Tag Archives: seo

Things to Consider if Page Speed is to Become a Ranking Factor

Posted on December 14, 2009 by admin

About a month ago, WebProNews interviewed Google's Matt Cutts , who suggested that page speed may soon become a ranking factor in the world's most popular search engine. Speed has been a consistent theme with the company over the past year or so, with the release of various tools and announcements. It has become quite evident that Google places a great deal of importance on speeding up the web. With that in mind, it's not hard to see why Cutts' suggestion could soon become a reality. Google has always maintained that it is trying to deliver the best user experience, and by delivering results that load quickly users should get just that. Do you think it's a good idea for Google to use speed as a ranking factor? Share your thoughts here . While many webmasters are embracing the notion of speed as a ranking factor as a welcome change, there are also plenty of people who do take issue with it for a variety of reasons. We've had some interesting comments from readers on the subject. Here are some of them: So, we all have to pay for the most expensive hosting now or we won’t get found in search engines. I won’t be able to host on my own servers at work now. It went from paying for backlinks with huge advertising corporations to get sites PageRank up, Now we have to go with even bigger corporations that can afford to have a massive pipe connecting to the Internet. I don’t think Google mean to, but they are squeesing the poor people of the World out from search results and glorifying huge corporations – Be careful Google! ... Page speed is going to be a big political issue. Apart from concerns about net neutrality, what about countries who’s internet infrastructure is vastly inferior to the technology rich countries. Regions like south east asia and central china have much better connections than east africa. Even some parts of Scotland have poor internet links based on the ageing BT networks. Also the people who can afford dedicated servers and high quality bandwidth have a big advantage over the common Joe who has to rely on shared hosting. Does this make google less democratic? or are they just following what they think people want, ie faster loading sites? ... What do you think will happen to the sites that are mainly using rich media like video blogs? Can they really accelerate their load time? If not, are they doomed to drop from the SERP? ... The speed thing concerns me. Next to a tiered internet its the biggest slam agains the small time net player. Corporations will take over fast and knock out anyone who can’t afford a lightning fast server. Those are just a few reader comments that were left on the video interview. You can read them all here . You can read quite a few more on this related article as well. Voice your own concerns here . Regardless of how you feel about the possibility of Google using page speed as a ranking factor, it's probably going to happen, and it's something you're more than likely going to have to deal with. Besides this even being a factor for regular organic results, consider Google's recently introduced real-time results . The quicker Google can crawl you, the quicker you can potentially appear in this section. As far as speeding up your site in general, Bill Hartzer recently shared a few tips on the subject in an interview with WebProNews: And of course, Google has its own tips. The company offered a few on site performance improvement using its Webmaster Tools . Webmaster Tools has a Site Performance feature, which shows you a performance overview graph. This looks at the aggregated speed numbers for your site, based on the pages that were most frequently accessed by visitors who use the Google Toolbar and have the PageRank feature activated. "By using data from Google Toolbar users, you don't have to worry about us testing your site from a location that your users do not use," explains John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Z Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged ageing, central china, data, google-toolbar, internet infrastructure, load, people, poor internet, rich countries, seo, share your thoughts, south east asia, technology, tools, users | Leave a comment

What Google’s Real-Time Search Means to SEO, PPC & Reputation Management

Posted on December 11, 2009 by admin

It seems that over the course of the entire year, we've been waiting for Google to get real-time search. Now it's here. If you have ever had a hard time finding a direct relationship between social media and search engine marketing, it doesn't get any more direct than this. Real-time search results (from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other sources) right in regular SERPs. Do you like the idea of real-time results in Google SERPs? Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged cool, dave snyder, facebook, hard time, kirkpatrick, president, search, search engine marketing, search users, seo, serps, spring, thoughts, time search, timeliness | Leave a comment

What’s Better: PPC or SEO?

Posted on December 9, 2009 by cgseo

At SES Chicago , there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor , Chirstine Churchill , Michael Gray , and Karen Weber , and Rand Fishkin . Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged Business, conversion, karen weber, new marketing, ppc, sales pipeline, search-results, seo, ses, ses chicago, traditional advertising, volume sales | Leave a comment

Link Building for Bing Rankings: Dos and Don’ts

Posted on November 23, 2009 by admin

It's easy for businesses to get caught up in Google's expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That's certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too. I'm obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo's share is declining, while Bing's is gaining . Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. We don't hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don'ts of link-building for Bing . Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing's policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion. Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time." What Not To Do DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff: 1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time 2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites 3. Using hidden links in your pages 4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known "bad neighborhoods" on the Web 5. Linking out to known web spam sites "When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction," says DeJarnette. "If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index." What To Do DeJarnette also shared some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing's tips for effective link building (paraphrased): 1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently 2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they're aware of your site/content 3. Publish concise, informative press releases online 4. Publish expert articles to online article directories 5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site's content when applicable 6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles) 7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content 8. Launch a blog/forum on your site 9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged dejarnette, microsoft, other search engines, period of time, related, review and story, search, search engine marketing, search market, sem, seo, your-site | Leave a comment

Google Rolls Out Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

Posted on November 17, 2009 by cgseo

Update: Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged breadcrumbs, google-search, internet, mainly-the-ones, original article, related, search, seo, serps, the-breadcrumbs, webmaster center | Leave a comment

Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

Posted on November 13, 2009 by admin

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google? Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews , Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor. "Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much." > > Site speed ranking comments starts at the 02:35 point in the video... "I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about 'how do I have my site be fast,' how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?'" he says. I would say that based on Matt's comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings. Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site , which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well. If you're serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven't given much thought to load times and such, it's time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn't it make sense if your site helped the process along? Have you given much thought to site speed? Is your site up to snuff? Discuss here . Related Articles: > Continue reading →