Chapter 23

Ten-Plus Ways to Stay Updated

In This Chapter

Staying updated with search engine technology

Finding detailed information for particular projects

Getting information directly from search engines

Discovering what people are searching for

Finding people to help you

The naysayers said it couldn’t be done, that a book about search engine optimization couldn’t be written because the technology is changing so quickly. That’s not entirely true — I wrote the first edition of this book eight years ago, and the basics are still the same: creating pages that search engines can read, picking good keywords, getting lots of links into your site, and so on.

But some details do change. Where are people searching these days? What tricks are search engines really clamping down on? Why did your site suddenly drop out of Google (as many thousands do now and then; see Chapter 20)?

You may also need more detailed information than I can provide in this book. Perhaps you have a problem with dynamic pages and you need to know the details of URL rewriting for a particular Web server, for instance. You need to know where to go to find more information. In this chapter, I provide you with resources that you can use to keep up-to-date and track down the details.

Let Me Help Some More

Visit my Web site at www.SearchEngineBulletin.com. I point you to important resources, provide links to all the Web pages listed in this book (so that you can just click instead of typing them), and provide important updates. I also have bonus chapters on pay per click, copyright law, and Google search techniques.

I also provide consulting services, including phone consultations. I can examine a company’s online strategy from not just the perspective of search engines but also a wider view; I’ve been working online for 28 years now and have experience in Web design, e-commerce and online transactions, traffic conversion, non–search engine traffic generation, and so on. An hour or two of advice can often save a company from the huge expense of going down the wrong path!

The Search Engines Themselves

One of the best ways to find information about search engines is by using carefully crafted search terms at the search engines themselves. Say you want to find detailed information about dealing with session IDs (see Chapter 8). You can go to Google and search for search engine session id. Or perhaps you have a problem with dynamic URLs and know that you need to use something called mod_rewrite. Go to a search engine and search for mod_rewrite or mod rewrite. (The former is the correct term, although many people talk of mod rewrite in the vernacular.)

It’s amazing what you can find if you dig around for a little while. A few minutes’ research through the search engines can save you many hours of time wasted through inefficient or ineffective SEO techniques. I suggest you read the bonus chapter, from an earlier edition of this book, posted at www.searchenginebulletin.com and www.dummies.com/go/search engineoptimizationfd, which explains various techniques for searching at Google. A good understanding of how to use search engines will pay dividends.

Google’s Webmaster Pages

Google is happy to tell you what it wants from you and what it doesn’t like. No, it won’t tell you exactly how it figures out search result rankings, but good information is there nonetheless. It’s a good idea to review the advice pages Google provides for Webmasters. You can find them at the following URLs:

Google Webmaster Guidelines: www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Google Webmaster Help Center: www.google.com/support/ webmasters

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Late in 2008, Google finally decided, “If we can’t beat them, join them,” and published its own SEO guide.

It’s basic but useful stuff, and I find it particularly handy when I’m arguing with Web developers. For instance, when a Web developer says, voice dripping with skepticism, “Why should we bother using H1 tags; nobody does anymore,” I can say quite simply, “Because Google says so,” and end the conversation right there.

You can find the guide here:

www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Bing SEO Tips

You can find information about optimizing pages for submission to Bing (and, through its partnership, inclusion in the Yahoo! search results) at http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/gg132923.aspx. You’ll find a wide range of information, from how the MSNbot works to how to handle a site move.

Search Engine Watch

The Search Engine Watch site gives you a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the search engine world. This site provides a ton of information about a very wide range of subjects related to not only search engine optimization but also the flip side of the coin — subjects related to searching online. In fact, perhaps this site’s greatest weakness is that it provides so much information; it’s really intended for search engine optimization experts rather than the average Webmaster or site manager. The site is divided into a free area and a paid-subscription area.

Visit the site at www.searchenginewatch.com.

The Official Google Webmaster Help Group

Google Groups hosts a very useful resource, the Official Google Webmaster Help Group, which has tens of thousands of members and hundreds of thousands of archived messages. It’s a great way to find out what people in the business are saying about, well, just about anything. Find it at www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters.

Here are a few more great ways to peep into the mind of Google:

Google Webmaster Central Blog: A very useful site, with information from actual employees of Google providing the Google view of search engine optimization. Visit http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.

Google’s Inside Search: This is really a promotional site targeting Google users rather than the SEO community, but it’s a great way to keep up-to-date with new search features as Google introduces them.

MattCutts.com: Matt Cutts is a well-known employee of Google (well known in SEO circles, that is) who works for the Search Quality team. He maintains a blog about a wide range of issues, including many related to SEO issues. I like to use Matt’s blog to find out the real answers; when I hear an SEO tip that I think is perhaps unlikely to be true, yet oft quoted, I sometimes think, “Let’s see what Matt has to say on the subject.” It’s also a great way to deal with uncooperative Web developers. For instance, when someone says, “Why use hyphens in URLs rather than underscores?” I can shut him or her up with a quick “Because Matt Cutts says so!”

Go to www.mattcutts.com/blog to see what he has to say.

WebMaster World

WebMaster World (www.webmasterworld.com) is a very good discussion group, with many knowledgeable people. It’ll cost ya, though: $89 for six months, or $149 for a year.

HighRankings.com

Hosted by a search engine optimization consultant, HighRankings.com is a pretty busy forum (free at this time) with discussions covering a wide range of subjects. Check it out at www.highrankings.com/forum.

Get the Search Engine Buzz

If you want to find out what people are doing with search engines — popular searches, for instance — check out some of the services in this section.

Google Zeitgeist is an analysis of what people are searching for, when, and where. You can find the most popular brand-name searches, charts showing how searches peak for particular keywords during news events or in response to TV shows, the most popular searches for particular men, women, and fictional characters, the most popular movie searches in Australia, the most popular brands in Italy, and so on. Google provides weekly, monthly, and annual reports. Check it out at www.google.com/zeitgeist.

Here are some other tools that provide information about how people are searching:

Google Trends: This is a very cool tool; enter a list of search terms, separated by commas, and Google displays a chart showing how often the terms have been searched over a particular time range, along with news stories correlated with particular peaks. You can even select a particular country (www.google.com/trends).

Google Insight: Google describes this as a tool to “Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties” (www.google.com/insights/search).

Wordtracker: Wordtracker provides free reports of the top 500 searches — with or without sexually explicit terms, both long-term (a year) and short term (48 hours; see http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/top-keywords).

What I find depressing about popular keyword lists is just how obsessed people are with sports and celebrities!