Online Marketing Blog

It’s been said that meta keywords and description tags are dead. Where as I’d agree with the keywords tag, the descriptions tag I’m no longer convinced is dead. Actually, it’s quite important; especially for blogs.

If you use the site: command in Google, and look at Google’s descriptions (aka snippits) for a blog, you may notice some indexing issues. Usually one of two things happens. Either your blog description is generic and includes things like the date and categories, or your blog’s description is exactly the same. The second one will probably land a lot of your pages in the supplemental index.

If you check out Matt Cutt’s blog, you’ll notice that the descriptions start with the date followed by time, categories and then the first few words of his post.

Some of our favorite Google people were in the media recently:

The Chicago Tribune did a huge piece on Google overall (hattip threadwatch) with a sidebar article “Meet Google’s Credibility Cop” on Matt Cutts.

I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Matt had worked for the NSA and this article mentions only that he interned with the Defense Department doing some programming.

The article opens up with language like, “hucksters, spammers and other charlatans” when making reference to manipulations to rank better on Google. Search marketing folks will know that means tactics that are to the extreme and not legit SEO, but I am not so sure everyday business Joe and Jane will see it that way. Actually, the article doesn’t mention search engine optimization at all.

21 SEO Tips from Matt Cutts. Via SEO EggheadThe A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic, Part One
The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic, Part Two

New Research Released on Blog Reach – via Micropersuasion

Windows Local Live

Pingoat Gets Acquired

Register for the MIMA Summit NOW.

Business Week is taking votes for their annual Best of the Web, which is not to be confused with the most excellent web site directory and blog directory from BOTW.org. There are 23 categories and two of them are related to blogs. The selection for “favorite blogs” includes an interesting mixture ranging from Scoble to Sand Hill Slave to Tech Crunch.

At the time of this post, there are only 744 votes so far with Tech Crunch the clear leader, but I think the SEO/SEM readership out there could make quite an impact on that if they wanted to.

If you would like more of a variety of blogs to vote for, then go ahead and fill in the write in form. I know I did. I put one in for Search Engine Roundtable and another for Matt Cutts. Good luck guys!

Matt Cutts, Google employee, has been taking search questions and answering them via video.  I wrote in and asked if Google treats blog sites any different than regular websites and he said no.

The thought behind my question was that with more sites converting from static HTML to WordPress or MovableType, the sites are becoming more complex.  There are posts, pages, feeds, comments and comment feeds.  I wasn’t sure if Google saw these sites any differently than a static HTML site.

My question was answered in the lightning round and it appears at the end of the video clip.

Thanks Matt!!

[tags]matt-cutts,google,movable-type,seo[/tags]

I see Matt has added 3 more videos including:

Session 4: Dynamic URLs, Sitemaps and Geotargeting
Session 5: (Adds background) 301 Redirects, Content Themes, Dynamic to Static URLs and Split A/B Testing
Session 6: Supplemental Results
I think there is a lot more to learn from this than just the content of Matt’s videos. It’s also an exellent example of creating excellent content which can produce an abundance of links and traffic.

Maybe “RocketGoogle” isn’t such a great name. Since these are really the opinions of Matt Cutts and not Google per se, then maybe RocketMatt? Or MattBoom?¬† Oh, and be sure to note the disclaimer.

Matt Cutts of Google has posted some videos of himself answering reader mail on different topics related to SEO:

• Session 1: Including qualities of a good site.
• Session 2: Including some SEO Myths.
• Session 3: Should you Optimize for Search Engines or for Users?

Seeing someone explain a thing is a much different experience than reading about it, especially for people just learning about search engine optimization.

A little over a week ago, Matt made a post about what direction to take his blog. There were a huge number of responses and I tossed one in:

“Since Rocketboom has taken a different direction maybe you could fill the void and start RocketGoogle? That way the cuttlets could get a dose of you in living color.”

• Ask.com just gets cooler and cooler: RSS Smart Answers – Example: Online Marketing Blog
• Matt Cutts on Google “Invalid Clicks” aka Click Fraud case.
• SEOmoz offers a breakdown on pricing for SEO: Basic – $30k. Full meal deal: $120k
• Searcher Behavior Research via Information Research
• Nielsen/Netratings: Google Domination Continues: 49.4% of all searches in June 2006.

Actually, some of these were from yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to post about them.

Aaron Wall interviews Seth Godin

Mike Grehan interviews Matt Cutts – Podcast Part 1, Podcast Part 2

Danny Sullivan chats up Matt Cutts on SEO Rockstars – via TW. Show was live last night, and should be available in the archive in a few days.

Google indexing timeline – Matt Cutts

Next week there will be a “must listen” SEO Rockstars and Daily SearchCast show on WebmasterRadio.fm. The show will start out with Todd Friesen (oilman) and Greg Boser (webguerilla) and then cut to a 45 min Danny Sullivan interview with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex and back to Friesen and Boser. The show airs Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. EST.
If you can’t wait and just need an audio fix of Mr. Cutts, then point your iPod over to Mike Grehan’s recently posted clip of a podcast interview he did with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex last week. Of course there’s also this podcast interview with Matt Cutts that Chris Pirillo did at Search Engine Strategies NYC.
As long as I’m on the topic of SEO and podcasts, here’s a podcast of the fireside chat on organic seo session with Barbara Coll and Bruce Clay from ad:tech in San Francisco. (via iMediaConnection) I think they do a handy job of sizing up their audience and providing great overview information on organic SEO.

At last week’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston, I had the opportunity to talk to Matt Cutts from Google a few times and when I posted my recollection of comments about Google and user or toolbar data for rankings he wanted to clarify. That presented an opportunity for a mini interview about Google’s position on toolbar data.

I started out by posing a few specific questions:

1. Does Google currently use toolbar data for rankings?
2. What do you see as the pros and cons of using such data for rankings?
3. Can you describe any scenario where information from a downloaded application from Google might be used in some way for ranking web pages?
4. If Google does not employ toolbar or other user data for rankings and another search engine does, could that provide the other search engine an advantage?

Matt Cutts leaves Google for Yahoo – Matt Cutts Blog

Jeremy Zawodny leaves Yahoo for Google – Jeremy Zawodny Blog

Scoble leaves Microsoft for Google – Scobleizer

Pin all your romantic hopes on Google Romance

Google Blogscoped tries with Google Rooms

The Register does it’s thing with China Buys Google

Google buys the French National Library – Pandia

Others: Google Browser, Google Quantum-Based Spam Filter, 1×1 pixel AdSense Ads