Feb
20
So whats is in a redirect? Does it matter if it is a 302 redirect or a 301 redirect? Yes! Very much so. A 301 redirect informs Google that you are permanently moving a page to this new destination whereas a 302 redirect lets Google know this is only temporary. There is a time for a 302 and a time for a 301. If you are migrating a website across to a new one, say a .com to a .co.uk, you must use a 301 redirect.
Jan
25
Apologies for the lack of posting, although I have a decent excuse as I broke my arm playing football two weeks ago! One handed typing does take its toll! I should have posted this earlier, but I did a blog for Intelligent Positioning on “Who is winning the early Christmas race?” and I noticed that Firebox had ignored the pagination rules and placed a canonical tag from all archived page to an “all” page. I’ll explain the methodology a little more and then you can have your say on whether this works or not.
Dec
28
It wasn’t too long ago that we ran a test to see how Google reduced the amount of EMDs (exact match domains) and PMDs over the past three years. We concluded that this was a change that occurred over twelve months, rather than overnight and Google had been actively trying to reduce the strength assigned to EMDs and PMDs within the SERPs.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve noticed in one sector, the inclusion of a number of PMDs that really should not be on page one.
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Dec
4
It seems a long time ago that Britain was gripped with summer sporting fever. Bradley Wiggins became the first Brit to win the Tour de France in July, the amazing Olympics experience with the likes of Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Ellie Simmonds doing the nation proud, but according to Google, it was ‘Euro 2012’ that received the most searches this year.
Oct
25
When Matt Cutts or the Google Webmaster team release information on an algorithm change, social networks, forums and comments boxes are all at a flutter with disgruntled webmasters claiming the big G is out to get them. It’s nothing personal, Google has its own agenda and I’m sure Mr Cutts hasn’t got a big dart board with your face on it. One thing I do when I receive a piece of information like this (the algorithm change not that Mr Cutts has my face on a dartboard) is check out the data myself, rather than taking Google’s word for it.
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Oct
18
There have been a vast amount of changes to Google’s algorithm in the past month and a half and one of the key changes was the target EMD (exact match domains) within the SERPs. I totally 100% agree that if the website isn’t relevant to the search term and is filled with useless content and ads, then it should be dropped. I have a testing website (EMD) that was hit on September 28th 2012 and I have a couple of of theories as to why.
Sep
20
Any SEO worth his or her salt knows how useless the META keyword tag is. It has been for years. Having said that, Google released the news yesterday that they will now support a META keywords tag for Google News. The obvious benefit is that you can have some additional freedom in creating headlines, although it is obviously still advised that you mention important keywords with the title, <h1>, caption (if you have one) and opening paragraph.
Aug
30
Google News. I should have done it a long time ago with my football blog but you know how is is. Writing the content, maintaining the forum, uploading statistics – it all takes time. Having updated the skin of the blog last summer (general downtime in football blogging unless you want to write pointless transfer rumour stories!), I felt it was time for me to get my blog into Google News.
Here is how I did it and the results the website has gained since it was accepted.
Jul
27
Google fully rolled out their knowledge graph in the UK today for people and events. I had noticed the knowledge graph returning, when logged in, for a few searches that I conducted – but never as prominent as in the US, which was launched back in May. I for one welcome such a feature, although I’m sure many will oppose yet another Google tool that promotes Google products and keeps you within their space. Take a look at some of the examples this morning.
Jul
20
The dreaded Google link penalty message made its way to a number of terrified webmasters yesterday, as Google ramps up – again – its quest to clean up ‘unethical’ linking techniques.
Buying links or participating in link schemes with the sole purpose of passing PageRank from one website to another is against Google’s guidelines – every SEO knows this and is probably the first point you were told when you started working in the field.
None of my current client websites received such a wanring, but a website I used to work with (that I am still verified for) did indeed get one.