According to Google+ page for Freebase, the website and Freebase API  will be retired by June 30. So Facebook and similar sites will need to pull their data from somewhere else. The most likely place where websites will turn is Wikidata. Google is transferring its data from Freebase to Wikidata and will offer a new API to take over what is called “entity search” powered by Google’s Knowledge Graph.

But these dates are behind schedule according to the Wikidata calendar for Freebase. Primary sources tools were released April 1. But a new Google Knowledge Graph based API will not be launched until Q2 2015, leaving the Freebase website running until Q3. During this time, Google will work to release data from Freebase to the Wikidata community. Denny Vrandečić, previously the Wikidata founder and director is working for Google on the migration.

According to Bob Schmidt, the details of how Wikidata can be use for SEO and Knowledge Graph are buried in these areas.

Found it! After wading through 29 billion pages of the total CF of hell that is Wikipedia documentation on itself (Wikidata being no exception), here is the link that SEOs, web programmers and DBAs will want to review to understand Wikidata classes, properties and datatypes — in other words, the data schema for the database of “facts” about the world’s people, places and things and apparently the new home of the motherlode fueling Google’s and Yahoo’s knowledge graphs (dare we call it the DMOZ of data?):
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-exports/miga/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

For those not up to the technical challenges of learning the code for data schema to update the database directly, enlisting the help of a Wikipedia editor may be more feasible.

The post Δ Freebase, Hummingbird’s Left Brain Becomes Wikidata appeared first on Blend SEO.

• first, if they should even use schema.org?
• why they should do microdata?
• what parts of schema.org should they use?
• what is the benefit of having rich snippets?
• what does schema.org have to do with semantic search and Google Hummingbird?

It’s not just upper management or website owners who have questions about Schema.org. Chris Everett, an SEO consultant here in Atlanta with a high degree of technical knowledge recently asked my opinion on schema.org. So I’m writing this post to address both the business question on whether to invest in Schema.org structured data as well as the SEO practitioner questions on keyword strategy. I’ll go through a 4 step process to break down the opportunity into its basic building blocks, identify opportunities, assign measured ROI value and make a prioritized tier based budget.

Business & Marketing Strategy for Schema.org

Rich snippets have been around for a long time. It was one of the first areas I dove into as an SEO Research and Development Technician about 4 years ago at my previous SEO agency in Atlanta. At that time, rich snippets required structured data, a feed or an XML sitemap (which also acts essentially as a feed).  Microdata was the newest structured data markup, as search engines already supported rDFA and microformats. About a year and half later, Schema.org was established via joint effort by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to have one vocabulary and semantic markup language.

I’ve since reviewed $100K+ websites that had structured data as a website development requirement, but in reality only had blank tags. No one came back after the developer to fill in the content for the tags.  I’ve seen developers take their best stab at integrating schema.org across websites for major brand names, only to see no change in search results.  As much as I love and respect web developers (hey, at one point that was the direction my career could have gone), a decision for exactly what content to cover with schema.org microdata should be made by an SEO who is familiar with your business goals and what search engines are capable of using and where they are headed in the future.  It is possible to tag every little detail of your website.  But the best business decision requires you to know the limitations and opportunities in search engines for this technology so that you can invest just enough to use it to leverage visibility for your content that will achieve your business goals.

SEO Strategy for Schema.org and Rich Snippets

For the last 4 years, this has been my strategy for using rich snippets. It follows basic logic that will continue working for years to come.  However, at the end of this article I mention additional considerations to keep in mind for the future as semantic markup and semantic search become a focal point for Google in mobile device search experience. But regardless of who you are, when you decide to use microdata and schema.org markup, the end goal is to maximize visibility in search in a way that leads to marketing goals.  This often means brand awareness, demonstrating thought leadership, some degree of reputation management and of course lead generation.

1. All the Building Blocks: Know What Google Will Display as a Rich Snippet.
   Google Webmaster Tools Help provides a list for types of rich snippets supported by Google. Knowing this list is important. It’s like your tool belt, your art brushes or your building blocks.  Schema.org provides a HUGE list of vocabulary you can markup, starting from thing and drills down to the next level labeled action, class, broadcast service, creative work, event, intangible, medical entity, organization, person, place, product and property.  But not everything you markup with Schema.org will appear in Google. Webmaster Tools Help provides a lot of information and several pages about rich snippets that you can spend hours reading and clicking through. But this is the best page buried among the others to use as a starting place. It gives you all the choices of things that you would bother to mark up.  Because these are the only things that will appear as rich snippets.
   • Rich snippets – Breadcrumbs
   • Rich snippets – Events
   • Rich snippets – Music
   • Rich snippets – Organizations
   • Rich snippets – People
   • Rich snippets – Products
   • Rich snippets – Recipes
   • Rich snippets – Review ratings
   • Rich snippets – Reviews
   • Rich snippets – Software applications
   • Rich snippets – Videos: Facebook Share and RDFa
   • schema.org markup for videos
   • Supported software application types
     
2. Your Blocks: Take Stock of Website Assets That Can be Marked Up
   If you are familiar with your website content and what assets may be available (like videos, expert reviews, customer testimonials, or event calendars), matching them up with items on the list above should be pretty easy.  Breadcrumbs and organization can be done on practically every website.  Video is also pretty common.  Products used to be a good one until Google Shopping required paid-inclusion.  People may be useful for high profile executives, celebrities, actors, lawyers, doctors, politicians or anyone that appears elsewhere online and may be searched by your audience. Events are good if the site keeps updated listings for upcoming events.
   .
3. Which of Your Blocks Can Fit the Holes: Keyword Research for Rich Snippets
   Just because you code a page with proper microdata and test it with a Bing or Google rich snippet markup testing tool, it does not mean a rich snippet will appear in live search results.  Google tells you in the rich snippet testing tool that the appearance of rich snippets is not guaranteed, that it depends on the query.  Here’s what that means in English. Google tries to understand search intent for every keyword.  Based on your keyphrase searched, Google is trying to guess what task you are trying to accomplish. Are you looking for somewhere to go? You probably could use local map search results.  Do you need to know a definition, translation or basic information about a subject? The Knowledge Graph may answer your question directly. Do you want to learn how to do something? Videos may be most helpful.To figure out if you have a good chance for your rich snippets to appear, some SEO software like Brightedge will tell you which keywords trigger universal results.  However, I found it more accurate to manually check. But you only need to check keywords where you rank relatively high.  Just check keywords that rank on page 1 or 2 (and maybe page 3), and keep a column that shows which webpage  ranks for each keyword.  If you are doing this exercise for multiple types of rich snippets, it would be wise to keep a separate column for each type, since one keyword can trigger multiple types of rich snippets.  Keeping a column for search volume will help you prioritize later. The idea is to figure out what existing rankings you can boost traffic through by turning a plain listing into a rich snippet. You may also see an improvement in ranking position.NOTE: Go ahead and do breadcrumbs and organization.  Breadcrumbs are sitewide and can appear in all your listings.  The search engine listing will display your breadcrumb navigation between the title and description, giving the user multiple links to multiple pages of your website.  Organization tagging can go on every page or just on contact or about-us pages. Organization tagging should coordinate with your Local SEO efforts and Google+. Refer to this article on how to implement schema.org microdata for Organization.
   .
4. Picking Your Best Blocks: Determine Best Pages to Optimize with Microdata
   This step will help you keep your cost down and narrow your efforts to the best pages. You should have a list of keywords where you have page 1-3 visibility, that display rich snippets for assets you are considering optimizing with schema.org microdata tags. You should also have the search volume and ranking webpage for each keyword. It’s likely that the same pages ranks for several keywords. You can use an excel table to filter the data. Order by webpages and find the subtotal for keyword search volume of all the keywords that rank for each page.  You can do this individually for each type of rich snippet.  Now you have a measure for the return on investment of optimizing schema.org microdata for each page in terms of potential visibility based on search volume.

Budgeting for Schema.org Microdata Tagging for Rich Snippets

With the method above you can create a prioritized list of pages for implementing schema.org tagging, and a measure of potential return on investment for each page based on search volume of the tracked keywords for which each page currently ranks.  Now you have the flexibility of creating tiered estimated cost by implementing across sets of pages divided into whatever tiers make sense from your potential ROI determined in step 4.

Schema.org SEO and the Future of Semantic Search

Google’s search product is being geared toward mobile voice search and has been retooled with the Hummingbird algorithm. The more information Google can pull from your structured data and serve via rich snippets and Knowledge Graph, the more complete the experience becomes.  Google wants to answer questions right in the SERPs, often without the need for a user to click through to a different website. This means SEO must strive to coordinate and maximize brand exposure in SERPs.  Therefore, schema tags for Organization, People, etc. must coordinate with social media, local SEO, Wikipedia and online PR efforts for brand mentions.

For more information on the future of SEO in Google, see my contribution (heading #3) of this BKV article on 2014 media predictions.

The post 4 Step Schema.org SEO Strategy & ROI for Microdata, Rich Snippets & Semantic Search appeared first on Blend SEO.

Google’s Strategy for Business, Adwords and SEO

To unravel the misunderstandings, let’s take a step back. This may seem like basic stuff, but its essential to remember as we consider Google’s recent initiatives and PR.  Google was started as an idealistic company, but as it became a giant we’ve come to realize it’s decisions and PR are done in a way for it to make money.

Google sells Adwords advertising based on keyword bids.  Google also owns Motorola, sells the Nexus tablet and provides the Android operating system for mobile and tablet devices.  With this in mind, it is in Google’s best interest to provide an excellent search experience in order to continue selling Adwords and to provide an excellent product experience on its mobile and tablet devices being sold.

Google makes no money from people strictly in the business of SEO.  In fact, the very nature of SEO is to provide someone an advantage to boost visibility in Google without paying Google. Yet it recognizes there is an entire SEO industry that influences how the world creates websites. Instead of waging war on SEO, Google realized it can leverage it’s own voice to influence SEO practices and the way websites are made.  In this way Google can help maintain quality of listings that appear in the organic search product. Google certainly does not owe anything to SEO professionals. Any pointers Google provides on optimizing for its algorithm are to help improve Google’s search product experience.

Biggest Misunderstanding About Google Hummingbird

Hummingbird is Google Not Providing Keyword Data…Wrong!

Hummingbird is Google’s new ranking algorithm.  It decides what listings to display after a user submits a search query.  It was implemented live near the end of August.  Google stopped providing all keyword data September 25. These are two separate things. But to confuse the issues into one, Google announced Hummingbird on the same day they stopped keyword data.  To further confuse and blend the two issues, Google stated that the new direction of search is less keyword oriented. They were making an announcement about their algorithm, so they knew their audience was SEO’s. They urged SEO’s to focus less on keywords and more on website quality and user experience.  And on that day, all organic keyword data ended. This spawned many articles discussing the relationship of Hummingbird and keywords not provided. However, Google continues to provide keyword data and insights to Adwords customers for the keywords they purchase.  Google is certainly not telling Adwords customers to stop focusing on keywords.

Hummingbird is Made to Sell Phones and Tablets

Hummingbird is designed to help people on an Android device do a voice search that brings up a rich snippet for knowledge graph information (which often includes Wikipedia data) or vertical results like conversions, dictionary, maps, etc.  The idea being that you ask your Android device a question and Google can answer it.  And Hummingbird is only concerned with understanding the query (person asking a question…Google, how far is the moon? What movies has Tom Cruise been in?, How do I get home? Where can I get Thai food?).  Knowledge graph, rich snippets, vertical search are all separate initiatives for displaying the results. But these were all improved recently before Hummingbird was announced and were highlighted during the announcement.  This all just in time for the new Nexus 7 tablet, new Kindle Fire (runs on a modified version of Android) and whatever onslaught of devices are pushed during Christmas (Motorola is owned by Google) so that people have a cool Google/device experience on their new devices.

The post Don’t Let Google Hummingbird Fool You: Misconception & Truth appeared first on Blend SEO.

Good or Bad SEO?

Avoid the SEO Money Drain

People want to pay for valuable results. A lot of SEO consultants slowly burn their clients and spread distrust & fear of shady SEO scammers. If you nickel & dime clients for requests that waste your time, you aren’t selling high value services. If you provide SEO consulting, it can be a challenge to decide how much to give away free up front, how much to reserve for paid SEO services and how many little answers to provide before charging. Some search engine optimization consultants charge business owners for SEO services and tasks that aren’t necessarily most important to turn around the business, but takes up their time. Ultimately, this type of pattern does not provide value for the money.  And of course there’s the scenario every SEO provider claims not to be… the devious SEO consultant doing blackhat tricks that cause penalties; the classic SEO scare tactic selling point. But they really are out there. And, I’ve noticed that the lower budget website owners who are struggling to make a profit seem to get taken advantage of the most. In either extreme, the consultant charges for SEO services or advice, creating hope for results until the business owner runs out of money or decides to stop paying for something that’s not doing any good.

Beware Free SEO Advice

The absolute worst scenario is when a website owner desperate to try anything gets a hold of half truths.  The business owner learns advice somewhere that is not applicable to him or her and ends up spending precious money to inadvertently destroy rankings and traffic.  Free SEO advise can be the most dangerous, because it often true and verifiable by Googling, but does not come with the full background story.  I spoke to a guy who sold exercise sand bags online.  He read or heard somewhere that blogging on WordPress is key to SEO.  But he didn’t realize it is not THE key to SEO.

There’s no single SEO silver bullet solution.  He had a website built from a Yahoo store that did OK for many years.  But something convinced him he needed to be on WordPress.  So he deleted the old website and started over with a new one developed on a WordPress platform.  His rankings and traffic immediately went to zero and he had no idea why.  He even blogged regularly.  But he had no idea that his old site back link profile was valuable and needed to be transferred to the new site.  He was link building by buying as many domains as he could and redirecting them to his website! He had no idea that he needed to write optimized blog posts in order to bring in any search traffic.  He didn’t understand how WordPress blogs are good for SEO, and he couldn’t get his new site in motion.  I looked at the competitors in his niche on page 1 and their backlink profiles were not stellar.  It wouldn’t be hard to get him on page 1 by salvaging his backlinks and training him on writing keyword optimized posts that cross link to the product pages.  By the second time I spoke with him, he had put out enough requests to hungry SEO’s who wanted what little money he had left to spend to turn around the website that he was completely on the defense and hung up on me like a telemarketer.  I really felt bad for the guy.  He had no clue what was good or bad advise.

Enjoy Free SEO Consulting

Sure, I give more free advice than paid SEO consultations.  But that’s partly because doing the SEO part is more fun than writing up estimates and billing people.  I do a thorough analysis and see what the issues are pretty quickly.  I’d rather just tell someone how to deal with it and teach them how to move forward.  I’ve been blessed with a great SEO career and I know that I don’t need to work a couple hundred bucks out of people whenever I have a chance.  I believe if you take a step of faith and give free SEO consulting instead of charging those who can’t afford it, God will work his magic and take care of your finances.

A recent client had been struggling to get results from his online business for the last 3 years. I took a look at the site he was trying to rank and compared a handful of KPIs as well as some basic observations with his competitors in SERPs.  There were a lot of deficiencies. He was flailing. I decided to offer a plan for paid SEO consulting services.  The plan is the strategy and estimate of work, which requires an analysis.  Writing up the analysis turned out to be the most time intensive part of the work.  And it was the part that was free.  A lot of SEO firms provide a free analysis that is basically an SEO report that is spit out directly from software, with no actionable items, no strategy, no thought, no insight.  But I look for…

• What are your editorial strengths that can be leveraged for SEO?
• Are there rich snippets you are not taking advantage of?
• Have you done any basic local SEO tactics?
• Do you have any technical issues that shoot yourself in the foot?
• Are you experiencing penalties or major crawling/indexing challenges?

I did a full SEO analysis and created a professional deliverable with observations, conclusions and steps to take with pricing for each phase of the work.  Here’s the reaction.

We are thinking that you sound like the first honest SEO person we have come across and agree with much of your analysis.

His partner went on to say…

I truly appreciate your efforts to date. The analysis you undertook, and the work needed for each of the three phases makes sense. And you presented the facts quite well. The back links with [competitor] were amazing, and your honesty for diagnosing the problems is again very much appreciated (as opposed to beating around the bush, which myself and Charlie had been through over and over and over again). You pin pointed facts that were problematic and that is what we were trying to find. Someone who could help and identify what it is that needs to be done as opposed to keeping the SEO process a deep dark mystery.

Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO

Funny thing, the nature of SEO makes it a deep dark mystery.  How to get your website to rank in Google’s secret algorithm above other websites, who are also using SEO to rank above you.  People want a key to cheat the system.  By Google’s webmaster guidelines, any attempt to game the algorithm to obtain higher rankings is considered SPAM.  That means any attempt to rank higher is black hat.

But Google (and other search engines) have recognized and embraced the SEO community.  To be a white hat SEO, means to build your online properties with information in a way that supports the same goals for users that Google values. It means creating a valuable resource for users, so Google can be proud to feature your website in it’s listings.  It also means to create structured data around your brand that search engines can pull into their databases in order to serve up media rich results with enough contextual information that visitors don’t need to click anywhere else to get their answers. It means utilizing all of Google’s properties so you are feeding Google tons of data around your brand, so as to maximize your visibility Google can give your brand.

The post SEO Consultant Ethics: Transparent Search Engine Optimization is the Best Policy appeared first on Blend SEO.

What are Advanced Persistent Threats?

Advanced persistent threats, or APTs are a term used to describe a funded organization with a goal to obtain secure data from a specific targeted party.  For example, this could be a funded terrorist group bent on breaking into and defiling the official website of another country.  Or it could be a factory of workers continually sending spam phishing emails  in order to steal financial records from a particular investment firm or steal electronic healthcare records from a hospital database.

What is FireEye?

FireEye Malware Protection System is an advanced family of email and web security appliances.  These appliances detect custom or new malware or viruses that anti-virus software does not yet recognize.  Known viruses are a cyber threat.  However, at some point, every virus was new, without an easy defense to recognize it and prevent intrusion.  Advanced threats are those that are newly developed and can get passed anti-virus software.  FireEye appliances go beyond known virus definitions to detect malware without signatures.  These appliances require highly trained people to administer, maintain and monitor them.

The post SEO Client Dell Teams with FireEye Against Advanced Persistent Threats appeared first on Blend SEO.

Blend starts with the end in mind.  A blended skill set of design and marketing contributes to SEO for a stronger, unified result.  Blend is SEO (search engine optimization) infused with design and marketing.  Our blog, the BlendER (ER = Everything Relevant), breaks down problems that are hard to chew into easily digestible servings.

Meaning Behind the Cute Words and Symbols?

The new business name and logo represent a blended approach to an end result.  A bit more organic than the old GLiD logo, Blend reveals aspects of synergy and growth.  The internet of yesterday, well, more like a few years ago…was pretty cut and dry.  If you got past the technical barriers, you were in.  Moving forward to the internet of yesterday – we were all captivated by web 2.0, and the community element. Blogs for individuals, blogs for companies, BLOGs for Everyone!  Search engine optimization became more organic as content provided by the community grew and search engines evolved.  Today, the elements of design and marketing are obviously essential components.  Technical internet expertise is required to keep up with quickly moving, influential search engines.  In addition, community involvement has blossomed into a mixture of social media.  Mobile web devices, local search and multinational internet presence demand focus to be divided and narrowed to human behavior at a single location.  With all this in mind, it starts with the marketing end goal.

GLiD has long been a solo act.  Since 1997, growth transformed Greg Lee I.D. through industrial design, identity, intelligent design, …and now the expansion involving collaboration with others behind the scenes coupled with intense SEO research and development pushes GLiD forward into Blend.  GLiD SEO and design services are now Blend SEO.

The post GLiD Design and Marketing Becomes Blend SEO. appeared first on Blend SEO.

Google Office in Atlanta

Google invited 150 search marketing professionals along with Bing, Yahoo, Razorfish and 360i into the Atlanta Google office for a mobile search marketing event.  Each of the major search engines sat side by side along with Razorfish to speak on upcoming trends in mobile search and to answer our questions from search engine optimization consultants, internet marketing companies, web designers, creative agencies and any company providing SEM and SEO services among the 150 first people to make it through the door in Atlanta.

I was one of those 150 people.

The event was simulcast from Google Atlanta to offices in New York and Boston.  Limited audiences were invited to attend the event in New York and Boston.  A live feed from each office was projected on the wall in the Atlanta office alongside the speaker presentation screen.  The speakers responded to questions from all three locations.

The mobile search marketing speaker panel consisted of:

• Bing: Director of Bing Mobile Product Management – Andy Chu
• Yahoo: Senior Director, Mobile Sales Strategies – Paul Cushman
• Google: Senior Account Executive (Mobile Ads Team) – Elliott Nix
• Razorfish: VP of Mobile – Paul Gelb

I showed up a little early to make sure I had plenty of time to explore the Google office.  The office in Atlanta is a satellite office for Google, and as you might imagine looks like a small version of the California office descriptions, decorated with big red, yellow, green and blue circles in the carpet, carved into the walls, in the ceiling and repeated playfully throughout the decor.

After networking for about an hour with other SEM and SEO agency, marketing and designer SEMPO Atlanta members we settled down for the presentations.  After introductions by various sponsors and SEMPO officials we got to the speaker presentations.  Razorfish went first, followed by Yahoo, Bing, then Google.

Whether intended or not, the reoccurring theme behind was how human behavior drives mobile search. Here’s a synopsis of their presentations.

Paul Gelb, Vice President of Mobile for Razorfish opened with entertaining examples of mobile search niches based on available search apps.  Search apps are catered to every behavior: shopping, finding restaurants, finding directions and even finding public restrooms (complete with user reviews and ratings on cleanliness), one of which provided by Charmin, the toilet paper brand. Paul Gelb relates that particular search apps are used based on human behaviors.

Yahoo Mobile Search Presenter

Next Paul Cushman, Senior Director of Mobile Sales Strategies for Yahoo presented.  Paul presented some fresh demographic information from Yahoo and insights on how to predict mobile search trends.

• The overall age is a younger demographic engaged in mobile search.
• The average number of keywords in a mobile query is shorter than on desktop.
• Day parting is shifted as mobile search volume starts earlier in the day and lasts longer into the night.
• iPads and entertainment related search increased as people search on iPads during TV watching

Paul Cushman presented a study of search volume during 2010 Academy Awards.  TV commercial breaks were tracked against mobile web user traffic.  Results show tendencies of “co-browsing”: spikes in mobile search traffic during commercial breaks.

An audience member asked how to persuade mobile paid search programs to prospects who are still new to the idea of mobile search.   Paul pointed out how search behaviors for mobile, unlike desktop, follow common sense.  In other words, think about how you search on your phone and the trends pretty much match.

• People search while in the bathroom, instead of using a magazine.
• People grab their phone before getting out of bed and search.
• People search products to read reviews while at store locations before making buying decisions.

These search trends are pretty easy to explain to customers, however it is new and if someone is not ready to shift funds into a new platform, than its probably not right for them yet.

Bing Mobile Search Presenter

Andy Chu, Director of Bing Mobile Product Management spoke next.  Andy provided data and case studies illustrating further opportunities in mobile search marketing.  Andy through out a few user statistics, skipping over those covered by Paul Cushman’s Yahoo presentation.  He did however mention the 18-20 year old demographic is growing fastest, up 65%.

Andy explores two types of search activity: task centric and local centric.

Task Centric Search:
Bing, a Microsoft brand maintains its market differentiators for search as visually organized, following task centric needs.  Task centric search sessions may last an hour.

Local Centric Search:
Local centric searches are geographic related and usually are infotainment related – learn about restaurants or movies in order to make a decision and find a location.

• It takes 21 steps to choose a restaurant
• Mobile searches have 1.5 times more typos than desktop
• 60% of adults rate alternate input as lead enabling experiences
• 70% of tasks are completed within 1 hour

Bing studies on money saving tasks indicate:

• 56% iPhone users compare prices
• 5.3% consumers reddem mobile coupons
• 39% of businesses intend to use mobile coupons

Bing opinion on search apps verses browsers:

Distribution of apps is a challenge.  Regardless of the platform, users are provided hundreds of apps to scroll through.  Most app descriptions lack meaningful content (hello, optimize your apps anyone?). Therefore the apps are not effectively searchable.

Question from the audience:

What are the values of a mobile site verses desktop site?  Do you really need a mobile site?

Answer from Andy Chu of Bing:

Yes. Mobile sites have more interaction and click through.

Google Mobile Search Presenter

Elliot Nix, Senior Account Executive  of Google’s Mobile Ads Team presented last.

• 35% of Android search is via voice
• A study in Japan showed a mobile device is always within 3 feet
• Mobile search occurs in the bathroom
• 1 in 5 adults check their mobile device before leaving bed in the morning
• 79% of retailers do not have a mobile site
• Google Analytics can track mobile app activity after the app is downloaded

The process for a mobile search strategy

1. Create a mobile site
2. Think mobile
3. Be discovered
4. Track (mobile independently)
5. Iterate

Audience Question: Does a slate or iPad device render desktop websites or is a 3rd version required after mobile?

Panel Answer: Most websites render fine on iPad, however flash is a problem.

Audience Question: How does +1 (plus one) affect search results?

Google Answer: +1 is a personal consumer tool, so it may affect organic search for that individual searching while logged into the account where +1 was used.

The original presentation can be found here:

• Paul Cushman, Yahoo:
  http://www.slideshare.net/sempoatlanta/sempo-mobile-yahoo?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
• Andy Chu, Bing:
  http://www.slideshare.net/sempoatlanta/sempo-mobile-bing?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
• Paul Gelb: Razorfish:
  http://www.slideshare.net/sempoatlanta/sempo-mobile-razorfish?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
• Google’s presentation is not available online, but they have provided the link below.
  http://www.google.com/events/thinkmobile2011/livestream.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Links courtesy of Benjamin Rudolf, President SEMPO Atlanta.

The post Mobile Search Marketing Event: Google, Bing, Yahoo and Razorfish Live Presentations appeared first on Blend SEO.

I am changing my business name and the website domain name.  How do I keep search engine traffic?  What do I do for search engine optimization so that I don’t throw away my past SEO efforts?  How do I redirect traffic from other websites and marketing to the new website?

If you are in this situation, there are two things to consider:

1. people’s perception of the name change
2. technical aspects of the name change for search engines and internet traffic

Name Change Perception

At the very least, I expect you will inform your current and potential customers and  that the name will be changing before it happens.  For example, I plan to change my business name from GLiD to Blend.  The name change has been long overdue.

People may want to know why and what to expect?  Will services change under the new name?  Is management changing?  For example, GLiD will be changing to Blend.

For GLiD, the core services have evolved from industrial design, to graphic design, to search engine optimization and internet marketing.  GLiD initially was created for Greg Lee Industrial Design.  Keeping the same name, the acronym transitioned to Greg Lee I.D. (for identity) and later to Greg Lee Intelligent Design (encompassing identity, print and web development).  Since 2004, SEO and internet marketing slowly infused deeper into the services while providing extensive graphic design and website development while working in tandem with an influential internet marketer in Charleston, South Carolina.

The internet evolved and GLiD did too.  Learning from experts in internet marketing and SEO, GLiD knowledge base grew.  In January 2009, I moved the GLiD office to Atlanta, a hub for the internet marketing and SEO community.  By January 2010, I began serving as the search engine optimization research and development department for the Atlanta internet marketing firm, Medium Blue.  In summer of 2011, GLiD will transition to Blend, dropping industrial design to completely focus on SEO, website development and graphic design.

During the transition period, www.GLiD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss will be co-branded with banners advertising the name change to Blend.  After the transition to Blend, there will still be prominent messages showing formerly GLiD, to address traffic from old links that promote GLiD.

Website Redirect for SEO and Traffic

OK, here’s the tricky part.  Even the experts get this wrong sometimes.  I watched a seasoned SEO webmaster use the wrong redirect and cause a business to disappear from search results.  On a day to day basis, I catch errors made by big name brands that create duplicate content and abandon thousands of back links when they attempt to switch domain names for a website.  To illustrate how to correctly make the switch, I will use the GLiD to Blend example.

The website www.GLiD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss will switch to www.BlendSEO.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  This is the process to correctly redirect all your traffic, back links and search engine authority (i.e. Google PageRank) to the new domain name.  Most online articles tell you to 301 redirect www.GliD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss to www.BlendSEO.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  This sounds simpler than it really is.

Many times, the web developer will create a 301 redirect from http://www.glid.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss to http://blendseo.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  The result is that the homepage of the old website redirects to the homepage of the new website, but all the interior pages are not affected.  This is WRONG!  Thousands of back links to interior pages still go to those pages on the old website.  Search engine results for interior pages still send traffic to the old website.  What is required is a global redirect.

Since this is only a domain name change, the website will remain the same except for the new domain name.  The files will continue to be hosted on the same server.

First, any internal links using absolute paths will need to be update to use relative paths.  Now, pointing the new domain www.BlendSEO.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss at the website will allow the homepage and any static pages to work.  As long as there are no back links using the new URL, search engines will not know about it yet.

Next to get the blog working, the settings will need to be changes to indicate the new absolute path to the blog.

Finally, a global rewrite rule must be added to the .htaccess file.  I will use a rewrite rule (which uses Follow SymLinks and RewriteEngine On), instead of a redirect (which only uses Rewrite Engine On) because both domain names will be pointed to the same set of files.  Using a typical 301 rewrite from every page of the website to the new domain in this situation would create an infinite loop any time the new domain is requested.   The rewrite rule will allow me to take any URL from www.glid.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss and rewrite it to the same path on www.blendseo.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  All links will continue to work when the new domain name is switched out.

The post Changing the Business Name and Website Domain Name appeared first on Blend SEO.

As of January 19, 2010 I (Gregory Lee) will be employed full time for the “Top SEO Company in the World”  while continuing SEO consulting.  I was hired as the Research and Development Technician to help clients with websites that are struggling.  I will be researching and developing new strategies to improve website visibility where the normal good practices just are not quite doing enough.  I’ll be researching new algorithm changes, studying link profiles, doing competitive website research, and overturning stones to improve standard procedures.

Kudos to Charleston SEO and Internet Marketing Mentor

Of course I have to give credit to my client and mentor of the last 5 or 6 years.  The SEO knowledge and tools will be going with me to my knew position.  The uniquely trained link building virtual assistants and copywriters will surely come in handy for countless clients who don’t have time to create optimized blogs every week or the time to comb the internet requesting for links, commenting on blogs, posting articles, etc.

At this prominent SEO agency, I’ll be wearing fewer hats so I can focus on creating, implementing and tracking the results of my SEO strategies…one client at a time.  Sure, there will still be some creative opportunities as I check all website implementation for graphic design cohesion.  I’ll even have some opportunity to roll up my sleeves and work with code when the implementation department gets backed up.  Furthermore, I’ll be diving into new ground (for me) working with server generated dynamic content where the meta tags are pieced together from different areas of a database.  I look forward to a fulfilling career, focused on Search Engine Optimization results.

Research & Development Technician or SEO Scientist?

Since I’ll be studying websites, creating a hypothesis designed to bring specific results, implementing my plan and testing the results, I believe that is essentially the scientific method.  So that would make me a scientist.  Maybe my new title should be SEO R&D Scientist.

What do you think of that title?  Sounds a little more impressive than Research and Development Technician.  And I think it may actually be accurate.  What credentials do you need to be considered a scientist, other than practicing the scientific method?

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