October 27, 2009
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Panelists: Dominic Litten, Jess Baker
Moderator: Cathy Zapata
Location: Windows on the River, Bridgeview Room
Type: Luncheon
It has been a long time since our last event that covered search in a broad sense, but the search landscape has not been standing still. That means that we have a lot to talk about! Microsoft has a new search engine, video and social sites are more important than ever, and there are powerful new ways to measure and manage your campaigns.
Come learn from some of the area's best and brightest as our panel discusses the tactics and strategies of SEO at a global scale.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »
If you missed the announcement earlier today, Microsoft announced that they were bringing Twitter search to their Bing search results. After finally playing with Bing's new Twitter search results integration - for, oh, 10 minutes - Google announces on their own blog that they too will be adding Twitter updates to their search results. What a coincidence!
From Google:
Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.
From Bing:
Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now). Try it out. The Bing and Twitter teams want to know what you think.
Also from the "not a coincidence" file, both search teams spoke (or will be speaking) today the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Take that Apple headlines.
RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my! (Official Google Blog)
Bing is Bringing Twitter Search to You (Bing Blog)
At Fathom, we've always optimized the meta keyword tag. While most search engines - including Google and Bing - have ignored the tag for years, the meta keyword tag has always carried some value because Yahoo! never abandoned it.
Earlier this month, Yahoo! announced that it too had stopped using the meta keyword tag for search results. Web programmers figured that, since the last major search engine had stopped indexing it, the meta keyword tag was finally dead.
Not so fast. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently tested the policy by including a line of gibberish in his site’s meta keyword tag. Sure enough, Search Engine Land now shows up as the top result for "xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk" in Yahoo.
Yahoo issued the following statement after they found out about the test:
What changed with Yahoo's ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.
Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words. Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page's recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.
However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.
So meta keywords still do matter to Yahoo!. In fact, Yahoo!'s recently updated Help page encourages programmers to optimize the meta keyword tag. Even though the tag now receives the "lowest ranking signal" in Yahoo!'s algorithm, it's still worth taking a few seconds to fill in 3-5 keywords and possibly giving your page a small boost in Yahoo!.
1 Comment »Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google recently wrote about ways to manage your reputation through search results.
It is great to see Google offering practical tips to people or companies looking to improve their online reputation. As an online reputation monitoring strategist I am encouraged that Google is taking steps to educate their audience on this topic. Reputation management can be a daunting task for any company or search engine marketer looking to repair or improve upon negative publicity.
Susan approaches the problem at hand with three strategies. Here are some additional tips to help with your online reputation management campaign:
Think twice
If you decide to put your information online, it is crucial to determine the right keywords to use. Whether it is the name of a company, product, or individual - the key to success is to remain consistent. URLs for online profiles are typically derived from the user name you select, so be mindful of your final choice. Your Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account can rank right behind your website on a search for your company name.
Tackle it at the source
You noticed a forum post from 2004 ranking #57 on a search for your company name. If you are trying to get this post removed from a site to lower the ranking, the worst thing you can do is reply to the thread. Adding new content to the thread can increase the chance that Google will re-crawl this page and increase the ranking of the forum post. Leave it alone!
Proactively publish information
Be very careful to the way you go about responding to any reputation issues. If not handled correctly, a small campfire can turn into a raging forest fire. Don't add more fuel to the fire if you can help it. If a blogger is not responsive to your rebuttal of false claims, consider taking the conversation offline with a phone call. Some journalists strive to post controversial topics, but make sure they aren't denying your right to respond. I have seen a well written response denied by the journalist because they don't want to cater to the reasoning of the company they slammed. As unfair as it is, it is a reality for a blog that has comment moderation.
Publishing new and positive content across the web is the best thing you can do to improve your online reputation. There are numerous social networks, wikis, article and press release websites that can be used to spread your name and positive image, along with improving your inbound links as entrance points to your website.
View more reputation monitoring articles by Fathom.
2 Comments »7 Ways to Effectively Expand Your Paid Search Budget
So you have just gotten word that your should expand your pay-per-click budget. Good job! This should mean that you are doing a great job driving return on advertising spend out of the pay-per-click campaign you are managing. This brings up the question: How can I most effectively expand my budget?
Sizing Up The Stats - Benchmarking in Google Analytics
In previous editions of the NewsWire, we've looked at how to get the most out of Google Analytics. From establishing goals and drilling down to visitor profile data, there are many ways to refine the data so that you can see how your search engine optimization efforts are impacting your business objectives. At some point you may feel that you have a good handle on where you are, where you've been and where you want to go to improve a particular metric. But you are not operating in a vacuum. At some point you might ask yourself, "How do we stack up against the competition?"
Big Changes Coming to Email Deliverability
A recent report has shaken up the email marketing industry and confirmed what many people have suspected for some time now: Top ISPs are now starting to measure the open and click rate of your messages and are using it in conjunction with traditional spam-identifying tactics to grade your overall sender reputation. How will this affect you and what can you do to take advantage of it?
Put Search Engine Rankings in Perspective
It's easy to get addicted to checking search engine rankings. I don't think a day goes by when I don't check rankings for something. And yet, truth be told, companies working with search engine optimization agencies should spend less time focusing on rankings and look more at sales revenue.
Using the Rules of Shot Composition to Improve your Online Videos
Learn the shot composition rules you should be using to enhance the quality of your online video footage. Steve Kozak discusses the rules of shot composition and how they can improve your video footage.
