Written on January 5th, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
SEO Scoop suggests that Google is in a state of chaos
SEO scoop notes what many of us have been suspecting for a while - that Google is in a state of chaos. I’m not sure I’d describe it as chaos - but the past month has seems some odd and unexplainable results including:
- Search for the word “Yahoo” on Google (without the quotes), and it returns less than 40 results. Yes you heard that right. Less than 40 results.
- The PageRank and Backlink update that began on December 31 has still not finished spreading across the datacenters. In fact, some datacenters that had the new information yesterday have reverted back to the old information today.
- The PR update was strange in that a lot of people received higher PR on their interior pages than they did on the home page - without having more backlinks to the interior pages
- Many people lost rankings in the last few weeks for undeterminable reasons. That in itself would not be anything out of the ordinary, but coupled with the above strangeness, it may actually be a part of the whole weirdness being seen.’
Read more of SEO Scoop’s Observations
Written on January 5th, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Six Apart to buy Live Journal
Om Malik has just revealed that Six Apart are about to buy Live Journal. This would definitely Six Apart up a notch when it comes to competing with Google’s Blogger as it would take them to 6.5 million users.
‘Folks have been predicting a big year for mergers and acquisitions in 2005, and we are starting the year with a bang. I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash, and could be announced sometime later this month, according to those close to the two companies.’
Written on January 5th, 2005 at 11:01 am by Darren Rowse
Gawker Media seeks Corporate Intern
Gawker Media are looking for a Corporate Intern. Of course no sooner had they made that announcement than they’d asked for no more applicants as they’d been flooded with expressions of interest from eager bloggers from around the world.
Written on January 4th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Categories and Search Engine Optimization
I would add another point to the last post on why Blogs are Popular with Search Engines and comment that it is not only page structure that works well but often overall site structure. The fact that many blog systems like Word Press and Moveable Type allow bloggers to categorize their posts can actually help Search Engines spider blogs and give them authority.
I get quite a few hits to the category pages of my blogs. For instance, one of the more popular entry pages from search engines on this blog is my Adsense page. This is not because loads of people directly link to this page (I can only find one external link that does) but it is because that particular page is keyword rich (ie the word Adsense is all over it ) - not because I’ve rigged it that way but just because its in virtually every title and first sentence of each post. It is also a page that is linked to from every page on this blog in the menu.
One of the disadvantages that I see with Blogger blogs (without hacking them) is that they do naturally come with a categories option. Instead posts are only archived according to date which means that they miss some of the benefits outlined here.
Written on January 4th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Why Blogs are Popular with Search Engines
Corporate Blogging Blog writes a very good article about why blogs rank well in Search Engines. Of course one of the big reasons is links - one of the major features of blogging is the interlinking between blogs of a similar theme or topic. If you write good content on a particular topic it is likely that you’ll attract inward bound links from other relevant blogs - this of course is one of the major ways that a Search Engine like Google or Yahoo decide how to rank sites. However Frank argues that there are other reasons in addition to links that make blogs attrActive to search engines including:
- Keywords, key phrases
- Straight to the point
- Each post’s page structure
- Coding
- One subject per post
- The blog site’s information structure
- Links then…?
Frank expands each point well and his argument makes perfect sense. In fact they are more than common sense some of his points can actually be built upon as a strategy. Learn from what he’s saying. For example - ‘one subject per point’ - the temptation is often to write 10 points on each post that you do. The smarter way to approach it would be to write 10 posts - each with a punchy title and content that tightly focused upon one point. You’re more willing to get picked up and ranked highly by search engines using this method than by a long general essay.
Written on January 4th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogs for business
Electronic Business has a good article introducing some of the concepts around Business Blogs (and Wikis), especially highlighting some of the internal ways that blogs can be used to communicate within a business.
‘Forget about all the hype you’ve heard about blogs (a.k.a. Web logs) as the latest outlet for personal journalism. It turns out they also have a remarkable ability to aid communication in business, whether within internal workgroups or among external chains of suppliers and partners. For an industry such as electronics—where relationships are far-flung and time-to-market pressures require fast communications—blogs can bring a new agility to the workforce….
Gomes suggests, blogs work best internally as a knowledge management tool, because information can be made so easily accessible.’
Written on January 3rd, 2005 at 11:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Find Your Future Google PageRank
So we know Google are doing a page rank update - on some data centers the results are not showing yet. Are you impatient and want to know what your blog’s page rank will be? You might find this future page rank predictor tool useful.
Future PageRank from SEO tools looks at a variety of data centers around the globe and checks to see if there is any discrepancies.
For example - this blog is currently showing a page rank of 3 on Google.com - but after checking the tool it seems that a page rank of 6 is on the way which would be a nice thing.
It seems most of my blogs have had an increase in page rank which is a nice feeling (one even seems headed for a page rank of 7 - up from 6) - however the backlink update of the last two weeks was not so positive and SERPs and traffic have suffered terribly (see attached graph which is an example of the decrease in traffic over the past few weeks on the blog with the page rank of 7).
So whilst the updates don’t seem to be final I’m left in a strange place - page rank is on the improve but traffic levels remain at an abysmal level.
And still we wait - assured by more experienced blog/webmaster friends that time will tell and that things will improve.
In the mean time the Future Page Rank tool will be a handy one.
A similarly useful tool is Datacentre Quick Check which has a good option for checking both page rank and backlink numbers of different datacentres. This one shows the same results in terms of page rank as the above tool and indicates that different data centres still have an array of bank link numbers - ie the back link update doesn’t seem to be over yet.
Written on January 3rd, 2005 at 05:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Publisher Driven Advertising
John Battelle also has a great column over at Technology Review that puts forward an idea called Publisher Driven Advertising (PDA). It is an alternative to the traditional approach to advertising where advertisers hold much of the power in the relationship between audience, publisher and advertiser. John argues that with the interactivity of the internet that an alternative economy is emerging that rebalances where the power lies in this interaction.
Of course the recent trend in online ads has gone to pay-per-click (PPC) which John argues is the first step to moving to a PDA economy. PPC represents a significant shift where ‘the advertiser pays only when the ad performs—when someone clicks on the ad itself. Second, paid search networks “disaggregate” advertisers from publishers—that is, advertisers no longer purchase space on the publisher’s site but instead pay for keywords.’
Battelle takes PPC a step further and suggests that the next move to PDA could be something like:
‘Next, imagine that, instead of buying into PPC networks or specific sites, advertisers release their ads onto the Internet….
Because an Internet-based ad is already a little piece of software, it can be tagged with information about its target audience, how much the advertiser is willing to spend to reach that audience (and how much each click will cost), what kind of websites are acceptable or forbidden (such as porn sites), and any number of other attributes. Most important, each ad could communicate with a “home” application that tracks its progress and status.
Once these tagged ads are let loose, publishers could simply copy and paste them into their own websites. Through connections to their home sites, the ads would report which publishers have pasted them where, how many clicks they’ve received, and how much money is left in the advertiser’s bank account. The ad propagates until it runs out of money. If it is working, the advertiser simply fills up the tank with more money.’
He goes on to suggest that it is weblogs that could be the key to such a system working.
As I read the column I find myself agreeing with much of the reasoning - but also wondering why it sounds so familiar. Then it struck me - in some ways what he’s suggesting is actually a fusion of what I’ve experienced in using Adsense but also affiliate programs.
In the case of affiliate programs like those run by Clix Galore, LinkShare.com and Affiliate Sensor (all of which I use on a variety of sites) it is the publisher who makes the decision about which companies, products and services that they will promote. The ‘advertiser’ simply advices (through a third party) what their conditions are (ie payment, products, banners etc) and allows publishers to grab and insert simple code into their sites.
The difference I guess in what John is talking about is that most affiliate programs don’t pay you for a click through, but rather pay you for a confirmed lead or an actual sale (and they usually pay you a little more than you’d expect from a click - although harder to get).
The main downside of what I’ve experienced of affiliate programs to this point is that they can be rather cumbersome to set up and implement. The advantage of most PPC programs is that they are fully contextualised. This means using a program like Adsense on a blog can be as simple as adding one piece of code to a template (which should ensure reasonably relevant ads on most pages), affiliate programs can be a lot more work for them to be as effective. To get the best results with them they usually require deep linking within your content, on a manual basis (to ensure their relevancy to the content) rather than just a one off placement in a side bar.
Written on January 3rd, 2005 at 04:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Another Look Ahead at 2005
Some of the predictions for 2005 in John Battelle’s Searchblog are worth a read for pro blogging types looking into the crystal ball. Here is a taste of the first three:
‘1….We’ll all work on figuring out ways to stick to our principles and get paid at the same time, however, I expect that things might get more contentious before they get better, and 2005 may be a more fractious year in the blogosphere as we evolve through this process.
2…. It will get harder to innovate before it gets easier. We’ll all be surprised by the lack of what we consider “progress” in the RSS/Blogging world, and expectations of major publishing revenues will not materialize as quickly as perhaps we think they should. However, we’ll in fact be making huge strides in understanding the path forward, it just won’t seem like it….
3. There will be two to five major new sites that emerge from “nowhere” to become major cultural influencers along the lines of the political bloggers of 2004. One of them will be sold to a major publisher/aggregator for what seems like a large sum of money, driving the abovementioned #2 and #1…’
Read more predictions for 2005 at John Battelle’s Searchblog: A Look Ahead
Written on January 3rd, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Google on 60 Minutes - Adsense Publishers to Profit?
Online Business Opportunity is predicting profits will result for Adsense users after the 60 Minutes show on Google tonight in the States. They say watch out for a rise in earnings due to:
‘- The price per click will rise across all products and services
- AdSense advertisers will be earning more money due to this rise in click prices
- A less sophisticated group of advertisers will be spending money without proper tracking and ROI calculation’
I’m not sure there will be much noticeable difference but will be interested to track it and am keen to get my hands upon a copy of the episode.
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