SearchInfluence

Search engines are designed to do one thing — make sense of the various documents found on the Web. Originally using just on-page factors like content and meta information contained in specialized tags, search engines moved to analysis of links in the late 90′s with the advent of the PageRank algorithm. This new method treated links as “votes” for websites, using anchor text and website clout to determine what is relevant to a search query. Recently, though still relying on links as the main source for determining a page’s worth, search engines and other Internet spiders are returning to on-page factors to find information that’s meaningful to users.

“New” On-Page Meta

These “new” on-page factors are the culmination of work dating back to the beginning of the modern Internet. The original diagram showing the basics of how the Web would work devotes much of its space to showing the connections between pages, but one corner lays the foundation for what is now known as the semantic web. This image shows a few of the basic properties in the semantic web: rel=author and other relationship markups, Schema’s breadcrumbs and on-page descriptions, and the hCard microformat.

Much like our weekly 5 For Friday series, Read This! is a monthly feature on our blog that collects all the practical guides and how-to’s you could ever want to help your business compete online. What’s on the roster for this month? Check it out:
 

StumbleUpon: A Forgotten Social Media Goldmine — Nifty Marketing

With the proliferation of people tumbl’ng, digging, tweeting and sharing, it’s easy to forget about one of the classics of link sharing: StumbleUpon. This powerful little tool has been around for years, and it may be time for you to think about utilizing it for your business.

One of the main purposes of our weekly 5 For Friday posts is to highlight weekly news stories that are funny, idea-provoking or just plain interesting. In this feature, we examine pieces that are useful, actionable and directly pertinent to you and your business. Check out these informative articles and get on the road to a bigger and better online presence:

How to Use YouTube to Build Explosive Product Buzz
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so on that note a video can be even more effective. This comprehensive guide gives you the basics of creating, optimizing and publishing a Youtube sensation that can grow your brand and attract even more eyeballs than static images or sales copy!

If you’re anything like me, when you visit a website that’s overloaded with Flash, an abundance of images, excessive menus, and just a general maze of content, your brain shrivels up to the size of a raisin and your eyes glaze over with no focus of what to look at or where to find it. (As far as I’m concerned, the same problem exists for social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Creating endless posts and tweets just for the sake of having more content and saying whatever pops into your fingers is the quickest way to get me to block or un-follow your posts. Then I’ll never hear anything you have to say!) The idea that the more there is to look at, the more visitors, friends, likes, and followers you’ll get is simply untrue in many cases.  You can still catch plenty of flies with sweet, sweet simplicity.