Page Speed or site load time is an important factor in summarizing user experience. It also has an impact on the site's search engine results placements too. How Google determines site speed and what number of sites' ranking is affected by site load speed, was what the webmasters wanted to know, and this was addressed by Google's Matt Cutts in a video.
Among many other things, Matt said that approximately 1 out of 100 searches are affected by the site speed ranking factor. He said and we quote, “that it would actually change the ranking to a noticeable degree.”
The search industry in an uproar after Google's announcement that they will now encrypt searches and outbound links by default, for signed in users. With the SSL in place, the SEOs and webmasters will not get the valuable search query string via the referrer. The fact that this data will be available to AdWords advertisers, has really angered the search community. The assurance by Google that only 10 percent of searchers will be impacted by this, but the data still remains significant
The Impact On SEOs And Webmasters- Without Referral Data, SEOs Are Blind!
The search industry is wounded deeply by this. Optimization will be hit directly as SEOs evaluate the keywords that work for them from the organic keyword data only. This leads them to design landing pages and other methods to improve the user experience as well as the site's performance. There will be no way to ensure that the traffic gets converted.
Also, at the moment, experts are trying to work their way around this but to no avail. Now an SEO has to give more emphasis on ranking rather than conversion. With no idea about the keywords dictating the users' movement on the site, an internet marketer will be clueless as to how to personalize content based on the keyword or search phrase. Even if this personalization is termed as cloaking by Google, SEOs make this effort to provide users with exactly what they come looking for on the site.
Google has been often quoted as saying- "Focus on the user and all else will follow". However, with the referral data blocked from SEOs then, a webmaster cannot focus on his users at all!
SEOs the world over are crying foul over Google's new move towards secure search. The search engine announced this in the blog post that changed it all. Now, Google has changed the way secure search works for users that are signed in its services. This means that if a signed in to Google user does a search, it will be on a secure socket layer (SSL) and the search term referrer data will not be passed on. But, if you are using Google PPC, then you will get the keyword data for the searches made.
What Is The New 'Secure Search'?
Google says that in order to make search a customized experience, it is essential to protect personalized search results. That is why the users signed in to Google will have their search queries encrypted.
As Google says, “Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate to https://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account.”
With the secure site search, the websites that get the clicks from the users will not know the search terms they were clicked for. This leaves the search experts and webmasters in the dark as they will not know the keywords that are working for them. They will lose valuable data that helps them understand what people come looking for on their site. They will just know that someone came!
The Panda 2.5 is moving forward, and on the night of the 13th of October, a minor update was rolled out by Google. The update was confirmed by Google's Matt Cutts in a tweet. The webmaster forums have a raging discussion going on about the same, where site administrators have reported a severe loss of traffic.
siFR stands for – scalable Inman Flash Replacement. In a nutshell, the technique behind sIFR is the same as image replacement, however, it relies on JavaScript and Flash to replace XHTML text with Flash text. Put simply, sIFR can be a website designer's dream tool as it allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses. And that too, without the user having it installed on their machine.
What Makes sIFR better?
To begin with sIFR allows designers to create a style sheet and set the size and other parameters of a headline, in other words, one can design their headlines any which way according to their fancy. Now, as sIFR requires JavaScript to be enabled and the Flash plugin installed in the reading browser. In this case, if you are without either JavaScript or Flash, then the reader's browser will automatically display traditional CSS based styling. Result- the user won't know the difference!
Google+ is creating gigantic waves, as of now, the gates are not open, but businesses are waiting in line to get their pages on the social network. In waiting are the SEO experts too. Most have already started experimenting with the various features of Google+- tweaking and testing the same to see their effect on search. Google+ is destined to be one of the most important aspects of “social” in SEO, and internet marketers are keeping a close watch on every new feature introduced by Google, and understanding its impact. In fact in the recently concluded SES San Francisco 2011, Google+ and the +1 button were discussed in detail.
Google's Tiffany Oberoi, in an interview with Eric Enge of Stone Temple, sheds light on the all important, Google's reconsideration requests.
Many websites have fallen victims to Google's emphasis on quality. In their attempt to get their websites back on track, webmasters end up sending endless reconsideration requests. This interview set's out to clarify the reconsideration request process.
Social Media is no longer for just social purposes. Search engines are taking the social explosion very seriously, and more and more social results are now included in search results. This changing pattern of search has caused a major shift in the basic orientation of SEOs. Now SEOs have turned or are turning really fast to social media too.
E-commerce websites thrive on quality product descriptions. In fact here is the statistic, that will interest you a lot:- e-commerce conversion rates have seen an increase of 30% more (sometimes 100%) when the content description quality has been bettered. So, not only is the traffic leading to sales, the amount of traffic coming in every day also steadily increasing. All because, a unique copy is written for each product. It is highly inadvisable to rely on images to sell products, or use the manufacturer's product description or even use inadequate copy. So, here is how unique product description helps:
You are doing everything by the book, but still there is always chance of an error. So just pause. Think for a while. You might be making some mistakes, that can prove to be death traps for your site. Listed below are the Top 5 SEO Mistakes, that many commit unknowingly.
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