(An SEO friendly URL shortener may not be far off)
Twitter really is making an impact on the Internet more and more, like it or not. URL shorteners have popped up all over the place to accommodate long links in the strict 140 character or less twitter world. Of course, the biggest drawback to these links is they are not SEO friendly. This is a big drawback. Since all url shortners do is act as a redirect translation system all short urls point to the url service. So if you are using bit.ly or tinyurl or aything else all you are adding backlinks to the domain of that services. Sure those services claim to use 301 redirects but lets face it, it’s likely done via programming code which basically equates to a javascript window.location url. You might get something out of it but not much. Anyways, you don’t use URL shortners as an SEO tactic in the first place.
However, in the near future, using an shortened url service may may actually work with your SEO efforts. Google has just announced today the Google URL shortener. For the time being, it is only available for their internal use but they will likely open it for general use soon. The service is named http://goo.gl/ . Not too shabby. The domain name is only 6 character total with the .gl included. They even managed to brand it by calling it googl. Not too shabby at all.
The benefit of this service, once it hopefully goes live to the public, is that you would be registering your short URL redirect with google. So Google would not have to index a service like tinyurl or bit.ly to understand what these redirects are. They will already know and could possibly fold this index into their other mystical algorithms.. This is very timely considering the rush to create a more relevant “real time social search”. Imagine trying to index every url shortening service out there fast enough to keep up with twitter. This could eliminate that challenge altogether.
So the question is… If and when this service goes live to the public, will you still use any of the other services? If so, why?
This morning a client of mine received an email from a supposed Internet marketing specialist. This email is such a great example of a company misrepresenting the search engine marketing industry and SEO techniques. How many false statement can you identify in this letter.
Hello, my name is————–and I am an internet marketing specialist. I was looking at websites under the keyword don swanson racing school and came across your website http://www.domainname.org. I see that you’re not ranked on the first page of Google for a don swanson racing school search. I’m not sure if you’re aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.
There’s no reason you can’t have a top three ranking for the keyword don swanson racing school based on your site structure and content. You have a very nice site.
You need significantly more one way anchor text backlinks. If you’re interested I can help you with this… I’m talking about getting you ranked for ALL your keywords. Adding new backlinks on a steady and consistent basis from high PR quality websites is what produces the rankings you are looking for http://www.domainname.org.
The right kind of links are very critical in getting top ranking….and I can hand deliver these quality links to you.
My partners and I own 1000′s websites and offer private linking to hundreds of website owners just like yourself.
I didn’t send this email out to very many people but I am currently reaching out to a list of your ‘keyword competitors’ as well. But I do favor your website because I can see your website monetizing the targeted website traffic the keyword don swanson racing school can deliver.
I have your contact information and phone number. Is it ok if I give you a call?
I have a very simple way to prove that what I do works and it’s risk free for you to try. Nothing beats seeing the results with your own eyes
Is it ok if I give you a call? I would love to pursue this further over the phone with you or should I go somewhere else?
P.S – If the tables were turned and somebody I didn’t know came to me with a proposition, even one that was appealing, I would be hesitant because I would be wondering – what’s the catch? What does this guy know that I don’t.
But then I would think he does know something that I don’t know. He does have thousands of high PR websites, he does have hundreds of thousands of pages indexed and ranking in Google Yahoo and MSN. Sites that can deliver the quality anchor text backlinks. I would also think that I need to get my website in the top rankings. And he is offering to turn key top rankings for me…on all my keywords including don swanson racing school. Even keywords I’m not currently competing for. Keywords that produce traffic that’s potentially worth tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.
I emailed you because It’s a win -win for both of us. Think of it this way – Who wouldn’t be interested in buying money at a discount? Because that’s what I’ll be able to do offer you…Money at a discount.
Is it Ok to give you a call? Or you can can call me anytime at the number above?
It really is amazing… in one message this sake oil sales man has:
misrepresented the SEO / SEM realities
Insulted current SEO efforts ( while using an irrelevant key-term, no less)
Guaranteed top placement for “All of your keywords”
discussed his link selling scam
Threatened to help out a competitor if we did not sign up with him and his unnamed “partner” who manage thousands of websites……….
Finally, this person actually says he can offer “Buying money at a discount” , if that ‘s not a red flag, I don’t know what is
Do business owners actually fall for this kind of marketing? Doing a quick search for this company on Google the first result is from ”RIPOFF REPORT”. Clearly Google knows this guy is a fraud.
Is Google taking any steps to really deter this kind of activity. Can it? I don’t expect Google to play police man but is there anything else they can beyond giving them low page ranks? I mean these SEO snake oil folks almost never produce worthwhile results but they do damage the industry through misrepresentation and confusing business owners. Google has really built this industry, now what can it do to help protect the legitimate SEO companies and business owners?
I attended my first search engine strategies conference in 2003 and I really took to it. I enjoyed modifying sites and seeing the results in search engines. You really feel and see a positive impact being made in the company.
The most unfortunate thing that I see in SEO today is the wild goose chases that are discrediting the entire industry. What’s worse is that for the most part the SEO industry is doing this to its self.
Let me state it load and clear, your super secret ultimate google hack is not real and you have not found the path to SEO GOLD.
Here’s why
First off it is a hack.
Second it’s not supported by any search engine
Third. Search engines make changes constantly without any warning. So even if your trick/hack does work it likely won’t work for long.
Fourth: Even if you are an avid tester of your techniques it doesn’t matter because your technique could be destroyed with one algorithm change
Fifth: Even if your hack does work, by the time you actually get it in place it will no loger work and you are going to look like a fool contradicting your self to a client in a month when your super hack doesn’t actually work
Sixth: Your making your self look like you don’t know what you are doing.
Seventh: You are lying. you are selling something that does not exist. Another word for this is fraud. In three months your client will see through you and you will lose the work. Try this, set realistic expectations, embrace a testing method and include the client in the testing process.
You are hurting your self and tarnishing the industry
I am not saying that you should stop trying to innovate and find a way to get ahead but I am saying you should stop selling it. Many of these theories likely came to be through some sort of observation and good intentions but since we, the mareketers, are at the mercy of the search engines, we can not establish any of these threroies as laws.
REAL SEO experts, enthusiasts etc… know better. For long term strategy success follow the basics and don’t fall for wild goose chase hacks or you will spend all your time cleaning up the mistakes from your
Here are some great posts covering SEO Goose Chases. I’ll admit that I ave fallen for a few of these myself. Some I still do just out of habit.
The real question now is how do we reeducate the average business on white hat SEO that establishes a long term strategy and follows the basics supported by the major search engines.
Looking at the new whitehouse.gov I have to say I really like the site. While clicking through the site I noticed it was architected in a fairly sophisticated manner. Very clean URLs (http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewashington/), no enormous query strings, key-terms and description set up. Very clean code with minimal in line Javascript and css based navigation and more.
So here’s the question: Does whitehouse.gov really need to be optimized for search engine indexing?
More surprising things on the site.
The design / layout and navigation is contemporary, sophisticated and well thought out
Categorized Syndication of headlines
RSS feeds for Agenda, Press, News, Blog, Gallery and Video Media RSS!
This ties in to my recent post on the importance of relevance (relevant) to the individual. I can follow the RSS how I want to.
There’s a robots.txt file but it really isn’t blocking anything
No xml sitemaps? I was betting there would be one given the other seo efforts
Looking at the source code there is a good use of jquery (my favorite library) and Thickbox! Codey Lindley should be proud.
And what are they using to measure website traffic? Webtrends. I wish Icould get a look at those reports. Especially today.
It looks like the newly formed cooperation between Google and Adobe is showing some results already. I mentioned the commitment Google, Adobe and Yahoo were makingto enhance the state of SEO & Flash a couple months ago. Well, last week Google announced a way to track flash interactivity in Google Analytics. There are some steps you need to take in the development of your flash to enable the Google Analytics tracking but it doesn’t look too complicated. See the video below for an example of the implementation.
Is this solid proof that an SEO friendly flash is on the way or possibly already here? If we are able to tell google of Flash “pages” visited and click actions performed, are we also telling Google what to index?
I am willing to bet there will be a Google supported Flash site architecture template released in the next year.
Google recently released a new way to implement and manage 404 error pages.
Below is a screenshot of the widget.
404 error pages are those pages that are displayed when you try to access a page that no longer exists on a website. Marketers often try to optimize these pages to ensure that if a visitor lands on one of these pages they do not leave the site altogether. Another common trick is to try to cross promote products and services via 404 error pages.
This domain has been several things over the last few years so I have a number of pages indexed in google that are no longer active. So I am trying out this widget on my site in hopes that it may communicate with Google technology and help remove outdated indexes sooner. (I have no proof of this, just hoping)
Last month Google, Yahoo and Adobe announced a cooperation to make Flash search engine indexable. Or at least, somewhat search engine friendly. Google made a similar claim around 2004. Google announced at that time their ability to index selectable text content in flash .swf files. For awhile swf files receieved placement in serps but I cant remember the last time I saw one.
This latest announcement states that Google and Yahoo will be able to index ONLY the root swf file. If the swf file loads external files, such as other swf files, text documents, videos, search will be unable to access and index them. Why does this matter? Well, most large flash sites load external files only as needed to reduce overall flash load times and create a better experice for the visitor. So most large flash sites or online services are made up of many different flash files.
So, the next question is why can’t these search engines index all the files?
I always figured that the real issue is a question of code ownership. You see, the only way google can make real sense of what is contained in a flash file is if it decompiles the entire Flash file. Now suppose you have some proprietary code in a flash file that is core to your business or protects user data, I know I wouldn’t want anyone, search engine or not, peeking through this code.
So what does all of this mean? I think it means we are one step closer to seeing an SEO friendly flash, but I do not think this will change the nature of SEO.
The Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose started yesterday and unfortunately I am not attending. I have attended this conference several times over the last few years but always in Chicago. This is an excellent event that can get anyone, regardless of their experience in SEO, up to speed in no time.
Over the last five years there have some big announcments made by search engines at these conferences including algorithm changes that drastically changed search engine result positions for many many companies. So far I have not heard any big breaking news, but I am following along to see what comes out.
There are a number of people live blogging So I will be following along. Hopefully I will make it to the Chicago event this year.
