If you are short of time the following points sum up the main thrust of the newsletter's message:
If it doesn't really make sense to your user, it's not going to be good for the search engine
Your site will always go up and down in the rankings; everyone's does
Never try to do everything with your home page alone
What is real unique content?
Perils of relying on free traffic from Google
Real content that sets you apart from your competitors, both in the
search engines and in real life, is more the added-value kind of
stuff. Information on how to best use the products, other things that
might go with them, what other customers of yours have done with their
products, reviews on various brands of your product, special offers
for special customers, etc...
nobody ever should have been counting on free traffic from Google for their livelihood.
Search engine traffic from the free results should always have been
your gravy, not your meat. Think of Google traffic as bonus traffic.
Obviously I'm a great fan of search engine marketing, because it
brings highly targeted visitors who want exactly what you're selling.
But common sense has got to tell you to diversify. Just as you
shouldn't put all your money in one type of stock, you shouldn't put
all your marketing efforts in the search engines...any other marketing promotions you do
can also help your search engine rankings. For instance, having
special promotions each week and announcing them to your newsletter
list or through press releases can often bring your site attention.
Any attention to your site is good attention, and it often comes with
links. Links in turn help search engine rankings....
Relying on things that were never intended for SEO purposes to begin with is starting to
catch up to many sites. There's certainly nothing wrong with using
header tags, nor alt attributes, nor link title attributes, nor
keyword-rich copy, nor keyword-rich Title tags, nor anything else that
we've all discussed and used for years. They are fine to use where
and when it makes sense for your particular page. Just don't go crazy
nutty obsessive with all of them, all at once. If a page doesn't call
for an H1 tag, don't force it in there. Don't list keyword phrases at
the top of your page because it seems like the search engines might
like it. Don't place your keyword phrase into your copy 50 million
times just because you can. If it doesn't really make sense to your
user, it's not going to be good for the search engine.
Your site will always go up and down in the rankings; everyone's does. Target lots and lots of relevant, specific keyword phrases so that when some go down, others go up.
Your site will always go up and down in the rankings;
Never try to do everything with your home page alone.
Search Engines Strategies – Chicago December 9th – Day One
Highlights:
1) one minor change was here thoughts on DHTML navigation. She said (based on internal data collected) that Google has been crawling DHTML code over the past few months.
2) I did not know was that Teoma finds links and resources pages on your site important. So for Teoma, unlike other search engines, having relevant external links in a resource or link page is a relevant factor in your overall sites ranking.
3) Keywords: 78% of people use search terms of 1 – 3 words in length. He also said that “generic names dominate” the searches performed in contrast to brand searches.
4) One point he said was rank checking could provide skewed results, that means if you are ranking well for a search term that does nothing for you in revenue – then who cares! He has a point and many SEOs want to rank well for keyword phrases but do not conduct the appropriate keyword research to rank for keywords that drive revenue. Also you cannot simply determine competitiveness of a keyword by WordTracker’s KEI feature nor by the total results found in Google, it’s just not an exact match. He uses a much more detailed process to determine competitiveness including reviewing the value of search terms in the pay per click module, the higher the dollar per click the more competitive. Also conducting a feed and then researching the results over a two-week period. Finally he said that a complex search term is rarely used compared to a simpler term (we know that but he took time to say it).
5) Writing for Search Engines
a) 2 – 3 keyphrases per page, if you are editing a large site – start with the top 20 pages in terms of top products and then work your way to the other pages
b) too many links (anchor text) makes a sites usability extremely poor
c) repeat the keyword phrases 3 – 4 times within a 250 word page
d) you should not look at “keyword density” when writing copy because (1) the content will come out unclear and urge the visitor to hit the back button and (2) with the current Google changes (Florida update) Jill feels that Google might be filtering out “over-optimized” sites. I personally disagree with that but who am I :)?
6) Jill Whalen:
a) Jill said right out “don’t worry they [Google] will fix things” when she discussed certain terms such as chicago real estate. Jill repeatedly said that her clients results were not affected but also brought examples of her clients terms that were affected, so I am not too sure about that.
b) She said “don’t use formulas” just write with keywords in mind and keep the percentages and templates out of SEO copywriting. She then went on to say that “floating keywords around” is why Google kicked out the sites that have disappeared.
c) An other point she made was that if you have words like e-mail/email or t-shirt/t shirt, do not optimize for both on the same page – use different pages for each variation because your Web visitor will think you are crazy for using different spellings on the same page (they might not notice if its spelled differently on a different page).
And for the big statement, Google no longer reads alternative text tags since that last update.
7) Danny Sullivan:
believes that’s search engines in the future will be more paid oriented and less organic oriented because that is the nature of advertisers and this industry is still in its infancy.
posted by Jen @ 9:05 AM
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