Archive for September, 2007

I just received this Toolkit in the mail from Google:

Are they trying to bribe advertisers? Is this the equivilant of a paid link?

Regardless, it’s always nice to receive goodies in the mail, especially from Google.

Thanks Google. I appreciate it.

This is just an image of a “Carousel” so everyone knowns what I’m talking about.

Question: Is the Carousel component crawlable/indexable?

The answer is…maybe.

A Carousel can be in either static HTML, Javascript, or Ajax.
It’s key that all of the carousel content be written to the page on the initial load, instead of server side. And, NOT contained within the Javascript.

A simple HTML version is better for Google, because the images (or links) are written to the browsers in HTML. So Google will see and read them. The “dynamic” versions of the carousel loads the data through javascript, so Google won’t see it. The simple one only uses javascript to adjust what portion of the list you’re looking at.

For example: Using a Search Engine Spider Simulator, you can copy and paste this URL , and you’ll see the content within the Carousel is crawlable.

Guidelines for SEO:
(1) Ideally, use the simple static html version vs. the dynamic one.
(2) For indexing purposes, you can include a link on the sitemap (or XML Sitemap), or create a list of all of the links for Google and browsers w/o javascript.
(3) Alternately, use an “Archives” section for the links/content within the carousel.

The Alt Tag provides very marginal if any boost in SEO. It certainly is a bestpractice to use Alt tags, but, I wouldn’t rely on them to provide a noticable SEO value.

The most important Alt tag is on the logo. So, you might be wondering, “How does Google know it’s your logo?”

Should it be called out in the filename? Well, there’s no Google “Logo Search”…at least not yet. Hmm, a vertical search engine that looks at logos. Not a bad idea.

Certainly, a logo should be tagged as a logo in the alt text for accessibility purposes. But, Google can’t differentiate the logo from other images. So therefore, perhaps the bestpractice would be to alt tag it - “logo”. Google can only know from the alt tag or file name. I wonder if tagging it “logo” would provide the extra wording in the Alt text any more SEO value…like, “Logo - SEO Company”. Although, I doubt it; sounds very 1999.

In my opinion, the most important Alt tags are on sitewide images.

Think about it. It’s just logical. Google must place more importance on a sitewide image over a single page image. So, sitewide images get more weight, not just logos. All things being equal between 2 sites, the Alt tags properly written could push 1 site over the top.

So, as far as Google being able to differentiate your logo from the rest of your images, they can’t. Google cannot OCR (optical character recognition) the whole web - thats why even links labeled sponsored links, Google can’t spot. The web is just too big for them to crawl and read all the graphics. Even though the bots can read the text in images. Thats why captchas don’t offer full-proof protection these days against spammers. Because the bots that OCR them are getting better.

New Link Networks can seem legitimate to an untrained eye. The problem I see is if they are listing inventory sites on their website…that is obviously bad. The other problem I can see with some Link Networks, is that that they are also allowing their clients to login and view the inventory on-line. This is also bad because eventually someone from Google will breach their security or simply create a login which will allow them to view their entire inventory.

So, even if they are only showing the inventory behind the login, it’s probably okay for a while, until they attract enough attention to get Google to log in and devalue or even ban their sites. This would be pretty easy to do as Google has hundreds of people prowling around looking for paid links, so a place like this is to them like a flower is to a bee - sooner or later one of them will find this site, log in, and flag all of the sites as those selling links. Additionally, Google is working on detecting paid links algorithmically.

I have seen this happen with other link building firms, that’s why I don’t use any firms that allow viewing of their site inventory. Site confidentiality should be taken very seriously (even if that means more work and longer placement time) so that we can rest easy that sites continue to pass PageRank and SEO value from Links.

A few additional thoughts/concerns:
1) Some Link Networks brag that they have big well know sites in their inventory. The bigger sites which they have as publishers are well known, and more likely on the Google radar.
2) If the Link Network uses an automated script to manage their links. Google is working feverishly to detect these scripts.
3) Perhaps their pricing isn’t out of line, but for the same money, less known sites could have a bigger SEO value, and provide a bigger bang for the buck.
4) It might be that just adding additional copy on your webpages will provide a boost, without the need to spend more money. Spend the time and/or money on SEO Copywriting.
5) Publicly viewable inventory is of great concern.

Besides the thrill of a Video Optimization, below are 10 Reasons to be interested in Youtube.

1) Videos will now appear in the regular Google search results (Google Universal Search).
2) Youtube can be a huge traffic driver.
3) Youtube is a huge part of the Web & Social media.
4) Youtube can be a branding machine.
5) Youtube can be used to drive traffic to an ecommerce site (Direct Response).
6) Free video storage space.
7) Convienent way to share videos with friends & family (Just send link).
Youtube is the #1 Social Media application used.
9) Youtube is the largest video site (See industry research chart below).
10) Youtube is the 11th most popular website in the US.