The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

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 »

Want to know what pisses spiders off? When they come to a website and see the same danged title and description for every page in it. Not every page on your site is identical (if it is, you’re really in trouble because having duplicate content on your own site will make it drop like a stone in the rankings), and each page should have its own unique set of information.

The same goes for blogs. If you’re not adding a unique title and description to every post you make, you’re making a big mistake.

You need to get either All-in-One SEO Pack or HeadSpace 2, either of which allow you to add unique information to every post you make.

HeadSpace 2 makes it really easy. All you have to do is click “Page Title” under the post blank, and your post title will be carried down automatically. It doesn’t work very well with descriptions, so you’ll have to fill in the blank there, but it gives you a good chance to use some keywords for your page, as well.

Remember, the title and description of your page are what show up in the SERPs (search engine results pages), too. So, if you want people to see crappy information about your post, be sure to leave that information out. continue reading »

I love Google Webmaster Tools. Well, to be honest, I’m a real fan of most everything Google does. They’ve given us a wealth of information, web tools, and help that we don’t even have to pay for. How can you NOT love Google? Well… if you’re a webmaster that’s been stung by the Google slap before, you may not love Google with 100% of your Internet heart, but hey… you have to give them credit for definite improvement of the Web overall.

I just recently went into my Webmaster Tools account and found a new feature… Labs! Neat-o, right? That means they’ll be trying new experimental stuff in there periodically and right now, there are two new helpers for you to check out.

One is the “Fetch as Googlebot” feature that will retrieve any page of your website and allow you to see it the way Google’s spider does. The benefit to you is that if you’re not seeing your keywords high enough or if the page looks funky or just plain isn’t appearing, you have some work to do. If Google’s spiders can’t see  your site properly, no other search bots will see it properly, either.

The other feature is the “Malware Details” checker. If your website has malware on it, you may not even know, but now, Google will tell you. Smart! I’d go back and check this periodically, just because.

Thanks, Google! You really kick major Internet ass.

You’d think that “perfect” things would be valued, right? But news flash! None of us is perfect, no matter how hard we try. Really.

And spiders know that about us wily humans. They have a filter in their algorithm that says… “Hey wait! This is too perfect and humans are nowhere near as smart as us, so Ehhh!!! This page is being manipulated to make us think humans can be perfect.  As if that would ever happen.”

What classifies as over-optimization?

One thing that’s a dead giveaway is keyword stuffing. If your keyword density is unusually high, that’s just a red flag. Don’t let it get over about 2%, three at the very highest.

Something else that will get your site dropping like a stone in the results is duplicate content. If you put an article on the front of your site, and the same thing hidden somewhere inside and you see that your site took a nosedive in the SERPs (search engine results pages)… that’s the problem! Spiders sniff that stuff out like bad Limburger cheese — easily.

And never use hidden text to get every one of your 500 keywords into the page. Dumb move! Spiders can’t see color. They see your text that isn’t hidden to them  and they’ll know that you just added a list of keywords that have no value. Duh.

Here’s the thing… continue reading »

So, did you know that some parts of your page are more important than others when it comes to SEO?

Yep. Spiders are looking for specific things when they arrive, and if your page is lacking… pffft!!! They just wasted a visit, and guess what? They may not come back anytime soon.

Here is a list of things you should be thinking about when putting any pages onto the Web, even blog posts:

1. Keyword in your title tag (First, if possible)
2. Keyword in your domain name (really helps if it’s there)
3. <h1> and <h2> tags that include your keywords
4. Anchor text (a keyword phrase that is hyperlinked back to your site)
5. External anchor text (keyword phrases on other pages that link back to your site)
6. Keyword use in your subdomain
7. Keywords in image ALT tags
8. Keywords in bold
9. Keyword phrases in italics
10. Keywords in your META description tag

All of these things are important to varying degrees. Want  to know the #1 most important thing you can do? Give your page a title! I mean, make sure your title tag in the HTML of the page is keyword rich, that your keyword appears first, and that it sells the click.

Your title tag and META description are what show up in Google when someone searches for a keyword that you rank for. So, make them good. Though the description isn’t quite as important to spiders, the title is VERY, very, VERY important. So, never neglect to add it to your page.

In a blog, each post is considered a page, so you can get plugins that allow you to add your title and description to every post you make: All-in-One SEO is one HeadSpace2 is another. Be sure to have ONE of those in place and be sure to add your title and description to every post. Don’t be lazy! This is really important stuff!

If you do nothing else—the <h1>, the bold, the alt tags, etc—be SURE that you have a title on every page. And that doesn’t mean the same title for every page in your site, either. That means a very specific, keyword rich title that makes sense for that individual page’s content.

If you don’t have a title, the spiders are already itching to move on.