An SEO conference is usually a good place for learning new SEO techniques and strategies and about the industry in general. Some people contend; however, that these very same techniques, strategies and general information can easily be found in several good SEO books, blogs, eBooks and magazines on the topic. Almost all industries have their own conferences and they are usually a great source of information and motivation that you just can’t find on SEO blogs, books or eBooks and the people in that industry completely look forward to them year after year.

One reason that people don’t enjoy SEO conferences as much other types of conferences is that the format is not usually discussion friendly. When dealing with an information-heavy topic such as SEO, it is easy to talk over people’s heads and when given certain time constraints it can be difficult to discuss complex topics in the way that they deserve to be dealt with what you get. There is a lot to learn and most SEO conferences just aren’t designed as they should be, to house a large number of people and to relate a lot of technical information in the time allotted.

Another reason and perhaps the biggest reason of all that SEO conferences are not always as great as they could be is that these people don’t want to give away all of the secrets they use to get top search engine rankings because that would automatically create more competition for them. They may give you an outline to “see the big picture and that is about all. Naturally, people are curious and want to know more so it is easy for the so-called gurus to sell you their latest eBook telling all about how to get incredible SEO results for yourself or your clients.

One way to assure yourself that you won’t be disappointed is to lower your expectations. You might try some gratitude and be thankful that you have the opportunity to mix and mingle with people in your line of work. This alone may be worth the conference fee you paid and you may find more insight into SEO by talking with the experts in the crowd than by listening to some on the stage. Spending time with other professionals with a shared interest has many benefits such as learning new techniques and making connections in the business world that just might pay off later.

Can your website be viewed by people in China? That is the question of SEO accessibility in China. There is no problem in a web page being translated into another language, but what other obstacles might exist that would prevent a viewer in another country, such as China, from viewing your website? You might think, initially, that this point is entirely irrelevant to you since you have created your website in English and believe that your target market is Americans, but this could very well be the costliest mistake you could ever make when it comes to SEO or search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of getting a high search engine ranking for your website in order to attract more viewers and potential customers. Why would you want to make sure that your website has SEO accessibility in China? How about the fact that there are currently more people online in China than in the United States? If that doesn’t mean anything to you consider the fact that although there are more people online in China than in the US, the number of people online in China represents a small percentage of the overall population in China. So to say that it is a virtually untapped market is a bit of an understatement.

Getting a good SEO ranking in China is going to first depend on your site even being allowed into China because of the advanced firewall system used there. This system is in place to prevent content that is unacceptable to the Chinese government from reaching the eyes of the general population in China. Knowledge is power and the government doesn’t want the people gaining any power because that could lead to a breakdown of power which is certainly something they would like to avoid.

In order to get and maintain good SEO in China you will have to be sensitive to not using keywords that might be suspect to the government or make any government official embarrassed at any time. Search engine optimization is vital to the success of your website and making sure you have SEO accessibility in China more than doubles the number of potential viewers and customers you will have the chance to impress and hopefully make a sale to. China may be on the other side of the world, but the internet brings everyone closer together than ever.

Googlebot is now able to construct much of the page and can access the onClick event contained in most tags. For now, if the onClick event calls a function that then constructs the URL, Googlebot can only interpret it if the function is part of the page (rather than in an external script).

Some examples of code that Googlebot can now execute include:

• <code><div onclick=”document.location.href=’http://foo.com/‘”></code>
• <code><tr onclick=”myfunction(’index.html’)”><a href=”#” onclick=”myfunction()”>new page</a></code>
• <code><a href=”javascript:void(0)” onclick=”window.open (’welcome.html’)”>open new window</a></code>

Here are some more links to discussion about Googlebot, AJAX, and Javascript Onclick:

• http://searchengineland.com/google-io-new-advances-in-the-searchability-of-javascript-and-flash-but-is-it-enough-19881
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-crawling-javascript-links-with-clean-urls/3352/
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20.html

Search engine conferences are a great place for learning and getting new SEO techniques and the 2009 SMX Advanced is not disappointing.

The highlight of the conference appears to be Matt Cutt’s discussion of the Nofollow tag and how Google interprets the use of Nofollow in relation to an Advanced SEO tactic often refered to as Page Rank Sculpting.  Here are some of the top blog posts discussing SMX Advanced 2009:

• Nofollow Makes News at SMX Advanced, BruceClay.com
• You&A With Matt Cutts, outspokenmedia.com
• Danny Sullivan Comments on NoFollow SearchEngineLand.com
• Duplicate Content Solutions & The Canonical Tag – SMX Advanced Coverage 2009, SEO Gadget
• Duplicate Content Solutions & The Canonical Tag, outspokenmedia.com
• Beyond the Usual Link Building, outspokenmedia.com
• Beyond the usual linkbuilding – SMX Advanced 2009, SEO Gadget
• Live from SMX Advanced: Beyond the Usual Link Building, Search Marketing Sage

Although public relations and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are often viewed as completely unrelated fields, they are actually quite closely linked. Read on to learn why SEO and PR should go hand in hand.

When people want to learn more about an organization or business, they often use a search engine. Companies can use SEO to help ensure that their web sites appear first, along with other sites that recommend them or refer to them favorably. Any major company is bound to incur an occasional negative review or criticism; it can be harmful to public relations if such information appears on the first page of results every time someone searches for it. Using SEO to optimize its web site and increase links to friendly sites can limit the impact of negative material which doesn’t accurately represent the company’s normal practices. It is also important to avoid unethical SEO techniques which can harm a company’s image.

Good public relations (in general) can also benefit SEO. An important component of Search Engine Optimization is to gain inbound links from quality, relevant web sites. When a business or other institution has positive relations with the public, people are more likely to voluntarily post links to it on their web sites and blogs. Non-profit organizations and government agencies are also affected by PR, and are more apt to place valuable links to another entity on their web sites if it has a good reputation. Sites with many links to them usually appear close to the top of search results for relevant keywords and phrases.

In summary, successful PR and SEO campaigns both improve the public’s perception of a company and increase its search engine generated traffic. Companies should use an integrated approach, rather than treating SEO and PR as entirely separate efforts.

Often times we are asked by clients can search engines spider forms or access the information behind forms. The answer is “yes” it can, but you need to make sure you are using the correct “method”. Forms usually use 2 types of methods – the way by which the information on the page is submitted to the server and deliver results back to the web users. These two methods are “get” and “post”. The “get” sends the data as part of the URL. When the form data (or “query data”) is added to the end of the URL it is “URL encoded” so that the data can be used in a standard URL. The post method is the preferred method for sending lengthy form data. When a form is submitted POST the user does not see the form data that was sent.

Now in regards to which has the ability to spider the information behind the form, as explained below by Wikipedia, the “get” method has this ability to get spidered by search engines:

Get vs. Post Method

Get
Requests a representation of the specified resource. Note: GET should not be used for operations that cause side-effects, such as using it for taking actions in web applications. One reason for this is that GET may be used arbitrarily by robots or crawlers, which should not need to consider the side effects that a request should cause. See safe methods below.

Post
Submits data to be processed (e.g., from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request. This may result in the creation of a new resource or the updates of existing resources or both.

Safe Methods
Some methods (for example, HEAD, GET, OPTIONS and TRACE) are defined as safe, which means they are intended only for information retrieval and should not change the state of the server. In other words, they should not have side effects, beyond relatively harmless effects such as logging, caching, the serving of banner advertisements or incrementing a web counter. Making arbitrary GET requests without regard to the context of the application’s state should therefore be considered safe.

By contrast, methods such as POST, PUT and DELETE are intended for actions which may cause side effects either on the server, or external side effects such as financial transactions or transmission of email. Such methods are therefore not usually used by conforming web robots or web crawlers, which tend to make requests without regard to context or consequences.

Despite the prescribed safety of GET requests, in practice their handling by the server is not technically limited in any way, and careless or deliberate programming can just as easily (or more easily, due to lack of user agent precautions) cause non-trivial changes on the server. This is discouraged, because it can cause problems for Web caching, search engines and other automated agents, which can make unintended changes on the server.

Many different factors influence your web site’s ranking among Google search results. Here are some of the top factors you should take into consideration, in no particular order:

- Inbound Links: Google is more likely to give your site a top ranking if other relevant web sites link to it, especially if they are well-known sites.

- META Tags: Description and title tags are also among the top factors to consider; they ought to be optimized with search keywords and appropriate text lengths. Be sure not to use the same tags on different pages.

- Spider Accessibility: Your site’s pages must be accessible to Google’s automated “spider” (or “robot”) system so that it can index them. Adding a “Site Map” will help make this possible.

- Creation Date: New sites generally receive low ranking levels in Google results for several months, while they are in the “Supplemental Index”. New pages are also at a disadvantage.

- Keywords: Web pages rank better when the search keywords being targeted are used repeatedly (but not too much) in the text, esp. if they coincide with the title and file name.

- Outbound Links: Linking to the wrong kinds of web sites (like bad neighborhoods) or exchanging links with unrelated web sites may harm your Google search ranking, especially if you do this more than once.

- File/Domain Names: Google also factors in the relevance of words within your web site’s URL, which includes its file, top level domain, subdirectory, and subdomain names.

- Outdated Links: It is best to avoid leaving links on your site that lead to URLs which no longer exist (this occurs when the linked pages have disappeared or changed their URLs).

These are some of the top factors which affect your site’s ranking on Google. Others also play a role, like image ALT text, time between updates, and the wording of inbound links.

The holiday season is over and all of us will spent hours with our favorite countdowns of the year. The search industry gets especially excited when top search term charts come out. After taking time to browse the top searches of 2008 on Ask and Yahoo!, then browsing this year’s edition of the Google Zeitgeist, I have to wonder: why do so many people search for branded websites in search engines?

According to Google, “facebook” (broad matched, of course) is the no. 2 searched term in 2008 behind “obama.” Ask’s rankings have the social network as the no. 5 most searched for term.

I totally understand that people searching online have a wide variety of education and comfort levels with the internet. Fine. That said, why on earth do people need to search “facebook” in Google or Ask to, presumably, find Facebook.com? Everyone says they left a comment on their friend’s  Facebook wall because, well, they left it on Facebook! Try using a direct web address every once and a while.

The tendency to search for web domain names is especially prevalent in Ask, where five branded wLebsites rank in their top 10 searches. I find it really funny that “Google” is the no. 3 top search term in Ask – anyone else? Ask is most likely being used by people who have a lower experience and comfort level with the internet. While I find this information interesting and useful for those who manage PPC accounts, is information like this useful at all to SEOs?

Other things I learned from the top search rankings for Yahoo!, Ask, and the Zeitgeist:

• Fans of professional wrestling own computers and can read (presumably) – WWE no. 2 top search in Yahoo!
• What RuneScape (a World Of Warcraft-style RPG) is – no. 5 search in Yahoo!
• surfthechannel is going to be a large player in 2009 for internet TV – no. 10 in Zeitgeist.
• People use Ask to gather information – Dictionary, Cars, Online degrees, and Credit score were some of the top searches.

Search on Yahoo! is still strongly driven by the entertainment industry, with the only non-entertainment related top 10 term being “Barack Obama.” Although, if you believe the ads from the McCain campaign, Obama is the world’s biggest celebrity. Whatever.

Anyway, in addition to Yahoo’s swing towards entertainment, I believe the news Yahoo! leads with in their  featured box directly drives how people search on their site. Argue amongst yourselves about whether or not she was a “search-worthy” celebrity this year, but did Yahoo! feature every Britney Spears headline – minor or major – she made in 2008? Yep. Thus the search volume.

Any other observations you made after checking out this year’s top searches? I’d love to hear ‘em. Thanks for hearing mine.

The recently released Google’s guide to SEO provides some highlights to what Google views as important:

1. Always focus on User Experience with the current SEO focus being on reducing bounce rate.
2. Always have unique page titles and Meta descriptions, this is easy to track with Google Webmaster tools.  Also, avoid using generic page names like page1.html.
3. Use short concise URL strings, preferably with descriptive words.  We recommend dashes, not underscores.
4. Make your site navigation as flat as possible.  Both in number of directories and clicks from home page.
5. Be consistent in your internal linking (caps versus no caps, www versus no www).
6. One URL to each document, avoid duplicate URL paths to the same content.
7. Have an xml and html sitemap with no errors.
8. Make sure the link text of all internal links is keyword focused.
9. Create content silos using breadcrumb navigational structure properly.

Facebook Connect Making Blog Comments More Authentic – The presence of trusted Facebook identity is creating a context for more meaningful conversation on the web.

One of the things that a lot of people don’t get about the new Google is the over-reliance on trust in the algorithm.  Here is a post by Michael Gray showing how Google’s trust resulted in Duplicate Content in the SERPS.

Great article by Aaron Wall on what EBay could have been doing in the last 10 years to be more competitive.

SEOMoz explains why Companies Are Investing in SEO more than ever during the recent economic downturn.

Vanessa Fox writes about how to Make Content Findable for Geotargeted Searches in both specific countries and for local search.

Is Social Media the Next In-Box?

This PPC Flowchart offers tips on how to set up a pay per click search engine marketing campaign.

How to Use A Proxy IP in Firefox- Once you get the basics down, be sure to download the FoxyProxy plugin for Firefox

There may be instances when you want to track the source of a request.  Jane and Robot! shows a common way of doing this is by using Referral Tracking Parameters in URLs.

Andrew Goodman offers a free 40 page guide to Google AdWords.