Universal Search – The Next Step in SERPs

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The search engines evolve, as does most modern technology.  The latest revision in search engine result pages is the “universal search”.  This is the displaying of results for searches in not just web site links, but images, maps, videos, blogs, and more.

The universal search allows a large breadth of information to be given that is relevant to any search done.  For SEOs, this means adjusting approach on how to get relevant information out onto the web.

When trying to publicize information about something you want people to discover, to make sure you can be found by different areas within this universal search you’ll want to make sure you go across multiple areas with your information publication.  This can be done through audio, video, blogging, social media – or getting creative and doing it in unique ways.

It all comes down to doing good marketing, just online.  As the web evolves, so must our online marketing.  For more good information on the universal search, check out this article by Ron Jones at Search Engine Watch.

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iPad Announcement Prompting Black Hat SEO and Malware Attacks

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The iPad is the latest Apple news and it’s been getting a lot of attention.  Considering this, some not-so-nice SEOs are using the fresh keywords to do black hat SEO to infect computers across the globe with malware.  They’re targeting laterally related keywords such as “Apple Tablet” and “Apple iPad Rumor”.

Be cautious if you see some weird results when you do searches on these types of terms.  The eWeek Security Watch has more info on this.

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SEO Strategies vs Tactics

In SEO, many people often think of the different types of SEO tactics that are put into play without ever really putting together a solid strategy.  Knowing how to distinguish which tactics should be used for which market is a great skill.  It’s something that is not focused on by all SEOs, but it really should be.

Beyond that, after determining which tactics are best, one of the best abilities to have is efficiency at various tasks.  Knowing how to balance your time for each need that your projects require is a very valuable asset.  Stephan Spencer described it very well in his article on Search Engine Land, I highly recommend viewing his tips on all of these often missed elements of SEO.

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Forbes Talks About Value of SEO

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When a major magazine that focuses on large businesses and exchanges of huge numbers of money talks about how important SEO is, you know that it’s worth knowing about.  Forbes put up an article about search engine optimization and gave a few really great tips.

The article mentions how there are over 12 billion searches each month and that most people never look past the first page on their searches.  Because of this, being on the first page of results for your market is becoming more and more valued and valuable.

The tips they talk about are details such as content, keyword organization, and even speed of the site itself.  The other element I was happy to see mentioned was the reminder to never forget the visitor directly.  I’ve often told people – top listings don’t matter if no one wants to stick around when they visit your page.  Because of this, good web design and focus on attractive details to the customer is important.

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SEO and the 80-20 Rule

The 80-20 rule is one that applies to several areas of business.  This includes SEO.  There are some elements in SEO that take a large amount of time and effort, especially in areas like building backlinks.  In this case, deciding on which 20% of these can provide 80% of your SEO value can save lots of time while not cutting many results.

In addition to this, when you have hundreds (or thousands) of pages on your site, it’s important to try avoiding the duplicate content penalty where possible.  To do this, each page must be unique and have valid content.  With that many pages, even with a full staff it still takes a lot of time.  In this case the 80-20 rule can be applied to choose the most important of your site’s pages and make sure they’re prepped to be crawled fully by the search engines.  You can find more detail on how to apply the 80-20 rule to SEO from Eric Enge at Search Engine Watch.

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Even Google Can Get Penalized

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Apparently Google in Japan got a big penalty placed on them by Google themselves, taking their toolbar PageRank level from 9 to 5 (Search Engine Land posted an update about this on an earlier story they had).  This is a huge sign – one, that Google takes bad actions by any site (even themselves) very seriously.

Only now has the penalty been removed, although the toolbar PageRank is only up to 8 (not 9).  That’s almost a full year of penalization (11 months, to be precise).

The malady that Google Japan performed?  They paid bloggers to review a new Google widget.  This isn’t the first time Google instated a penalty on themselves – it does go to show that Google enforces their rules consistently, even against themselves.

It demonstrates that if you want to be sure to keep good rankings, you do have to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

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Web Design With SEO

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SEO, by its very nature, requires changes to the construct of the web pages in the site being optimizated.  Because of this it’s usually easier to integrate SEO with web design on the initial construction of the site.

By doing this in combination, the decisions of which pages to create can be more targeted from a marketing perspective, and this can make a well-ranked site look good instead of just “adjusted”.

The key to this is finding a web designer and an SEO expert that can work well together to make this process seamless.  Or else to find an SEO expert that also does web design (as TMO does).

Attention to these details was pointed out by Last Click News.

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Negative Attention Can Mean Positive SEO

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Most companies perceive getting negative attention or negative reviews as a purely bad thing.  However, any type of attention is good for SEO.  It will build up links, it puts eyes on the company.  And in the case that the bad review or bad attention is a minor part of what is overall a good reputation for the company, getting eyes on the company (even in this way) can be a very good thing.

Also, a balance of positive and negative attention tends to make a company look more legitimate, so this can also make this negative aspect bring positive points.

For SEO, any links that point back to the site (even if for negative reasons) will increase PageRank and sometimes may even affect keyword ranking in a good way.  I wouldn’t recommend searching for negative attention, but getting some is not always a bad thing.  SEO Consult in the UK has more details on why this is.

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How is SEO for Bing different?

Usually in the SEO world, Google comes first.  However, as Microsoft adjusts its approach, it seems that Bing is starting to get more ground.  So how is Bing different than Google when it comes to SEO?

Michael Carden-Edwards from Coast Digital explained it well: Bing needs a lot of the same things Google does, but just focuses on some key elements more heavily.  The primary areas that Bing checks are the following:

  1. Domain age – Bing likes well-established sites, it shows that there’s some experience behind the site.
  2. Quality links, both inbound and outbound – This is one area that differs from where most SEOs focus on, by looking at quality of outbound links as well as incoming links.
  3. Substantial content on each page – At least 300 words for any page that you want ranked on Bing.  It appears Microsoft is going to reduce ranking for shell pages that don’t offer much information.
  4. Title tags – This is the one major element that fits for all SEO, and stays the same with Bing.  Keep them relevant and with your keywords, it will help.

Even though Google is still king, Bing is starting to become a bigger source of traffic than before, and it’s worth knowing how to rank in their listings to keep traffic up.

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Duties of an In-House SEO Employee

As SEO becomes more prominent, more companies are turning to it to increase their rankings on the search engine results and to drive traffic to their site (to increase business).  The choice for these companies is to either hire a qualified SEO company or to hire an in-house SEO guru.

Unfortunately many companies still don’t realize the amount of work involved when asking one person to handle all of the SEO work.  Patricia Skinner from Search Engine Journal does an excellent job of outlining all of the responsibilities any in-house SEO will hold in this article.  She clearly shows that it’s something that does take time, and covers details on what to do for a company that wants quick results when you have work that isn’t always quick to show results.

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