Matt Cutts on ‘How Search Works’:

Important Takeaways:

• When one searches they do not search the whole web, only what pages Google has in it’s index
• Google indexes what pages it can find, but not the whole web
• As a site owner, assuming you have used the search terms on a page, you compete for a search results position against every other page Google has indexed with those same terms [ = key words or phrases]
• When comparing your page and the others, Google’s algorithm uses 200 questions or signals
• One obvious question relates to your use of the search terms on a page, like are they in your title, your URL and/or how are they used in the content of the page
• Another question looks for search term synonyms on your page – be careful NOT to over stuff the actual search terms as the algorithm is known to see this as bad practice or spammy
• Page Rank has emphasis and it is focused on the back links your page has accumulated, but note that it’s not necessarily just volume… it’s also very much a determination of the quality of those links
• Organic results or how Google ranks pages is NEVER paid for!

Thoughts on Search Engine Optimization:

• It can take time, but consistent activity and topic focus is proven
• How long you have been there for search terms can help
• Broaden search term target focus – leverage the long tail
• Your competition has a great deal to do with where you get and how fast you get there
• Pursue back links where you can, but from good sites preferably with good page rank and in anchor text
• Your site design & technology must not only be search engine friendly, but it must be updated & advanced in order to remain search engine friendly – static sites will not sustain a competitive edge!

Related Posts:

• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• What does the Google Crawl mean to your business and how will your Business Blog help?
• So, how important is our Page Rank?
• Google’s Matt Cutts On Organic Versus Reciprocal Links
• Beware of What Is Sold As SEO!

Google’s ability to index your content is now even faster!

Google Webmasters Excerpt: “Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second.”

What does it mean to us?

[For indexing] that always depends on our target market and the competitive set  looking to reach it, but Allan Dalton wisely suggests we triangulate on the pressing issues relevant to our audience. Maybe, being a current source is even more valuable to our visibility now… with Caffeine?

Matt Cutts talks about getting successful back links and how they should be based upon the merit of your content: the summarized answer to the question he answers is, ‘attract as many back links as you can, but do it organically based upon quality. Don’t do reciprocated or purchased back links based upon an  ulterior motive.’

The subtle hint is, if humans wouldn’t appreciate the link assume Google’s algorithm might not either.

And remember, core organic SEO [without gaming] is based upon:

1) focused, well formed & consistent content,

2) a measurable reaction from humans to that content [back links, SERP activity, bookmarks, subscriptions, feed connections to other sites, time on page, etc., etc.] and also

3) well configured / easily spider crawled sites.

Still confused, try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’ for some more depth

WordPress: Site Speed Versus Feature Benefits

On Friday Google announced they were going to include a new signal in their search ranking algorithm – “site speed”. For the layperson, site speed is often refered to it as “load time” and it is a part of what affects a WordPress blog’s or, for that matter, any site’s competitive SEO. your site speed reflects how quickly a page responds to visitor requests from a web browser. Not to worry too much, Matt Cutts of Google discloses that “site speed” is only one of 200 signals used to compare you to the competition for organic search results and it’s not nearly as important as the relevance of your pages -see the below video. Google also adds, less than 1% of all search queries are even affected by the speed of sites… so again worry some, but not too much. 
 

 
While they’re saying site speed is a new signal, there are some general things you should know. First off, there are a scary number of random things that can affect how your WordPress blog loads in any one person’s browser, including their own computer settings. Second, pages have probably always had to load favorably in order to justify more spider crawling, more key phrase indexing and better SEO. Spiders don’t always crawl deep into your pages! And finally, it’s why a service like ours puts so much effort into things like WordPress updates, plugin evaluation, server setup and caching as a part of our standard monthly service. Here is a quick list of things that may affect a blogs’ “site speed” depending on your site’s setup and also on who’s visiting:
 
1. The version of the visitors’ browser – is it current or so old and obsolete that it’s having an effect on the speed they see?
2. Does site have too many plugins or widgets added – we certainly do our best to monitor this for clients, but folks want lots of plugins & widgets and a bad one or bad combination can have an effect.
3. Are there specific modifications to a site’s design or to a feature that all of a sudden slows site speed down?
4. Is the site making reference to too many outside resources, like for instance, various 3rd party or Social Media tools?
5. Is a theme or design choice creating too much drag – does it count on too many style sheets or is there a poor use of graphics?
6. Something that can be in your favor, but also deceiving in the long run is “how far along is the competition?” – are they even competing yet?
7. And then there’s security software. If tuned too agressively on a visitor’s PC, it can also undermine visitor experience.

Ultimately, we’re constantly looking for ways to balance features and speeding things up to provide a better visitor experience for all clients. No matter how you manage a WordPress blog nothing ever stands still: WordPress software, open source feature plugins, widgets, search algorithm signals, security solutions and web browsers are forever being updated and that affects everyone – not just you, but the competition too. We’d be the first to admit we’ve made some mistakes managing it all over the years, but that experience is a benefit in the long run. The focus of a service like ours is to fight the never ending battle so clients are always advancing cost effectively and in ways that support a competitive advantage!

Related Posts:

• Managing Your WordPress Blog Like It’s A Business Asset?
• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• What does the Google Crawl mean to your business and how will your Business Blog help?

Has Anyone Ever Promised You Top Organic Search Results?

It’s a dangerous promise when the dynamic nature of a networked web, search engine algorithms and random competitive activity makes search results unpredictable. If someone tells me they can improve my results, which are pretty good, I’d ask, “Really, what information do you have on recent algorithm [proprietary] adjustments and what do you know about my competitors’ activity that might affect the results?” See, search engines constantly change the way they rank content AND activity around our competitors online presence is obviously not static [at least it won't be forever]. So, the position we hold for a key word or phrase today may very well change tomorrow.

Lately Google has hinted to a higher weight for consumer driven signals such as bookmarks, subscriptions and even the choices they make from a search results page. Logic would have Google wants to protect the quality of their search results by reducing the weight of signals like meta data & back links, considering the ease for their manipulation. But even then, there are over 200 [mostly unknown by design!] signals used to compare us and our search marketing competitors.

If Promised Search Results Were Possible, Are They Sustainable?

In theory, there are best practices for in page [site architecture], on page [content] and off page [links, subscriptions, bookmarks, search choices, etc., etc.] SEO; however, is anyone truly an expert to the degree they can promise long term search results?

Even Google’s own Search Engineers are, at times, unaware of changes that occur. “When Barry asked me about ‘position 6′ in late December, I said that I didn’t know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We’re in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.” Matt Cutts

Sure there are lots of facts out there, but also misunderstood or false facts and/ or those that rapidly lessen in importance. For instance PageRank, which measures and compares our links, is one heavily documented signal; however and as suggested above, PageRank is no where near as important as it once was.

Yes there are going to be new hacks, but know the war between Google and such tactics will carry on. Betting against Google’s resources may not be the best idea. If sustainability is a goal [and for the serious business person it should be], we’re best off using marketing strategies that build brands!

Good Content and Activity

We believe that content builds brands: consistently publishing useful coverage for a target marketplace builds visibility & trust. Sure good blog solutions are known to make a competitive difference with search engines, but understanding how to create good content and the activity stemming from that effort is key.

In an environment where future customers are [re]searching our products and services, it’s the coverage activity that will:

1. generate more qualified search discovery,
2. generate more voluntary RSS subscription,
3. differentiate as dedicated, knowledgeable & trustworthy and
4. establish us as unique marketplace brands.

Get instructional education and make a disciplined effort to blog what you see, hear, know and have to offer. Add comments on other relevant blogs. Register for and, at least, submit content into relevant social network environments. Notify clients & prospects of the commitment to useful market coverage and ask they subscribe!

Interested people will develop an appreciation for our effort. Some people will expose us to audiences of their own via link, others via word of mouth; some will become new clients later and others right now! An in doing so, our markets will have identified us and our Brands!

Several top search optimization educators have been sounding the horns: Google has been changing, and is preparing to launch a major overhaul of, their content ranking methods. Ultimately, search personalization will see to it that each person has different search results… for the exact same search.

Google knows where you’re located based upon an IP address [numeric identifier specific to your computer and Internet service provider] so, while it is certainly a factor, it won’t really matter whether you’re logged into a personal Google account or not. With this information, they can track prior search history and determine what your future search results should be. If you search for “java” they can make assumptions about the intent of your search and that you are looking for coffee; whereas another person’s previous search results may show they’re looking for computer code.

We’ve been beating this drum at Kinetic [ How important is Page Rank ] for a long time now, but rather than us listen to Google: Udi Manber says, “The goal is always the same: improve the user experience. This is not the main goal, it is the only goal.”

The reality is progress: what’s hidden in Manber’s point is that chasing a “quick fix”, rather than creating good content, for search engine optimization is not only their right to fight, but their objective. Because there has been so much gaming around links, the value of your site’s link structure [ PageRank ] will lessen versus newer methods of rank comparison. Google’s vast data shows them that the highest quality organic search results foster higher search loyalty. More searching at Google, as opposed to the competition, fosters more pay per click and that drives their business.

At the end of the day business people fighting for online visibility should accept that the winning formula is a commitment to consistent, on-topic content coverage. And that’s not so bad because when it comes to your business the appeal you need to receive a searcher, a subscriber or a referral will simply depend on a willingness to publish what you know, see, hear and have to offer. Simple, affordable and fair!

Sure, you’re going to have to look at your analytics, to measure traffic, bounce rates and overall activity in order to gauge what content is working, but today’s SEO is different. It’s content, being informed about how to create content and having a good technology platform to format & present content!

Give us a holler, we can help.

We are all looking to find favor with the Google Gods, right?  The article below will teach you how find your Google Index and will outline the metrics that are truly important in evaluating your success on the web. 

What?
Whoa, let’s back up just a step – what is Google’s index anyway?  Google’s index is all of the unique pages on all of the websites and blogs out there that Google knows about and has explored (with Googlebot or its "web spiders").  Would you believe that there are 1 trillion unique URLs out there?  And, that’s only the URLs that Google has found so far. 

The Right Questions
So why do we care about Google’s index?  Good question.  Finding out the number of pages that Google knows about and has spidered on your own sites will you how many pages Google has indexed for you.  Unfortunately that is all it tells you.  While this is good to know - the number of pages you have indexed is no magic number by any means.  Does having more pages indexed equate to Google recommending those sites to searchers more often?  While perhaps this seems logical the answer in my opinion is likely not.  A case could certainly be made for the opposite viewpoint, but to my knowledge there is no evidential proof for this position.  It is important to note that not being found in the index at all is not good.  This means Google does not know your site exists and therefore cannot recommend you to searchers.  If you have a concern about this, please visit Google’s Help Center on the subject.   

Let’s Be Logical
Think about the following scenario… Website A contains only 10 pages in total.  Website B on the other hand contains 1,000 pages in total.  It follows that website B will have many more pages in Google’s index simply because more pages exist right?  Right.  Now let’s talk about what those two websites contain.  Website A contains 10 comprehensive pages that are updated regularly about protected sea turtles in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.  Website B contains one page about the same subject that has not changed in over a year and 999 pages about real estate, travel, vacationing, recreating, rentals, airports, govt policy and everything else you might want to know about Mexico.  Website A is a well respected educational resource and is linked to often, website B is not.  Despite website Bs sheer volume of additional pages which site do you think Google will recommend for those searching for information about endangered sea turtles in the Sea of Cortez?  The site with lots of pages and little relevant information or the site with few pages and lots of valuable and current information?

Quality Not Quantity
Finding Google’s favor has a lot less to do with how many pages are in your index (and thus existing in your website or blog) and more to do with how good those pages actually are.  Are they fresh, on topic, and chocked full of value?  Excellent – then you have a good chance of getting them recommended.  While having a large Google index might feel like something to brag about – take a step back and ask yourself if those pages are bringing you a return of value.  This is a game of quality, not necessarily quantity.  Just because you have lots of pages indexed for a particular site does not automatically mean the site is any more valuable to you than your other sites with fewer pages in the index.  I will say however that if you have lots of good quality content, more seems to be more in the game of search.  Quality first though - always! 

Tread Carefully
Be wary of sales tactics that use a scenario where a large index = smashing success.  Many systems can auto generate lots and lots of pages that offer little human value and therefore won’t add to helping you get recommended for the keywords and keyphrases that are important to your business.  The real metrics you should be concerned with are much more tangible: how many visitors does your site get, how many terms are the search engines recommending you for, what pages within your site are getting you noticed, how many leads is your site generating, how sticky is the site (how long do visitors stay), etc.  These are the metrics that will help you measure the business success of your site.  Ask yourself where the real value is – in tangible results, or in subjective statistics?

Finding Your Index
In the event any of you would like to know what your index looks like for your website or blog (it is nice to know – you may find pages on your sites that are old and need to be deleted or cleaned up, you may find that your meta data needs some work or you may find that you don’t exist – yikes!), you can find out by doing the following:

• Go to Google
• In the search field enter site:url.com where the url is your blog or website

There are a few specifics you should know about, for instance (also – no spaces, important!):

• site:abc.com will include every page on abc.com including anything in any of your subdomains (such as blog.abc.com)
• site:www.abc.com will include only those pages on your www
• site:blog.abc.com will include only those pages on this subdomain

Here is a bit more information about advanced operators from Google for those of you wishing to learn more.

Most importantly – it’s not an exact science by any means!  Google does the best it can to give you the facts and they don’t always add up exactly.  That’s right, nobody is truly perfect 

Spiders, Web Pages and Crawling

For starters, it may help to define what a crawl and what spiders are. To find and organize information on the web in what has become hundreds of millions of pages, a search engine deploys software typically referred to as a spider [or a crawler or a bot.] By using spiders to crawl web pages on the world wide web [of pages] search engines are able to build lists of keywords and key phrases from what they identify and consume. Note: we didn’t mention websites or business blogs so much as we did *web pages.* Google applies rank consideration to every single web page and not just to a site domain or home page. It’s important to understand this because *Google wants to index everything and that means you want to place emphasis on your content as a whole*, making all your important keywords and key phrases obvious and available!

Rebuilding the Index

According to Google, its’ spiders regularly crawl the world wide web in order to rebuild their index of web pages, topics, keywords and key phrases. Note: Google says it wants to *rebuild* its index, meaning it wants your most timely knowledge. It’s important because many people think they can set up a static website and be done with it; however, in this day and age search engines demand much much more. They are constantly rebuilding their indexes meaning *you want to be sharing your most current knowledge [placing on emphasis on targeted topics, keywords & key phrases] all the time.* In a competitive world for traffic and for leads, search engine rank/ relevance is NO static exercise. So long as you have well built technology and you’re updating your web presence with ‘what’s new’ you’ve got as good a chance as anyone to turn up in consumer searches.

Click to view larger image

Crawls, Deeper and More Often

The search indexes are in constant motion… in fact, they are kinetic Google crawls the Web at varying depths and on several different schedules. You may have heard of the deep crawl and/ or a fresh crawl. If not, they’re meant to distinguish comprehensive crawls [i.e. deep crawls], which are believed to occur every month, versus the common intermediate or random crawl [i.e. fresh crawls] which occur more often but index less content. Some folks refer to the constant motion of the indexes as ‘the Google Dance’, but the fact is new information is always being crawled, consumed and indexed by thousands of servers. Sites will raise their chances for being crawled deeper and more often [more topic, keyword and key phrase indexing] by changing their content frequently. Google’s spider is capable of comparing previous crawls to the current one at light speed. If it identifies that new content is added frequently, it will revisit your site or blog more often. Think of it as your web presence is being judged on each visit. *It would be highly inefficient for Google to crawl you often if you’re not producing new information.* Remember, there is only so much crawl bandwidth and they’re trying to succeed by satisfying searchers. In order to satisfy searchers, they must have the most timely and accurate information possible. Note: due to the Google dance and constant reevaluation there’s no guarantee your keyword and/ or key phrase will be in the same position tomorrow as it is today.

Cooperate with Google: Business Blog!

In all, your site, your blog and/or every one of your web pages will be reevaluated over and over. Like anything else in life worth having, your topic, keyword and key phrase ranking must be earned. You need to be consistent and you need to be on- topic with your knowledge. And while you need well built technology, don’t focus on tech’ advantages so much as content because that’s what Google wants and it’s highly unlikely anyone is outsmarting Google. If you are a Vail/ Beaver Creek CO vacation and travel firm, you need to be writing less about global warming & politics and more about Vail/ Beaver Creek CO vacation and travel.

And folks, Business Blog Solutions are far and away the most cost efficient and simple way to meet this challenge of 1) sharing knowledge and 2) optimizing your topical presence for a web full of consumers.

What exactly is Google Page Rank?

For those who don’t know, with the Google Tool Bar you can see a ’Page Rank’ between 1 and 10 for your [or any other you're visiting] website or blog .

According to Google’s definition of Page Rank, “it relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.”

VP of Search Quality Udi Manber says, “…surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse…”

Sure there are widely held beliefs, but clearly *no one* can tell you exactly how to compete for rank in Google. What’s more, Google’s engineers aren’t going to allow for link abuse or the gaming of their algorithm. Not when links can be paid for, gathered solely for the purpose of gaming or just plain irrelevant. We can certainly assume they will continue to advance the algorithm, which means that any optimization effort aims at a moving target. Says Google, “We’re constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users.”

And, by the way, if that Page Rank number is so important, why do I rank higher for so many topics and key phrases than other sites with a higher Page Rank number?

Are there other means used to rank our sites, blogs, pages [and posts]?

How much does that number between 1 and 10 truly count toward our positioning in the Search Engine Results Pages? According to a New York Times piece titled ‘Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine’, “Mr. Singhal [current master of Google’s ranking algorithm] has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” Page Rank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years.”

So it counts, but how each signal is weighted versus 200+ others in the algorithm leaves one to wonder whether or not focusing on one is a smart idea. Could there ever even be a sustainable search engine optimization strategy? Is it likely someone somewhere could ever game a small army of PHDs determined to deliver the most relevant [links to] answers possible?

In all, it appears the Page Rank signal may be less and less an important indicator of our status.

If very little is known, what can we do to compete?

Consider the search engine business. In order to be successful, search engines require a critical mass of loyal searching so that they can generate [pay per] clicks. According to the New York Times, “It [Google] believes that its ability to decrease the number of times it leaves searchers disappointed is  crucial to fending off ever fiercer attacks from the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft and preserving the tidy advertising gold mine that search represents.” Logically, the idea is to attract more, and to keep those who have already been, searching. Says Udi Manber, “The goal is always the same: improve the user experience. This is not the main goal, it is the only goal.”

So rather than obsessing about links and ’Page Rank’, a comitment to the consistent Business Blogging of our useful and subject focused knowledge may be the best long term strategy. With more and more good timely content, we’ll attract more and more visitors, page views, links and [RSS] subscriptions. And with more human interest [or the data those 'signals' reveal to Google resulting from that interest] we’ll become more relevant for our pages, our posts and the content we blog.

Business website owners and Business Bloggers beware! I see the claims almost everyday and, for the record, the latest Search Engine Advantage is NOT necessarily site technology or optimization tactics so much as it is you!

Google is at the top of the technology mountain; however, they need 1) search traffic and 2) your practical knowledge in order to monetize their technology. In this sense “practical knowledge” refers to online content – the topics, keywords, and key phrases that make up your websites and blogs. Google deploys spiders [bots] to crawl the web and consume all content for their indexes. Once they have it, they prepare it for their search traffic by ranking it!

Everybody searches, so the success of Google’s [Yahoo's, MSN's, etc.] business depends on their ability to meet that search activity with the best user experience possible. They employ an army of engineers & PHDs whose primary intention is to perfect an ability to accurately identify, consume and rank content… NOT SITE TECHNOLOGY. The Google algorithm is known to have over 200 individually weighted criteria, cementing their ability to decide what truly is and what is not a relevant high ranking search result. Says Google, “We’re constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users.”  In effect [and this is very important], Google truly wants to level the playing field for all content so that they can successfully return the best, most relevant search results possible to their users.

Yes, all the hearsay is true – a blog can offer you certain advantages in the eyes of the search engines and we provide a leading- edge solution[coming soon: we'll be writing about the important features your blog should have.] And yes, your Blog must be designed well and its’ feature set must evolve because the web & search engines always do; however, those 200 individually weighted criteria mentioned above are used to evaluate and to compare your site or blog, its pages and especially its content! Sure links are important: some are more important than others, some are in your control, but your content is ultimately the key. 

Make no mistake, it’s your “practical knowledge” that search engines need in order to earn the loyalty of consumer search traffic! Google openly discloses site standards in order to assist in making websites and blogs more search engine friendly. Why? They want it to be easy for everyone to bring practical knowledge to the web so they can ‘…organize the world’s information.’ They don’t say they want to organize the most technical, the most intellectual or the most eloquent presentation… they say they want “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  Why? So they can successfully connect ALL searching consumers with the fresh, relevant, unbiased & useful answers they want.

Content is your practical knowledge; your content transferred to the web is YOU transferred to the web. Good evolving blog technology is very important, but the largest advantage is your practical knowledge of a subject [i.e. Santa Barbara Pocket Listings Blog] and the consistent, on topic transfer of that knowledge to the web. Because of Google’s reliable search driven business model, the advantage is you! And it is YOU by design!

In this day and age the cost to create content is negligible. The means to distribute your content to the people who want and who need it is without constraint! Great Business blog solutions make it simple! So, get in there and blog: blog enthusiastically about what you know, what you hear, what you see and what have to offer and you will generate visibility, awareness and new business