The Art Of SEO - The Science Of PPC

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Test For Duplicate Content With Google Cache

You can use the Google Cache of a page to figure out if Google is handling your parameters, tag pages, etc., without creating problems.  Click on the "Cached Snapshot" in the Google toolbar from URL and see if the path displayed in the cache matches the original URL.  If it does not match, the cache is displaying the canonical URL and you know that Google has figured out your duplicate content and has mapped the pages together.  This technique is particularly useful for any site that uses tracking parameters, controls display through or has canonical concerns.

I discovered this trick while investigating Semtech.com the other day, a semiconductor company that makes ICs for circuit protection and ESD protection .  Semtech has complex needs because engineers want to locate products with specific parameters. Semtech solves this requirement with a very powerful CMS, but one with some SEO concerns.

The user navigation portion of the site has a hierarchical navigation system that put products in categories with subcategories while the parametric search calls products part number in the /products/ root directory.  External links point to both versions, depending on the path the user took to find it.  This canonicalization issue has largely been address by blocking the parametric search path via robots.txt, but the products continue to exist with two different URLs: the canonically deterministic URL and in the /products/ directory.  For example, one of their power management product has a canonical URL of http://www.semtech.com/products/power_management/switching_regulators/sc2440/ but also exists at http://www.semtech.com/products/sc2440/.

If you look at the Cache for the non-canonical URL , http://www.semtech.com/products/sc2440/, you can see that Google shows the canonical URL in the Cache. Cache version

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Pay The Links Love Forward

Aaron Wall had a great post today about Black Hole SEO in which he called out The New York Times, among others, for hording Page Rank by refusing to give links.

The idea may appeal to some, but it is a recipe for failure. Page Rank hording is an illusion. Linking out to an authority site actually helps your site be authoritative. My take is that Google probably manages internal Page Rank flow and external flow separately. Linking out to an external page has nothing to do with how much juice you can pass internally.

The willingness of bloggers to liberally link out whenever they write a post has a lot to do with how much easier it is for a blog to rank than a typical commercial site with the same amount of content and link juice. This generous link profile also explains why so many conspiracy SEOs think that .orgs and .edu sites are preferred by Google. Not for profits and particularly academic sites tend to include a lot of citations. Only commercial sites fail to link out or put all of there outbound links on a single page.

Black Hole Linking profiles are pretty easy for Google to spot. A big site without outbound links probably sticks out like the Great Wall of China– search engines can from outer space!

So, play the link of forward. The world will reciprocate.

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Google Page One Rankings Get Harder

Anyone else out there seeing Google changing from 10 results per page to 7? This appears to be a UI experiment rather than a definite change. While only a few people have seen this tweak, it may be a sign of the biggest change to hit search engine results in years.
Google SERP Of Seven
The idea of 10 organic results seemed sacred, surviving the launch of blended/universal and the integration of local/maps, One Box and Sitelinks, not to mention preserved across all the major and not so major engines. Google may have been preparing for this for some time with changes such as reducing the number of ad units in the right rail.

It will be very interesting to see how this change influences user behavior.  Will this increase the percentage of people who go to page 2?  Will it increase CTR for the 4-7th positions?  Will it increase the number of people who reformulate the query?

Implicit in this decision seems to be Google’s belief that the top seven results contain all that is relevant.  Hubris is the first step towards defeat.

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SEO and Politics – McCain Bombing

The impact of SEO on politics has yet to be really felt, but Chris Bower from Open Left is following the Electronic Grass Roots strategy I wrote about a year ago with his Google Bombing John McCain initiative.

Using the best practices of repuation management, Chris has chosen articles from established media outlets and is attempting to drive links to these articles with targeted anchor text.  Since the articles are keyword rich, on target and focused, they are highly relevant to the phrases.  Since the anchor text Chris suggests are taken from the article titles, it is very difficult for the engines to differentiate between "legitimate, editorial endorsements" and the kind of manipulation.

The only red flag for the engines will be that most bloggers will go ahead and link to all nine articles from one location instead of taking the time to create individual posts to support each topic/position they are trying to Google Bomb.

For example, one social commentary blog posted all of the links from a single story, although the author did at least take the time to change up the anchor text and add some more commentary.

Here are nine positions by John McCain that shows his true political allegence.  He is not a Maverick or an Independent, he has sold his soul to the Neo-Con Right Wing to get the nomination.

(1) John McCain Filibusters Minimum Wage Hike accuses the Democrats of class warfare — While adding to the war on the poor.

(2) McCain The Hypocrite economic policy shaped by lobbyist, just like every other republican agenda item. Bought and sold by Corporate America

(3) Bush, McCain On Social Security : Shredding the safety net. John McCain doesn’t need Social Security – He has two government pensions and married an heiress. .

(4) McCain Defends Nafta : It makes it so much easier to get export jobs when you create a special tax free zone and give corporations refunds for sending your jobs over seas. John McCain is a man of the people — Who make over $250,000 a year.

(5) McCain On Irag : Keep Troops in Iraq for "A Hundred Years".

(6) McCain Supports Bush Veto : Deny kids health insurance expansion.

(7) McCain Opposes GI Benefits: : He already got a government funded college education, why should our troops expect the same.

(8) McCain Opposed Choice: He supports individual rights of corporations, but not women’s rights to control their own body.

(9) McCain Defends Bush’s Iraq Policy : The biggest disaster in 225 years of American Foreign Policy and John McCain, the man running on his experience, supports Bush’s Policies.

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Speaking At SMX Advanced

I will be speaking on June 4th at SMX advanced on SEO Analytics. Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know – It’s more than just rankings and traffic reports to measure the health of SEO efforts. This session focuses on analytics that SEOs should be considering.

Not surprisingly, I will initially focus on ROI for ecommerce sites, particularly the importance of configuring your internal systems to capture Lifetime Customer Value within your CRM system instead of leaving it to 3rd party tagging software.

I will also talk about Crawl frequency and index inclusion as well as some of the data hidden in Google Webmaster Central.

Does anyone have a metric you find useful that you are willing to give up or a tool that you recommend? All contributions will be duly credited.

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