Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2010-01-29

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January 29th, 2010 Welcome to the SEO Chat newsletter. The Internet is so much a part of what we do that serious threats to its functioning, of necessity, make us take notice. We can't just react; we have to anticipate. Hence the item we're highlighting this week from eWeek. It reveals the top 10 Internet access, security, and privacy threats for 2010. Check it out; it helps to be prepared. Preparation comes in many forms, as you'll see when you read this week's articles on SEO Chat. For example, if you take on SEO clients located in a country different from the one you reside in, you may find yourself in surprising disagreements â€" until you realize that when you use their version of Google (i.e. google.co.uk for a UK-based business), it will still show results biased by your physical location. Monday's article shows you how to fix this issue. Trying to get the most out of your WordPress blog? Before you make too many changes, check out Tuesday's article, which looks at the practices of one of the best-known WordPress bloggers in the SEO industry: Matt Cutts. Finally, do you know which ranking factors are most important to Google? Are you sure? Check out the three-part article we kicked off on Wednesday before you start your next SEO campaign. Hypothetical questions can sometimes prepare us for real-life situations, as you'll learn from this week's thread; it gives you a chance to weigh all the arguments before you're confronted with the actual. So, given the choice, would you take a link each from two separate PR 2 sites, or one link from a PR 4 site? Stop by the thread and voice your views. While you're pondering, don't forget to stop by Tutorialized to further your SEO education. With more than 100 tutorials on topics such as choosing keywords, website marketing and more, you're sure to find some words of wisdom you can use to help you in your optimization efforts. Or you can submit your own tutorial and dazzle our worldwide audience! Our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, talks broadly about preparing for the kind of SEO campaign that makes most newcomers to this profession nervous: the job interview. Whether you're the prospective employer or employee, how should you prepare? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out. As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff

ARTICLES Verifying Google Search Engine Ranking Factors WordPress SEO Tips: Benchmarking Matt Cutts Blog Accurate Rank Checking in Google for Different Geographical Locations SEO on Tutorialized SEO Thread of The Week SEO Chat News Spotlight TOOLS Get Our Content on Your Site with DevText! New Articles, Right To Your E-mail

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It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's News You Can't Use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions: DevShed Hulk is back and green with envy. And radiation poisoning. Plus Jenny brings us all the news that's weird.. Watch the video!

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Verifying Google Search Engine Ranking Factors by Codex-M 2010-01-27 Google search engine ranking factors are among the most important items to check in any SEO work. This will ensure that the strategies formulated are effective, current and optimal for the best search engine ranking results. Every search engine optimization analysis examines the website's performance against these important ranking factors. This article series will take a closer look at these factors and find evidence for their existence, so you will know that you are on the right track when performing SEO on your website. If deficiencies are found in a site's Google search engine ranking factors, the SEO in charge will attempt to make some changes to the website in such a way that it will now become search engine friendly and compliant with SEO ranking factors. Taken from a broader perspective, these improvements cover three important aspects: Content (using optimal titles, checking content quality, focusing relevance to targeted keywords, etc). Links (how other sites reference the website in terms of quality and quantity). Technical aspects (i.e. crawlability of the website). Read Verifying Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

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WordPress SEO Tips: Benchmarking Matt Cutts Blog by Codex-M 2010-01-26 Matt Cutts writes one of the most successful and widely read blogs in the SEO field. What can we learn from taking a close look at his blog ? What lessons can we apply to making our own blog a success? Keep reading as we take benchmarking to a whole new arena. Benchmarking has been defined as ""The process of identifying the best practice in relation to products and processes, both within an industry and outside it, with the object of using this as a guide and reference point for improving the practice of one's own organization." We can use benchmarking techniques to examine highly successful blogs , such as the one written by Matt Cutts , to gain insights, tips and methods and a better understanding of best practices that pertain to optimizing WordPress blogs for the search engines. Blogging using WordPress is the most popular method of blogging among professionals , and it is fortunate to know that Matt Cutts uses WordPress for his blog. Read WordPress SEO Tips: Benchmarking Matt Cutts Blog

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Accurate Rank Checking in Google for Different Geographical Locations by Codex-M 2010-01-25 If one didn't consider geographical location as a factor, one would think ranking a website accurately is a straightforward task. Say a website ranked at position 15 in Google before it was improved with SEO, but after SEO it ranks at position 5 for the chosen keyword(s). Then we can say it reached the first page, and that the SEO campaign was successful. However, the ranking we check is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to client expectations. For example, say you have a client who is US-based and targeting Google.com US, and you are an SEO specialist living in the UK. Of course, your client's and your geographical locations are different, and so are the ranking results you see; they are not exactly the same. Initially, we've observed this to be different and discussed some useful geo-targeting techniques . Read Accurate Rank Checking in Google for Different Geographical Locations

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Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Online Branding by way of SEO Brand - a trademark or a unique name to identify your product or a manufacturer. Read the tutorial. Creating Search Engine Friendly URLs Using .htaccess Using .htaccess is simple and easy. Read the tutorial. Secrets Behind Link Building On reading this post you should be able to do link building with simple steps. Read the tutorial. 10 Tips To Improve Traffic Learn these 10 steps to increase traffic to your site. Read the tutorial. Bring Customers and Business Together Through Proper Keywords The title says it all. Easy methods. Read the tutorial. 5 SEO Myths Are you still spending too long on worthless SEO? This can help. Read the tutorial.

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If Page Rank really didn't mean anything anymore, this week's thread would not have generated the number of replies it has so far, as members discuss the value of backlinks. Be sure to stop by the thread and join the conversation! markhincks What's best, two PR2 links or one PR4 link? Hi, I have a site which has a PR of 4. I have the option to get a link from either 1 PR4 site or 2 PR2 sites. What would benefit me most? chr1ssy There are a lot of factors, but to answer your question, with everything else being equal, I prefer the 1 PR4. Here's some other information you need to consider: -link from a relevant site. -should be quality and not spammy site. -choose a page on that site that has the least outbound links. -choose a page that has the most relevant text/content. -surround the link with relevant text. -have the anchor text be the keyword you want to improve ranking for. -the more links you can get with the anchor text you are trying to rank for the higher your SERPs will be. -The more links you get from high PR sites (on pages preferrably with few outbound links), the higher your PR will become. -PR is logrithmic..i.e. a PR2 may be about 10 times a PR1, a PR3 10 times a PR2, etc.. So based on that, 1 PR4 will pass more PR than (2) PR2 links--but that's only relevant for PR not SERPs. SERPs are generally by the number of links with that anchor text. -higher PR pages will pass more PR which can help your own PR. Some say PR doesn't matter--and I agree it alone doesn't amtter. However I have found having a high PR (meaning you have Google trust) doesn't alone give your high SERPs, but it enables you to get high SERPs easier and stay on top easier. -a page with tons of outbound links will dilute PR value and I believe some link value. I choose pages that have a combo of relevancy, ability to add surrounding text, high PR and few outbound links. -after being succesful with your main generic keyword phrase continue to add links but use some variations and longer tail anchor text to cover all the possibilities. -If a PR4 link is on a "resources/links page" with tons of other links, no relevant text, no surrounding text and the PR2 site is on a page that has the stuff mentioned above, I'd then choose the PR2 page.... so there are more factors than PR, but all being the same, I'd choose the higher PR. Cheers! channel5 There is a lot less magic to the value of links than some people would claim. Pagerank is exponential, and the general consensus is that it runs to log 6. So a PR2 page has around 6 times as much juice a a PR1, a PR3 around 6 times as much as a PR2 etc. So a PR4 page has around 36 times the juice of a PR2. Now, the juice is distributed evenly amongst all outgoing links on the page (even nofollowed links, they just don't pass their juice on) internal or external. So a PR4 link is going to pass more juice than a PR2 link as long as it has less than 36 times the number of outbound links on the page. That's the basic math (okay there are some additional things but this is the simple version!). Put simply, if I was offered the choice I'd take the PR4 link over two PR2s. Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read the full thread.

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Preparing for an SEO Interview Whether you're a relatively novice SEO preparing to get your first job in the field, or a business looking to hire an SEO for the first time (on either a contract or permanent basis), you'll need to face the nerve-wracking interview process. It's not a picnic from either side of the desk. If you're the SEO, you're wondering whether the company will expect the impossible. If you're the interviewer, you're wondering if your candidate really knows what he's talking about. What do you do? To start with, it helps to be clear about what, exactly, you're looking for. As the business, if you're expecting to train someone or have them learn on the job, plan for that up front. What you're looking for is an aptitude for SEO, in which case you can start by asking fairly broad questions â€" such as what their favorite sites on the web are, and why. If you're not planning to hire someone who's completely new to the profession, you'll need to ask some technical questions. Past successes matter here. So does general SEO knowledge. Ask them to explain some of the “buzzwords” in the field, such as SERPs, KEI, keyword density, pagerank, and what they think of them. Ask them how search engines work, and how they'd tackle a new SEO project step by step. But that's just a start. You can find lists of 55 and even more than 80 questions to ask an SEO you're thinking of hiring (and if you're on the other end of that, it helps to know the answers!). You need to get a feel not only for what they know, but how they approach things, where they think the industry (and search in general) is going, how invested they are in the field, and so forth. It takes a special kind of person to make sense of the information overload inherent to SEO, pick out the parts that are really important, and act on them. What if you're the interviewee? Some questions are fair, and some aren't. If a company asks you to analyze their website and come back with a full report, for example, that's a red flag; they may take what you tell them, apply it, and then not hire you. Even so, it helps to examine the company's web site before the interview so you know what you're dealing with. Make sure you know what they expect from you, and from SEO in general â€" and if you think it's unrealistic, find a graceful way to tell them why. Don't try to bluff your way through or say only what you think they want to hear; some interviewers actually ask questions designed to trip someone up and weed out candidates, like “Tell me how you use keyword density in your copy writing.” Most important of all, keep reading about SEO, asking questions, and applying what you learn â€" because the best way to prepare for any job is to learn how to do it well. Good luck! Read the relevant forum thread.

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