Link-building comment spam

That ever-present pox on blogs and just about any site with commenting – otherwise known as comment spam – is finally getting its day in the sun. In this case, the sunlight is sanitizing, and Google's most recent algorithm updates have actively and aggressively penalized the sites who used comment spam for link-building.

I've covered legitimate ways to build to links in class, and those methods – seeking relevant, quality links from other sites – are still good practice. But the darker art of massive-scale link building that went on for many years in the comments sections of websites around the world has now come back to haunt the companies that benefitted from those strategies, and the results are sometimes hilarious.

For a great rundown of how all this happened and the plaintive requests that site owners are now making to have their links removed, read this great piece over at The Awl. It's a fine, brief history of "black hat" link building and a pretty humorous review of the requests that The Awl is now receiving to have those links removed.

The Importance of Google PageRank: A Guide For Small Business Executives

An entry-level primer over at HubSpot on exactly what Google's PageRank is and how it affects your search ranking. For those of you who desire a more thorough explanation of PageRank than what I provide in class, this is a great starting point.

If any of you are trying to optimize a site that sells products that are pretty much identical to your competitors', you might want to check out my latest article for Identity Marketing magazine. I discuss the ups and downs of trying to optimize a site that sells commodity products when hundreds or thousands of other online sellers are offering exactly the same stuff. In this case, I'm talking about promotional products, but the same advice can apply to anyone who sells commodity goods against a lot of other competitors. Check it out here on the eBlox blog.

Google updates algorithm, targeting content farms

We saw this one coming a while back, and now it's live: Google has made changes to their algorithm that will reduce the ranking of so-called "content farms" like Demand Media or eHow, who create all those wonderful articles like "How to Get Pregnant" (seriously). These articles, though marginally informative, don't really exist to provide unique, useful information; they exist to sell ads on those very pages, and that advertising is big business - Demand Media's IPO was valued at more than one billion dollars.

It remains to be seen exactly how content farm pages will suffer in ranking. Demand Media and other large-scale content providers have been anticipating this change for quite a while, so I expect they're already attempting to work around it. But, there's no denying that web users have staged something of a revolt against low-quality, high-volume content creators, and Google had no choice if it wanted to be perceived as delivering good search results.

The twist? Google, as the largest online ad network in the world, makes millions off the ads that are shown on these sites. Reducing the ranking of high-volume content farm pages will undoubtedly impact Google's ad revenue. No one has any idea how much impact this will have on ranking or revenue, but if you're interested in an in-depth overview of the change, Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land has put together a thorough, detailed analysis.

Is Google Ignoring The HTML Title Tag More Often?

With all our talk about the importance of title tags, this one comes as a bit of shocker - many webmasters are complaining that Google is ignoring title tags in certain situations and generating its own titles for search engine results. That means that the carefully keyworded, clickthru-optimized titles that you wrote for your pages might not show up when someone searches for your site on Google.

Don't worry, though: they'll always show up on your own site! This may mean that Google is giving less (or no) weight to the keywords and order of title tags, which probably makes sense given that Google focuses pretty much exclusively on page content. Also, Google's own Chrome browser happens to do a terrible job of displaying titles in its tabs if you've got more than a few tabs open, so it's possible that Google feels the tag itself isn't as important as it used to be.

More than likely, though, Google is treating the title tag the way that it began treating the meta description tag a few years ago: it decides what to do with it based on an algorithm. If it's good, brief and non-spammy, Google uses it, but if it looks loaded with keywords, or perhaps over-optimized for click thru, Google will ignore it and create its own. I'll keep you posted on this one....

Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - NYTimes.com

Comprehensive overview of how JC Penney gamed Google's search engine over the holiday season. If you're looking for a reasonably succinct explanation of how "black hat", or under-the-table search engine optimization works, this is a good place to start.

In JC Penney's case, they weren't caught until the New York TImes pointed it out, and they weren't penalized as harshly as others who game Google; they were just demoted in ranking to where they should actually be based on their quality. It's an interesting story, and it shows that even big companies who try to game Google can only be successful at it for so long. Full article here.

The Huffington Post and SEO

Some interesting detail on what, exactly, AOL was paying for when they purchased The Huffington Post last week. Similar in some ways to the strategy used by so-called "content farms" such as Demand Media, The Huffington Post employs techniques that mine the internet for popular trends and searches. Once a popular set of keywords are determined (e.g. "what time is the Superbowl?"), Huffington Post writers often create articles geared specifically to capturing clicks from search engines for that content.

To be fair, The Huffington Post also creates a good deal of original editorial content that is less engineered toward search engine eyeballs. But their search engine-tuned content chops are what bring in the money and triggered the acquisition. I'll leave the determination of whether they are contributing to the rise of junk content up to you. Full article here.

Specialization and Cross-Selling

An article from Identity Marketing on how specialization and cross-selling can be a primary strategy for online sellers in very competitive spaces. Worth checking out if you are planning on selling something where the main keywords are very competitive - like "shoes" or "promotional products". Check it out here.

An article I penned for Identity Marketing magazine, republished on the eBlox blog, about giving up on organic search optimization. For those of you that are considering organic SEO (optimizing content and inbound links to rank higher in organic searches) vs. diving into pay-per-click advertising, this might provide some insight as to why I feel the latter is often a better use of your time, especially if you are engaged in e-commerce and want to actually sell your products online.

You should still optimize your site for organic search – as I've said in class, keywords are everything – and try to get those higher-ranking, relevant inbound links. But the article specifically addresses the situations where organic SEO is a losing battle because of the intense competition. In this situation, the targeted, controlled method of advertising offered by pay-per-click may be your best bet. Read the article here and let me know what you think.

Forget about the keywords meta tag

I've mentioned in class before that the keywords meta tag is basically useless for search engine optimization and ranking. The description meta tag is important if you want to control the page description in the SERP (search engine results page), but the keyword tag has no value because Google bases keyword analysis on human-readable content.

Today, Google confirmed (apparently in response to a variety of legal actions regarding keyword tags) that they completely ignore the keywords meta tag. Bluntly: "Google doesn't use the 'keywords' meta tag in our web search ranking."

I don't think you can get a more clear-cut answer than that. For more information and an explanatory video, click here to read the complete article at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Hiring Social Media Experts

New post from a forthcoming Identity Marketing magazine article on hiring social media experts is available over at the eBlox E-commerce Blog. If you're considering bringing in a social media expert to help with your marketing and SEO or perhaps you're considering becoming one yourself (why not? everyone else is doing it) then head over and check it out.

Google's Webmaster Central Blog

If you want to dig deeper into the whys and hows of web crawling and indexing – those obscure yet important processes that determine where your site ranks in search engines – go straight to the source at Google's Webmaster Central Blog. If you aren't already familiar with Google's Tools for Webmasters, it's a great way to view all the information Google has on your site, including really important stuff like inbound links.

Google's Webmaster Central Blog is a good spot to learn about changes in Google's policies and updates to Webmaster tools. Do like I do and subscribe to it with your favorite RSS reader - mine is Google Reader, but there are plenty of others out there, and your web browser itself may allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds.

Inbound Links

A new series of pieces are going up at the eBlox blog over the next two weeks regarding inbound links. I explain in layman's terms what they are, how to measure them, and how to obtain at least a few of them to assist you in your own search engine optimization efforts. Check it out.

Using your Competitors' Keywords and Trademarks

We've discussed the use of negative keywords and competing keywords in your content as potential strategies to attract customers looking for alternatives to something – for instance, using "chemotherapy" and related keywords for a site that is actually promoting alternatives to traditional cancer treatment like chemotherapy. With non-trademark keywords, this is a sound strategy.

With trademarks, you have to be a little bit more careful. A recent ruling points out that using competitors' trademarks specifically for search engine optimization can run afoul of trademark law. The ruling seems to rest on the standard that the use of the words can create confusion for consumers but, since I'm not a lawyer, I'll send you right over to this excellent blog post that discusses it in detail.

Keyword Tool

For those of you who don't want to spring for tools like Wordtracker, Google offers similar functionality with its Keyword Tool. Google's Keyword Tool provides keyword assistance by allowing you to enter seed keywords or phrases and then showing you potential traffic of your keywords and suggesting related ones.

The tool is built primarily to assist pay-per-click customers in developing keyword lists but, if you are having trouble generating basic keywords for your product or service, it can be an excellent way to generate alternatives and evaluate their potential search traffic. Check it out here.

10 Resources for SEO

Clickz provides a good list of SEO resources for folks just starting out with their search engine optimization efforts. Some of this is covered in the SEO session, but there are a few new ones here worht checking out. Have a look.

Search Engine Optimization basics

I'm adapting a series of Identity Marketing magazine columns for blog posts over at the eBlox e-commerce blog. These articles focus on the basic search engine optimization for folks that are just beginning to try and optimize their content. The first article is available today, and subsequent posts should be out roughly every week or so. Check it out.

Flash may now be indexed by Google and Yahoo

Adobe announced today that they are providing a method for the major search engines to index Flash content. I have always recommended against extensive (or total) use of Flash for your site if you wish to be properly indexed and garner good search rankings. It looks like at least part of that problem is solved. I still recommend against using Flash for information-rich sites like e-commerce (it's just too expensive to duplicate all that content for non-Flash users like mobile users) but for those of you with mainly brochure-style content on your site, this new method of crawling Flash sites might benefit you. Read a full writeup at TechCrunch here.

Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design

For those of you undertaking web design on your own or hiring someone to build your dream site for you, a classic set of tips from usability expert Jakob Nielsen on what not to do. Check out the article here.

Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet

Great resource here for the technically inclined, especially if you want to know how many characters to put in a title tag or how many bytes a web page should be. Good stuff even for those of you just worried about creating proper meta tags. Check it out here.

For those of you looking for more specific information on e-commerce and general articles on web technology, my company eBlox is now publishing a blog over at blog.eblox.com. Many of the web technology articles I write for Identity Marketing Magazine will be published there, as well as various strategies for e-commerce, search engine optimization and web marketing. If any of that interests you, head on over and check it out!