A geek's blog about nerdy stuff, with an array of musings on SEO & web design, Barnsley based but internationally read. Honest.
Posts tagged Google
Small Business Focus: Don’t Let Your Facebook Talk Into Your Website, Google Won’t Like It
May 10th
Ok I need to get this out there first: this short post doesn’t take any pot shots at anyone and their ability to write or spell.
That’s that done.
A while ago I wrote a short article musing on the notion that the language we so casually emit was being butchered by the Facebook and SMS culture we have today.
I admit, it does wind me up and I see it more and more in my daily work; so called professionals (I’ve seen SEO professionals do it, those who work with copy) not quite getting the fundamentals of the language right.
Here are a few examples More >
Small Business Focus: Google Analytics Page Load Speed Tracking – What It Means To Small Business Owners
May 9th
For a while now, certainly the last couple of years, search optimisation professionals have been trying to measure and heavily debating the importance of webpage load speed as a ranking factor.
Well, 5 days ago Google announced that it’s free Analytics tracking suite would start to track page load speed via it’s new interface.
This is without a doubt the surest sign so far that Google is serious about bringing the most responsive results to the top of its search pages and something that confirms what we geeky search people have been discussing for those two years I mention in my opening More >
Google +1 And SEOs Social Future – But Will We Sign Up?
Apr 3rd
Ok so a few days ago Google announced their new +1 button – a way for savvy searchers to tell people in their Google network that they think a web site is “pretty cool”.
Sounds familiar, right? Of course it smacks of the Facebook “Like” button and the inevitable comparisons and war cries began in minutes.
But, what sort of impact will this shiny new recommendation engine have on the small business owner trying to achieve rankings locally or even pitching for some big, industry related terms that are quite hefty in the way of competition?
Well I think the place to More >
LDA – On Page Content As A Secret SEO Weapon?
Sep 15th
I’ve been reading through a fantastic blog post over at SEOmoz looking at the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) correlation with SEO, in particular on page SEO work.
It’s a hefty post that looks at how Google speculatively interprets words and their meaning based on the context in which they are used.
I’ve always been a believer in writing for your audience; believing that anyone who writes their web pages in this way will will achieve long term search engine success. If it is true that Google not only looks at the words you use (keywords) but also the context in which More >
Google Instant: SEO Is Dead, Long Live SEO!
Sep 13th
Last week Google announced the launch of Google Instant.
Unless you’ve been blissfully ignorant of all things online then you’ll know what that means:
Search as you type. It’s a simple and straightforward idea—people can get results as they type their queries. The Official Google Blog
Sweet idea right? Right!
Google Instant – SEO Impact…I’ve almost been reserving judgment on this whilst I ponder it – my initial reaction was “Oh crap, better look at a new career” and then it developed into “No no, hang on; this could be good for us SEO folk“.
So, why the juxtaposition?
Well initially the thought occurred to More >
Google Offers Insight Into What Makes A Great Backlink
Jun 23rd
Hey all, just a quickie today – but something potentially very valuable.
Google has posted a very interesting article on their Webmaster Central blog regarding what makes a good quality backlink.
The usual fare is present about directories not having the weight they once did, not creating spammy content and so on. But one of the main highlights of the post is that Google points to “community involvement” which seems to indicate a nod to social media.
With the impact of social media on SEO being closely scrutinised, I wonder whether this will provide a clear view point on it, or at least go More >
How Google Synonyms Are Working More And More Effectively
Jun 18th
As a search marketer, Google synonym functionality poses some interesting problems. We optimise for keywords that we’ve strongly researched, and try to include as many quality variants that we can without sacrificing usability and copy quality.
However, we can’t really cover every base; there are always keywords providing entry points to your site that you won’t have optimised for; usually longer tailed phrases.
As we know, Google is always looking to provide the most relevant results to its users and searchers, and to facilitate this further they’ve been doing work for years on how their algorithms deal with synonyms:
An irony of computer science More >
