May Day Update Revisited Two Months Later

 It's been two months since Google's May Day update went live. The May Day update was an algorithm change that affected web sites that utilize "long-tail" keywords traffic. So what do we know two months later? We know that the May Day update likes high-quality inbound links that not only point to your homepage but also that point deep into your inner web pages. May Day also likes fresh content so make sure to update your pages as often as possible.
 
 We have seen many ecommerce sites affected by the May Day update. Many of these sites had done well for long-tail keywords in the past, and now have dropped off. Try getting more inbound links to these pages with your selected phrases.
 
 Past Articles on May Day:

::|:: - May Day, May Day, May Day – Google’s Long Tail Rankings Change
::|:: - May Day Update, Why Now and not Before?

Does Using Pipes or Other Characters in the Title Tag Hurt?

Many designers like to use special characters in the title tags of web pages. This has been happening since the start of the web. Call it creative expressionism if you will. I have always found it funny, but at the same token saw some creative implementations over the years. So the question is does it hurt to use these characters from a search engine result point of view. The short answer is no it does not. It neither helps nor hurts because the search engines ignore these characters.

Now having said all of this remember that the title tag allows for a certain number of acceptable characters from an seo standpoint. The W3C, in their page W3C - The TITLE element in HTML, states: "The title should ideally be less than 64 characters in length. That is, many applications will display document titles in window titles, menus, etc where there is only limited room." A 64 character limit is a good starting place. Google will display up to 66 characters of a title tag, cropping to complete words for Search Engine Optimization & Web Usability.

Obviously, anything that serves to draw the search engine user's attention toward your title tag information will help get traffic to your website, but care must be taken not to overdo it!

Do you have a Store with Numerous Locations? Create Web Pages for each Location Then!

While most stores have a zip code search function built into their websites, why not also have a page devoted to each store location also. Why is that important you say. Well, that way you can have that stores page come up in a web search, and drive additional traffic to your site. With these pages being crawlable by the search engines and being location specific it will give you a chance to promote that store from a local level standpoint. For instance you could promote local city or area events, offer exclusive local promotions, give a downloadable coupon, and things of that nature. So while the quick zip code search functions works also it isn't generally crawlable and doesn't help you in the (SERP's) search engine results pages.

The Risks of Offshore Outsourcing your SEO Projects

Many offshore companies will try and get your SEO business. We receive 5 to 10 emails everyday asking us to outsource our SEO work to an offshore company and they proceed to tell us why it will be beneficial to us. We are old school, and by that we believe that if you want something done right then you need to do it yourself. Having offshore companies tell us how much money we can save by using their offshore services in not what is important to us. What is important to us is our clients, and the quality of work that they receive from us. That's not to say that offshore companies are not capable of doing the work, but in our eyes we again believe that if you want something done right then you should do it yourself.

SEO is a rules based process and one must be engaged in following the rules in order to maximize their results. So because of this it is easy to get lost in someone else's work and miss important rules that should not have been used. We take no greater pride in doing all of our own work, leaving us without having to deal with the pitfalls of offshore outsourcing.

June 2010 Google PR (PageRank) Update

Webmasters around the web are reporting drops in their PR value after Google did an update to their PageRank algorithm. Since a webmaster can easily look at the PR of their website through Google Toolbar it's an easy look at the popularity of your website via their 1 to 10 ranking scale. Gogle came out and said that webmasters should not focus on PR since it's one of 200 things their algorithm looks at.

Google PageRank is named after Larry Page, a co-founder of Google.  PageRank deals with backlinks and doesn't have anything to do with the content or structure that a web site has.

Google has said: "PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner."

Use PageRank as a quick peek at the value of a site based on links but by no means should you put much substantive value on it.

• Processes thousands of pages in parallel.
• Caffeine adds hundreds of thousands of gigabytes of data per day.
• Each second Caffeine processes thousands of pages in parallel to give you fresher information.
• With Caffeine, Google can analyze the web in small portions and update the search index on a continuous basis

For more see Google's Blog

What Will Google Top Positioning Get You Traffic Wise?

Current research has been able to break down the traffic differences between the different positions on Google’s results pages (SERP's - search engine results pages). Amazingly the difference between the #1 and #2 positions is double the traffic! So if you ever thought that SEO didn’t make a difference here is one very good reason to rethink that.

Research results were provided by: Chitika Research