PalatnikFactor.com » SEO

SEO: Over-Optimization of Your Website

Pablo Palatnik — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:01:39 +0000

We’ve heard this before, “don’t over-optimize your website.” YES, there is such as thing for those who are starting that you can actually be penalized by the engines for over-optimization. Why? Because over optimizing your website is telling the engine you are spamming to get top results.

Eric Enge talks about this today in his post on SearchEngineWatch. He list the following as methods of over optimization:

1) Pages that have identical page titles and H1 headings.

2) Too many non-contextual internal links on your site.

3) Having pages with great visual experiences above the fold, and not finding text until well below the fold.

So, how do you know if you’re over-optimizing your website? Well, there isn’t a way to be 100% sure but as the Google model goes, it just has to be natural. If you have 100 keywords in your meta-tag, that will not be looked good upon to the bot.

Make your on-site optimization as natural and clear as possible. Don’t cloak and fill it with a bunch of crap that will eventually lead nowhere. Good optimization will be the result of:

1) Good clean on-site optimization.

2) Good original content

3) Good linking structure

4) Solid inbound links

You also may be interested in reading Aaron Walls take at: Filters vs Penalties & Optimization vs Over-Optimization

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Googles SEO Report Card Can Help You

Pablo Palatnik — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:12:46 +0000

Google just issued on their webmaster blog an SEO report card that can better help you understand the key elements when rating your SEO or that of your clients. Even the mighty Google themselves have areas of improvement when it comes to good solid SEO.

The release of this post and report card by Google tells us they do SEO as an important element and there is some sort of guidance Google wants to give SEOs out there, specially those who just start. Google did do a great job with the SEOs Beginners Guide which really outlines the basics and important elements of a website key…elements…for better optimization.

This SEO report card goes into search result presentation, URLs and redirects, on-page optimization. The way they did this is they went into 100 of Google products and based their report on that. If you want to see the report, check out Googles SEO report card.

This report can help you guide yourself through a checklist if you will and see if you can follow their report on your own website/s or that of your clients.

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SEO Things You Aren’t Doing That You Should Be

Pablo Palatnik — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:10:03 +0000

SEOMoz has ANOTHER great Whiteboard Friday titled, “5 Things You’re Not Doing (But Should Be.)” I REALLY recommend watching this video as there are some real great tips in there for you that you can start thinking about and implementing as of now. As SEO gets more technical, its very important to keep up-to-date and check every angle as it also gets more competitive.

You can read and see the post at SEOMOZ.org —–> 5 Things You’re Not Doing (But Should Be.)

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The State of The Google Index 2009 to 2010

Pablo Palatnik — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:33:48 +0000

I was doing some catch-up reading on the Matt Cutts blog and came across a post, “PubCon 2009 talk: State of the Index.” Though this slide he presents on the blog may be from NOV of 2009, it still very relevant TODAY and serves as a look at the present state of the Google Index.

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6 Ways to Improve SEO and Caffeine Talk

Pablo Palatnik — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:10:34 +0000

MarketingVox posted an article regarding 6 ways to improve Search Engine Optimization and also touched a bit on Caffeine. Caffeine hasn’t had the impact but was buzzed about at first if it truly is rolled out at this point. The impact in the SERPs seem very minimal but like all things that are new, will take some time to really show real difference as they improve on the indexing.

6 Ways to improve SEO as dictates in the MarketingVox piece:

1. Address the real intent of your target audience. “Ask yourself, ‘What purpose does someone have for using a certain search term?’ We see a lot of businesses push brand names and industry buzz words instead of creating web content that addresses the intent of target audience. Yes, it’s true that businesses have an agenda when they create a website but web searchers have their agenda as well. The degree to which those two overlap is where you have engagement.”

2. So engage. “Offer up content for the individual so he or she wants to learn more and discover a credible organization in the process. Rather than assuming your customers buy for certain reasons, research them to find out why they buy and then prepare a pathway that sits in their decision process.”

3. Consider what kind of medium communicates best with this person. Interactive tools, social tools, email or a combination?

4. Then consider new ways of engaging. Technology and techniques for engagement are ever evolving. Stay on top of them to keep connected with your customers.

5. Organize the content of the site with the user in mind. They should be able to quickly find what they are looking for – even if the search terms don’t match branding initiative perfectly.

6. Influence the influencers of your target audience. “Be open to sharing, collaborating and building relationships – even with your competitors if necessary – if it means being able to creatively engage the audience.

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Optimizing Topic Pages (SEOMoz Video)

Pablo Palatnik — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:30:57 +0000

SEOMoz.org had a great video last week regarding the optimization of topic pages on your site and a great guest along side Rand Fishkin with some great insight.

“Whether or not to use topic pages–and how to use them effectively–is a topic of some debate in the SEO world. Well, who better to ask about it than the guy in charge of SEO strategy for the NYT and About.com, two of the topic page-iest sites on the web?

If you’re using a topic page strategy, or you’ve considered it, watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday. Marshall breaks down how and when they can be effective, pros and cons, as well as expenses and advantages to the strategy.”

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Using Email Marketing To Improve Search Engine Rankings

Pablo Palatnik — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:16:01 +0000

First of all, what is EMO? EMO is eMail Marketing Optimization. I didn’t know much about this until I read the post on the GetElastic blog which refers to the original post on BetterRetail regarding a new method that can help improve rankings in the SERPS.

Basically, the gist of this post is that if Google is taking into account the CTR in the organics to use as a ranking factor, emailing your customers a request to search for an important keyword that you want, and clicking on your search result can improve your position displayed by this image:

As he states:

From a marketing perspective this makes sense for the following reasons:

– This is a non-typical email so it will capture the attention of the recipient.
– There is a fun element to it (hunting for a discount).
– Time based limit creates sense of urgency.
– There is a clear 5% off benefit.

MY argument with this method as I joined the Get Elastic conversation is the following:

I actually think while it may make sense that CTR plays a role in ranking with Google, it probably plays a small role and only within the top 10 results if that.

The way I see it, as an SEO, I’ve gotten pages from the 4th-5th page in Google to the first page, I can pretty much say with low volume keywords, it wouldnt be possible that a factor of CTR was placed for higher ranking since at those rankings, no one ever came through the site.

NOW- when you’re talking about positions 1-10, it can and most likely does play a role in the algo ranking. What could be causing the rise in position with this method suggested, is googles personalized search within the top results.

>>>>>>What do you think about this tactic?<<<<<< COMMENT BELOW.

As you see in the post, the most important seo factors, a survey by top SEOs, 7% said Traffic and Click-Through Data played a big role in Googles algo.

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Top SEO Twitter Tips

Pablo Palatnik — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:12:42 +0000

There is a way of using Twitter to your advantage for search engine optimization. Since Google is now indexing real-time tweets and also profile pages (that has been for a while now) there is a way to capitalize this in the SERPs.

About 7 months ago, Mashable had a great post titled, “The Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips,” which I suggest you read as I will list those top 10 tips and you can get much more information there.

1. Choose a good handle

2. Select an account name wisely

3. Make your bio count

4. Spread the word

5. Remember your URL

6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully

7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible

8. Mind your retweetability

9. Provide some link love

10. As always, give ‘em what they want

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SEO Wordpress Plugins You Should Be Using

Pablo Palatnik — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:11:14 +0000

If you are using Wordpress as the platform for your blog or website, you should be looking into plugins that can really help optimize your blog and/or website. This blog is a wordpress blog and even without any plugins it optimizes fairly well. Here you’ll find a list of some SEO Wordpress plugins that you can use to help optimize your blog. So far, I have used 2 and I believe one has made a difference, even in the smallest way.

You can start downloading these now by reading their features and functionality and clicking on the link to go directly to the wordpress press and begin downloading instantly.

ALL IN ONE SEO PACK
Some Features:
Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
Generates META tags automatically
Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
Advanced Canonical URLs

Google Sitemap Generator
Function:
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Platinum SEO Pack
Some Features:
Automatic 301 redirects for any permalink changes
Canonical URLs
Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically
Option to specify meta description and meta keywords tag for categories and tag pages. (http://techblissonline.com/wordpress-categories/)**
Option to turn off Page title or Post title rewrites for any particular post or page(http://techblissonline.com/page-title/)**
Option to turn off Page title or Post title format for any particular post or page
Helps you avoid duplicate content
Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page
Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO.
Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noodp, noydir, noarchive, nosnippet meta tags to any post/page.These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set post/page level Meta Robots Tag useful?

SEO Friendly Images
Functionality:
SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

SEO No Duplicate
Functionality:
This simple plugin helps you easily tell the search engine bots the preferred version of a page by specifying the canonical properly within your head tag.

Why would you do such a thing? Simply because many black-hat SEO folks abuse duplicate content to gain search ranking and search engine try really hard to detect and penalize them. The last thing you want to do is present yourself as an SEO spammer to search engines.

Broken Link Checker
Some Features:
Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
Also detects redirected links.
Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
Link checking intervals can be configured.
New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.
Searching and filtering links by URL, anchor text and so on is also possible.
Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

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Is 2006 SEO Still Relevant?

Pablo Palatnik — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:49:58 +0000

I was doing some research online, LIKE A GOOD SEO!….and came across a post on SEOMoz.org titled, “Long List of Link Searches” written by one of my fav guys in the industry, Rand Fishkin. This post was written on the SEOMoz blog in Oct 26, 2006.

In this post, Rand goes over how to find backlinks through the search engines through various queries you can input as I think it was the technique most used by SEOs then to find relevant back links. Let's look at some of those tactics (through the post he used snowboard equipment as the keyword to find backlinks for):

The Obvious
Basically, we're seeking every possible permutation of the term/phrase - links from any of the top ranking sites (#1-100, depending on competitiveness) will provide high value. As you go down the list, you can also use these modified terms/phrases to get extra results from the other sources.

* snowboard equipment
* "snowboard equipment"
* snow board equipment
* "snow board equipment"
* snowboard
* "snow board"
* snowboards
* "snow boards"

Advanced Operators
Then use the engines' advanced query parameters with the basic phrase. As we refine in this manner, the number of pages that still provide value shrinks - I'd probably look at the top 30-50 results maximum.

* allintitle:snowboard equipment
* allinanchor:snowboard equipment
* allinurl:snowboard equipment
* allintext:snowboard equipment

Alternative Search Sources
The main indices are great ways to define value, but adding in some alternate sources for link searches can help to diversify. The engines might not always consider these sources as important (which is why I'd stick to only the highest profile sites/pages in these results), but they can often be great sources for traffic.

* Google News - snowboard equipment
* Google News Archive - snowboard equipment
* Yahoo! News - snowboard equipment
* Technorati - snowboard equipment (sort by authority, too)
* Del.icio.us - snowboard equipment + del.icio.us/tag/snowboard and del.icio.us/tag/snowboarding, too
* Ask.com Blog Search - snowboard equipment
* Google Blog Search - snowboard equipment
* Wikipedia Search - snowboard equipment
* DMOZ Search - snowboard equipment (check the categories, the sites and the sites listed in the relevant categories)

The list goes on in the post....do you still find these techniques relevant to your SEO?

Bing Is The Slowest Indexing Search Engine

Pablo Palatnik — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:13:18 +0000

I may be exaggerating the title a little bit on this post compared to all the search engines out there, but when you compare the big three (GOOGLE, YAHOO, and BING) Bing is definitely the slowest indexing engine of them all. As they want to go head to head with Google and ‘merged’ with Yahoo on the search technology front, this is something they have to look at and consider very strongly.

As Techie-Buzz.com reports, “It is well known in the industry that MSNbot is fairly slow. I suggest reading our FAQs stickied at the top of the indexing forum to get some ideas of what to do.”

This comment was made in response to a user query. The user in question had submitted a sitemap to Bing about 6 weeks back. While Google and Yahoo had indexed hundreds of pages on his site, Bing had indexed only one – the homepage.

Considering that the site has genuine backlinks (14 of them according to Bing’s own calculations), it is pretty shabby on Bing’s part to index only one page in 6 weeks. But wait, things get better. Brett Yount, the aforementionedProgram Manager suggested the user to check the FAQs. So, let us take a look at what the FAQ suggests.

if your site is not in the index, please do the following:

1. verify in our tools that your site is not blocked
2. run a site: query to verify there are no pages in the index
3. Copy the URL of the site query and post on this thread.

I will work with you to at least get your home page indexed. Deeper indexing will require good content and backlinks as described in the FAQ.”

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Local SEO is One of The Top Places To Be in 2010

Pablo Palatnik — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:16:08 +0000

For about 2-5 years, search engine optimization has blown up in an incredible way. The web and search engines IS how most people now search for what they are looking for, whether its to gain knowledge about something or something as simple as the nearest pizza joint. Many thought SEO would be for mid-large size companies but it’s really the small companies that have gained big from the search engines, where ANYONE can be a player.

Aaron Wall has a great guest post on SearchNewz discussing local SEO. "Google's Local Business Center is becoming a more and more robust service.

The local 10 Pack continues to show up in general service related queries. Local SEO is also about gaining visibility in Google's 10 pack and maps in general so it is equally as important to be optimized for your geo-specific keywords as it is to be set up to succeed in the local pack

Speaking of the local 10 pack, it appears to have done part of its job for Google. Consider the following from TMPDM/ComScore "

Read the whole story @ SearchNewz.com ---------> Local SEO - A Case Study
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Is SEO Ultimately Killing the Search Engines and User Experience?

Pablo Palatnik — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:01:17 +0000

John C. Dvorak wrote a piece on PC Magazine regarding the effect that SEO is having on user experience in the search engines. While the article talks about how companies or individuals are maybe “manipulating” the search engines, I feel, and if you are in the industry, you probably do as well, that search engine optimization is a marketing tactic just like any other that a company will implement to get more visibility. It’s that plain and simple.

What tactics you use to get to the top is a different story, but the websites with real value, not spam, are the ones that reach the top and stay there. Ranking in the first page of first position is SO HARD, it is almost a certainty you are ranking for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.

"Essentially the process involves tricking Google or Bing or Yahoo into ranking your particular Web site higher than the competition by reverse-engineering the tricks used by Google, et al to rank sites in the first place. The problem with the technique is that it ruins the search experience for users and also requires the search engine folks to constantly work on countermeasures to minimize the impact of SEO techniques"

Read the whole article @ PCMag.com ------> Search Engine Cold Wars and SEO
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The Most Important Factors for SEO in Googles Algorithm

Pablo Palatnik — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:26:45 +0000

Ann Smarty had a great post on Friday regarding the Google search algorithm and what makes websites rank well. According to Matt Cutts, the “brain” behind the Google Algo, said there are 200 ranking signals that goes into Google ranking a website.

Ann was able to list about 120 ranking signals and asked members to contribute to the post as SEJ readers have started to contribute already. Based on my current SEO practice and research, in a nut shell, the most important current factors are:

1- Domain Age
2- On-Site Optimization (Title, Meta Tags)
3- External Links
4- Content Update Frequency
5- Internal Linking
6- URL Structure
7- Size of Website

>>WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC? COMMENT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST<<

Those in itself are the 7 key factors I believe will make a big different in your search engine optimization efforts. Granted, Ann listed some great signals that will also be playing factors in optimization. Here are some of the most important ones she list, in my opinion:

Domain: 12 factors

1. Domain age;
2. Length of domain registration;
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous;
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk);
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info);
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP);
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain;
10. Domain IP;
11. Domain IP neighbors;
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)

Internal Cross Linking: 5 factors

1. # of internal links to page;
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text;
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc);
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute; (?)
5. Internal link density,

Page-specific factors: 9 factors

1. Page meta Robots tags;
2. Page age;
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits);
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level; (?)
6. Page load time;
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page);
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has);
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site);

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 11 factors

1. Keywords in the title of a page;
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title;
3. Keywords in Alt tags;
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text);
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links (?);
6. Keywords in bold and italic text (?);
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text;
8. Keywords in body text;
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site;
10. Keywords in filenames;
11. Keywords in URL.

Outbound links: 8 factors

1. Number of outbound links (per domain);
2. Number of outbound links (per page);
3. Quality of pages the site links in;
4. Links to bad neighborhoods;
5. Relevancy of outbound links;
6. Links to 404 and other error pages.
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Read the whole story and all the factors at SearchEngineJournal.com --------> Let’s Try to Find All 200 Parameters in Google Algorithm
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21 Free Press Release Submission Websites

Pablo Palatnik — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:37:11 +0000

Submitting press releases throughout the web can get you some decent links. You should submit press releases about important news regarding your company, don’t just put a press release for no reason to spam. Here are 21 free press release submission websites that can help you build some links.

Prlog.org
1888pressrelease.com
24-7pressrelease.com
Pressreleasepoint.com
Onlineprnews.com
Newswiretoday.com
i-newswire.com
Bignews.biz
Release-news.com
Pr-usa.net
Openpr.com
Prurgent.com
Clickpress.com
Pressbox.co.uk
Pressabout.com
Mediasyndicate.com
Sanepr.com
Pr.com
Free-press-release.com
Presszoom.com

>>WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC? COMMENT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST<<

Add press release submission sites to the comments if you know of one so others can see some you use as well. Hope this helps with your online press release submissions.

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