One thing you’ll quickly realize about the SEO world is that there’s always some debate or the other. Take the example of RSS feeds. Some people firmly believe that they’re a waste of time and create nothing but duplicate content which search engines will ignore. Others argue that RSS feeds should be a part of any SEO strategy, if used properly. There might be something in this if you can write summaries which include your keywords but are different from the wording on your site. This way you can actually increase the number of times your keywords appear without being accused of keyword stuffing.

RSS feeds are common on a lot of sites now as webmasters are seeing their value in reaching potential visitors. By giving them an interesting teaser, it is possible to entice them to your site thereby increasing your traffic. RSS feeds work best on sites which are regularly updated though so if you have site that isn’t updated more than once a month you won’t be getting its full benefits. These include:

•    RSS feeds are a convenient way to update content.
•    RSS feeds allow potential viewers to find out about your site without feeling as though they’re being forced to visit.
•    RSS feeds are compatible with both human readers and search engine spiders.
•    RSS feeds are an excellent way to market blogs since these tend to updated most often.
•    RSS feeds have the potential to be ‘syndicated’ by other webmasters and this can increase your back-links.

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Has anyone else heard that Google has a new proposal out which would allow the indexing of AJAX sites? Well it’s about time. Here’s what I’ve been able to come with. The main problem that search engines have with AJAX is the generation of pages containing the # mark. Search engine spiders get confused because the same mark is use to denote anchors within the page, and so the whole thing gets ignored. This is just sad because AJAX can do some amazing things.

So what’s this new proposal? Well let’s look at it in steps:

1)    The AJAX generated URL with the # mark is replaced by one with a #! mark.
2)    When the #! mark is encountered by the search engine spider it requests the URL with a syntax that would replace the #! with ?_escaped_fragment_=
3)    This ends up with the URL request being routed to a headless browser in order for a static page to be rendered.

As far as I can tell, the actual URL that visitors see will contain the #!, not the ?_escaped_fragment_=. Sound complicated? Undoubtedly it is and only dedicated AJAX users would have been able to wrap their heads around it. The point is that Google may now be able to index AJAX sites. The second point is that other search engines might not as yet. Something like this is bound to have a lot of bugs so it’s best to wait and see how things go before fiddling around with your site and trying to change your URLs.

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So I have been playing around with xtranormal.com and decided to do a blog post in their video format. Hope you understand it, basically it just explains how you can increase your brand by not just focusing on keyword targetted anchor links but rather obtaining brand domain anchor links.

I.E. The reason sites such as Toyota, Ford etc have seen a brand boost is because the majority of their links if not all of them link back with their brand domain name. So as an example if I registered djsdjsndjsndj.com, youwould look at getting anchor links for djsdjsndjsndj to increase your brand rating.

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I don’t usually post news stories as I try to make the blog different and unique, I mean why post something that everyone else is posting, with exactly the same stance. But I feel that the Caffeine update that Google have recently announced is well worth a blog post.

Here is a caption from the official announcement

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Read the full post by Google Here

The Google caffeine update clarifies exactly what I have been saying and thinking for the last few weeks, you can refer to the recent blog post http://www.seotops.com/google-are-now-bringing-in-more-real-time-results_1096/
I like to post about things that I see and notice happening in the search industry from experience and testing. So let’s get down to discussing the Caffeine update. So what does this mean to search positions? The future of search? And so many more unanswered questions?

Well from what I have seen although Google say that they are testing the new infrastructure on www2.sandbox.google.com and some people stating it will not affect the results. I have been seeing this is the current SERPs for some weeks now. Basically what I am seeing is results constantly changing, updated content is getting a fresh boost for major terms a lot more now query deserves freshness, part of the faster indexing and crawling capabilities. I.E. new blog posts go straight into the Top 10 for competitive terms and gradually drop out. Results are no longer stable and personally from a searchers point of view it’s a good thing. The reason I say this is because the internet has expanded so much, whereas we used to have a strict Top 10 with all the best sites, there are now so many more sites online and simply not enough room to show ever decent authority site in the Top 10.

We all know that users do not navigate to page 2-3-4 etc, so what Google can now do is constantly refresh the Top 10 with the authority and power sites, so users get to see much more great sites as well as newly created content for what they are searching for. This is basically a response to Twitter and a right back at you to Bing.

But from what I am seeing, although Google seem to be bringing in real time results and constantly refreshing the SERPs, the Top 4 positions seem to be still be stable. Again the reason for Google doing this is because they have to please all searchers, although moving into real time is all very well and good, a lot of people still want consistency and a huge amount of users click on the Top 4 results, so they have to stick. I mean if you go and search for something find a great site at the top, you want that site to appear there next time.
So where does this leave SEO? Personally I think it’s good for the SEO sector. I mean even the most competitive terms do not get that much traffic from positions 8-9 and 10. So the constant refresh will allow Google to deliver a constant flow of great results and allow all sites to get coverage numerous times a day, stable positions for competitive terms will be a thing of the past, unless of course you are a good SEO or employ a good SEO to push you into the Top 4.

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The current popularity of Twitter and the fact that Twitter are trying to turn them selves into a real time search engine has made Google stand up and react.

Although we all know that fresh unique content was always essential to build power and authority on your site and also give your new post a freshness boost, there has been a slight tweak in the algo from what I am seeing over the last few days to give further power to fresh posts from authority and powerful sites.

What seems to be happening is that when a new post is created it gets indexed and then placed into a Top 10 position for some highly competitive terms, this ten over the next few days drops off on to page two, three and then eventually disappears from the SERPs.

It seems as though Google have increased the algothirm to bring in fresh results a lot more. Again this is great for that extra little bit of exposure.

A great example of this is the term “SEO”. Firstly it was Dave Naylor’s post about geo targeting which came straight into the Top 10 and then slowly faded out as the post aged and then the Search engine journal post which hit the first page and then slowly started shifting out.

I have also seen this occur on numerous other search terms

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After months of development and months of closed Beta testing, we are delighted to announce the launch of Articleranks.com in public Beta.

The site basically has two main functions the first allows Webmasters to feed in unique free content to their site. The second is more targetted towards article marketers and SEOs.

All of the major search engines love content, this is a proven fact and one of the best ways to actually get visitors to your site is via articles. Not only do they give you great click throughs, they also increase brand exposure and more importantly if done correctly it is one of the best methods to increase search positions.

But the thing is for so long people have been writing great content and having nowhere to submit it too except article directories which are off topic and full of spam.

ArticleRanks is set to revolutionise all of this by allowing people to actually submit their articles on REAL blogs and sites that people read. The best thing about it all is that you get great clickthroughs and you are getting links that the search engines will love why? I can tell you EXACTLY why, you are creating useful content which is then distributed to real webmasters that want to receive it. This is the end of approaching webmaster asking them if they would like to host your article.

Just imagine writing an article and getting it automatically drip fed into a huge numbers of top ranked blogs on different IPs, even better, each article will be unique in its own right with a link back to your site. Your rankings are simply going to shoot through the roof.

The service is absolutley FREE to use, but there is also a monthly plan and the option to buy credits. The site also has the following functions:

As a gift for all the SEOTops loyal readers, please enter this coupon when signing up 5186e8988585703797cba7173b1a2dca This will give you free credits in your account that you can use for publishing.

Remember there are three ways that you can gain access to publishing articles and getting themed links.

1) The FREE way. Add your sites to the system and earn credits for each article that gets published on your site, which can then be exhanged to allow you to publish articles.

2) Buy individual credits, this is great if you are only planning to use the system say once a month

3) Upgrade your account to monthly subscription, pay a small fee and have unlimited publishing access.

P.S. The system is still in Beta and may have a few glitches therefore it would be great if you could use the form on the site to report any.

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Since the brand update was released by Google there has been numerous SEOs asking “How they infact determine a brand”. There have been a huge amount of suggestions by various big name SEOs and other industry experts such as the following:

1) Looking at analytics data

2) Looking at offline activity

3) People searching for the brand domain

While all these may play a major part, I have been undecisive at why brands actually deserve to be ranking for highly competitive words if they are not making the effort until now. After checking and analysing most of the current results, it actually could be a great update for the search industry. The reason I say this is as follows.

For so long Google have been giving so much power to links and anchor text and although they still do, this brand update could in my opinion be introducing “brand citation” a lot more. Lets think of it this way,  to have a brand, you have to have a lot of buzz surrounding that thing. As an example lets take Ford who have recently got a major boost in all of their positions. How many citations of ford do you think there are around the whole internet? Would the majority of people actually talking about Ford link back to them? A high percentage would not, lets just say someone wrote a blog post or a news story such as the BBC and it read as follows.

“Ford have released a new model of the highly succesful Mondeo car, this new car is set to introduce a new era of driving”.

Now thinking about it a huge amount of sites would actually do something like this, then if on the other hand you had Mr Smiths car related site called mrsmithautos.com as an example, that has great content and a great structure but has actually gone out and got himself lots of great backlinks with perfect targetted anchor text, in Googles eyes this is a lot less natural then people actually talking about his site. And in most occasions Mr Smiths site will not have any REAL citations such as “mrsmithautos are releasing a new innovative approach to selling cars online”.

But with the ford sentence above, Google have the processing power to analyse and understand all the content around the Brand, so they know that in high probability that the person is talking about the Brand ford and the site gets a boost for the keywords around it. Again as Matt Cutts indicated the higher the PR and relevancy of the site referencing the brand name, the more power will be passed through.

Its the same if you look at another brand Autotrader, there are a huge amount of people that write personal blog posts such as “I just purchased a great second hand BMW for Autotrader, it only cost me £1000″. Just because that term is not linked why should Autotrader not get any benefits from it? We all know that with the rise in popularity of social media sites such as Twitter a vast amount of people are going to be citing brands.

In my opinion Google from what it seems could be actually analysing content and references a lot more, its the perfect solution ifyou have a brand people are going to talk about it in general sentence not just link to it and this is what Google may now well be analysing and it could be the reason as to why some of the results are slightly out of shape as they further tweak the algo to get this right.

Just my two cents, to create a brand you need to have something good to offer and great content so people discuss your site a lot more.

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We all know that SEO is essential if you are considering launching your business online, and this is why SEO is becoming one of the most powerful mediums of advertising.

Without SEO in this current day and age your website is bound to fail. This is exactly what companies around the world are coming to realise as they seek to optimise their sites. But I have noticed that a lot of firms are concentrating so much on their SEO that they are forgetting about another of the most important business aspects which is great customer service.

What happens is that businesses aim for a target in terms of SERP’s, and when the in house SEO’s or SEO agencies deliver, the businesses are unable to cope with the sheer volume of enquiries, which will infact end up hurting your reputation a huge amount.

Personally I have experienced businesses that have great rankings and get a huge amount of traffic and enquiries but are the unable to cope with it all. These businesses leave you holding on the phone for hours upon hours and the worst thing is that the calls are not even freephone, so you end up having a huge phone bill at the end of it.

What I am basically trying to say is that companies should invest in both SEO and customer service at an equal level, because without customer service no matter how many enquiries you get, people will end up leaving simply because they are not satisfied.

Have you had any previous experiences with great ranking sites that fail to deliver on the customer service end of things?

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There seems to be a lot of activity occurring with Google lately, for the past few weeks I have seen organic listings being shuffled around constantly. A lot of people have enquired as to what seems to be happening, people have been noticing that the inner pages on their sites are no longer ranking like they used too.

It seems as though from my point of view that Google are devaluing the power of domain ranking. What I mean by this is that for so long sites that have had a powerful homepage have been also getting inner pages ranked for their keyterms without the individual page actually having any authority whatsoever.

An example of this is the Web 2.0 sites that a lot of people have been targeting such as Squidoo, Tumblr and Ezine, people having been creating pages on these powerful domains and have seen the pages get relatively high rankings. But it seems as though with Google’s latest update this could be a thing of the past as they now seem to be looking more at the individual strength of each and every page instead of the domain that the page it is on. Google have always stated they rank pages and not sites, but this has not been the case until now.

As we all know Google did bring in a new “Brand Ranking” factor which gives more authority towards brands, I feel this and the Mayinner update are going to work hand in hand, as sites such as Amazon are not going to feel the change, but smaller sites which have built up only their homepages as the power horse could now see a huge drop in inner page rankings.

Mind you this is just an observation, let me know if you have noticed anything similar?

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For our UK readers and visitors I have a nice little treat, we have partnered up with SMX London 2009 and offer all of our readers a 15% discount on your bookings to two day treat on the 18th and 19th May.

As taken from the SMX Site

Join us for a strategic view of how marketing is evolving – and the critical role search must play – from one of the world’s most influential marketing executives. Brian Featherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO, OgilvyOne Worldwide, brings a unique vantage point on how brands are built, how corporate cultures are created and what happens as the world goes digital.

To read more click the following URL http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london

Your discount code for the event is SEOTOPUK09

Book your place now.

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