Google Product Search Results Poach Traditional Natural Search Traffic
In 2009, Google made a lot of changes to its page one search results, not the least of which was the placement testing of Google Product Search (formerly Google Base and/or Froogle) listings in the natural results. At times, if someone searched for a particular product or class of product, say "women's cashmere sweaters", Google would populate the body of the natural listings with a few entries from their Google Product Search datafeed.
The results were popping up at the top of the results, at the very bottom of the results and also right in the middle or a few positions down. It would seem Google has settled on returning their Google Base results towards the top if not before the "normal" natural listings entirely.
In addition, Google has (depending on the keyword search) decided to include photos of particular products, not just text listings pulled from the datafeeds.
Why does this matter?
For retailers who run datafeeds in Google and also rank well for generic product terms, tracking their non-brand natural search traffic/visits may have changed drastically towards the end of Q3 and during Q4. I've witnessed first hand retailer brands whose YoY non-brand natural traffic decreased but had their datafeed traffic shoot through the roof. Point being, now that the datafeed results are trumping top ranking natural results (and have pictures in the listings to boot), more people are noticing and clicking on datafeed results, thus "poaching" what would normally be considered natural search traffic.
The lesson learned here is that if you are a retailer and are not taking advantage of Google Base, you are definitely losing out on potential natural search traffic, as the combined total traffic of datafeed and natural search is your "real" natural search visitor count on a monthly basis.
The ever-changing world of page one results is making search marketers re-evaluate what value each channel represents in the mix of their online marketing efforts.
Beef Wellington Back in the Saddle
Old-time crooner Beef Wellington is at it again (er, still). His new conquest is the internet and he has hired me to help him take the web by storm.
Everyone knows Beef Wellington, who's career dates back to the late fifties, has been entertaining barren audiences with a charm and wit incomparable by today's live performance standards. But, there is a whole group of potential non-attendees that have yet to hear of this questionable stage talent. The internet is the perfect way for Beef to reach out to this crowd.
Through my partnership with Beef, we are working on Social Networking outlets like Facebook and Twitter to help get the message out. Be sure to follow Beef's Twitter feed and friend Beef on facebook to find out more about Beef's dearth of talent and where you can catch a live show.
I can't stress how excited and grateful I am to be working with Beef on this project and look forward to placing this nascent star on its rightful pedestal (er, shoe shine box and/or milk crate). For all those who love great entertainment, prime rib, cheap gin and stuffed olives... we salute you.
Paid Link Building
I have a hard time with the concept of buying links for the purpose of ranking higher in the search engine results pages (SERP) or increasing a site's PageRank.
But I'm not so sure why or what aspect of it bothers me.
On the one hand, Google frowns upon paid link building so my White Hat SEO side tells me that I shouldn't entertain the concept.
But on the other foot I start to think of the following:
preface
Google's job, as with all search engines, is to try and organize the chaos that is "information" available on the web. Trying to determine (mostly through crazy computer calculations) what results you want to see when you enter a search term/phrase. But as we all know, many times we DON'T get the results we want. It is a flawed system. The end-game in Google's mind is to give you the right content.
end preface
To that end, if you are a site owner with quality (read worthwhile) content that pertains to specific keywords but you don't rank high for these keywords for any of a number of reasons, should you not be allowed the chance to do so? I mean, that is what Google wants, right? So why should so many non-relevant sites come up high for keyword searches just because a quality site/page may not have enough link popularity or PageRank or whatever.
Granted, I'm definitely opposed to link farms or crazy linking schemes that employ black hat seo tactics to create links en masse. Don't get me wrong.
But, if you have the ability to buy select links from quality, relevant, related sites in order to boost your rankings and you have quality content on your site, is that necessarily bad?
There are many large websites out there that pimp out their PageRank and viewership to advertisers every day (banner ads, etc.) for big dollars. Why should this practice be considered acceptable but having these high PR sites sell text links to quality, relevant sites be frowned upon?
In one sense it's the same thing, the large site is selling itself to generate a nice revenue stream. Who cares if it is banner ads or Google ads or paid links?
Obviously this could be abused and people could outbid each other and it could/would become an insane cost model like any supply and demand scenario, but it's definitely something to think about.
Again, this could be an abused practice, but the flip side is that is could be just what the doctor ordered with regard to getting more quality content to rank higher in the SERPs.
Do nofollow Links Pass Link Equity?
Many have wondered whether or not "nofollow" links actually pass any value in spite of the fact that they are not passing PageRank. I know I have.
My personal belief was that having keyword-optimized inbound links pointing to relevant landing pages should/would allow that page to rank higher for that keyword even if the links were nofollow'ed. I decided to run a three month test to try and prove my theory.
I built a landing page around a single keyword that was very odd. I had a simple, optimized title tag, meta's, H1, body copy, etc. I created the page on my ajazi.com domain but DID NOT LINK TO IT from anywhere on the ajazi domain. I did add it to my XML sitemap feed though.
Then, after a few weeks, I added two nofollow'ed links pointing to it from two different third-party websites/blogs with the keyword in the anchor text.
I let Google sit on that for a few weeks as well. All the while checking ranking for that page every week.
I moved around position 50-65 for the keyword every time I checked. I added a few more links after a couple months had passed and actually moved out of the top 100.
Odd.
At the end of the three months I finally added a "live" set of links pointing to the page utilizing anchor text with the keyword in it. The page reached top 10. Grrr...
So as of late October, 2009 it would seem that nofollow means novalue. But my gut still tells me that over time a littany of nofollow'ed links from all these social websites will definitely amount to something. I just don't have the answer as to what.
Oh well...
Free SEO Blog
So I used to keep a blog on another domain called Persona Non Gravy. This blog was a mixture of SEO tips, tidbits, ideas, etc. coupled with some hilarious musings and other trivialities.
I will be resurrecting this concept here on my main domain ajazi.com albeit I won't be updating the blog anywhere near as frequently. I may also try and bring back some of the better posts from the old blog as they might be beneficial to those looking for quality seo information.
Any and all information posted here is of my own mind and not related in any way to my present employer.
Cheers!