Musings of a Professional UK SEO Consultant

The Search Engine Results in Google are becoming more and more influenced by efforts to personalise the results for the searcher. This is nothing new but I thought that the video below contained some interesting detail that many would be unaware of.

It now seems possible for UK businesses to submit to a third party site and thereby gain a local listing in Bing.

Bing Local Listings are similar to Google Local (or Google Maps) in that they can come up above the algorithmic (organic) search engine results when a searcher includes local place names in a search query, for example: “SEO Company Cheltenham” rather than just “SEO Company”.

Up until now I had assumed that Bing Local listing submissions could only be completed by US based companies, with the few UK based local search engine results being cobbled together from the listings on third party business directories.

All that changed after I read Matthew Elshaws’ Blog on ineedhits.com entitled “How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing” where he talks about Daniel Dutton who has identified where Microsoft gets UK local business listings from, in his blog post entitled “Get Listed in Microsoft UK’s Bing/MSN/Live Business Directory”.

Anyway long story short if you are based in the UK and want to see if it works go to http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq/ and enter your company details.

Please note that this is rather speculative and it will probably take some time for results to be seen, so please no e-mails.  I have submitted my own site and put the word out about this and will let you know the outcome.

Justin March offers this set of instructions as ‘Guidance Only’. Therefore, Justin cannot be held responsible for any work carried out by YOU and/or ANY third party using the instructions.

Having started up this blog only a short while back, I am still in the throes of adding quality content to get the blog up and running properly. I am enjoying the process and writing is fun but… as the floodgates begin to open, the spam starts rolling in…

Obviously this Blog is moderated and I delete blatant spam as soon as it appears, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between being blatant spam and being insightful.

I have therefore been struggling with the nofollow / dofollow question and whether I should apply these tags to the post comments on this Blog.

What are Nofollow / Dofollow tags?

A link with a nofollow tag will appear the same to the general web going public as a link without the tag, but by implementing the nofollow tag the Blog or Forum owner is telling the search engines that this link has not been checked (or is not from a trusted source) and that the link should therefore pass no link juice or power to the resulting page.   At least that is the official line; there is some debate as to how the tag is really being dealt with by Google and the other search engines.  Tests have been run that prove that the Search Engines at least follow the nofollow links to their destination whether the resulting pages receive any link juice is open to debate.

Nofollow tags are implemented as follows:

Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/”>SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham

Applying a nofollow tag, the comment would be transformed to:

Visit my <a href=” http://www.justinmarch.com/cheltenham-gloucester-web-design-seo-offer/” rel=”nofollow”> SEO Company Cheltenham</a> site.
Which would look like this: SEO Company Cheltenham

As you can see both of the above links look exactly the same to the casual observer.

NB: There is no dofollow tag; essentially dofollow is simply a “normal” hyperlink (or the absence of the nofollow tag).

Find out more about the background of the nofollow tag here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

See David Leonhardts’ blog post for even more insight into this debate.

So what to do about Nofollow / Dofollow tags on this Blog?

I act to prevent spam as much as possible but am also willing to reward insightful comments with a dofollow link, the trouble is I’m getting a lot of comments that are in between, they aren’t blatant spam and they aren’t quite as insightful as I would like.

The problem  is it’s a trade off, I don’t want to put people off, and I don’t mind a bit of banter as it helps to humanise my Blog, on the other hand I don’t want to necessarily reward banter with a dofollow link.

Option 1:

• delete the spam
• nofollow the in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Option 2:

• delete the spam
• delete the in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Option 3:

• delete the spam
• follow in-between comments
• follow the insightful comments

Conclusion

For the moment anyway I think that option 1 is the most ideal I will just have to put up with the questions relating to why some comments are assigned nofollow where others are given normal link status.

I look forward to pleanty of insightful comments on this below…

In a recent interview with Webpro news Matt Cutts suggests that site load speed will have an effect on how a site is ranked, rewarding the faster sites over those that are less fast or just downright slow.

See: http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/13/matt-cutts-interview/

The good news is that the Google Caffeine launch will not take place early in 2010 to keep Webmasters happy over the holidays.

It seems to me that Barry Schwartz from searchengineland.com has hit the nail on the head in this article: http://searchengineland.com/site-speed-googles-next-ranking-factor-29793

Conclusions
This change is likely to be a very small part of the Google algorithm and unless your site is really slow and surrounded by other competing sites that load very quickly I don’t believe that most people will see a change in how their website is ranked.  The message is if it isn’t broke don’t fix it.

If you do want to improve your site load speed, check out the following sites:

http://www.webpagetest.org/

http://code.google.com/speed/ or http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

The following video explains how to improve your website performance with Page Speed:

Google have modified Google Translate into a cool tool that offers instant translation results as you type the text into the text box: http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

Sure it’s not perfect “Justin March” comes out as “Justin Mars” when translated into Albanian (which is to be expected I guess) but it certainly is a powerful tool.

For more on the translate tool see: http://translate.google.com/ and the video below:

It has been a long struggle but I am finally seeing some major results for the effort that I have been putting into the SEO work for my site.  My site has finally been ranked for one of my main target phrases SEO Cheltenham the page is low at present but as the content of the page itself is not new I have every reason to believe that this will only improve.

Since inception the site has been gradually improving in the natural search results bringing me leads and business for the longer tail search phrases (those of 3 to 4 words or more).  But now I’m starting to see real increases in natural qualified traffic.

A higher ranking for “Freelance SEO Cheltenham” has also been achieved along with a ranking for “Freelance SEO UK”.

Google Caffine (a major rewrite of a large chunk of how Google index web pages) looks set to launch, the sandbox that was set up by Google has now been retired http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Google state that “Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.”

So what is going to be different:

• It looks like the results will be returned much faster
• It may change the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) but supposedly not by much
• Google will get better and better at prioritising Breaking News
• Mashable think it means a tough time for SEO’s (see link below)

While the sandbox was active Mashable reviewed it here: http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-caffeine/

This is What Matt Cutts had to say back in August 2009:

For some time now I have been targeting certain phrases with local place names in the Search Engines, as such I keep looking at the resulting web pages and am very familiar with the normal results.  This weekend I noticed that the Google Maps listing are no longer appearing under some of these phrases I first spotted this under a search for SEO Cheltenham see image below.

SEO Cheltenham Google Results

Now I have been conducting SEO work since before Google was the next big thing, so I expect to see fluctuations in the results from time to time.  I wouldn’t have been so concerned except for the fact that:

1. I was in the middle of researching an article entitled “How to add your Local Business Listing to Google Maps” and I needed screen shots.
2. I had just read an article about the new Google Local Business Listings Guideline Changes Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-targets-spammers-with-new-local-business-listing-guidelines-29077

The guideline changes in Google Local relate to the business name and the physical location of the business.  In terms of the business name that is used the new guidelines state that this should now be the full and legal business name, this suggests that keyword inclusion in conjunction with or replacing the business name will no longer be tolerated.

Examples of Business names that are now officially not allowed by the new Google Local Business Listings Guidelines:

“Business Name – Keyword1 Keyword2”
“Keyword1 Keyword2”

In terms of the location that is entered when a Google Local Business Listing is applied for this should be the central offices and not a PO Box or virtual location.

For further clarification see Business Listing Quality Guidelines at: http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Was this a penalty handed down by Google to punish all SEO’s?  Having dug about a bit obviously not as the search for SEO Bristol shows:

SEO Bristol Google Results

And it wasn’t anything to do with the area either as a search for Carpet Cheltenham shows:

Google Results Carpets Cheltenham

I also discovered many businesses breaking the new guidelines so it seems unlikely that they are the cause of this sudden change.

I posted a question here: http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=132017

The consensus seems to be that this is a blip on the landscape and that the listings will soon reappear thanks to Ali-v-8 for his thoughts.

The latest video offering from Matt Cutts in which he talks about the importance of optimising your site images for Google Image Search.

This type of optimisation can be particularly important when imagery is integral to your business offering, for example if you are a photographer, designer or artist.

How to Optimise Images
Ann Smarty has written an excellent post on how to optimise images for people, Social Media and the Search Engines, see: http://www.seosmarty.com/image-seo/

Another Thought
If you really want to get your images out to a wider audience sites such as Flikr.com can also be a great way of posting your images and putting them in front of a large audience of image enthusiasts.

Google are Beta testing Social Search, a facility that shows relevant results from your friend’s social media pages including the likes of Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc.

Essentially Google are trying to present us with the most relevant information, our friends and connections are like us, so it follows that we are interested to hear what they say about the places, products and services that we are interested in.

To make social search work a user must have and be signed into their Google Profile (http://www.google.com/profiles) they must also connect that profile to at least one social networking site so that Google can start to identify their “Social Circle”.  When a user searches with their Google Profile enabled Google will find relevant public content from their friends and contacts and highlight it within the search results.

Google have been gravitating towards a more personalised search experience for some time http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/personally-speaking.html and have also been bumping up new content in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) for a while.

Essentially then Google continue to strive to provide the most relevant results to it’s users, it will be interesting to see how this develops, my initial thoughts are:

• It will be interesting to see how many people actually know about the Google Profile
• It is unclear how many people provide useful info on places, products and services when they use Twitter, Facebook etc.

To find out more see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-social-search-i.html