Why SEO is Similar to Fantasy Baseball

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Tommy Landry

Two of my biggest interests these days are search engine optimization and fantasy sports. You might be surprised to hear the responses I get when others hear that they are both so interesting to me. Seriously, I get everything from “What a geek!” to “Why the heck would you like either of those?”

If you are one of the people who doesn’t “get” either of the topics, that is perfectly fine. Let me share my rationale for why the two have parallels that seem to work well with the way I think and operate

Reasons Why Search Engine Optimization is Similar to Fantasy Baseball

Data Intensive

Both SEO and Fantasy Baseball are extremely dependent on statistics and data analysis. They both require trending, deep dives into why things are happening, and deriving conclusions about what will happen in different possible future scenarios. Essentially, they both involve studying statistics, and studying an even deeper level of statistics than most people will both with. In baseball, there’s Sabermetrics and other similar analytical systems. In SEO, we have relevance, competition, and the like.

I’ll take your SEO competition score and Page Rank, and raise you a BABIP and a couple of FIPs.

Balances Analytical with Creative Thinking

Balance between analysis and creativity is another area where both disciplines (and yes, both are disciplines in their own way) mirror each other.In SEO, we find high leverage keywords with low competition, then gear our targeting and messaging around it. In Fantasy Baseball, we identify those players whose stats do not truly support their level of performance, and manage our team in a way that exchanges overperformers for underperformers. Essentially, it’s using numbers to come up with creative ways to extract value where no one else sees it yet.

Changes Daily

The rapid rate of change is possibly the biggest parallel between the two topic areas. In any sport, injuries are simply part of the game. Rotations / starting gigs change, players retire or get suspended, and in many cases players are added from the minor leagues or elsewhere mid season (or demoted back down). In business, the competitive landscape can change not only daily, but hourly! In both cases, the changes ripple through in many ways, and it’s up to you to figure out how to respond in the best way possible.

Social Media and Content Heavy

SEO and Fantasy Baseball are both very visible topics around the social media properties. Both are generating content on a daily basis and looking to share that content, then exchange opinions and ideas. There are fanatics in both camps, folks who will spend every waking hour thinking about new ways to win the game. Social is the best way to spread content and talk about it, and both groups have figured that out in short order.

Deep Level of Expertise Required

There are many times where someone finds out I’m into either or both of these topics, and my standard response is, “I’m a geek. I love this stuff.” And sadly, that’s 100% true! I’ve spent years reading every piece of analysis I could find, trying to work out how to apply it, and even generating my own creative ideas for handling the different challenges that crop up. To get really good at either practice, you need to have a depth of knowledge that is unrivaled by generalist types. And you have to absolutely LOVE collecting that information and using it.

Summary

There you have it, my take on why SEO and Fantasy Baseball aren’t really different. I brainstormed at least a dozen different angles on this spin, and the above are all that made the final cut. Are you into both topics? What commonalities do you see?

Anchored Links: What You Need To Know for SEO

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Tommy Landry

I was posed an interesting question a few weeks ago, and have been doing a bit of testing and research against it. The question was related to anchored links, and whether web crawlers would index only parts of a web page if routed there via an anchored link.

Anchored Links vs. Anchor Text

Before diving into this topic in detail, I want to point out the distinction between anchored links and anchor text.

Any good SEO can tell you what anchor text is – the actual words you use when hyperlinking to another website or internal web page. For a long time, anchor text has been known to impact SEO by matching backlinks to keywords overtly.

Anchored links are completely different. Did you ever click a hyperlink, only to watch the page load and immediately jump to the most relevant spot on the page? If you did, you clicked an anchored link.

Anchored Links: How They Work

You can always tell you are looking at an anchored link if you see a URL with a pound sign (#) and a word after it. For example (sample only, non-working link):

http://returnonnow.com/Sample-page#Anchor

This URL tells the browser to first load the page, and then move it so a pre-specified location moves to the top or main real estate of the viewing area, depending on how far down the page is. How does it know where to anchor?

Before assembling the above URL, you will need to define what the anchor point on the page is. This is done using the “name” tag. To do so, assign a value to “name” that is the same as the “Anchor” in the above URL.

Example Anchor Code:
<a name=”Anchor”>Sample Anchor Point</a>

In this example, the anchor will point at the location on the page where the phrase “Sample Anchor Point” is placed. This is a rather basic HTML command that even the most inexperienced of webmasters (even marketing folks with very limited HTML knowledge) can employ.

Anchored Links and SEO: Answering the Question

Anchored links are most useful for enhancing user experience. By loading the most relevant content on the page right upon click, you provide the reader with immediate access to the content they are seeking. The fewer clicks and less confusion you have site visitors go through, the better.

As for SEO, anchored links do have an impact. The impact is not on the web crawler as the aforementioned question suggested. Anything after the “#” is considered a browser-only command, and is completely ignored by spiders (probably to prevent partial indexing of pages). The browser merely uses it to route to the content for UX reasons.

Anchored links, however, do provide two useful SEO benefits:

The keyword used as the anchor is noted by the web spider much like anchor text is. It is a much lesser indicator of relevance, but taken into account nonetheless.
For longer or more complex pages, search engines frequently create direct links to the anchored locations. These are positioned very similarly to sitelinks in function. You can see a sample of anchor links showing as sitelinks below. Click on each of them and see where it takes you for reference. I’ve hyperlinked to the SERP directly if you click the image.

: Click the image to test drive the anchored links for yourself

Summary

That should give you plenty to think about for anchored links. Surely there are some nice tips and tricks that others have identified. If you have any great ideas that I overlooked, feel free to share in the comments below. All ideas area welcomed!

3 Keys to Balancing User Experience and SEO

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Tommy Landry

I cover a variety of SEO topics on Return On Now, but it is often important to take a step back and consider the full realm of online marketing.

While SEO is most important for presenting your best game face to the search engines, it is not the only variable at play. You also have to keep a close eye on usability.

Usability: What is It?

Usability is a very intuitive concept. Essentially, it answers the question of how easy it is for the average web user to navigate around the website?

Usability includes:

How easy or difficult it is to learn what the site is about on first entry
How quickly it is to navigate to the most relevant content on the site (faster nav and fewer clicks is the goal)
Whether buttons, navigation, and other interactive objects are placed where most users will be able to find them without undue frustration

Well managed usability provides the best possible experience for the readers. This is what we refer to a User Experience (UX).

Balancing User Experience with Search Engine Optimization

There are some common misconceptions about this topic among marketing types. The worst one is that you cannot balance UX and SEO without one of the two (or both) suffering in some way. This is simply not true.

The objective of building a site for both readers / users as well as the search engines is both reasonable and achievable. Sure, you may have to make some tradeoffs in how you architect your site or structure your content to accommodate both needs. But the key point is that minor tradeoffs between the two can result in major gains in user satisfaction, without causing undue negative impact to traffic volumes.

Here are the 3 keys to balancing SEO and UX:

Design your site layout, templates, and architecture for the REAL users. If the site provides a stellar user experience, traffic will come back and grow over time via word of mouth, sharing, and other means. It will also grow via SEO, as one of the factors in Google’s algorithm measures the overall usability of the site.
Structure the content – the title, headers, body content, and image alt-tags – in the best way possible for the search engines. I’m not saying to write a bunch of keyword-stuffed gobblety-goop either. Write to communicate clearly to the average reader, but also be sure you are speaking in the language that people use to search.
Craft your overall site content strategy to provide high value, regularly updated material. Particularly with a newfound focus on timing via the Google Fresh update (October, 2011), you cannot build a site and never touch it again. If you want to move up in the rankings, you need to offer relevant, timely, and shareable materials. Did I mention that you need to write for the readers and not the search engines?

Summary

You may hear from various sources that it is difficult or even impossible to balance SEO and user experience / usability. Those sources are simply misinformed. If you follow the guidelines above, you should be able to deliver on both goals.

Have you found it challenging to balance the two? Let me know what your biggest frustrations are below and I’ll see if I can help.

Subdomains vs. Subfolders: Which is best for SEO?

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Tommy Landry

There have been some long standing myths about what ranks best for search engine optimization between subdomains and subfolders on your root domain. Both approaches can have value for SEO purposes. However, in my experience, the vast majority of marketing and web practitioners have an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of when and how to use them.

Let’s take a moment to look at this topic in more detail.

Definitions

Subdomain

While your root domain will show up as domain-name.com or www.domain-name.com, a subdomain shows up as subdomain.domain-name.com. Good examples of subdomains are:

As you can see, a subdomain is most freqently used when a specific area of the website is targeted to a very pointed topic or audience. AdWords is focused on Google’s PPC offering, the second link is the support site for a company called TigerTech, and the last example is the community website for my current employer, SolarWinds.

Subfolder

A subfolder is essentially a directory on the overall hierarchy / structure of your root domain itself. In your browser address bar, this shows up as www.domain-name.com/subfolder/. If you click on any of the keywords in my navigation, you can see what subfolder each of those tag items sits in.

Subdomain vs. Subfolder: When to Use Each

Let’s start with subfolders, since it is very straightforward to understand when to use them and how they work.

Subfolders are integral components on your root domain. When in doubt about where to put new content, ask yourself how important that content will be to getting your root domain ranked.

If it is a crucial piece, put it in a subfolder. It will serve to help increase your keyword coverage, grow your site page volume, and position you for relevant backlinks deeper than your home page (which we all should be chasing).

Subdomains can be a tougher challenge. For several years now, Google has given direction that subdomains are not considered part of the root domain. However, earlier this year, they advised that some changes have been made to how they handle subdomains.

This post led to quite a bit of confusion. Many practitioners, and even SEO experts automatically read this post to say that subdomains are now being considered as part of the root domain. Those individuals are dead wrong.

If you read it carefully, this is changing nothing about subdomain vs root domain ranking except for one thing – links between various subdomains and a root domain are now considered “internal links”.

This is a great modification in reality. Previously, gray hat SEOs could simply buy one domain for $7 – $20, and roll out a slew of subdomains on similar topics. Then, they could create a link farm by cross linking all of the various properties. That was a great way to cheat by hyper-optimizing the on-page and then providing relevant backlinks across the sites.

Now, each subdomain counts as a separate website for ranking purposes, but links between two subdomains are counted as internal.

No more games, no more link farms. Take that Gray Hat!

How to Use Subdomains for SEO

So now that we’re on the same page, you can see why the subfolder is the obvious answer for generating content and receiving direct benefits from it. But why would any reasonably cognizant SEO recommend using a subdomain? I’m glad you (I) asked!

In today’s web-heavy world, a new field called online reputation management (ORM) has emerged. A large piece of this practice is managing the SERPs for your name and/or brand terms (e.g. company or product names).

Without going into to much detail on ORM (which actually deserves a full post of its own), here’s the key point: subdomains can rank independently for a keyword. Google often hides multiple pages on one domain that rank for the same keyword and forces you to click “view more results” to see them. They only do this for same-domain URLs.

Many people worry that having multiple sites trying to rank for one keyword is too much work, and that very well may be true. But how much is it worth to own the two of the top 5 SERP positions for your most important terms or brand names? The only two ways to do this are to roll out a subdomain or launch a new website on a whole new root domain. At least the latter gives you external links, if you don’t mind managing a split brand (not recommended).

Summary: They are Not the Same for SEO Purposes

There is a long standing confusion that subdomains are considered part of your root domain, like subfolders are. This is simply not true. Subdomains are separate sites that are considered internal to your root domain only for counting backlinks. Subfolders are the best way to drive SEO for the root domain.

What other uses have you found for subdomains? Any creative ideas I missed here?

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Tommy Landry

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO: What's the difference?

This week I received an inquiry focused on White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO from a college student in MIS. This inquiry was part of an e-business class assignment he received, in which he was to write a report on what White Hat SEO is.

Having taken the time to respond thoughtfully, I believe it is useful to share my quick-hit answer about what they are and how they impact SEO success. I’d very much like to hear any feedback you or your favorite SEO may have, so please share the post freely and comment at will!

His specific questions:

What do you think the most challenging aspect of white hat seo?
Is SEO really ethical? I mean. white hat/black hat…..It´s all about gaming the search engine to get better placements. Don’t you agree that SEO practices are in constant change as the Internet evolves?
Who is responsible to drawing the line between white hat SEO and black hat SEO?

My answer:

Let me just respond to the three questions in aggregate.

First, there is a huge divide between white hat and black hat SEO techniques. Black Hat involves using any method possible to game the system, not following SEO best practices as outlined by Google, and most often, using shady means to leap ahead of other reputable sites in the SERPS.

The whole Google Panda update was to draw a line between white and black hat (i.e. spammers in most cases) practitioners, and they actually did a decent job of doing so. That said, they overshot their target and ended up hurting some fully ethical, white hat sites. This was mostly collateral damage or by association, since part of Panda is to compare your site, content, etc. with “like” websites on similar topic areas.

White Hat SEO is not rocket science. It is about building reputable websites without an ounce of deception involved. It is about generating high quality, share-able content that readers will want to read and spread to their network. And it is about truly adding value with that content.

Black Hat SEO is easy to identify. It might include keyword stuffed, hard to read material. It might have bad grammar or punctuation. It might thinly mention the topic of what it wants to rank for, sticking the keyword in all the right “on page” areas, but really just thinly veiling a pitch for some spammy/scammy product. Most of all, if you search for a term and get to their site, a reasonably intelligent consumer would quickly want to bounce away from it or even be offended at the bait and switch. And they often acquire backlinks through paid or other mistrusted means (in Google’s Eyes).

The hardest part of White Hat SEO is two-fold:

Being disciplined and focused enough to stick to your guns with standards, and to execute on a well-thought out and constructed content and linking pursuit strategy.
Convincing other stakeholders in your company or organization to avoid using questionable techniques.

#1 is a ton of work and requires a lot of focus. #2 is political in most cases.

Last Words

How would you describe White Hat SEO, or answer these questions if posed to you? I typed this out in a matter of minutes, so it is my natural, quick response. Anything I missed?

Website Traffic – The Power of Buzz

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Tommy Landry

We talk about search engine optimization (SEO) quite a bit on here, but SEO is (obviously) not the only way to drive web traffic.

You could also invest in various paid placements such as PPC, display, or sponsored white papers to drive targeted traffic back to your website. Many old school marketers immediately turn to these tactics, and the can certainly be used effectively if managed properly.

There’s something even bigger at your disposal.

The Buzz

None of the pay-for-play methods can compare to the potential scale of widespread buzz about your company. It is the pinnacle of word-of-mouth, albeit with wider, louder, and deeper reach. Whether fleeting or lasting, buzz can really make magical things happen for your business.

Great, So What Can We Do To Generate Buzz?

The best way to generate positive buzz is to be outstanding. Not average or good enough, but beyond expectations. Offer products or services that really wow your audience, that deliver on the vision of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment. Look at what Apple has done and imagine the possibilities.

Of course, not every company can have an image like Apple. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to attract positive attention to just about any business.

Public Relations (PR)

PR is available to anyone, individuals, businesses, non-profits, special interest groups, performance artists…you name an industry or profession, and there is a benefit within reach. This can be as simple as getting to know the local business page editor, or as sophisticated as you are comfortable taking your program.

As a powerful awareness vehicle, PR has a positive impact on organic as well as direct traffic to your site.

Social Media

Low on budget but have a lot to say? Passionate about, or possibly a budding thought leader, in your field? Start a blog. Take a few moments to learn about content marketing,

and how you can spread the word via social media. You will meet some amazing people if you jump in with an open mind and a good idea of what you are trying to accomplish.

Charitable Donations

Philanthropy is always a good way to show your commitment to the local community or bigger causes. Donations in the form of money, relief for emergency victims, or even assistance putting on a charity event are all equal in value. And it helps those in need, which is a tremendous side benefit on a personal level.

Publicity Stunts

I have seen some outrageous but madly successful publicity stunts over the years.

Publicity Stunt Gone Bad (Image via Wikipedia)

When they work well, they can leave a lasting memory / impression. But be careful here, because a publicity stunt has been known to backfire for rather unexpected reasons.

As a sub set of publicity stunts, viral video or other materials is also a great “digital publicity stunt” that you can test in a controlled fashion. Just make the video good and cutting edge, and the audience could respond with raving approval.

What are some other creative ways you have used to drive traffic to your website?

Robots.txt: Understanding the Basics of Crawler Management

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Tommy Landry

Business owners today would be hard pressed to develop ongoing consistent business without depending on web leads and traffic. As part of your overall online marketing arsenal, it is crucial to have the right documents posted live on the web.

One of the most important files to post is robots.txt. Since search engines use “bots” (a.k.a. spiders, wanderers, or crawlers) to index websites and pages, Google has made available a feedback loop.

The feedback loop is essentially the ability to request that search engines stay away from certain pages or directories completely. This is done using the robots.txt file.

Take note that it is a suggestion, so it may or may not prevent crawling over time. There are many reasons why a page might still get crawled (e.g. spider following a backlink right to the page), so it is imperative that you hide any sensitive or proprietary data behind a login or other access layer as well.

Robots.txt: How to make it

This file is quite literally a plain text file that you can create in minutes using MS Notepad or a similar basic application. Simply open up Notepad, create a new file, and save as “robots.txt”. Voila! You have the file.

Robots.txt: Managing the content

So we have the file, but it contains no content just yet. Let’s look at what goes in there.

The robots.txt file is basically divided into several sections, one for each of of the robot crawlers’ User Agent names. You can direct a section at all crawlers or a specific one, so this can be as simple or as complex of an exercise as you feel comfortable taking on.

Each section begins with code designating what User Agent is targeted. Examples of this piece of code include:

User-agent: * (targets all spiders)
User-agent: Googlebot
User-agent: insert name of agent here

Beneath each User-agent designation, there will be one or more DISALLOW entries. How’s that for simple-to-learn logic? The syntax for this command looks like this:

Disallow: / (tells the User-agent not to index any pages on the site)
Disallow: /name-of-microsite/
Disallow: /directory-not-to-index/

Disallow can be used as a negative by entering nothing after the colon. This is essentially an “Allow this crawler to index any and all pages on this website” command. There is only one practical reason that I’ve ever found to use this derivative – where you set a disallow for all user agents, but want to override it for only one agent. To keep it straightforward, come back to this one when you are much more comfortable with this topic later.

Robots.txt: Where to put it

This is a simple answer, but a very important one. Once you finish building your file, upload it right into the root directory of the website. If you place it anywhere else, search engine spiders will consider it to be merely a posted document and not a set of instructions to review prior to crawling.

Difference between robots.txt and the “robots” meta tag

Robots.txt and the robots meta tag are both effective ways to tell search engines not to crawl or index a specific page. I’ve heard many an SEO split hairs about whether there is any good reason to use one over the other.

While this is technically splitting hairs, keep in mind that the robots.txt file is massively more scalable than it’s meta tag cousin. Why? Because you can disallow access to an entire directory on your site with two lines of code. If that directory were to have, say, 18 pages in it, you would have to physically edit, save, and upload the new version of each page to the server individually for the same result.

More Information

I strongly recommend you take the time to learn how to manage this yourself. It is really not very difficult, and something you can keep in your back pocket for later when you really need it.

For those of you who don’t need to do this more than one time, I stumbled upon a robots.txt generator while researching a couple of items for this blog post. If you use it, let me know how it goes. I am sure there are multiple tools out there, and would rather only share the good ones.

In closing, the following is a nice chart from technyat.com that explains all this in an easy-to-understand comparison chart format. Enjoy!

: Image Source: Technyat.com

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Google Plus: What Is It Really All About?

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Tommy Landry

Most of you have likely found your way onto Google’s latest experiment in social media, Google Plus / Google+. I have been a member since the second week it was available for sign up, but have held off on making commentary here on Return On Now until I could better evaluate it.

Now that we have had several weeks to use and discuss Google+, it’s time to get in on the conversation.

First Impressions of Google+

The thing that immediately jumped out to me, like most of you, was the interesting implementation of circles rather than following in a one- or two-way fashion (a’la Twitter or Facebook). The ability to target postings to a specific circle is a great feature in concept, although it can be a bit cumbersome to use if you are very active on the site. Either way, it’s nice to have the flexibility.

The site comes with a built in +1 button on all posts, comments, and links. That’s great, especially now that Google has built the feature into their algorithm. Now, the +1 works a lot like the Facebook Like button for both liking and sharing. It’s a good thing they caught up on that one quickly.

The Hangout feature looks interesting, but I haven’t used it much due to a lack of time to play around online. It’s probably cool for some purposes, perhaps virtual meet ups or even a round table, so I still need to find time to play with it.

The Photos tab is an interesting view the first time you view it, but not something I find myself ever drawn to click again. And they’ll have to beef up the games section quite a bit. It might be a unique way to play games, but selections are limited at this point in time, mostly titles you can get on an iPhone.

Overall, it’s interesting, but I still struggle to find the motivation to use it, even after several weeks.

Google Plus as a Social Tool

The biggest issue with Google+ is that it comes across more as a “social tool” than as a social network. Google is a analytical company who provides technical products / tools / services for a variety of purposes. Since they felt they had to “be social”, they have been dipping toes in the water for some time now (e.g. the failed Google Buzz experiment). So they built a tool that incorporates a lot of what you see and like on the leading social networks. And they tried to add additional structure to what has been a bit unstructured elsewhere.

I question whether Google understands what a community is. This is a vastly different animal than something like AdWords or Google Docs. Their communication has been sparse, which is a major issue for those who have been singled out by the Real Names Only rule. The kicker is that they simply group Google Plus with all their other services, and if they kick you off for using a fake name, they kick you off everything!

With so many of us drinking the “cloud” Kool-Aid, moving to Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365, this is a massive error on Google’s part. After all, if this is just a “project” as they have been calling it, why would our other services suffer if we are deemed unworthy for their community? This has not affected me since I always use my real name, but others have been burned badly in this fiasco. Sorry Google, but this is a perfect example of the word FAIL.

Google Plus for SEO and website traffic

I would be remiss without considering how Google+ might impact Search Engine Optimization. After all, we are talking about Google and their 90% market share in search.

One thing they are getting right is the +1 button. By making it easier to share on Google Plus from anywhere online, they get the outstanding effect that the Facebook Like button offers. Even more importantly, it gives the public a chance to voice positive votes for content, even with social sites linking as “nofollow“. This is a huge change, and one that should add a lot of value in social search.

In reality, I’m torn between whether Google Plus is truly an attempt at creating a social network or more about figuring out how to meld social data into search. I actually hope it is at least in part about the latter.

Regardless of their motivations, the market for social networks is already saturated. We have invested too much time in the frontrunners, and I am not seeing the social graph of the masses looking to move. Sure, the social media crowd has jumped on full speed ahead, but even among that group, opinions of Google+ range widely.

Final Thoughts

It will be interesting to see if Google figures it out, or if this becomes just another failed social experiment. Or perhaps it offers some unforeseen value for social search. Some of this could already be built into their search algorithm, and all the refinements we’ve seen over the past 6 months very well may represent them still trying to get it right.

What do you think? Is this a real attempt at being social, or a short term experiment to figure out how to meld social activity into SERPs?

SEO: Google Sitelinks Enhancements

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Tommy Landry

In the ongoing evolution of search engine marketing, the game keeps getting more interesting. The latest development to catch my attention was today’s update of how sitelinks appear on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Sitelinks: What Are They?

For those of you unfamiliar with sitelinks, these are the list of links that appear just under the meta description on SERPs. Sitelinks point directly to various pages of your website and are meant to help searchers access the exact information they need as quickly as possible. Typical pages you will see included are Careers/Jobs, About Us, Contact Us, and product overview pages, among others.

Google’s New Sitelink Structure

In the past, sitelinks included much less detail. Back in 2008, sitelinks appeared as a simple of list of the pages that tend to be the most popular on a typical web site (see list above). Aside from simple routine layout changes, the first major update to sitelinks in a long time just happened today.

Here is a screenshot of the sitelinks that appear when I search for Anue Systems, the network monitoring switch vendor in Austin, TX.

: New Google Sitelinks – Anue Systems Example

As you can see, the new approach allots much more real estate to the sitelinks than before. Since sitelinks are for quickly routing searchers to the most relevant content, this enhancement is a great change for all involved.

First, by providing the links with more information displayed (meta description and URL path), SEO landing pages begin to permeate throughout the site. These days, the primary purpose of the home page is to say “Welcome, how can I most quickly route you to the content you desire?” If you have already adopted that approach, this helps you send them straight to it without having to pass through the home page first. Remember, the more clicks they have to make, the more likely they are to bounce right off the site onto the next task.

Second, this provides significant value-add for search engine optimization efforts. Meta description becomes even more important to earning clicks. Why? It is your chance to “pitch” why the reader should view the page. If you include keywords as well as “what’s in it for me” in the meta description, the deep linking will serve you well for spreading the SEO “juice” out more across your website.

Managing Your Sitelinks

Of course, this feature is mostly automated, so you need to keep tabs on what is included in your sitelinks. I have read case studies about all sorts of unwanted pages showing up. In fact, one case study from 2009 showed a page with a vulgar page title (complete with the F-word) appearing right above the executive leadership link. I’d imagine someone on the web team found themselves sending out resumes in short order.

Regardless, particularly if you have user generated content on your website, Google offers a tool to demote a sitelink from the SERPs. Here is a quick excerpt on how to do it from the Webmaster Tools – Sitelinks page:

To demote a sitelink URL:

On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
Under Site configuration, click Sitelinks.
In the For this search result box, compete the URL for which you don’t want a specific sitelink URL to appear.
In the Demote this sitelink URL box, complete the URL of the sitelink you want to demote.

Once you’ve demoted or undemoted a sitelink, it can take some time for search results to reflect your changes.

You can demote up to 100 URLs, and demotions are effective for 90 days from your most recent visit to the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools.

What do you think about the new sitelink appearance? What will you do differently from an SEO perspective to take advantage of it?

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SEO: Best Blogs about Search Engine Optimization

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Tommy Landry

In my ongoing networking with various marketing colleagues, it has become apparent that the general level of understanding about SEO is rather low. Most marketing folks really do understand that SEO is important, so they have at least read up on the “why” and some basic on-page items you can do to optimize for search engines.

Now, with the rather massive changes that Google has rolled out with the initial Panda / Farmer update and more recent update to PageRank, the knowledge gap has expanded for most of us. Just this week I was chatting with a couple of SEO folks here in Austin, and they had completely missed when Google updated its PageRank formula not once, but twice in the past two months. [Read more about the PageRank update and other recent Google changes on WebProNews, one of our recommended blogs in the list below.]

The most common question I get is, “What are your favorite online resources for me to learn more about SEO?” Typically, I rattle off a couple of my favorites, but it is due time that I take a moment to share a more thorough list here on Return On Now.

The following list is meant to be a starting point. I did not take the time to rank them, as each of these blogs offers solid content that has proven useful to me in one area or another. And of course, I start with the SEO king of Google himself…

Top Blogs Covering Search Engine Optimization

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
The Daily SEO Blog (SEOmoz)
SEO Blog (SEO Book)
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Watch: SEO Category
Search Engine Journal: SEO Category
Graywolf’s SEO Blog (by Michael Gray)
Search Engine Roundtable
Search Engine Guide
TopRank Online Marketing Blog (Lee Odden)
WebProNews
SEOptimise
SEO Scientist (possibly a best kept secret in the SEO industry)
Search Engine Optimization Journal
Website Magazine (tag=SEO)
GoogleCache (SEO Research and Ramblings)
Search Marketing Wisdom
SEO 2.0 SEO Blog

There you have it, my list of the top resources I turn to when looking for industry news and analysis about search engine optimization.

What did I miss?

Please recommend any other great resources that I may have overlooked below in the comments. I’ll go back and update the post to add more if you come up with some solid finds that our readers would enjoy as well.

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