they actually could be Google clones.

We know the right ways: article marketing, blog commenting (not spamming), press releases, yadda, yadda. But they also mention that reciprocal linking is cool… IF you’re linking to sites in your niche. Linking to sites with no relation to what you’re doing won’t help you and in some instances can actually hurt.

So, let’s focus on stuff that will cause you harm: continue reading »

I admit it… I made a foolish blunder.

I trusted my SEOQuake add-on for Firefox to tell me about Twitter. It was showing that I had links coming back from my profile and that they were “do follow” links, when ehhhhhhh….  (See http://ovblogger.com/1694/google-ranks-twitter-profiles/)

Someone questioned me on this, and so, I went into the page source for my Twitter profile page and there you see it  [rel="nofollow"] right in the code.

Somebody shoot me.

Everything I wrote in that Twitter post is wrong. Don’t use your Twitter page for sending links anywhere because the spiders can’t follow them. So, it really doesn’t matter if your page is a PR10, it doesn’t help.

But here’s the thing that will be cool: The most visitors you get to your Twitter profile and the higher your page rank goes, the higher your profile page will go int the SERPs. You ‘ll get traffic to your links just because people want to find out more about you. So…

Tweet away. Don’t go nuts thinking that you’ll get link juice from Twitter, though, because it just ain’t going to happen.

Grr… SEOQuake. I really like that add-on, but if I have to go back and double check everything it tells me… ppfffftttt!!!

Mea culpa.

ATTENTION: Please read this post first… http://ovblogger.com/1720/twitter-wr-wr-ong/ Duh.

Did you realize that your Twitter profile page (the one with all of your own tweets on: http://Twitter.com/username) has page rank? If it doesn’t, you’re not tweeting that often. If it does, and it’s a good PR, you may or may not realize that putting links on that page pass page rank to the sites on it, right?

Yep. I just checked mine out because I heard that Google just did another page rank update (Google Surprise PageRank Update by Navneet Kaushal, SearchNewz.com), and I see that I now have a PR5 on my Twitter page. Hmm… Need to send more links to that page to help my sites.

Check our your Twitter page and see where you stand. If you update Twitter frequently with cool info, you’re probably going to find a good PR punch.

It doesn’t hurt you to show up on other people’s profile pages when they have a high page rank, either. That’s why putting stuff out there that folks enjoy and having it “retweeted” by them really makes a difference.  So, if you’ve been using Twitter only to chit-chat and you’re in business, you’re wasting a valuable SEO tool.

Yes, you should be chatty on Twitter. But, you shouldn’t ONLY be chatty. Plan what you want to write in Twitter that concerns your business everyday. Maybe plan out 10 Tweets. You can go in once an hour and tweet something cool. If you want to set them all up at once, you can use a site called “SocialOOmph.com (was Tweet Later),” which allows you to schedule your tweets throughout the day.

I’m not suggesting that you send out ads all the time, like some losers do. Really, they’re not using Twitter properly, either, and they’re probably pissing a lot of people off and creating bad karma. You totally do not want that. continue reading »

If you’re interested in SEO, a really good place to get a handle on what Google wants is by spending time at well… Google. Their Webmaster Central is chock full of information on everything from site construction to META tagging and you can find its homepage at:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/

And if you think you’ve already been,  remember that things change. As Google bots get smarter and smarter, they’re looking for ways to stop manipulation of their results, and we can all understand that, of course. Nobody wants to type a search phrase into Google and have the first 10 results all pointing to the same page. It’s not good for Google and it’s not good for us — the searchers.

I don’t know about you, but I use Google at least 10 times a day and on most days, it’s more like 50. And for simple things like spelling, too. I know… There are better ways, but well, how convenient, right?

Anyway, there are things that Google absolutely abhors, and one of them is “linking schemes.”  This wasn’t always the case. A few years ago, any link to your site was a good one whether or not you had one pointing back in the reciprocal manner. Didn’t make a hoot of difference. Then, Google decided they didn’t like “bad neighborhoods.” Those were places like porn sites, gambling sites, even free card sites or what they term “link farms,” which are nothing more than pages of links pointing to sites without a human editor to decide whether the sites are good or bad.

Today, there are many more reasons for Google to hate your links. continue reading »

Way back in the Stone Age of  SEO (like in 2006), linking was the potentate of the country, “IWPR,” or “I Want Page Rank.” It didn’t much matter where the links came from. You could buy them or sell them, add them to a gazillion directories, or trade with other folks in your niche in link exchanges. It really didn’t matter much where they came from, as long as you and the site linking to you were in the same biz.

Then came 2008 when Google cracked down on linking. No longer was it a good idea to either buy or sell links, to add your link to a non-human edited directory, or to exchange links with all your pals in a forum.

Linking became less important, but don’t get me wrong…

It will still boost your rankings. Google, our 600-pound search gorilla in the room, says that it wants linking to occur “naturally,” as in someone comes to your site, likes the content, and adds a link to it from their own website. You don’t ask, pay, or even try to get the link, it just happens naturally because YOUR content is just that awesome.

We know that those kinds of links are gold. They are one-way, meaning you don’t link back to their site, and the more of this type link you have, the better for your search engine optimization. Google will raise your page rank because of your one-way links from reputable sites and directories, and they’ll place your page higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), too.

So, how do you get more people to link to you?

Well… social links are important, so make it easy for people to link to you from their social accounts at Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, to Tweet your posts. When folks can just push a button and do something, they’re much more likely to do it. You’ll notice that I have several different types of buttons on my blog to help you to add my posts to many different Web 2.0 sites. (So, please do! )

Another way to have your stuff linked to is by making it good, solid content that people can learn from. I have different types of posts here, but each week, I try to post more information than chatter. I have to admit that I’ve been chattering for a couple of weeks here, mea culpa. That was because I was so busy with the ListBuilding Club launch that I had minimal time for much else. However, if you go back into my archive, you should be able to find more information than chatter. That’s important.

Folks want information, and they want a good time. If you can be funny while providing information, all the better. Who doesn’t need a good laugh these days?

Be sure (and I’ve already mentioned this) that you stick to your topic. Wandering off about your vacation is OK, if you do it once a year or so, but generally, if you have a blog about Depression glass, you should write about Depression glass and not much else. People who read your blog come to read about Depression glass, not about the latest marketing promo going around.

That’s really all you have to do. Encourage linking, and make it easy for people. Folks who enjoy what you’re providing for them will do it naturally because it adds value to their audience or their list.  And that’s exactly what Google wants. Use your time to create good, linkable content and forget actively searching for link opportunities and I’ll betcha that the great content will win out every time.

There’s a new add-on in town, and guess what? It’s for Firefox… the “SEO’s browser.”

Really, Firefox is just the bomb for quick SEO evaluations of a site. I’ve told you about SEOQuake and Search Status before, but today, I found this new add-on called “FoxyLinks.”

When you land on a page, it will give you the same information as the add-ons mentioned above, but here’s the cool part about this add-on…

It shows you how much “link juice” will come to you from having a link on that page. It also tells you about no-follow links, whether there’s a blocking robots.txt, and you can get all the info just by clicking an icon in your tray.

The only really cool part that makes it worth having in addition to SEOQuake, which is still my favorite eval tool, is the indicator of how valuable it will be to have a link on someone else’s website. It doesn’t always make sense you know.

When there are so many links on a page that it’s distributing you .01% link juice, why bother?

Page rank distribution works like this: If you have 10 links on the page, each one will distribute 10% of the PR from that page. (The page in question doesn’t lose page rank from this, by the way.) But if there are 100 links on the page, watch what happens… now, you only get 1% of the PR in link juice. BIG difference, eh?

What FoxyLinks does is automatically count the links on the page and calcualtes the link juice ratio for you. Sweet!

If you’re really into this SEO stuff like me, it’s the small stuff that matters. But the add-on is still in Beta so be wary of adding it. If Firefox starts doing funky things (and 3.0.11 has enough funk to suit me for sure), then you’ll just have to deactivate it. But I thought I’d give it a try out. Imagine knowing how effective a link will be without doing the math!

Oh, and by the way…

If you want to learn all there is about SEO from the ground up so that it’s easy to understand, try Spider Language, a course from me & Tellman that will put you on the right track. Believe me, it’s not really rocket science. You just need to hear all about it in human terms.  Get your first month for only $4.95.

When I tell people to do that, I can usually hear the gears turning in their brain… EVERY DAY!?!

Well… yeah. Every single day.

The more you blog, the more subscribers you’ll get, the more traction you’ll have with the search engines and the benefits are HUGE.  That’s to get your blog started. After you’ve built an audience, you can cut back to three times a week and then, maybe once a week. It’s all in what your niche is and what your readers expect from you. But here’s the deal…

If you blog once a month or even once a week or you’re inconsistent with your posts, you’re training an audience to ignore you. People want fresh content, and if they like what you provide in your blog, they’ll come back regularly to read your stuff, if YOU are regular about getting it up there.

In terms of search engines, pages equal page rank. Since each post you make has its own separate page, you’re adding pages to your site. (This isn’t to confuse you with the “Page” feature in WordPress. Those are pages, too, but they’re more like static information, like “About,” calendars, and such. Posts are continually updating content.) Plus, you’re updating content often, and the spiders just eat that up.

So, how can you post every day and not feel like a gerbil on a constantly spinning wheel?

Simple.

Make videos. They’re easy to do. You can make them with Flip Cams, Camcorders, or cheap old webcams like mine and put them up on YouTube or Seesmic and then, just embed them in your blog. They can teach people something or you can just talk into the camera. Have you checked out “Dear Tellman” lately? All video.

Make voice recordings and post those to your blog. Podcasting blogs are great, and if you’ve ever been to Stephen Pierce’s blog DTAlpha Talkback, you’ll see how easy they can be to do. His stuff is killer! But then, he’s Stephen Pierce, right?

You don’t have to write every day.

But you can get people to write for you. Hire folks at Elance.com and have them write for a small fee.

Or, here’s one I like a lot… get guest bloggers. You don’t have to pay for them, and it’s a win-win situation. They get exposure on a different venue and YOU get a blog post. Sweet! You link to their site from your blog and the guest blogger has a backlink, too. Nice! Plus, their working with a new audience to get readers for their own blogs. It’s great!

You don’t have to make videos, either. You can grab videos from YouTube or another directory and just post them.

The caveats are:

1. Be sure that the content is is consistently about the niche your blog lives in. Don’t have a fishing buddy post something about fishing to your Internet marketing blog. Bad, bad, bad.

2. Don’t use other people’s stuff ALL the time. Just now and then to take the load off. People are coming to your blog to learn about YOU and what you have to say. Don’t always be leaning on others.

3. Mix things up. Unless you’re going to have a pure video blog or a pure podcast blog, then try adding different types of content at reasonable intervals. You’ll notice that most of my posts are written because well… I’m a writer. But I do add videos now and again. When I’m really busy, those are a godsend.

So, see? When you think of blogging every day in those terms… it’s not so overwhelming, is it?

I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.

So, Wall linked to Danny Sullivan’s post “Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting,” which made me curious. So I went over to Danny’s blog, which explains the situation in much clearer detail.

Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.

What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.

I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.

Great.

If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.

Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.

Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.

Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.

Don’t you just love it when someone comes to your blog and types in “Internesting post”? I mean, it’s nice that they read it–maybe, but I totally doubt that they did, but if they did, nice. But let me ask you why don’t they have anything better to say?

I mean, I get some great comments here. People are totally helpful, start up a discussion, or whatever, and that totally rocks!

But when I see a comment that says, “Interesting post,” I’m SO beyond flattery. LOL I know it’s someone just tyring to get a link back or whatever.

‘Course you’ll notice that I got the smackdown again from Google for having the paid links on my site. I’m a PR 2 again. Big whoop. Page rank means exactly the same thing to me as does “Interesting post.” I totally ignore both of them. The vapid blog comment gets sent right to Akismet.

PLONK!

Am I cranky today or what?

Yes, I am.

Working too hard.

But I have a call coming up tonight. But that should be fun. Some SEO talk: http://easyseotricks.com/paul if you’re interested. This is what I love, so it will be fun. Come on over.