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Rob Laporte

Google Webmaster Central Hosting "Link Week" - 0 views

searchengineland.com/al-hosting-link-week-14961.php

Linking

shared by Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Oct 7, 2008 at 8:11am Eastern by Barry Schwartz    Google Webmaster Central Hosting “Link Week” This week at the Google Webmaster Central blog, Google has a series of blog posts all about links. The first two blog posts are live and are named: Links information straight from the source Importance of link architecture Google explains that they will be writing about three main topics this week. (1) Internal links, the links that you have within your site. That post is already live and is about the how you should structure your link structure for best search engine visibility. (2) Outbound links or the links you post on your pages to other sites. I assume Google will discuss the value of these links and who you should and should not link to. Clearly, think about your user here and not the search engine. (3) Inbound links or the external sites that are linking to your site. I assume Google left this for last, because this may be the most interesting topic. Google plans to bust some myths, so it will be interesting to see what they say on the topic of links hurting your site. Time will tell - but stay tuned for more information. Postscript: Here is Google’s post on linking outbound, which has useful tips for beginners on who and when to link out. In addition, it tells you how to handle user generated content links. Postscript 2: I was a bit let down by Google’s inbound link post.
  • Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08
     
    Oct 7, 2008 at 8:11am Eastern by Barry Schwartz Google Webmaster Central Hosting "Link Week" This week at the Google Webmaster Central blog, Google has a series of blog posts all about links. The first two blog posts are live and are named: * Links information straight from the source * Importance of link architecture Google explains that they will be writing about three main topics this week. (1) Internal links, the links that you have within your site. That post is already live and is about the how you should structure your link structure for best search engine visibility. (2) Outbound links or the links you post on your pages to other sites. I assume Google will discuss the value of these links and who you should and should not link to. Clearly, think about your user here and not the search engine. (3) Inbound links or the external sites that are linking to your site. I assume Google left this for last, because this may be the most interesting topic. Google plans to bust some myths, so it will be interesting to see what they say on the topic of links hurting your site. Time will tell - but stay tuned for more information. Postscript: Here is Google's post on linking outbound, which has useful tips for beginners on who and when to link out. In addition, it tells you how to handle user generated content links. Postscript 2: I was a bit let down by Google's inbound link post.
Rob Laporte

Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search | Developing Knowledge about Local Search - 0 views

blumenthals.com/blog

Statistics local & mobile marketing

shared by Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08
     
    Google Maps: relative value of a OneBox vs top organic results Category: Google Maps (Google Local) - Mike - 5:50 am Steve Espinosa has some interesting preliminary research on the relative click thru rates of a #1 listing in the Local 10-Pack and a simultaneous #1 listing in organic. The organic listing showed 1.6x the click thru of the the Local 10 Pack listing. As it is preliminary research and only looked at click thru not call in or other measures of action, it is an important piece of research but doesn't speak to ultimate customer action. According to TMP's Local Search Usage Study : Following online local searches, consumers most often contact a business over the telephone (39%), visit the business in-person (32%) or contact the business online (12%). If one works out the combined math of the two studies (a not very reliable number I assure you), in the end the top local ranking would still provide more client contacts either via phone or in person than the organic ranking. At the end of the day, Steve's research can not be viewed as a reason to not focus on local but rather as a call to action on the organic side. I think he would agree that, in the excitement around local, you can't forget organic's power and that in an ideal world a business would use every tool available to them. However, many times, due to the nature of a business, a business may not be able to legitimately play in the Local space and their only recourse is to optimize their website for local phrases. Another interesting outcome of Steve's initial research was "the fact is that the majority of the users who got to the site via the natural link had resolution above 1024×768 and the majority of users who visited via the Onebox result had resoultion of 1024×768 or under." As Steve pointed out, this could be do the greater real estate visible to those with larger screens and thus greater visibility of organic listings above the fold. It could also, however, be
Rob Laporte

Google; You can put 50 words in your title tag, we'll read it | Hobo - 0 views

www.hobo-web.co.uk/...in-your-title-tag-well-read-it

algorithms seo

shared by Rob Laporte on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 29 Oct 08
     
    Google; You can put 50 words in your title tag, we'll read it Blurb by Shaun Anderson Note - This is a test, testing Title Tags in Google. Consider also Google Title Tag Best Practice. We recently tested "how many keywords will Google read in the title tag / element?" using our simple seo mythbuster test (number 2 in the series). And here's the results, which are quite surprising. First - here's the test title tag we tried to get Google to swallow. And it did. All of it. Even though it was a bit spammy; HoboA HoboB HoboC HoboD HoboE HoboF HoboG HoboH HoboI HoboJ HoboK HoboL HoboM HoboN HoboO HoboP HoboQ HoboR HoboS HoboT HoboU HoboV HoboW HoboX HoboY Hob10 Hob20 Hob30 Hob40 Hob50 Hob60 Hob70 Hob80 Hob90 Hob11 Hob12 Hob13 Hob14 Hob15 Hob16 Hob17 Hob18 Hob19 Hob1a Hob1b Hob1c Hob1d Hob1e Hob1f Hob1g Hob1h Using a keyword search - hoboA Hob1h - we were surprised to see Google returned our page. We also tested it using - Hob1g Hob1h - the keywords right at the end of the title - and again our page was returned. So that's 51 words, and 255 characters without spaces, 305 characters with spaces, at least! It seems clear Google will read just about anything these days! ************** Update: Qwerty pointed out an interesting fact about the intitle: site operator in Google. Google results with the intitle: command…..results as expected. But next in the sequence returns the following, unexpected result….. Google results with the intitle: command So what does this tell us? Google seems to stop at the 12th word on this page at least when returning results using the intitle: site operator. Another interesting observation. Thanks Qwerty. ************** We're obviously not sure what benefit a title tag with this many keywords in it has for your page, in terms of keyword density / dilution, and "clickability" in the search engine results pages (serps). 50+ words is certainly not best practice! When creating your title tag bear in
Dale Webb

Pixelsilk: SEO-Friendly Content Management System | Search Engine Journal - 0 views

www.searchenginejournal.com/...14743

web programming seo site code & design

shared by Dale Webb on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Dale Webb on 17 Nov 09
     
    Article I found about PixelSilk in my Blog rounds. It does look pretty slick and user-friendly. I'll be very interested to see how easy it is to work with from a development perspective, how it's coded, etc. This article is interesting and insightful because the person is unfamiliar with CMS/coding in general, but knows SEO, and finds it very easy to use and likes the SEO features.
Rob Laporte

SBA Loans Under the CARES Act - Updated as of April 25, 2020 | Blogs | Coronavirus Reso... - 0 views

www.foley.com/...ns-under-the-cares-act-updated

SEM Industry

shared by Rob Laporte on 01 May 20 - No Cached
  • The PPP provisions of the CARES Act were further interpreted by the U.S. Small Business Administration (“SBA”) in four interim final rules issued on April 2, 2020 (the “Interim Rule”), April 3, 2020 (the “Affiliation Rule”), April 14, 2020 (available here), and April 24, 2020 (available here), and Frequently Asked Questions issued on April 6, 2020 and updated through April 24, 2020 (the “FAQs” ). In conjunction with the issuance of the Affiliation Rule, the SBA also issued a two-page explanation of the affiliation principles applicable to the PPP (the “Affiliation Guidance”). The Interim Rule provided important information on the calculation of the loan amount, and added some further requirements. The Affiliation Rule and Affiliation Guidance clarified the affiliation principles that apply to applicants. The FAQs provide some additional clarification regarding the application of the affiliation rules and interpretation of the CARES Act, including guidance on how to calculate “payroll costs” and how a relationship with a third-party payroll provider and/or Professional Employer Organization (“PEO”) should be viewed for purposes of the PPP. The FAQs make it clear that borrowers and lenders may rely on the SBA’s guidance in the FAQs and the Interim Rule available at the time of application. Specifically, the FAQs provide that the government will not challenge lender PPP actions that conform to such guidance.
  • Unlike most typical SBA loans, the PPP Loans are unsecured loans requiring no collateral, no personal guarantee, and no showing that credit is unavailable elsewhere.
  • A 2-year term (decreased from the maximum maturity of 10 years under the Act), An interest rate of 1% (increased from prior Treasury guidance that set the interest rate at 0.5%), Principal and interest deferred for 6 months.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Moreover, the applicant must acknowledge that the funds will be used to retain workers and maintain payroll or make mortgage payments, lease payments, and utility payments. The FAQs further clarify that providing an accurate calculation of payroll costs and applying the affiliation rules is the borrower’s responsibility. Lenders are only expected to perform a good faith review of the payroll cost calculations, the depth of which should be informed by the quality of the documents provided by the borrower.
  • Payment of State or Local tax assessed on employee compensation. Question 16 of the FAQs clarifies that payroll costs are calculated on a gross basis; provided that payroll costs do not include the employer’s share of payroll costs (e.g., FICA).
  • Important Note: Question 7 of the FAQs clarifies that the CARES Act exclusion of any employee compensation in excess of an annual salary of $100,000 applies only to cash compensation. Therefore, non-cash benefits, including employer contributions to defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans, payment for the provision of group health care benefits and insurance premiums, and payment of state and local taxes assessed on employee compensation, are not counted in calculating the cap and, therefore, those non-cash benefits may be included as a payroll cost
  • The loans may be used for the following expenses/costs from February 15, 2020 through June 30, 2020
  • Interest on debt incurred prior to the loan
  • Payroll costs (as defined above) Costs related to the continuation of group health care benefits during periods of paid sick, medical or family leave, and insurance premiums Employee compensation
  • rent with respect to leasing agreements that had been in place before February 15, 2020
  • electricity, gas
  • transportation, telephone
  • internet access for such services that began before February 15, 2020
  • Note, however, that (i) at least 75% of the forgiven amount must be used for payroll costs and (ii) the amount of the PPP loan forgiveness may be reduced if the borrower reduces the number of employees or salaries and wages (for employees with annual salaries of $100,000 or less by more than 25%).
  • The reduction penalty will not apply to the extent the borrower restores their workforce count and salaries/wages by June 30, 2020.
  • The FAQ issued on April 8, 2020 also clarified that the lender must make the first disbursement of the loan no later than 10 calendar days from the date of loan approval, so lenders and borrowers do not have much flexibility in choosing when the 8-week timeframe begins.
  • Rob Laporte on 01 May 20
     
    "Unlike most typical SBA loans, the PPP Loans are unsecured loans requiring no collateral, no personal guarantee, and no showing that credit is unavailable elsewhere."
Rob Laporte

Deduping Duplicate Content - ClickZ - 0 views

www.clickz.com/3635050

seo site code & design

shared by Rob Laporte on 24 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 24 Sep 09
     
    One interesting thing that came out of SES San Jose's Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues session in August was the sheer volume of duplicate content on the Web. Ivan Davtchev, Yahoo's lead product manager for search relevance, said "more than 30 percent of the Web is made up of duplicate content." At first I thought, "Wow! Three out of every 10 pages consist of duplicate content on the Web." My second thought was, "Sheesh, the Web is one tangled mess of equally irrelevant content." Small wonder trust and linkage play such significant roles in determining a domain's overall authority and consequent relevancy in the search engines. Three Flavors of Bleh Davtchev went on to explain three basic types of duplicate content: 1. Accidental content duplication: This occurs when Webmasters unintentionally allow content to be replicated by non-canonicalization (define), session IDs, soft 404s (define), and the like. 2. Dodgy content duplication: This primarily consists of replicating content across multiple domains. 3. Abusive content duplication: This includes scraper spammers, weaving or stitching (mixed and matched content to create "new" content), and bulk content replication. Fortunately, Greg Grothaus from Google's search quality team had already addressed the duplicate content penalty myth, noting that Google "tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information." It's common knowledge that Google uses a checksum-like method for initially filtering out replicated content. For example, most Web sites have a regular and print version of each article. Google only wants to serve up one copy of the content in its search results, which is predominately determined by linking prowess. Because most print-ready pages are dead-end URLs sans site navigation, it's relatively simply to equate which page Google prefers to serve up in its search results. In exceptional cases of content duplication that Google perceives as an abusive attempt to manipula
  • Rob Laporte on 24 Sep 09
     
    One interesting thing that came out of SES San Jose's Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues session in August was the sheer volume of duplicate content on the Web. Ivan Davtchev, Yahoo's lead product manager for search relevance, said "more than 30 percent of the Web is made up of duplicate content." At first I thought, "Wow! Three out of every 10 pages consist of duplicate content on the Web." My second thought was, "Sheesh, the Web is one tangled mess of equally irrelevant content." Small wonder trust and linkage play such significant roles in determining a domain's overall authority and consequent relevancy in the search engines. Three Flavors of Bleh Davtchev went on to explain three basic types of duplicate content: 1. Accidental content duplication: This occurs when Webmasters unintentionally allow content to be replicated by non-canonicalization (define), session IDs, soft 404s (define), and the like. 2. Dodgy content duplication: This primarily consists of replicating content across multiple domains. 3. Abusive content duplication: This includes scraper spammers, weaving or stitching (mixed and matched content to create "new" content), and bulk content replication. Fortunately, Greg Grothaus from Google's search quality team had already addressed the duplicate content penalty myth, noting that Google "tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information." It's common knowledge that Google uses a checksum-like method for initially filtering out replicated content. For example, most Web sites have a regular and print version of each article. Google only wants to serve up one copy of the content in its search results, which is predominately determined by linking prowess. Because most print-ready pages are dead-end URLs sans site navigation, it's relatively simply to equate which page Google prefers to serve up in its search results. In exceptional cases of content duplication that Google perceives as an abusive attempt to manipula
jack_fox

Why You Should Embed a Google Map on Your Website - Sterling Sky Inc - 0 views

www.sterlingsky.ca/d-a-google-map-on-your-website

seo local & mobile marketing

shared by jack_fox on 09 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • There are a few main reasons to add a Google map to your website: It helps customers or website visitors get directions to your business and saves customers the steps of opening a new browser window, leaving your website, and finding directions. Customers can simply use the map on your website. Your business contact information is easy to find. The data an embedded Google Map provides is your business address, phone number, website, directions, reviews, and review stars. A Google map can highlight nearby points of interest, parking areas, restaurants, theaters, parks, etc. Visitors can reference nearby areas if they are not exactly sure where your business is located.
  • jack_fox on 09 Nov 20
     
    "There are a few main reasons to add a Google map to your website: It helps customers or website visitors get directions to your business and saves customers the steps of opening a new browser window, leaving your website, and finding directions. Customers can simply use the map on your website. Your business contact information is easy to find. The data an embedded Google Map provides is your business address, phone number, website, directions, reviews, and review stars. A Google map can highlight nearby points of interest, parking areas, restaurants, theaters, parks, etc. Visitors can reference nearby areas if they are not exactly sure where your business is located."
Rob Laporte

Eric Schmidt: Google Will Give Higher Rankings to Content Tied to Verified Profiles - S... - 0 views

searchenginewatch.com/...tent-Tied-to-Verified-Profiles

seo social media sem industry

shared by Rob Laporte on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 06 Feb 13
     
    It's no understatement to say that Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt is quite outspoken. His "talk first, think later" approach has a tendency of providing some great soundbites for the media. This time, it's not an impromptu interview providing the interesting opinion. The Wall Street Journal has obtained some excerpts from Schmidt's upcoming book, "The New Digital Age." One of those excerpts clearly spells out where Google is heading in the future: "Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance." When Google introduced authorship markup in 2011, Google did note that they were "looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results." Now Schmidt has made it explicit: in the future, you can boost your rankings by using Google authorship, and as we've reported before, Google+ has been designed to be an identity verification network. 
Dale Webb

Inbound links: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - 0 views

googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/...-times-with-inbound-links.html

redirects inbound links

shared by Dale Webb on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • So how can you engage more users and potentially increase merit-based inbound links?Many webmasters have written about their success in growing their audience. We've compiled several ideas and resources that can improve the web for all users.Create unique and compelling content on your site and the web in generalStart a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you're passionate about your site's topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.If you're interested in blogging, see our Help Center for specific tips for bloggers.
  • Dale Webb on 11 May 09
     
    How they factor into ranking. Most importantly - Google appropriately flows PageRank and related signals through 301 redirects!!
Rob Laporte

Evaluating Google's Response To Mapspam Reports - 0 views

searchengineland.com/080911-082824.php

iyp" local

shared by Rob Laporte on 11 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 11 Sep 08
     
    Conclusions * Local business owners seem to be confused about what actually constitutes spam, but can you blame them? The world of the Local search engines is often confusing even to those of us who study them on a daily basis! * Google's creation of a public forum for reporting anomalies in Maps has helped a lot of businesses recover traffic lost via Maps, and has probably helped Google identify weaknesses in its own algorithm as well. The responsiveness of the Maps team has been relatively admirable, even without providing verbal confirmation in the thread that changes have been made. (Of course, business owners whose situation hasn't been addressed are irate over the lack of response...) * The on-again/off-again bulk upload feature of Google Maps seems to be a particular favorite tool of mapspammers. * Local business owners: claim your listing at Google to avoid being victimized by hijackers and to decrease the likelihood of conflation with someone else's listing. If you don't have a website, direct your Local Business Listing at Google to one of your listings featuring the same information on another portal, such as Yahoo, Citysearch, or Yelp. * The large percentage of reported record conflations also underlines the importance of giving Google a strong signal of your business information (i.e. spiderable HTML address and phone number) on your own website. The more closely Google can associate that particular information with your business, the lower the chance of identifying someone else's business with the same information. In all honesty, I was surprised that the total number of bona-fide instances of spam reported in two months was so low, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's possible that the quality of Local results has improved dramatically since the advent of the 10-pack in January. However, more likely is that the typical local business owner doesn't know where to report possible spam. It'll be interesting to see whether
Jennifer Williams

Intelligent Forms Design - 0 views

intelligentforms.net

sales opps

shared by Jennifer Williams on 07 May 08 - Cached
  • Jennifer Williams on 07 May 08
     
    Canadian company designing sustainable and high end designed laptop pillows and solar charging lounge table. Interesting products. They have some SEO, but it doesn't look like it's been done well.
Rob Laporte

Honey, Social Media Shrunk Big Business - ClickZ - 0 views

www.clickz.com/3634156

social media

shared by Rob Laporte on 24 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 24 Jun 09
     
    Marketing Has Become Personal (Again) When the Big Guys want to look like Small Players, they make deep investments, mostly in social media. If you look at Coca-Cola's Facebook Page, for example, it doesn't look remarkably different from any other Facebook Page, even those created by tiny companies. On that Facebook Page, Coca-Cola -- one of the largest companies in the world and possibly the most recognized brand on the globe -- is presenting itself as not just small but also personal and approachable. In fact, if you are a fan of its page, you can write on its wall. Coke has videos of its fans and simple pictures of people enjoying a Coke. These aren't professional, glossy images but the sort of pictures we've come to expect online: a bit grainy, not well lit, and very real looking. The rule, and indeed the opportunity, of the new medium is to make your marketing personal. You need a bit of guts to do it. We all have a natural tendency to speak and act in ways we feel are professional when doing business, and this is true online as well. But social media is the single most important media space for brands right now, and its nature is different. If you are a big brand, you don't need to pretend you are small, but you do need to find ways to become approachable, engaging, and personal in the way that small brands do. Let's Get Small There are a few rules to follow when you try to get more personal in your marketing. Use these methods and you can start putting some real faces next to the brands consumers think they know: * Start with the current fans.This is really the great story of the Coca-Cola page. It was started by two guys who simply loved Coke, not by company itself. They amassed a following of brand loyalists, totally on their own. The company came to these guys and asked for the opportunity to help them out and keep them involved. Exactly what you would do if you were an actual human being, not a great big company more concerned with protectin
Dale Webb

Traffick: Most of SEO a Boondoggle? Jill Whalen Sticks to Her Guns: The Business of Search - 0 views

www.traffick.com/...seo-boondoggle-jill-whalen.asp

seo

shared by Dale Webb on 31 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Dale Webb on 31 Jul 09
     
    Andrew Goodman interview of Jill Whalen. Certain things I disagree about, but still an interesting and informative read.
Rob Laporte

Live Search Webmaster Center Blog : The key to picking the right keywords (SEM 101) - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...he-right-keywords-sem-101.aspx

seo

shared by Rob Laporte on 18 May 09 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 18 May 09
     
    Tool time Lastly, augment all of that good data with professional keyword research tools. Microsoft offers a tool called adCenter Excel Add-in Keyword Research Tool for versions 2003 and 2007. (Note: You'll need to set up an adCenter account before you can use the tool. Luckily, unlike most other online ad vendors, adCenter offers customer support over the phone with a real person - at no cost to you! - to help you get your account set up and running.) Both Google and Yahoo! offer their own keyword research tools. In addition, there are many third-party keyword research tools available, some for free, others for a fee. The adCenter Excel Add-in Keyword Research Tool can do the following: * Scan your current website and extract the keywords that offer the highest confidence levels based on their current usage * Suggest new keywords based on user behavior or your existing keyword list * Provide: o Research data on top performing keywords o Performance data on the keywords you specify o Information on keyword usage based on geographic and demographic data Note that the keyword tool is primarily designed to help users figure out which keywords to use with their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. However, the tool's output is also extremely relevant to developing or revising a keyword list for your website as part of an SEO update. We'll talk about the process of creating a PPC campaign in later posts. To use the tool, I recommend adding your keywords (one word per line) to an empty Excel spreadsheet, listing them in column A. Select the words for which you want to see adCenter's confidence level rating, click the Ad Intelligence tab, and then click the lower half of the Keyword Suggestion button on the toolbar, using both the Contained and Similarity tasks. You'll get a list of additional suggested keywords and phrases that correspond to each of the keywords you selected. Use the ones that are relevant
Rob Laporte

How Individuals Can Build a Robust Social Presence - ClickZ - 0 views

www.clickz.com/3633240

social media

shared by Rob Laporte on 01 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 01 Apr 09
     
    How to Build a Robust Social Presence Get your basic data out there. For many professionals, the core of your social presence probably involves one or more of these: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Each of these can be set up in less than five minutes and costs you nothing. Before jumping in, a few tips are in order: * When creating your profile, be sure to include a nice photo, and follow the steps suggested at each site to complete as much of your profile as you can. When you're considering adding, following, or contacting someone, think about the impact of missing or otherwise insufficient information. Business networking should not feel like you're living in a mystery novel. None of us has time for that, so think about the people who are looking at you. Make it easy for them to understand who are and what you do. * Thoughtfully add people to your network. I overheard someone on a plane last week saying "I have over a thousand people in my personal network but have no idea who most of them are." If the people in your network lack credibility, what's that say about you? These are your "friends," right? * On LinkedIn, seek out recommendations, but only from people who are qualified to give them. Five hundred professional connections without a single recommendation sends an unfortunate message. Likewise, a recommendation that starts out "I've never actually worked with Dave, but..." is useless, and detracts from social capital and personal credibility. * Participate. Leverage your ability to add or become friends, to post, and to comment to your advantage. Talk about your business, about news that relates to you or your profession, about things that are of interest to your audience. Do not shill or spam. * Be careful with questions like "What are you doing right now?" This common question -- in the context of business -- is a thought-starter, not a literal interrogative. The best response is less along the lines of "ea
Rob Laporte

Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title : What's the Difference? - 1 views

www.searchenginejournal.com/...6930

seo site code & design

shared by Rob Laporte on 21 May 08 - Cached
  • Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title : What’s the Difference? May 19th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 5 Comments search_engine399:http://www.searchenginejournal.com/image-alt-text-vs-image-title-whats-the-difference/6930/Buzz up! submit_url = "http://www.searchenginejournal.com/image-alt-text-vs-image-title-whats-the-difference/6930/"; Most webmasters don’t see any difference between image alt text and title mostly keeping them the same. A great discussion over at Google Webmaster Groups provides an exhaustive information on the differences between an image Alt attribute and an image title and standard recommendations of how to use them. Alt text is meant to be an alternative information source for those people who have chosen to disable images in their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “see” the images. It should describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested to see it. Without an alt text an image will be displayed as an empty icon: In Internet Explorer Alt text also pops up when you hover over an image. Last year Google officially confirmed that it mainly focuses on an alt text when trying to understand what an image is about. Image title (and the element name speaks for itself) should provide additional information and follow the rules of the regular title: it should be relevant, short, catchy and concise (a title “offers advisory information about the element for which it is set“). In FireFox and Opera it pops up when you hover over an image: So based on the above, we can discuss how to properly handle them: the both tags are primarily meant for visitors (though alt text seems more important for crawlers) - so provide explicit information on an image to encourage them to view it or get them interested. include your main keywords in both of them but keep them different. Keyword stuffing in Alt text and Title is still keyword stuffing, so keep them relevant and meaningful. Another good point to take into consideration: According to Aaron Wall, alt text is crucially important when used for a sitewide header banner.
Rob Laporte

Article Pagination: Actions that Improved Google Search Traffic Google SEO News and Dis... - 0 views

www.webmasterworld.com/...4203724.htm

seo site code & design

shared by Rob Laporte on 30 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 30 Jun 11
     
    The value of "long-form journalism" has been tested on websites such as Salon and shown to be quite viable. It also attracts a better caliber of writer. With this in mind, over a year ago I was working with an online magazine that was already publishing longer, in-depth articles, in the area of many thousands of words. The SEO challenge we had was that page 2 and beyond for most articles were not getting any search traffic - even though there was plenty of awesome content there. The approach we decided on is labor intensive for the content creators. But after some education, the writers were all interested in trying to increase the audience size. Here are the steps we took: Page 1 naturally enough uses the overall title of the article for both its title tag and header, and has a unique meta-description. Every internal page then has its own unique title and header tag . These are based on the first SUB-head for that section of the article. This means more keyword research and writing of subheads than would normally be the case. If the article is considered as a whole, then an tag would seem more accurate semantically. But Google looks at the semantic structure one URL at a time, not for the overall multi-URL article. Most pages also include internal subheads, and these are style as On each internal page, there is also a "pre-head" that does use the article title from page 1 in a small font. This pre-head does not use a header tag of any kind, just a CSS style. This pre-head article title is at the top as a navigation cue for the user. An additional navigation cue is that the unique page titles each begin with the numeral "2." or "3." Each internal page also has a unique meta description, one that summarizes that page specifically, rather than summarizing the overall article. Every page of the article links to every other page at the top and the bottom. None of this anemic "Back | Next" junk. There's a complete page choice shown on everywhe
Rob Laporte

Problems Continue With Google Local Business Listings - 0 views

searchengineland.com/al-business-listings-15087.php

local & mobile marketing

shared by Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 21 Oct 08
     
    Oct 14, 2008 at 1:08pm Eastern by Mike Blumenthal Problems Continue With Google Local Business Listings What do the Google searches; Orlando Hotels, Miami Discount Car Rental & Dallas Discount Car Rental have in common? The obvious answer is that they are all local searches on popular phrases in major metro areas. A less obvious answer is that like the infamous Denver Florist search last December, they all return seemingly authoritative OneBox results on popular geo phrase searches in a major market, as in the example below: Orlando Hotels or the Marriott The searches demonstrate clear problems with Google's Universal Local OneBox algorithm. Certainly, "major city + service/product" searches should return a broad range of consumer choices and not an authoritative OneBox that limits the view to one highlighted provider of the service. Google returns the OneBox result because the ostensible business name in the result supposedly mirrors the search phrase and in Google's opinion provides strong relevance in relation to the user query. The problem with the above result is that the business shown on the map is the Marriott Orlando Downtown, not "travel.ian.com." The Marriott's business listing has apparently been hijacked. In fact, all of the listings returned on these searches have apparently been "hijacked" via Google's community edit feature and the business name of the listing has been modified from the original, Marriott Orlando Downtown, to match the search phrase. The URL's of the listings have also been modified to direct users to an affiliate link on an appropriate site. How? Through the use of Google's community edit feature for local business listings. Google's community edit feature has become the playground of black hat affiliate marketers and is sorely in need of more security. Of interest in this regards is that many of these listings are for multinational corporations. These are not small independent business that are t
Rob Laporte

Early data on Google March 2019 Core Update show an interesting pattern - Search Engine... - 0 views

searchengineland.com/-an-interesting-pattern-314089

seo roi planning

shared by Rob Laporte on 06 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Rob Laporte on 06 Apr 19
     
    "Search Metrics"
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