30.9.11
Internet Retailing Summit 2011
29.9.11
Learning from Failure
25.9.11
Whiteboard Interview - Google's Matt Cutts on Redirects, Trust + More
We've got a very special bonus video for you today. Our buddy-and the Googliest spam cop to ever walk the webz - Matt Cutts stopped by to do a quick interview in front of ye olde whiteboard. Watch in wonder and amazement as Rand and Matt discuss headers, status codes, how much of the web is worth indexing, porn, redirect chains, URL structures, geo targeting, leaking link juice, and amateur beekeeping!
Before you get all cynical on me and assume all you'll hear in this interview is, "design content for users, not for engines," give it a chance. Matt only brings up his trademark catchphrase once in the whole ~20 minute interview, and he is exceedingly candid and forthcoming throughout. I promise you're gonna walk away from this knowing some things about Google you didn't know before. If you don't, I'll stand on my head. Maybe. Not really. BUT I won't have to because you're going to be all super-smart and educated by the end of the video. So put on your learning pants and hit play, you uppity whipper-snapper, or, if you're like Steve Jobs and are incompatible with Flash video, read the recap below...
If you need a refresher or you're scared of moving images and prefer the company of fluffy, harmless typing, here's a little recap of what Matt and Rand discussed.
Should Webmasters Use the 'If Modified Since' Header?
The 'If Modified Since' header can be used to manually indicate to Google whether or not you've made changes to content on the page. According to Matt, they started supporting it in 2003 when bandwidth was a big issue, but nowadays, it's not very important. That said, he still advises it as a good standard practice, but also notes that it won't necessarily help you get crawled faster.
Should Webmasters Use 503 Status Codes for Downtime?
503s can help avoid getting a page that's under construction or experiencing problems crawled and indexed, which can be a big problem especially for large, popular sites (watch the video for Rand's example of Disney running into this issue). Matt advocates using 503s in this case. You can't specify when you'd like Google to re-crawl, but they will come back and won't index the maintenance content of the page.
Does the Number of Outbound Links from a Page Affect PageRank?
For instance, to conserve "link juice" and/or funnel it more discretely, does it matter whether I have three outbound links versus two? In the original PageRank formula, yes, juice flowed out in a simple formula of Passable PR divided by number of outbound links. But nowadays, Matt says it is a much more cyclical, iterative analysis and, "it really doesn't make as much difference as people suspect." There's no need to hoarde all of your link juice on your page and, in fact, there may be benefit to generously linking out (not the least of which is the link-building power of good will).
If Google's seen a Trillion URLs, How Many Do They Pay Attention To?
Since Google crawls in PageRank order, they see the "best" stuff first and avoid a lot of the serious crap. The biggest issue is discovering duplicate or previously banned content. Matt said that about 28% of what they see is duplicate. He also made the careful distinction between "quality" content and "popular" content, further illustrating that traffic isn't a significant ranking factor: "PR does not reflect popularity in the sense that porn is very popular, but nobody links to porn...(those sites) don't have the PageRank you'd expect if you went by usage."
Is a Trailing / Important in URL Structure?
Seems like a minor thing right? Do you use url.com/folder of url.com/folder/ in your URL structure? Matt says he would slightly advocate for using a trailing slash simply because it clearly indicates that a URL is a folder and not a document. That said, Google is quite good at differentiating so it's not a huge deal.
Does Google Crawl from Multiple Geopgraphic Locations?
Should I be displaying geo-specific content based on user IP? It's a very popular question among SEOs dealing with international sites and users; but how does it affect what Google sees and what shows up in the SERPs?
Matt confirmed that, "Google basically crawls from one IP address range worldwide because (they) have one index worldwide. (They) don't build different indices, one for each country."
This means it's very important to avoid showing significantly different content to users from different countries. As Matt says, "The problem is if you're showing different content-like French content to French IPs-Googlebot may not see that."
Thus, you want to be sure to send everyone to the same content initially and allow them to navigate to geo-specific areas of your site. While Google has gotten better at submitting dropdowns, working with JavaScript, etc., it is still strongly advised that you provide this geo-targeted navigation via static links.
Is It a Bad Idea to Chain Redirects (e.g. 301-->301-->301)?
"It is, yeah."
Matt was very clear that Google can and usually will deal with one or two redirects in a series, but three is pushing it and anything beyond that probably won't be followed. He also reiterated that 302s should only be used for temporary redirects...but you already knew that, right?
What's with the Bees?
It's true, there are bees in Mountain view. A rash of amateur apiculture has sprung up on the Google campus and a few members of the Web Spam Team have caught stinger fever (though not Matt, he prefers cats). Apparently they've ven gone so far as to color all of the hives in the apiary in Google's traditional primary colors...what a bunch of geeks :P
Well, that was a whole pile of great stuff we were able to get out of Mr. Cutts (and we didn't even have to ply him with booze)! Now, go venture forth and use your new nuggets of searchy goodness to clobber your competitors.
Another huge thanks to Matt for taking the time to answer our questions so thoughtfully!
Source:seomoz
Rand Fishkin Dishes on Google
Fishkin’s company is a leading provider of search engine optimization software and his efforts to get websites to rank in Google have compelled Fishkin to delve deeply into why some sites show up No. 1 as others don’t even make it into the top 100 search results.
24.9.11
Amazing Facebook Scam :)
There is now a scam going around that has landed as a status update post on the Facebook pages of many Kennedy School students and actually caught a number of them. It invites you to link to a site that will take your picture and show you, by computer transformation, what you will look like when you are old. The post shows a picture of a gnarled old guy.ng on Facebook, and it is scary that a number of them are really well done -- not like the opportunities to work with Nigerian "government officials" that everyone deletes in a nanosecond, or even the obvious ones with status updates from Facebook friends that ask you to click on a picture of an attractive woman stripping or something.
23.9.11
Miracle in Social Media Psychology
- Social media are user-centric and facilitate social practices
- It is not what the social media site or platform does, bu
- t what the user sees, feels, thinks, and anticipates, that matters most
- User experience is effectively the social media company’s brand, identity, product, and service
- A social media site’s ability to captivate, keep, and sustain user attention, and so serve its business needs, hangs on the user’s own sense of his or her participation.
- People perceive
- People think
- People feel
- People act
- People react
- People expect and anticipate
- People communicate
- People relate
- People desire
- People acknowledge
- Non - interactive media do not involve the user in their production
- Movies “suspend disbelief” and create a reality through sense-perceptions, out of moving pictures and sound (immersion, action, surprise, suspense, replacing thought with immediacy)
- Books captivate the reader’s imagination and allow him or her to build a reality through mental experience (fantasy, projection, logic, reasons and abstractions, distance)
- Music holds the listener’s attention in time, unfolding in the foreground or background, and has special impact when it is recognizable and familiar (recognition, memory, and recollection, “being there again”)
- Leverage common media narratives and forms, to make content available to users for their own references and purposes
- These forms are social: they communicate and can be used to communicate, represent, identify, signify and so on
- Users bring media to life, media bring users to life
- Social media construct realities their users help to produce
- Users can believe in the reality of these social objects, and their significance to other usersand can become interested in the objects or in their owners and creators
- Because social media depend on users to provide content as a byproduct of acting, doing, talking, sharing, asking, answering, and navigating, how they structure the user experience = user engagement
- Engaged users will participate, and their participation creates value: content, communication, profiles, connections, preferences and tastes, and so on
- Engaged users participate because they want to, are compelled to, interested to, in short, motivated to participate
- Users will put into a site, and expect from it, according to how it structures social interactions, objects, information: its World
- Social media are the productions of their users
- Social media engage the mental, emotional, psychological, and relational interests of their users.
- Users see, feel, and act:
- User Perceptions: create a visible and believable world
- User Affects: engage the feelings and motivations of users
- User Engagement: provide a means to relate feelings to acts and action
- User Satisfaction: satisfy complex user interests through social experience
- Social media create or construct a social reality
- Users:
- see themselves in it
- see others in it
- see what they and others do in it, the results of their actions
- see what their activities are about
- see social scenes, and themselves as participants
- see themselves being seen
- Users have affects, or feelings, moods, dispositions, attitudes, which are experienced “alone.” Because we are social beings, we experience affects even when interactions are mediated.
- Users experience affects:
- such as inclinations, tendencies, interests, desires
- curiosities, surprise, excitement, humor, comedy
- trepidation, anxiety, hesitation, doubt
- concern, caring, touch, recognition
- Social media realities engage user interests, to varying degrees, and in various modes, according to the activity and social practice they facilitate
- This means not just making something interesting, but captivating the user’s own interests
- Furthermore, users come to a social media site or service with their own interests already
- A well-structured social media brand permits the user to see into it, to involve him or herself, to become interested in others, and to take pleasure in their own involvement
- A social media site succeeds when its users invest in it as they would in any social practice, which means that its technology, features, functionality, and design become transparent
- The user’s interests are his or her motivation
- User has interests:
- in him or herself
- in his or her appearance to others
- in others
- in their actual or potential relationship to him/her
21.9.11
Psychology of Website Design
Read on to learn more and please leave your feedback and comments at the end of this post.They’re also mainly easy to implement, though some take a bit more care and planning than others.
This is the main reason for taking psychology into account in your designs. You want to make it more likely your visitors will do what you want.more likely to perform the actions you want them to, whether that’s getting in touch with you, buying your product, or referring their friends.
One of the biggest marks of an amateur site is trying to put too much information on each page. Don’t be afraid of white space on your pages, and don’t be afraid of having a defined purpose for each and every page on your site.