iWebEarth

Does it matter to Google if the specified page is in the root folder or deeper? This question has been popping up for ages and let’s discuss all possible angles of it.

1. The page physical location hardly matters

Though it is often speculated Google likes root folders more, it is more about the "visibility" of the page and proper interlinking than its actual location. Any page linked to repeatedly and consistently throughout the site will be found, indexed and ranked just fine.

Quoting WebmasterWorld thread,

For many sites today, the url is only a dynamic and virtual representation of the site structure and there are no "real" folders – so a search engine will not find a valuable signal if it looks at things like presence or absence of directories.

A quick example indirectly proving this point is that for many years Google was recommending using numbers in the end of the file path to get accepted to Google news (which is no longer true btw). This /XXXXX/ part could possibly look like separate folder and it would be weird if Google advised to have it and used it as a dampening ranking factor in general search.

Important note: it is speculated that Google may be using "URL stripping" (i.e. dropping the file path to discover and crawl the folder), so if you are using "virtual folder" which returns no content or 404 status code when queried directly, this may result in extra crawl errors. In this case the file location relative to the root may matter to some extent.

What does matter is the URL length:

Extra folders may make your URLs look much longer and this may be not really good in some cases.

User experience:

• User browsers can handle very long URLs: Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example, has a maximum uniform resource locator (URL) length of 2,083 characters.
• Users hardly pay attention to the URL in the browser address bar but shorter URLs do occasionally enhance user experience: for example, they are easier to remember and can improve the direct type-in traffic

This is called "intuitive URIs" when you can just type /your-word after the root and end up where you need to be.

Google:

• Best SEO URL practice: it is recommended to have no more than 3-5 words in the file path (note: this is not really about the whole URL but the actual file path after the last / in the URL but should be mentioned anyway as it indirectly demonstrates Google’s overall treatment of the URL length):

  According to Google’s Matt Cutts if there are more than 5 words…

[Google] algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”

• Click-through: this research shows that short URLs within Google SERPs get clicked twice as often as long ones. Besides, longer URLs are cut off in Google SERPs – so the end user can’t see where he is going to land, this should be decreasing the click-through immensely.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

URL Structure: The Closer to the Root – the Better?

Since it changed one of its trademark policies for  AdWords, Google had earned nine lawsuits concerning patent infringement from various companies.  Now, Google is facing yet again, a new lawsuit this time from Rosetta Stone, a language-learning software firm. Rosetta Stone filed a legal complaint against Google for allegedly allowing companies to use Rosetta Stone’s patented brands when serving online ads.

The lawsuit is asking Google to stop allowing other companies to use its trademark when selling ads related to online searches. These companies, according to the lawsuit include competitors of Rosetta Stone.

Rosetta claims ownership of  these trademarks and said that the company has invested substantial money in building up its brand’s popularity, name recognition and brand loyalty. And so, it is but natural for the company to protect its interest. Rosetta Stone’s lawsuit also alleged that Google’s AdWords Program has been using keywords relating to their trademark, which when used on online ads does not include a link to Rosetta Stone but instead points to the companies’ who employed Google’s AdWords program.

This practice is misleading to users and when Google displays the ads of other companies, users led into thinking that they will be brought to Rosetta Stone’s site but instead those links point to rival sites.

Among the Rosetta trademarks which Google is allegedly using for Google AdWords serving are “Rosetta Stone,” “global traveler,” “language library,” and “dynamic immersion.”

The lawsuit has not received any reaction from  Google’s camp yet. However, some trademark law experts said that whether Google has infringed on Rosetta Stone’s intellectual property rights or not, the question that should be asked is whether users were actually misled by Google’s practice.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Gets a New Lawsuit, This Time from Rosetta Stone

One of our new services at Fuel Interactive is consulting/training. I’ve been training a guy in Austin, Texas, and he’s very observant. That means he asks me questions… and LOL I don’t know everything, but fortunately we’ve got this killer AdWords dedicated account rep team, so I ask them. Here are a couple questions that came up while we were doing some Quality-Score-oriented optimizations lately.

1. Do keywords with zero impressions lower your quality score (QS) at the account level?
2. Is 7/10 a good enough quality score?
3. Does it hurt 10/10 quality score keywords if they’re in the same ad group as 7/10 keywords? In other words, is there an Ad Group level quality score?

First, a refresher:

• Quality score is kept at the keyword level, ad level, and account level
• Quality score is largely but not entirely based on CTR
• High quality score lowers the bid required to achieve a given ad position

Do keywords with zero impressions lower your quality score at the account level?

In short, the answer is no. However, if they are zero long enough, they will become inactive for search, and inactive for search keywords do lower your account-level quality score. Here’s the exact quote from our optimization specialist:

-QS is influenced by CTR
- CTR is influenced by search volume, impressions and clicks
- Since the search volume is low, there are no impressions or clicks i.e., 0% CTR
- If the keywords continue to have zero or low search volume, they will become inactive for search and this will negatively impact your QS.
- In this particular account case, especially, the low search volume seems to have an impact on the QS in a round-about way.

Is 7/10 a good enough quality score?

I thought the goal would be to get 10/10 on every keyword, but evidently 7 is good enough. The AdWords guy says:

Any QS less than 5 can be treated as a low score and they can be either paused or deleted. If need be, you can resume or add the same keyword at a later date when the trend or traffic for these keywords improve. 7/10 is a good QS.

This is a relief, because I don’t see any rhyme or reason to why, in some cases, some keywords in the same ad group are 7 and some are 10.

Does it hurt 10/10 quality score keywords if they’re in the same ad group as 7/10 keywords? In other words, is there an Ad Group level quality score?

Nope, no ad group level quality score. The AdWords guy says:

It is true that there is account level, keyword level, and ad level QS. While there are no obvious QS at the ad group or campaign level, the QS of all the individual keywords put together seems to create a score for the ad group which is an influential factor for account level Quality Score. 7/10 is a good QS and you do not have to worry about it hurting the ones with 10/10.

It never ceases to amaze me that there are more depths of complexity to AdWords for us to plumb.  Here’s hoping these few insights help you optimize your accounts better.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Quality Score: 3 UnFrequently Asked Questions

Aside from the MyLocation feature that was added to its Maps Service, Google is also putting Google Maps somewhere else – on location-based search results. Now when you do a search for a location related searches in Google, the first search result will be a map of that location plus some nice photos of that location.

Clicking on those photos or map will bring you to their photo layers on Google Maps where you can find more information about those places, as well as its other photo layers.

While this may be a simple feature, it is however a good way for Google to promote its Google Maps service, which incidentally is getting better with the many features that Google has been introducing to this service.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Search Results for Places Now Includes Maps and Photos

Here’s a new twist on the oft repeated whine of many businesses regarding the use of brand names to trigger online ads. Cosmetics company Mary Kay filed a lawsuit against Yahoo! this week in federal court alleging trademark infringement after they discovered Yahoo was inserting links to unauthorized retailers in personal messages that its sellers send to their consumers.

Prior lawsuits dealing with this issue have mainly revolved around ads in search engines or pop-up ads served by adware companies showing up for certain trademarked keywords.  What sets this case apart is that it is the first time that a company has complained about links in personal emails.  Some lawyers now say that this distinction may help Mary Kay prove that consumers are easily confused by the ads.

Yahoo seems to have begun inserting this kind of in-email ads earlier this year.  Mary Kay became aware of the practice this past spring after some of the company’s consultants and employees tipped them off after noticing them in their emails.

In their filing, Mary Kay argues that the email recipients may “mistakenly believe that the hyperlinks and pop-ups which include ads associated with the Mary Kay marks were affirmatively included or authorized by either Mary Kay or the Independent Beauty Consultant sending the email.”

It sounds like a logical arguement, but it might not be enough.  Some point out that although Mary Kay is complaining about unauthorized resellers, people are still typically permitted to sell products without authorization as long as the products have been lawfully purchased.

It is really going to come down to how the court views this, and it will definitely be an interesting case to monitor.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Mary Kay Sues Yahoo for Trademark Infringement

GeoCities web hosting has been around since the very early days of the internet and while it’s not widely used anymore, it’s name still arouses a fond memory in the minds of early adopters.  Every once in awhile, a long-dead GeoCities site will even crop up in search results.  Yahoo, the current owner of GeoCities, has decided to finally put the sites and the entire service to rest, announcing that GeoCities will cease to function on October 26, 2009.

Launched in 1994 in the early days of the web, GeoCities offered a great place for aspiring webmasters to launch websites.  What we thought was so cool back then would hardly suffice today with the all of the modern day’s multimedia and interactive aspects of websites eating up the minuscule amounts of storage and bandwidth that GeoCities offered.  It’ll be a sad day nonetheless, as the once popular web host of our youth ceases to exist.

Yahoo purchased the business in the late 1990’s for $3.6, when scrolling HTML marquees were still considered cool (ha!). We’re pretty sure that investment did not pan out, as web designers began to create more dynamic sites and demand on resources increased.  So in a last ditch attempt to squeeze something out of GeoCities, Yahoo is now encouraging those that still use it (does anyone really use it anymore?!) to upgrade to Yahoo! Hosting.

I suppose that after October, if you want to reminisce about the good ol’ GeoCities days, you can take a trip down memory lane and visit archive.org.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo to Shut Down GeoCities This Fall

Tumblr, another one of the many free hosted blogging platforms available on the web, announced this week the addition of a fun new feature to their blogs that will certainly interest anyone running a community-driven blog.  The new feature, called “Submissions”,  will allow your readers to submit posts to the blog.

The feature can be enabled from your Tumblr blog’s “Customize” screen, and each blog owner can customize the submissions form.

With more and more sites accepting reader submitted content, the timing couldn’t have been much better. In the sea of look-a-like blog services, this is definitely a feature that stands out.  It shows that the Tumblr people are keeping an eye on new trends, as well as coming up with new innovative ideas.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Tumblr Launches “Submissions” for Community-Driven Blogs

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might not know that for the last few months we’ve been posting daily free webmaster videos on our webmaster video channel. That YouTube channel has over 100 videos on it now.

We just finished up the most recent round of videos, and now the question is whether to keep them going, or try some new way to communicate with webmasters. Tell me what you think in the poll below:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Thanks for voting! Here’s a sample webmaster video, where I discuss what effect site load times may have on your site now vs. in the future:

Added: And if you don’t like the videos, how would you want to get the information?

Posted by randfish

In the last 10 months, we’ve taken a number of dramatic steps to improve the link information available to webmasters & SEOs. Today, I’m pleased to announce even more progress in that direction, as well and cover the impressive store of data now accessible.

Sections in this post:

1. Linkscape’s Web Index Over Time
2. Upgrades to Link Data & Metrics
3. Tools to View Link Information
4. The Future of Link Data

Linkscape’s Web Index Over Time

When Linkscape first launched last October, it featured ~30 Billion URLs – impressive, but much smaller than the depth we’ve reached today. Today we’re announcing our July index update (technically launched late last week) with 48.5 Billion URLs, slightly smaller than our last index, but with a greater focus on quality and less spam/junk.

# of Links in Each Index – March-July 2009

# of Pages in Each Index - March-July 2009

# of Root & Sub Domains in Each Index - March-July 2009

Perhaps not surprisingly, though, the more we crawl, the more it becomes evident that much of the web is fairly useless to index or serve.  So while these numbers are to an extent meaningful, most of our work doesn’t change these statistics (and some of it decreases them) yet this work still should be contributing to improving the quality of our index.

July Linkscape Update: Upgrades to Link Data & Metrics</b

July’s index is the first to feature several important upgrades:

#1 – The "Via 301" Link Flag

When requesting link data for a site or page, we’ll now show you important links that are pointing to URLs that 301 redirect to that location. I still recall early feedback from Danny Sullivan, who was very upset that Linkscape didn’t show him many of what he considered the "most important links" to SearchEngineLand.com. As it turned out, a large number of those pointed to www.searchengineland.com (which does 301 redirect), hence the confusion.  For deciding 301 strategy, people sometimes run reports on a 301′ed url to see just the links through it.  This still works.  Now, in addition those links are also shown on reports for the target of the 301.

#2 – MozRank "Evaporation" through NoFollows

The mozRank algorithm now "evaporates" link juice through nofollowed links in much the same fashion that Google messaged their change to PageRank. For those wondering why the SEO world didn’t notice the nofollow change, there’s some fairly compelling information in the correlation data between mozRank & Google’s toolbar PageRank:

Note that due to mozRank’s ability to show greater data refinement (e.g. 5.57 vs. just "5"), a "perfect" correlation would average 0.25. Thus, the MAE (Mean Average Error) is still remarkably close, but clearly changing the nofollow treatment had only a very slight impact.

#3 – Canonical URL Tags Now Indexed

Although this began in our last index, it’s good to note that canonical URL tags are being picked up and indexed.  We count around 35 million of them.  But until it becomes more evident exactly how the different search engines are treating the tags we are holding off anything drastic, like always trusting the tag in our canonicalization code.  This means unless URLs are canonicalized for other reasons, we still produce separate reports for different URL.  But you may see some "canonical tag" links in a few places.

#4 – Large Sites Have More Consistent Link Data

Although we’re still a few updates away from crawling as deeply as we’d like on large sites, this latest index shows considerably more and better data about "important pages" on "important domains." Some of our users noticed that although we often had a number of pages from large sites, they were frequently not the top-level or most linked-to pages – this fix works to address that. Future indices will multiply this capacity considerably.

#5 – Blogscape’s Data Helping Linkscape Stay Fresher

One of the best features of newer Linkscape indices is their inclusion of fresher link data from the blogosphere and "fresh web" (social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, web forums and others that push data out via feeds). Linkscape is now sucking down link data from Blogscape’s fresh crawl of the web (updated from 10 million+ feeds every 3 hours) and pushing that out in index updates. Linkscape still has the delay between updates, but the link data produced is now considerably better at showing important links from the fresh web.

Tools to View Link Information

This may be a bit overwhelming, but it’s also very, very cool As you probably know, Linkscape data is infiltrating all sorts of tubes on the Internet.  Here’s a smattering:

Quirk’s SearchStatus Bar

The good folks over at Quirk.biz have baked mozRank into their SearchStatus Firefox extension:

SEOmoz’s MozBar

If you haven’t yet installed the MozBar, I highly recommend it. I’m also very, very excited for the upgrade coming out a few weeks from today. In fact, I’m so excited, I’m leaking a spliced up screenshot (because the 800 pixel wide bar won’t fit in this 600 pixel wide post):

As we noted above, knowing the number of linking root domains is critical to SEO link analysis, so we’re packing it into the new release. That "analyze page" button is going to be seriously awesome, too. Sadly, as I mentioned in my previous post about SEO operators, we’ve been asked by Google to remove PageRank from our toolbar, but there are lots of other third-party extensions that can provide it, like the above SearchStatus bar.

The Free Linkscape API

Our free API serves millions of requests every month, spreading link data far and wide. If you have an application, an internal tool, or hate manually importing data (like I do), check out the API and Nick’s post on the subject.

Top Pages on a Domain

One of my very favorite tools on the web for SEO (and Richard Baxter’s too!), Top Pages lets you enter any domain or subdomain and see the pages on it that have received the largest number of links from unique root domains. The signal to noise ratio is fantastic and it’s remarkably useful for both internal analysis (Do I have opportunities I’m not executing on? Where do I have some spare link juice? What pages might perform best for given keywords?) and competitive information (What is my competition doing that’s bringing them links?).

Smashing Magazine has done some serious Linkbait!

Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool

When you need to see anchor text distribution across thousands of links in a few seconds, there’s nothing else like the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool. Upgraded this Spring to show Linkscape data, it features sub-30-second runtimes and phenomenal comprehensiveness.

Poor Dave… His friends aren’t using good keywords to link to him. Here you go, buddy – UK SEO

If you’d like even more functionality (particularly the ability to choose a subdomain, root domain or individual URL), the labs version of this tool is also quite excellent.

Linkscape Data Visualization Tool

The most recent addition to the Labs family, Nick’s amazing visualizer tool helps show exactly where strengths and weaknesses exist by comparing many of the data points Linkscape calculates on a scale using Ben’s preliminary rank modeling:

Everybody loves a good radar chart

Basic Linkscape Reports

The classic Linkscape reports still provide a great depth of data and metrics, but you need to know where to look (we obviously have some usability work to do). The juiciest stuff is in the "data detail" tab:

Wow… Twitter gets a LOT of links

Advanced Linkscape Reports

For digging deep into the links that point to a page/site and the associated metrics, advanced reports are still the best source of access.

I’ve got more to write about Oyster.com in the near future (and not just because their namesake is delectable)

The Future of Link Data

There’s clearly been a lot of exciting progress made, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what’s possible. Marketers need data – and SEOmoz’s obligation (and mission) is to answer that call. What’s been done to date hasn’t been easy, and what lies ahead is even harder; particularly making many pieces of incredibly complex information simple and actionabel, but if we wanted easy, crawling the web and building query-independent search ranking metrics probably wasn’t the way to go

Some of the biggest things we’re thinking about for the future include:

• Crawling deeper and producing more frequent index updates
• Showing historical link information (this one is especially challenging because of index and web size fluctuations)
• Illustrating more about internal link architectures on a site and providing recommendations for improvement
• Building ranking models that predict actions that will drive up organic rankings
• Visualizing important data about links, pages, keywords and global metrics

Again, I’ll share a brief taste of what’s ahead (remember, these are just concept wireframes):

The future looks bright indeed.

As always, we rely on the feedback of our members and the SEO community to help us improve the information provided. Please leave any requests or questions in the comments or send them over to sitesupport@seomoz.org.

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Posted by Lucy Langdon

When I talk about ‘niche blogs’, I mean blogs that are regularly updated and focus mainly, but not exclusively, on a certain subject area like, for example, crocheting or tea. More often than not, a blog with a specialty will be of a much higher quality than your average ‘rambling and musings of x’ site. However, with a zillion new blogs published per hour, it’s getting increasingly difficult to ferret these quality blogs out, particularly if they’re not in the business of being found. That makes it sound like I’m talking about underground crochet blogs. I’m not. I just mean blogs that aren’t particularly well optimised for the search engines and don’t know an awful lot about things like title tags or keyphrases.

Why do you want to find niche blogs?

There are a few good reasons but the main one is links.

There is almost certainly a blogging community around something that your site offers (granted, you might have to get a bit creative here). Building a relationship with other websites that cover the same topic is a great way to get genuine quality links from a diverse range of domains- all good things in the search engines’ eyes.

A second reason is plain old simple traffic. A good niche blogger will have a dedicated following and will probably be linked up with several other niche bloggers, each with their own respectable readership. Getting an editorial link from this kind of blog should drive well-converting visitors to your site.

Lastly, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that this niche blogger knows more about their subject area than you do. If you build up a proper relationship, you could gain more than links and traffic, you could also benefit from their expertise.

Why it’s difficult to find them

They’re niche, so while they may be top of their game, they’re not necessarily going to make it any ‘top x’ lists. As mentioned above, there are also a lot of blogs and although the best will usually make themselves known in one way or another, finding and assessing their value to you can still be a frustrating and time-consuming business.

How to find them

Before you even start looking, have a creative think about which ‘niches’ your site fits into. A spot of brainstorming and keyphrase research can help with this. For example, if you have a craft site, don’t just start by looking for ‘craft blogs’- think about going both broader and more specific: sites that talk about design, creativity or children’s/kids’ activities might have a regular spot for craft; focus in on knitting, crocheting, sewing, embroidery, lace, patchwork, applique, quilting…. the list goes on.

Here are a few things you can do once you’ve got this long list of subject areas:

• swing by a few blog directories. Technorati’s a good place to start, but check out this post for a fuller list of directories. Where it all gets a bit rabbit hole-esque is when you get to the niche blog directories. When you’re searching through any of these directories, be aware that they won’t necessarily categorize everything in the same way. All those blogs you found under ‘crafts’ in one directory might be in the ‘arts’ category in another. This is where that list of keyphrases comes in useful.
• it’s also worth sticking those keyphrases into Wordpress tag search. I’m not really sure what ‘most relevant’ means here, but it seems like a sensible enough list!
• once you’ve found a few decent looking niche blogs, take a good look at their blogrolls. If the list isn’t too long, have a hunt through and pull out any decent looking sites. If the list is too long, pull out all the blogrolls, stick them in a spreadsheet and highlight any duplicates.
• Google’s Blog search is pretty good- particularly the ‘Related Blogs’ bit
• do a few creative searches in Google. If you’re after links, try something like "intitle:<subject> guest post". A blog that’s been open to guest posts in the past, is much more likely to be willing to engage again.

I’ve run through each of these tips with my craft example:

• blog directories: you’ll have to change the setting slightly in Technorati, but check out this page for some useful information. There’s a list of really high (Technorati) authority blogs, each closely related to my search term. The related tags box on the right is also useful for expanding that keyphrase list. I also looked through the blogs on BOTW, which has a craft category and a dedicated knitting and crocheting subcategory. It’s not easy to get listed in this particular directory so I’m confident that this list would be worth spending time exploring.
• the Wordpress tag search brings up a long list of knitting blogs. The list is date-ordered and there aren’t any options to change this, so I would advise the strength of this list would be to strike while the iron is hot and contact bloggers while the post they’ve written is still at the forefront of their mind.
• blogrolls: this knitting site (listed in the top ten of the knitting blogs in Technorait) has this useful ‘Blogs I read‘ page, as does this blog, this blog and this blog. You helpful knitters you!
• Google Blog Search results. Have a look at those Related Blogs- a couple aren’t really relevant, but this knitting parlour blog looks pretty engaging.
• Creative search in Google- some great results!

How to chose your target niche blogs

There are lots of ways you could order this list of blogs, but a lot of the choosing just comes through common sense. For example, there’s no point putting a blog with three posts into the list in the first place, or one that hasn’t been updated in 6 months. If you’ve got the mozBar, it’s easy enough to rule out any blogs with no DmR (or, if they’re on a platform, no mR on any pages).

Once you’ve narrowed down your list, you need to find contact details. If this proves difficult, the bloggers probably aren’t down with being contacted like this so it might be best to take them off the list at this point.

What next?

Don’t spam them! These are quality blogs that value the area you work in- caution and respect are wise bedfellows. Here are a few ideas:

• We’ve had great successes asking for reviews of products as long as we lay our cards on the table from email numero uno. If your site sells something inexpensive and reviewable then this might be the route for you.
• Sending some linkbait round a few of your favourite niche blogs is a great way to get that first wave of interest. You can incentivise this by giving one or two blogs a headstart and letting them know about your latest linkbait a little before everyone else.
• As I mentioned briefly above, guest posting is a really good way to get featured on a niche blog, particularly if you have some clout in your industry. Again, offer something that makes the blogger feel valued- an exclusive interview with the CEO of your company or some stats from your analytics.

This post has some great advice for contacting blogs. It’s meant for artists trying to showcase work, but it’s applicable to this endeavour too.

Any other ideas about how to find, evaluate and otherwise make the most of niche blogs would be much appreciated in the comments. Thank you.

(Thanks to Chiszeo for the cute image)

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