Another very useful tool from Google

Published | 14.55, 25th of May 2010, by Chris van Aurich | SEO

I came across this tool, after talking to a friend of mine in PR, it has been around quite a while, but has only just come to my attention. Google alerts allows you to be sent results for key search terms, a very useful tool for SEO, PR or a companies marketing department.

See more information from Google below:

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

http://www.google.com/alerts

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The value of Bounce Rates

Published | 14.09, 27th of April 2010, by Chris van Aurich | SEO

Many people only ever focus on link strategies and keywords when they talk about search engine optimisation. There are so many elements to what makes a full campaign work. Often people only think that the design of the site is the pretty bit at the front. People should not be so quick to judge. Having a site that is engaging and well designed can be as influential as the content, keywords and links it can establish.

Google looks at how people interact with websites and how long they stay. If people leave your site straight away once arriving (this is know as the Bounce Rate) it means they are not happy with the results they have found. Google has its place within the market by delivering relevant, interesting content and results. To sum up, search engines want good search results, they move sites with low bounce rates up and sites with high bounce rates down. Users are far more likely to stay on your site and look around if it looks good. This will then in turn have a positive effect on your search position.

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Google incorporates site speed in search rankings

Published | 13.05, 13th of April 2010, by Chris van Aurich | SEO

Working on search engine optimisation things are always changing, so I thought I would share some information, Google are now using the speed of your site's delivery as a factor in search results and the amount of pages it will index. See the official post below.

Google Says

You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we've seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don't just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that's why we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven't seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.

Summary

The site speed is only one element that will affect your ongoing SEO strategy but key things worth looking at are:

• quality of build
• site architecture
• accessibility
• good web hosting
• duplicated content
• quality inbound links

You can see from the test results of this page (image above), we take all of the above very seriously.

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SEO | Yahoo targets Next Generation Web Search

Published | 11.39, 11th of February 2010, by Paul Butler | SEO

Recent reports have said that partnering Bing has made a dent but have not killed off Yahoo. This is according to Yahoo's newbie Search Boss, Shashi Seth. They are still intent on making considerable gains within the Internet search market with new products aimed at what they are calling next generation search features. Although these new features are still under development they will focus on how we look at restaurants for instance on a Smartphone, using your finger to draw a circle on a map, plus short cuts to event information and most operations without requiring the use of a search bar.

However, research group comScore have confirmed a 3 point downward slide for Yahoo in the overall Search market share during the past year. Google still shows a clear lead with approximately 65% of all searches made and Microsoft's Bing has taken some of Yahoos percentage, rising to 11% whilst Yahoo drop 3 percentage points to 17% of the market share.

Personally, I see no reason to use anything other than Google. It offers everything I need. Then again I do not use a Smartphone. So entering keywords and phrases into a search bar is the primary way I search. Perhaps I will have to look again at which Internet Search I use after my next mobile upgrade.

Which do you prefer to use and more importantly, why? Please feel free to add your comment below.

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Partners | Microsoft's Bing and Google's previous rival - Wolfram Alpha

Published | 11.05, 12th of November 2009, by Paul Butler | SEO

Bing has joined forces with Google's early rival Wolfram Alpha, in a bid to deliver a more specific Search Engine result rather than the typical link list. Unlike other search engines, Wolfram's computational knowledge engine is thought to offer more specific answers to questions such as the height of St Paul's Cathedral or the current total for the Earth's population.

Microsoft's new partnership with Steven Wolfram's creation will roll out in the USA initially but it has a long way to go if it is to compete seriously with the industry leader. Despite Bing's increasing popularity Google still maintains a 70.6% share of the overall search engine market.

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