As an SEO we’re bred to think that javascript is bad. More than 2 years ago Google came out and said they were starting to follow these javascript links. Google knows that to better serve their users, they’re going to have to learn to understand this integrated language. They know not all webmasters are SEOs; in all honesty, I’m sure they don’t want them to be! Since many sites were heavily developed in javascript, especially for dynamic navigations, Google had to overcome.

And they did. The tests in the footer of this site showed it. Not only could Google index my pages that had the anchor text in them, but they could also index the thin destination pages. And they did so within 3 hours! Hey, they did say they’re obsessed with speed this year.

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The Simple Experiment

I tried:

<a href=”javascript:var handle=window.open(‘http://www.greenlaneseo.com/temp/test.html’)”>callicamally</a>

Success!

I also tried:

<script type=”text/javascript”>document.write(“<a href=’http://www.greenlaneseo.com/temp/test2.html‘>sporgieborgi</a>”);</script>

Success!

Finally I tried:

<script type=”text/javascript”>var str = “blankimankorati”;document.write(str.link(“http://www.greenlaneseo.com/temp/test3.html“));</script>

Again, Success! I’m pretty satisfied with Google here. Bing and Yahoo? Not so much – they were only able to index the page with the anchor text. And even then, not every time.  But they never claimed to be able to (that I’m aware of).

Now this isn’t surprising to some groups of SEOs, but it really is interesting how often I still hear old SEO recommendations as being critical today.  Granted, this test isn’t exhaustive (the actual PageRank associated through JS links wasn’t tested – just crawlability), but it’s valid.  I think some SEOs really need to get caught up to Google, and start implementing what really matters – user value, context, authority, recommendation, and community.  Whatever you want to call it (SEO 2.0 or not), the wave is starting to build right now – get in front of it, and down shift on the old school SEO tactics.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Google Reads Javascript – Yahoo and Bing, not so much.

This is a very social media thing to do. I think you should be doing this in the social world. It is, after all, still marketing.

The new world media gives businesses a face (if you didn’t create a face for your business in 2009, you’re already a year behind). This year I truly believe it’s about practicing your communication skills. When you’re writing your emails to your friends and colleagues, think about whether you can share it with your consumers. Does what you’re saying feed into the big picture? It’s probably valuable enough to have inspired you to write it – so should you share it? Possibly. That’s what your social consumers want from you anyway. They want to know how you feel about a market trend. They want to know if you have a plan. They want to know, well, if you realize your pizza sucks.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Bad Pizza and Good Social Marketing

Which retailers am I talking about?  Well, three years ago I would have said Amazon.  Now, since I’ve become an almost complete online shopper (yes – I do my grocery shopping online), I’m noticing a lot more great retailers kicking up their experience.  Zappos, Barnes & Nobles, and Overstock are a few I hit lately.  There’s plenty more.

So this is a simple post with a simple message.  I like analogies.  I think they go a long way.  Ask yourself – is your site a vending machine?  If so, how are you going to change that?  If you don’t have the real estate on your machine now, build it.  Don’t worry so much about putting ROI to it – a lot of times that discourages a chance to really grow, despite how ’sensible’ and safe you think your paranoia is.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

How Do You SEO A Vending Machine?

Well, I care less about the acronym and the ‘coolness’ of labeling something, as I do the real principal behind what it is.  As an SEO who came up with it for 10 years, I’ve realized I’ve taken a different path than many.  I don’t get excited by the algorithm manipulations anymore.  I don’t really get involved in the forum arguments on SEO minutia.  I started my professional life as a marketing guy, in love with the art of thought and context, and somehow deviated into web and graphic design.  SEO was a chance to connect it all together.  Now I think I’ve changed in the same direction that search engines changed (or will continue to change).  It’s not about “original content” as much as it’s about “original, valid, creative, editorial content with a purpose.”

Algorithms are headed in the direction of trust, reputation, and influence.  Google wants to rank pages based on the way people would rank them if asked.  Of course, there’s no way every human to assist Google on the billion of pages, so Google’s algorithms will have to grow.  And based on the progress (and patented algorithms) we’ve seen in the last year or two, it’s really likely that they’ll get closer to achieving that goal.  Is SEO dead?  The odds of it dying are as likely as search dying – nada.  It will just change, even if it means another acronym.

Searchable Content Optimization = Marketing

If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all.  Don’t create noise.  There’s enough of that.  But if you have a passion and a purpose, sing it from the rooftops.  Defend it like it’s your child.  Specialize in your vertical, and be an authority.  Care less about the algorithm and more about your niche and the people you can connect with.  Make the content easily available.  Make it readable and crawlable (= searchable), and groom it to be your voice.  Then, market the hell out of that content.  Set it to the top of your hierarchy and speak to it from your other pages, other venues, other channels.

For me, SEO is art.  And for me, in 2010, it is more art than science.  The split is now flattening in my opinion.  And if I had to pick an area to focus solely on, this would be it.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

SCO (Searchable Content Optimization)

Go to your engine, and type:

site:www.yoursite.com

Check out the results. Interesting to see what they give you. But the problem is, this is sort of bunk data. See, search engines don’t crawl all the pages they know about. They also don’t index all the pages they crawl. Thirdly, they don’t publish all the pages in their index with the site operator. Google once said they prefer not to display this data because it’s not really valuable to the average site owner, and not necessarily worth the processing power.

Quite arguable.

Google’s response to webmasters (and SEOs) is to give you a better, more accurate count through Webmaster Tools. But it’s not as accessible as going to Google.com and typing “site:” into the engine.

SEOmoz put out an article about using Google Analytics to get a better view of not the pages Google knows about, but the pages Google serves. Now that is actionable!

It’s a must read article. Knowing what pages serve and what pages don’t help you identify the pages that need the most attention.

Don’t have Google Analytics on your site? Hopefully you have some kind of sophisticated web analytics package that is configured to retrieve this type of page-level data. The more data you have, the less guessing you’re doing within your SEO strategies.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

What Pages Does Google Know About vs. What Pages Does Google Care About

I like when someone finds my articles interesting enough to tweet/retweet.  Vaidhyanathan clearly has one of millions of Twitter scripts/sites that follow updates. This one (looks like Twitterfeed in this case) just syndicates through his account, building his tweets up to nearly 9k tweets.

Is this noise?  Or is there value?  Isn’t value what we all want?

I follow people in Twitter who do the same thing as this Tweeter. I end up scanning and ignoring the junk for the good stuff. If I don’t find it after a few tries, that Tweeter is history. I originally followed them because I was inspired by the wealth of information. But, in time, if it’s completely uncategorized, then it becomes noise.  It’s taught me to be a little more particular about who I follow.  The Twitter ‘newness’ isn’t there anymore.  We’re becoming power users.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not knocking Vaidhyanathan – I’m having a little fun.  I mean, hell, he has the right to do whatever he wants!  Plus he is an SEO per his bio, so it’s not like he’s just aggregating any old junk (like some of the people I followed).  I think he’s legit, and his intention for this account may be totally valuable in a way I just don’t understand.  That’s very possible.

But I’d like to know… what is that benefit?  More eventual followers? A better opportunity for sponsored tweets? A better Twitter grade?  Granted, Twitter is what you make of it, but it’s frustrating seeing some spammers wasting the opportunity.  I don’t assume he’s a spammer, but maybe he’ll tell me what his intention was.

I say this to clients about Twitter, “Don’t be static.  Be Electric!”  Yes. I wrote that.  I’m clever like that.  But it’s really true, especially a year after its original explosion.  People put up with much less on Twitter these days.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Because I Want To See If Vaidhyanathan Will Tweet This!

Well, Google hasn’t quite planned for that. At least their algorithm doesn’t address it.

I’m working with two companies now that have altered, cute spellings for their brand. One ranks properly for the misspellings, the other doesn’t. The first has been in existence for a while with a lot of links, the second is equally old, but very small – it doesn’t have a large link portfolio. Both have the intentionally misspelled terms in their URL.

I’m not alone. Other webmasters frequent the Google help forums with the same issues. We do not want Google auto-correcting our spelling. Frankly, I don’t even want a “did you mean…” link in the result pages, but I understand the option. To be a company with an intentionally misspelled name or product, it’s pretty important you hammer home your intentions with your content and your links. You have to work harder to get Google to notice, just like you do your consumers. Led Zepplin and Def Leppard didn’t get spelled in the “officially” correct names until they were household names. Same concept applies.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Ranking With Intentional Misspellings

Click here to read the article

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Blurring The Line Between SEO and Social Media

Why would you want these people to crowdsource for you? Look at them. Teenagers. Derelicts. Hippies!

Ok, that’s sarcasm.

I’ve been really into the idea of using other properties for marketing for a while.  I really got into a Twitter kick last year, and am still active.  I’ve played with every social bookmarking, social voting, image network, and tagging sites.  I’ve recently been working with my company on a social media marketing offering via Facebook.  It’s not a new concept, but it is.  It’s still very much fluid, and very much worth exploring.  A lot of companies turn their nose at it.  Yeah, but we’re used to that.

Remember when we used to try to talk CMO’s into letting us post on forums?  They were worried about negative responses (at the cost of the positive responses).  Then we had to convince the CMO’s that blogs were good!  We often got the go ahead as long as we had a dedicated moderator to cut out the negative stuff.  I admit it – I had that job once. But somewhereb thanks in part to the slow adoption from major brands like Dell, Zappos, and Amazon, the publicly posted negative feedback and reviews stopped getting censored.  When they would get censored, there would be a public outcry.  Progressive CMO’s were more worried about that outcry than the negative posts on their domains.  Good call.  If the products can stand for themselves, then let the social media prove it for you.  Now we’re talking about something truly valid.

The social media space really evolved this past year.  The community noticed the companies making these efforts, and taking these risk.  The companies were embraced for it.  Fans and followers became as faithful as NASCAR fans are to their brands.  And even when the quantity is few, their presence was very illuminating.

So here I am, getting really into marketing on Facebook, and finding myself excited about the opportunity of riding a wave that will either dissolve before reaching the shore, or smash into beachfront property like a tsunami.  My only regret is that I wish I had the foresight to jump on it sooner.  Actually, my regret is that more businesses still don’t have the insight to jump into it now.

It’s a tough sell.  I can completely relate to the business owner.  It’s very similar to convincing a CMO to try building a blog in 2006.  By the time they were all convinced, every company had one and none were being used properly.  A lot of noise.  But how do we convince the CMO’s that these teenagers, derelicts, and hippies are all extremely important components of your business, and not just because of their dollars?  It’s now officially a different world online, and I’m afraid business is once again way behind.  The CMOs are reading all the trades, and the “social media is where it’s at” articles, but it’s not sparking enough passion in the CMOs to pick up all the Lego pieces and start building.  How big does the bang need to be this time?

But what about the content, cross-channel implications?  They’re huge.  Maybe Facebook marketing doesn’t seemingly pass as much SEO value based on the structure of the Facebook platform, but SEO is so much more than algorithms.  It’s marketing.  It’s content.  It’s helping search engines adore your business, content, and value.  Facebook (and the content it provides) means more than most people think.  To me that’s the hurdle you have to get over first and foremost.  With passion.  Show that it’s rock n’ roll, yeah, but it’s not dangerous.  It’s cultural.  It’s last year’s next big thing.  Let’s get a move on, already before the crowd actually moves on!

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Facebook Marketing: Last Year’s Next Big Thing!

It doesn’t matter if you’re logged in or not.  It doesn’t just happen if you’re ranked in the top position (like sitelinks).  Honestly, it seems pretty random.  I haven’t figured out what triggers it, but it does seem like a useful variation of the horizontal sitelinks.  Is it better than seeing the usual display URL?  Maybe since keyworded URLs still aren’t completely prevalent yet on the web.  Function over form?

Try it – I Googled  transformers toys but it’s happening elsewhere. All the more reason to have a good site hierarchy… now it’s actually marketing for you in the search engine result pages.

Post from: Bill Sebald's Greenlane SEO 2.0 Blog

Google’s Breadcrumb Trail Display URL