Human beings sometimes work with concepts and may use different words to express the same idea. This human intelligence is not easily mimicked by a computer which is digital. True or false, that is the way the computer sees it. For example the Title and the Heading of a blog are two distinct entities. People sometimes get confused between the two and call the headline the title of the blog post. This is incorrect. The title is what appears at the top of the screen: the heading is the headline that appears in the view window of the browser. As is discussed elsewhere, the simplest explanation is that Headlines are for humans, while titles are for robots.

Where it can get really complicated is where the same word is used with two quite distinct meanings. Unfortunately this has happened to one of the most important words relating to a web page: the description. One place the word description is used extensively is in the Open Directory Project or DMOZ. This site started off just over 10 years ago as GnuHoo, switching to NewHoo, before being acquired by Netscape. Being featured in the Open Directory Project provides a useful link for any site in gaining search engine visibility. In consequence many people have gone through the DMOZ submission process.

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Marhsall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web makes a supposition that may be inherently incorrect.

A huge number of people online don’t know the difference between their browser’s address bar and search bar. Let’s keep that in perspective. What will it take for them to learn?

That particular point has created a great conversation over at Read Write Web including an extremely well thought out response from John Andrews.

The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her [a user] than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.

To read John’s entire response head on over to Read Write Web. I however believe that another commenter, Jahbuh, got it right when he said;

The answer is very simple - People feel safer with Google correcting their mistakes than the typo sending them to a virus, porn laden site. How many times has a slip of the finger sent you to a site you would never visit? Do a Google search and even if you do a typo somehow Google still points you to the site you want to go to.

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For all the those small businesses, who aren’t able to afford expensive search marketers or do not have time to spare to attend search engine marketing conferences or read SEO related books, there is finally a remedy to improve your search engine rankings. Over at Pandia, there is a very interesting and a highly informative post, highlighting 5 essential steps aimed towards enhanced search engine rankings. However, these tips and suggestions should only be applied by those, whose websites and blogs aren’t targeting a very competitive area.

1. Identify Right Keywords and Incorporate Them in Your Headlines: Find out what search terms your target audience will use when looking for the kind of information, goods or services your site provides. You need to use relevant keywords in your headline to make the search engines identify your website as per the user query. It would be advisable for you to use Wordtracker for such a task as it is known to one of the best tools in this field.
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In today’s race to the top of the Google SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages), there are a number of factors that can help you achieve those coveted spots. While certain techniques may weigh better than others based on your industry and level of competition, there is no questioning the power of links.

There are several methods, some common and some yet to be discovered, you can try out to help boost your link density and search rankings. While it would be near impossible to go into great detail on all methods (that would require a book) below I have outlined some of the more common techniques a web site owner can use to increase their site’s popularity.

1. Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links used to be a huge asset and played a significant role. Today, fewer sites are employing this technique as it is thought by many to have no role in the eyes of Google. This is simply not true. While the overall value of reciprocal links has declined over the years, they can and will still help your rankings if done correctly.

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I’m trying to figure out all this blogging stuff, but I’m a bit confused about two aspects of blogging: pings and trackbacks. What’s the difference?

Dave’s Answer:

You’re not alone, I’ll tell you that. I was recently attending a blogger meetup here in Colorado and was rather surprised to find out that many bloggers don’t understand the difference either. When one attendee endeavored to explain it, I realized that he too didn’t fully understand.

Here’s the difference: a ping is a message sent by a blogging application to blog search engines like Technorati that inform the systems that you have posted a new entry. If you think about how a regular search engine like Google works, you’ll realize that when you add a new page, nothing happens until the search engine stumbles upon it, so the “on demand” pings are quite efficient and are one reason that blog entries are so quickly indexed. If your blogging tool doesn’t send out pings — which most do — then you can also generate these system pings through a service like pingomatic.

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In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. If you are interested in reading more please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO.

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Did you know that there are three simple alphabet letters that can make or break your social media campaigns? So many times we overlook these three letters and never realize that they can help improve your social media profiles’ success. In fact, many top social media users use this and often we don’t realize that they’re using these three letters to make them successful.

What are these three letters? RSS. Yes, it is probably not surprising and we’ve all heard it before. Most of the time we associate RSS as being from our own site and our own blog; many blogs automatically create an RSS feed of the content, allowing you to syndicate it on other sites. But did you know that many social media sites (social bookmarking sites) automatically create an RSS feed of everything that you’ve bookmarked?

Most likely you’ve spent time promoting the RSS feed of your blog and you’ve tried to get more people to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed. But, how often have you looked at the RSS feed of your social media profiles that are available? Did you know that many social media sites give you an RSS feed of everything that you’ve submitted, voted on, or otherwise participated in? By promoting the RSS feed of your social media profiles, you’ll drive more traffic and build links; which will help you in the long run.

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Some tools exist because they are valuable and remove market friction. Others exist because they are perceived as being valuable, even if they are actually value destroying, or only valuable in rare circumstances.

Valuable Tools of the Trade

Outside of paying for a domain name, hosting, site design, and buying a few links you could create (an ad supported) business online virtually free.

Blogs are easy to post to, easy to subscribe to, and easy to comment and interact with. Keyword tools and analytics services are easy to view and infer ideas and trends from. Searchable email saves time. Google Alerts and feed readers save time and keep you connected with your industry. Many of these tools are free, in spite of offering great value.

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We have heard from Matt Cutts on many issues either through his blog or through the videos. The NOINDEX tag has been deliberated upon before by him, see: Handling Noindex Meta Tags and Google even made changes to how the tag was implemented, see: Google Accepts The “noindex” Directive In The robots.txt, Temporary or Permanent?.

Some time back Google came up with a video about removing your websites from its index, and later when it was discussed at one of the forums, many came to know for the first time, that the remove url feature came with an expiry of 90 days.

The latest post from Matt comes as a policy discussion about NOINDEX and how Google should treat the NOINDEX meta tag.

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