Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Google Search Engine’ Category

Google is telling the world what every seasoned webmaster and search marketer should already know: The keywords meta tag has no impact whatsoever on how Google’s search engine ranks pages. None. Zilch. Nada. And while Google often needs to be somewhat ambiguous when talking about how it ranks pages, the message in today’s blog post is perfectly clear:

    “Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.”

Google’s blog post also talks about an imagined clash between two web site owners, Bob and Alice, over Bob’s use of Alice’s business name in his keywords tag and copying of other words from her keywords tag. Although Google doesn’t mention actual companies and doesn’t reference a specific lawsuit, the video that accompanies the blog post does mention lawsuits that involve the keywords tag and Google’s search rankings. About the keywords meta tag, Matt Cutts says:

    “It’s really not worth suing someone over because, at least for Google, we don’t use that information in our rankings even the least little bit.”

This is old news and most people know that just putting the keywords in the keyword meta tag has no effect at all, at least at Google.   I guess this confirms it!   Yet really the keyword meta tag hasnt been used for like 5 years or more and never really was that big of a factor anyway.  The Title of each page though is very important, as is having solid unique content on all pages and many links from other websites pointing to your site using the keywords in the anchor text that you want to be ranked on.

VIDEO OF MATT CUTS TALKING ABOUT KEYWORD META TAG

Greg Grothaus of the Search Quality Team has posted a video (along with a presentation on the Webmaster Central Blog) covering duplicate content and multiple site issues that webmasters continue to face when trying to rank well in Google. 

Greg begins by clearing up a popular myth about duplicate content, and that is that Google penalizes sites for having duplicate content. This is not the case. That's not to say that duplicate content can't have a negative impact on your rankings, but Google itself is not penalizing you for it.

Greg stresses that duplicate content is simply a factor on a "by query" basis.  "What's actually happening, is that we're looking at the query that the user's doing, and we're saying that we want diversity in the results we're going to show a user," says Grothaus. He says those who think their content is being omitted because it is duplicate, will likely find that if they adjust their query to more specifically reflect the missing piece, they may just find that it shows up in results after all.

Google recognizes that most duplicate content is not created to be deceptive. There are of course exceptions, which are considered spam. Grothaus says even spam sites aren't being penalized for having duplicate content though. They're being penalized for being spam. Just like some spammers use bold tags, he says. They don't penalize people just for using them. And they don't penalize people just for having duplicate content.

Duplicate Content:

    * example.com/
    * example.com/?
    * example.com/index.html
    * example.com/Home.aspx
    * www.example.com/
    * www.example.com/?
    * www.example.com/index.html
    * www.example.com/Home.aspx

The above list from Grothaus's presentation shows examples of URLs that are different, but show the same content. Google will recognize that they're the same, and will try to pick the right one, (although sometimes they pick the wrong one). Greg says Webmasters are the best people to know which one is best, so it helps to only use one.

You will not be penalized for using more than one, but there are some issues that can arise that may negatively affect your rankings. For one, your link popularity will be diluted. Backlinks pointing to several different URL versions of the same content, will make it harder to accumulate link juice for one URL. Greg says that user-unfriendly URLs in search results may offset branding efforts and decrease usability as well. Plus, with multiple versions of the same thing, Google will spend more time crawling the same content, meaning it will have less time to go deeper into your site, and you run the risk of having content not get indexed.

***

I really don't think this brings anything that new to the duplicate content question. It certainly doesn't 'bust' any myths.  I mean the bottom line is that if you use duplicate content, you won't get ranked for multiple pages or sites.  Google is basically saying here that your not going to get banned but its not going to help your overall cause.  It's always a good idea to use unique content on different pages and if you have more then one site, you should not use the same content you used on the main site.   You will never have multiple domains coming up for same set of content, it must be unique.
 

With the release of the new Google search feature of "Show Options", this is going to make certain things even more valuable, such as having videos on your site. Not only having videos on your site but having videos that are optimized for the video search engines such as You Tube or Google Video.

Below is an image of a search of "Ohio tax lawyers" at Google and then notice the Show Options link below the search box…….

Once that is clicked, a new section opens on the left side of the screen with additional options to sort the search results. The first option is to sort the search results by Videos…

Once the user clicks on Videos, this means the search results will change on the right side of the screen to the top 10 results of videos…..

So now its obvious here that just having the top organic position is not enough. You also need to have videos that are promoting your firm coming up at video sites such as Youtube. You also need a blog and to produce content on a weekly basis, but thats a whole different post!

Video SEO is a smart thing to do as a lawyer, right now it doesnt seem like theres a ton of competition, so get in now!

Google's Searchology event was today, and one of the highlights of the event was Marissa Mayer introducing some
changes to Google's search results. This is called "Search Options,"
and allows users to get different results in a number of ways.

When you perform a search on Google, you will see a link under the
search box that says "show options." If you click this, it will bring up a
left-side navigation menu allowing you to see results for video,
forums, and reviews, and view them from "any time," "recent results,"
"the past 24 hours," "the past week," and the "past year." 

This is all really big and they should just make this the default search because most people won't even recognize that option.  Yet it offers a number of different ways to search and this makes it more important then ever to make sure your site is optimized and your doing everything that needs to be done including blogging, video SEO and social media marketing.

There is also the option to switch between standard view, related
searches, the "wonder wheel," and a timeline. The wonder wheel is
particularly interesting. It gives you different links related to your
query.

WONDER WHEEL – "CHICAGO LAWYERS"

This then brings up different searches and if you click on them, the search results on the right side change, very cool!

If you click on any of the other links on the left side starting with videos, different results come up.  So right off the bat its obvious that having a video come up would be a really good thing.  This means for one you have to have video and then like a website, you must make sure its optimized and submitted to the video sites, among other things. 

Then the fact that people can choose to see results from the last 24 hours says you better create some content on a regular basis and if you do, your going to be rewarded with a good listing at Google. 

All of the different searches bring up pretty much different results. So its more important then ever to get your site into proper optimization shape and consider creating a blog and creating new content related to what your firm does. Consider creating a video that promotes your law firm  Create listings at all the social media sites. It's all really important if you want your site to be found by the many people that are searching the Internet.

Tomorrow from 10am – 11:30am PDT, Google will live stream their latest Searchology event. We will be live blogging at the event, so if you can’t watch the Google webcast, check here for all the news as it unfolds.

In 2007, Google held their first Searchology event, where they announced universal search. Universal search, of course, has since expanded to become a critical part of the search experience and has greatly impacted the evolution of search engine optimization. No word on whether Google will be making similar game-changing announcements this time. They say they’ll be providing:

“An insider’s perspective on Search including recent search innovations. Speakers will include VP of Search Engineering, Udi Manber, and VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer.”

Google didn’t hold a Searchology event last year, opting instead for smaller gatherings. Perhaps they were waiting for another big announcement before holding another one. Check here or the Google webcast tomorrow to find out.

source

A client of mine recently had their website hacked by someone who put invisible code on the sites homepage with links to other sites. Google detected this and reported it in the clients Google Sitemap account. The site did get removed from the Google index but was added back with no loss of rankings within 48 hours. 

I had to remove the offending code and replace the pages and then had to request reconsideration from Google. The notice they sent said the site was going to be removed for 30 days but luckily it was back within 2 days and Google was very helpful during the process.

It's hard to say how this happened but the most likely scenario is that someone got the FTP login name and password. Its important that you use a reputable webhosting company and that you make sure to use a good password for your FTP account. Its not a bad idea to change this on a frequent basis.  Its also important to have a Google sitemap account setup for your site, this way Google can contact you quickly if it sees a problem with your site.

The web is full of duplicate content. Search engines try to index and display the original or “canonical” version. Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they’ll lose ranking.

Today, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (links are to their separate announcements) have united to offer a way to reduce duplicate content clutter and make things easier for everyone. Webmasters rejoice! Worried about duplicate content on your site? Want to know what “canonical” means? Read on for more details.

Multiple URLs, one page

Duplicate content comes in different forms, but a major scenario is multiple URLs that point to the same page. This can come up for lots of reasons. An ecommerce site might allow various sort orders for a page (by lowest price, highest rated…), the marketing department might want tracking codes added to URLs for analytics. You could end up with 100 pages, but 10 URLs for each page. Suddenly search engines have to sort  through 1,000 URLs.

This can be a problem for a couple of reasons.

• Less of the site may get crawled. Search engine crawlers use a limited amount of bandwidth on each site (based on numerous factors). If the crawler only is able to crawl 100 pages of your site in a single visit, you want it to be 100 unique pages, not 10 pages 10 times each.
• Each page may not get full link credit. If a page has 10 URLs that point to it, then other sites can link to it 10 different ways. One link to each URL dilutes the value  the page could have if all 10 links pointed to a single URL.

Using the new canonical tag

Specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish"/>

That’s it!

• You can only use the tag on pages within a single site (subdomains and subfolders are fine).
• You can use relative or absolute links, but the search engines recommend absolute links.

This tag will operate in a similar way to a 301 redirect for all URLs that display the page with this tag.

• Links to all URLs will be consolidated to the one specified as canonical.
• Search engines will consider this URL a “strong hint” as to the one to crawl and index.

Canonical URL best practices

The search engines use this as a hint, not as a directive, (Google calls it a “suggestion that we honor strongly”) but are more likely to use  it if the URLs use best practices, such as:

• The  content rendered for each URL is very similar or exact
• The canonical URL is the shortest version
• The URL uses easy to understand parameter patterns (such as using ? and %)

Can this be abused by spammers? They might try, but Matt Cutts of Google told me that the same safeguards that prevent abuse by other methods (such as redirects) are in place here as well, and that Google  reserves the right to take action on sites that are using the tag to manipulate search engines and violate search engine guidelines.

For instance, this tag will only work with very similar or identical content, so you can’t use it to send all of the link value from the less important pages of your site to the more important ones.

If tags conflict (such as pages point to each other as canonical, the URL specified as canonical redirects to a non-canonical version, or the page specified as canonical doesn’t exist), search engines will sort things out just as they do now, and will determine which URL they think is the best canonical version.

The tag in action

This tag will most often be useful in the case of multiple URLs pointing at the same page, but might also be used when multiple versions of a page exist. For instance, wikia.com is using the tag for previous revisions of a page. Both http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=4901&oldid=4819 and http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=5401&oldid=4901reference the latest version of the article (http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Comedian%27s_badge) as the canonical.

The search engines stress that it’s still important to build good URL structure and also note that if you aren’t able to implement this tag, they’ll still keep the processes they have now to determine the canonical. For instance, at SMX West on Tuesday, Maile Ohye of Google explained how Google can detect patterns in URLs if they use standard parameters. For instance, with these URLs:

• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=evil
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=good

Maile explained that Google can detect (particularly when looking at patterns across the site) that the sort parameter may order the page differently, but that the URLs with the sort parameter display the same  content as the shorter URL (http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike).

While it’s rare for the search engines to join forces, this isn’t the first time they’ve come together on a standard. In November 2006, they came together to support sitemaps.org. And in June 2008 they announced a standard set of robots.txt directives. Matt Cutts of Google and Nathan Buggia of Microsoft told me that they want to help reduce the clutter on the web, and make things easier for searchers as well as site owners.

This new tag won’t completely solve duplicate issues on the web, but it should help make things quite a bit easier particuarly for ecommerce sites, who likely need all the help they can get in the current economic conditions. Site owners have been asking for help with these issues for a really long time so this should be a greatly welcomed addition.

source: Search Engine Land

Google’s Clout Grows as Tech Initiatives Take Shape from the Wall Street Journal outlines Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent technology meeting with Obama and the new US government. If you missed the news, a group of executives met with President Obama last week to discuss technology’s role in the US stimulus plan. One of those executives was Schmidt, who sat right next to Obama at the meeting.

We are all aware that Google was very politically and financially supportive of Obama during the elections. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google was the “fourth-largest corporate source of campaign cash” for Obama’s presidential race. Why is this important for Google? Because the government can issue policy that can either help Google or hurt Google.

From making it easier for more people to use the Internet to making deals like the Yahoo/Google ad deal easier to get passed to incentives on renewable energy that would lower Google’s data center costs – all these policies can either help Google or hurt Google.

Some are concerned over what appears to be Google’s tight relationship with President Obama. Jeff Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer-privacy advocacy group, said:

Given the relationship of Schmidt to the campaign, I think there’s a real concern there’s a kind of open office, revolving door between Google and their goals and the Obama administration.

Even Schmidt admitted that “There is no question technology has more influence with this president,” adding that President Obama has “a personal interest” in technology. But when asked about Google’s influence with the new administration, Schmidt said, “I think our influence is moderate, not tremendous.” In fact, Schmidt turned down the CTO position offered by Obama months ago.

source

Not that anyone needed any confirmation of Google’s dominance, but comScore has put it into numbers with today’s release
of data about worldwide Internet usage. comScore says Google is the
most popular Internet property in the world, with its sites reaching
77% of the online population that’s 15-years-old and up in December,
2008.

Microsoft and Yahoo are second and third, respectively, while
Facebook is the top social networking site in the world and the seventh
most popular property overall.

It’s also worth mentioning that comScore says the global Internet
audience surpassed one billion people in December — the first time
that’s happened. China’s 180 million Internet users makes it the
largest national online population.

Actually its surprising that Microsoft is ahead of Yahoo and so close to Google.

source

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an
avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th
position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there
at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes
about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful.
Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to
best meet your needs.

Today
we're launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by
re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With
just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add
a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and
remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be
shown to you every time you do the same search in the future.
SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your
changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed
in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the
upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own
searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights
with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively
edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this
SearchWiki" link.

This can be a cool and useful feature. Google just keeps getting better!