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When Matt Cutts from Google was asked (in one of his many starring performances in Google’s YouTube videos) about the use of URL Shorteners and the value for SEO of those links, he said that if the URL Shortener uses a 301 redirect then it is treated the same as any other 301 redirect and Google follows the link and the flow of PageRank is the same.

What is a URL Shortener?

Those who use Twitter and tweet links to webpages will be familiar with the need to squish alot into 140 characters and if the link to the web page URL is lengthy, then you have little room left to say anything. Thus, the use of shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl. Hootsuite users will be familiar with ow.ly. And Irish users may be familiar with the home grown service short.ie (this one also allows you to customise the URL).

What is PageRank?

Briefly put, PageRank is a value between 0 and 10 which Google gives to a webpage as it’s authority rank. When a page links to another page, and Google follows the link, some of this value is passed to the other page, which may be on another website. The value that’s passed is known as ‘link juice‘ and is important for the authority of the receiving page.

What is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a code issued by a web server to the browser when a page is requested. It signifies that the page has a ‘permanent’ move to another page. In the case of a shortened URL that Google is crawling, it means that when Google gets the page, any linkjuice from the first page will be passed on to the page of the long URL like a normal page, instead of being discarded on the shortened URL.

So ideally, from an SEO perspective, if you’re using URL shorteners, use one that does a 301 redirect.

Here’s what Matt had to say:

The post on search engine land that Matt refers to in the video is on the qualities of the different URL shortening services.

Google doesn’t like Duplicate Content.

And the reason it doesn’t like Duplicate Content is that people don’t like it, and Google does aim to please it’s customers. When it serves search results pages (SERPs) the goal is to provide a variety of relevant and quality results to the searcher and it uses highly complex alogoritms in order to achieve this.

If the content on your website also appears on another site, for whatever reason, Google may not be sure which is the most authoritative or relevant to show in it’s results. But the important thing to remember is that it will probably only return one of them. If the one it decides to show is not your main site, and is not where you wish traffic to go, then you have a problem.

At this point, I’m going to pass you over to Joost who has just published a great Guide to Duplicate Content. I saw Joost (aka Yoast) ‘perform’ at WordCamp in Kilkenny earlier this year and while everyone may not agree with him all the time, he does delight in SEO. His guide gives a comprehensive list of reasons duplicate content appears, how to identify when it’s happening and, most importantly, how to fix it.

Case Study

Now for an example of where duplicate content is taking traffic from the main site and diluting the message and online presence. Let’s take a look at the charity website for Self Help Africa. It’s a great site – not perfect – but definitely up there with sites putting alot of effort into trying to engage with visitors. The charity also has a site for Sandwich Day which is a microsite relating to a specific fund-raising event. This event is now over (it looks like an event from 2008). But, if we type in the search term ‘charities for Africa’, a relevant term which the charity would  be targeting, Google returns the Sandwich Day site in position 8 on page 1:

while the main site has been relegated to page 7 where no-one will see it:

This example is a search on Google.ie. One of the problems is that the microsite for the specific event has some content that is the same as the main site. If we compare the pages sandwichday.ie/selfhelp/Main/pr-home.htm and www.selfhelpafrica.org/selfhelp/Main/pr-home.htm, we see that they are the same. And as we’ve said before, Google are not likely to show search results that have the same content. Thus it is more difficult for the main site to rank in Google.

This case of duplicate content is within the control of the charity. In the search example, it is Google that have decided which is the more relevant of the charity’s websites to display. It may have decided this on the keywords – the keywords ‘charities‘ and ‘africa‘  are in the meta title for sandwichday.ie, whereas the words ‘charity‘ and ‘africa‘ are in the meta title for www.selfhelpafrica.org – there are many factors that Google look at. But the charity can take back this control. They might be better off to use microsites to promote specific events only, and to link back to the main site to show users other content, rather than replicating this content on the microsite.

Have you seen any similar examples?

They may not know what’s inside your head, but Google are going to take a guess and give you results even as you type a search query!

Google Instant is the latest delivery from the Google techies and is aimed (as always) at enhancing the search experience. Following on from their recent new indexing capability with Caffeine, the appearance of Google Instant might suggest that they’re going after the instant coffee market. Rather, it is speed that interests them.

With Google Instant, the messages no longer need to get from your brain to your typing fingers – you can just choose a term offered. The search box is already offering previous search terms, which the user can select from, or type their own. Now, the top search term is highlighted in grey in the search box and if this is the one you choose, you can stop typing and just hit the return key. As you type results are being served up. There is alot of flickering on the screen as it changes while you type the search term, and this can be a bit distracting, but it’s definitely quicker and serves the user. However, you can switch it off if you want.

Here’s an example to illustrate. If we type in ‘a’, we get ‘aib’ in top place (nice to see they’re at the top somewhere):

It’s interesting that in many places ‘a’ is for ‘amazon’, ‘e’ is for ‘ebay, ‘f’ is for ‘facebook’, ‘g’ is for ‘gmail’, ‘h’ is for ‘hotmail’,  ‘i’ is for ‘ikea’ (which surprised me), and so on. But type ‘w’ and you get ‘weather’. It seems we all want to know what kind of day it’s going to be.

So, any implications for SEO?

• rankings – Google says it has no effect on rankings
• localised – the search suggestions and search results are shown based on where Google thinks you are
• number of impressions shown in Webmaster Tools – this will reflect the normal search, plus any impressions shown where the user clicks any result on a page, and also where the result (or impression) is on the screen for at least 3 secs

Interesting facts (for geeks anyway):

15  new technologies contribute to the functionality

haven’t  they been busy…

It has just been rolled out in Ireland and is available on Google.ie, but only if you are signed in to Google. It will be rolled out for all users over the next few months.

All in all, it’s just the latest step in optimising the user experience. Speed is one of the big issues now on the web and Google have already added site download times as a factor in site ranking. Research is showing them that users are not prepared to wait. And that’s true whether it’s waiting for sites to appear on their screens or for search engines to solve their problem.

So, no loitering out there on the interweb…

While the rest of us were on our coffee break, Google have been busy building a new and more powerful way of indexing the web. It’s called Caffeine. Though I wouldn’t be impressed by the name – ‘caffeine’ isn’t the most powerful stimulant known to man – I guess they couldn’t call it ‘speed’!

When you do a google search, the software races off and searches the Google index of the web, not the live web itself. So the results you get are somewhat out of date. However, Caffeine provides the ability to index greater amounts of content, of different types eg. video, at a much faster pace.

As Google have said:

… every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second.

One of the advantages of Caffeine for SEO consultants and those responsible for website traffic has been that the number of inbound links being shown on the Google Webmaster Tools has increased.

The number and quality of inbound links to a website is a critical SEO factor. So the availability of a more up to date and comprehensive picture of your inbound links is all good news.

You can read more about Caffeine on the Google Blog.

Have you seen more links on your Google webmaster tools report?

Come back next week for a post on how to create more inbound links.

First of all, SEO in Ireland is primarily about Google (though not all, Bing and Yahoo are relevant also). And it’s about giving Google what it wants. Let me explain what I mean by that. If you have a business, say you give karate classes to kids in Dublin and you have a website. How do you utilise the web to find yourself new customers using organic search (which is, after all, a relatively inexpensive form of advertising)?  An SEO person can tell you what you need to be doing online – both on your site and in other ways – to present yourself to Googles bots in an attractive way. For example, how to optimise your pages with your keywords:  ’karate’, ‘classes’, ‘kids’, ‘Dublin’.

There are a number of things an SEO person can see and do straight away, the success of which depends very much on the competitiveness of the area. Many of these can be seen in the SEO Starter Guide provided by Google (pdf).

After these tasks and issues have been dealt with, SEO can be become a bit of a grey area. This is because Google does not give away the secrets of their algorithms, they do not reveal exactly how they rank websites. This is for the very good reason that they do not want people to manipulate rankings. Overt manipulation contrary to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is referred to as ‘black-hat SEO’ (whereas ‘white-hat‘ SEOs are the good guys).  The goal remains to serve up search results pages (SERPs) that are relevant and provide quality content. Therefore, you can get disagreement amongst SEOs about certain issues, duplicate content for example. As SEOs do not have access to the algorithm, it’s impossible for them to say exactly the effect of a certain approach. Also, the algorithm changes constantly, so what worked a year ago may not work today and effects seen before may not be re-created subsequently.

So if you’re new to SEO, here are the kind of questions you should be thinking about when you consider engaging an SEO consultant to work with you on promoting your website:

1. Do they have clients testimonials that you can check out?
2. What do they consider the most important SEO techniques?
3. What is the timeframe involved?
4. How do they intend to measure results?
5. Will they tell you exactly what they’re doing and why?
6. Will they leave you with ownership of any changes?
7. Do they engage with the SEO community in Ireland?
8. How long have they been established in SEO?
9. Do they follow Google Webmaster guidelines?
10. Do they see SEO and online marketing as inter-related disciplines?

Now you have a starting point to kick off your initial meeting with your SEO. It’s important in any meeting to go in there with your questions prepared. How often have you gone to the doctor and found it all very satisfactory until you went home and realised you didn’t ask the obvious questions!

So what can a Business Blog do for you? How can it return the cost in setting it up and the on-going investment in time in updating it? Does it suit your business? 

Here’s a 10 point guide to your own part of the blogosphere.

Why blog for business?

1.  A Blog offers you the opportunity to show how much you know (though not to sound like a know-all..)! It presents you with a platform where you can establish yourself as an authority in your field. 

Would you prefer to do business with someone you don’t know and aren’t sure how much they know about what they’re doing? Or with someone who has a personality and seems to know what they’re talking about?

2.  ‘Content is king’: The old adage rides again. One of the key benefits of a Business Blog is in the SEO. The regular content updates on your site (via posts to your blog) attracts the search engines. The more frequently you post, the more frequently you will be crawled by the bots (search engines). It offers you the opportunity for more keyword placement, allows you to interlink your pages as you link back to your own pages and other posts. All of which will drive more traffic to your site.

‘Sharing is caring’: (we’re full of pithy aphorisms today). As people come to your blog and it becomes popular, you will get people linking back to it from other sites as they share your content, thereby getting ‘deep links’ back to your site. All good SEO.

3.  A blog allows you to share information with your customers and prospects and others interested in the same area and it can act as a channel for news updates relating to your business. 

4.  It also gives you the chance to interact with your customers and prospects. You can ask questions and receive feedback via the comment forms on your blog. You can ask questions, perhaps about new products, and answer questions. Your customers and potential customers can engage with you in an informal way. They are then more likely to do business with you subsequently.

 How do I set it up?

5.  WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform.

WordPress

This is an open-source software (ie. free) which can be installed very easily. The software is easy to use with a user-friendly CMS (customer management system) and comes out-of-the-box with all the blogging functionality you need – posts structure, tags, categories, comment forms etc. You can use categories to organise your posts. So, if a visitor is interested in a particular topic, they can view posts by Category. You can also use Tags to give a more granular way to search through your posts. Comments can be moderated, with options for different levels, so that you might moderate the first comment of a visitor and let the others through automatically, or you may choose to moderate all comments. So no nasty or spammy type comments.

Plug-ins are available to control spam, optimise for search engines (SEO) and sharing buttons, aswell as many others. Sharing buttons are important to allow your content to be linked to across the blogosphere, this will bring you more traffic as time goes on.

6.  For SEO benefits, it is important to have your blog hosted on your own website. You can quickly set up a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com, but these will not bring traffic to your own website. 

How to I blog successfully?

7.  The success of any blog depends on the goals starting out. First of all decide what your content will relate to and determine who your target audience is. Your business blog should keep to topics which are of interest to your target audience and are within your realm of expertise.

8.  The blog must be regular. Some blogs start off well, but after a few months, the posts taper off and the benefits are lost. Start how you mean to continue and decide how often you are going to post, and stick to it. It should be scheduled as an activity, and not something to be done when you have a few minutes free (because you never will have!). The posts do not have to be done by one person, as long as the person writing is in a position of knowledge on the topic.

8.  Use keywords in your blog titles to increase your SEO. Each post has it’s own web page and URL and these are known as permalinks and do not change. So, having a keyword in the URL of the post is beneficial for SEO and as people link to the post, the link remains in place and will not change as time goes on. This is important for search engines, as they don’t like to have pages indexed that subsequently have broken links.

9.  Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your blog. Have a RSS feed option and an option to subscribe by email. FeedBurner is a free service which allows blog subscriptions by email and is easy to place on your site.

10.  Write in an engaging way and keep it short and snappy. Structure your posts so that the reader can see at first glance what it’s about. (No-one wants to see what you had for breakfast or what you thought about it.)

• keep sentences short
• use headings 
• use bullet points
• use active verbs
• ask questions and look for feedback
• highlight key words and phrases
• link to relevant sources or other posts
• have personality!

Thinking of outsourcing your Blog?

If you’re thinking of outsourcing your blog, then beware. A blog is not likely to be successful if the person writing it is not close to the subject matter and it will quickly become evident.

And don’t consider setting up a fake blog to promote your business. These ‘flogs‘ (fake blogs) will only serve to undermine your reputation when you get found out – which you probably will. They are akin to ‘infomercials‘ and ‘advertorials’.

See examples of Business Blogs in the Irish Blog Awards Shortlist for 2010.

It’s getting closer to real-time. Google now has a real-time feed from Twitter showing a scrolling feed as people are tweeting on the given search term.

Even Blog postings are indexed practially straight away. Our post on ‘deep links’ was indexed within an hour and displayed in Google’s search results:

How fast is your new content being indexed?