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Avoiding Web 2.0 Overload
The Internet of today is bustling over Web 2.0 words like weblogs, wikis, and widgets. However, it’s important that SEMs (search engine marketers) stay true to a business’ purpose and avoid misapplying the Web 2.0 toolbox.
The Web 2.0 “look” encompasses much more than light colours, cute rounded corners, and huge buttons. The overall design should underscore the website’s raison d’être, and its usage should be as intuitive as possible. The design should also anticipate and cater to user behaviour.
Tags: graphics, SEM, Web 2.0, web developmentPacing Quality Link Building Strategies
When it comes to link building initiatives, it is important to look beyond the sheer volume of inbound links to your website. Getting hundreds of incoming links from low quality sites is decidedly not as beneficial as a handful of links from high authority sites.
As would be expected, most of these “high authority” websites are inherently more difficult to get linked from because of their stricter requirements, and affinity to only associate with other “high authority” sites. There might also be unforeseen bureaucracy issues with getting in touch with the link building decision-maker, which may bring your link building initiatives to a standstill.
Tags: link building, SEO, social media marketingThe End of Supplemental Results?
Less than a week ago, Google’s Search Quality Team made a post in the Webmaster Central blog, that hints to the end of supplemental results along with the supplemental index. One of the main purposes for the supplemental index was to separate complex content (meant for esoteric queries), from pages with more “basic” information that’s catered towards the general public.
However, webmasters have often found that the supplemental index simply stored pages with duplicate content, were crawled less often, and even showed up less on the primary search engine result pages. Webmasters saw it to be more of a second-tier disciplinary index, rather than a scholarly index for expert search queries.
Tags: Google, search trafficContent Analysis Through Webmaster Tools
Search engine optimization was made just a little easier last week with the inception of “Content Analysis” features in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The Content Analysis page can be found under the Diagnostic section, and builds upon the previously available reports of any crawling and indexing issues discovered by the GoogleBot spider.
Content Analysis information consists of very basic search engine optimization tips and suggestions. It will analyze meta title tag lengths, duplicate titles, and even non-informative title tags. Meta descriptions are also looked at in terms of length and duplicate entries. Expanding slightly on the previous crawling / indexing reports, the “non-indexable content” component will find pages with flash files, video files, and images.
Tags: Google, SEO, tools, web developmentMore adCenter Tools for Search Marketers
Microsoft has presented search marketers and advertisers with an early Christmas present this year, with plans for a more extensive array of tools in adCenter. Some advertisers have been critical of Microsoft’s search engine Live.com, as it only commands about 7.4% of search traffic in the United States, placing it well behind Google and Yahoo, and only a few percentage points above Ask.com.
Despite lower search volumes, adCenter is continuing to delight the marketing folks with its innovative and practical tools. Among the newest additions is the ability to geotarget ads and better direct messages to local markets. Through the dayparting feature, advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed between certain time slots. These bells and whistles are further complemented by the demographic targeting of a searcher’s age and gender.
Tags: adCenter, Microsoft, pay-per-click, SEM, tools