BrightEdge Weekly Search Recap – 10/21

Albert Gouyet

This week we announced our exciting partnership with Gyro, helping to make Search and Social work together even better! Yahoo! finalized its integration with Bing finalized this week, learn how to create a good mobile SEO strategy and how content can best be used for SEO. Read on for more!

1. Yahoo Completes Global Organic Transition To Bing (Except Korea)

Twenty months later, Yahoo and Bing have announced the completion of the organic (algorithmic) transition from Yahoo powered search results to Bing powered search results globally, with the exception of Korea.

If you do a search on any Yahoo powered site via your desktop or mobile device the search results will be powered by Bing.

2. Having Won The Land War, Google Is Now After “Hearts And Minds” With Ice Cream Sandwich

Google is hoping that with the release of Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”), with a wide array of new features and upgrades, will win the hearts of consumers.

The new version of the operating system unites Android for tablets and smartphones, though there are not yet any Ice Cream tablets. Honeycomb, which proved to be tablet-only, was largely a failure.

3. Should I Change my URLs for SEO?

If you do decide a sitewide URL change is worth the risk, plan and execute it carefully, keep in mind a couple of high-level points:

  1. Use proper 301-redirects.
  2. Redirect URL-to-URL, for every page you want to keep.
  3. Update all on-page links.
  4. Don’t chain redirects, if you can avoid it.
  5. Add a new XML sitemap.
  6. Leave the old sitemap up temporarily.

4. Integrating SEO & PPC: 3 Areas to Explore

This discussion of the integration and balance the interplay of organic and paid listings touches upon the need for through utilizing landing page snippet text in PPC ad copy, focusing on competitive search and understanding traffic value to get the most of your marketing efforts.

5. Mobile SEO is a Myth

Having a strategy for creating strong mobile SEO is important with the boom of mobile devices. To be able to have the maximum audience reach the best mobile strategy is to create a site that works on all devices and always provide a link for me to switch to the full version. Though, if you want a true “device experience,” create an app.

6. How Google’s Human Search Quality Raters Assign a URL Rating

Google ran over 20,000 experiments in 2010 to come up with the 500 modifications they felt best improved search results for users. While there are over 200 factors, or signals, these constant updates affect their relevance and how they impact search results. It might seem like the algorithm is changing so often, webmasters can’t keep up – especially when updates like Panda come out.

However, there are specific qualities and attributes real people – Google’s URL Raters – look for when they visit your page. Those guidelines have been leaked in the form of a 120+ page training manual for new URL raters.

7. Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search

Google will now begin encrypting searches that people do by default, if they are logged into Google.com already through a secure connection. The change to SSL search also means that sites people visit after clicking on results at Google will no longer receive “referrer” data that reveals what those people searched for, except in the case of ads.

8. Why Is Content Good for SEO? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Infographic: Why Content for SEO? explores how content is key to search engine visibility.  They also have a related post which breaks down each area of the infographic. I like this stat – “76% of marketers who have strategic SEO campaigns in place invest in content creation.”

9. Head To Head: Siri Vs. Google Voice Actions

The introduction of Siri as a marquee feature on the iPhone will change the way people interact with their phones and how competitors are forced to respond. Google, with its already powerful voice assets, doesn’t have far to go to match or nearly match Siri’s capabilities. Microsoft also has formidable speech assets but there’s nothing like Siri or Google Voice Actions on Windows Phones currently.

Only time will tell the direction that Siri and Google voice go on their Roadmap and how this will affect brands on mobile devices.

10. Advanced SEO Keyword Research Tips and Ideas!

This is a guide and a few quick tips and tricks for the best SEO keyword research and keyword examples to show areas you can incorporate into your keyword research. Including adding in social media data and utilizing Google Keyword Tool to help keep keywords organized.