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Tuesday, November 22, 2011 | 3:43 PM

Labels: alert

Google recommends that data feeds be under 20MB for upload within Google Merchant Center, while scheduled fetch and FTP uploaded feeds can be up to 1GB. Compressed feeds must be under 500MB or you will need to split them in to 500MB or less files.

While most will not be affected by this, I think new feeds will come under deeper scrutiny with regard to size, data quality, freshness and so on.

Where Have all the Sitemaps Gone?

Odd indeed! However, the reason for the post is more for you to go check and make sure everything is in order in your webmaster's tools. Holiday shopping is already on the rise, we cannot afford to let a simple thing like this escape our grasps. So login to your Google Webmaster accounts and check under

Site Configuration >> Sitemaps

If you have missing sitemaps as well, we would love for you to comment so we can determine if Google is just picking on us... sob =)

***Update several customers websites (all old ones, verified and submitted long ago) are missing their sitemaps as well!

According to Google, search queries can be classified into action queries ("do"), information queries ("know") and navigation queries ("go").

So the very content we use on our pages to drive conversions can also help Google deliver you more "doers" than"knowers". The challenge, as it has always been, is to create content which:

• Answers all of the shoppers questions
• Engages him
• Causes him to make a purchase (add to cart)

Some of these things we are inherently going to be quite good at, based on our own personality and experiences.... However, I rarely see shop owners who hit all 3. Lets have a look at some examples:

This example is your basic "Information Overachiever". There is so much information here that as a shopper I am perhaps even overwhelmed. The lack of natural content coupled with the very direct add to cart area may make this page uncomfortable for many shoppers. Kind of like that guys who follows you around the store from the door and won't leave you alone.

Here we have a much softer sell, but it lacks the "wow" of the informational listing. This format creates trust better and delivers a more comfortable feel to the decision to make a purchase. Keep in mind that many times your needs will be specific to your products or niche as well.

This is a nice product page layout. Easy to read, scan and understand. It is a significantly "softer" sell, but instills confidence to make the purchase. Visually the images are large enough and plenty, while the information is both natural and detailed.

So we can see that different layouts have different strengths, but what about the actual words?

The words that you use to describe your content should be presented naturally in the same manner as you would attempt to sell the product on the phone. Using alternate names, slang and layman terminology will help Google deliver your products for the natural language people search with. There is not point in ranking number 1 for a roro widget, when everyone refers to it as a rooo for example.

Lastly, to help the search engines understand the actionable nature of your product pages you should includes words such as "buy", "purchase", "shop online" etc. When including these types of action phrases it will be most effective to string them along a keyword for the product. something such as "When buying a roo online, you have several options for color, size and delivery". It's way too easy to get spammy when trying to create actionable content... so pay close attention to the perceived intent of the words you chose.

A great example of this type of short sited issue can be found in "Crawl Errors" under your Diagnostics bar. This tool has been a source of unending frustration... always. Why?

There is a very simple stupid reason why.... Business website owners haven't the knowledge to understand that blocking pages in robots.txt is important and they are NOT crawl errors in the layman's sense in which they are presented!

Now the new Google Webmaster Tools Site Health feature seeks to label blocked pages such as tag pages, archives and even damn uploads directory stuff like images as a "SEVERE HEALTH ISSUE FOUND ON YOUR SITE!". Yes, they even have a little RED exclamation point.

Click to Enlarge

So in our webmaster tools account we have 2 of these sites (at the very top of the main dash page), that have severe health issues. Both sites have only 1 ding.... The first has tag and archive pages blocked in robots.txt (well... duhhhh), while the second has its WP uploads directory content blocked (which is blocking an image of obvious huge importance?).

The problem? Google has first alarmed the user with strong, scary text (Severe health issues are found on your site), images and colors. Secondly, telling the user that an archive page for example, blocked in robots.txt is an "important page". So the user, who is probably just a business owner.... Hurries to pay their IT guy to unblock this "important page", so Google can omit it from the search results for duplicity and "low quality".

Seriously, I really doubt that Google gives these things a second thought..... But I can assure you that these short sighted and somewhat lazy generalizations in the language and presentation of informational data being reported as problematic causes many Google users grief! Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the tools.... They just seem to lack the dedication to present data accurately. Is it really too much trouble to include data like this as informational as opposed to "alarming issues"?

Google's Snake Oil Sales

I have in the past defended Google's business practices and desire to make the index a more user friendly and productive experience..... BUT now I'm not so sure Google isn't the capitalists that many claim they are.

So here's the deal.

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, particularly for signed in users, we believe that protecting these personalized search results is important. As part of that effort, today the Google Search team announced that SSL Search on https://www.google.com will become the default experience for signed in users on Google.com (see the Official Google Blog post to learn more). Protecting user privacy is important to us, and we want to take this opportunity to explain what the Google Analytics team is doing to help you continue measuring your website effectively in light of these changes.

How will this change impact Google Analytics users?
When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google “cpc”.

Now in a more digestible language. When a searcher is logged in to ANY Google service and uses Google.com we will no longer get to see what the searcher searched for. For example:

If I have a page about crab apples and am getting a great deal of traffic I cannot see if Google understands the page.... Because I cannot see what is being searched for by logged in users. They could be searching for green apples, in which case my page needs better topical information to help searchers who are looking for crab apples find it.... AND to stop the frustration of searchers who are looking for green apples and finding my crab apples!

Google plays this out as being a small percent of all searches..... But with the stickiest damn cookies of any service in the world you are always friggin logged in! Google +1, Analytics, Gmail, Google Aps, Moodle, Google Shopping.... you name it and you are logged in. Come back in 2 weeks and you are STILL LOGGED IN!

Google claims this is an effort to protect the privacy of searchers. So, only logged in searchers are worthy of protection? Worse than that, NO PII is released in provided searcher's queries... So this is NOT at all a privacy issue. Fact, all statistical formats for websites will lose the ability to see Google referrers with queries for logged in customers.... EXCEPT Google Adwords, which will continue to have this "protected data". So, this looks bad for Google.... It's only private data if we are not paying Google for traffic? Bullshit!

So the question in my mind just begging to be asked... "Has Google collected, restricted availability and charged for and thus created a Monopoly on search data from the worlds largest market share of users?" I suspect we will see this information available to Premium Analytics Users (who PAY) as well. I think this is an outright attempt for Google to maintain it's already prominent market share, while using the data collected by Google users for profit ONLY.

You see, in your Google account you have ALWAYS been able to turn off the collection of this type of non-personal data. Google isn't worried about your privacy, they are worried about their pockets. I realize that many non-web people will not understand this, but I think presented in the true light, anyone can see Google is taking non-personal data collected to make the searchers experience, websites and usability better out of the hands of the webmasters and selling it to the people who pay to have your search data.

Here are some comments from the blog post I found interesting:

ADN said...
Where's the -1 button?

admin said...
It's a big, big BS...we are getting summary of those searches, and we can't see the "personal data" and searches done by a certain user...

Martin Aberastegue said...
This really sucks, I'm sure you will be providing this on the premium version. And why this only affects to organic and not paid search too? This is BS....

Claye Stokes said...
Showing search queries for CPC suggests that you're not really interested in making search more secure, as the title is trying to spin it.
What gives?

Anonymous said...
And how is this a security feature? That same SSL connection is obviously working fine for non-Google users and PPC hits, so there is no technical barrier. So really it's not the SSL security that changed; it's that Google's "protecting" Google users from GA users. Aka, us.

pittfall said...
FAIL
Analytics data is already private... I don't see "John Doe" searched for this keyword in my reporting.
If Google wants webmasters and marketers to be able to improve their websites for visitors, then this data would remain as is. This is imparative to providing the best landing page and experience. Example: if Google determined that a single page ranked for two keywords and one has a better experience for keyword 1 but not for keyword 2 then a webmaster would work to build a better page for keyword 2, however, if the data is split in half or more people using keyword 2 are signed into their Google account, you wouldn't be able to provide a positive experience.
Who is looking out for the visitors?

In closing.... I am LOGGING OUT OF GOOGLE. I may even dump our company's Google Aps for a less carnivorous company.

Well, Matt is NOT saying Google ranks pages based on spelling ... But rather he is saying there seems to be a correlation of higher PageRank/Reputation for websites/pages with proper spelling. While he states very clearly that "last time he checked" it was not used as a "direct"  ranking signal, however, it does seem obvious that some signal is picking this up. He even goes as far as to suggest it should be a ranking signal.

Turns out, in our experience, the more reputable pages do tend to have better spelling and better grammar.

I think Matt hit on a couple of key things on this subject that easily translate in to our current experiences with the Panda update. Using words like "trust" and "user experience" tell me that while it may not be a direct ranking signal.... It is being signaled from other relevant areas such as we see in the quality guidelines Google has given us in regards to Panda.

I endeavor to spell correctly.... Check my work and ALWAYS view every page I publish in the strictest of view, but I make spelling errors occasionally and my grammar sucks. I actually had a customer report a spelling error on a page recently that was 3 years old! UGH

So, in closing, I think this is just another thing you should not stress over, but do make an effort to use better spelling and grammar as I am certain in the current climate of Google it IS being signaled from somewhere. It's much easier to fix one big thing than to chase 200 little things, but as Google knows, it's the little things that make the best search experience. If I were you, I would try to see things in that light and fix what you can, as you can ... instead of picking one tiny piece such as speed or spelling and obsessing over it.

This has been a long haul for many shop owners, I see it and we ourselves are living it as well. I think the perception is part of the problem. I try very hard to "put myself in Google's shoes" and see how I would run such a global business. I think I would run Google, very similarly as Google is proceeding. I would want safe, quality and transparent search results for my users as well. So, having said that I honestly might not even be as fair and transparent as Google is. For example, I would certainly go out of my way to point people in the right direction.... But I would hardly spend countless resources to hold these webmaster's hands as Google does.

So in thinking about these changes, we should likely be grateful that Google aspires to help us... help our stupid selves.

As panda continues to evolve we are seeing the implementation and tweaking of the very transparent set of quality guidelines Google provided months ago. If you haven't looked at these very direct "gudielines" from Google or have discounted them as BS, then you are hurting yourself.... and it's NOT Google's fault. Fact is, it's time to quit whining and get to work if you intend to be successful in your web presence. Having said that, Matt Cutts announced another "Panda tweak" on 10/5/2011.

Matt Cutts Panda Update Tweet

While perspective is certainly a driving force for all of us.... Understanding is a much higher quality signal for us. This Tweet does NOT say your website is going to tank, it does NOT say that the changes are permanent (thus the use of the word flux) and it does NOT say that all websites are affected. Matt Cutts is a very educated guy and I would expect that his choice of words is nothing short of intentional.

This Tweet from Matt DOES say the Panda update has been tweaked, that less than 2% of Google indexed websites are affected and that the change is NOT necessarily permanent (flux). So, while I'm certain many of you are sitting there in panic mode with your finger of the change everything trigger... I suggest you relax and read thoroughly what Google wants ... Then comprise a plan of attack to meet those guidelines and proceed in an orderly fashion!

I'll make this statement: meta keywords is a signal. One of roughly a thousand we analyze. Getting it right is a nice perk for us, but won't rock your world. Abusing meta keywords can hurt you.

How MSN typical is that?

The entire search community is trying to fix the spam while Bing seeks to perpetuate it further. This is NOT 1997 anymore. Even at "one of a thousand signals" it's a ridiculous statement and signal. So in this page I can say in a proper Meta Keyword Tag that the post is about red tomatoes ( have a look for yourselves =P ) and Bing will actually consider this stupidity which is hidden from normal users?  Really dumb guys!

This from the folks who took 4 years to realize that we use no WWW in our urls.... The forced redirect was literally ignored by Bing for 4 full years and whose own design staff has to use a ton of IE hacks to display their OWN damn pages. So Microsoft just handed all the motivation the spammers need to begin adding a thousand keywords stuffed in the head of their pages and cause us unsurpassed frustration trying to explain to clients that the Meta Keyword tag is NOT going to help them rank... Unbelievable!

This, like many things, requires a balance. So my theory has always been this...

When you create pages, use the W3C validation tool to check your work. My personal expectation is to set out to fix every error and warning, but not at a loss of display, usability or general "coolness" of the page. Most times upon validation you will find a bunch of simple errors which are easily repaired. Issues such as unclosed tags, unescaped ampersands and such are quickly and easily fixed! In fixing these you learn to create better code in the first place... and the task gets easier and easier.

Big errors such are missing divs, missing alts, titles and such DO affect the page's usability and ability to be displayed and crawled correctly. These things should always be fixed. Again, don't get obsessive... Fix what you can, leave the rest and move on. If you think I'm kidding, checkout the 359 Errors, 293 warning(s) on Google's post page above for this announcement. And yes... most of these should be repaired as they are easy or affect usability.

Ages ago in the SEO business we frequently used a term called "link bait".  This term is a simplified way to say the content on the page is so good/needed/fun/exciting etc that people want to link to it naturally. This is actually a concept that I have embraced since day 1. I aim with every keystroke to create content you will want to share. I am not always as successful as I would like, but most times am quite successful. The very anatomy of creating link bait is exactly what Panda is looking for in their signals.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Is my content personable?
• Is my content funny, exciting, important?
• Are people engaged when they read my content?
• Is my content structured to be  easy to scan, read and follow?
• Is my content directed at the reader specifically?

These types of questions will help you to understand what people and Google wants, as well as creating a more effective content delivery structure. For ecommerce, these items are a bit more challenging. Sure, we can build everyone a blog to deliver higher quality content, but those lousy pages will still bring down the whole site. This is exactly why you need a new thought process to implement the changes needed for Panda.

Blogging is obviously an easy way to deliver compelling content to your readers, build authority and create great link bait... But what about those booooring product pages?

Product pages are at a disadvantage to begin with. Let's face it, we need the specs, numbers and all the boring data that goes with the product. However, no where is it written that's all you need! What about your own experiences with the product? Innovative uses and information? This is the type of information that Google is looking for.

I always tell shop owners to create product descriptions in a natural language using the same words that they would use to "sell" this product on the phone to a shopper. The reasoning for this is quite logical.

• If you cannot see me I am at nearly the same disadvantage as your website
• I will use descriptive words that you know and recognize to convey my sales pitch.. they are probably the same words you are searching for =)
• I will tell you my own experiences, similar products or better options
• I will talk to you... Not at you

This really makes it easy to see why I have said this... and why Google wants you to create personable and compelling content. I think that the ecommerce masses are just too lazy to approach each product page the way they would a face to face sale. For those of you who fall in this category... Sorry I can't help you. Those of you who want to create a great user experience on your website... C'mon in, we can help you.

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz has created a "Whiteboard Friday" video that every single one of you should watch. Rand has a unique way of explaining things in a easy to follow manner and this video will help you help yourself.

I have always noticed when I blog that the more personable and sometimes passionate way I present a topic... the more visits. For example, and I am not suggesting you do this for your own website, but If I swear in a blog post... It will have 2x more traffic that average! Damn crazy huh? The reason is actually pretty simple. When I write, especially when I am fired up, it is very passionate... People are engaged. This is the goal right?

I think each of you should set a plan to do the following:

• Fire your SEO content writer. Write for yourself or even use customer provided information... How about hiring a regular "joe" from your niche to write for you? I bet he's even cheaper!
• Set a goal to rewrite x amount of product pages a week. Don't do hundreds a week, we don't want you to tank in search results because of the flux you create by changing so much at once.
• Seek out and destroy crappy pages on your website. To hell with blocking them, unless they are absolutely required get rid of them. Not good enough for Google, then not good enough for your shoppers.
• Ask 10 friends to shop on your website and give you their thoughts about trust, usability, navigation, presentation and WOW. Then listen to what they have to say... Do not make a bunch of bullshit excuses as to why you know better than them!

Doing these things in a controlled manner will begin to resolve your Panda issues and build your freshness, authority and other ranking metrics right along side. How often do you get a win win? So, yes, it's hard work.... But it's inexpensive and easy to do.

This "Quality" post from Google really holds most of the information needed to overcome the losses. I have summarized these below for ecommerce website owners and added some targeted shopping cart notes to help you move past Panda.

Trust, Quality and Duplication

Trust is, and has always been a huge indicator for all websites... Especially ecommerce, as it affects sales as well as rank. Google has devised some simple questions to help you determine if your pages can, should be trusted.

Is your cart a recognized authority in the realm of your products? Do you at least act like one by providing tutorials, information and tips?

Would you trust the information presented in your pages? Looking at your pages, especially product descriptions, ask yourself if the information is descriptive enough, lengthy enough and written well enough to give shoppers a feeling of trust.

Is your content written by a person who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature? Are you paying for content from a non niche content writing service? Does your content contain dull and mundane facts, or is it well written by someone who knows the products and can provide interesting tips, enthusiasm and accuracy?

Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information on your cart? This is a big one... We have covered many times. Phone number in a prominent location, easy to find and follow navigation, shipping readily available w/o the need to create an account... etc. Look at your website through the shoppers eyes. The days of tricks for clicks have passed and you MUST be giving the necessary "Trust" signals to your shoppers.

Does the site have pages you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? Face it, those of you promoting your products in social media avenues w/o eliciting interaction are wasting your time. Provide top quality content that people want to share... In the "old days" we called this "Link Bait". Is your content moving people to link to you? If not.... Your content is not moving people to share it either!

Would users complain when they see pages from your site? Does your site suck? Do shoppers get lost, land on irrelevant pages from searches, are your descriptions garbage? Face it, you need to earn your sales and you lack the ability to look these shoppers in the eye so your pages must project the necessary information to complete the sale.

Have you poor grammar or misspellings in your product descriptions? I recently can across a friend who found a misspelling on a retailers website... EFFECT instead of AFFECT. The person thought the retailer was so dumb and it was so funny they shared it in an email to their friends and family. Is this the type of recognition you want? Spellcheck, reading your pages... This is easy.

Is your content a paste job of the manufacturers descriptions? You MUST provide unique content. I don't care how hard you think it is or what your organizational hurdles are... You cannot avoid this.

Are you stuffing your pages full of boring textual content for the search engines? While duplication is a problem and you DO need textual content, stuffing your pages full of crap so you can rank is completely pointless when you can't make a sale. The days of populating pages with stuffed content for rank are gone... Cannot even stuff the bottoms of the pages for an edge anymore ... Google knows this trick and has made algorithmic changes to better determine the proper "weight" of your content.

Are you adding 900 keywords to your Meta keyword tag? Google DOES NOT USE IT! Move on.... Stop playing games and write content for your users, not the search engines. Whether you like it or not... It's necessary and all the complaining in the world will not change it, quit wasting your time on tricks and ways around Google's quality guidelines.

Got "SEO Content Pages"? If they miss any of the questions above.... delete them and write something yourself that demonstrates your interest, knowledge and enthusiasm in your niche.

Do your pages load too slowly? Google has really taken a front runner stand on page speed. Ditch the widgets and garbage when you don't need them, work to increase speed and shoppers will buy more as well.

It's really simple. I find it SO hard to answer questions and help people who are overall more willing to spend 5x the effort to cheat or overcome the needs than to just do it right. If you haven't the desire, time and willingness to create quality, moving content... then you are in the wrong business, you will continue to fail and there is no quick or cheaters way for you to survive. Whomever told you that websites are fast, easy money for doing nothing while you sleep lied to you. You can decide today to create pages that engage your shoppers or you can ride the slide to the bottom and then delete your website.... Your choice, these bars will only be raised from here. There is no chance Google will return to the days of meta tag spamming so you can be successful.

Every page is a sales pitch, opportunity to impress and a representation of you.... Are you projecting your vision?

The +1 button makes it easy for visitors to recommend your pages to friends and contacts exactly when their advice is most useful -- on Google search. As a result, you could get more and better qualified site traffic.

Step 1

In Add the following line of code to your includes/templates/common/html_header.php
directly following <?php } //endif FAVICON ?>

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Step 2

Then, in your product pages (this is really the best place for them) add the
following, styled however you like.

<g:plusone size="tall"></g:plusone> <a title="Post to Google Buzz" href="http://www.google.com/buzz/post" data-button-style="normal-count"></a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js"></script> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="vertical">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like layout="box_count" font="verdana"></fb:like> <script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=5"></script></span>

That's it... Socially up to speed. Click here to download the .txt of the instructions above.

For the old GA you will add pageTracker._trackPageLoadTime(); like this

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ?
"https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape
("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
 type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try{
 var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
 pageTracker._trackPageview();
 pageTracker._trackPageLoadTime();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

For the new Asynchronous code you will add  _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']); like this

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

 (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type
= 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol
? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
   var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
 })();
</script>

Nice indeed. Once you set this up in about 24 hours you will begin to see data trickling in the content >> site speed report area of your Analytics dash. Google notes that probably should only tag a few pages, but the whole damn web is dynamic and so is my solution. Tag them all and let Google sort them out!

I really like the default selections of metrics for the new site speed report. They are all related relevant and insightful. Probably will even keep me from needing a custom speed report for a few months.

The default view of the Site Speed report shows Pages (your website pages) as the primary dimension. It lists your pages in order from those with the highest latency to those with the lowest. In this view, you get the following metrics in the report table:

• Avg Page Load Time—the average amount of time (in seconds) it takes that page to load, from initiation of the pageview (e.g. click on a page link) to load completion in the browser.
• Pageviews—The actual number of times the page was viewed for the selected date range.
• Page Load Sample—The actual number of pageviews that were sampled to calculate the average page load time.
• Bounce Rate—As for Pages report, the percentage of views to this page in which this page was the only one viewed for the session.
• % Exit—As for the Pages report, the percentage of views to this page in which this page was the last page in the session.

One thing to note is that this method of tracking/monitoring your PageSpeed score is far more useful than the snapshots we check ourselves. What are people in other geographical areas getting? Does your server have a very slow period you didn't know about? Dang, my site is that slow in Safari?

Google's quest and passion for speed suits me just fine, as I'm about as impatient as they come! Get on board and start thinking speed as part of your maintenance, growth plan and SEO... Google does!

NOT

Googler Amit Singhal wrote a nice post on Google Webmaster Central regarding the Panda update, things you can do to improve your site and ...

Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.

This is where we get the "Holy Algorithms Batman" title for this post!

Okay, well having said that... Keep your shirt on, he also really did have some logical and easily to follow thoughts for surmising the quality issues on your website. I am going to post them verbatim for you lazy clickers to read.

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

I think you should read these questions and answer them honestly about your shop. Then send them off to 3 friends to do the same (because I know you are not exactly objective). Then use your savvy niche expertise in your field to generate a logical and sustained plan of attack from the answers.

I would choose to agree and disagree with the author's suggestion to :

...rather than focusing on one particular algorithmic tweak, we encourage you to ask yourself the same sorts of questions we ask when looking at the big picture.

I agree that you must be moving towards an overall quality and a big picture, but I disagree that focusing and studying individual algorithm tweaks is somehow "ill advised". Instead I suggest that lack of current knowledge and information regarding the search results leads to disastrous and  uninformed decisions. My own process is to study the changes, read all I can on them and then try to determine what the overall purpose and end result Google may be seeking. That way I can hopefully cover the initial change quickly and continue to grow in the correct direction overall.

Every shop owner should be taking steps to eliminate low quality content, duplication and improper formed content throughout your websites. No one expects to complete this in a day, to be honest I have a couple of days to spend in my own shops and we have never duplicated content EVER. So, do not think you are going to be "okay", rather take the steps to update your content and store's SEO now while Google is still experimenting.

First let me start by saying I mention SEO in the truest sense of the process and not in the manner most of you *think SEO is about. SEO is very simply managing the website's ability to be properly crawled and indexed by search engines. Notice the complete and utter lack of words like keywords, stuffing, spam, tags...etc. That's simply because that stuff is garbage marketing and NOT SEO.

While just like anything else new, there is a lot involved... We are going to concentrate on 3 main areas that ecommerce shop owners can should be able to control. These areas are duplication, quality and architecture. I've decided that these areas are likely to provide the greatest impact for shop owners and help you to create better habits ongoing as well.

Duplication

Duplication of content can happen in may ways and comes in many forms. For ecommerce websites we will canonical duplication, copied text, lack of text and repeated text as the top areas of concern.

Canonical duplication:

This is simply the duplication caused by the same content being loaded on more than one url. For example www.domain.com, domain.com, domain.com/index.php?main_page=index etc... you get the picture. Serving up the correct canonical page for your content is crucial and this is a task that is easily met. For your www/non www provide a 301 permanent redirect to the correct version. For the index pages, provide a 301 permanent redirect to the domain/shop root such as domain.com. We specialize in Zen Carts, so we can provide some extra tips for not so normal canonical duplication such as /index.php?main_page=products_new and /index.php?main_page=products_new&disp_order=6&page=2 for example. The issue with new products, specials, featured and even sorted product index pages is that they have the same content, but different urls. The easiest way to combat this is to upgrade to Zen Cart version 1.3.9H, which has native canonical support via the rel="canonical" tags for these and other pages.

Copied Text:

Copied text is just that... If you copied the text in full or part from ANY other web page (including your own), it's duplicate. This also includes using manufacturer's provided descriptions that 9 million other shops are using as well. The simplest way to fix this issue is to "stem" the content. If you add or change a word every 5 words, the content should then be unique to you.

Lack of  Text:

This one is a little more confusing. The most common cause (see image below) is that shop owners do not provide enough page unique text to overcome the common template textual areas which are duplicate on every page.

Click to Enlarge

While I am in no way suggesting that a common template throughout your website is a bad thing.... Quite the contrary as it's more professional, consistently branded and builds shoppers trust. Rather I am suggesting that the page specific text on each be of enough content to make the page about the unique provided text.

Quality of Textual Content

This one in my opinion is the easiest to figure out and perhaps the most tedious to implement. Writing unique and quality content is your job if you have a website... No ifs ands or buts about it. It is necessary and it's a load of long hard work to accomplish once you already derailed.

Your product descriptions for example should be descriptive, creative and moving. I tell shop owners to describe and sell the product on the page the exact same way they would on the phone. Category pages and index pages are a bit more of a struggle. We know we need unique content... But we are concerned with the page real estate issues of our product listings being pushed down the page. With these pages I have 3 simple rules.

1. The text is ONLY about that page and no other pages or broad site comments.

2. The text is 100% unique.

3. The text is short enough to allow the shopper to at least get the first product listing without scrolling.

Proper Textual Architecture

As we have discussed already, Google endeavors to more effectively determine the proper "weight" for our web page containers. This in a great many ways will help shop owners. The common template text we discussed earlier will have it's weight "downgraded" by Google, logically making our unique text in the "main content container" more effective. But this idea has some other implications as well with regard to how we form our content.

Content should be formed in proper containers. Paragraphs, lists and other "grammar school day lessons" will be need to be practiced so that Google can effectively segment the page's containers, thoughts and more effectively pull snippets. These are a challenge for many and the code aspect is a real challenge for all Zen Cart HTML editors. The built in editor tends to screw this all up. Instead of a clean separation of content with <p> paragraph tags we tend to see....

<p>some text is here and this is the thought<br /><br />this is the next thought but the editor is too stupid to create another paragraph</p>

I will suggest that you use a proper HTML editor to create proper containers for your text and avoid using Zen Cart built in editors at all. Something we didn't mention above is the code/text ratio of a page. This is a little more complicated than I wanted to go, but I will touch on it briefly.

Let's say for example you edit a product description using a built in editor and change some size, colors etc. See example of the damage all the garbage code can cause below.

Click to Enlarge

I'll leave you all to get to work now.... As always if you have any questions, we will be sure to help you out best we can.

Get one!

Looking  at the changes and trend of Google and the other search engines, I thought it might be a good time to plot a new plan of attack. Sure, many things remain as they were... But there are also many new things we are looking at more deeply, as well as things we no longer concern ourselves with.

In my mind's eye you need to have a plan to accomplish anything well. So I always develop a plan of attack for our shops, every year.  This plan of attack is intended to not only keep me on track and focused... But it helps me muster the desire and dedication needed to be more successful every year.

In this plan, I generally try to prioritize the tasks as well as keeping them simple and targeted. Below is the list we are using in house for 2011 for our own shops. Your own list is likely going to be a bit different, but this may help you develop a customized plan of attack for your store more easily.

1. Speed. We are spending some resources, time and training  to improve the speed at which our shop's pages are being delivered to shoppers and spiders alike.
2. Uniqueness. We have always endeavored to create high quality content on our websites, but this year we are putting a great deal of time in to creating not only high quality content... But high quality 100% unique content.
3. Regularity. All of our shops have adequate opportunity for related content, we are making a huge effort to post fresh, top quality relevant content regularly. Such as once a month or once a week, depending on the size of the site.
4. Usability. We are split testing several different product page layouts, navigation and checkout options to find the best system to improve click through, trust and of course the shop's ability to convert.... by lowering abandonment.
5. Link bait. This is a term you hardly ever hear in ecommerce, but since Google has gone commando on low quality and reciprocal links we will shoot to create content so excellent on our store's content pages that people will naturally share and link to it.
6. Optimizing for feeds. We are working hard to include proper information, killer images and high converting information in our product pages so that our product feeds are bringing in the highest quality clicks possible.
7. Low hanging fruit. We are looking to our deep analytics reports to find high converting, but low traffic searches... We then properly optimize the product for these smaller phrases to reap the better conversions.
8. Content containers. We are working extremely hard to correctly segment our page's content in to proper containers for better snippets, readability and  to answer Google's new patent for analyzing page content.

Hope you find a helpful start to your own 2011 plan of attack!

Google grabs the page's source to attempt to simulate a typical browser display. This act allows Google to fairly reasonably surmise the different page elements, their purpose and thus relative importance. So common areas such as header, footer, sidebars, ads, etc are undoubtedly given less weight/importance that the main content area of the page. One cool idea I would like to see come from this is that Google downgrades the duplication issues for these common areas such as header & footer. Taking these commonly site wide areas of duplication out of the duplication filter would allow us to use a highly usable and site wide template, which is shown consistently to be favored by users, without the need to "pump" up the main content unique page's text in order to overcome the common template text parts. Wouldn't that be awesome?

The new patent (7,913,163) lists several "modules" that are used to analyze a web document. These modules link analysis, text analysis, image captioning and snippet construction are all weighted relative to their position on the page. For example a footer link would carry less weight than a link in the main content, by the same rule a link in a paragraph in the main content would thus carry even more weight. Important search terms shoved the in footer or header will not help you nearly as much as the same terms in the main content area. Images surrounded by relevant text are by the same right easier to rank in image search as the text around the image in near proximity provides more weight.

Something else to consider is the use of proper containers throughout your content. A great example we see quite often is a product description that is a list or lacks proper paragraph tags to logically break the content in to separate thoughts. The issue here is that without a proper textual container such as a paragraph Google has little to generate a snippet from. Google doesn't always our own Meta description, instead they pull a snippet from a container containing or relative the searcher's query. Here is an example:

This product, Gadsden US Flag is searched for in many different terms. In the illustration below, you can see that effort was made not only to cover all they ways people search for this flag, but to include each one in a contain that Google can find worthy of a proper snippet.

As you can see the effort to demonstrate the importance and relation of these terms has been mapped and planned out very well. The biggest "tell" is that this page performs very well in search for the terms it was written for. Note that at no time did we spam, stuff or even create anything odd... This is also great text for our shoppers.

I think that it is possible that incredibly complicated page designs, pages with important content in irregular or oddly positioned containers may suffer, but in the end a standard, easy to navigate and predictable layout converts best ... Because shoppers are more comfortable and able to navigate. What is good for Google is good for your shoppers as well ... Win, Win!

While Google has done, and continues to make regular improvements and tweaks to their algorithm to accomplish this, yesterday they made a huge adjustment. This update, deemed the "Farmer" Algorithm Update is a really big deal for those of you residing on the "darkside". The name Farmer is derived from the unofficial target of content farms. While this huge update affects nearly 12% of all Google search results, it is really the second wave of what is this endeavor to clean up their results announced here in the Official Google Blog post identifying both their intent and means of which they intended to accomplish this. While this was back in late January, most didn't heed the warning.

The first wave, the scraper update, was confirmed by Matt Cutts on 1/28/2011 affected only a small 2% of Google's search queries. This probably went unnoticed by most, if not all shop owners as scraper sites are a pretty tight and defined category of which you are not likely to fall in.

Excerpt Search Engine Land - Danny Sullivan

“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.

While I was very excited to see these plans from Google come to fruition (some pretty crappy content with stronger links outranking us for some queries we are targeting), I think most of the ecommerce community was/is completely oblivious to what's going on.... Much less how it will affect them.

What Google's Farmer Update Means to You!

This update is designed reduce rank for websites which have low quality content. Note the use of the term websites as opposed to web pages. This means those of you who have largely duplicate content, lousy, spammy or utter lack of content may have been skating by in the past on a few quality pages... and that is no more. These low quality content websites will/have had their organic rank for the entire site lowered. Logically speaking, this allows websites with quality content to rise above you... Including that one great page or section you have relied on in the past.

While plenty of low quality sites remain in Google's search results, I don't at all expect that they will stop here. Google has the one thing that any company needs to continue down this road.... Closely matching feedback of low quality sites collected from their users via the new Chrome browser extension to report spam. A blessing from your users is a very compelling reason to "keep up the good work".

Avoiding the "Farmer's" Wrath

• Your content is not duplicated anywhere on the web. So those manufacturers descriptions you copied and pasted are included in "low quality".
• Enough targeted content (WORDS) on each page so that they are deemed unique from all of your other pages.
• Create "fresh" new content on a regular schedule.... FOREVER.
• Block Google and the other search engines from garbage pages like the shopping cart, login, contact form and conditions pages. (Why on earth would these be displayed in a search result?)
• Ensure that you are using a proper robots.txt and sitemap to help the search engines locate your"quality" content.
• Don't buy links, create good content that people willingly want to link to for FREE.
• Use good and clean code to present your text. Proper paragraphs, avoid listing a bunch of keywords with a separator, use proper heading tags, short and targeted page titles and last but not least keep each page's content topical for the page. Avoid site wide content expressions.
• Don't spam in your alt and title tags.
• Don't create spammy internal links to boost your own content from other pages.
• Create usable content. Content I CAN (not 20 paragraphs in one block with a 6px font size) and WANT to read.

The simple truth is, that it's way to simple and easy to do these things. Nothing pleases me more than doing things I believe to be right and correct, being rewarded by a company like Google with the same belief. That old adage goes ...

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

John Wooden

Seems very appropriate! I like it. get to work, fix these issues and start building the type of online store you can feel proud of and count on to represent and fund your business.

On Feb 12, 2011 the New York Times ran an article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search in where they detailed big box search queries such as "dresses", "bedding" and "area rugs" where although not perhaps our own first logical result... J. C. Penney was pulling top results. The New York Times, seeking a great story enlisted the help of a well know SEO company (Blue Fountain Media) to conduct a investigation of Penney's elusive top performance. What they found....

Was that J. C. Penney was using one of the oldest "Black Hat SEO" techniques around... Buying links. This campaign, of which Penney refused any knowledge of was described as "the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that he has ever seen. "  The New York Times, just like anyone else in the world can easily do... reported their findings to Google, who slapped the great J. C. Penney with an algorithmic tweak to lower and in many cases eliminate their organic rank AND some manual penalties were assessed as well.

Matt Cutts head of webspam for Google not only confirmed the tactics but went as far as to "tweet" the following.

Google's algorithms had started to work; manual action also taken.

J.C. Penney when asked to respond firmly passed the buck and blame on their SEO company SearchDex. A spokeswoman for Penney, Darcie Brossart gave the following rebuttal.

J. C. Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies,” Ms. Brossart wrote in an e-mail. She added, “We are working to have the links taken down.

J.C Penney is most certainly responsible for their own behavior and IF they genuinely didn't know about the paid links, it is still firmly their fault for not monitoring their SEO campaign. Blaming the SEO company is kind of like saying that "wow I didn't know that item was stolen goods"... Too bad, busted anyhow.

However, the public humiliation J.C. Penney suffered for their wrong doing doesn't seem to have deterred big companies from utilizing these tactics which violate Google's guidelines. Recently, Google notified Forbes.com that they have been penalized for selling links on their web site. While this is clearly the "other side" of this "black hat", it is none the less a violation and the monster Forbes has now suffered the same fate as Penney. The really unbelievable thing is that not only did the embarrassment J.C. Penny suffered not deter Forbes, but the means by which these advertising links were allowed to pass PageRank is a well known issue.... and they have been busted before.

Here is the notice from webspam as posted by denis.pinsky in Google Webmaster Central.. Have a look at all the responders taking the opportunity to report paid links they have found... Perhaps their competitors?

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.forbes.com/,
We’ve detected that some or all of your pages are using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which are available here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. For more information about our linking guidelines, visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356&hl=en.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en to submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This really winds me up. How am I supposed to convince shop owners that this is bad and can cost them dearly... when the big boys do it and don't seem to care and much more, if the big boys do it and they don't.... How are they to compete?

What you need to know as shop owners is simple....

1. It's a clear violation of Google's guidelines to buy or sell links that pass PageRank
2. It's way to easy to get reported and caught
3. Your business will suffer 10 fold compared to these big boys
4. You may not recover at all
5. ... and I told you so =P

How to Link Google Webmaster Tools to Analytics

Once logged in to Google Webmaster Tools you will select the "Manage" dropdown for one of your accounts. In the dropdown you will see "Google Analytics Profile". Select this.

On the resulting "Google Analytics" page simply check the radio button for the correct profile (watch the www and non) and save.

If you have many accounts, like we do, then this page,  with all of the accounts and a simple link next to each to connect them more quickly and easily and view a collective of their verification statuses.

While in the article Google alludes to being able to use this feature for multiple owners, it does not appear to be working just yet.

Note: If your site has multiple owners, each owner will need to link their own account to a Google Analytics profile.

This is a nice and fast way to get more data, more tools and less time needed to use them. Google seems to be very sensitive to our needs and lack of time for these matters.