'Net Features : seo corner

SEO for Google Social Search

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:23:00 GMT

Search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns have moved far beyond simply optimizing <title> tags, page content, and generating incoming links.

Now that Google “universal” or “blended” search has become widespread on almost every search query, a standard organic listing is competing with images, video, news, local, paid and real-time search. Now we can add social search results to the mix. These new sets of results not only deliver content that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, but also have the potential to push other, organic listings off the visible page. That means social media optimization (SMO) is now in direct competition with SEO. However, don’t be discouraged. The good news is that it’s often much easier to get top rankings for a blended or social search category than a highly competitive organic listing. That is, of course, if you understand how to optimize for Google Social Search.

Understanding Google Social Search
It’s important to differentiate Social Search from Google’s realtime search results. Real-time results are labeled “Latest results for ...” and include a scrolling results box for some queries. Alternatively, Google Social Search is labeled “Results from people in your social circle for ...” and results appear with an accompanying image (or avatar) from your social circle.

Think of Social Search as Google “Trust” Search. By personally choosing to “follow” certain friends and websites online, Google assumes that information from these sources is important, relevant and trusted by you and uses these contacts to form your social graph. Then, particular queries will return results from those in your circle — their blog posts, Twitter updates, etc. Google feels this can add yet another layer to search results and improve your overall search experience.

How does Google Determine Relevancy for Social Search?
Google claims to use a normal ranking algorithm when determining what websites to display first in Social Search results. So, page content, number of incoming links, and incoming link quality and authority are the primary ranking factors. However, expect this to change as Google continues to test and tweak Social Search results and puts more emphasis on the Direct and Secondary connections within your social circle.

Optimizing for Google Social Search
First and foremost, you must have a Google Profile that includes information about you, and links to websites you want to promote. This should include links to your primary website and its weblog, and social profile URL’s including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, FriendFeed, Yelp, etc. In short, any active social network profile should be included. While some networks and their content will not be indexed by Google (such as Facebook), linking those profiles to your Google profile (and vice-versa) will offer a better chance of connecting with people through Google and, ultimately, be found in Social Search results.

Establish Connections within Gmail and Google Chat
While time consuming, it is worth gathering as many Gmail and/or Google Chat contacts as possible, as it will increase your exposure in Social Search. Unfortunately, contacts from other networks are not as easily imported. You can’t add Twitter followers easily — they must be added one-byone. But you can import contacts from a CSV file, for example. Remember, not only will your contacts see you in their Social Search results, but you have the potential to be seen by the connections-of-your-connections or friends-offriends. In short, your reach will grow exponentially as you add connections.

Keep Content Relevant and High-Quality
Aggressively pursuing new contacts is important to Social Search success. However, you want to stay relevant and post quality content. Posting low-quality, keyword-stuffed content will result in the same fate as usual — low conversion rates. Or, in this case, you might find yourself banned from your contacts’ Social Search results. Remember, these results are targeted to friends and trusted contacts. So, you want to appear as genuine and trustworthy as possible.

Social Search is Here to Stay
With the explosion of Facebook and Twitter you can no longer ignore the enormous potential in being social. Google wants its share of the social pie, so don’t expect them to remain idle while Facebook and Twitter try to eat into their search market share. However, it is important to keep in mind that Google will continue to test and tweak results. Not every query will result in Social Search results, and you can expect many changes on the results pages and to the social ranking algorithm in the future. In the interim, get ahead of the game by optimizing your Google Profile for Social Search while competition is fairly low. It will benefit your overall social media and SEO efforts.

:: by Dante Monteverde, SEO Corner Columnist at Website Magazine ::

Google PageRank Sculpting For SEO Profit (Part 2)

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Starting the Process or PR Sculpting

If you are starting a PageRank sculpting process for your website (read part one of PageRank Sculpting for SEO Profit), proceed with caution. SEO’s must first do an in depth analysis of the website being optimized and determine which pages you are trying to rank for on the search result pages, which pages you are not trying to get ranked (but would like to be indexed and found for) and finally which pages you don’t need to be indexed by the search engines at all.

Each website is going to be different depending upon its goals which is why information on how to sculpt PR (and for which pages it is important) is so sparse. It is important to focus on how potential visitors can find your site. For a local website where displaying the physical address is essential, I would highly recommend not adding the nofollow attribute to links pointing to your contact page. However, if you put your physical address on all your pages (which I highly recommend for all website promote a local product or services) you may be able to nofollow that specific page. Again, the point is to evaluate your website and develop a strategy before you start applying nofollow on individual links to web pages.

Before proceeding into the actual implementation of PR Sculpting, let’s first discuss when and why PR Sculpting should NOT be used.

A way to cut corners on your initial SEO. You still need to develop well thought out website with SEO in mind from day one. It would be best to include PR Sculpting in the beginning when putting together your SEO Checklist.
A poorly designed internal linking structure. PR Sculpting isn’t meant to be used as a way to compensate for poorly designed site architecture.
A substitute for link building. If you don’t have any incoming links to start with you really don’t have much to sculpt, now do you?

Now that we have outlined what PR Sculpting is and the potential pitfalls, we can get into how to use this strategy for your SEO benefit.

Track everything - Make sure you mark the date you started so you can go back and look at your analytics. Did the PR Sculpting make any difference in the amount of traffic my site was receiving? Google updates their PR every 3 months at best and the publicly listed Google PR may or may not be accurate. Your goal should not be to increase your Google PR number but rather the amount of traffic you’re receiving.
Do a complete search engine ranking report - Keep a record of how you were performing with your keywords on the SERP’s so after your do some PR Sculpting you can go back and check its effectiveness.
Check backlinks on all of your webpages - First, see what kind of incoming links you have to play with. You may discover that some of your internal pages have some incoming links and are worth sculpting.
Cover your bases - Again, I can’t state this enough, be absolutely sure if you want a page to show up in the Search Engine index’s make sure it can spidered and indexed via another means other than the link with the nofollow attribute. i.e. XML Sitemap.

Other than the obvious (About Us/Email Us, Login/My Account, Privacy Policy/Legal Notice, Customer Support/Help Center, Testimonials, View Shopping Cart) what are some other ways to use PR Sculpting?

The classic example for using PR Sculpting is if you have an ecommerce site with multiple products you are selling on each webpage. Say a webpage has over 50 products and each product has 3 different links pointing to the same webpage. One link is a text link with the product model name in the anchor text, one is an image link, and one is a “Click Here” text link. It would make sense to nofollow the image and “Click Here” link in order to just pass on link juice through the link which has a keyword in the anchor text. This method can be done through a number of different applications. Be creative.

Although most PR Sculpting starts with your index page because typically your index page has the most incoming links and thus the highest Google Page Rank, don’t limit yourself to your index page. For example let’s say you have created a great new magic widget that’s become a great new linkbaiting vehicle for your website. Why not direct all those incoming links to your index page or top converting product page. So PR Sculpting doesn’t always have to be top level down it can work in reverse as well.

While many argue the value of Google PR Sculpting I would generally recommend this technique if done correctly. In addition, don’t think you need a site with thousands of internal pages for this tactic to successful. The ratio is still the same. If you nofollow one link on a site with only ten internal webpages versus a site with thousands of internal pages you are actually make more of a difference with the smaller website. Also keep in mind Google PageRank is by no mean the end all be all to ranking well. I still see pages with lower PageRank ranking higher on the SERP’s than pages with higher PageRank. PageRank is just one of thousands of factors that go into a Search Engine Algorithm. I’m not advocating by any means that this is your silver bullet to crack into the top 10 for a search term you have been gunning for years now. Good SEO still take a lot of time and effort. But with all that effort you have spent on link building, PR Sculpting is a viable means to direct all of that effort in a more effective manner. Just another piece in an attempt at solving the SEO puzzle.

We’d like to hear from you… Are you implementing the nofollow tag to your internal links, have you seen any positive/negative results on your search engine rankings and/or SE traffic. Is PR Sculpting a useful SEO strategy? Let us know; register and comment now.