Nov 15, 2011

Google changes: Ten recent algorithm changes

If your site got downgraded by Google in the last couple of days, the announcement below is probably the reason why.

The most important ones for SEO are these five changes in Google's algorithm:

  • Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
  • Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
  • Fresher, more recent resultsAs we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
  • Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
  • Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
The last two are rather vague, but the first three are quite clear: less consideration to Title tags, Headers, menu items and much more consideration to the actual copy/text on the page, so less emphasis on hieararchy - which will make SEO even harder..

This seemed to have affected my website design Ottawa site but has not had any impact to my SEO Ottawa site.

Oct 29, 2011

Referrer Data from Signed-in Searches on Google is Now Encrypted

This October Google launched a new SSL-based restriction on search data, "making search more secure". For users who are signed into their Google account (gmail, blogger, analytics, etc.), while searching on Google for certain keywords, their search terms will not be "passed" along to the websites they visit. So the website owners won't know what keywords those users typed to get to their sites. Note, this affects only signed-in users or those who chose to search from Google's encrypted platform: https://www.google.com (note the 's' after 'http').

This is not a great news for online marketers, as many SEOs were quick to point out. Although Google insists that only roughly 1% of all searches will be affected by this restriction, SEOs expect that keyword research and analytics data will be less specific and less accurate. I personally find it hard to believe that 1% of the search value was a good business case justification for Google to undertake this SSL project.

Google is gradually moving towards monopolizing information and, unfortunately, I see a lot more people "signing up" for Google accounts, buying into the teaser of their privacy being "protected". In the future, I won't be surprised to see Google Analytics "selling" some add-on features, for example, keywords from SSL-encrypted searches. What a novel idea, eh?

Ohh, but lets not to forget to mention: this SSL change will NOT affect paid ads on Google AdWords - why am I not surprised?

In hard economic conditions all companies will look for creative ways to increase revenue, i.e. force users into spending more. I think this SSL-encryption for signed users is one such measure by Google to continue to grow revenue: you get more people sign up to your accounts because their "privacy" will be protected and you also get more people buying ads from you to get better analytics data about their websites.

I am waiting for the next announcement..I am guessing, something to do with selling info based on "personalized" or searches: beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing!

Oct 6, 2011

Steve Jobs: The Understood Genius of Our Times

"3 Apples changed the World: 1st one seduced Eve, 2nd fell on Newton and the 3rd was offered to the world half bitten by Steve Jobs".

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

I found myself profoundly saddened by the passing of this remarkable man. May his soul find a deserving dwelling in the next cycle.

Apr 5, 2011

SEO Myths (Website Design Ottawa)

Many people believe that if you stop paying monthly fees to an SEO firm, your positioning on Google will drop. If you understand what is involved in an SEO project, you would understand why this is an expensive myth many SEO firms would like you to believe in.

In a nutshell, SEO involves three things:

  1. Content of your website (pages and articles containing unique content devoted to the area of expertise that your desired keywords cover)
  2. Frequency of repetitions of your desired keywords across various elements of your website (URL, Page title, header tags, link anchor text, copy)
  3. Number of links from other websites pointing at your website (preferably, from reputable websites highly specialized in the area of your keywords). 
Here is a more detailed overview of these SEO basics

If you paid an SEO firm to create unique content for you, pepper it with your desired keywords and create back links from other websites, and all this has already been done, then how can they take it away after you stop paying your monthly fees? 

Ask yourself: 
  • Can they remove your content from your own website? 
  • Can they un-create all the back links that have been created over the course of several months or even years? 
  • If the answer to these questions is "No", then they can't do anything to adversely affect your SEO
Once your website has achieved a certain SEO level, there is not much that an SEO firm can do to take it away - except for doing a lot of SEO work for your immediate competitors, perhaps.

In fact, the only real thing that would affect your SEO in the long run is your competition. If they undertake an aggressive SEO campaign by doing a lot of the three things I listed above, then your SEO can get lowered, i.e. your link might drop a few lines down. But an SEO firm cannot lower your positioning on Google. Only Google can.

If is therefore foolish to engage in a forever-monthly-fee contract with any SEO firm.

Yes, SEO takes work and it takes time, but there is a limit to it, and after you've reached a certain level, it does not require a lot of maintenance. 

A savvy business owner would be advised to do the following:
  1. Take an SEO seminar or research SEO independently to learn what is involved in SEO. This is not rocket science. SEO is not difficult. It requires leg work and time, but it is not difficult, and anyone who knows how to type and use email can learn how to do SEO quite well - and within a few hours.
  2. If you are too scared or too busy, hire an SEO firm do to the bulk of the required work for you for a limited fixed fee.
  3. Maintain the achieved SEO results on your own by creating new content every so often and acquiring back links (or by something social media marketing)
On average, this SEO strategy will result in savings of several thousand dollars (anywhere between $5,000 and $7,000 or more, depending on how many keywords you would want to cover) in the course of two years. And in many thousands more - in the long run.

If you need an SEO advice or a new website with SEO implemented from the grounds up, check out this website design Ottawa firm (which is my firm).

Jan 19, 2011

Best Quality Links

Everyone knows that SEO entails link building. In fact, link building is the most important part of SEO. But what kind of links? Any links, from any website?

Well, the answer is any link is good to have but links from specialized reputable websites in the field of your desired keywords is what will affect your SEO in the most noticeable way.

Define "related" and "reputable" websites.

"Rebutable" has nothing to do with PR. In fact, a link from a website with PR0 can be quite valuable if this website is specialized in your area of expertise (i.e. in the area of expertise covered by your desired keyword).

"Related" is best understood in terms of specific keywords AND in terms of general specialization of a website. Again, websites specialized in your area of expertise are a much better link material than general websites.

Plus, ideally you'd want to have a link from a page that has a title containing the same keywords that your website is about and include the same keywords as an anchor text of the link that leads to your website.

If all your links come from these type of websites and these type of pages on those websites then you can only have a few links from each, with the total of 200 or so links, and you will be very high on Google, provided your content is unique and is well saturated with the same keywords.

If you have any questions, contact me via my webiste design Ottawa website or via my SEO Ottawa website. We revently launched a new website design ottawa 4u site, check it out and let us know what you think.

Jan 16, 2011

SEO Tart is Here!

My SEO Ottawa website is getting old, but I have an emotional attachment to it, so I don't want to redesign or change it. Instead, I created a new search engine optimization site - SEO Tart.

I wanted to free myself from the burden of the business style presentation and have a fun site with tons of useful SEO information.

I still maintain that SEO is easy and fun and anyone can learn how to do it well within a few hours. The level of SEO expertise becomes apparent with numbers: how many sites were optimized, for how many keywords, for what level of competition - things like that.

Every now and then I come across nice SEO articles and even SEO books with a lot of good SEO information, but after a couple of minutes of reading it I can tell that the author has very little hands-on SEO experience.

You can also find me via my website design Ottawa site.

Jan 12, 2011

Website Design Ottawa

Yesterday I got a call from a sales person asking if I need help closing on my customers. I politely refused. During the conversation he informed me that one of Ottawa's most prominent website design agencies receives 25 registrations per day. They are on the 1st page on Google for "website design Ottawa".

Here are some of the new websites our designers built:

If you have any questions, contact me via my SEO Ottawa website.