The success of the Web has traditionally been based around linking, so much so that the search engine algorithms are based heavily on thinks like link popularity amongst hundreds of other elements.  The fact is that the engines do place a lot of weight on link popularity and link authority.  My concern is that pages with high link popularity do not always serve up the best result for my needs as a searcher.  This is one reason why I was excited to see some of the focus from Google switch to real-time search results.  Many real-time search results do not necessarily have a lot of link popularity (at least not initially).  However these results tend to provide the timely information that one may be looking for.

Link building has become an often used tactic by search engine marketers and site owners to get their site placing in the prime real estate of the search results.  As you know this does not always mean that the most relevant result is being returned.  With linking, it’s not just about search engine optimization.   A well written piece, whether it be an article blog post, press release, or web page should be able to generate the link authority needs.  The ability to buy links and inflate a site’s link popularity totally depreciates the whole idea of link authority.

So what then happens when link popularity becomes… well less popular?  I am speaking from a search engine algorithm perspective.  What if the engines were to drastically change their algorithm so that link popularity was not as important of a factor as it is today?  Here are some things that I think would happen:

1. Purchasing of links becomes less of an issue - Google is having difficulty in dealing with this widespread issue.  There are still numerous sites out there that have acquired links by buying them to artificially inflate their link inventory and improve their link popularity.  Again this presents an issue for the search engines and for the users of search as this can have a direct impact on the results that are being presented.   Does Google use “human raters” to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect (of purchasing links)?  Google has recently admitted that “employees” do have the ability to change index rankings.  This is a touchy issue and as Scott Cleland, on his “The Precursor” blog has stated:  “If links are a factor in determining the rank of content, and Google’s advertising revenue is derived from sites’ search rankings, how does Google ensure the human raters of the SDB are not influenced to reward Google-owned content or Google partners’ content that Google revenue shares with?”
2. The search engines would need to place greater weighting on other elements – perhaps freshness of content, on-page elements, engagement with a given page, time spent etc all get a higher weighting and the true value or relevancy of a page comes out.  Google already factor these things in but if they shifted weighting of some of their algorithm components, you can bet that we would see a shift in the pages or elements that make up a search results page.
3. Drastic changes in the SERPs – placing less weight on link popularity would mean that we would most likely experience drastic changes in the search results.  We might even see sites that had been ranking for a given key phrase no longer place as well as they once did.  Again it should all come back to relevancy.
4. Backlash from link-optimized website owners – sites that have enjoyed successful rankings and presence in the search results might all of a sudden lose some of their visibility.  You can image what this could mean in terms of traffic and potentially revenue that is generated by these sites.  There would most likely be a number of lawsuits to try and put pressure on the search engines to return the results to where they once were.
5. Truly authoritative sites would better populate search results – as mentioned, less focus on link buying might allow people to create content that is more engaging and speaks to their audience thereby providing more authority in the results that are returned.  Depending on the nature of the search query, more relevant results could populate the results that did not have their link inventories artificially inflated.
6. Link Brokers go out of business – the folks that sell links for all of the wrong reasons would be left scratching their heads, but you know what, they tend to be pretty smart people and would look for other opportunities.
7. The Web gets cleaned up – think about all of those spammy links that are out there.  Link farms etc etc, there are currently massive amounts of useless linking going on and it has diluted the Web.  Think about how much better it would be to browse the ‘Net without clicking through to sites that simply don’t serve your needs.  Less focus on links would eventually see a lot of these environments phase out.  Thee would simply be less garbage and fewer blogs and sites that are leveraged for the purposes of link building on the Internet.

Will the search engines ever place less value on link popularity?  Well with some of the past algorithm updates in Google, they have already made slight changes which have at times caused a ripple in the search results.   At the end of the day, Google and the other engines want to deliver the most relevant result possible.  I truly believe that.  However it is not an easy thing to do.  Is placing less value on link popularity the answer?  I’m not sure, but I know that it would be an interesting test if anything else.  Again we’re talking about link popularity not link authority.  Although with regards to link authority, this is another reason why some sites have gone the route of purchasing links.

I think that link popularity is a little overrated and that the engines will need to continually tweak their algorithms so that they are delivering the most relevant results to us the user.  With highly frequented environments such as social networks (read:  Facebook, Twitter) we might see a shift from search engine usage to other tools and sites that people will visit to find the information that they are looking for.  The popularity of the Facebooks, Twitters and YouTubes of the world proves that people just might visit their online destination of choice regardless of link popularity or even search engine of preference.

Yahoo! and Bing announced their intentions to merge in mid-2009 and that transition is starting to come to fruition. As of June, comScore reported that 64% of searches occur on Google, 18% on Yahoo! and 12% on Bing. Assuming no one migrates from Yahoo! to Google after the transition, Bing will be powering 30% of all search results in the U.S. Yahoo! confirmed last week that they are starting to conduct systems integration testing with Bing, though if recent ranking results from Yahoo! are any indication, there has been algorithm testing taking place for the past couple of months. Systems integration testing is expected to take place in June and July with the actual transition to Bing results taking place in August and September (the PPC transition is operating on a slightly different timeline). If there are any problems, Yahoo! will pause integration during November and December as those are critical months for online retailers who could see a impact on their bottom line if there were major changes in organic search results driving traffic to their sites. While Yahoo! search results will be powered by Bing, it should be noted that the Yahoo! user interface will not be changing and will not show the same related search results, quick tabs, and categories that Bing does.

The web crawler that fuels Bing’s search results will also be changing. As of October 1, MSNbot 2.0 will be replaced by “Bingbot”, which is currently being tested. For websites that have a crawl exclusion set up in their robots.txt file, Bing has said that the Bingbot will follow exclusions set up for the previous MSNbot – no change is required to the robots.txt file by webmasters though eventually you will want to have this updated. If you have directives in your robots.txt for both MSNbot and Bingbot, the new Bingbot will ignore directives for MSNbot and only follow directives for Bingbot, so make sure you don’t have conflicting information for the two different bots as different directives won’t both be followed.

The basics of SEO optimization are the same for Google and Bing: original content with targeted keywords, quality links, and well designed, cleanly coded sites. There are some differences in the Google and Bing user interfaces – Google’s blended results versus Bing’s related search results, quick tabs and categories – which means there are some different tactics for optimizing for some of the ‘finer details’ of SEO. If you don’t already have your website set up in Bing Webmaster Tools, you should make sure your site is set up and there are no crawl errors occurring that would prevent your site from being indexed or ranking well. I’ve noticed that Bing’s geotargeting can sometimes be off for foreign sites, so make sure Bing correctly recognizes the country and language your site is targeted to. If you are wondering how well you will do on the new Yahoo! search results page, check your current Bing rankings as these will be similar once the transition is complete.

I’m burnt – toasted, roasted and completely fried. I’ve just spent the last two days in stakeholder meetings with a client. In those two days I’ve met with representatives from every department imaginable – from channel sales to governance, from corporate relations to Analytics, from corporate marketing to website design, from social media to IT. In total, a dozen meetings with almost twice that many people. I’ve got about twenty pages of notes I have to sift through.

Why?

I’ll give you the same answer I gave before each meeting, in what officially became known as the “preamble”:

“You might be wondering why you’re here. For the past two years we’ve been working with your company on the organic visibility of your website. With organic optimization, there are really two things you have to think about – what you say about your self, and what others say about you. Up to now, we’ve been focused on the first category: the content on your website, how the site is coded, the keywords customers might use to find you. That was relatively straightforward because you controlled all the things we were looking at. But now, we have to look at the second category – what others are saying about you. And that gets a lot more complicated. Now suddenly, we need to understand what’s happening in almost every aspect of the business. What makes it even more complicated is that we have to begin to understand how all those pieces fit together.”

What became clear over the two days was that the discussions that we initiated by our SEO strategy could also have been the beginning discussions required to craft a company wide strategy. The fact is, trying to please a search engine algorithm means you have to think of your online presence in it’s totality. Google and Bing determine your online relevance based on nothing less than the digital footprint of your organization. And, as the boundaries continue to dissolve between the virtual realities of our businesses and the bricks and mortar reality, who we are online is who we are…period.

This opens up an interesting challenge for organic practitioners. They have to be prepared to step out of their cozy niches, wedged somewhere between the worlds of marketing and IT, and be ready to truly “get” their clients at all levels. The best SEO practitioners have to abandon the quick fixes, like buying links, and roll up their sleeves, putting in the sweat equity required to come up with strategies that come from the very DNA of the company. SEO tactics that are grounded in the day-to-day business and the strategic objectives of the company will always outperform the “links for hire” and ghostwriter content creation that still flourishes in this business. Is it easy? Hell no. Is it worth it? I believe so, or wouldn’t have spent the last two days holed up in a non-descript meeting room across the hall from cubicle B23.

Here’s the thing. In trying to understand what is required for the next phase of SEO, its imposing a discovery process and discipline that I believe will make us a better vendor partner and will make our client a better marketer. The same is true, by the way, for a truly authentic social media strategy. A while ago, I wrote a column entitled companies get the SEO they deserve. It’s also incumbent upon us, as partners in this process, to be ready to rise to the challenge for those clients who have proven themselves ready to move beyond the quick fixes and questionable practices.

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider July 8th 2010

Interlinking and link building are essential parts of an effective SEO strategy so anything that could have implications on the effectiveness of these tactics is a core organic search marketing concern. On May 11, 2010 a six year old Google patent application was approved that will change the way link juice is passed from page to page, both within a site and across domains. One month later, the implications of this new patent are starting to get the attention of the SEO community.

Dubbed the Reasonable Surfer Patent by SEO Bill Slawski, this new link analysis methodology anticipates which links on a page are most likely to be clicked on by a user and assigns a relative ranking value accordingly. The more likely a link is to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” the larger share of available link juice it will be assigned.

In technical terms, the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent works like this:

A system generates a model based on feature data relating to different features of a link from a linking document to a linked document and user behavior data relating to navigational actions associated with the link. The system also assigns a rank to a document based on the model.

Reading the full text of the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent it quickly becomes clear that some tried and true interlinking strategies are about to go the way of the dinosaur. A once simple mathematical calculation dividing the number of links on a page by a ranking value and assigning each an equal share has become a complex equation involving the unpredictable variable of anticipated human behavior and a sliding scale of link juice flow. In short, the true value of a link on any given page will no longer be as transparent as it has been in the past. 

The Reasonable Surfer Patent eliminates the transparency of link juice flow which means changes to the way that link building and interlinking plans will be developed. Link flow SEO just became a much more strategic game. When deciding how to link within a site SEOs now need to be very aware of the impact of navigational elements and footers as well as the value of linking to pages like “About Us” throughout a site.

On pages that combine internal links with external links, SEOs will have to weigh the potential costs of lost link juice flow. If a user is more likely to click on the external link it could impact the rankings of any relevant internal links, making it a strategic play to remove the external link at the expense of providing true user value. The Reasonable Surfer Patent could end up cultivating a culture of protectionism among SEO analysts.

Because of its potential to cultivate a sense of protectionism the Reasonable Surfer Patent means that link building could become a much harder sell. SEO strategists may be weary of adding outbound links to their sites for fear that it will devalue internal links. While this fear is valid, excluding quality outbound links is not necessarily warranted.

The Google patent hints at the signals it will use to determine the behavior of a “reasonable surfer” toward a given link, and understanding these signals will give in-the-know SEOs the tools they need to benefit from the new patent.

The signals Google may use when identifying links to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” include:

Link position on the page – above the fold is best, the sooner you get a user’s attention the more likely they are to click through, also positioning key links in areas that users naturally ignore, like the left and right hand columns on a page, could devalue user interest ratings

Link relevance – the more relevant a link is to the content on the page the better, truly related resources are always more likely to be clicked on than unrelated or irrelevant content

Anchor text of the link – the more relevant the anchor text is to the content on a page the more likely it is to be weighted with a higher user interest value

Links in the body of the page text – links placed in the body of the page text are known to be clicked on more frequently than links or link groups that frame the content, the positioning of a link within the actual text of a page will be a strong signal

Presentation of the link – be it as an image, in a list, in a larger font size or in a different coloured text, the way in which you present your links will be a signal as to how likely a user is to click through

User ad aversion – avoid presenting links so that they may be confused for advertisements as this will likely be a negative signal, do not place links in areas that users traditionally associate with ads, like the right hand column of a page or in images that look like banners

Uniqueness of the link – redundant links on a page have long been an SEO no-no and while it may seem that increasing a link’s presence on a page would increase the likelihood of a click through, in reality it will most likely be perceived in the new schema as link stuffing

Navigational interlinking – including navigational or footer links on every page may no longer be an SEO must-do as they lead to link distraction and link juice flow dilution, even the coveted (and very useful) breadcrumb trail may be a negative signal for these reasons

Google Caffeine is finally live, and while SEOs have been speculating for months about whether or not it was live and on how many data centers, we now know that it is a done deal across the board straight from Google. Caffeine is not an algorithm change like the recent MayDay update, it is an indexing adjustment based on a need for speed that Google first identified on September 11, 2001. It has taken Google nearly nine years to perfect Caffeine, so you know that this is a major progression that will change the face of SERPs and SEO forever.

Since this is a modification to how the index works, and not an adjustment of the algorithm itself, some SEOs are dismissing it as irrelevant. That is a mistake. While Google Caffeine does not change the actual ranking factors it does change how quickly new information is found and parsed, which will inevitably impact SERPs. Anything that impacts how things are found for search results impacts SEO strategy and development.

So what exactly does Caffeine mean for SEO? Nobody can say for sure because in typical Google fashion, details are not forthcoming. What Google has said is that Caffeine allows for faster more accurate inclusion of pages and other web content in its index. It appears that Caffeine will be kinder to rich media and the real time web than the previous indexing method. Google has provided a pretty (and cryptic) picture to illustrate the shift; make of it what you will…

The Old Google Index V. Google Caffeine

Previously I’ve discussed the importance of custom and how to properly set up 404 error pages.  Part of the reason that you should leverage a custom 404 error page is to direct your users to the information that they are looking for.  Well another benefit of setting up and more importantly serving up proper 404 error pages is to assist the search engine spiders in the crawling of your site. 

Yesterday, the Google Webmaster Central blog announced that GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is now reporting on soft 404s or soft 404 errors.  As a reminder, a “soft 404″ occurs when a webserver responds with a 200 OK HTTP response code for a page that doesn’t exist rather than the appropriate 404 Not Found.  According to Google,

Soft 404s can limit a site’s crawl coverage by search engines because these duplicate URLs may be crawled instead of pages with unique content.

The web is infinite, but the time search engines spend crawling your site is limited. Properly reporting non-existent pages with a 404 or 410 response code can improve the crawl coverage of your site’s best content.

Soft 404 errors are not only a bad idea for the search engines, but they can confuse your site visitors as well.  Returning a 404 response code for a non-existent URL is ideal as opposed to websites that serve “soft 404s” return a 200 response code.  It’s much better to return a 404 response code and clearly explain to users that the file wasn’t found.  Google illustrates this very clearly with this post.

How to Fix Soft 404 Errors

1. Check whether you have soft 404s listed in Webmaster Tools
2. For the soft 404s, determine whether the URL:
   1. Contains the correct content and properly returns a 200 response (not actually a soft 404)
   2. Should 301 redirect to a more accurate URL
   3. Doesn’t exist and should return a 404 or 410 response
3. Confirm that you’ve configured the proper HTTP Response by using Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools
4. If you now return 404s, you may want to customize your 404 page to aid your users. Our custom 404 widget can help.

People are talking about MayDay… and it’s not about the series finale of the ABC program Lost… we’re talking about the algorithm update that was dubbed “MayDay” by  Webmaster World.  Over at Marketing Jive, I compiled a list of some of the top resources pertaining to the Google MayDay algorithm update.  I will reproduce that post below in it’s entirety.  Original post:  Google MayDay Update: Definitive List of Resources - Marketing Jive.

We, like many, have monitoring a number of sites to see if they have been hit by the latest Google algorithm update, which was dubbed “Google MayDay” by Webmaster World. The good news? We have not seen this impact any of the sites that we work on including large e-commerce sites.   This is a vote of confidence in the recommendations that we have been sending to our clients as their sites are doing the right things to become authorities in their given industries.  This includes:

• optimizing for the proper mix keywords between head/torso/long-tail phrases as part of your keyword strategy
• creating unique, informative and useful content through content development strategies
  • creating unique product descriptions anyone?
• obtaining quality links by producing useful content as mentioned above

Many in the industry have chimed in including Google’s Matt Cutts in a video that you can find within the links mentioned below. 

Matt Cutts:  “This is purely our algorithm thinking that some sites are better match for some queries than other sites…” (read: long-tail).  This will change how Google assesses which sites are the best match for long-tail queries.  Matt goes on to state that if your site is being affected to:

• go back and ask yourself do you have a high quality site?
• are you showing up for the most qualified searches?
• what can I do to add great content?
• do people consider you an authority?  (read: quality inbound links)

There has been some great discussion about “MayDay”, from Search Engine Roundtable to Vanessa Fox and Matt Cutts.  One month after initially reported, we have come up with the definitive resource list for the Google MayDay algorithm update.

Google MayDay Update:  Definitive List of Resources

1. Google MAYDAY Update Hitting Long Tail Ranking? – Search Engine Roundtable
   http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022128.html
2. Google MAYDAY Update – SERP Changes May 2010 – Webmaster World
   http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4125460.htm
3. Whiteboard Friday – Google’s May Day Update & What It Means for You – SEOmoz
   http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-googles-may-day-update-what-it-means-for-you
4. Google Confirms “Mayday” Update Impacts Long Tail Traffic – Vanessa Fox – SE Land
   http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054
5. Google May Day Update Confirmed, Our Fourth Post – Search Engine Roundtable
   http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022289.html
6. Video: Google’s Matt Cutts On May Day Update
   http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022293.html
7. Is This Google Algorithm Update Costing You? – Web Pro News
   http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/05/27/webmasters-say-google-algorithm-update-costing-them
8. Mayday! Mayday! Google Changes Impact Long Tail Search – Marketing Pilgrim
   http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/05/mayday-mayday-google-changes-impact-long-tail-search.html
9. Google “Mayday” Update – New Long-Tail Indexing from Google? – Marketing Jive
   http://www.marketing-jive.com/2010/05/google-mayday-update-new-long-tail.html
10. Google’s Mayday Update and What to Do About It – Step Forth
    http://www.stepforth.com/blog/2010/googles-mayday-update/

Expect more stories on “MayDay” to emerge.  The fact is “MayDay” is an algorithm update, confirmed by Google itself.  You probably do not need to panic because by now you should be doing the things that you should be doing to make your site a great resource for your audience.  Your site should feature unique and informative content that will help you become the authority your need to be on your given discipline.

For those of you who use Google Webmaster Tools on a regular basis, you must have been excited to see some of the recent updates that Google has made to GWT.  Earlier this month, Google announced that they were updating some of the search query data which turned out to be:

• showing an “Average position” column right on the main Search Queries page
• showing a “Displaying” number for Impressions and Clicks
• showing a CTR for a given query

These items can provide some great insight into your site’s activity.  Of course you should cross reference with your own analytics to see if the data resembles what you are actually seeing.  Especially in terms of organic click-through rates.  We should remind you that the traditional definition of click-through rate is the average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.   The organic click-through rate that Google is reporting in Google Webmaster Tools is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, expressed as a percentage.

According to Wikipedia:

CTR is most commonly defined as “number of clicks” divided by “number of impressions” and generally not in terms of the “number of persons” who clicked divided by the “number of impressions”

Organic Click -Through Rates: What’s the Standard? 

What is interesting about this is that in the past, people have tried to establish a standard for organic click-through rates, yet this has not been an easy thing to do.  I would suggest that there really is no true standard for organic click-through rates due to a couple of key factors:

• Nature of the search – different types of searches will provide different type of CTRs
• Changing Landscape of the SERPs – as personalization and blended search make the Search Engine Results Pages more dynamic, calculating the organic click-through rate becomes more difficult.
• Real-Time Search – timely search results contribute to the changing landscape of search results page

So as you can see having a standard for organic click-through rates is truly difficult to produce.  Having said that we are getting closer.  Here’s a comparison of some recent research and information on organic click-through rates that you might want to consider.

Chitka Research @Chitka – May 2010

There were some interesting findings with this research.  While stating the obvious, that the prime organic real estate in Google is the #1 spot, the CTR of 34.35% that they reported was higher than we have typically seen.   Here is a breakdown of the organic click-through rates (in Google) for positions 1-15 based on Chitka’s research.

Another interesting finding from their research was the importance of being on the first page of Google.  The research suggests that moving from the top of page o in Google (position 11) to the bottom of page one (position 10) sees a 143% jump in traffic.  This is significant although the 143% increase means going from a CTR of 1.11% to 2.71%.  The point is clear however, you want to be on page one of Google results to generate sufficient click throughs and organic traffic.  In particular within the top three organic results ideally in the top spot.  Does this task daunting?  Well it obviously depends on the keyword your are trying to place for, but optimizing your content, and not just your traditional web pages (read: video, press releases, shopping feeds, local results, blogs etc.)can help you gain visiblity in the organic search results.  http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

Enquiro’s Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer – 2007

In our very own research we established our own organic click-through rates based on how B2B technical buyers search knowing that technical buyers are using online to search and select and screen out vendors; to create short lists; and to get competitive pricing for closing negotiations.  What we found is that the top organic listing generated a CTR of nearly 25%.  What we found that was interesting and holds true based on some of our own client’s data is that being in position ten at the bottom of the page was more valuable than say being in positions five thru nine.  Here is a breakdown of our organic click-through rates:

If you like, you can download our free B2B whitepaper on Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer from Enquiro Whitepapers page.  We have been analyzing organic click-through rates for years dating back to some of our earlier research in 2005 as mentioned here.  It’s interesting that even in 2010, that organic listings/results still generate the majority of clicks compared to paid or sponsored listings.  While the gap is narrowing ever so slightly (a few years ago the split was 80/20 paid vs, organic), today 70-75% of the clicks are for organic listings when compared to sponsored.  Where are you putting your resources? 

We have conducted additional research which suggests that the CTR is most likely around 26% for top organic, 12.68% for position two and 8.89% for third organic spot.  Results vary but this seems to be close to what we are seeing in Google.  With all of the recent changes that Google has been implementing it appears that the organic CTRs are changing as well.  Take this post which suggest that the average organic click-through rate s 46.37% and spot number two is 29.3%.  Still other reports such as this one, suggest that the CTR for the top organic spot in Google is 42.3% and the second spot is 11.92%.

So while there is no standard for organic click-through rates, the data is there and organic click-through rates are not as elusive as they once were.  Of course you have to monitor your own data to see if the CTRs mentioned above hold true for what you are seeing with your own traffic and such.  Your organic search efforts should focus on gaining visibility in the search results.  It is obvious that there is no greater visibility than being in the prime real estate of the top organic listing in the search results, whether it’s Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

Original Post:  Courtesy of Marketing Jive’s Five Must Read Articles on Google

As always there is a lot going on at Google.  Late Spring/early Summer seems to be a busy time for Googlers.  Here are a couple of great articles that are Google related that you might want to consider sharing with your online marketing or SEO teams.

1. Google SEO experts explain what REALLY affects search results – http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-answers-seo-questions/13731/ five Google experts shared their thoughts on SEO from things such as duplicate content to XML sitemaps.  It is a good reminder for many in the industry with some nice nuggets thrown in.�
   

   For example, with regards to HTML sitemaps, Matt Cutts suggests: If you have time or a script that can generate a pretty HTML Sitemap (e.g; for a blog, you could have one page for each year or month of your blog, depending on how much you write), that can work nicely.

   As mentioned there are some pretty great reminders here.

2. Google’s encrypted search casts shadow on web analytics – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/25/google_ssl_search_and_web_analytics/.  An interesting articles on the impact of how “SSL snuffs browser referrals”.  Here’s a brief snippet from the article: “Web browsers typically turn off referrers when going from HTTPS to HTTP mode to provide extra privacy,” Google says. “By clicking on a search result that takes you to an HTTP site, you could disable any customizations that the website provides based on the referrer information.”
3.  The Value of Google Result Positioning – there have been a number of articles out recently based on click-thru percentages from the organic results of Google search results.  Chitka Research shares their information.  Some interesting stuff here.  What does top spot in the organic rankings mean?  According to Chitka, 34.35% which is considerably higher than what others including our own research have stated.  (Our research suggests that the top spot typically returns a CTR of around 26%. In addition, one of the stats mentioned based on the Chitka research was that going from the 11th spot to 10th (from the second page top the first page) sees a 143% jump in traffic.   The numbers are based on a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across the Chitika advertising network in May, 2010.
   http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/
   
   
4. Something Is Up (Or Down) With Google’s Search Algorithm - SE Roundtable has shared their thoughts on the Google “MayDay” Update which we had previously touched on a few weeks back.  Is it this possible algorithm update that is taking place at Google or are people experiencing traffic fluctuations due to Google’s redesign?  http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022264.html
   
5. Google’s Push To Speed Up Your Web Site – As Eric Enge points out on his SE Land piece, Google continues to make a big push for improving your website download performance.  Arte you one that thinks that page speed is not an issue?  Well Eric provides an example of a site that did in fact experience a drop in rankings and traffic as a result of slower page load times:

We recently became involved with one website that had seen a drop in rankings and traffic right around the time that Google announced that speed was a ranking factor back on April 9th. Our investigation found that they had been having significant server outages as well as a fairly long average page load time (greater than 5 seconds). While it is not possible to be definitively sure that page speed is the reason for the drop, our investigation has led us to believe that this is in fact the case. We have, of course, addressed the issues and hope to see traffic pop up again soon.

There you have it a couple of great articles about Google.  Google is up to a lot of things these days, from potential algorithm updates to SERP redesigns to encrypted search.  It can be a full time job keeping on top of all of these initiatives, but the main thing is to be patient and see how this will impact you site.  Do not be too quick to make changes for the sake of making changes, but be aware the Google is continuing to evolve its search offering.

Thanks to Tina Kells for pointing us in the direction of a couple of the articles mentioned above.

Let me start out by saying that to be honest, link building is not one of my favorite subjects.  I have seen way too many examples of webmasters, site owners and so-call SEO people who have abused this idea of link building and used this to try and manipulate the search results.  That’s not what we are about here at Enquiro.  There is more to our SEO services than just link building. 

We consult with clients on their linking efforts through items such as link audits and such.  We are well versed in link analysis and use tools to help identify issues with client’s link inventories.  We used advanced link operators such as these to evaluate link inventories for client’s competitors.  We used Google Webmaster Tools to gain insight in both internal and external link inventories for a given site.  We get the importance of link building, but there’s more to SEO than just link building.

The fact is that the search engine algorithms are fundamentally based on link popularity.  Yahoo for example, was started by David Filo and Jerry Yang got together  in February 1994 to organize their favorite sites on the Web.  They began compiling their lists of favorite links eventually turning Yahoo into the most popular destination on the Web.  Since then, most (all?) search engines that have followed have used link popularity as a key part of their search engine algorithm.  I take issue with this a little because based on my experience as a searcher the results that appear at the top of a given keyword query are not always relevant, and knowing that a reason a lot of these site appear is due to link popularity, I would love to see a shift in the algorithm.  For me relevant search results are exactly what I am looking for.  We tend to put a lot of trust into Google in terms of the search results that they present us, but you know as well as I that there are always potentially better results that are not on the first page of Google’s search results.  Why do you think Google is pushing things like personalization and blended results?  Why have they shifted focus to provide real-time search results? Websites that have artificially inflated their link inventories does not always equate to relevant results.  Again this is another reason as to why there is more to SEO than just link building.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of link building.  How you go about link building and the types of links you acquire  is your business.  For me, I am more in favor of the approach that the search engines communicate that they would like to see and that is building your link inventory in a natural manner.  A few years back this was referred to as “link-baiting”.  Over the years link building has changed and more recently how link popularity as part of the search algorithms continues to change.  Think about some of the reasons for this:

• Un-trustworthy link practices are tripping the filters and resulting in more penalties than ever before.
• There are a ton, most likely billions of non-linked “references” that are on the web through avenues such as social media messages, instant messages, emails, and tweets. There is a lot of relevant content here.  You cannot tell me that someone, at Google or the other search engines, is not evaluating this data to see how they can extract value and relevancy from this content.
• The ease of setting up a blog or website for the purposes of link building.  The content is being watered down and artificially linked web properties are polluting the search results
• More weight is being place on brands and
• The ability to acquire and purchase links has established an accelerated rate of link acquisition causing the engines to take more proactive action to address the volume and new unknown value of these links  

Rand Fishkin had a great piece on how link building is changing over at SEOmoz where he shared some similar reasons as to what he feels has caused this change or shift.  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-has-changed

So if there is more to SEO than link building, what does this “more” consist of?  Well there are two areas where you should be focusing your marketing efforts on:

The most important piece of SEO?  Where many will say link building and link popularity, we say content.  Content is the key to all that you do with any of your marketing efforts.  It does not matter if you are a B2B site or a B2C site.  Without useful, informative and somewhat unique and timely content, your online efforts may prove fruitless.  When we refer to content, we are not just talking about a traditional web page of content.  In 2010, content is dynamic and can be in the form of various guises including:

1. Keyword Research
2. Content

In terms of keywords, all search queries or questions begin with a keyword or a key phrase.  Recent trends show that longer key phrase queries are up with phrases that contain 8 or more words on the increase.  (This data has been supported by findings from Hitwise).  The fact of the matter is, without a sound keyword research process and keyword strategy, link building becomes somewhat irrelevant.  Keywords will always be a part of the search process.  At the heart of any search is a keyword.  Why do you think that the search engines spend so much time compiling user data and learning about semantic mapping?

The most important piece of SEO?  Where many will say link building and link popularity, we say content.  Content is the key to all that you do with any of your marketing efforts.  It does not matter if you are a B2B site or a B2C site.  Without useful, informative and somewhat unique and timely content, your online efforts may prove fruitless.  When we refer to content, we are not just talking about a traditional web page of content.  In 2010, content is dynamic and can be in the form of various guises including:

• Video
• Tweets
• Facebook status updates
• Blog posts
• Press releases
• Images
• Smart phone applications
• Podcast

The fact is people search looking to find timely information and in case you haven’t noticed, this habit has become social.  Of course Facebook and Twitter are the obvious examples, but think about all of the other environments where people go to find and share information.  From forums to YouTube to popular blogs, information has never been so accessible.  From an SEO perspective ensuring that your site features timely and useful information that can be shared will assist in improving the visibility of your site and web properties links or not.  To state the obvious, you need content to link to and from.  You can build your link inventory with great content. Should your SEO strategy be centered around link building?  We suggest no.  Should it be centered around content?  Our answer is yes.

A third area of SEO that always plays second fiddle to link building is on-page optimization.  Yet almost every site that we look at has missed some of the fundamentals in terms of on-page optimization.   On-Page optimization is a key piece to your SEO strategy that can be easy to address whereas link building can take a lot of resources.  Link building a key part of SEO?  Yes for sure but not the only part and not the most  important part from the way we see it. 

What would happen if Google made a fundamental shift with their algorithm and decided to place less value on link popularity?  All of the link building in the world would not help you.  In fact they have done this with past algorithm updates (think of algoruthm updates such as Florida).

The future of SEO will be less about links and more about content, the timely presentation of that content and the social dialogue about your brand.  You decide where you want to spend your time; link building or participating in a conversation with your audience?  The choice seems like an obvious one.