Search Engine Optimization
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 18. August 2011 - 5:28
Last week, a “big” business marketing website had the following:
DIY Search Engine Optimization
With keywords and links… What a bunch of crock! In 2010, it would have been correct, 2011 onward is another story.
I wrote, in May 2011, that Google is Changing its Search Results by focusing on “high-quality” websites.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 8. May 2011 - 17:00
In February 2011, Google got shamed by JC Penny who cheated to be ranked in the top 5 websites for common words like dress, jeans…. I wrote about in SEO: How To Cheat JC Penney Style
Fast forward May 2011, and last week, I was talking with a Google engineer.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. March 2011 - 11:25
If you want to sell any photo on the web, you have only 2 choices:
- Microstock like iStockPhoto and the others
- Your own website
The problem with using your own website is that people have to find you. Google, here we come. You are indexed by Google and nothing! No inquiry, no sale, nothing, nada… What's happening?
What's the problem?
Google has the standard Googlebot. That's the standard index spider. That's the one that everybody looks for.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. March 2011 - 18:36
The Sartorialist is a very popular website. Scott Schuman gets an average of 2+ millions of visits per month to his website. He lives in New York and makes street photos of people that are well dressed or interestingly dressed.
Sartorial: about a tailor or their trade. A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.
He has done many YouTube videos, but in this video Scott explains how he became so popular and how the blog drives his business.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. February 2011 - 14:25
On 15-Feb-2011, Google has done some significant changes to their ranking algorithm.
In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 14. February 2011 - 18:27
Everybody wants to be the number 1 when it comes to Google and search. Being the number 1 does bring millions of dollars, especially when you are the number 1 on very common words like “dress”, “skinny jeans”, or “Samsonite carry on luggage”…
JC. Penney was the number 1 on all these common words . JC Penney was even above Samsonite when asking about Samsonite! JC Penney web sales for fiscal 2009 were $1.9 billion.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. February 2011 - 8:05
When search was a baby, you could rank high by just adding white words. Those are words with a tiny white font, so the readers wouldn't see them, but the search engine would. Then the search engines figured it out, next…
Roll a few years later. Why bother creating content? Somebody else can do it for you. That's the area of user generated content with blogs and comments. The problem with the blogs and the comments is that the vast majority of the blogs are just “junk”.
All the announcements are all the same.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 11. January 2011 - 12:51
Ask anybody and 120% of the people asked will want to know the Google secrets. Knowing the Google Secrets will make you:
- Rank high up on their index
- Rich beyond belief
- Famous beyond belief
- ...
Turns out that Google doesn't really have SEO secrets, that's the search engine optimization secrets. If Google had those secrets why do Bing, Microsoft search engine, returns very similar results to search requests? The only real difference between Bing and Google is the frequency and the breadth of the indexing spiders.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 22. November 2010 - 9:26
Everybody tells you that to drive traffic to your beloved blog and your masterful website, you should comment on other websites and other blogs. Ain't the steps simple?
- Go to the website
- Post the comment
- Link to your website/blog through your signature
- Done!
Wrong!
- Go to the blog you want to comment on and look around.
-
- What kind of traffic does this website/blog gets. Commenting on a blog that rarely gets people doesn't get you anywhere unless you want to have the attention of the blog owner.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 15. November 2010 - 12:12
Yesterday, I wrote a post called: SEO Misunderstandings explaining where was the SEO in the grand scheme of things. I also said:
I was at one of Matt Cutts talk and he explained it fairly well, I hope I can make it also clear.
Looking back at it, I don't think that I did such a good job. I need to further expand and explain. There are a few things that you should do, not for Google or the SEO but for the user. Please note that it's Google's interest in having your website do well.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 14. November 2010 - 18:29
There seem to be a major misunderstanding when people talk about SEO, the Search Engine Optimization. Google has 2 priorities: make money and make itself indispensable to its users by providing great services. I was at one of Matt Cutts talk and he explained it fairly well, I hope I can make it also clear. Who is Matt Cutts and why he is such an important guy?
Hi, my name is Matt Cutts and I joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. I'm currently the head of Google's web spam team, aka quality control.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. May 2010 - 23:00
Do you realize how information you give others when you are surfing the Internet?
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. January 2009 - 0:00
Everybody's dream is to have Google show their website as #1 when somebody asks for photography and they'll be rich, beyond belief. Now everybody and their dog claims to be an SEO expert.
Please note that my cat also claims to be an SEO expert, but he is busy waiting for his tuna.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 10. January 2009 - 0:00
Everybody knows how to search on Google, and what it means. Right? Are you sure? And what about the consequences for your own website? If you are doing your job right your website will go right up there, but only after Google has indexed and added your website to its database.
How To Read Google Search Results
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 2. January 2009 - 0:00
You register your website with Google and within a few hours Google will come to your website to pick up the sitemap and done! You have a sitemap! Right? No sitemap, no indexing of your website.
Then, wait, wait and wait. Nothing! Google comes and picks up the updates of “sitemap.tar.gz”. But you are not part of the index for weeks on end. Why? It's because your website hasn't been indexed. Eventually Google may index a few pages but indexing your whole website? That's another story.
