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SEO For Begninners : The Essential SEO Tips

June 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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The following post and video by Maile Ohye, Google’s Developer Programs Tech Lead, gives some great tips on SEO for beginners.

She goes through:

  • Select www or non-www version of your website
  • Using Webmaster Tools
  • Domain background check
  • Get your website crawled by the Googlebot
  • Website design strategy
  • Website copy/content
  • On-site SEO best practice

Webmaster Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Wondering how to be search-friendly but lacking time for SEO research? We’d like to help! Meta keywords tag? Google Search ignores it. Meta description? Good to include.

If you:

  • Work on a company website that’s under 50ish pages.
  • Hope to rank well for your company name and a handful of related terms (not lots of terms like a news agency or e-commerce site).
  • Want to be smart about search engines and attracting searchers, but haven’t kept up with the latest search news.

Then perhaps set aside ten minutes for this video (or just the slides) and gain SEO peace of mind.


Everything I’d tell a startup if I had ten minutes as their SEO consultant.

More tips at developers.google.com/startups. Best of luck!

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead


Google Webmaster Central Blog

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Google Hot Searches Is Updated Making It Easier To Find Out What People Are Searching

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Hot Search Gets A Makeover

The following article by Nimrod Tamir, Google Trends Team, describes the new fresh look to Google Hot Search and how you can find out quickly, what topics are “hot” at the moment.

People turn to search when they’re looking for answers and information, and sometimes what they want to know is on other people’s minds as well. You can learn a lot about what’s happening around the country or catch wind of a breaking news story by looking at what others are searching for.

With Hot Searches in Google Trends, you can see a list of the fastest rising search terms in the U.S. for a snapshot of what’s on the public’s collective mind. To create the Hot Searches list which is updated on an hourly basis, an algorithm analyzes millions of searches in the U.S. and determines which queries are being searched much more than usual.

Now, Hot Searches has gotten a refresh that makes the list of searches more visual, groups related rising search terms together and lets you see more information about those searches.

With rich images and links to related news articles, you can glance at the list and instantly get an idea of why these topics are particularly hot at the moment and click to find out more about them. Unlike the previous version of Hot Searches, which always provided 20 daily results, the new page introduces a filtering system that helps us make sure that the list includes only the truly hottest news stories of the day. Also, when a few of the fastest rising search terms refer to the same news story, such as [tony awards 2012] and [audra mcdonald], they’re now aggregated into one entry, which lists all the “Related searches” that go along with the main story. Lastly, the new list also provides an indication of how many searches have been conducted for each topic in the 24 hour period when it was trending.

To find out what the hottest searches are today, whether it’s a celebrity engagement, a sports-related shakeup or news about your favorite TV series, check out the updated Hot Searches list in Google Trends.

Posted by Nimrod Tamir, Google Trends Team

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)


Inside Search

Filed Under: Google Search Tagged With: , , , , ,

10 Things Your Should Tweet About

June 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Twitter For Business: What Should You Tweet About

I have just come across this great article by Jon Gelberg, who is the Chief Content Officer at Blue Fountain Media, a leading Web design, development, and marketing company based in New York.

He talks about the 10 things that you, as a business owner, should tweet about. Click here to go the article or just read below.

Here are his ten tweeting suggestions:

1. The “I found this amazing article I think you’d love” tweet:

These are not direct plugs of your business, but links to articles that would be of interest to your target audience. If you sell health-related products, then link to news stories or tips on wellness. If you are a podiatrist, link to stories about marathons, hiking, etc.

2. The “there are human beings behind our brand name” tweet:

These are tweets designed to humanize your company. Links to photographs of your employees, offices, celebrations, etc. remind your followers that you are the kind of people they’d like to do business with.

3. The “twitter-only promotion” tweet:

Everybody loves a deal. By giving discounts or other benefits to your Twitter followers, you give them a reason to follow you and you get a captive audience for other business messaging.

4. The “promote our favorite charity” tweet:

Remember, social media is social. We are all part of a greater community. If your business donates or is otherwise involved with a charity, use your Tweets to promote it. If your business doesn’t have a direct relationship with a charity, pick one and use Twitter to promote it.

5. The “we’re listening to you” tweet:

Twitter is an amazing tool for customer service. If you fail to monitor what is being said about your company on Twitter you’re making a huge mistake. Simply monitoring the messages and taking no action is a mistake, too. Only when you monitor and respond appropriately will you get the full value of Twitter as a customer service tool. This doesn’t mean that you have to respond to every negative statement, but when there is a real issue or if a person has a specific question, you need to address it quickly and honestly.

6. The “sharing our great content” tweet:

If you have a company blog, if you’ve written article or white papers, use tweets to link to your content. If you are a thought leader, an expert, or just have some unique thoughts or perspectives, tweeting is a great way to get your expertise in front of a large audience.

7. The “we’re proud as hell” tweet:

So your company has won an award, gotten a great review, garnered some major press or has a killer testimonial; don’t be shy about using Twitter to broadcast the great news.

8. The “we found this to be hilarious and hope you do as well” tweet:

While Twitter is a fantastic place to do business, the  compelling thing about it is that it’s not all business. If visitors think you are just trying to sell them all the time, they will unfollow you or, worse, complain about you on Twitter. There’s a lot of funny content on the Web, whether it’s on YouTube, in The Onion, or on any number of humor sites. Sharing humor with your target audience (via links) not only humanizes your company, it gives your followers a reason to seek you out.

9. The “we are on top of industry trends” tweet:

If your business is based on being on the cutting edge of your industry, show the world by providing links to the latest studies, trends, breakthroughs and advances. This serves the dual purpose of providing interesting content and proves to your audience you are serious about staying ahead of the curve.

10. The “none of the above” tweet:

As you become a regular participant on Twitter, you will find unique ways in which Twitter works to deliver messages specific to your business. Twitter is all about being creative, useful and engaging. Utilize the specific talents, interests and strengths of your team to find a way to use Twitter to the best advantage of your business.

As with any other marketing efforts, pay close attention to how your followers respond to you tweets. Which ones are getting positive feedback (retweets, etc.)? Which ones are being ignored? Which ones are getting you negative feedback?

The answers to these questions might surprise you, so be prepared to tweak your tweets.

Above article by Jon Gelberg is the Chief Content Officer at Blue Fountain Media, a leading Web design, development, and marketing company based in New York.

A Quick Video For Those Who Don’t Know How To Set Up Twitter

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Introducing Webmaster Academy

June 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Launches Webmaster Academy

Julian Prentice, from Google’s Search Quality Team, talks about the launch of Google’s Webmaster Academy, which offers educational content to help you understand and use Webmaster Tools:

Webmaster Level: Beginner

Looking through all of the information in Webmaster Central can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started with a website. This is why we’re excited to introduce a new set of educational materials in a program called Webmaster Academy. Webmaster Academy provides practical and easy-to-understand lessons for beginner webmasters to help you improve your site with topics like getting your site in our index, providing search engines with helpful information about your video and image content, and understanding Webmaster Tools features.

We’ve organized the content to represent what beginner webmasters should know in a way that’s both structured and modular, meaning you can go through the whole curriculum, or pick and choose your own path. Once you’ve read the articles, you can easily delve deeper into each topic, as we provide links to more in-depth articles. Most lessons are also accompanied by a video from the Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. If you’re looking to understand search and improve your site, Webmaster Academy is for you!

Have feedback? Excellent. Post it in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Julian Prentice, Search Quality Team

Contributors: Oliver Barrett & Alexi Douvas, Search Quality Team


Google Webmaster Central Blog

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Helping to create better websites: Introducing Content Experiments

June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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New Website Testing Tool In Google Analytics

The following article by Nir Tzemah, of Google’s Analytics team, talks about the integration of the Google Website Optimizer tool into Google Analytics.

Over the last 5 years, it’s been great to see how many marketers and publishers have improved the web by using insights from Google Website Optimizer to create better experiences for their visitors. Today, we announced that we’re bringing website testing to Google Analytics. This means that we’ll be saying goodbye to the standalone version as we welcome a fully integrated website testing tool in Google Analytics.

Content Experiments helps you optimize for goals you have already defined in your Google Analytics account, and can help you decide which page designs, layouts and content are most effective. With Content Experiments, you can develop several versions of a page and show different versions to different visitors. Google Analytics measures the efficacy of each page version, and with a new advanced statistical engine, it determines the most effective version.  Take a look at this video to learn more:


Testing and experimentation of websites may sound complicated, but we’ve worked hard to provide a testing tool that makes it as easy as possible:

  • Content Experiments comes with a setup wizard that walks you step by step through setting up experiments, which helps you quickly launch new tests.
  • Content Experiments reuses Google Analytics tags so that you only need to add one additional tag to the original page.
  • Content Experiments helps you understand which content performs best, and identifies a winner as soon as statistically significant data has been collected.
  • Since content testing is so important, we’ve placed Content Experiments just a click away from your regular diagnosis reports in Google Analytics.

We’re excited to integrate this important functionality into Google Analytics and believe it will help you meet your goals of measuring, testing and optimizing all in one place. With full integration in Google Analytics, we’ll be able to grow and evolve website experimentation tools within our broader measurement platform. Initially, you’ll be able to utilize important features like optimized goal conversions, easier tagging and advanced segmentation in reports. We’re also working hard to release page metrics, additional goal conversion options and experiment suggestions.

The last day you’ll be able to access Google Website Optimizer, and any reports for current or past experiments, will be August 1, 2012. While it won’t be possible to migrate experiments or reports to Google Analytics, up until August 1 you can download your reports to retain your data.  We encourage you to start any new experiments in Content Experiments. For those of you that are new to website experimentation, we hope you’ll try out the new Google Analytics Content Experiments.

This is just the first step we’re taking to simplify website testing, and we look forward to integrating more features into the experimentation framework of Google Analytics.  Content Experiments will be gradually rolling out over the next few weeks to all users. Once available in your account, you can start testing by going to Google Analytics and accessing Experiments within the Content section of your reports. If you’re new to Google Analytics, you can sign up here.

We’ll continue to have a strong network of Google Analytics Certified Partners who will be able to provide advanced support for Analytics, including Content Experiments. If you would like professional assistance in designing, implementing, or interpreting the results of a test, simply go to the Google Analytics Partner page and select “Website Optimizer” from the Specialization menu.  You can also find more information in our help center. Please try out Content Experiments and let us know what you think.

Happy testing!

Posted by Nir Tzemah, Google Analytics team


Google Website Optimizer Blog

Filed Under: Google Analytics Tagged With: , ,

Find places faster with quick access to local info on the go

June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Local Search On Mobile Phones

Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer at Google, talks about how it is becoming faster to search for local businesses on your mobile phone:

I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a picky eater. If I’m choosing a restaurant, I want to know that it has good reviews, that they’ll have food items I like, that it’s not too expensive, and all that. With the new changes to the local listings in search on mobile devices, now I’ll be able to see more details about places quickly and make decisions more easily — whether about restaurants or any other type of place.

For example, if I search for [restaurants dallas] on my mobile phone now, I’m presented with a list of local results as usual. Now, if I click on the name of the place, I instantly see a summary of the business, with reviews, photos, and more details, similar to the local information you see when searching on your computer. Okay, this place looks fine, but what about the other results from the list? With a simple swipe of the page left or right, I can see the local result before or after this one, to quickly compare the different options and make a decision on where to eat.

This is available worldwide on Android and iOS devices. Now I can’t wait to go traveling and try this out when I’m hungry elsewhere in the world!

Posted by Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer


Inside Search

Filed Under: Mobile Local Search Tagged With: , , , ,

Google Updates Algorithm Search With 39 Changes for May

June 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google made a number of updates to its algorithm in May and the following post by Scott Huffman, Google’s Engineering Director, describes those changes.

May is often a big month for us in Search, and 2012 has been no exception. This month we had exciting announcements including the Knowledge Graph, better search for users in mainland China, and an updated Search App for iPhone. We also released new sports features, deeper detection of hacked pages, and much more.

Here’s the list for May:

  • Deeper detection of hacked pages. [launch codename "GPGB", project codename "Page Quality"] For some time now Google has been detecting defaced content on hacked pages and presenting a notice on search results reading, “This site may be compromised.” In the past, this algorithm has focused exclusively on homepages, but now we’ve noticed hacking incidents are growing more common on deeper pages on particular sites, so we’re expanding to these deeper pages.
  • Autocomplete predictions used as refinements. [launch codename "Alaska", project codename “Refinements”] When a user types a search she’ll see a number of predictions beneath the search box. After she hits “Enter”, the results page may also include related searches or “refinements”. With this change, we’re beginning to include some especially useful predictions as “Related searches” on the results page.
  • More predictions for Japanese users. [project codename "Autocomplete"] Our usability testing suggests that Japanese users prefer more autocomplete predictions than users in other locales. Because of this, we’ve expanded the number or predictions shown in Japan to as many as eight (when Instant is on).
  • Improvements to autocomplete on Mobile. [launch codename "Lookahead", project codename "Mobile"] We made an improvement to make predictions work faster on mobile networks through more aggressive caching.
  • Fewer arbitrary predictions. [launch codename "Axis5", project codename "Autocomplete"] This launch makes it less likely you’ll see low-quality predictions in autocomplete.
  • Improved IME in autocomplete. [launch codename "ime9", project codename "Translation and Internationalization"] This change improves handling of input method editors (IMEs) in autocomplete, including support for caps lock and better handling of inputs based on user language.
  • New segmenters for Asian languages. [launch codename "BeautifulMind"] Speech segmentation is about finding the boundaries between words or parts of words. We updated the segmenters for three asian languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, to better understand the meaning of text in these languages. We’ll continue to update and improve our algorithm for segmentation.
  • Scoring and infrastructure improvements for Google Books pages in Universal Search. [launch codename “Utgo”, project codename “Indexing”] This launch transitions the billions of pages of scanned books to a unified serving and scoring infrastructure with web search. This is an efficiency, comprehensiveness and quality change that provides significant savings in CPU usage while improving the quality of search results.
  • Unified Soccer feature. [project codename "Answers"] This change unifies the soccer search feature experience across leagues in Spain, England, Germany and Italy, providing scores and scheduling information right on the search result page.
  • Improvements to NBA search feature. [project codename "Answers"] This launch makes it so we’ll more often return relevant NBA scores and information right at the top of your search results. Try searching for [nba playoffs] or [heat games].
  • New Golf search feature. [project codename "Answers"] This change introduces a new search feature for the Professional Golf Association (PGA) and PGA Tour, including information about tour matches and golfers. Try searching for [tiger woods] or [2012 pga schedule].
  • Improvements to ranking for news results. [project codename "News"] This change improves signals we use to rank news content in our main search results. In particular, this change helps you discover news content more quickly than before.
  • Better application of inorganic backlinks signals. [launch codename "improv-fix", project codename "Page Quality"] We have algorithms in place designed to detect a variety of link schemes, a common spam technique. This change ensures we’re using those signals appropriately in the rest of our ranking.
  • Improvements to Penguin. [launch codename "twref2", project codename "Page Quality"] This month we rolled out a couple minor tweaks to improve signals and refresh the data used by the penguin algorithm.
  • Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated. [launch codename "tomwaits", project codename "Snippets"] We have algorithms designed to present the best possible result titles. This change will show a more succinct title for results where the current title is so long that it gets truncated. We’ll only do this when the new, shorter title is just as accurate as the old one.
  • Efficiency improvements in alternative title generation. [launch codename "TopOfTheRock", project codename "Snippets"] With this change we’ve improved the efficiency of title generation systems, leading to significant savings in cpu usage and a more focused set of titles actually shown in search results.
  • Better demotion of boilerplate anchors in alternate title generation. [launch codename "otisredding", project codename "Snippets"] When presenting titles in search results, we want to avoid boilerplate copy that doesn’t describe the page accurately, such as “Go Back.” This change helps improve titles by avoiding these less useful bits of text.
  • Internationalizing music rich snippets. [launch codename "the kids are disco dancing", project codename "Snippets"] Music rich snippets enable webmasters to mark up their pages so users can more easily discover pages in the search results where you can listen to or preview songs. The feature launched originally on google.com, but this month we enabled music rich snippets for the rest of the world.
  • Music rich snippets on mobile. [project codename "Snippets"] With this change we’ve turned on music rich snippets for mobile devices, making it easier for users to find songs and albums when they’re on the go.
  • Improvement to SafeSearch goes international. [launch codename "GentleWorld", project codename "SafeSearch"] This change internationalizes an algorithm designed to handle results on the borderline between adult and general content.
  • Simplification of term-scoring algorithms. [launch codename "ROLL", project codename "Query Understanding"] This change simplifies some of our code at a minimal cost in quality. This is part of a larger effort to improve code readability.
  • Fading results to white for Google Instant. [project codename "Google Instant"] We made a minor user experience improvement to Google Instant. With this change, we introduced a subtle fade animation when going from a page with results to a page without.
  • Better detection of major new events. [project codename "Freshness"] This change helps ensure that Google can return fresh web results in realtime seconds after a major event occurs.
  • Smoother ranking functions for freshness. [launch codename "flsp", project codename "Freshness"] This change replaces a number of thresholds used for identifying fresh documents with more continuous functions.
  • Better detection of searches looking for fresh content. [launch codename "Pineapples", project codename "Freshness"] This change introduces a brand new classifier to help detect searches that are likely looking for fresh content.
  • Freshness algorithm simplifications. [launch codename “febofu", project codename "Freshness"] This month we rolled out a simplification to our freshness algorithms, which will make it easier to understand bugs and tune signals.
  • Updates to +Pages in right-hand panel. [project codename “Social Search”] We improved our signals for identifying relevant +Pages to show in the right-hand panel.
  • Performance optimizations in our ranking algorithm. [launch codename "DropSmallCFeature"] This launch significantly improves the efficiency of our scoring infrastructure with minimal impact on the quality of our results.
  • Simpler logic for serving results from diverse domains. [launch codename "hc1", project codename "Other Ranking Components"] We have algorithms to help return a diverse set of domains when relevant to the user query. This change simplifies the logic behind those algorithms.
  • Precise location option on tablet. [project codename “Mobile”] For a while you’ve had the option to choose to get personalized search results relevant to your more precise location on mobile. This month we expanded that choice to tablet. You’ll see the link at the bottom of the homepage and a button above local search results.
  • Improvements to local search on tablet. [project codename “Mobile”] Similar to the changes we released on mobile this month, we also improved local search on tablet as well. Now you can more easily expand a local result to see more details about the place. After tapping the reviews link in local results, you’ll find details such as a map, reviews, menu links, reservation links, open hours and more.
  • Internationalization of “recent” search feature on mobile. [project codename "Mobile"] This month we expanded the “recent” search feature on mobile to new languages and regions.

Other changes we’ve blogged about since last time:

Posted by Scott Huffman, Engineering Director


Inside Search

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: , ,