Category Archives: Webmasterworld

Matt’s mom’s blog

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When Matt Cutts mentioned that his Mom had been blogging longer than he has it set off a flurry of "Find Matt's Mom's blog" activity. She actually has three blogs! Betty is a great lady who is using the blogs to bring together people and ideas and help spread the wealth we enjoy here in the USA to those less fortunate in China. No wonder Matt's such a smart and clever fellow!

Matt's mom's blog

Blessing Hands Charity   Betty's great charity effort – send them some money!   In fact it looks like there is a matching grant in place now through another educational charity so this will double the effect of your contribution.   Especially for those at Webmasterworld Boston who enjoyed Matt's helpful sessions I recommend you pony up for his Mom's worthy efforts in China.

Google and Yahoo review websites at WebmasterWorld Boston

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The best session at WebmasterWorld Boston had site reviews of nine websites by Matt Cutts of Google, Tim Mayer of Yahoo, and SEOs Thomas Bindl and Bruce Clay. Jake Baille did a fine job moderating, keeping the reviews fast. Here's a summary which I'll add to during the day as I recover from the conference here in Concord, MA.

1) Britannica.com Problem: Brittanica's subscription content is behind the pay firewall and therefore not crawlable. They don't want to change this model too much. They rank poorly for many terms for which they think they are authoritative. What should they do?

Matt Cutts: Wikipedia gives people all the information they are looking for and therefore ranks above Brittanica. Paid firewall snips are NOT enough information to attract inbound links. Consider picking a few articles in highly searched areas and making 100% of that content crawlable. It's tough to rank a page with just a paragraph of text and even tougher to get links to that content.

Bruce Clay: Check your "Expertness" by analyzing inbound links, outbound links. Check technical factors related to weighting and content rankings. Check server issues including accidental replication of content which can lead to duplicate content filters.

Tim Mayer: Consider a more colloquial writing style (I understood this to mean that that SE's are looking for natural conversational styles over formal or automated content though I don't think Tim said that specifically). Talk to the Search Engines about an information feed program.

ResumeRabbit.com He wanted optimization comments on a new home page here: edirectpublishing.com/newlandingpage/ BUT in a fun moment at the start of this review Matt said he'd gotten a LOT of unsolicited emails from ResumeRabbit and felt that may have "tainted" the brand. "how about ResumeAardvark?" suggested Matt in perhaps his *worst* piece of advice during the conference.

Matt: Links look good, you've made the site crawlable.
Thomas: Links, links, links (I think he meant one always needs more quality inbound links)
Tim: Use keyword tags! They matter in some SEs
Bruce: Drop id= which is in the source code for some/all pages.

InternationalLiving.com Problem: We are one of the best sites in the niche, but don't rank high.
Tim: Lose the flash download at home page. You are losing people immediately by forcing them to download stuff to see the whole site.

Bruce: Put the postcard thing in an IFRAME, consider more consistent home page text rather than regular changes.

Thomas: Consider CSS style sheets for better look. Use of H tag is good.

Matt: The site feels "thinner" than it really is. Emphasize the detailed content and the fact the project predates the web and has been online for a LONG time. Try to buy Internationaliving.com, a similar URL that could be taking some traffic away due to spelling confusion. If you do this use 301 redirect to send them to the real [canonical] site. People make weird queries you can't predict so cast a wider net [using emphasis on more keywords] to pull in long tailed searches.

Cherokee-NC.com

As the big flash home page …. slowly ….loaded …. the crowd erupted into laughter. [Note to all my friends in Travel and tourism STOP HIRING PRINT AGENCIES TO BUILD YOUR WEBSITES and STOP USING FLASH as a key component of any part of the site – it does NOT index well and often confuses the search engines!]

Problem – they get 80% of the traffic from terms "Cherokee" and "Cherokee NC"? and want more long tail searches to deliver traffic. How to optimize.

Tim: Build another site that is static and optimized for search. Flash is a BIG disadvantage.

Matt: Do not build a separate website but do a text version of this one. Note that if you select a text blurb on your site and can find it elsewhere you may be under a duplicate content penalty/filter. [he mentioned tripod.com because I think he found some duplicatation of this site there?]. Flash: You are not getting link credit in the index for [the flash based links?] but duplicate content is probably more important.

Separate navigation links from Flash. Matt: I turn off Flash. You may be losing 5% of traffic just by using Flash.

BigMouthMedia.com

I don't think Big Mouth asked for this, rather somebody wanted Matt to explain why and how they got dropped and then back in the index so fast.

Matt: Turn off CSS to see if hidden text is a problem. Look at internet Archive (or Alexa Wayback Machine) for page history [?] They had 13,000 characters stuffed into a small box, this was considered hidden text and they were banned. They cleaned it up and filed for reinclusion and are now back. Matt indicated they are not "out to get you" and this was a simple case where he did not go back in to fine every possible violation, rather when they removed the offending hidden text he felt they deserved back in. PR7 indicates a "robust" site.

Continued HERE 

WebmasterWorld Boston moves to the Elephant & Castle

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DSCF0053.jpg

WMW Boston ended at a nice Pub on Devonshire in Downtown Boston. This conference seemed to get better each day and although I felt some of the sessions covered "much of the same" things I'd been hearing at the last two Pubcons the special sessions and networking were great as always.

I'm kind of burned out right now from hundreds of new people, conversations, and ideas but I'll have some time tomorrow to pull together my notes on the site reviews session which was very good.

I think the highlight of this conference was a very enjoyable dinner with Aaron Wall, one of those very few who is *so good* at search optimization that Matt Cutts was asking *him* questions.

Aaron is an excellent guy. Buy his book!

Webmaster World Boston

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The session of the Webmasterworld conference wrapped up today with PubCon tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll try to post pix and summaries of my two favorite sessions which were Jeremy, Matt, and Robert about blogging and the site reviews by Matt, Tim, Bruce, and Tom where I have a very detailed summary of all sites reviewed and much of the advice given. Yahoo also threw a very nice party at a local club called "Saint" which was so stylish with the simple "St" on the door I walked right past and had to ask directions.

Overall the "big news" to me is that there is not a lot of new complexity to the SEO scene – in fact it's clearer than ever that site quality is the best metric for how you'll do in the rankings. Things seem to be moving away from organic optimization and to PPC optimizing.

A Google Nightmare

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Jeremy! Oh no it’s happening ….. to …. me …..

I had a talk a few weeks ago at WebmasterWorld Las Vegas with the most excellent Mr. Jeremy Zawodny. We were concerned about the way people are starting to change their writing styles and subjects to comply with search engine preferences.

Today I noticed this happening to me as I was about to NOT POST this note critical of Google. I almost thought “hey, I’m beeing too hard on Google. They are a suberb company and the most excellent Mr. Matt Cutts, Google’s new uber blogmeister and global search guru, could not be a better spokesperson for the company as well as being a really great fellow.

Matt was also at Webmasterworld Las Vegas where he went out of his way to answer complex questions and treat everybody with great respect. I’ve talked with him at some length and Google should be simply thrilled to have him out and about making friends and keeping Google tops on the “coolest company/coolest people” list for many technology watchers.

BUT, greatness brings great responsibility, and here is where I think Google is falling short right now big time. So with apologies to the most excellent Googlers I’ve met I offer this in the spirit of constructive criticism:

My great fear about Google:

First, massive spam onslaughts cause Google to accept huge amounts of collateral damage for legitimate sites.

THEN, Google’s market share insulates them from the needs of the web community and makes them immune to criticism.

THEN, Google fails in their OBLIGATION as a MARKET LEADER to provide basic and thorough support for sites they have delisted or downranked.

THEN, People accept all this and fail to rant against it because people are sheep, sucking up to Google and thinking stupidly that search rather than content is what the web is all about.

THEN, even otherwise intelligent people often argue, in dumbfounded ignorance of historical precedent, that Google has no obligation to the community to work hard to identify the damage it has caused and to effectively deal with the problems it’s dominance has created.

Wait – this is not a nightmare – it’s happening RIGHT NOW!

Yes, Google has a new program to communicate with damaged sites but it’s weak and small. The support system does not provide access to problem solvers, rather to canned info.