The Rank Magic Blog
Link Text Rules
August 31, 2004 ::: Some are alleging that
what other web sites say in their links to you matters more than what's actually
on your web site. I don't believe that's completely true, but a couple of recent
pranks clearly illustrate the power of link text.
Link text, if you're not sure, is the text that comprises the actual hyperlink
to another web page or web site. In the article below from August 24, the link
for Google Talk points to the web page
www.google.com/talk/
but it doesn't say that. It says "Google Talk". What the link
actually says makes a big difference.
You may have heard that if you do a search for "miserable failure" or "worst
president", the #1 result in the search engines is
the
official biography of President George W. Bush. Try it: go to Google and
type in either search term and see what you get.
Now if you go to President Bush's biography and search it for the word
"miserable" or the word "worst", you'll find neither one anywhere on the page.
How can that be? Apparently, many bloggers have created links that say "miserable
failure" and "worst
president" in the link text but which point to President Bush's biography.
So the #1 result you found in Google was driven entirely by link text.
The Moral of the Story
Take this to heart when you're requesting links to your site. By default, most
people giving you links will thoughtlessly give you a link that states your URL,
like
www.McHughAndMacri.com. That doesn't help you nearly as much as a
link pointing to the same page that says
Elderlaw Attorneys in
NewJersey.
Google Talk Announced Today - Goes Live Today
August 24, 2005 ::: Continuing its rapid
expansion into new product categories, Google has just today launched an instant
messaging program called
Google Talk. This
comes just a few days after they introduced
Google Sidebar, which
pulls news stories, photographs, weather updates, stock quotes and other
features onto your computer without opening a Web browser. There had been
anticipation of the new Google Talk product for a few days, as evidenced by
this story in the Los Angeles Times. [sorry - that story
is no longer on the LA Times website.]
Google Talk requires you to have a Gmail account, and is partially compatible
with other IM clients. Currently, you need to download the free Google Talk
application in order to actually talk with people across the Internet.
If any of you are using it, let us know how
you like it!
Google Throws a Tantrum, CNET Apologizes
August 16, 2005 ::: Google recently became
upset at CNET for publishing
info obtained by Googling Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, promising not to talk to
anyone from CNET for the next year. <Story
here>
ZDNet in the UK wrote today:
Acting under the mistaken impression that Google's search engine
was intended to help research public data, we have in the past enthusiastically
abused the system to conduct exactly the kind of journalism that Google finds so
objectionable.
Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated,
unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using
them to illustrate areas of concern. We apologise unreservedly, and will
cooperate fully in helping Google change people's perceptions of its role just
as soon as it feels capable of communicating to us how it wishes that role to be
seen.
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The full editorial can be found here.
New Search Options for Google
August 14, 2005 ::: Google seems to be
testing some new search features,
as described in a blog by Tech Digits.
Link Buying Isn't Always Bad
August 11, 2005 ::: Link Buying: A panel at
the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose said that link buying isn't
a punishable offense (by the search engines) as long as the obvious intention of
purchased links is advertising and not just to influence search engine ranking.
For example, a paid ad on
East Hanover Online
won't get you penalized for "buying links". Neither would a law firms listing at
FindLaw.com.
But be careful where you purchase your links. If you're getting a link from what
could be considered a "bad neighborhood," make sure you don't link back to that
area to avoid being penalized.
Google Gets Sued
August 9, 2005 ::: Google
is being sued over accusations that it overcharged advertisers who use their
paid search advertising program, AdWords, which accounts for the vast majority
of Google's revenue.
The full story is available at Reuters.
Keyword Rich Text - Not Keyword Stuffing!
August 4, 2005 ::: In the August 3 edition of the
High
Rankings Newsletter, noted SEO expert Jill Whalen writes the following:
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... you've probably heard me say a million times "Make
sure to have great keyword-rich content."
... Does keyword-rich content mean you should find
every available spot on your page to stuff your keywords? Of course
not! In fact, if you are even using the word "stuff" in the same
sentence as "keywords," it's most likely not something you want to do.
Writing keyword-rich content has nothing to do with stuffing. (We save
all our stuffing for Thanksgiving, thank you very much!) To me, it's
common sense that it's a bad idea to stick keyword phrases everywhere
and anywhere. But unless I specifically point out the exact places on
a page where you might want to put them (and might not), some people
will never quite get it.
Unfortunately, even when I do spell it out, like in
my Nitty-gritty Guide there will always be people who will take my
suggestions further than they should. They have not learned the most
important rule in professional search engine optimization, i.e.,
always put your site users before the search engines in anything that
you do for your website.
The sad (and kinda scary) thing is that even
professional SEO companies don't always get this. I've had 2 or 3
emails just this week from people who hired various SEO companies to
do work for them, only to have the company make recommendations that
actually made the pages of their website *worse* than they were before
they hired the company. Not necessarily worse for the search engines,
but most definitely worse for the site visitors. In this day and age,
it's hard for me to fathom that an SEO company would still be telling
their clients, "You have to do this for the search engines, even
though we realize it makes your site look dumb."
No, you absolutely do not!
There is no SEO technique that you should have to do
on your site that will make your site icky for your visitors. Don't
believe it for a second. There may certainly be some trade-offs that
your SEO may suggest to you, but you should be able to pick and choose
the ones that will work for your site and still get the results you
are hoping for. |
We couldn't have said it better ourselves!
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August
2005
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