SEO
Google Search includes Google+ by Default
Sorry for all the posts today, I keep seeing things I think people would want to hear.
Google announced today that search will now include “Your World”. It’s a good idea to watch that Google Blog, always good stuff.
Google needs to push Google+ somehow, and this will sure help. Including “Personal results” in search results is both good and bad in my opinion.
You’ll start to see (as this rolls out over the next few days to everyone) Google+ posts and shared photos showing up in search results. These are posts of people who you are following.
Also in the Google search box, Google+ profiles will start showing up there.
If you don’t like it, you can opt-out (although it is opt-in by default).
This change means for SEO experts, having those Google+ profiles, and relevant Google Pages is important.
Happy New Year 2012
I wish you readers all the best in 2012.
If you haven’t seen it, check out the imgur Best of 2011. 11 of the most viewed image collections on imgur.com. One of my annual favorites to check out.
What do I expect in the next year?
- Much more WordPress work (on more complex and demanding sites)
- A trip somewhere, maybe Europe.
- To redo seangw.com at some point. The site is becoming more popular (we get thousands of visitors every day) — and the site now deserves some love. What web developer/blogger websites do you like most?
- To actually use my SEO knowledge on my own sites!
- Introduce an “Ask A Question” button on the site. If you don’t know, I welcome any and all feedback. You can Contact Me anytime if you have a questions not answered on the site.
- New monitors (I’ve had my 3 monitors since 2003?) — it’s time.
- Even more social interactions! The facebook and Google Plus buttons have been popular this year. Next year I will build dedicated brand pages (and maybe a Twitter brand page, if they open it up)
- I may even migrate this “blog” out from under the “wordpress” directory and to the root of my site! Craziness.
Finally, I want to thank all the people that have shared this site in 2011.
Some viewership numbers:
December 2008 – 200 readers/week
December 2009 – 1000 readers / week
December 2010 – 1,800 readers / week
December 2011 – 9,000 readers / week
So I appreciate all those Facebook likes, those tweets, and links to some of my posts.
If there’s anything you’d like to see covered in 2012, please shoot me a message.
Happy New Year
- Sean
Why you should add Facebook like buttons
I still think at some point, Facebook will fade into our memories. It’s a safe bet.. given enough time.
For now it’s time to embrace it. Until this past summer, I hadn’t added Facebook like buttons to my site. This was done because I was opposed to having those irritating social media icons all over my site. I thought maybe I was missing out on a few percentage points of hits.
Today, and for the past few days, I’ve gotten more page views on my site from Facebook than from Google search. This is according to the WordPress Jetpack by the way, Google Analytics still says I get more from Google (but I’m inclined to have suspicions).
There are about 50 pages / articles on my site that people have “liked” on Facebook (go ahead and try it… ). A few of my posts have hundreds of likes.
This is currently generating about 500-1000 page views a day for me. I would have never though adding a stupid Facebook Like button could do that for my site.
Add them to your site, you won’t regret it.
SEO: Black vs White Techniques
An excellent write up over at Matt Legend Gemmell’s blog, SEO for Non-dicks, got me thinking again about the concept of “black/white” hat SEO. His blog post is in reference to an SEO speech given at BrightonSEO 2011.
I need to get this out, and I don’t think it’s what you may be expecting…
Google Webmaster: Site Performance is as important as SEO
Web developers always say it’s important to speed up a site. Either cut the size of an image, or minimize requests.
Why should we? Everyone has a broadband connection and a fast computer. Why worry about an extra second or two?
First, it’s never just worrying about a second, it’s sometimes worrying about cutting a few milliseconds off a page load. Eliminating 1 HTTP request.
Fixing site perforamance is just as important as doing proper SEO. If you do all the SEO work in the world, Google won’t want to index a slow site.
Google Caffeine Launched – and how it will affect SEO
Google has changed their indexing subsystem significantly.
It has now named “Caffeine” and is supposed to be another generation in terms of the quality of the Google index. The new index service supposedly indexes 50% faster than the old indexing system, and will delivery “fresh” results.
Top WordPress Plugins: Headspace2 replaces All in One SEO
I have been using and recommending the WordPress plugin, All in One SEO, for years now. It is solid, provides the ability to manage terms that were more difficult before.
Enter Headspace2.
Headspace2, by Urban Giraff, is another SEO meta data manager. That means it helps you organize everything your website uses or organize itself.
Is it worth Switching?
So you have put all your efforts into typing specific keywords, overriding titles, and are finally happy with the results of your SEO work. That normally provides a huge barrier to switching tools, not with Headspace 2. Headspace 2 makes migration easy, and instantly gives you more control than you had before.
Help: How do I announce a new website?
We launch websites every month or two for clients, and make many website updates. What are the best ways to tell the “internet” that your site is up, and ready to be checked out? I’m going to focus on the free options, as I find anything that costs money sketchy (especially with regard to listing a site).
We can divide this into a few categories:
- Search Engines
- Social Networking
- Peer Sites
- News Aggregators
Google History: Distorts Search Results (Warning for SEO experts)
A growing sector in web development nowadays is the SEO “expert”.
With the blossoming effects of social networks and rapidly developing online presences, many people consider themselves SEO experts because they can gain visibility for your site.
One could argue, that’s exactly what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, making sure your site gets visibility.
I’m going to stay neutral on that subject, but say that SEO should generate organic traffic to your site through cooperation with modern search technologies. Proper SEO shouldn’t be a Boom and Bust scenario, but a constantly growing user base.
With all of these new SEO experts comes a group of individuals who are NOT skilled in all the fundamentals on the internet.
Google History
One warning I wanted to throw out there, is Google distorts search results for users based on sites they have clicked on previously. Take a look at Google History, and you’ll see what I mean.
Google History takes your previous browsing behavior and organizes it. That information is used to tailor your search results, and I’m sure for Google to customize their search engine performance overall.
When doing SEO you frequently search for a few search terms every day, and may click on the results you like.
SEO experts should know that the results they see may differ wildly from the rest of the world.
All SEO experts should use “neutral” browsers without Google Toolbar installed such as Firefox or Safari (yes, it’s available on the PC too — and it works pretty well) to test the search placements of their clients.
Additionally, if you have hired an SEO expert, be sure to cross reference their results with searches on indepedent computers. Your SEO expert may say your site is now “top 5″ when it is in fact only in the top 20. This is because their computer is biased based on that user’s history.
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