Cshel Chicago SEO, PR and Web Development

SEO 101: Google Revelations

Posted on 26. Sep, 2008 by Carolyn Shelby.

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Brian, David and I discuss two Google Webmaster Central Blog posts and the impact of those announcements on how we build sites, review our stats and logs, and how we deal with clients.

Specifically, we discuss:

• Crawling through HTML Forms — Friday, April 11, 2008
• Dynamic URLs vs static URLs — Monday, September 22, 2008

In a nutshell, Google says they pull “important” terms from surrounding pages and use them to populate search boxes and other forms in an effort to get more content. Some of the terms they pull don’t seem like things normal people would be searching for, so we’re not sure how exactly they decide what terms to try or not try. You should be able to scan through your access logs and pick out examples of the bot filling in forms to see for yourself.

As for the 180 degree flip on dynamic URLs vs. static URLs, we’re pretty much in agreement that it’s not a green light to shut off URL rewriting or stop doing “pretty URLs”. Pretty URLs enhance the user experience, and in cases where you have an existing web site that is already turning ugly, dynamic URLs into pretty static strings, you should DEFINITELY not deviate from the status quo. Changing all of your existing URLs will cause a horrendous drop in traffic while the engines try to figure out what you’ve done and get everything sorted out.

Popularity: 53% [?]

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How well does the Google algo catch spamdexers?

Posted on 16. May, 2007 by Carolyn Shelby.

First off, I’m not picking on Google. I’m not, okay? I’m just puzzled, and so I’m asking some questions.

For all the talk lately about how awesome the algo has become at catching and stopping duplicate content, determining a site’s overall theme, evaluate (and factor in) the quality of the links, etc. I’ve come across some things that make me kind of wonder how much of that is actually true.

People’s Exhibit A: Metal Buildings

Metalbuildingdepot.com is #1 for “metal buildings” (which are the main kws for a press release client of mine, hence why I was being nosy). They also rank well for other industry terms like steel buildings, metal garages, etc.

So… why does this make them evil?

This company appears to be spamdexing their way to the top by using 5000ish domains with identical content. They seem to all use the same template and have the same content then cross link between them. Isn’t that supposed to raise some red flags someplace? [...]

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Google easing into domain business afterall

Posted on 17. Dec, 2006 by Carolyn Shelby.

Remember when I said Google can’t see behind privacy protected domain registrations because they don’t actually manage any domains? Well… Google just announced they’ve added domain registration to the Google Apps for Your Domain Beta. Adding a domain to your Google Apps account is only $10.00 a year to register AND host AND get private domain registration to protect you from Evil spammers.

So this begs the question…

Is Google finally using their registrar license to manage domains for the general public?

Nope. They’re partnering with GoDaddy and Enom to provide the registration services. I doubt it’s a coincidence that they chose to partner with the registrars that have the first and third largest shares, respectively, of the domain market. Via these partnerships, there are now at least 20 million domain records to which Google (presumably) has full, behind-the-privacy-screen access.

Abhilash previously suggested this type of situation might be possible, and honestly, I didn’t think any of the registrars would get into bed with Google like this because the risk of clients becoming upset and transfering out in droves wouldn’t be worth taking. Sort of makes me wonder what kind of financial incentive they received.

I guess we’ll just have to watch and see how this plays out.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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