Aaron Wall says, “Remember the whole shtick about good, legitimate, high-quality content being created for readers without concern for search engines – even as though search engines do not exist? Whatever happened to that? We quickly shifted from the above “ideology” to this: The red triangle/exclamation point icon was arrived at after the Chrome team commissioned research around the world to figure out which symbols alarmed users the most. Search Engine Engineering Fear Google is explicitly spreading the message that they are doing testing on how to create maximum fear to... [...]

Wall says, “Google owns search, but are they a one trick pony? A couple weeks ago Ben Thompson published an interesting article suggestingGoogle may follow IBM and Microsoft in peaking, perhaps with native ads becoming more dominant than online search ads. According to Forrester, in a couple years digital ad spend will overtake TV ad spend. In spite of the rise of sponsored content, native isn’t even broken out as a category”. Peak Google? Not Even Close SEO Book Blog  [...]

Wall says, “One wonders how Yahoo Search revenues keep growing even as Yahoo’s search marketshare is in perpetual decline. Then one looks at a Yahoo SERP and quickly understands what is going on. Here’s a Yahoo SERP test I saw this morning”. SMX East 2011 Recap for SEOBook SEO Book Blog  [...]

Peterd says, “In the last post, we looked at how SEO has always been changing, but one thing remains constant – the quest for information. Given people will always be on a quest for information, and given there is no shortage of information, but there is limited time, then there will always be a marketing imperative to get your information seen either ahead of the competition, or in places where the competition haven’t yet targeted. Channels My take on SEO is broad because I’m concerned with the marketing potential of the search process, rather than just the behaviour of the Google... [...]

Peterd says, “SEO is subject to frequent change, but in the last year or two, the changes feel both more frequent and significant than changes in the past. Florida hit in 2003. Since then, it’s like we get a Florida every six months. Whenever Google updates the underlying landscape, the strategies need to change in order to deal with it. No fair warning. That’s not the game. From Tweaks To Strategy There used to be a time when SEOs followed a standard prescription. Many of us remember a piece of software called Web Position Gold”. The Only Thing Certain In SEO Is Change SEO Book Blog  [...]

Peterd says, “In recent years, the biggest change to the search landscape happened when Google chose to withhold keyword data from webmasters. At SEOBook, Aaron noticed and wrote about the change, as evermore keyword data disappeared. The motivation to withold this data, according to Google, was privacy concerns: SSL encryption on the web has been growing by leaps and bounds. As part of our commitment to provide a more secure online experience, today we announced that SSL Search on https://www.google.com will become the default experience for signed in users on google.com”.   Measuring... [...]

Aaron Wall says, “Google recently announced they were doing away with exact match AdWords ad targeting this September. They will force all match types to have close variant keyword matching enabled. This means you get misspelled searches, plural versus singular overlap, and an undoing of your tight organization. In some cases the user intent is different between singular and plural versions of a keyword. A singular version search might be looking to buy a single widget, whereas a plural search might be a user wanting to compare different options in the marketplace”. Loah Qwality Add Werds... [...]

Aaron Wall says, “Whenever Google does a major algorithm update we all rush off to our data to see what changed in terms of rankings, search traffic, and then look for the trends to try to figure out what changed. The two people I chat most with during periods of big algorithmic changes are Joe Sinkwitz and Jim Boykin. I recently interviewed them about the Penguin algorithm. Topics include: what it is its impact why there hasn’t been an update in a while how to determine if issues are related to Penguin or something else”. Understanding The Google Penguin Algorithm ‘SEO Book’... [...]

Peterd says, “For those new to optimizing clients sites, or those seeking a refresher, we thought we’d put together a guide to step you through it, along with some selected deeper reading on each topic area. Every SEO has different ways of doing things, but we’ll cover the aspects that you’ll find common to most client projects. Few Rules The best rule I know about SEO is there are few absolutes in SEO. Google is a black box, so complete data sets will never be available to you. Therefore, it can be difficult to pin down cause and effect, so there will always be a lot of experimentation... [...]

Wall says, “A couple years ago we published an article named Branding & the Cycle, which highlighted how brands would realign with the algorithmic boost they gained from Panda & leverage their increased level of trust to increase their profit margins by leveraging algorithmic journalism. Narrative Science has been a big player in the algorithmic journalism game for years. But they are not the only player in the market. Recently the Associated Press (AP) announced they will use algorithms to write articles based on quarterly earnings reports, working with a company named Automated... [...]