Google Stop Words Now Indexed

From: seobythesea.com

Not too long ago, if you entered in Google the phrase (without quotation marks) “a room with a view,” you might have received some warnings that your query contained “Stop Words.”

Stop words are words that appear so frequently in documents and on web pages that search engines would often ignore them when indexing the words on pages. These could be words like: a, and, is, on, of, or, the, was, with.

Good bye to stop words?

In that search for “a room with a view,” you might have received results like “a room for a view,” or “room to view,” or other phrases that replaced some stop words with others. That made it less likely to find exactly what you were looking for when you searched for a phrase with stop words in it.

I’m not seeing Google ignoring stop words any more. Last week, Dan Thies asked Stop Words Are Dead! Did I Miss Another Memo?

This newly granted Google Patent seems to hold some answers to the disappearance of stop words, and to potentially a number of other indexing issues from Google:

Document compression scheme that supports searching and partial decompression
Invented by Olcan Sercinoglu
Assigned to Google
US Patent 7,319,994
Granted January 15, 2008
Filed May 23, 2003

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SEO Requires Constant Improvement

It used to be possible to run a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign and then leave it alone but this is no longer the case, an expert has stated.

Matt Hopkins, managing director of search engine marketing firm Vertical Leap, made his comments through his company’s blog, advocating what he calls the Kaizen approach.

“Kaizen is a Japanese term that effectively means continuous, incremental improvement,” he explained, adding that this philosophy is a “large part” of Vertical Leap’s management of SEO campaigns.

Mr Hopkins agreed that a lot of work is necessary at the beginning of an SEO strategy but that a Kaizen-inspired attention to detail and “pig-headed determination” is what creates a successful approach.

SEO company Phoenix Realm also describes optimization as a continuous process and suggests that a methodical persistence will give a marketer long-lasting results.

Furthermore, it advises that organic optimization will protect a website from falling in search engine rankings if the algorithms change, whereas so-called black hat techniques risk detection and a fall in rankings.

SEO can lower costs of PPC

From:  www.directnews.co.uk

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) can help to lower the cost of paid search campaigns, it has been claimed.

International property publication Global edge aims to assist overseas estate agents to derive greater benefits from the internet.

Designing a website with SEO in mind can help to achieve this, the publication asserts.

By incorporating between six and ten keywords into a site’s content, search engine visibility can be improved and paid search budgets reduced, Global edge explains.

“Users will convert at higher rates - and besides, you’ll have done your SEO right at the design phase so you’ll be getting lots of free natural traffic,” the publication contends.

“A good website will inspire your audience and position you as an authority in your chosen niche,” it adds.

In a recent presentation, Global edge advised its readers on the best ways to identify gaps in the search market before optimizing content, as well as how best to strike a balance between site design and SEO considerations.

New Experimental Google Search | The end of SEO?

www.seroundtable.com 

Yesterday I covered the news at Search Engine Land of a new Google experimental search feature that lets you move search results up and remove results from the Google search results page.

The changes you make only impact you - your login and does not influence the overall scope of the search results. But can they? Who knows. We have been seeing Google test remove results features before and then drop the feature.

Google says:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

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Link Building 101 Rap

Why Search Engine Marketing is Necessary

From: www.seomoz.org

While many readers of this document may have overcome their skepticism about the need for and value of search marketing (and specifically, organic search engine optimization), it’s entirely likely that others in your organization, company, network or client meetings may have differing opinions. Thus, this section is provided to help explain the need for proactive search engine optimization.

One of the most common issues I hear from folks on both the business and technology sides of a company goes something like this:

No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or indexed. Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through any architecture, parse any amount of complex or imperfect code and still find a way to return the best and most relevant results, not the ones that have been “optimized” by unlicensed search marketing experts.

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Balancing SEO and Usability

From: Just Search

SEO and usability are very closely related. Without the proper SEO your site won’t be found by potential customers. However, if your site is performing in the listings but not properly designed for usability, you will struggle to convert your traffic into hard sales.

It is therefore in your best interests to design a site that can cater for both SEO and usability. This will help turn your traffic into purchases and leads.

Search engines are getting more complex and can now collect data about the basic usability of your site. For example if your site is regularly bookmarked in popular bookmarking sites such as del.cio.us, Stumble Upon, and Digg. Search engines can index these popular bookmarking sites and from this information evaluate how popular your site is, hence how usable.

Another factor search engines can look into to evaluate your usability is the amount of high power links you have pointing to your site. Powerful sites tend to only link to articles/pages on your site which present related information and can be easily navigated by users.

You can check usability factors on your site yourself to by analyzing data from Google Analytics, which can provide you with important data such as the bounce rate of your site, and the length of time users spend on this site. A usable site tends to have a lower bounce rate, and users tend to spend longer on the site.

So what can you do?

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SEO And Paid Search Go Together

by Tony Orelli
blogs.mediapost.com
To understand where SEO fits in the marketing mix, you first need to consider the behavior of the online consumer. When searching for a product, either hard goods or services, the first step is typically a very general search like “home theater” or “dresses.” As searchers become more familiar with their options, they conduct more specific product searches. The evolution of a consumer’s search for a digital camera might look something like this:

1. Digital Cameras
2. Digital Camera Reviews
3. 5 Megapixel Cameras
4. Inexpensive 5 Megapixel Cameras
5. Canon PowerShot A460

What we can infer from this behavior is that as consumers refine their search, they identify more specific product needs and, therefore, move further down the Long Tail of search. By entering a more general search term, the consumer is identifying himself as an information seeker. As a search becomes more specific, the consumer is far more likely to become a purchaser.

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The 8 Most Important Things I have Learned About Interactive Marketing

From: Search Engine Lowdown

It’s been my honor to follow Andy’s and Garrett’s lead for the last year. These were incredibly large shoes to fill, and moderating this blog is not something that I have taken lightly. My hope was that I’ve done it justice. And unless THK decides to generously give this blog to me, this will be my last post as I leave MSA today.

In the meanwhile, below are what I think are the most important tidbits of information that I’ve picked up about interactive marketing over the years. Some of them are pretty obvious, but then again:

1. Never forget that it is interactive. There is nothing more essential for conversion than a site that responds to the needs of the target market.

2. SEO never ends because it is a mindset, not a project.

3. The best way to have a search engine friendly site is to have clear and concise performance goals before the first line is coded. Your goals should affect the brand, the tone, the products, the pricing and the overall architecture. Retrofitting a site for SEO is almost always second best.

4. If you are not committing yourself to understanding and immersing yourself in your Web site’s analytics, you are in the wrong business.

5. PPC will never get less expensive. Success should be determined by overall conversions and trended conversion rates. Expect CPC to go up every year, because it’s going to.

6. The best Web sites diversify their traffic drivers between organic and paid search, email marketing, affiliate marketing, social media and when appropriate online and offline media. Those who rely solely on one of these tactics won’t last.

7. There is no more crucial Analytics metrics than bounce rates and conversion rates. Everything else comes second.

8. The term “linkbait” is given a bad name, because if you have good intentions the premise is very sound. It’s not about scheming to get links. It’s about creating something that is so good, your interactive neighbors can’t help but link to you.

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Google Selling Top Organic Spot?

- Jordan McCollum

I’m not sure if this can be filed under “lawsuits filed purely for publicity” quite yet, but apparently the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is suing Google for selling the #1 organic spot in their search results. Now, either someone is confused, or the rest of the SEO industry is seriously getting gypped.

Let’s go with seriously confused: News.com.au states that the suit “alleges [that] Google does not do enough to differentiate ‘organic’ search results - those ranked by relevance - from sponsored links which appear at the top of the results page.”

For a laugh, read the rest of the story: