I stumbled upon a short but really important post by Steve Rubel in which he gives us an insightful graphic:
He names 2 learnings out of this graphic which I think we all should remind ourselves frequently:
At first sight this has nothing to do with Search, but understanding this shift in media definitely helps understanding the development and future of Search.
Sometimes a simple piece of information is more valuable than a long and decent article, especially in a time where attention span is decreasing due to services like Twitter.
From this article I found a simple but valuable table outlining what a landing page should contain for SEO, SEA (PPC) or both, regarding informational, transactional or navigational searcher intent:
As you might know from my tweets I attended SMX London this week.
I really enjoyed the conference which had some good sessions and speakers. The London SEO networking event with all the local SEO’s was great fun as well.
I wrote down my top 20 SEO quotes and take-aways from SMX London, which I posted at SearchCowboys:
“Top 20 SEO quotes from SMX London” – SearchCowboys.com
And if you like that post, please vote for it at Sphinn! 
“Top 20 SEO quotes from SMX London” – Sphinn
Ps. I also attended the previous SMX London last November. My write-ups can be found here:
- How to do International SEO?
- The Global Search Universe
Link building is a vital part of SEO ever since search engines started using the link structure of the web to capture the relative importance of web pages.
The link building economy especially took off since Google introduced PageRank, their algorithm for prioritizing the results of web keyword searches based on analyzing the citation (link) graph of the web.
But is relying on PageRank still the way to go with link building in 2009, 10 years after Google introduced it? I don’t think so.
And what about these link building tips from 2002 for requesting a link (see the “131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies” article, which is worth a read anyway)?
Last december the people of FaberNovel created an excellent presentation about Google, titled “Everything you always wanted to know about Google…But were afraid to ask“.
Last month they created another fabulous presentation with a more serious title this time: “Why could Google die . . . maybe not now, but tomorrow”.
French consulting company FaberNovel again succeeded in creating a very comprehensive and easy to read presentation, defining 12 of Google’s weaknesses.
Go read the SlideShare presentation below:
Last week I stumbled upon a recent Hitwise video seminar of their extensive UK Search engine market research.
Hitwise analyzed the top 1,500 terms searched for in the 12 weeks ending 3rd January 2009 (the last quarter of 2008) across the top 5 UK search engines, being Google.co.uk, Google.com, Yahoo, Live Search ans Ask.
Hitwise pulled out all the non-branded terms and attached a subject area to them. For example, ‘football’ was labelled as sport, ‘tv guide’ as TV, ‘oasis’ as music and so on.
The video seminar, presented by Richard Seymour, started with some facts & figures of the UK search engine market, some key facts:
Read the rest of "UK Search engine market research in depth (graphs)"
First of all I want to apologize for not writing here since a last month. I’ve just been incredibly busy and didn’t find a lot of time to blog (besides some Dutch writings).
I kept up with the Search news though and thought I’d share some highlights here. At least that makes me feel a little less bad about not writing here that long 
So here we go:
The big news in SEO-land of course was the announcement of the canonical tag support by the 3 major search engines.
This tag lets you point out on a page level which URL is the ‘canonical’ or original version, when there are more identical or duplicate URL’s.
My advice
Please note that this doesn’t just solve the duplicate content issue! Before using the canonical tag, please first check if you can resolve a duplicate content issue with:
Read the rest of "Some Search-food for thought"
My article “Measuring SEO: why rankings are worthless“, which I wrote for Joost de Valk’s blog, is nominated for a SEMMY in the SEO category!
What are The SEMMYS? From the site:
The SEMMYS are an annual awards event honoring the great content produced across the search and online marketing industry, initiated by Matt McGee.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has grown to include a variety of disciplines, including blogging, social media, reputation management, and much more. The SEMMYS attempt to include all these elements into one awards event.
I am definitely honoured that my article is one of the 44 nominees in the SEO category, which include articles from people like Aaron Wall (SEO Book), Vanessa Fox (ex-Google), Lee Odden (TopRank) and Joost de Valk himself.
I could write my own opinion on how Microsoft could be succesful in Search, but I definitely can’t beat Danny Sullivan at this.
Last week he wrote a very good article about it and names a couple of interesting points and suggestions. I highly recommend reading it: “Tough Love For Microsoft Search“.
Some quotes from the article as a summary:
Just a short post to wish you all a “Search-a-licious” 2009! Above all I wish you a year with health, luck and fun!
Thanks for finding your way to my blog in the last couple of months of its existence! I appreciate every visitor, comment and email very much!
Thanks again from within my new Amsterdam based appartement!
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