Now, it’s my job to help you understand this patent so here I will do my absolute best to de-construct this new patent and help you understand it in plain English.

In a nutshell, this new patent allows Google to take multiple query paths and associate them so that one URL wins out above the others when it’s related to that same kind of query path.

Here’s what I mean.

And for the record, whenever Google refers to “content items” in their patent, or when I refer to them in this blog post, they (and I) are referring to URLs; whether that URL be a “video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc.”

I’ll use an example that Google used in their patent.

When someone visits Google and does a search, during that search session they’ll revise their queries if they aren’t getting the kinds of results that they want, eventually clicking on a URL after they’re done revising their search.

If a “statistically significant number of users” submit that same set of queries and then end up clicking on the same URL this URL will be considered more relevant and that URL will then get a ranking increase.

In another example, if 55% of searchers using a query path such as apples/bananas/strawberries click on FruitURL1 and 35% of searchers using this same path click on FruitURL2, the search engine can rank FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.  These can also be ranked as #1 and #2 whenever someone searches on apples/bananas or even apples, bananas, or strawberries as long as that path is identified as being related to the original query path that ranked FruitURL1 first and FruitURL2 second.

In other words, if more people click on FruitURL1 whenever they do a similar query that is identified as part of a query path apples -> bananas -> strawberries, then that URL will get a better ranking in the organic search results.

There’s many more examples provided in the patent itself but suffice it to say, that this is quite honestly, a popularity contest.  The more people click through to your website within the organic search results, the more likely you are to have a better ranking.

Think if it like a CTR (click-through-rate) of your website in the natural search results.  Much like your positioning in the Google AdWords program is determined by how well your ad performs, such is the case with this new patent.  If it’s determined that more people searching on apples/oranges/bananas tend to visit FruitURL1, then FruitURL1 will gain a better position in the organic search engine rankings.

What I found interesting however, is this little snippet of text taken from the patent which gives a little bit of insight into exactly how Google ranks pages.

The search results can, for example, be ranked by a quality measure and a relevance measure. For example, a particular web page can have a quality measure derived from the number of other web pages that are linked to the particular web page, and can have an information retrieval score related to the matching the query terms to words in the particular web page. The information retrieval score can be combined with the page rank to give a final rank to the particular web page.

From this little bit of information we can determine a few things that indicate how Google does in fact rank web pages:

• The “quality measure” of a web page is determined by the number of sites linking to that web page (no surprise there).
• The “information retrieval score” is determined by the number of matching query terms on the web page.  Note that this doesn’t mention where on the web page, only that it looks at the web page itself to see if there are matching query terms.
• The “information retrieval score” can be combined with the page rank to give the page a final rank.  Here again is the dreaded PageRank.  Now, to be fair, the term “page rank” is not capitalized nor does it have a trademark symbol associated with it, but one can only assume that PageRank is definitely playing a role in how web pages rank even though Google has recently removed PageRank from the Google Webmaster tools area (and updated PageRank across the board just recently).  Check out this post by Barry Schwartz where he states that “…according to Susan Moskwa from the Google Webmaster Central team “…it [PageRank] was removed [from Google's Webmaster tools] because Google keeps telling webmasters “that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much.” They felt it was “silly” to keep telling webmasters that, and at the same time show it in Webmaster Tools. So Google removed it from Webmaster Tools. I think this is a good thing, since I agree it is obsessed over too much, plus what Google showed in Webmaster Tools was not very useful to webmasters.”So, all this said, I wonder then why it’s referred to within the patent?  Since it’s not used in it’s proper form, spelled PageRank, do we then assume that they’re just using the phrase “page rank” as an overall encompassing term, not associated with the actual trademarked PageRank?

  Since they’ve removed it from Google Webmaster tools but then days later updated the PageRank on the Google toolbar across the board for websites, one can only assume that they are referring to actual PageRank.  Never let it be said that Google was transparent.

The bottom line is, this new patent appears as though it will begin ranking web content based upon the number of clicks that an individual URL gets by actual web searchers and the paths that they take to get there.  So my advice to you, as a website owner, is to be sure that people want to click over to your website.

Do you offer compelling reasons to do so?  Are these reasons contained within your web pages’ descriptions?

If not, now might be a good time to get to work on that.

Transcript

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is “How do I get my site into Google?” And the process is a very easy and simple one.

There’s actually one of two ways to get your site found by Google.  The first way is to have another website that is already listed in Google link to you.  This can be done in various ways:

• If you’re a regular on a forum in the same industry that your website is about, you can add your new website in your signature.  Forums, especially active forums, tend to get indexed quite regularly.
• You can write an article on the same topic as your website and submit that article to places like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com.  Both of these places get visited very often by Google.
• You can leave a real (not spammy) comment on a regularly visited blog.  Typically when you leave blog comments, the blog owner allows you to add your website URL.  Be sure however that the blog is a “do follow” blog.  That is, they allow the search engines to follow the links off of their site back to the site source.  Click here for a list of do follow blogs.

The second way to get your site indexed by Google is to submit your sitemap to them.  A sitemap file is a list of all the links contained on your website and is Google’s preferred way of finding and indexing your website.

Sitemaps are XML web pages that are created for the purpose of letting the search engines know about all of the pages on your website and they’re essential for getting all of your web pages indexed in a search engine.

Although XML format of a web page might sound a little intimidating, you’ll be happy to know that there are plenty of services online that will create one for you.  http://www.xml-sitemaps.com is one of them.

Once you have a good set of pages created for your website, you can simply tell xml-sitemaps to create a sitemap file for you which you can then move to your web host.  Once there, you’ll want to create a Google Webmaster Tools account at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and then submit the sitemap URL to Google.  This way, Google will be notified that you have submitted a sitemap and will generally visit that page within 24 hours; oftentimes less.  Aside from a search engine robot finding one of your pages through a link, this is one of the best ways to notify Google that you have a new website with content.

While Google doesn’t always guarantee that they’ll crawl your sitemap, you’ll generally find that they do so within 24 hours of you submitting the sitemap to them.

In our Premium BoneheadSEO membership, I discuss Google’s Webmaster Tools in depth.  Visit http://BoneheadSEO.com for more information.

Using either or both of these ways will get your site indexed in Google.

But alas, since no SEOs control the search engines, we cannot guarantee to any client or to our boss who’s demanding that we give some hard factual numbers that he can pump at his next big-important-guy meeting where your site will end up in the search engines and even if you’ll make a return on your investment.

However, all that aside (as invigorating as it was), we CAN determine a close-as-accurately possible number using a method of approach explained by SEOROI.com.

The author of the site, Gab Goldenberg also made a very useful and relevant guest post at Wolf-Howl.com, the website ran by Michael Gray.

What Gab offers within the guest post and his outline on how to forecast SEO ROI, are both must reads if you’re tasked with the job of forecasting SEO for your company or for your clients.

Enjoy!

During this talk (which runs around 45 minutes), Matt revealed some very interesting facts and ideas about SEO which I found…well…enlightening as I’m sure you will too.

If you do have the time to watch the entire video for yourself (like I said it runs about 45 minutes); see my notes below the video which gives you plenty of highlights.

In the video Matt States:

• WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the mechanics of SEO. [@3:30]
  • Mechanics = “how crawlable a website is.”
• Plugins Matt uses: [@4:15]
  • Askimet
  • Cookies for Comments
    • Spam prevention.
  • Enforce www. Preference
    • What you prefer (canonical).
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith
  • WP Super Cache
• “We crawl roughly in order of PageRank.  The more PR you have the faster you’re likely to be found, the deeper we’ll crawl, the more often we’ll visit.” [@5:40]
  • PageRank = the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.  (basic SEO).
  • Example:  A web page has a PR of 9 and has three outlinks (links heading out and away from the website) then each of those outlinks gets 3.
  • PageRank starts to “evaporate” each time it goes across a link.
  • Getting backlinks:  You want people to know you and you want them to be reputable.
• Blog posts need to be on-topic and you want to be reputable. [@9:40]
  • How to do this:
    • If you don’t love it, don’t write about it.
      • Write often, write every day.
    • What am I good at doing?
    • What do I have to say?
• Keywords [@12:05]
  • Think about all the different ways someone can describe something. Put those into your blog post naturally.
  • Jargon mis-match:  Translate [jargon] into regular language.
    • what are titles you could type that are “normal”.
  • Use Google Keyword Tool.
  • If you don’t have [a specific word] on your site you probably aren’t going to rank.
• Custom Structure on URLs “/%postname%/ [@19:15]
• Google looks at over 200 things [when determining where to rank you]
  • Things in the title
  • Things in the URL
  • Things that are highlighted like H1 tags and stuff like that.
  • Be sure you put the keywords in the title in some way.
  • Power Tip:  Use variations between the post title itself and within the URL itself [the permalink].  Not spam.  One or two variants.  Use them as separate opportunities to put keywords in.  Now you can rank for both variations of the keywords.
• Use categories that are also good keywords.
• Keywords in URL paths:  example.com/my-keywords
  • Dashes are best
  • Next best is underscores
  • No spaces is worst.
• If you’ve already done your site should you change things?
  • No.
• Don’t overdo [on page SEO]
  • After you mention a term two or three times Google knows what your post is about.
• Gaining a reputation [@25:24]
  • Be interesting. Funny, alternative opinions.
  • Update often.
  • Apply Katamari Philosophy.
    • Start small.  Start in a niche that you can do well.
    • Build up, build up, build up.  Get there gradually.
  • Ways to Get Links [@30:14 in the video]
    • Provide a useful service.
    • Do original research or reporting. Huge!
    • Give great information.
    • Find a creative niche.  One good idea can carry you so, so far.
    • Write some code.  Open source.
    • Live blogging!  Blogging as it happens.
    • Make lists.  People love lists.
    • Create controversy.  Too often sometimes can’t work well.
    • Meet folks on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed
• Should you do a podcast?
  • Recommends videos over podcasts.
  • Videos tend to rank relatively well on Google.
• Tools you should know about [@35:55]
  • Webmaster console at http://Google.com/webmasters/
  • Google Analytics
  • FeedBurner:  MyBrand for free feeds.mattcutts.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com.
  • Google website optimizer
  • Custom Search Engine: free site search
  • AdSense
    • Use these tags to mark out the meat of your blog post so that AdSense will only target what’s contained in the tags: (highly recommended)
      • <!–google_ad_section_start–>
      • <!– google_ad_section_end –>
• Google Analytics Tip [@38:12]
  • Click Settings -> top landing pages and will tell you which blog posts get the most visitors.
  • Bounces tell you how often people come to your page and then leave.
  • Simple trick:  Show related posts.
• What NOT to do [@40:19]
  • Avoid paid posts.
• Keep your WordPress updated!
• Power Tip: [@43:57]
  • Add an .htaccess to your /wp-admin
    • This says only these two IP addresses are allowed to use the wp-admin.
    • Search for “protect wp-admin”.  Also on Matt’s blog.
• In WP core 2.8 you don’t have to worry about the rel=canonical tags.  Already included. [@44:50]

Bing recently released their SEO Toolkit (currently still in beta) and I took some time to run through the toolkit to see what kinds of information it gave me.

The first thing you should know is installing it is less than a breeze.

First, you need to be using a PC – no surprise there.

In order to install the toolkit, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops first.

1. You need a PC running Vista, Windows Server, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. It won’t work on XP (which is a shame).  Most of you reading this (if you’re not using a Mac) will have Windows Vista on your computer.
2. If you do have Windows Vista, you need to be sure that youalso have installed Windows Vista SP1 (service pack 1) or higher. Most of you will also already have this if your computer updates itself regularly.
3. You also need IIS 7 running on your computer. Unless you’ve worked on a server team, the typical webmaster probably won’t understand what this means (huge problem!). Click here to view the Microsoft installation guide and get IIS 7.
   UPDATE: Note that on the Microsoft site – this link points to a topic that is “No Longer Available”.  After checking Microsoft’s own post about this installation guide, I receive the same message.  Hopefully they’ll have it fixed soon.
4. Next, you need to enable IIS 7 before you can install the SEO Toolkit. To do this…
   1. Click Start.
   2. Click Control Panel.
   3. Click Programs.
   4. Select “Turn Windows features on or off”.
   5. When the window opens, select the “Internet Information Services” check box.
   6. Click the plus sign (+) to expand the directory (they call them nodes), expand “world wide web services” and then expand “Application Development Features”.  Finally, check the box next to .net Extensibility.
   7. Click “OK” and then wait…a long time…while your computer updates.

Now, you next have to determine if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

(By now, I’ll bet that a vast majority of people have already said “This is WAY too much trouble – forget it!).  And I wouldn’t blame you.  As much as Microsoft search has evolved, it seems that the rest of the company has not.

To do this…

1. Click Start
2. Right click “Computer” and then choose “Properties”
3. In the “system group” the System Type will tell you what kind you’re running; 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. FINALLY, install the right version.  (Note that these links will download the SEO Toolkit to your computer – they’re directly from Microsoft. If you’d rather view the Microsoft page itself, click here.):
   1. IIS SEO Toolkit for 32-bit Windows
   2. IIS SEO Toolkit for 64-bit Windows
5. NOW, you’re ready to install and use the SEO Toolkit (and it’s probably time for a quick break).  I don’t know about you but my head hurts!

Once you have the SEO Toolkit installed, you’ll need to open the program.  But like most programs that you install, where you expect to see them in your Start menu, this one’s a little tricky.

1. Click the Start icon on your Windows Vista computer.
2. In the Start Search box, type “IIS”.
3. IIS manager should pop up in the window. I suggest that you move this to your desktop in an easier-to-find location.
4. Double click the program.
5. Once it loads in the main menu section scroll down to “Search Engine Optimization” and double click on “Site Analysis”.
6. Next, on the right, click “New Analysis”.
7. Give it a name.
8. Enter in the URL of your website and make your additional choices from here (which aren’t many).
9. Finally click “OK”.

Now the program will traverse your website and find issues (if any) that relate to SEO (as Bing sees it).

There’s various categories that Bing looks at such as SEO, Content, Standards and Performance.

Now, while this was a hassle to install it does give you a great deal of on-page SEO information.

For instance it found multiple spots where I had missed giving an image an alt tag attribute.

It also found a few spots where my description was too long and where I had a few broken hyperlinks – many of these attributed to a bookmarking service that I had included on my web pages.

If you double-click on any of the pages that had issues within the SEO Toolkit, you’ll get a very detailed analysis of that web page (this is definitely a plus).  Things like:

• A Word Analysis which shows you…
  • The counts for any specific word or phrase up to three word phrases.
  • The character count on the page.
  • The links referenced on the page along with their anchor text.
  • The links pointing TO the page.
  • The links coming FROM the page.
    • As well as what the linking status is, is it OK or not found, the linking title, the linked URL the type of link and the anchor text.  All invaluable information to have.

Now, all this being said, I will tell you of one very large (and frustrating) issue that I had.  After I ran through the steps and set up everything exactly as explained, I could NOT get to any of my websites that I had set up in the SEO Toolkit.

I could get anywhere else (so I knew it wasn’t my internet connection) but just not to my own sites.  Obviously very frustrating.

Now, my husband who is a VoIP engineer and who works with this kind of thing on a daily basis couldn’t even figure out what the issue was.  And we together tried multiple things…all to no avail.

Until…for the heck of it, I unplugged my DSL modem, plugged it back in and all was fine (Occam’s Razor).  So in the event you follow through this process, and have the same issues, just try rebooting your modem.  I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it worked for me.  (You’ve just received a 5-hour-time-saving tip).

All in all, I think that the SEO Toolkit provides great information, so long as you’re willing to put up with the installation of it.  And best of all it’s free!

View this walkthrough at Bing (complete with screenshots) by clicking here.

Everyone who runs a website has at one point or another worried about whether or not their site is being silently penalized in the search engines for having duplicate content.

Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page let’s first define what duplicate content REALLY is.

When you have two pages that are identical to one another on your own website, this is considered duplicate content.  And chances are you likely have duplicate content but you just don’t know it.

Here’s why that would happen…

Let’s say that you have a website located at http://www.Example.com.

You create a new web page on your site and have a few people link to that page.

• Person #1 links to you using http://www.Example.com.
• Person #2 links to you using http://Example.com (notice the lack of the “www”).
• Person #3 links to you using http://www.Example.com/ (notice the trailing slash).
• And Person #4 links to you using http://www.Example.com/index.html (notice the “index.html).

To YOU and to the people visiting your site, this is all the same page.

To the SEARCH ENGINES however, these are all different URLs. Surprised?

So as far as the search engines are concerned you have 4 pages on your site that all contain the same exact content – hence, the duplicate content issue.

You see, search engines can’t tell that these are the same URLs (I’m shaking my head as I say that because it’s still beyond me), but, the fact remains, that this is in fact, very true.

So how do you fix this issue?  Well, thankfully, there’s a few ways to fix this issue.

1. When you link internally, that is, link to other pages within your own website, consistently use the same URL.  ALWAYS use http://www.Example.com or http://Example.com -whichever one is your preferred way of linking, choose one and stick with it.
2. Additionally you can also use a 301 redirect to point to your preferred way of linking to your URL.  For example, if you prefer http://www.Example.com then set up a 301 redirect on http://Example.com, http://www.Example.com/, http://www.Example.com/index.html, etc.  (I’ve listed below the most common ways people would link to your site).
3. Within your Google webmaster tools area you can TELL Google what you’re preferred way of linking is.
4. Be sure that when you submit a sitemap for your website that within that sitemap, all of the URLs are using your preferred way of linking.

Some potential issues are:

1. If you don’t have direct control over the webhost that administers your files, you’ll have to have someone else place that 301 redirect on the URLs you want.
2. A lot of free web hosts don’t let you create a 301 redirect.
3. Session IDs on a website can create a huge duplicate content issue.  Since each page may be accessed with a different session ID in the URL, that page may be indexed multiple times; even though it’s the same page.

Now if all else fails and you simply can’t implement a 301 redirect to your preferred way of linking, then consider placing the canonical link element on the individual page.

In the head of the individual web page you’d place the following:

<head>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.Example.com/page.html” />
</head>

Note the trailing slash after “page.html”.  This is very important to include.

The bottom line is, using the canonical link element on your website is EXTREMELY beneficial to you.  But first and foremost, use the methods listed in the first four items at the top and if those fail, then use the canonical link element.

This information has summarized what Matt Cutts said in his 20-minute presentation; but if you want more information, here’s a few more places you can check out:

• The Matt Cutts video.
• The blog post at Google webmaster central.
• Yahoo’s blog post.
• Microsoft

And, as promised, here’s a list of URLs that are all different in the search engines eyes and that might cause duplicate content issues:

• www.Example.com
• Example.com
• www.Example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/index.html
• www.example.com/Home.aspx
• example.com/Home.aspx

Google Knol

At first, many thought it was a direct competitor to Wikipedia, however, the more you get to know knol (say THAT ten times fast), the more you begin to realize that it leans to more the side of a Squidoo or Hubpage.

That said, here’s some quick and easy tips to creating your own free Knol and what it can do for you.

A “Knol” is a “unit of knowledge”.  And you can create a Knol on any topic you can come up with.  Unlike Wikipedia however, where anyone can add to the content, with a Google Knol,  people can still add to your content but you have to approve it first…needless to say this will cut down on the amount of spammy content you might otherwise receive.

Here’s how it can help your business get better rankings.

One of the benefits to having a Knol is that you can, without regard, actually use it to promote your own products and websites.  If you’ve ever used Hubpages before, you know that they’re sticklers when it comes to linking up your content…even if it promotes your own site and Squidoo isn’t much better although it does allow for a lot more wiggle room.

Google Knol even states in their policy “You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services that are not otherwise prohibited by our Content Policy or Terms of Service, unless you are in Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan.  There are some commercial uses we don’t allow.  We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website.  We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads.”

And if you wanted another reason to start a Knol of your own, consider this.  When Google first opened up Knol it said that it would no follow the links on the Knol pages…however, this is no longer the case.

But don’t think that all of your links will automatically be followed by Google.  You now have to earn “trust” with Google in order to get your links followed.  They state that “they are now at a point where we “trust” a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a “follow” directive for links within such Knols.”

Some links however, will permanently remain no follow including:

• Links within comments
• Our [Google's] automatically generated links to “similar content on the web”.
• Brand new pages and recently-added authors are liable to remain “nofollow” for a period of time.

Although they don’t state what that period of time is.

Here’s how to start your own Knol…

Sign in using your Google account (or get one if you don’t already have one) and simply follow along with the instructions.  It’s a very easy-to-use interface that anyone can follow.

When you’re ready to start writing, you’ll want to use some general SEO techniques such as:

• Title – Like a web page on your site, use a keyword here.
• Sub-title – Like a sub-heading on your web pages.  Use additional complimentary keywords here.
• Summary – This is where a little bit of copywriting experience comes in.  You’ll want to entice anyone finding your Knol to read further…so make it appealing.
• Publishing Mode – your Knol will not be published until you actually tell Google to publish it.  On the right hand side of the page is a section that says “Author controls” where you can click a button to publish your Knol.
• If you don’t want to moderate comments on the Knol, change this under “permissions” on the right hand side.
• The default setting for a Google Knol is to give the Knol a Creative Commons Attribution license.  I talked about this at the very beginning of the newsletter.  You can change this to the other methods you’re given.

Now, in addition to the basic steps outlined above, here are a few more ideas that will move you ahead of the pack.

Google gives high quality Knols badges and awards.  Items such as “Top Viewed Knol Award”, “Top Viewed Author Award”, “Top Pick Knol Award”, and “Top Pick Author Award”.  But in order to get these badges, you need to keep your Knol “better than the rest”.

Here’s how to do that:

• Keyword optimize your title – discussed above.
• Optimize your content – just like your web pages use the keywords you want to rank well for at the beginning of your Knol.  Use keywords throughout your content and work in related words and phrases centered around that topic. When you link out to your own site, be sure that you use those keywords in your anchor text.
• Don’t try to fake your way through a Knol.  If you know about your topic, you’ll have a much better chance of getting seen.  If you don’t, I suggest you beef up on the topic you’ll be writing about.
• Use engaging elements in your Knol.  Use things like videos, images, audios, documents, spreadsheets, calendars and more.
• A Knol is NOT a blog!  A Knol provides high-quality information presented from all sides of the issue. It is not the place to blatantly promote your own products (although you can link to them), but rather it’s a professional resource that covers all facets of the information you’re presenting.  If you aren’t sure how to write your Knol in a professional manner, visit the Knol’s that have already earned badges and see how they spoke about their content, what they added, how they presented their information.  And then use that framework to speak on your own topic.
• Keep it updated!!!  Fresh content is a plus when it comes to a Knol.

Lastly read http://knol.google.com/k/peter-baskerville/how-to-write-knols-that-rank-top-10/14j3i4hyjvi88/19# which explains to you how to write a Knol that ranks in the top 10.

Additionally, here’s another top Knol tip for you that a lot of people aren’t currently aware of.  Google is currently experimenting with Text to speech on their Knols.  What this means is that right now, only a handful of high-quality Knols have the “listen” option which will read the Knol to the visitor.

Since Google is only choosing a small number of Knols to experiment with at this time, there are some tips you can follow to be sure that if and when this becomes an option for you that it reads well for your audience.

1. Don’t use contractions in your Knol.  Use “we are” instead of “we’re”, “you are” instead of “you’re”, cannot instead of “can’t”, etc.
2. If your Knol has some kind of image or chart this cannot be translated into audio.  So when using visual aids, be sure that a full explanation of that visual aid is available for those who cannot actual view it but rather are listening or have downloaded the Knol audio into an MP3 format.

Ever since Microsoft came out with their new search engine Bing, there have been lots of buzzing about it.  And good buzz at that…not what people expected to see which was just a name change from “Live.com” to “Bing.com” and nothing more.

But Bing has taken a lot of people by surprise and now that Yahoo! has agreed to use Bing’s search results as their own search engine (thus taking the number of major search engines down to 2), it’s a very big deal and has great potential to be a big competitor for Google.

Just for the record, the use of Bing’s search results at Yahoo.com probably won’t come to light until sometime in 2010 or beyond, but it is something to start taking notice of right now.

Because we know that this change is coming, we can be fully prepared for it.  And that means doing a few things to be sure that our websites are on top of these changes starting today.

I’ll be covering Bing in sections during the upcoming newsletters but for now, I want to focus on one of the more crucial elements of getting listed well in Bing and this is where your linking strategy comes into play.

Unlike Google who tends to keep information on ranking well in their search engine pretty close to the hip, only divulging just enough information, Bing seems to be moving in the opposite direction.  While not full-disclosure by any means, Bing does give you a lot of tips and ideas when it comes to ranking well with them.

So let’s take a look at what Bing considers to be important where linking strategies are concerned.

The do’s and the don’ts.

While some of the do’s and don’ts of link building will seem familiar to you if you’ve engaged in link building where Google is concerned, some of the advice through Bing is easier to understand… and truly gives a “no bones about it” kind of approach.

So, let’s cover what these do’s and don’ts are.

DO – Link TO (that is from your own site) other websites that your site visitors would find helpful and useful. When you link to another site you are telling your site visitor that you “endorse” that site, so be sure that you actually do.  Don’t link to a website just because it’s your Mom’s or you promised a friend you would link to them.  If it isn’t helpful and complimentary to your own, skip it.

Do – Link to other sites that are relevant to your own. A wedding cake website linking to a tuxedo rental website would be relevant.  A local coffee shop linking to a PPC marketing product would not be relevant.  The same holds true for those links that point to you – granted you can’t control who links to you, you can influence this to an extent.  IF you are engaging in a link-building campaign where you ask other site owners to link to you, be sure that those sites are relevant to your own.

Do attempt to get high-quality links pointing to you. Quantity is NOT the same thing as quality.  This also holds true for Google.  Just because you have thousands of incoming links to your site does not mean that you’ll rank well.  What matters is the quality of those links.  A thousand poor low-quality links cannot equal the ranking power of one high-quality link.

Do not participate in site-wide linking strategies from “bad neighborhoods”. Search engines know what a bad neighborhood is because the bad neighborhoods give off certain signals.  Bad neighborhoods often consist of families of websites that all link to one another, have little to no content in and of themselves and often cover every kind of topic under the sun.

You want links from authority sites – those sites that are older (and thus “more reliable” as stated by Bing), have had consistent content on them over time and have high quality links pointing to their site as well as away from their site.

You can use this tool – http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm to help you determine if a neighborhood is “bad” or not.

Do use proper canonicalization. This means that you use one style of URL for every link within your site.  If you remember in a past blog post I had talked about how the search engines view different variations of your URL as different domains all-together.

This means that http://YourSite.com and http://www.YourSite.com are viewed as two separate URLs.  Why this is detrimental to you as the site owner, is because the importance of your websites are then spread across two domains instead of one – thus reducing the importance of your website in the search engines eyes.

Now, as you’ve probably guessed, you can’t control how others link to you and they will use a vast number of ways to point to your URL which the search engines will all consider different UNLESS you set up a 301 redirect on each of the subsequent domain names.

So for instance if you wanted http://YourSite.com to be your primary URL that you referred people to and that you used consistently as absolute links on your own site, then…

• www.YourSite.com
• YourSite.com/
• www.YourSite.com/
• YourSite.com/index.html
• www.YourSite.com/index.html
• etc.

All need to have a 301 redirect set up on them that point to the URL you want to be your “main” URL.  In this case, YourSite.com.  Whenever you link within your own site, always, ALWAYS use the YourSite.com or whatever URL you have determined to be your primary URL.

Additionally use absolute links everywhere on your site.  An absolute link means that you actually place the “http://www…whatever your site is.

For example, if you had a page on your site named “espresso-beans.html” and you linked to this page from any other page on your site, it should look like this:  <a href=”http://www.YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html“> Espresso beans</a> and NOT <a href=”espresso-beans.html”> Espresso Beans </a>.

This is referred to as an “absolute URL” and as Bing states “The use of absolute links reinforces the use of your full URL and, like canonicalization, focuses the link juice to that URL.”

When linking to your home page within your own site, use the trailing slash and omit the “index.html” or “default.html” whatever the name of your default home page is.  For example:

http://www.YourSite.com/ and not http://www.YourSite.com (notice the lack of the trailing slash.)

Bing also suggests that you use the title attribute within your internal links. For example:

<a href=”http://YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html” title=”keyword or key phrase describing the page you’re linking to“>Anchor text link (also the keyword or keyword phrase) </a>.

For sites that use dynamic linking (in other words pull descriptions and item numbers from a database), you know that the URL to those pages can get quite long.  Do a search on Amazon.com for any book title and then take a look at the URL in your address bar.  As you can imagine, these kinds of links can make a search engines job quite difficult.

In order to help the search engines use a more user-friendly version of that URL so that they don’t have to do a lot of hard work understanding the link, add some special code into the head section of your web page that will tell the search engines which canonical URL to use.

Ex:  <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://YourSite.com/products.php?item=espressobeans” />  And be absolutely certain that this link actually points to the page you want it to go to and that it WORKS.

Bing suggests to use the nofollow tag on your links if you don’t want them to follow that link.  However, if you want to block an entire page of links from being crawled, instead use the meta robots tag to block access to that content or use a robots.txt file.

What a nofollow tag looks like:

<a href=”http://YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html” rel=”nofollow”> Espresso beans </a>.

What a meta robots tag looks like:

<meta content=”noindex, nofollow”>  (this tells the search engines to NOT index nor follow all of the links on the page this is located on.

You can also use:

<meta content=”index, nofollow”>  which means that the search engines will still index your web page but they won’t follow any links on the page itself.

In summary, we know that the merger of search results between Bing and Yahoo! will be a significant step in the right direction where the search engines are concerned.  And we’re also aware that Bing is starting to get lots of great feedback.

Since Bing is new, relatively speaking, they are handing you outright information that can help you rank better with them.  Use these suggestions for your own site’s benefits.  All of these suggestions will work well with Google as well…rarely do we see a big change of what’s allowed and what’s not where the search engines are concerned.  But, Bing is a little more forthright with their information … which is something we haven’t seen in a long time with Google.

But, in this post I want to bring to your attention something that some unsavvy folks might decide to do to your local listing especially since now the local listings are becoming more prominent.   It’s something called MapSpam and even though you may not have heard of it, it’s extremely important that you understand what it is and how it works to prevent your own listing from being hi-jacked.

I made a video about this issue around six months ago when the floral industry was the victim:

Here’s what’s important to understand:

• If you do not claim your local listing, it can be hi-jacked.
• This issue may become more prevalent since Google is now showing local listings for more competitive terms.
• If you’ve never claimed your listing, you wouldn’t be notified.
• If you attempted to later claim it you have to jump through hoops to do so proving you are the original business owner.
• To claim (or add) your local listing visit https://www.Google.com/local/add/

For example, if I type in the one word of “spa” within Google, I now get local listings of all the spas located in my area.  See below.

Google will show you local listings relevant to the search you just performed based upon your IP address.

Why this is so great for local businesses is because now, it appears that regardless of what keyword you place in the search box, you’re likely to get local listings instead of depending upon the user making a reference to their location.

Just consider the possibilities for local businesses here for a moment.  Previously if I wanted to locate a spa in my location of Des Moines, IA, I would have had to tell Google that I was looking for a spa in my city.  So I’d submit a query such as “spa des moines, ia”.

Now, all someone has to do is enter in a generic term (which is near to impossible to rank well for on a quick basis) and if your local business has set up a listing with Google and you’ve included keywords relevant to that listing, then your business would show up regardless of whether or not you specified a location.

If you have not yet set up a local listing for your business, I highly suggest that you do so by visiting Google Local and specifying your local business details.  It’s completely free but you do need a Google account in order to do so.

On the flip side of these new listings showing up, you might wonder where the rest of the listings are heading.

The good news is, that even with the local listings showing up for more competitive terms, there are still the typical 10 web page listings on the initial page.  The local listings (and any news listings or videos), are only placed within the actual search results as an “addition” not as a “replacement to” the current listings.

That being said, it’s interesting to note that even though some local listings might be more relevant to me as someone who is searching for a spa, I receive a couple of web page listings first and then receive my local listings.  However, the map for the local listings certainly draws the eye which may tend to make someone overlook a single blue link on the page.

The moral of the story is that if you do have a local business and you want to get it appearing in search results for those within your location, get that listing up on Google Local as soon as possible.