Most SERPs relating to areas that Google have a business interest already display Adwords for the service, but this is one of the first times I’ve seen an additional snippet advertising the service.  Plus it’s also unusual for Google to include branding (blogger logo) in otherwise text based SERPs.

An interesting change – perhaps just a test, but could lead on to more commercial Google properties being advertised in SERPs outwith the Adwords model.

What strikes me is that with the recent debates about the Pay Per Post model of link building (let’s not mince about – it is link building, regardless of how the facilitating companies choose to position themselves!), and FTC requirements for disclosure, surely Google should be under some kind of requirement to disclose the fact that they own Blogger.

Keep in mind, although we (in the SEO industry) are more than aware of Google’s various acquisitions over the years, the average user may not be.  So advertising a “tip” on ALL “blog” and “weblog” related searches may seem like more of a recommendation than a promotion.  Certainly a dive into a very grey area.

What do you think?  I know a few people I chat to about these things (that aren’t instantly bored my choice of profession!) don’t really look at SERPs in the way that I do.  Most will look at the results and perceive them to be in some order or relevance and importance (and not simply as an easily manipulated set of data as I personally view them).  And as such, I would assume that these type of users would perceive any information outside normal and sponsored results as being a message from Google (or any search engine they are using).

If Windows pops up a “tip” for me, I know (as does the average user) that it is for usability purposes.  I would suspect a lot of people apply the same logic to stuff they read on websites, and I would go on to assume that for strong brands such as Google, small details such as this can and will be taken very literally.

That said, the statement, “Tip: Want to share your life online with a blog? Try Blogger” is a very common way to plus sell products and many websites use this technique.  Amazon for example will use the same offhand recommendation style to pitch related products, so why shouldn’t Google?

But then, why can’t a blogger be paid to make a post about a product?  Google, it seems, doesn’t need to label their promotions as “sponsored results” anymore.

Should Google have to disclose their relationship with Blogger?  At face value, Blogger is a free service, so technically Google aren’t selling anything – but Blogger is a huge network that allows Google to plus sell Adsense and therefore expand their product offering to Adwords advertisers, so they do profit from it.

It doesn’t really bother me – I think anyone should be able to do whatever they please with their website, regardless if you are Google or Ma n’ Pa’s e-shop.  But I do think this approach by Google is somewhat borderline grey area territory.  Considering Google’s historically “do no evil” approach to marketing and the current climate for the need for disclosure with business relationships, this otherwise innocent addition to Google SERPs could raise a few eyebrows.

MG

And…

www.mattcutts.co.uk does 301 redirect to www.mattcutts.com – so why are Google picking it up?  Interestingly, there are no references to “UK” on the page, so the ranking probably comes from link text (Matt does rank quite well for “SEO blog”).

Off topic, but this is a good example why link weight alone isn’t a great deciding factor for rankings – Mr Cutts isn’t a UK SEO!

This result has just popped in – I suspect that it will be gone in a day or so, which suggests Google deal with 301 redirects after-the-fact – listing the content first, then implementing a 301 filter of sorts to remove superfluous content.

However it could be (and most likely is) that the short term flood of IBLs to mattcutts.co.uk is causing a weird result – in most cases the redirecting page wouldn’t probably appear in obvious results (ie, not in the top 10 or so) – this is just an unusual situation where loads of people have linked to an unused domain that was already 301 redirecting, but not previously used.

The question is – why are Google even listing a page that delivers a 301 response (and I assume has done so since Google first found it)?  Surely results such as this should be filtered internally before going live…

MG

In a statement for the Scotsman*, Big Mouth Media MD Steve Leach is quoted to have said that the only options for the company were “to be swallowed and cash up or seek investment to acquire and grow“.

Your thoughts?

Is the SEO agency sector so difficult to scale that options for progression are so limited?  Certainly there are only a few SEO agencies in the world that have grown to the size of BMM (£15 million turnover, 50 staff, portfolio of big brand clients), so perhaps it is indeed the case.

Agency side, the SEO industry is fraught with problems.  At the core, I’d say there are 2 main issues – experience and scalability.

Outside major metropolitan areas, experienced SEOs are hard to come by.  Let’s not mistake “experienced SEOs” with “people who have done SEO for a while” as anyone who has had to fix the work of another “SEO” knows that these aren’t the same.

It’s not that large agencies aren’t attractive to experienced SEOs – it’s just that any SEO worth their salt can earn infinitely more money working for themselves (and probably work less hours and face less stress).  And most do.  So newbies are hired and trained up (just like any other industry) – some might stay and some might move on (I’m sure that anyone who has ever worked agency side knows a lot of people who have left to go it on their own).

I know for a fact that quite a few of the larger SEO agencies in the UK faced an exodus at some point in their history – where several members of staff left to start up on their own.  The SEO industry is very attractive in this respect (in fact one of the main reasons I left BMM was that I managed clients that collectively paid around 20-30 times my annual salary) – but is this necessarily a barrier all SEO agencies need to face?

Maybe when the company reaches a critical mass, staff become less important – not literally of course, but more in perceived sense.  The company expands – more people arrive doing the same job as you – job satisfaction decreases and the almighty £££ becomes the over-riding factor in your career?  I know a few folks who read Fused Nation have moved on from employment to self employment – anyone care to share their own experiences?

What are your thoughts on the scalability of the SEO agency model?  Personally I think current agencies seem to be too marketing agency focused in their style of management – very account management focused.  While certain elements of this model are both appropriate and necessary, I do think that SEO agencies need to re-assess their long term strategies for growth.

I launched my own agency this year, so I’ve put a lot of thought into this – perhaps prematurely given that I’m the only member of staff, but I do like to consider these things.  One of my first sites (and real SEO successes) was a career advice website (no link; I get enough forum spam from the SEO community thank you very much! ), so this is an area of business I hold close to my heart.

I personally prefer to divide my time between client work and my own projects – I think both compliment each other in terms of research and long term security for me – this is one of the key areas that SEO trumps traditional marketing – marketing agencies don’t really have the resources to make money outside their agency model – SEOs do.

I’d be interested in hearing about everyone else’s agency experiences and thoughts on that side of the industry.  I think it’s an area that doesn’t really get discussed quite as fully as everything else in SEO, probably because agencies reign in public discussions quite carefully, particularly in areas where “inside knowledge” can be exposed.

MG

* The Scotsman has removed a couple of comments on the post – nothing wildly exciting or new for the industry, but interesting to see mainstream media censor comments.  Just a couple of links to TW threads about Bigmouthmedia being banned from Google earlier this year.  So much for objective journalism. Amusing to see adverts for Bigmouthmedia’s competitors in the Adsense block below the article though!

Basically the original poster asks a question about duplicate content based on a blog post he read (I assume it was this topic from Pubcon):

“No two links should point to the same page”

Why not?  Anyone expand on this?

A reasonable request based on a topic which is pretty complicated.  However the resulting “discussion” made me laugh – it’s so typical of the SEO community to take something at face value and run a mile with it without looking into a little bit deeper…

The confusion has arisen from the terminology used in the original blog post, where the panel members at the Pubcon roundtable (Duplicate content issues):

Types of dup include multiple URLs going to same page, similar content on different pages, syndicated content, manufacturers’ databases, printable pages, different languages or countries, different domains and scraped content.

A “page” here is refered to as a piece of content.  The “URL” is the direct URL used to reach the content.  So a simple example would be http://example.com and http://www.example.com both leading to your homepage – 2 URLs, both leading to the same “page”.

However, this was misinterpreted by the good folks over at WMW (shocker!) who took the statement to mean that multiple links to any URL could cause duplicate content.  Ie, if you had a 10 page site, every page linked to “Home” and caused 10 duplicate version.

OK, fair enough some of the folks may not have read the report on the WebmasterWorld Pubcon session…but then maybe think before posting comments such as…

• This is pure nonsense
• I hate to say it in such strong terms but this is BS.

Hat tip to moderator jdMorgan for stepping in and clarifying the situation with a perfect explanation / clarification and a statement that I think should preceed every comment posted on every forum on the net:

“Reading earlier posts in this thread may save some embarassment to those who wish to assume the worst….”

Now here’s a thought for the forum junkies out there.  For every stupid comment made without thought that is subsequently brought to light – how many aren’t?  Worth considering while you base the future of your business on information you read on forums.

MG

Well, not really obsess…more just pay it more attention than it really warrants.

Clearly some people still put a great deal of weight in Google PR – although it still a Google ranking factor, it is pitched in many link request emails as more of a selling point.  “I’m a PR6 – your life will change when I link to you!”.

Maybe it’s just a stat thing.  A case of virtual dick length that easily differentiates one site from another, without having to delve too deeply into insignificant factors like quality…

Like the appeal of RPG games.  Grind the experience through dull, reptitive tasks (link building) and be rewarded with a higher level (PageRank).  And like RPG games, the reward and benefit is usually only part of the battle, requiring continuing comittment to win the war.

I still do like PR though – it adds an extra angle to using Google as a tool when researching a site.  It can be a signal to a potential ban.  Low homepage PR can show that a site needs some serious link building work (useful for quickly analysing client sites). PR0 on internal pages can be an indication of their age (ie, that they are new) or that there is an indexing issue.

I just don’t think this is the view that most SEO’s take when referring to PR.  Well, I say “SEO’s” – I refer to the masses just entering the industry who simply regurgitate what they read on forums – not the seasoned professionals who know to form their own opinions!  I just get the feeling that a lot of newbies think that PR is the pinnacle of SEO – the holy grail.  This leads to many opening questions, “How do I get high PR links?”, “How do I increase my PR?”…talk about barking up the wrong tree!  Obsessing about a juicy PR9 link for a 10 page site…sure…while you’re at it, could you ask the nice folks over at The Times to write a front page feature about my work from home envelope stuffing business too please?

But newbies I can appreciate – they don’t know any better and are just basing their actions on some ill-informed comments from forums, etc.

What really bites my ass are newbies posing as experts.  Like those link request emails who simply announce, “I have a homepage PR6″.  Oh sorry…wait one second…I just need to open fanfaire.wav…..

I do appreciate the lecture they go on to give about how links increase Google PR and this means good rankings!  Some even claim Google PR helps rankings on other search engines.  The funniest was a large hosting company emailing all their customers claiming that if I linked to them, then my rankings would improve!

PageRank – I love it and I hate it.  I love having it there, even if it’s just for my own obsessive need to have my success quantified in any way.  I hate it for what it’s done to the SEO industry, creating a whole subculture of self righteous newbies who think that because they managed to get their crappy site to PR5 that they are suddenly an SEO expert.

I’m gonna set up my autoresponder to point to this post – I get like 20-30 link requests a day and some of those folks really need an education.

MG

FusedNation is now a PR3.  I clearly suck.

List of Google Ranking Factors (in no particular order)

Yeh some of this stuff is pure speculation so don’t piss and moan.  Just wanted to fire everything down and see what I ended up with.  All these items may or may not have an impact (be it positive or negative) on the ranking of the page.

• Page Title tag (length, keyword use, keyword positioning)
• H1
• H2
• H3
• H4
• H5
• H6 (yeh all 6 are listed as they are likely to be given different weights)
• Meta description
• Meta keywords
• Overall page keyword density
• First paragraph keyword density
• Last paragraph keyword density
• Synonym keyword density / use
• Bold tag
• Underline tag
• Em tag
• Strong tag
• Itallic tag
• Could probably add more, but lets cap it by saying different forms of HTML markup may carry different weights
• Use of markup (generally) to improve accessibility and usability of the page – that is, a page with a lot of text may pull more value from H1, H2, H3 headings than a page with only 100 words.
• Link text used (to internal pages)
• Link text used (to external pages)
• Quantity of links on page (any type)
• External sites deep linking to the page
• The link text used by external pages linking to the page
• The link text used by internal pages linking to the page
• The text surrounding internal links to the page
• The text surrounding external links to the page
• Location (on page) of internal links to the page
• Location (on page) of external links to the page
• The source and relative authoritative status of external links to the page / root domain.
• ALT text
• Keywords in domain name
• Keywords in directory structure
• Keywords in subdomain
• The PageRank of the page
• The PageRank of the site’s homepage
• The PageRank of internal pages linking to the page
• The PageRank of external pages linking to the page
• The overall theme of the site (ie, niche or broad)
• Average word count per page compared to industry averages
• The general competitiveness of the industry
• The theme of internal linking pages (based on how related they are to the target page)
• The theme of external linking pages (based on how related they are to the target page)
• The TLD of your domain
• The TLD of external linking pages
• The IP address of the site’s host (relevant to local targeting)
• The IP address of external linking pages
• The age of the domain name
• The age of the domain name relative to the amount of time the current owner has controlled it
• The age of the domain name of external linking sites
• The age of the domain name of sites you link to (train of thought – linking to only sites that are new doesn’t seem “natural” – you are more likely to link to established sites)
• The frequency that the content on your page is updated – perhaps not a factor for all industries, but relevant to some (eg news sites)
• The frequency that the overall content on the domain is updated - new content posting frequency could be an indicator of the type of site (and as such, relevance to certain searches)
• The frequency that your site gains new links over time (link growth)
• Link growth compared to industry averages
• Content growth compared to industry averages
• Sources of links compared to industry averages
• General sources of links (ie, if 90% of your links are from free directories, this could be used to “judge” your site)
• External link text compared to industry norms (how many plain URL links, how many target keyword links, how many generic word links, etc vs what’s usual for the industry)
• CTR of organic SERPs
• Time spent on site after CTR from organic SERPs (monitored via toolbar or clicking back on browser and hitting a new listing)
• Relevance based on search actions (will a user click to your site, then leave to refine their search further?)
• Authoritative status (just as sites could be “flagged” as potential spam and as such devalued, others could be flagged as authoritative and given a bit more slack or a boost).
• SEO flagged?  Many sites are clearly made by SEOs (common use of keywords in key areas such as inbound links, title tags, etc) – this could be a signal of quality.
• DMOZ listing – either a) DMOZ considered (independently) authoritative or b) receives authoritative flag by virtue of Google’s system of defining authoritative sites.
• Accessibility of the page
• Duplication of content on the site
• Uniqueness of the content of the page / site (keyword ladden content and “perfect SEO” pages could be considered to be partially duplicated content)
• Language of the page / site
• Words focused on the purpose of the site.  For example, ecommerce sites using the words “buy”, “sell”, “for sale”, “to buy” may rank better for related queries as the user intention is matched with the focus of the site.  Although this could simply be coincidental to using the keywords as normal (keyword density, etc)
• Historical rankings of the site – a site which consistently ranks well should continue to do so.  A new site that begins to rank well may raise flags
• Google sitemaps – may influence speed of indexing and therefore an indirect factor in the ability to rank on Google – most likely not a direct factor in ranking
• Type of site – I recently hypothesised that Google treat different types of sites (eg blogs) differently.
• Industry – already mentioned in other aspects, but worth generalising – Google most likely treat sites in different industries in different ways.  Broad generalisation – PPC (porn, pills, casinos) are likely to require higher levels of authorative IBLs for example, before ranking well compared to other industries.
• Size of the site (how many pages) compared to industry average
• Google spam reporting – perhaps an indirect factor, but could ultimately impact ranking – if an industry receives a large amount of spam reports, this could affect how Google approach rankings (see point 75)
• Use of off the shelve software – Wordpress, PhPbb, vBulletin, etc are all easily identified.  Some off the shelve software is more prone to spam than others
• History with Google – whois data, Adsense, Adwords, sitemaps, etc data can easily be collated and used to judge overall quality.  Ie, Authoritative publishers?
• Use of nofollow attribute (generally)
• Use of nofollow attribute compared to other OBLs.
• Quality of sites linked to (quantity of spam sites compared to quantity of quality sites)
• Number of links to Google you have
• Age of links to your page
• Number of other external links on external pages that link to you
• Link relationship with other sites in your industry
• Link relationship with other sites on your IP range
• Link relationship with other sites in general
• Link relationship with academic, government and news sites
• Affiliate links
• Uptime of your site
• URL length and use of keywords (rehashed from a previous point)
• Broken external links on your page

So far, Google indexed and cached a version of my homepage only (even before I updated the template) and has just updated the results page for “fusednation“.  Interestingly the secondary result is for “Dylan, Jeremy and nofollow“, a recent blog post (ie, the first content link on the front of the blog, outwith nav and such).

However, a few days ago, the secondary link was to the post about the 2006 WWW conference.  Why?  Because when Google came to visit, that was the top blog entry.

Given the recent indexing changes at Google, I would hypothesise either of these theories are true:

• Google is only also only following a few links on the page (due to low backlink “priority”, and as a result is only catching the top post.  However why aren’t the category pages and about page (links at top of every page) indexed first instead?  This question leads me to think the following is more likely…
• Google is indexing as above, but treating blogs differently (easily identified by multiple traits) – that is, only indexing homepage + most recent post (singular) while the inbound link quality is low.

Obviously there’s not much evidence to go on here – just speculating based on my experience and some of the things I’ve seen with this site.

If Google is indeed treating blogs differently (for the purposes of indexing) – and I think they could be (this site was indexed in Google Blog search long before the main index), then what other factors could affect your crawl depth and frequency?

We consider constantly updating content as a popular indicator (hence the increasing popularity of forums and blogs within the SEO industry), so would Google take this as a factor?  Perhaps with frequency, but with crawl depth?

Do blog posts even need to be in the main index?  I’d hazard a guess that direct referrals from various blog engines, tag sites, etc would be good for business too.

Maybe this is a step towards Google treating sites as sites – individual entities and not just random slabs of HTML that may or may not be spam?  Who knows?  Hope so – it would make life a little easier.

MG

In a recent uber post, Matt Cutts has touched on the subject several times in relation to the feedback from the recently bigdaddy rollout.

Linking to a free ringtones site, an SEO contest, and an Omega 3 fish oil site? I think I’ve found your problem. I’d think about the quality of your links if you’d prefer to have more pages crawled. As these indexing changes have rolled out, we’ve improving how we handle reciprocal link exchanges and link buying/selling.

Then:

This time, I’m seeing links to mortgages sites, credit card sites, and exercise equipment. I think this is covered by the same guidance as above; if you were getting crawled more before and you’re trading a bunch of reciprocal links, don’t be surprised if the new crawler has different crawl priorities and doesn’t crawl as much.

Closing with:

Some folks that were doing a lot of reciprocal links might see less crawling. If your site has very few links where you’d be on the fringe of the crawl, then it’s relatively normal that changes in the crawl may change how much of your site we crawl.

Being a simple minded non-tech guy I always kinda assumed that the crawl process was a simple “let’s grab it all and sort the shit out back at the ‘plex”.  But clearly I was wrong.

I’m not sure crawl depth has been affected by inbound link quality / type in the past, but this change, allbeit a subtle one, will have quite an impact.  Designed to target (or rather, ignore) short term, artificial link building campaigns this will be a great way for Google to side step a huge part of the SEO industry – particularly MFA sites, low content affiliate sites, etc etc.

Think about the model of such a site – large amount of pages, low amount of links (or x amount of low quality links).  This is not the model of a site that is organically developing (as people simply don’t know build crap links if they aren’t SEOs!).

However I know of a client who’s been with an SEO agency for a while now – they have a large site that is growing fast since launch and were recently impacted by these bigdaddy changes.  They definitely aren’t spamming – they have lot’s of orginial content (over 60 individuals writing unique content for the site) – they are just dwindling due to Crap Link Syndrome (I’m going to coin the abbreviation CLS! ).  Not really their fault now?

MG