Google

A lesson in Canonical URLs & Trailing Slashes

Published: July 20th, 2010

Most websites will use the http://www.website.com structure as their main website URL and this will be the address used in link building campaigns. However in some circumstances, you may find that Google has indexed two versions of your homepage. E.g.

  • http://www.website.com
  • http://www.website.com/
  • http://website.com
  • http://website.com/
  • http://www.website.com/index.html
  • http://www.website.com/index.html/

These are called “canonical” URLs and for the best search engine results, you should get rid of all but one, and stick to it!

Use the Google site command to see if there are any extraneous URLs. Type in site:www.website.com to see what pages are indexed. If you have a large site, also try site:www.website.com/index.html or whatever your “index” page is. If both exist, you should go through your website links and point all your “home” links to just one of them. Also consider putting a 301 redirect on extra pages to

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Blueclaw achieves new Google AdWords Certified Partner Status

Published: July 6th, 2010

Google recently announced that it is retiring the Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) program, originally launched in November 2004, and replacing it with the new Google AdWords Certification Program for agencies managing AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers. We had previously attained the Google AdWords qualified company status in this program.

We are pleased to announce today that we have attained Google AdWords Certified Partner Status in the newly launched Google AdWords Certification program.

The new company qualification involves more rigorous certification exams to test Google AdWords optimization ability, practical application of knowledge and best practices with both fundamental and  advanced-level exams to “highlight competency in search, display, reporting and analysis”.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss your Google AdWords campaign.

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Ranking Well in Google Product Search

Published: June 24th, 2010

 

An updated set of tips is now available here

 

Google shopping is the feature with a thousand names. Or maybe just three. Google shopping/Google base/Google product search offers those with an ecommerce website an opportunity to appear within the organic search results under high search volume terms. I have used the electrical industry (probably not the best example due to the competitive nature) as a focal point of my post. Dependant on the competition, the niche category of your products and the amount of products you stock it is possible to increase visibility to your product catalogue through Google product search.

Side note: You can sign up to Google product through the following url:

http://www.google.com/merchants/

Ranking Factors for Google Products
The ranking factors listed are probably the most clear and noticeable ranking factors available. You may want to test alternative factors (extra data fields) however getting the basics right will help rank quickly and effectively.

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The future of search?

Published: June 9th, 2010

Something interesting was reported in Hitwise’s report for UK web traffic for May 2010- traffic to social networking sites was higher than that to search engines. Does this spell the beginning of the end for the search engines? Highly unlikely but what it does show is that when (and if) websites such as Facebook are able to tie customer intent (“I want information about this”) with advertisements as effectively as Google, then the search landscape will change dramatically.

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A Guide to Getting into Google News : SMX Advanced London – Live Blog

Published: May 17th, 2010

A good guide to getting your content on Google News by Rob Kerry (@robkerry). It’s a great way to make the first page of Google for a very competitive keyword,  even if it is only in the short term.  In the long term, you benefit from indexed content and hopefully ranking for long tail keywords. Rob also suggests that instead of panicking about Personalised Search and how that is going to affect SEO, think instead that if you get a high CTR from your Google News item that your webpage will be counted favourably towards each visitor’s “personalised” search result. Also try to take advantage of your visitors through strong Conversion Optimisation.

1 – You need a unique URL. WordPress is recommended as it takes all the legwork out of making sure each and every URL is unique.

2 – There has to be at least 3 numbers in your unique URL. These can no way resemble a date.

3 – Suggested permalink structure: /%postname%-001%post_id%.html

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