Google Penguin Information

For those of you who don’t know about Penguin yet, it has caused quite a stir. Google originally dubbed it the “Over Optimization” Penalty. That threw much of the SEO world into a panic, so they retitled it the WEBSPAM update (a.k.a. Penguin). The thought is that they’d systematically drop sites that exhibit spammy behavior from the index.

What defines spammy behavior in this case? Some of the types of behaviors I’ve seen mentioned include:

1. Creating a link farm, or link circle
2. Having a link profile stacked with questionable backlinks to the website
3. Selecting a keyword-rich domain and launching just shallow content
4. Publishing low quality content that is clearly machine generated
5. Keyword-stuffing on the page or entire domain

Hopefully your website survived all these changes unscathed. If so congratulations, but don’t just sit on your laurels and enjoy it. You need to know what behaviors are out of bounds, so it’s crucial to read all you can about Penguin. There’s something called negative SEO that has been the buzz. That’s something you don’t want aimed at you.

Google Penguin Resources

Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo (SEOmoz)

Of course, I have to start with SEOmoz. They are my favorite source for interpreting pretty much anything Google says about SEO. Start with this article first, and peruse the blog listing for other related posts. They are all valuable.

The following are some of the more interesting and insightful posts from other sites that I’ve found covering Penguin. If you see anything else worth adding, let me know and I can update the post.

Original Webmaster Blog Post: Another step to reward high-quality sites

Here is the official announcement of Penguin straight from Google. They did a lot of advanced commentary, but this was when we knew it was set in motion.

Google Penguin Update: Don’t Forget About Duplicate Content (WebProNews)

This is both a refresher on duplicate content and commentary on managing it in the age of Penguin. There are a bunch of educational videos embedded at the end, so consume this one when you have time to watch all the Matt Cutts cameos.

Google’s Unnatural Links Messages: The Shot Heard ’round the SEO World? (Search Engine Watch)

This post does a great job of explaining what the new rules of backlinks are. This is a different kind of algorithm update. It’s the first one I can recall where they can penalize your website for the lack of quality of those who choose to link to it. The days of volume backlink campaigns is over, my friend. Quality is now a defining factor.

Google Crushes Spinners and Spammers (Website Magazine)

Website Magazine chimes in on everything with at least a high level overview. This does that and hits on a few areas where spammy behavior might be identified. Quick read if you don’t mind a more high level view of the situation.

Webspam And Panda Updates: Does SEO Still Matter?  (WebProNews)

First, this post is not advocating the belief that SEO is done, dead, or otherwise obsolete. It does cover some of how it will need to change moving forward, and also includes a list of sites that were impacted, either positively or negatively, from April 24 forward.

What to Do if Your Search Rankings Were Hurt by Google’s Penguin Update (Hubspot)

Hubspot does a good job of explaining how you can figure out if you’ve been penalized by Penguin. It also provides some basic tips to take into account if you do get hit. Most importantly, it links to the form you can submit to Google for their review if you think you’ve been penalized in error. Just be sure you’ve fixed whatever they told you to fix in Webmaster Tools before you submit, and your chances of success will higher.

Move Over Panda, a Penguin’s on the Loose (Site Reference)

This one has some good tips about how to address any concerns you have over Penguin. It also outlines some areas to start with if you are in remediation mode.

If My Content is “King,” Why Does Google Hate It? (Site Reference)

Google just wants everyone to remove the shortcuts and play by the same rules. This talks about some realities around content marketing. It also touches on how the white hat SEO practitioner can insulate against further algorithm jockeying.

Google Penguin Update: Impact of Anchor Text Diversity & Link Relevancy (Search Engine Watch)

This ties to the March announcement, which was a precursor to Penguin. They’re cracking down on shady offpage practices, and you need to alter your backlink efforts accordingly. Exact match anchor text is no longer the way to go.

Even the FTC is getting in on the fun

Have you heard about the FTC antitrust investigation surrounding this update? That is probably the only way we’ll ever see Google even consider rolling back an update. Although it’s a very long shot that this will be successful at proving any guilt, it’s worth watching. The last time we had a major investigation like this it was Microsoft, and that was quite a ride!

Thanks for reading!

Sure, SEO is “free” and should be addressed for any website. But once you have optimized the on page and started driving backlinks, you really need to have patience as it all starts to pick up momentum.

Most businesses don’t have time to simply sit and wait. That’s when PPC needs to be taken more seriously.

Keyword Match Types: What Are They?

Google allows you to set the targeting you prefer for your keywords. Targeting is managed using match types. These designate the keywords you want to go after and how tightly you want to focus your ads within the SERPs. Here are the four top-level match types they offer:

Broad Match

Broad match is set by simply entering the keyword into the AdWords interface as a target keyword. If you do not add any modifiers to indicate it should be Phrase or Exact, it defaults to Broad.

Broad allows you to not only show up for verbatim searches of a keyword, but to also show up for variants, misspellings, and terms with similar meanings. While this sounds great in terms of ad impressions to those of us who were brought up in the mass advertising age, it is often the wrong choice.

Since you pay for every click, relevance is crucial. If you show up on a badly targeted SERP, you are guaranteed to pay for bad clicks. And to make matters worse, Google charges more for the same ranking on pages with high competition (meaning a lot of other people are bidding on the same terms), so a broad click is typically the most expensive of all.

Broad is useful for researching new variants of a keyword, but proceed with caution. I recommend you partition off a test budget of maybe 10% of your overall spend to find those new variants. Then go after those keywords using one of the below better targeted match types.

Phrase Match

Phrase Match looks for searches that include a pre-specified phrase, but also include other words around the phrase. You can set a keyword to phrase by putting quotation symbols around it.

For example, if you use “SEO services” as the keyword, your ad would appear on SERPs for “SEO Services in Memphis”, “Best SEO Services in Texas”, or “What to expect from SEO services firms”. As you may have noticed, the order of the words in the phrase must be the same, so “what services should an SEO offer” would not match.

This is useful for tighter targeting overall, perhaps based on location as shown above. Phrase match tends to be less expensive on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, as compared to broad match. At the same time, it also delivers significantly reduced impressions but is more likely to be relevant to a larger percent of the results on which the ad will appear.

Exact Match

Exact Match, designated by using brackets such as [SEO Services], will only serve up your ad on SERPs for verbatim searches of that term. No other words can appear in the search, which is why it is called exact match.

This is the tightest targeting, most likely to be relevant, and least expensive bidding option. If you know for a fact that a keyword has a lot of volume, is relevant as an exact match, and has low competition (based on number of advertisers bidding for the term), you’ve found yourself a bargain.

The best way to find what terms to target with exact is to start with broad or phrase match and see what searches drive results. You may have a very relevant keyword that never drives conversions or quality visits to your site. On the other hand, you will sometimes be surprised to see what words drive the best results. Target those with exact match to get more clicks with higher potential for success.

Negative Match

Another match type you need to know about is Negative Match. This is how you specify all the words you DO NOT want to match for.

At a previous company, we sold a product that attached to a device called a Network TAP (Test Access Point). Unfortunately, the IT community rarely included the word “Network” when searching.

We started out on broad match and found that a huge portion of our spend was on irrelevant terms! There are kitchen taps, beer taps, tap dance shoes, the song “Taps”, the list goes on and on. So we used negative match types on our TAPs ad group to remove any search including the words kitchen, beer, dance, shoes, song, etc.

More on Match Types

This is just a brief introduction. There is much more to figure out when working with PPC advertising.You can use modified broad match, which allows for more wide variants and misspellings to match. You can now use modified exact or phrase match, which allows for close synonyms to match. And once you get all that down, it will be time to learn about bid stacking to optimize your spend across the various keywords and match types.

Even after managing PPC for nearly10 years, I still learn something new almost every week. Just be creative and willing to learn, and you’ll see the massive potential of PPC to drive results for your business or cause.

Read more about Google’s take on these Match Types at http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100

So today you are looking at the first edition of “Return On News”. My goal is to share a similar set of recommended articles and blog posts at least once monthly. If there is enough volume, I might even do it more often.

How to Remove Your Google Web History Before The New Privacy Policy Change

This article from Melanie Pinola of lifehacker goes beyond just how to remove your web history; it offers some great reasons why you want to do it in the first place.

Pinterest is profiting off your ‘pinspired’ purchases without a disclosure

Molly McHugh of Digital Trends reveals her findings regarding how social media upstart Pinterest pays their bills. We already know they include dofollow links back to the various websites where the images originated. But they have a full affiliate strategy going on in the background. It’s working, but is it deceptive? See for yourself.

Someday, Your Reputation May Be More Important Than Your Net Worth

Boonsri Dickinson of Business Insider speculates about a possible future where who you are and what you stand for could one day be more valuable than money or “stuff.” He makes a darn good case for it. You’ve likely seen all the detractors beating up on Klout, but this is a rare article that envisions a more rosy future for them or whomever it is that figures out the personal branding / online reputation game.

Unofficial SXSW 2012 Guide

It’s no secret that I live in Austin, so I had to share something about the festival. This page gives a nice overview of the parties to expect outside show hours. Fun is part of the festival, so save up some energy for the afterparties. And welcome to Austin! [Thanks to Melanie Wise, who originally shared this with me via Twitter.]

Block Advertisers From Your Google Search Results

Cris Crum of WebProNews reviews Google’s new offering that allows users to block Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements from entire domains. Fortunately for advertisers, they are allowing users to manage their own web search experience without saddling those same advertisers with any negative ranking or quality score repurcussions. At least for the time being.

Conclusion

That’s the list for this week. If you find something you think would be a great fit here, please share with me on Twitter: @tommy_landry!

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:

1. How easy or difficult it is to learn what the site is about on first entry
2. How quickly it is to navigate to the most relevant content on the site (faster nav and fewer clicks is the goal)
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

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:

• https://adwords.google.com/
• http://support.tigertech.net
• http://thwack.solarwinds.com

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: 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:

1. What do you think the most challenging aspect of white hat seo?
2. 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?
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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?

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!

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?

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.

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?

Read more posts from Return On Now about Search Engine Optimization.

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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

1. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
2. The Daily SEO Blog (SEOmoz)
3. SEO Blog (SEO Book)
4. Search Engine Land
5. Search Engine Watch: SEO Category
6. Search Engine Journal: SEO Category
7. Graywolf’s SEO Blog (by Michael Gray)
8. Search Engine Roundtable
9. Search Engine Guide
10. TopRank Online Marketing Blog (Lee Odden)
11. WebProNews
12. SEOptimise
13. SEO Scientist (possibly a best kept secret in the SEO industry)
14. Search Engine Optimization Journal
15. Website Magazine (tag=SEO)
16. GoogleCache (SEO Research and Ramblings)
17. Search Marketing Wisdom
18. 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.