startup hustle

When a new feature is launched, especially in the search world, I hold off on writing about till I get some time to play with it. Google launches the Search plus Your World (SPYW) feature which allows you to see sites in the organic search results that are more aligned with Google+ and your friends recommendations. Pages that have been +1′ed will show higher and when searching individuals or brands their Google+ profile will display first (in most cases). The “Don’t be Evil” Google did have the common sense to give searches an option to toggle (see image above) between the personalized results and the universal results that you are used to viewing. Then Google went evil and decided to default to the  SPYW option when you are logged into a Google account. Lame.

Originally, I was going to write about how I could see this move by Google to both compete on the social front and help push a few more clicks to the paid search results. The reason, organic results are going to be pulling in results that I probably already have an idea about and seem less relevant. Most pages that are +1′ed and will rank higher in the SERPs are blog posts or popular web services that my friends on Google+ use, and therefore I have usually heard of or already know intimately. Thereby turning to the paid results for “relevant” answers, or so searchers hope.

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The SEO community got all worked up this week when SEO Book and Search Engine Land reported that an advertising campaign by Google for their Chrome browser included links without no follow tags. The assumption was Google is buying links, which is a big no-no, per Google’s webmaster guidelines.

The image above shows a link with the anchor text of “Google Chrome” from one of the paid posts. Google responded to the accusations by claiming that they were buying video advertisements (there is a video lower on the page reference above), and the article that was created had the questionable links added by the authors of the posts. The pages included “This post is sponsored by Google”.

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In mid-October Google announced that all searches conducted while a user is logged into their account will be secured with SSL encryption. Technically not a big deal, till Google mentioned that all organic searches would not pass keyword data to Google Analytics. Instead, GA would show (not provided) in the keyword column. While this extremely valuable information would now be hidden, Google said that it should only be about 10% of the total keyword volume. Lets see how close to 10% we are.

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The JCPenny link scheme / black hat / blame the seo firm / manual Google slap has been covered to death (and in case you missed it, here is the original NYT article and Search Engine Lands excellent recap).

A quick recap if you don’t want to read the Gone with the Wind versions. JCPenny was ranking first for every product they sell (kidding, but way too many). They were ranking 1st for generic terms like “area rugs,” “table cloths,” “furniture,” “home decor,” and the best one, “Samsonite carry on luggage” ahead of Samsonite. The NYT asked a search expert to look into it. Ultimate conclusion was there were hundreds of paid links on spam sites with great anchor text pointing to the corresponding pages on JCP.com. NYT reports findings to Google. Google back hands JCP. JCP blames their SEO firm and says they have no knowledge of such activities.

The first thing I thought when I read the article is how links, even those on spam sites that should hold little to no value, still have a tremendous amount of sway in the rankings even though Google is suppose to curb the strength based on quality of the site. Then, I assumed that JCP is a big sites with many natural links and is in good standing with Google so those spam links may not stand out in their overall link graph.

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Google has begun the PageRank update. I have seen updates on multiple site that I work on.

Some of the potential changes per the Search Engine Roundtable blog:

1. Internal links and external links on the same page may not be splitting the PageRank vote equally.
2. Depending on the location of the link, PR may be weighted differently.
3. Multiple links to the same url from the same page may not each get the same piece of the PR vote.
4. “Run-of-site” external links, like Blogrolls, may now have diminished PR.
5. Links between domains that Google sees as “related” may have their PR significantly damped down. Possibly the same goes for sites that link to subdomains.

Although many deem PageRank unimportant I still contend that it is one way to tell how relevant Google deems your site.

Adobe Flash is a pain to the SEO community. Flash has never been indexed well by the search engines which reduces the amount of copy/images to work with. The best work around was to produce an HTML version of the Flash page so search engines could index all the awesome unique content that you produced. I work with a sketchbook site that uses Flash (against my wishes ). As you can see there is very little on-page material for the search engines to work with.

The fight against the use of Flash is going to get a little harder. Adobe has announced that they are working with Google and Yahoo to make Flash and rich Internet application (RIA’s) files searchable. Google also announced that they have built a better “Flash indexing algorithm”. How well they index and exactly how much information can be pulled from Flash files is still to be seen.

On a side note, the Flash site I referenced above has released new, one-of-a-kind sketchbooks signed by the artist. If you know anyone that is into original art please forward the link.

Source: Adobe makes Flash Searchable – ReadWriteWeb

Google has updated PageRank over the last few days. I have seen increases on all the sites I work, including Startup Hustle which went from PR2 to PR3.

Remember that Toolbar PageRank is a dated version and Google does not disclose your current PageRank. The green bar you see is a few months behind. PageRank is not very important anymore when it comes to rankings but is fun to see the shifts.

Rand wrote a good post over at SEOmoz about startups lack of using (or understanding) SEO. I saw a list of blog post that provided startup marketing advice and I was hoping to see a post from Startup Hustle (because I wanted a link from Rand), but I do talk about SEO so I did not meet the requirement. Rands overall point was that SEO is basically free and a little keyword research goes a long way.

Let me just be clear on this point – not one of those posts has the word “SEO” in it, nor makes any clear reference to getting traffic from search engines. I’m forced to ask myself – are these people idiots? Are they being coy? Or have they really never experienced the built-in marketing channel that comes from ranking at the top of the engines for a relevant keyword phrase?

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Sites are always trying to rank higher in search engines. The best way to rank well is to have well written, original content that sites want to link to (this is the non-spamming technique). This is why many web optimizers push you to have a blog on your site. A blog will generate new, original content (hopefully). The problem is, depending on your sites focus, there are only so many articles that you can write that are quality and relevant to your business.

There is another way to generate new, original pages and your website members will do it for you. A member profile can be a very powerful SEO tool. I like to call it “Profile SEO” or “Name SEO“. If you search a name in Google, like mine, you will find profiles that I have signed up for (Linkedin and the Go BIG Network) as well as profiles that I did not create (Spock). These profiles are an excellent long tail SEO tactic for a website. Anyone who searches my name to find out more about me will most likely check these sites first.

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