Disorganized Google

Funny. No matter how hard google tries to fulfill its mission to organize world’s information, there will always be people who use it to increase chaos and entropy. This guy created a google personalized homepage more than 8.000 pixels long…

New Google link tool

So yesterday google announced a link research tool. They included it into their webmaster tools pages, and it was meant to facilitate link research for one’s own domains.

However, the tool was wide wide open and allowed quite detailed analysis of ANY website and its external link structure.

The SEOs clever/fast enough seized this opportunity like crazy. Researching competitor’s inlink is often not easy. The number of useful tools is limited (yahoo site explorer, msn link tool) and Google’s own link command stopped working reliably several years ago. So, having a tool that quickly and comfortably let’s you do the job was a blessing that lasted a bit more than 24 hours. Enough time to research entire sectors, link neighborhoods and domain cities that go usually undetected and rank high in Google because they are simply to complex for the current algo.

What are the consequencies of this error? More spam in Google index. This window of opportunity created by Google helped some SEOs to gain more insight into the way blackhat/greyhat heavyweights link. Those unscrupulous will follow them and exceed them in the methods revealed by the tool, the rest of us will most likely use those principles in a rather conservative (but still very useful) way….

Both groups will contribute to increase competition levels in all high-profile sectors. I already had several inquiries on travel sector (both global and Spanish speaking markets). And while I personally have no intention to benefit from this error, many others will.

This development is very similar to the gaffe by AOL when they released huge quantity of search data that is still available for analysis in some places… Privacy-wise, it is not so bad, but spam-wise, the effect will be stronger.

One wonders, seeing the stupidity of the error, how safe are our Gmail, calendar, spreadsheet, desktop search and any other data we keep in Google’s hands. Hopefully the person responsible for the error is packing his lava lamp and cleaning his cubicle in Googleplex. Firing him/her is the only possible signal that Google strives to keep our data safe…

More stuff about the tool and the official announcement (naive optimism I would call it, it’s clear they had no idea how fast people would move in…)

Balancing your links – Be Natural

Un tal Steven Bradley wrote recently an interesting post about balancing your links. The adage is that you should make them look “natural” and avoid over-optimization.

There is nothing wrong with this advice, if your site is purely designed for Googlebot, Slurp or msnbot.

If your site is designed for real users, and your goal is to sell them something (be it a product, service, or subscription) or to give them something useful (such as valuable posts and articles or some useful utility, plugin or extension), let me give you another advice.

Instead of SEOing your site and worrying about making it look natural, be natural. By that I mean that every link you put on your site should be of value for your users.

There is nothing wrong with Steven’s advice, because by trying to look natural you will probably achieve linking structure that will benefit your users. However, I strongly believe that by being natural and focusing on your user’s needs you can achieve superior results, both in usability of your site and in long-term SEO. It pays well to be authentic and natural. You can stop worrying about ongoing changes in ranking algorithms and focus on building a useful site. SE bots learn and get better every month in distinguishing value from manipulation. Being natural (instead of looking natural) is the safest long-term SEO strategy.

Let me give you a natural alternative to Steven’s advice.

• Steven: Mix up links to your home page and to deeper pages of your site
• Ubibene: Try to predict / anticipate user’s informational needs on every page and provide links to satisfy them

• Steven: Vary the anchor text in links to your pages
• Ubibene: Put the anchor text in links that best explain the content of the target page. Avoid misleading the user. Different context to different (but related) anchor texts.

• Steven: Trade a few links to balance out the one way inbound links
• Ubibene: Mix outlinks and internal links always having in mind the user and his/her needs. There is nothing wrong with NOT having any outlink if the user does not really need them on some page. There is nothing wrong with having ONLY outlinks if it benefits the user.
• Steven and Ubibene: Link out as well as linking in. Here we completely agree, however, I suspect the motivation is different (Steven focuses on naturally-looking linking structure, ubibene on linking structure that best satisfies user needs).
• Get site wide and one off links (this one I don’t really get, my English is not that good.)

Google Adwords Website Optimizer

This is probably the most important SEO news this month. It allows a simple way to improve SEO payout by improving the conversion rate of landing pages.

 While in itself it does not generate more traffic, it helps to improve user experience and increases the “goals” (such as sales, bookings, subscriptions etc.)

It has an important side effect on quite a lot of services/companies with similar usability improvement goals. So, expect something similar to “analytics earthquake” and “maps earthquake” once tool is released (free of charge) to all interested webmasters.

 Google adwords website optimizer is (at the moment) in invitation-only beta, but if I had a usability services company, I would be worried. Very worried…

Google playing catch-up game

Google has finally decided to match the offer of msn search to offer its user to create its own search engines, using subsets of its huge index.

Under the umbrella of Google Co-op, users can create specialized index(es) defining several hundred thousand(!) websites they want to include.

Why this news is interested from SEO point of view? Because it moves gives SEOs the possibility to leverage the traffic from well positioned keywords, with the traffic from well positioned specialized search sites (using index that conveniently leaves out sites that the SEO is not able to beat in the regular index, or that are spammy and useless for the site’s target audience.

History of SE by Aaron Wall

Aaron Wall’s article covers the history of search engines from the very beginning. It is an interesting reading because it shows clearly the volatility of the SE world. There were times of very strong dominance by some players who did not survive because the did not innovate fast enough. The current SEO is based on the current type of SEs. Once they change (or once they fail to innovate), the current SEO will either have to change or will disappear.

The consequences for SEO: keep your eyes open and start changing today. Study new web technology trends (Yes, I mean technology trends, not just SEO news) and think regularly on what their impact may be on your work. SEO as we know it may dissapear within few years; the need to attract quality traffic to your websites is however permanent. I keep stressing to my (ex-)clients the need to think ahead today’s trends and dedicate at least 10% of their SEO budget on research (into social networks, personalized search future, viral marketing etc.) so that they are prepared when the changes hit.

Sandbox reloaded

I just came across a very good article on trust related issues in google algo (a.k.a. sandbox). The article is interesting not only because of what it says (most of it has been rather widely known in professional SEO circles for months) but because of its reveal-it-all character; something not very common among SEO professionals.

AOL search data

Well, I just did a rather thorough analysis of the data released by AOL recently. 20 million search queries done over 3 months period. It offers a rare insight on how people really search, what results they click etc.

It is without any doubt the most valuable SEO related data released this year and it’s analysis should be obligatory for all SEOs.

AOL search data dowloads can be found using google. If you don’t have time/capacity/skills to analyze them, drop me a line. For privacy reasons the original data file is not available anymore, however, you may find my aggregate results analysis quite useful.

SEO in edreams

A curious spam report from a fellow wordpress.com blogger (in Spanish) attacking the SEO techniques applied at edreams. (edreams is the leading online travel agency in Spain).

it includes a response from Mark Toner , SEO specialist at edreams, refuting the charges.

I have been asked by several fellow SEOers on my opinion about this and other similiar anti-spam initiatives.

So here is where I stand:

• It is the SEs that should handle spam. Therefore all spam reports should be primarily directed to them.
• It is the right of anybody unhappy with some SE spam or SE inactivity to write a public spam report, as long as he does not misinterpret the facts.
• In this particular case, I believe the interest behind the spam report very “commercial”. By that I mean that I suspect the author works for some competitor and this report is a part of his overall SEO strategy.
• A note of caution: I would advise against using similar spam reports to learn new SEO techniques. SEO in Spain is 2-3 years behind the top SEO techniques. People trying to learn SEO shouldn’t waste time studying local SEO cases but go for cutting-edge techniques applied in extremely competitive industries in English speaking countries (this is true for all colors of SEO, white, black, magenta…).
• I intentionally do not take parts, nor evaluate the merits of this particular spam report. Anybody can read it, check out the website and verify if it meets the SEO best practice or not.

Paradox of Choice in SEO

I am reading a fascinating book by Barry Schwartz. If you are lazy to read/buy the book, check out his google video lecture.

There are important implications of his research to usability and SEO. Highly recommended, especially for Steve and his long-tail SEO approach followers .