WebProNews

New Details on Google Caffeine Update

Update 2:  Matt Cutts gave WebProNews another exclusive interview, in which he gave some more details about Caffeine (among other things. It's only hitting one data center before the holidays, and it isn't even live quite yet. Google will roll it out to more data centers in January.  

Is Brand the Key to Ranking on Google?

A recent SEOBook article highlights a good deal of evidence that Google is placing more emphasis on brands than ever before. Author Aaron Wall takes an in depth look at how Google's algorithm has evolved over his own SEO career, and points out some hints Google has provided in the media as to where its headed before answering a few questions from me for this article.

FAQ Pages Could Boost Your Google Rankings

In a recent report, Hitwise said that the length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of 5+ words in length, have increased 10% from January '08 to January '09 they noted. Ask has an interesting blog post up interpreting this data, and the gist of it is summed up with this paragraph from it:

Changes and Significance in Search: Looking Back on 2008

I initially intended to piece together a retrospective article about the happenings in the search industry and SEO from throughout the year, based on our coverage of it., much like what I did with online video and online music. I quickly realized this would be a monumental task given that something like 90% of what we cover is search or SEO related.

PubCon: Aaron Wall Talks Link Buying Without Getting in Trouble

Aaron Wall knows a thing or two about SEO. He's been in this game as long as I can remember. He's the brains behind the hugely popular SEOBook. When he talks about ways of getting links, people looking to increase their search engine rankings should pay attention. Our own Mike McDonald scored an interview with him out in Las Vegas while attending the PubCon conference. Video of that can be seen below.

Top Search Engine Marketing Tools

The number of internet marketing tools launched over the past couple years has been staggering. Many of them are both free and highly valuable. SEO, which was once considered a bit of a seedy niche, has grown with search to become a mainstream marketing practice, with...

Google's Favoritism Makes Knoll SEO Magnet

Author and search optimization expert Aaron Wall headed to Google's Knol, as did many SEO professionals, to create a page. He doesn't sound happy about what he found.

Speculation About a New Google Filter

Aaron Wall put up a post about a new Google filter that causes people with high ranking terms to be bumped down to position #6. There is also a thread at Webmaster World about this phenomenon. This is still reasonably speculative in nature, but there are a lot of people who have seen this.

The Paid Link Stages Of Grief

Let the bargaining begin. It's a natural stage of mourning. As Google shuffles loose the paid links from its algorithms, SEOs are cycling past their initial denial, their outrage, and have begun negotiating. Stay tuned; depression and acceptance are likely to follow.

Wall and Cutts Talk Things Over

Matt Cutts recently offered a public voting for my lynching, but we just talked things over, and there will be no lynching - at least not yet. I think Matt is a great guy, but his job is tough as a public face of THE company dominating the web.