SEO Scoop

Posted by Diane Aull on April 7th, 2009 in SEO Theories, SEO Tips

If search rankings aren’t a good measure of site success (I don’t think they are - and they’re getting less significant every day) then what metrics should site owners be tracking?

2 Comments

Posted by Megan Slick on April 3rd, 2009 in SEO Theories, SEO Tips

I’ve been considering writing about description tags but thought it might be a bit blahsay for SEO Scoop (as industry people know that well written description tags help control what the search engines use for their snippets and improve click through rate). Then I read the Google blog, Angie Haggstrom’s and Marshall Kirkpatrick’s posts on Google’s acquiring Orion and introducing longer snippets.

Google said on their blog on March 24th:

“When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet…

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Posted by Barry Welford on March 25th, 2009 in SEO Theories

Introduction

If you were expecting to find a website devoted to a disciplinarian lady dressed in black, then you have come to the wrong place.

This is not about that popular television quiz show, Weakest Link, hosted by Anne Robinson.  That was first shown by the BBC in the UK on 14 August 2000, and you can now even play an online version of that game.  It goes without saying that such a topic is not covered by SEO Scoop.

Instantly I am sure everyone then guesses what we will be talking about.  It clearly must be something to do with Google. …

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Posted by Diane Aull on March 17th, 2009 in SEO Theories, SEO Tips

Are there better ways of measuring the success of a site optimization campaign than rankings? I think so.

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Posted by James Duthie on March 4th, 2009 in Guest Posts, SEO Theories, SEO Tips

Today I want to talk link building. To be frank… I’m not a master link builder. In fact, I’m not even an everyday SEO. I am but a humble web marketing strategist (with a solid grasp of SEO concepts). However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t managed to pick up a few nuggets while running my own marketing blog. And today I wanted to share one of those lessons with you. It’s not rocket science, but I think it’s an important lesson for every budding marketer to recognize. The lesson is all about link quality.

I’ve got plenty of links to my…

6 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on July 26th, 2008 in SEO Theories

Matt Cutts mentioned that we’d be seeing a toolbar PR update within a few days, and sure enough, I see it today, as do others. *Everyone yawns*. But that’s not the most interesting aspect of the day. Matt also said, “we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.” And sure enough, he was telling the truth on that one too!

I’ve had a penalty on one site for two solid years. It happened during the July 27, 2006 “data refresh”. I’ve never known what the penalty was for, but obviously I did something wrong. I eventually quit worrying about it, and just lived…

16 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on March 27th, 2008 in SEO Theories

Let me start out by saying I absolutely don’t have the answers to the question of how to deal with hackers crackers who attack our websites. Because there are so many different ways that these jerks attack, and so many different things they do to the sites once they attack, I suppose it’s impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer. Still, I see more and more of this type of thing happening every day (even to security experts sites), and it just seems like there must be *something* we can all do if we just all put our minds together.

Obviously, being faithful about…

16 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 23rd, 2007 in SEO Theories

It’s not often that I can truly compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges when looking at search engine stats. It’s also not often that I rank #1 for a major keyword phrase for all 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live). I’ve got quite a few major phrases that aren’t #1 across the board, but are scattered about at #2, #3, etc. But even one ranking down means you are no longer comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And sure, I’ve got lots of long-tail phrases that are #1 across all three - everyone has that. But…

18 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 6th, 2007 in SEO Theories

I love Scratchback and the whole concept behind it (Scratchback is that widget to the right that says Are You In My TopSpots?). I might not be totally crazy about the nofollowed links, but hey, they are Google-friendly, so I’m doing the “right thing”, right? I understand people don’t want to pay a lot of money for G-friendly links - I get that. But when it’s difficult to practically give them away - what’s up with that???

Most of the Scratchback links you find on blogs are priced in the $1-$5 range. I was selling them for $1 here on SEO Scoop…

26 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on December 2nd, 2007 in SEO Theories

Matt Cutts says in a comment over on a pretty interesting post at SEOmoz - we did do a full PageRank update several weeks ago - there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO). Vanessa Fox’s site dropped by one as well, and for her as well, it’s just a case where less PageRank is flowing in some niches of the net. PageRank doesn’t always monotonically increase.

There’s lots of other good info from Matt over there too, but that one bit about there being less PR flowing through the SEO niche got me wondering…

Some people have been…

13 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 19th, 2007 in SEO Theories

This weekend was a dream-filled weekend for me. Wait, let me clarify. I dream a lot, and I generally remember my dreams. But this weekend was special because the dreams were centered on SEO. In fact, they revolved around Google and Google’s intentions. The images are fuzzy in my mind, but the concepts keep ringing in my ears. Think I’m crazy? Hey, that’s ok, I would too, but I know from experience, that some of my dreams have significance - and I can pretty much always tell which ones do and which ones don’t. I can’t shake the feeling that…

2 Comments

Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 16th, 2007 in SEO Theories

Autumn 2007 Google PageRank SlapDown Dates

Some days I just like to visualize things. This is one of those days.

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Posted by DazzlinDonna on November 15th, 2007 in SEO Theories

Motivation. Motivation is one of those slippery things. You can’t always grasp it. It often seems within reach, easily understandable, but in reality, someone’s motivation for his or her actions are very likely to be completely different than what you or I may think.

Bloggers are motivated by…what? The obvious answers would include things like fame, publicity, traffic, linkbait, ego, altruism, etc. We tend to jump to conclusions when assigning motivation to a blogger’s post. Hey, that’s human, I suppose, but that doesn’t necessarily make it “right”.

What is the motivation of a blogger who raises issues with Google? I’ve seen nearly all…

10 Comments