What I learned at Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, by SageRock.com

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What I learned at Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, by SageRock.com

By Sage Lewis
http://www.sagerock.com/website-promotion-articles/SES-chicago.ht...

It’s always good to stay on top of the state of your industry, which was what we at SageRock were busy doing before the Holidays at the Chicago Search Engine Strategies Show. As you might expect, the main topic of conversation was the "Florida" update and how to avoid a slide in rankings or get reestablished if rankings had fallen in Google.

If this is the first you’re reading about "Florida," check out this article (<a href="http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3285661" target="_blank">http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3285661</a>) on Searchenginewatch.com for a list of great resources about the update.

The industry consensus (and this is no shocker) was that sites with lots of useful content for visitors would be rewarded in all the engines including Google with its new algorithm. The conference, of course, had its fair share of fairly hostile people disagreeing with this sentiment and coming forward as exceptions to that rule. But, for the most part, all of us in the industry were in agreement about this. In fact, one website that claimed to be an exception to this rule (i.e.: it was an information rich site that had been ousted from Google) came forward during the "Meet the Crawlers" session to discuss the injustice and then learned mid-session that the site’s high rankings had been restored.

This prompted the Google representative to reiterate that there were going to be some relevancy problems in a few of the results, but that programmers would continue to make adjustments and improve the algorithm over time.

SEO industry leaders were also speculating that the "Florida" update seemed to be featuring information sites in the free listings and leaving commercial site exposure primarily to the AdWords campaigns. Google spokesmen, however, disagreed with this interpretation of the new update, saying the result changes were strictly based on phrase relevancy and commercial-oriented phrases would continue to list results for both commercial and informational websites in the free listings.

While there was much to learn in Chicago and tons of great information for SEO professionals and newbies alike, these are the top three things we at the office felt were most relevant.

1) Just be an Information Site Already

This is not new advice, but it’s been important for the last 4 years and now, post Florida, it’s more important than ever. Commercial sites need to be information resources for potential clients – with relevant content that visitors will want to read and come back too repeatedly, not just to buy things but to stay informed about an industry’s main topics of interest.

But what is the best way to approach this tactic? Should a company have an informational portal that then points or links to a commercial site? Should there be multiple domains focusing on different information topic areas that remain separate or interlink together off of a main url? While these different approaches can be legitimate and effective, the Google rep at the Meet the Crawlers Forum said he felt that Google’s algorithm would "prefer" one site with one domain – commercial and resourceful – openly combined with no cross linking or hidden agendas.

2) No Way around Similar or Duplicate Content

Forget it. The engines are getting too savvy for three sites from one company about basically the same thing. Even with different products being promoted, multiple domains are turning into a major no-no. Once again, not breaking news, but it is becoming more and more essential to adhere to these rules as time goes on or suffer the consequences.

So what do you do if you have multiple domains and related content (spammy or otherwise)? Combine them into one major site and then use redirects to give spiders a clear new path.

At the Search Engines and Web Server Issues session, Bruce Clay shared his advice for the best redirecting tactic to present one main web address to search engines. Bruce says you can best handle that on the server with a 301 "moved permanently" redirect. Using this code on your server lets the search engines know that there is only one main web address to spider.

As an example, if you have 2 domains, then move content from the secondary site to the primary site and use that 301 moved permanently redirect to point the secondary url to the main site url. If you have multiple domains, choose one as the main site, one as the permanent redirect site, and then have all the other domains forward to the redirect site, which will then use a "moved permanently" redirect to the main site. Check out the visual and more details about this at: <a href="http://www.bruceclay.com/SEO-tech-tips/" target="_blank">http://www.bruceclay.com/SEO-tech-tips/</a>

3) Bad Links are a Bad Idea

Links farms have never been supported as a legitimate tactic for building link popularity and now relying solely on reciprocal link programs between related industry sites joins the ranks with link farms as a bad idea. Having the same amount of incoming and outgoing links is now a tip off to spiders that the links are probably solicited and therefore not as valuable as straight incoming links.

Pursue links that are not straight exchanges, with relevant and related sites, and be rewarded. The "Advanced Link Building" session told attendees to be sure and make it easy for people to link to a site by providing code and copy. And don’t forget not to use tracking codes in that code as spiders can choke on those url strings and not follow the link properly. So how do you pursue links if you’re not offering reciprocal benefits? The hard way, of course. Submitting articles and press releases with links back to your site are a great way to do this. Having that valuable resource site is the other great way to encourage people to want to link to you. And if you are having trouble finding potential sites you’d like links from, don’t forget to use your web log statistics to uncover valuable linking potential. Finally, if you switch domains and need to keep link popularity, use the 301 permanent redirect to keep your Google Page Rank.

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