Talking SEO with Google’s Search Evangelist: Adam Lasnik

Recently I was lucky enough to interview Adam Lasnik, Google’s Search Evangelist, for Tech Talk Radio Australia about the way Google encourages Webmasters to approach search engine optimization; the new buzz word that is making its way around the world. Podcast and Transcript are available on the Tech Talk Web site.

A basic definition of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) before we start:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is making your site look better to search engines, in an attempt to rank higher in natural or organic search results. Organic results are the results chosen by search engines based on various factors, without cost to you. For more information about SEO try Wikipedia, or take a look at Google’s thoughts on SEO companies.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is when you pay for your site to be included in the search results. There are many ways to do this; if you are interested, start by looking at Google’s advertising programs.

Below: Organic, or natural results appear on the left side of Google’s results, with a white background. Advertising appears above this with a blue background, or in a column on the right. Do not confuse these with malicious ads.

Lessons from Adam:

Adam explains the important things to consider when you want to optimize your site are; write for the user, include compelling content, optimize your title tag and Meta description tag, and maintain your Website or blog.

Instead of thinking about SEO and SEM first, which Adam believes is too narrow, you need to start thinking about how to optimize your site for users, which typically results in better crawling, indexing and ranking on Google. For a more in-depth look into how to optimize your site for users read “What does the Googlebot see when it visits your site?”

Optimize both your title tags and also your meta description tags:

Adam explains one of the most powerful yet simplest forms of SEO you can perform, to optimize your site, is to optimize your title and Meta description tags.

Your title tag and your Meta description tag are seen in Google’s search results.

“You want to think of it, particularly for the Meta description tag, as a brief and targeted description, not a series of keywords, so that it looks like how you would describe your page to someone else, in just a brief moment of speaking.”

Many people still stuff title tags and Meta description tags with keyword; something both users and Google do not like.

An example of a spammy looking title and meta description as appearing in Googles search results:

Note: This is not a site that Google or Adam have called spammy; this is my interpretation of a spammy Web site based on the fact that both the title and the description are just filled with keywords.

Title Tags:

The title tag is the name given to a Web page. It is what appears on the top left corner of your browser when you visit a Web site, it is also what Google uses for its results page.

Adam suggest having a title that mentions the company name and describes what the page or section is about, is your best bet. “It can really help both the user, and also, help your sites presence in Google as well.”

On the Tech Talk Radio home page, the title is clearly seen in your browser as:

“Tech Talk Radio – Weekly independent Australian Podcast”

Meta description tag:

The meta description tag is something you do not see when you visit a site, however the Googlebot does. It can see the Meta description tag when it is indexing your site, and uses it to describe your page in search results. It is an easy addition to your source code. Just add: <META name=”description” content=> and the text you want it to include.

Tech Talk Radio has the description:

“Tech Talk Radio, Australia’s premier non biased tech talk show heard weekly on free to air radio and Podcast, with the latest tech news & views.”

You can look at it by going to our home page and right clicking onto ‘view source’.

This is what our title tag and Meta description tag look like in Google’s search results:

You can see the title and the Meta description we included in the HTML of our site, has appeared exactly as written on Google’s query results. Pretty neat trick huh? If you want a real time example of a badly optimized site, you can read the case study of Harvey Norman’s Website at Blogwell.

A look into Adam’s thoughts:

Keywords:

There is no set number or set ratio. Google’s algorithms are based around what a user would want to see and what is actually useful.

Links:

Think relevance. There is no set number, no set ratio. If it makes sense to link somewhere, do it, if it doesn’t, don’t. Google looks at patterns, both incoming and outgoing, rather than individual links, so if you want to put the odd link to a friend’s site, knock yourself out. Another point about links, don’t let them go stale – maintain your site.

Regional filters:

Although Google applies regional filters, they are more subtle than people think. Google will not index completely different content by region; it looks at regional, cultural and linguistic differences.

If you are primarily intending to reach fellow Australians; use language Australians would expect. E.G. mum instead of mom.

Blogging

Blogging can be great way to frequently update content, something Google loves, however, don’t do it just for the sake of ranking, it won’t work. You need to be passionate about your subject and like all good writing, expect it to take time. It takes time and effort to create content that is interesting, compelling, funny and useful. If you have the time, brilliant, if you don’t, don’t do it. If you are interested in blogging, I recommend Pro Blogger.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps give the crawler hints so it can better crawl and index individual sites. The bonus is that it is an augment to the normal crawling cycle. Sitemaps.org will help you create a sitemap easily.

PageRank:

PageRank is one of as many as 200 factors that Google takes into account at the crawling and indexing stage; 1 of 200… don’t get hung up on it. At a base level, PageRank looks at how and what other sites link to you, then uses that information to determine the relevance and importance of your site. If you really have to know more, check out The Anatomy of a Search Engine written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but be prepared for a tricky read.

Quality of words

Google wants to send its users to sites that have compelling and unique content that is updated regularly. It doesn’t matter if your spelling isn’t perfect, Google can fix that for the user, nevertheless, this does not mean you shouldn’t care about the words you use, you should; as Adam says “It is critical to at least have a style.”

Google operators:

Google has many tricks available to searchers to find best what they are looking for. An example Adam gives us is the [Define:] operator, which allows you to search for the definition of any word without having to grab your dictionary. A list of Google’s advanced operators.

Webmaster Central:

Being a Webmaster liaison, Adam is hooked on Webmaster Central.

If you are a Webmaster, you should be too. Webmaster central lets you check whether your site is being indexed, has tools and statistics, including Sitemap submission, gives you a place to submit content to Google. It also has a Webmasters blog letting you know the latest in Webmaster stuff from Google, a help center with Google’s FAQ’s for Webmasters, and a discussion group, which you really should consider joining if you are serious in wanting to best serve your users.

Number of servers Google has: 42

Lidija Davis

Note: All links have been inserted by TTR

How to Link Bait

The idea of generating traffic to your website seems daunting for many; people often use not too clever ideas, sometimes learning about the Google death penalty as a result.

You don’t want that.  If people can’t find your site, they won’t come to your site; if they don’t come to your site – no surprise – your product or service can not sell.

Q: So how do you generate traffic to your site?

A: You encourage new links!  Think Link Bait!

Eric Ward sums it up neatly and accurately:

“Link Bait has been around longer than I have.  It’s what we used to call ‘content’.”

Google’s Matt Cutts describes it as “Anything interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

Although it has an unfortunate name, the ideas are tried and true; just ask any journalist, PR or marketing person – you need to ‘hook’ the reader.  Read more about what is linkbait at blogwell.

The Art of the Blog

A recent study by MRI research and CBS chief research officer David Poltrack, only 8% of Americans read blogs.  This figure is based on a survey of 20,000 people.

Yet here I am telling you to blog.  Huh?

Eight percent of people read blogs on a regular basis. 

Search Engines READ blogs; better, search engines LOVE blogs.

Blogs update a lot; they are remarkably free of stupid, confusing code.

If your customers are looking for products that you make, or services that you provide, you want to be the first thing to show up in the search results.  If you want search engines to consider your site to be the most relevant result to your industry – blogging is the way to go.

WHY?: Technorati currently tracks 66 million blogs…

In January 2006, over 70,000 blogs were added every day, now over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) make a debut every day – think about the numbers.

At the beginning of last year, research showed that only about 5% of FORTUNE 500 companies had blogs. A new survey that began in October 2006 has to date looked at 64 Fortune 500 companies and found 43 with at least one public-facing corporate blog.  The Fortune 500 Blog Project is an independent volunteer effort to study public-facing corporate blogs by Fortune 500 companies.  They are reviewing on average about 10 companies a month.  You can help by registering as a researcher; choosing a fortune 500 company and helping them complete their list.

I had a chat with Adam Lasnik (Google Search Evangalist) in December, who said:

“We DO love blogs – because they have frequently updated material and many links – I don’t see us looking down at blogs anytime soon” And that’s the clue:  Frequent updates and many links.

Anthony Hicks began a database of Australian blogs in 2000, but stopped in 2005.  He says the site began with only a couple of hundred bloggers, but ended at 8,500 in 2005. 

An Age article says that as of June 2006, there were 750,000 Aussie blogs

It is an exercise in frustration if you try to get numbers for blogs; so much so that comScore last week announced they are going to join forces with Federated Media and start taking a closer look at the blogosphere.  All everyone knows is that the blogosphere is growing, and growing fast.

What to blog about?

Decide what you want to blog about.  Generally you either write in a news format, reporting what is happening in the world in a particular field, or you write a personal piece, something for friends and family to stay connected with what you are doing, or your opinion on a topic.

So where do you start?

First you need someone to host your blog.  This is easy, and inexpensive.  For the most part, many sites that are dedicated to blogging offer their basic package for free as long as you are happy to have a site name like www.techtalkradio.wordpress.com.

When you sign up, you will have to fill in basic fields like the name of your blog, a brief description.  Then it’s off to determine the basic layout of the page, usually called a template, skin or theme.

That’s pretty much it.  Now you need to add content by adding a posting.  The html is done for you; usually you just click on a button that lets you ‘post’.  Once done, save it and put it out there for the world to see.

Seoblackhat has a great tip:  “In blogging, the tightest grasp is with an open fist”

Know what Search Engines Hate and Avoid the Google Death Penalty

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) is not just about knowing what to do, sometimes it is more important to understand what you should never do.

Some Webmasters, in their excitement and haste to optimize their site for search engines, inadvertently do some stuff that is considered really, really bad. 

And thus, the problem begins.

Not understanding what search engines do and do not allow, plus over eager site creators often results in your site being penalized, or worse, incurring the “Google Death Penalty” when Google permanently ban your site. 

What Search Engines Hate:

Link Farms

Link farms are a group of Websites that all link to other pages within the group.  Often there is no relevance between them; they are set up solely to ensure members of their group have many ‘links’. 

While it is true that search engines look at the number of links a site has when determining ranking, they now look at the quality of links.  Linking to Stanford or having Stanford link to you is much better than having a dozen useless, irrelevant links.

There are many link farms out there—keep away from all of them.

Misleading Content

Don’t be tricky and include misleading content – ever! 

Not only is there a good chance users won’t return to your site, search engines wont like you much either.  For instance, if you are offering cool fonts at five dollars a pop – say so.  Don’t use the words “free fonts” in your content, meta tags or title tags.  It wastes everyone’s time, ruins the search experience and ultimately puts you in the search engines black books.

Keyword Stuffing

Also known as keyword loading, is the phrase given to web pages that have too many occurrences of a particular keyword in the hope of being noticed by the search engines. 

As there is no rule to follow in terms of how many keywords you should include it makes finding the right number difficult.  Google’s search evangelist Adam Lasnik explained to me last week that the magic number is “42.”  If you cannot understand this – watch The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy . 

There is no ‘magic’ number.  Adam explains you should have a “smell” test.  If it looks wrong, “smells” wrong, the Googlebot will probably think it IS wrong.  So if it reads ok, smells ok….your site is fine.

Invisible text – a variation of keyword stuffing

Invisible text is text a search engine sees clearly, a user does not.  An example of this is when the same color is used for the text and for the background of a page.  Until, or unless a user selects and highlights the area, the text remains hidden. 

Cloaking

There is still debate within the SEO industry as to what exactly this means, but given Google is a major player, we took their version from the Google Webmaster FAQ’s.

“The term cloaking is used to describe a website that returns altered WebPages to search engines crawling the site.  In other words, the web server is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine ratings.  This can mislead users about what they’ll find when they click on a search result.  To preserve the accuracy and quality of our search result, Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings.”

A great example of this is the German Website of BMW that in February 2006, presented users with a standard looking page that had lots of pictures of cars and not too much text.   Exactly what you would expect from a car dealer—however—Google’s spider saw an entirely different thing.  It saw a page filled with text, no images.  To add insult to injury, not only did BMW Germany cloak their site, they then went on to use the German words “gebrauchtwagen” (used car) and “neuwagen” (new car) over, and over and over, which you now know is known as “keyword stuffing” and considered very, very bad.
 
Google promptly removed them from the index, and then reset their PageRank to zero. 

As you can see, there is much to understand about optimizing your site for search engines, so what should be your next port of call? 

Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have Webmasters guidelines.  It is worth your while having a look, familiarizing yourself with their expectations, and then ensuring your site exceeds them.  By following the guidelines, the search engines will be in a better position to find and index your site—and this leads to better rankings for you.

Yahoo!’s Search Content Quality Guidelines

MSN’s Guidelines for Successful Indexing

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

If you are really eager, an article worth reading is one written by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd while they were at Stanford University.

The PageRank Citation Ranking – Bringing Order to the Web – January 1998