Those of you who regularly use Google Blog Search may be interested in a recent change. It makes it easier for you to find a blog on a specific topic , rather than finding individual posts. Google collects information from a blog’s feed and from the blog itself in an attempt to understand what a blog might be about.
It might collect information such as the content of posts, post titles, post authors, blog authors, the blog’s title, profile information about the authors, blog roll information, and possibly other information about the blog.
Rather than focusing upon ranking individual blog posts for a particular query, the search appears to be determining whether the blog itself should be ranked for that query.
If you start a search at Google’s home page for the term “Brighton SEO Training,” and then choose “blogs” in the left sidebar, you will see three blogs listed at the top of the blog search results under a link that says “Related blogs about Brighton SEO Training.”
Google Blog Rank for Brigthon SEO Training
You will see three blogs listed at the top of the results on Brighton SEO Training, and then a line separating those links from results that appear to be a ranking of individual blog posts about Brighton SEO Training.
Silicon Beach Training blogs are number 1 because we write many new and interesting blog posts about SEO Training each week.
One nice thing about this change is that when you click on the “Related Blogs about Brighton SEO Training” link we can now see a much longer list of “home pages” (the front page of a blog dedicated to the subject) on topics that we search for. We get a sense of how relevant a blog might be to our search – those blogs (not articles or pages) that Google deem most relevant for it to show up at the top of the “realated blogs” search results.
Google still delivers results for the most relvant single page or post underneath the “Related Blogs” list. Read what Google have to say about on the Official Google Blog
The big brands are now getting more exposure in the Google search results than ever before. Although Google are talking about the importance of brand there seems to be little information about how “brand” is measured, what makes a brand stronger in the eyes of Google would be very useful indeed.
One thing is for certain - the way the big brands are handled by Google is changing, but so far we can only speculate on how Google measures a brands strength. It’s such a fuzzy area and one that is difficult to research so I put brand expert Nichola Stott on the spot at the last Brighton SEO meet and this is what she said:
Google is now allowing the initial pages of some search results to be dominated by a single brand or website, if it has sub-domains and a “strong user interest”. The fact that a user’s query “may be restricted” to a search of the one website/brand most associated with that query is an issue for SEO providers. For an example of this type ‘dell’ into Google and it will return the 5 top results from dell. But this is not universal – type Nike into Google and it’s a different story. This suggests these restricted searches will only effect brands that have been specifically targeted by Google so smaller businesses will not be effected. Your ranking, however will be effected by what Matt Cutts calls ‘trust metrics’.
He even goes on to say that Google doesn’t think about Brand that much! Mmmmm… I’m not so sure about that, but I certainly think that following his suggestions will definitely help your SEO efforts:
Provide great content
Become an authority in your niche
Be the expert that people want to link to (read linkbait)
Be the expert that people want to talk about (ie: references to your company name)
Kevin Rose, Digg’s co-founder previously warned “the new version of Digg, which would go live in the next few months, would represent the biggest change in the site’s history.
“This is just phase one of what will be an on-going, iterative process, involving lots of input from all of you. We’ll be pushing out features on a regular basis and tweaking often.”
“Our goal has always been for Digg to be a place where people can discover and share content and conversations from anywhere on the web. With Digg v4, we are introducing a few things that will make discovering and discussing news a lot better.”
“When you see the new design, you’re going to go, ‘Wow, this is not the same site’.”
What makes Digg different from other social bookmarking sites is it’s strong user community who vote on how interesting stories are by “digging” the articles they like, and “burying” those they don’t. With 35 million unique users per month many bloggers and web developers feature Digg buttons on their site (like us) to allow readers to easily share articles.
Speed is a big factor as the new Digg is faster in every way: submitting articles, loading pages, and Digging content, great news for those using it as part of their social media routine.
Personalisation is even more key, the new design will makes it easier to view content and connect with friends, publishers, and influencers you care about. I think this will be key to Diggs ongoing success, whilst there has been a lot of speculation lately about the future of Digg, this could get them right back on track.
Digg had become a tool for “digg power users” and the company was both unhappy with the way that power users were influencing the natural and organic way in which Digg is supposed to work. Now the new features make the social and community aspects of Digg paramount, it has definitely made digg much more attractive to peopel like me who want to use it for social media. Read the rest of "I’m digging the new Digg?"
You need to people to see your post especially if your blog is new. Here are some top tips for publicising your Blog. These techniques not only get traffic to your blog but also serve as a very effective way to use social media for link building – which is great for your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) .
How to Increase Traffic to your Blog, Improve Ranking and Link Building using Social Media
Search for other topic related Facebook business pages and find ones that automatically show “others” posts on their wall, you can post your link up here too.
Rob Green from iCrossing talks about Data Analysis for SEO.
I know it’s taking me forever to upload all the videos from #brightonseo but I am getting there! Don’t judge me! @kelvinnewman of Site Visibility is already talking about the next one maybe in November. I might be finished by then!
Its time for Rob Greens presentation on Data Analysis for SEO. One of his recommendations was to use a combination of the Google Keyword Tool and Competitor Analysis data together to to collect more data to make more informed decisions about identifying keywords.
Rob suggested looking for search terms that include universal search in the results on them and using media (image and video) effectively to appear in universal search.
He made an interesting point about how you can use SEO to help increase brand awareness and encourage direct visitors to the website. Rob showed the effect that non-branded keywords can have on brand terms.
I really don’t need to go into more detail as Rob says it all and I have it all on video:
Data Analysis for SEO Part 1 – Rob Green form iCrossing
Read more for the second part of Data Analysis for SEO
Facebook Places use the mobile browser of any cell phone that supports HTML5 and geolocation, If you want to learn HTML you should look at our HTML5 training course – it’s the future! Although ‘Facebook Location’ is currently only available in the U.S. UK users and the rest of the world will be joining in soon – could it be the new foursquare? It is not yet known when the service, which allows users to check-in to restaurants, bars and shops, will launch in the UK. It is currently live via the Facebook iPhone app in the US and on an advanced version of its mobile site.
Facebook has said it is working with Foursquare and Yelp, to develop Places, although there is no information about how this relationship will work and it is apparent that the service could be a threat to these established giants considering it already has has over 500 million members. It is already influencing it’s competitors/collaborators. Yesterday Foursquare introduced new privacy settings, ahead of the Facebook Places launch, which make it easier for its users to hide their email addresses and phone numbers, to opt-out of automatic check-in at certain venues, and to choose which lists they appear on. It allows them to control whether or not they publish their Foursquare activity to Facebook and Twitter, and to decide whether they want businesses to know if they are a regular customer or not.
Here’s how Facebook Places works
Display your Location on Facebook
Now, or at least soon, you can broadcast your current location to your friends on Facebook now Facebook has unveiled it’s new location based service called Facebook Places
If you show your location using Facebook Places it will show you other people who may be near that place around the same time.
Who will see my location on Facebook?
As Always privacy will be a concern but this time (once bitten!) Facebook has added very simple settings allowing you control the visibility of places where you are checking-in.
Image adapted by original by @striatic on flickr http://striatic.net/
There has been a lot of bad press about social media, and the ’so called’ experts.
They are often portrayed as money grabbing opportunists wanting to make a quick buck out of unsuspecting business owners who don’t want to be left behind in the current torrent of social networking marketing opportunities.
Considering YouTube’s size, traffic, and viral potential it should be treated as a major search engine itself.
SEO for YouTube
Image by Rafael Amado Deras
You Tube’s search algorithm includes the optimisation of the following:
title
description
tags
number of views
rating
These can be manipulated by YouTube account holder, as well as the account/video viewers, to influence not only its placement in YouTube but also Google’s universal/blended search.
Content ideas for good SEO (linkbait)
Just like Blog posts ‘How to’Videos are a sure way to get traffic and links to your video, embed your video in your blog post and get an SEO double whammy. You could set up a dedicated ‘how to’ channel and collect your ‘How to’s’ all in one channel for extra effect.
Competitor Research for SEO
Community and social network linking can play a big part in determining ranking on many video search engines. This may include Ratings, Favorites, Playlists, Comments, Honors, Views, Embedding, Response Videos, and Linking. You can check out your competitors video watch page – click on the “Statistics & Data” tab and work out what factors make this video so popular and work out a strategy that will help you achieve the same or better.
Those of you who regularly use Google Blog Search may be interested in a recent change. It makes it easier for you to find a blog on a specific topic , rather than finding individual posts. Google collects information from a blog’s feed and from the blog itself in an attempt to understand what a blog might be about.
The big brands are now getting more exposure in the Google search results than ever before. Although Google are talking about the importance of brand there seems to be little information about how “brand” is measured, what makes a brand stronger in the eyes of Google would be very useful indeed.
