2008.11.02 SLSC vs Serps Gala at Tooting Bec – RACES
The Serpentine swimmers went to Tooting Bec Lido to compete in the annual gala against the South London Swimming Club. The Serpentine Swimming Club won.
Duration : 0:4:26
Originally posted 2010-03-13 07:12:35.
Keyword Research How to Know If You Can Rank on The First Page of the SERPS
http://www.articlemarketingexplosion.net/blog/
If you don’t get your keyword research right, you’ll really struggle to rank anywhere, let alone get first page SERPS results. The video shows you how to research your competition properly. Search like a searcher, not like a marketer.
Duration : 0:5:44
Originally posted 2010-07-30 22:49:59.
The Facts And Fiction Of Meta Tags
It amazes me sometimes, the amount of outdated and mis-information that can be found on the internet.
One of the best examples would certainly have to be Meta Tags. I still talk to people that are of the firm belief that all they have to do is add the proper META tags to a site and that site will automagically rank for their target terms. Where do they get this information? The internet of course.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to put down the fact and fiction regarding META tags as of 2007.
First, for anyone who is new to the net and unsure of what a META tag is, let me define what exactly META tags are.
META tags, are bits of code that are placed within the tags of a webpage. Their intent was and is, to give information on certain aspects of that page to software programs (such as search engine spiders) without that information being readily visible to the normal visitor.
The two best known (and misunderstood) META tags are the “description” and “keywords” META tags. It is the outdated and false information that is associated with these two tags that is the reason I am writing this article.
Let’s start with the description tag. The META description tag was designed to give robots visiting your page a brief description of what that page is about. It is this description that is often used along with the page title in the SERPs (search engine results pages). So, by adding the META description tag to a page, you are able to (sometimes) control the text used to describe that page in the SERPs.
The question is, does the META description help with the actual ranking of the page. At one point in time, yes, it did. Does it today? NO! Not at ALL.
Ok…now on to the META keywords tag. This particular tag, was originally intended to give robots indexing a page a list of keywords that particular page was about. This was a BIG thing. This tag literally allowed you to TELL the search engines WHAT keywords that page was supposed to rank for. Wow…imagine the possibilities.
Well, MANY people imagined the possibilities and MANY people to FULL advantage of them. So many, that within a matter of just a year or two of it’s initial use, almost none of the top engines even used it anymore. As of today, NONE of the top engines use the keywords tag in any way for ranking purposes.
So…does the keyword tag still have any uses? Nope. The thought was nice, but the greed of many webmasters quickly made this tag obsolete and useless. You will still find many sites using this tag as it doesn’t hurt anything, but it has absolutely no beneficial affect on ranking any longer.
To summarize, neither the META description or keywords tags have any positive affect on rankings. The only one of these two tags that has any use is the keywords tag and that is simply to assist in controlling the description used in the search engine listings.
If you run into someone telling you they will work with your META tags to help your rankings RUN, don’t walk away from them!
See you at the top!
John Buchanan
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/the-facts-and-fiction-of-meta-tags-136386.html
Originally posted 2010-07-17 17:13:47.
Learn About Pros and Cons of Google Suggest for Seos-00-790
One of the biggest effects that Google Suggest might have on the search experience would be that the searches will most probably lose the long tail keywords. The chances are that, users would not manually input long search queries, instead would rather rely on Google Suggest and prefer the short tail queries suggested by Google.
As Martin Bowling explains, “Google will now be forcing users into high-volume, high-money terms (i.e., terms that people are bidding on via Adsense) it’s almost like Google is creating a new Top 10 before the user is ever even taken to the SERPs. For more details go to www.brew-own-beer.com .By having your primary keywords that you are ranking for listed in this drop down, you are far more likely to get traffic than those related terms that aren’t being listed. When presented with options, people will generally choose one.”
Over at Site Creations, Scott Clark, has put up a very interesting post that highlights the 9 potential ways, through which Google Suggest might change the pattern of search marketing. These potential steps are:
1. Google Suggest Drop Down a new micro “SERP”: “Those who make their way into the suggest feature get a “better than #1? position. For example, typing “ipod case” into Google with Suggest shows the first suggested feature as “ipod cases at Wal-Mart” – grabbing people and then offering up the organic page free from PPC ads that use “Wal-Mart” in their keywords.”
2. Google Suggest Results May Change Long-Tail Search Optimization: “Those of us who believe in doing long-tail marketing may find an decrease down the tail from search, and a greater need to develop segments of our site to serve those long tail queries. Searches that used to come in with two word phrases may now have 3-4 words, which helps with medium-tail optimization, but longer phrases previously further down the tail may be “clipped.” This will concentrate search terms so that Adwords bids will rise and competition increases in a sort of ‘cluster’ effect.”
3. We May See More Traffic to Regional Sites: People regularly enter ‘cheap gas’ and ‘best dentist’ in search engines – without qualifying the searches at all. Organic results tend to send people to national portals, but suggest-driven search gets them closer to well optimized, regional sites. For more details go to www.dream-revealed.com .A search for ‘cheap gas’ without search suggest offers gasbuddy.com at number one organic result, while a ‘suggested’ search for ‘cheap gas houston’ gives houstongasprices.com.
4. Google Suggest SERPS offer More Impact for Trademark Blocking in PPC: “If your tradename is offered in
Google suggest results, and you’ve filed a trademark complaint form, the results page will be free from paid competition giving you a better shot at the traffic through organic or ppc links.”
5. Google Suggest Can Improve User/Searcher Skills Forever: “With Google suggest constantly popping up when you go about your daily queries, many who never really thought of keyphrases will now start to think about them. It will be a constant reinforcement of our efforts to think about how consumers search. We may have to adjust our planning to meet these enhanced skills.”
6. Google Suggest Can Be an Ad-Hoc Negative Keyword Tool: “There are other ways to be more comprehensive, but Google suggest can help to identify negative keywords you may want to enter in your campaigns. And I saw some negative phrases with higher index numbers that never showed up in Google keyword tools.”
7. Dramatically Reduced Spelling Error Opportunity: “While many of us set up ad-groups to capture spelling errors, this will have a decreasing impact as people start to use the suggest feature as a live auto-correction. Typo-campaigns may get less traffic.”
8. Hijacking Google Suggest May Become a SEO Technique: “It may become possible to hijack Google suggest so that competitive phrases are strategically flashed to the user. For example.. if you sell “abc widget” then a suggest of “abc widget fails miserably” could be used to divert traffic.”
9. Better Searches Offer Improved Analytics Information: “With the user making clear choices among those available, we’ll have better information about what is enticing and engaging to the users. Vague, high volume two-word searches are always confusing when we’re looking to make decisions, and this might just help us plan better.”
deepak.dec2008
http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/learn-about-pros-and-cons-of-google-suggest-for-seos00790-684022.html
Originally posted 2010-07-10 04:14:46.
Importance of a Search Engine Optimization Specialist
The World Wide Web has made a huge impact on our lives and it can make a vast difference to the performance of any business. Whatever the industry, the Internet provides tremendous opportunities for any business. Nowadays, every business has an online presence and the idea behind that is to reach the customers globally.
Search engines are one of the major sources for getting traffic to your website and finally the actual customers of your products/services. For this, your website should be ranked well across different search engines for the targeted keywords. Search engine marketing is an important aspect which helps online business to be successful on the World Wide Web.
A “Search Engine Optimization Specialist” is an ideal person to optimize your website in such a way that it ranks well in SERPs, by implementing various search engine marketing strategies. A Search engine optimization specialist has expertise and experience in preparing and implementing the best search engine optimization strategy for any business. He knows what things need to be added and what things have to be removed to make a website favorable for good search engine rankings. As SEO is a technical job, it is always advisable to employ a professional Search engine optimization specialist rather than do it yourself. However, finding a good SEO specialist will take some time and knowledge.
There are many firms that offer search engine marketing services to businesses of all sizes; large, medium and small. One thing that is important is finding an SEO company which understands your business and has deep knowledge about what strategies are to be followed to optimize and promote your website.
Outsourcing Technologies, based in India, offers professional and reliable search engine optimization services through its various SEO specialists. At Outsourcing Technologies, professional search engine optimization specialists study the algorithms of each search engine in detail to create the visibility of your website on the Internet. SEO experts here have immense knowledge about which strategies need to be implemented to make your website rank well and how to bring quality traffic to your website. The company also advises you regarding various search engine optimization and search engine marketing options.
If you want to get SEO tips from professional search engine optimization specialists for your website, please visit the site http://www.outsourcingtechnologies.com
Bob Smith
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/importance-of-a-search-engine-optimization-specialist-675288.html
Originally posted 2010-08-10 18:27:49.
Why are .com sites ranking highly in UK SERPs?
For a followup post about this video, please see: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-about-generic-tlds-in-say-uk-results/
guavarian from the UK asks:
“Why are the UK SERPS still really poor with irrelevant non UK sites (US/Aus/NZ) ranking very high Google.co.uk since early June?”
This video is part of a “Grab Bag” series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, answers questions from users. We’re not currently taking new video questions, so your best bet for getting an answer about webmaster-related search issues is to head to our help forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en
Duration : 0:2:0
Originally posted 2009-12-23 23:05:38.