August 23,
2006
In This Issue:
1. Confirming and Denying SEO Myths
2. In the News - Linking resources, Newsletter
or blog?
3. More News Headlines
4. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Confirming and Denying SEO Myths
My favorite session at the Search Engine Strategies
Conference in San Jose was called "Search
Engine Algorithm Research" -- and yes, I
liked it even better than the session where I
spoke! One of the speakers in the "Research"
session was Jon Glick, who's currently working
at the shopping search engine Become.com, but
used to be way up in Yahoo's search ladder. Longtime
Net Gains readers may recall me writing about
an interview he did in 2004 where he answered
in detail several common SEO questions, including
how Yahoo handles the Keywords meta tag.
Jon did much of the same during his presentation
-- confirming and denying a lot of SEO myths,
and providing answers to questions a lot of us
wonder about on a regular basis. To make this
simple, here's a list of the highlights from Jon's
presentation. I trust this will be valuable.
1.) SEs have a history of your site and track
how often your pages change. Consistent “meaningful
changes” can increase how often your site
is crawled.
2.) Search engines monitor how often a page’s
links change. A sudden jump in incoming links
will lead to scrutiny. The SEs make exceptions
for a site/page that gets a lot of buzz and a
lot of searches. Sites or pages like these are
editorially reviewed to assure they appear in
the SERPs.
3.) Search engines evaluate your outbound links,
and give a “spamminess score” based
on your link profile. (So make sure you're not
linking to bad neighborhoods.)
4.) Pages with shorter URLs are usually crawled
more often, and rank higher, because the algorithm
sees them as more authoritative.
5.) Sites with an RSS feed are generally crawled
more often by Yahoo because their algorithm assumes
the site offers fresh content.
6.) The three most important factors for ranking
well across all the major search engines are still
a) Content - keyword-rich copy
b) Connectivity - in the form of links
c) Outside opinion - in the form of anchor
text
_________________
In The News
All Kinds of Linking Resources
Looks like the SEO crowd has been drinking a lot
of link juice lately. All kinds of good articles
lately on the subject of building links. For starters,
there's the "good" SEO Book article
"101
Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006."
Then there's the "better" article on
Link Building Blog titled "Where
to start in a link building campaign."
And finally, there's the "best" resource
of all, a post on Threadwatch.org with links to
a couple dozen great
link building articles. This last one, in
particular, is worth a bookmark in your browser,
del.icio.us, or wherever you save web pages.
Newsletter or Blog?
That's a question I've pondered lately. I enjoy
the weekly Net Gains newsletter format, but an
OWT blog related to SEO, web development, and
online marketing would certainly be more timely.
Maybe some day we'll switch, but if you're still
deciding whether to do a newsletter or a blog,
have a look at Barry Welford's article "Newsletter
or Blog" where he lays out the pros and cons
of both options. The article is a few months old,
but still a good read.
Newsletter
or Blog: Which works better?
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time
to read. These are just some of the headlines
we've posted to OWTweb.com in recent days.
Get
that 'One Thing' into your web page headline
August 22, 2006 - Excess Voice
Ten
things to consider when going through a site redesign
August 22, 2006 - Search Engine Guide
The
magic of seeing your search ad
August 17, 2006 - ClickZ.com
Small business prospects ask local ad sales forces:
Where will I be able to see my ad?
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's all for this week. Hope online business
is treating you well!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service
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