A Google Groups thread has a detailed discussion around the topic of Google spider, GoogleBot, crawling too much. Sometimes servers can be overwhelmed by all the traffic it gets and automated crawlers, such as GoogleBot, can add a tremendous amount of stress to a server that is already stressing. Most webmasters are not in the position of banning GoogleBot from accessing their sites, so what can you do?

Here are some of the tips from the thread, including tips from Google representatives:

• Make sure GoogleBot is really GoogleBot and not some spammer. More on that over here and here.
• If you have a large site, limit or instruct GoogleBot on what it can or cannot crawl via the robots.txt file.
• Some URLs might be more “expensive” to be crawled than others (i.e. static pages versus large dynamic and graphic rich pages.
• Do you have 2 or 3 times the amount of pages indexed by Google, as you have actual product pages on your site? If so, why?
• Redirect any temporary URLs or tracking URLs using a 301
• Set the Google Crawl Rate, in Webmaster Tools, more on that over here

The Android Blog is reporting that Google has officially announced the Android Market, an App Store like solution that allows publishers to upload programs and sell them online.

Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.

More information on CrunchGear as we get it.

Ad blockers are nothing new, and privacy settings on Internet Explorer and Firefox have long allowed users to opt out of some forms of advertising, but a beta version of Microsoft’s new IE8 is raising some eyebrows in the interactive marketing community, according to an Associated Press report.

Users of the new IE8 who select the InPrivateBrowsing mode will be able to surf the web without sharing key data points with advertisers such as the previous sites they’ve visited. The privacy mode also allows users to view some websites without ads.

Firefox, which owns a significantly smaller segment of the browser market than Microsoft, launched an ad-blocking product last fall that stirred up a great deal of controversy, though it ultimately proved to be a non-issue despite widespread adoption by Firefox users. Yet, Microsoft’s decision to enhance IE’s ad blocking capabilities seems to be a rather curious choice given the company’s insistence on becoming an advertising giant.

But according to JJ Richards, a general manager in Microsoft’s advertising division, the decision will help to highlight the value exchange between free content and advertising that is vital to the future of the internet.

However, the new browser is treading on dangerous waters if it sees widespread adoption because it will block the ability of ad servers to calculate how many times an ad is viewed. According to Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Internet Advertising Bureau, the new browser could have drastic implications for the internet advertising marketplace. But Zaneis said he and the IAB would reserve judgment until Microsoft releases the final version of IE8.

There is no set date for the release of IE8, however the product is available for public beta testing.

Google announced that over the next week they are going to implement their Google Suggest search suggestion feature on Google.com. This change will help searchers find popular keywords that other searchers recently searched for.

Short Term Influence on Search

When this search suggest change is coupled with the recent launch of automatic matching and the new quality score update it may consolidate PPC competition against a smaller set of core industry keywords. Some outlier keywords, like misspelled terms, are going to be much harder to build a traffic stream from.

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Free SEO Tips for Google Search Suggest

Back in the day when reciprocal linking was useful, some webmasters were trigger happy and aimed to link to everything that would link back, even if there was no relevancy from site to site. Over the past few years, many of those reciprocal links were not as reciprocal as they used to be, as other webmasters became savvier and realized there was likely no value in these links.

With this being the case, a webmaster has looked into his links and noted that it’s probably about time that he should revamp his “directory” of links. Should he dump everyone (especially the irrelevant links) or just a few select individuals who aren’t linking back and aren’t relevant either? Continue Reading »
Should I Dump My Reciprocal Link Partners?

Are you a Google AdSense publisher? Do you have a Google Analytics account? If so, you may be in for a surprise, since there’s a rumor circulating that Google Analytics may soon include Google AdSense data. This information comes from thegooglecache.com (where the post has been pulled) and Amit Agarwal, and this has subsequently been reported on Search Engine Land, where screenshots are available. One such screenshot is shown below:

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Google AdSense to Be Migrated into Google Analytics

SEO web design is a skill that can be learned, though most search engine optimization for beginners courses dwell too much on linking strategy as opposed to web site design per se. There are many ways for most normal people to get an improved search engine ranking, and secure a high search engine listing, and while linking is important, good on-site SEO is also necessary.

Although it might not seem like it, getting a good listing on Google or any of the other search engines is not as difficult as many like to claim. There are rules to follow, and if you play the game properly then the outcome should be in your favour. The tips provided in this article are not really secrets as such; although many people offer to divulge marvelous secrets to you, all they are giving you is stuff that people have been using for years.

So you won’t get any secrets here. I have nothing hidden away that I don’t want anybody to know, and if I had I wouldn’t tell you about it! Would you? If you had some secrets that were so valuable that they were making you money, would you give them away free in an article like this one? Of course you wouldn’t!

So here are my not-so-secret tips on getting a good listíng in Google and improving your search engine ranking. You likely know a fair bit about meta tags, and have been informed that most are not used by search engines. Well let me tell you something. If you ‘Google’ Article Services you will finds my website right at the top in the #1 position for that keyword. Check the description that Google provides right under the title: that is exactly as it is in the ‘Description’ tag that I have on the site. So don’t let anybody tell you that Google doesn’t use the Description tag, because they do. So do Ask and MSN (now Live Search), and Yahoo also uses it, but not the whole thing exactly as written.

The Keyword tag is another matter. Google isn’t interested in what you tell them the keywords are: they decide the relevance of the page themselves from the text and Alt tags on the page. Google no longer needs keyword repetition to understand what you are writing about: they have the LSI algorithm now, that will determine the meaning of your page from the character strings it contains. The algorithm is programmed to calculate a relevance factor from the vocabulary you use in relation to the rest of the vocabulary on the page. However, back to SEO web design, and some search engine optimization tips for beginners.

In addition to the Description meta tag, the HTML tags you should use are:

1. The Keywords meta tag. Although little used it only takes a second to put in, and does no harm. There is evidence that some search engines might use it. The rest of the meta tags are pointless.

2. The TITLE tag. This is the title of your web page, and should contain the primary keyword for the page. Each page should be written round one primary keyword that relates to the subject of your website or niche.

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SEO Web Design Secrets Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners

Blogs have been abuzz for at least 4 years in the tech space and in the past 2-3 years in the business marketing world. Like many new marketing/communication channels, there continues to be a need to demystify shiny new objects and what they mean for businesses. Blogs and search engine optimization are no different.

One point I would make is that companies are wasting their long term time when setting up blogs purely for SEO purposes. It’s short term thinking and over time, results in difficulties with keeping momentum, new ideas and content. How do I know? Been there and done that, many times.

It’s far more realistic to implement blogs for specific purposes such as product communications, online newsroom, thought leader/strategy, customer support/communications, news, branding, advice/tips, aggregation of content in specific topics and many more. Regardless of the purpose, each blog implementation and ongoing management should have an intentional SEO effort.

Our session at SES San Jose on Blogs and Feeds included Amanda Watlington who gave a litany of advice and insights on strategic considerations for blogging ranging from goals to content sourcing to URL. She also offered an impressive list of specific tactics for optimizing both blogs and feeds. Amanda has been presenting on this topic at SES since the session was first implemented 3-4 years ago.

Chris Boggs gave advice on linking from blogs with examples of why not to link to press releases since they can get removed and not linking to other types of content because of archiving and lack of proper redirection.

Daron Babin made an argument based on his personal experience with the new WebmasterRadio.FM site on why it might be better in some cases not to use a blog platform, but to use a custom CMS (content management system) that publishes feeds. He offered numerous ranking examples and technical details of how the publishing platform automates many SEO friendly features of the web site.

My presentation on blog SEO focused on the value and opportunity with links specific to blogs and also offered 3 case studies.

In 2007 there were approximately 70 million blogs tracked by Technorati and this year they post 112 million, although there are likely far more than that. Out of all those blogs, 100 million have less than 20 inbound links. 400,000 blogs have more than 20 links and the top 2,600 blogs have over 1,000 inbound links.

Think about that. To be one of the top 1% of all blogs according to Technorati, it takes (among other things) 1,000 inbound links. That’s a number any competent search marketer could achieve in a reasonable amount of time provided there’s good content to work with. It represents a good illustration of the opportunity for SEOs to leverage blogs as a compliment to search engine optimization programs.

The first case study I presented concerned a Senior Housing Development Company, that wanted to provide an informal communications channel to address topics of interest to their target market and also to motivate a shift in thinking of their industry from “old folks homes” to “senior communities, senior living”. Continue Reading »
Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose

When Yahoo Buzz first opened in beta, stories soon surfaced that, those invited to the beta, saw some big increases in traffic. If you’ve been pining to get a piece of your own Buzz, you’ll be pleased to know that Yahoo Buzz is now open to all web sites.

Today, six months and more than 5 million users later, we’re pleased to share that we’re opening Yahoo! Buzz up so that you can “buzz up” content from any publisher on the Web…And for anyone publishing Web content that was not part of our beta testing, today we hope you will join Yahoo! Buzz and let our audience (of more then half a billion people!) buzz up your content, too. Joining is as simple. Just grab code from our Buttons page and paste it into your website or blog.

Now, before you get dizzy with excitement, you might want to temper your expectations. Marketing Pilgrim joined Yahoo Buzz, late in the beta–actually about 3 weeks ago. Despite adding big buttons to the bottom of each post, we’ve not seen any significant traffic from Yahoo Buzz. Maybe we don’t appeal to Yahoo Buzz’s majority or perhaps our posts just stink. Either way, Yahoo Buzz hasn’t been the winner, we’d hoped it would be.

So, go ahead and give Yahoo Buzz a whirl. It’s a great site and I still plan on keeping our Yahoo Buzz buttons on each post. Maybe you can leave me a comment with your results.