OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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So, I’m working on a top secret project that I’m very excited about. As part of it, I took on the onus of defining what a search engine spider does.

People who aren’t into SEO probably don’t really know. They probably have a general idea, but it may not be what you think.

Spiders don’t decide where your page will rank in Google, the algorithm does that.

Spiders don’t need to be alerted, they’ll just show up.

Spiders aren’t always good spiders.

Spiders do crawl the web. They go into every nook and cranny where they’re allowed and they gather pages. They take the data on those pages and condense it, then send it back to the search engine so that the algorithm can be applied. That’s what determines where your page will show up in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

You don’t need to do anything special for them to show up. Submitting your website to all the search engines is a waste of time, and paying a service to do that for you is a waste of money. Spiders will come.

How well you prepare your pages by having the right META tags and keywords on your page, and perhaps a robots.txt, to tell them which pages to notice and which to ignore, will help you when it comes time for the algorithm to be applied.

But that’s if the spider is sending your page to a search engine. Some spiders are black widows. Some of them go around gathering pages that have email addresses so that creepy spammers can harvest those addresses and spam you with abandon.

Yet, most of the spiders that frequent your page are the good kind, and without them, there would be no search engines.

The nicest thing you can do for a spider, kind of like leaving cookies out for Santa, is to give them the information they need to send to the search engine. It’s the nicest thing for you, too, because unlike Santa, they are real, and they mean the difference between you showing up in the search indexes or being an orphan.

If you do nothing else, learn what META tags are and include a title and description for every page. Remember, too, that each page is different and requires a different title and description. And don’t be lazy!

Remember, search engine traffic is free. The better you prepare your pages for the spiders, the better your website will do.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Today, one of my workmates needed to know page rank of blogs for a project she’s working on, but had no Google Toolbar or anything that would show it to her. Immediately, I asked her what browser she was using  and she told me Firefox. Yes!

Do you know how many very cool add-ons for Firefox there are? I mean, wow! You can go nuts. Here’s my list of must-have add-ons for SEO and social marketing in alphabetical order:

• Bending the Web Toolbar: I’ve told you about this one before, but it’s awesome! One toolbar gives you access to all the important Web 2.0 networking, bookmarking, content, and video sites. It also has a built-in radio. Pretty sweet. Love it, especially since it allowed me to add a calculator to my browser. I’m forever using those. Read more about Bending the Web from social marketing experts Jack Humphrey and Howie Schwartz here: http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/make-money-while-bending-the-web/

• Bookmark Duplicate Detector: Oh, yeah… We’ve all done it, right? We think we need to save a site, and end up with a hundred bookmarks that we just keep adding. Nope! Not with this tool. It keeps my bookmarks unique and I love it.

• Clipmarks: Save the stuff you enjoy and add it to your online account. Clip it! Or, add it to your blog or whatever. Neat.

• ColorZilla: click the icon and get the hexcodes for any color you rest your mouse on. I also like a little program called “Pixie” for this, which you can get at http://nattyware.com free. It’s great for getting matching color codes when you’re not using a browser.

• Fast Dial: Allows you to add icons for all the sites you visit regularly. No more searching, even in neat bookmarks. Just click and you’re there.

• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: This is awesome if you have more than one computer. Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks and when you log in to your other computer with Foxmarks installed, you’re golden. All your bookmarks are always up-to-date.

• IE Tab: Switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer interfaces with the click of a mouse. This is great if you need to see web pages in both browsers or if a site just doesn’t work with Firefox. You don’t have to open the other browser, just click!

• Rank Checker from SEOBook.com Let’s say it’s SEOElite lite. You can check the rank of any site in Google, Yahoo, and Live right from your browser.

• Amason S3Fox: It’s like .ftp for Amazon S3. All you have to do to access all your S3 files is click on the icon in your browser.

• Search Status: Give you Google Page Rank and Alexa Ranking plus a bunch of other stuff. Let’s you see keyword density of pages, highlight no follow links, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

• SEOQuake: I love this one. You get this tiny toolbar that appears every time you open a web page. It’s transparent and really unobtrusive, until you open it. BAM! You have Google page rank, the number of pages indexed, the number of backlinks, and similar info for Yahoo and Live. You can also access Whois, SEODigger, and a whole load of info in a heartbeat. This is totally cool.

• Tab Mix Plus: Lets you reorder your tabs, have tabs open when you click on links, rather than leaving pages, and you can really customize this one any way you want. It’s really great, too. Worth the effort to get it and plug it in.

• TwitterFox: I know, I know… You can really customize TweetDeck so much better, but TwitterFox just sits open on my browser all day. I can see when tweets come in immediately and whether or not it’s something I might want to check out or reply to. I mean, I’m so busy that I really don’t have much time for Twitter. If I had to use Tweet Deck or another stand alone program, I doubt that I’d be able to bother with it at all. If you’re as busy as me, you might enjoy this add-on.

I have a few others that aren’t worth mentioning, but these are my absolute faves. Try them. You’ll be amazed at what you can get one free and very cool browser to do for you.

Popularity: 24% [?]

So, I get all kinds of interesting SEO stuff in my inbox every day, and read all of it with great interest. But one of my favorite digests is the one I get from the people at Axandra.com, the people who make IBP (IBusinessPromoter)

Today, they had an article about Cuil (pronounced “cool,” BTW), a new search engine that just opened its doors… yesterday! You can see it at http://cuil.com

It’s run by people with some pretty impressive credentials. Tom Costello, its CEO and founder, who was an important figure at IBM; Anna Patterson, President and founder, formerly in charge of GoogleBase; and a host of other IBM, Alta Vista and Google folks. Just go over and check out their About Us, Management page. You’ll be impressed.

They’re claiming that their engine is better than Google, according to Axandra. Well, time will tell, but I totally like what I see from a searcher standpoint. From a marketing standpoint, I’m not sure.  Where I managed to get a #1 listing that has kept on keepin’ on for more than a year so far in Google, the site doesn’t even show up on page 1 at Cuil. In fact, I went through a couple of pages and nada.

To me, that says they have a totally different algorithm and the same things we do to rank with Google will hold no weight with Cuil. Should we worry? Hmm… Not yet. I think it will take any search engine to bump Google off the map—not that it can’t be done, but it will take a while, if that happens. We’ll have time to figure things out.

But the coolest thing about Cuil is how it returns your results. Rather than the listings that we’re so used to seeing in Google and Live Search, Cuil gives you a thumbnail and a description, followed by the URL. It’s cool looking, and makes images much more important. And beside the results, you get categories, like Yahoo, but in brief. Neato.

Since this just came out yesterday, I can’t give you an opinion of whether it’s better or not. I have no idea. I don’t know if it will take the Internet by storm or whether it will be just another good search engine that nobody uses. I hope that’s not the case. I think it’s pretty sweet.

Now, it will be my job to figure out how it works and whether it’s worth optimizing for. Time will tell. Keep ya posted.

Popularity: 38% [?]