Google Personalizing Organic Search Results

Google has always been experimenting on its products, and this time Google is planning to personalize the organic results. The thought is good and when I login to my account and search results I get a new kind of results and now I have an option to rank my favorite sites as number one. I have collected the snapshots of this new interface.

Google has introduced new buttons beside every result. Now you have an option to move the result up or down depending on your choice.

Set your preferences as per your wish that you would like to visit everytime.
I have tried removing couple of results from the listing and these results are removed from the listing and they are placed at the end of the page as removed listings.
This is the feature that I liked a lot. I can write comments about a website and that gets registered below the result.
Apart from what I have mentioned above there is a "Add a Result" link at the end of the page. This is good in some way.

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Usage of Meta Tags for a Web Page

Meta Tags are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes. Let’s go step by step looking at an example below.

Let’s look at each of the attribute differently and the importance of that attribute. Firstly <> represents the closing of the tag. When a tag is opened it should be closed, else may result in an error. Then http-equiv=" ", META tags with an HTTP-EQUIV attribute are equivalent to HTTP headers. Typically, they control the action of browsers, and may be used to refine the information provided by the actual headers. Tags using this form should have an equivalent effect when specified as an HTTP header, and in some servers may be translated to actual HTTP headers automatically or by a pre-processing tool. On the whole the above example indicates that type of content within the document which is text/html.


Meta Tags of any web page can be found in any browser by going to View -> Page Source. Meta tags describe the content and the purpose of the webpage. Meta tags are very useful from the search engine point of view as it forms one of the criteria for ranking high in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and etc. The below is the example of the meta tag for Facebook.com,
Meta tags come under the header section of the web page, which starts with and ends with . Title is another critical attribute for the Meta tags. Title starts with the tag. A good title tag will be of 63 characters which can fit in any search engine results page correctly. If the title exceeds 63 characters we will see “…” with the characters that exceed 63. The title of a web page tells in short the content in that page. Deciding the title needs a good keyword research about the theme of the article.

What is “UTF-8”?
UTF-8 is defined by the Unicode Standard [UNICODE]. In UTF-8, characters range from the U+0000..U+10FFFF (the UTF-16 accessible range) are encoded using sequences of 1 to 4 octets. The only octet of a "sequence" of one has the higher-order bit set to 0, the remaining 7 bits being used to encode the character number. In a sequence of n octets, n>1, the initial octet has the n higher-order bits set to 1, followed by a bit set to 0. The remaining bit(s) of that octet contain bits from the number of the character to be encoded. The following octet(s) all have the higher-order bit set to 1 and the following bit set to 0, leaving 6 bits in each to contain bits from the character to be encoded. The syntax for the usage of utf-8 is

Why is “noodp and noydir” used?
The search engines Google, Yahoo! and MSN use in some cases the title and abstract of the Open Directory Project (ODP) listing of a Web site for the title and/or description (also called snippet or abstract) in the search engine results pages (SERPS). To give webmasters the option to specify that the ODP content should not be used for listings of their website, Microsoft introduced in May 2006 the new "NOODP" value for the "robots" element of the meta tags. Yahoo also came out with the similar option later “Noydir” to opt out of the Yahoo directory. The syntax will be,
Meta Description and Keyword attribute:
The description attribute defines the description of a page. The idle description attribute can be 150 characters that can describe the web page in short. This is the description that also appears in the search engines results page which can be visible for the visitors who search for your website in the search engines. The similar is the keyword attribute. Writing the keyword attribute requires a good keyword research on the theme in which the web page is build. We can include a wide range of keywords in the meta keyword tag which can include synonyms. There is no maximum number of characters for the meta keyword attribute but excluding the irrelevant keyword would make the meta keyword attribute very specific to the content on the web page.

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SEO Manual

I was looking at what could be the best SEO Manual for new learners in SEO, I could come out with this set of different streams for learning full SEO. Please comment on if there is any thing else that needs to be added.


Technology

1. Redirection methods and theory - 301, 302, and 200 response codes
2. Basic understanding of DNS and website hosting issues and jargon.
3. Enough javascript and PHP to tweak existing code and to understand how the script is supposed to work.
4. Header and meta information standards - metatags, http-equiv, title, etc
5. How server side includes work and how to troubleshoot them
6. Robots control methods (meta, robots.txt)

Web Design

1. Basic knowledge of HTML 4, XHTML and CSS
2. Knowledge of W3C compliance testing, and when you can make intelligent exceptions.
3. Knowledge of 501 Usability standards, especially related to alt attributes
4. Common standards and expectations for interface design

Marketing

1. How to make a business plan
2. How to create interesting content that converts
3. How to fit keywords into content naturally and easily
4. How to measure ROI, conversions and other web metrics
5. How to implement, understand and react to website analytics reporting
6. Understand international and language issues in marketing and search

Information Retrieval Science

1. How a search engine spider operates, as well as it's limitations and abilities
2. How information is stored - compression, tokenization, indexing, etc
3. Advanced query building and special searches and commands
4. Read every Google patent, as well as search related patents by Yahoo, MS, IBM, etc
5. Understand concepts such as term vector theory, semantic co-location, etc
6. Understand and know the guidelines and issues search engines have. This is more art than science, since they are intentionally vague.
7. Understand the key elements that search engines look at while analyzing a page and why they look at them.

SEO

1. Know how to analyze a site for key factors - links, anchor text, content, etc.
2. Know how to tweak a site to effectively present itself as a good candidate for ranking on a specific term.
3. Know the basics of link building - neighbourhoods, anchor text, etc
4. Know the basics of organizing links and content to be helpful to both people and search engines.
5. Know how to make the content in non-spiderable media like images, sounds, flash, AJAX and so forth available, or to be able to compensate for it.
6. Know how to tweak content and structure (headers, etc) to best present a site to a search engine and a visitor.
7. Be aware of all the major search engines, their demographics and idiosyncrasies. Also be aware of what they have to offer outside of search, and what the connections between the two are.

SEM

1. Know how to set up basic Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN search accounts
2. Know how to create and test ad copy and landing pages
3. Know how to analyze the reports and to optimize the results.
4. Know the basics of advertising purchases, including links, banners and other advertising channels
5. Know how to optimize for local search for the major engines

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Keyword Comparision Tool Google Vs. Yahoo

I was browsing the new and I found a very good tool which can compare any keywords results in Google and yahoo together.

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A look at HTTP Status Codes - Server Headers

HTTP Protocol is a different subject altogether. Lets get some glimpse of what HTTP status codes or Server headers are and how are they useful for search engine optimization. When a client or a customer is making a request to a web server through a web browser, the request goes to the web server and HTTP status codes are returned in the header of the web server response. The client decides on what action to be taken.

For Example if the client receives the status code 200, Which is ok, it means that the webpage is found and is returned in the browser.

Lets look at the different status codes that are available. From the Search engine marketing or optimization point of view there are 11 major status codes that you need to know 200, 301, 302, 304, 307, 400, 401, 403, 404, 500 and 501.

1. 200 - OK : as discussed earlier 200 is a "OK". That means that request has been successful.

2. 301 - Moved Permanently: This means that the request is assigned or directed to new URL and will have a permanent redirection.

3. 302 - Found: The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

4. 304 Not Modified: If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code. The 304 response MUST NOT contain a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

5. 307 Temporary redirection: It means the URL request that is made from the client is temporally in a different URL. From My personal experience I would recommend that don't use temporary redirection for the web pages that you are optimizing, unless it is really genuine. If you see that the web page is moved permanently use 301 instead.

6. 400 Bad Request: If the web server does not understand the request, it gives a 400 error. It is always recommended that you give the same request without any modifications.

7. 401 Unauthorized: This code will appear if the client requires any authentication to perform for proceeding further.

8. 403 Forbidden : this status normally happens when the internet connection is down or slow or the web server has understood the request and is not performing the function due to various reasons like as I mentioned about you internet connection or if the server is over loaded etc.

9. 404 - Not Found: We usually keep seeing this status with many web pages. This means that the page that the client has requested is not found.

10 Internal Server Error: If the server encountered any problem and temporarily is not fulfilling on the request made.

11. 501 Not Implemented: This status generally comes when the server is not capable of recognizing the request made or even is not capable of returning response to the request made.


For Further reference, see links below:

Website Technology Issues

W3C Status Codes

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Research Tools for Competitor Analysis

We need some research tools for doing competitor analysis for many reasons. It could be to find out the competitor in the Industry or even to know where are you standing in the bunch. Their are many competitor analysis tools, some free tools to help you look at what you are looking for. Lets look at some of the best competitor tools on web:

1. Alexa : is a free tool and gives you a brief analysis of your competitor traffic. You can check your website traffic and compare with that of your competitors.

2. Seobook Firefox Plugin : One of the best tool I would say for doing Competitor Analysis. Its free and you can use it as a firefox plugin. This tool check various factors of a webpage like site back links, .edu links, .gov links, age of the site, number of links from blog through Technorati and etc.

3. Compete : Compete has both free for basic and paid for advance. This is a great tool that can provide a statistical comparison of up to 5 different websites. Excellent for competitor analysis but the final data should be taken with a grain of salt because Compete can only produce stats on the limited data available.

4. Check Server Headers Tool : This is a free tool of Stepforth.com. A slightly technical this tool valuable insight into the setup of yours or your competitor’s servers. For example, StepForth uses this tool to verify that our clients have properly set up their server redirects (301’s) so that duplicate content issues are avoided. It is also used extensively within our competitor analysis reports; it is useful to see how your competitors might have an edge over you.

5. Xenu Link : This is a free tool. Please see the video below which explains about how effectively this tool can be used for SEO.


6. Domain Tools : Domain Tools is one of my favorite sites for competitor analysis. Its a free too. The most useful component, the Reverse IP Tool, allows me to plunk in a single competitor’s domain and then see every other website that is hosted on its server. In rare instances where the co-hosted domains are owned by the competitor I can get a hint at any future marketing plans my clients should be made aware of.

7. Robots.txt Syntax Checker : There is nothing worse than making an error in a Robots.txt file and accidentally dropping a site out of the search engines. The free Robots.txt checker will review your Robots.txt file; ensuring it is properly created and it will provide you with the rules within the file in plain language to ensure everything meets your approval. This is a valuable tool for avoiding serious indexing issues.

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Search Engine Marketing - The Spending trends and the Boom

I was going through this article in Economic times.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/Search_engine_marketing_poised_for_boom/articleshow/3418823.cms . It is a good article and has raised hopes for future of Search Marketing in India.

Let us look at the what are the four Pillars of Search Engine Marketing:

Paid Search Advertising : are the ads that appear on the search engines results page, beside the natural Listing. You can find them as Sponsored links in Google, Sponsored results in Yahoo and Sponsored sites in MSn.

Search Engine Optimization : is also called as natural or organic listing is a kind or search marketing where, the websites are listed on the basics of certain factors like, Meta tag's Content, external links to the site, site navigation and etc.

Paid inclusion : This normally means the amount that you spend to get your site listed in any director or a search engine to crawl.

Contextual Advertising : mainly refers to the text ads that appear on third party websites. Google dominates even hear. Quigo is catching up faster after AOL acquired Quigo. The other publishers are Industry brains, advertising.com, MSN, Yahoo and etc.


The below is the research done by IAMAI on Search marketing trends in India.
http://www.iamai.in/Upload/Research/sem%20report_24.pdf

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Yahoo survey for search results

Yahoo recently started survey and looking to keep a track of the kind of people who are searching in the yahoo search engine. One of the question that amazed me was, In the last 30 days, how often have you used Yahoo Search!. And the options were
Not at all
Once
Twice
3-4 times
5-6 times
More than 6 times

I am sure that I have not used this engine for the past 6 months.

Any one can participate in this test.
http://surveys.globalepanel.com/wix/p217746760.aspx
Cheers ;)

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Significance of Ask Search Engine

Ask.com is the property of InterActiveCorp. Ask.com, according to the statistics of Hitwise shares approximately around 3.53% of the total Search Market.

Most of the advertisers and Search marketing professionals look ask.com as a search engine with low priority. It has come of the unique features and very easy to optimize without loosing rankings on other search engines.

Ask now has features of Universal search. universal search includes features like images, video, local information, news, blogs, etc. Eventhough Google has already implemented Universal search, Ask is the only search engine which gave Google the head to head competition.

One of the best feature is the AskCity, it gives the best local business listings, along with the Maps. InterActiveCorp. is also the owner of bloglines, one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the web and happens to be the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds.

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What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization ? It can be put across as the best way of building up a brand and reputation management for any website, especially when competitors are standing close by to grab customers. It is one of the most effective marketing strategies for increasing the website relevance for the targeted customers.

Let?s look at the background of ?How Search Engines Work??

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and AOL are few of the prominently used search engines. Google shares the major portion of the internet search engines, followed by Yahoo and MSN. The figure below gives you an idea of how much portion is being occupied by Google.

All the search engines work largely with keywords as the key matrix for giving their search results. Search Engines identify the article in the webpage by the keywords that appear on the content of the webpage, title of the webpage, meta tags and the description of the page and serve results. They have their algorithms which send the bots to web approximately every 15 to 90 days. These bots crawl a website (www.yoursite.com) or a webpage, which are submitted to www.searchengine.com/AddURL.html, or by passing through a website (www.example.com) which is freshly crawled and your site link appears on the website www.example.com before the bot crawling. Then your site is stored in the database of the search engine and whenever a keyword is entered in the text box of a search engine, depending on the criteria of keyword relevance, link popularity, site architecture, quality of content and site updating the chances of your site getting listed in the top 10 results are greater.

The best practices in SEO can be classified into four different categories:

• Subject matter Expertise
• Information Architecture
• Technical Implementation
• Marketing

Let?s have a look at each of the above one by one:

Subject matter Expertise:

In the search engine optimization industry we often come across a saying ?Content is the King?. The content for a website has major role to play for producing good results in SEO. We cannot build a large site unless we have good content. It requires expertise to build content that is unique. Content should never be duplicated or copied. We often find copied content not being listed in the search results page -- or they appear as supplemental results.

Here are a few ideas to show expertise with your content:

• Write articles on the area of your expertise. Don?t stuff the article with the goal of selling it. Make sure that the purpose of your writing an article is served.
• Create a theme-based site which has expertise in one area.
• Create a community around your website for the theme in which your website content exists.
• News and Updates make up a major source of expertise for a theme-based site.

The content-rich site wins more trust with the customers. And trust is something that lasts with a website for a long time.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture is a process or a practice of structuring information. This is an essential part of building a website.

First, let?s understand what the user needs and what is he searching for.

• Here, keyword mapping plays a significant role. Identify keywords using the word tracker, keyword discovery or Google keyword suggestion tool. Find out what the search count is for the keyword you?re looking to optimize. If you see there are more appropriate keywords highly relevant to your subject matter, use the keywords which are likely to draw good traffic.
• Have well defined site navigation so that the bot as well as the user can easily access whatever content they wish. A tree structure is always recommended, unlike site architecture.
• Ensure smooth accessibility for the user to go any page he wants from whichever page he?s in.

a. Technical Aspect

As discussed above, search engines have some basic requirements to fulfill for listing a website on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP?s). Here are few key points that can be considered in order to have a search engine friendly web site.

• See that the web page navigation is done properly and that the search engine bots can easily crawl your website when ever they come to your site.
• Internal linking architecture should be easily accessible from the home page of the website. The good articles or articles which are regularly updated should be accessible within 2 to 4 pages from the home page.
• Have Meta tags and Title of every page according to the article of the respective keyword.

Marketing

Word of mouth marketing is what works in search engine optimization. That can be achieved through links to your site from other good sites. The best way to get more traffic from SEO is to have theme-based link exchange. When you have good content on your site, there are many other external sites that will link your website or webpage to theirs, which gives weight to your site. You can even build page rank for your site through link exchange from other sites. It flows from one site to another. The page rank in the Google tool bar shows how good your site is with regard to reputation. It?s ranked on a scale of 1 to 10.

Here are the points to be noted:

• Have Alt text for all the links that are from or in your site (i.e., inbound or outbound links).
• Don?t blindly swap the links. Consider the weight that your site gets from linking to another site.
• Have links from traffic-oriented websites which are ranking high in search engines.

Summary

SEO is one of the most effective methods to build a good reputation for your company or website. There are many ways of marketing a website and many other practices that are followed in optimizing a website. These are only few of them. Hope to come up with some others in the next article!

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Easy tips to top listings on local search

Local search is the fastest growing form of online activity, according to Comscore, and as consumers will soon conduct two billion local searches each month, businesses should take action to manage their online local listings. Local search has revolutionised how quickly and easily customers can find local business information. In an instant you can have a list of every Indian restaurant in a 10-mile vicinity and directions on how to get there.

A variety of search engines are currently providing local search, including efforts backed by the largest search engines and new start-ups. Some of these efforts are further targeted to specific vertical segments, and several are tied into mapping products. A few of them are local.yahoo.com, local.aol.com, maps.live.com, yell.com and of course maps.google.com

The local search algorithm is based on relevance. This relevance depends upon the trust the search engines have in the information they have about your business. In most cases, the merchant is considered to be the most trusted source of data about their own business. Verifying ownership of your profile online is the most important factor for ranking well on local search engines. Let's look at what could be the most important factors for building trust as well as optimizing them on the best search engines:

Domain Research

This is a crucial part of building any successful website. Choose your domain name in such a way that the name of the city or state that you are looking to target is included in the domain name

Hosting your website

Many SEO experts debate if hosting a website locally help in SEO. It is generally recommended that you host your website with the local hosting provider where you look to target your business. Technically the website IP address would be assigned as per your region of hosting, so hosting the website in the location is likely help in optimizing with some engines.

Optimize each page

Optimization of every page of the website can make optimization easy in search engines. Try to have the physical address and contact information on the pages you are optimizing for local search (ideally it's the home page of your website)

URL rewriting using .htaccess

While creating the pages in your website - for dynamic websites make sure that you are using .htaccess to rewrite the URL of every file. Try your best to put the files in the relevant folder and rename to folder as the city name that you would like to target.

Directory Submission

This is one of the important factors in the optimization of a website in search engines. Submitting your site in the relevant category within the relevant region. There are various directories including Dmoz and the Yahoo directory.

Address

Include your local address in every page as far as possible. Either at the bottom of the page or on the left hand strip. Make sure that you also include your local phone number for that respective address.

Local Links

Ask your customers to provide the link to your site from a relevant page. A relevant page could be either a page of your customer that talks about the city that you would like to advertise for, or a product relevant to yours. Get good reviews from your clients along with a good link to your site.

Local PR

Plan a strategy to build your local PR. This will help you to build good word-of-mouth publicity as well as good branding for your site.

Submit your site

You can submit your site to all the search providers like maps.google.com, local.yahoo.com, local.aol.com, maps.live.com and yell.com for UK. You can submit all these sites for free. You can also do a bulk upload in Google if your company has multiple locations all around the world.

Google Maps Local Business listing allows you to add coupons to print out and bring to your shop. Yahoo has a paid search option where you can get additional features like Company logo and tag line detail business description, guaranteed placement, and broader exposure about your business, etc.

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