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Yahoo now has Bing-Power
August 25, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team No Comments »
It’s official. Yahoo!’s transition from Yahoo Search to Bing-powered organic search results is now complete. The Yahoo! search interface remains the same, but Microsoft’s search technology now generates the search results. This transition began a week ago and, in a blog posting by Shashi Seth, Senior VP of Yahoo! Search Products, was stated to have gone smoothly.
“This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo! and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer.”
While Yahoo! continues to make improvements to its search experience, Microsoft will migrate Yahoo’s advertising customers to adCenter and is expecting to complete that phase by fall.
So far, this move is in only the US and Canada markets and is only available in English. However, it can affect some users’ search engine rankings. What’s really interesting is that a webpage may rank differently in Bing compared to the new Bing-powered Yahoo!. If you’re tracking your search engine rankings, it’s still a good idea to track your rankings across Bing and Yahoo! separately. You can do a quick check on your search rankings free at www.webposition.com.
comScore’s July 2010 US Search Engine Rankings
August 20, 2010 By Sue Spiker 1 Comment »
comScore’s July 2010 US Search Engine Rankings report is out. And, starting this month it includes two versions of the search engine query statistics – the traditional “Core Search” numbers and the new “Explicit Core Search” metric.
Here’s the difference. Core Search captures all qualified searches and remains consistent with comScore’s previous monthly reports. The new Explicit Core Search is an extracted metric of Core Search, and it contains only searches that are the direct result of users interacting with the search box. It excludes supplemental system-generated queries such as slideshows.
Because of this new metric, comScore’s July numbers may initially leave some confused and making it difficult to compare with last year’s figures.
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Core Search |
Explicit Core Search |
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Google |
61.6% |
-1 point |
Google |
65.8% |
-0.4% |
Last month, Cameron Meierhoefer, comScore’s Executive VP of Analytics, discussed the reasoning behind the then-upcoming change. And in his Monday blog post, Meirhoefer describes Explicit Core Search as a way to provide “increased transparency into the search market” and that it’s meant to enable “each interested stakeholder to determine which view of the market they deem most appropriate depending on the particular circumstance.”
Essentially, comScore is responding to the recent changes in how some search providers are generating portions of their search results and is presenting a way to categorize each type of search, letting its clients choose which is most applicable for them.
But however you look at it, Yahoo has made the most progress while Bing remained relatively flat. Over the past couple months, Yahoo’s numbers have been in question due to the implementation of its slideshow feature, but with the Explicit Core Search we can now see the true gains in market share. Only time will tell if it can maintain this momentum and while some may worry about the decline in Google’s market share, these numbers are almost surely encouraging to Bing and Yahoo as they move forward with their partnership.
In the meantime, analysts still hold on to their wait-and-see approach as we look forward to seeing how Explicit Core Search impacts the ever-evolving search industry.
Seed Sites are One of SEO’s Best Kept Secrets
By Sue Spiker No Comments »
Part of a search engine’s secret formula is what domains it chooses to use as seed sites, the entry points through which it deploys its web crawlers to explore and index the Internet. Knowing exactly what domains it chooses as seed sites could tell us exactly where to make sure our websites are listed and where to focus our linking strategies.
Helpful information for those of us on an eternal quest for a higher page rank.
No such comprehensive list is publicly available, for two reasons. First, search providers use a multitude of seed sites, and they’re not committed to using the same sites each time. Domains such as Yahoo Directory and DMOZ are likely candidates, but using a variety of domains increases the chances of discovering new URLs and finding out which URLs have expired, which helps keep its search index up-to-date. Therefore, that list would constantly be in flux and not entirely accurate at any given date.
Second, search providers are historically (and understandably) protective of their trade secrets and are not expected to volunteer such key information any time soon. Basically, they could tell us, but then they’d have to…well…you know.
And we can’t really blame them. Imagine what would happen if such information fell into unscrupulous hands. Spammers and hackers the world over would start gaming the system before we could say “Let me look that up online.”
So give your website the best exposure you can by submitting it to as many appropriate directories and niche portals as possible. While you’re at it, use social media to get your site out there. Search engines will find your website if you just keep spreading the word by practicing solid, white hat SEO techniques. And when they do, make sure that you’ve done a thorough job of optimizing your content, coding and structure, including creating a sitemap.xml file to tell their web crawlers exactly where to go next.
YPO: The Original SEO
August 17, 2010 By Scott Penrose No Comments »
You may not be familiar with the name YPO (Yellow Pages Optimization), but you’ve seen it in action.
Go grab your Yellow Pages directory. What is that you ask? It’s that big book full of ads sitting in the closet under the bread maker you always said you’d use. Thumb to a category like pest control and tell me what you see.
The concept of advertising optimization is nothing new. Long before search engines and secret algorithms, all a person needed to know to get a first page listing under their Yellow Pages category was the alphabet. Eventually, somebody figured out that all they had to do to make sure more eyeballs saw their company’s name was to stick some A’s at the beginning of it.
Now, if you want to rank on the first page of say, Google…the old formula was that the more links you had, the more popular you must be and so the higher you would rank. The concept is similar to “Alpha Loading” your company’s name with A’s. The more A’s (or links) you have, the closer to the top you ‘ll be.
So the next time you think SEO is something new, think back to your handy dandy Yellow Pages. As long as there are marketers trying to sell products, there will be marketers who try to game the system whether they be online OR offline.
WebPosition Gets Client-Friendly with Two New Features
August 12, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team No Comments »
A few weeks ago, we announced the upcoming release of two new client-friendly reporting features for WebPosition Reporter. And soon after, we delivered on that promise with a new feature update that includes your most-requested capabilities – White Labeling and Secure Online Sharing.
White Labeling lets you brand a report with a preferred logo or graphic, and it includes
the option of adding a company name and /or URL. Once you save the changes, the report will display its new branding each time it’s downloaded to PDF or shared online via Secure Online Sharing.
Secure Online Sharing lets you grant clients or colleagues view-only access to an online, white labeled report. Once enabled, they can view that report’s data in full detail while you maintain full administrative capabilities to download report views, export data or modify the report’s settings. Set this feature once to give them secure access to the most up-to-date information any time they need.
Multiple clients? Not a problem. These features are set on a per-report basis. You can also enable, disable or modify the settings for either of these features at any time.
Both of these new features are available to paid WebPosition Reporter subscribers at no cost. And we’re very excited about new developments that are coming down the pipeline. So, keep the feedback coming and stay tuned as we continue building out this new online service.
Optimization: One Big Party On & Off the Page
August 9, 2010 By Sue Spiker No Comments »
Their names imply that they’re completely separate approaches, but here’s the truth… good SEO integrates on-page and off-page optimization to grow web traffic and encourage a higher search ranking. Neglecting one in favor of the other can do your site a great disservice because ultimately, they work together.
On-Page Optimization is what’s done to a website’s content to offer a smartly designed user experience and make the site easily explored and indexed by search engines. Elements include title tags, meta tags, HTML tags, keywords, content, internal links, headings, images and Calls to Action (CTAs).
But after you optimize the content, coding and structure, you need to make it easy for people (and search engines) to find your site. Otherwise, it’s like getting your house ready for a party and not telling anyone. Sure, you may get the stray guest occasionally, but your traffic won’t be all that it can be and you won’t be listed on any Top 10 Parties lists. You need to spread the word – that’s where off-page optimization comes in.
Off-Page Optimization focuses on generating high quality inbound links to increase your site’s link popularity, which tells search engines that your site is important and authoritative. Remember that phrase “high quality” – it refers to the other site’s Google Page Rank, amount of web traffic and relevancy of its content. Start by submitting your site to appropriate web directory categories, which have a very broad scope, and niche portals, which are smaller but much more specialized listings.
When your off-page optimization starts generating interest, your on-page optimization (which should already be in place) encourages users to come back and gives other sites a reason to create backlinks. Basically, if you’re going to send out party invitations, your house must be ready to receive guests. Otherwise, most visitors won’t stay long, and even fewer will recommend you to friends and family.
There’s no single, universally accepted SEO checklist that addresses the best practices for optimization on all search engines, or even the top three. But here are some resources to help you get started:
- MarketPosition SEO 101: Takes you through some of the ins-&-outs of basic SEO.
- Google SEO Starter Guide (PDF): Explains some best practices for making your site user- and search engine-friendly.
- Google Webmaster Guidelines: Guidelines to best optimize your webpage and submit it to be included in Google’s search index.
- Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters White Paper: Includes SEO guidelines for ranking well on Bing’s search results.
To Click or Not to Click: What Was the Question?
August 2, 2010 By Sue Spiker 1 Comment »
How much information do you retain after reading online content? Not as much as you may think. Take a brief moment to read through each of these articles.
- When Linking Gets Out of Control (Version 1)
- When Linking Gets Out of Control (Version 2)
Done? Okay. Now let’s chat. How many of you clicked on the links in the second version AS you were reading? That didn’t happen with the first version, did it? That’s because Version 2 has hyperlinks within the body content while Version 1 doesn’t. And hyperlinks within body content are a leading reason for users not retaining as much information as they would if they were reading a continuous, flow of unlinked text.
Let’s be honest, we don’t ‘read’ so much as we ‘scan’ online content. Nor do we think twice about clicking link after link to go from page to page. And it’s hard to retain information when elements within the content are specifically designed to encourage navigation somewhere else. In fact, we quickly forget much of what we’ve just read the moment we move on.
As users, we’re hardwired to instantly evaluate the value of clicking a link versus the value of staying where we are. How much focus can you actually maintain as you move from page to page reading up on SEO, Information Architecture, the World Wide Web and the Twinkies 80th Anniversary Celebration? (Incidentally, Twinkies have a shelf life of 26 days – I looked.)
Yes, including links within the body content may be good for SEO, but too many links can be data overload for users.
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Good SEO practitioners know that their efforts should not interfere with the user experience. |
Understanding how your current approach impacts user behavior can help you create a stronger, more effective linking strategy. Balancing the number and placement of links with the user experience can actually strengthen your linking strategy AND help readers retain the information that you’re offering.
WebPosition Going Forward
July 16, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team No Comments »
We launched the all new, all online WebPosition Reporter on May 11th, and since then have had the opportunity to welcome customers new and old. Over the past two months we’ve received fantastic feedback from our subscribers about how we can make our product even better.
Our top request has been for a White Labeling capability, which we will be releasing later this month along with Secure Online Sharing. Secure Online Sharing will enable our customers to provide view-only access to their clients and colleagues, while keeping full editing, downloading and exporting permissions. Reports that are shared take advantage of the White Labeling feature, and will not have any mention of WebPosition on them. These two great features will be provided at no additional cost to our subscribers.
We moved WebPosition Reporter completely online for a variety of reasons. We wanted to provide a service our customers could access anytime, anywhere. A service that never required a customer to download, install, or update software. A service we could offer to more people on more platforms without requiring a complete re-write. We wanted to provide ranking report data that wouldn’t break every time a search engine changed some aspect of their results pages, as is the case with downloadable rank checking software. We wanted to provide the ability for customers to run high volumes of reports in short time-frames – minutes instead of hours or days – and do so without putting their IP address at risk. We wanted to deliver the data in a more user-friendly format that could be sorted and filtered according to a customer’s whim. We’ve been able to deliver on all of those things, and we’re very proud of the result.
We’ve provided the capability for our WP4 customers to export their historical Reporter data and import it into the new online version. Thanks to the feedback from customers who have taken advantage of the feature, we will be releasing an even more robust version of the import tool along with the White Label and Secure Online Sharing features next week.
Our focus is on improving and expanding our online product offering, and we are grateful for the opportunity to carry this torch forward.
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