Barry Schwartz, Ophir Cohen and Olivier Amar (L2R)

Today Compucall had the pleasure of hosting a nice SEO get together. With the arrival of Barry Schwartz to Israel, we got a chance to meet and also host some of brighter SEO minds and agencies in Israel for a few hours. In attendance was, of course, Barry of Rustybrick.com, Itai Levitan of Easynet.co.il, Mayer Reich of Rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson of Nekuda.co.il and the Compucall Staff including Ophir Cohen and myself, Olivier Amar, amongst others. There was also a great presentation by the founders of articlesbase.com and bukisa.com.

Barry Schwartz, Meyer Reich and Gilad Sasson

Itai Levitan of Easynet

Firstly, I need to thank Barry for taking some precious time out of his 7 day trip. As part of a very organized Blogger Delegation to Israel with lots of stops along the way, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

Simon Gelfand and Eyal Halimi ArticlesBase and Bukisa Founders

The meeting started with two short presentations by Simon Gelfand. One on Articlesbase.com and the other on Bukisa.com. He explained to us his huge rise in growth, from zero to one of the main sites in each of their markets, in little to no time. He went over the business models and solid SEO infrastructures of either site. It’s nice to see such a huge website spawn from just an idea with the efforts of just a couple of people and no venture captial whatsoever.

Paid Search in Israel

Barry Schwartz then asked some interesting questions that veered towards paid search in Israel. The general consensus seemed to be that although some of the quality on certain verticals might sometimes be better in Microsoft and Yahoo, the combination of terrible platforms on both Yahoo and MSN and the lack of local offices for either of them, made their offerings here less than ideal. With the Israeli paid search market so much bigger than its population as a result of the number of Israeli companies dealing with foreign markets, both Yahoo and MSN would probably be in a much better position with local offices (as long as they ditched their present platforms and did something that more or less mimicked Googles, I mean why reinvent the wheel right?).

Google Analytics – The Future is Now!

We also touched upon how important Analytics had become in today’s companies and how no matter how far companies had managed to take their in-house analytics, then they never had the resources to go deep enough and get it right. Since both Easynet and Compucall are Google Analtyics Authorized Consultants (GAAC) we both felt that we had not yet come upon a company that had managed to get there alone. As a result it has represented a very viable avenue for both our companies to explore.

The meeting ended with some great smiles and some good catching up. Again, thank you Barry. We’ll get together again soon

Every SEO expert knows that one of the biggest problems we face is duplicate content. When there are two different URLs for one page, the search engine is never clear on how to treat them. It has to decide which page to show for a specific keyword, which page to give the PageRank to and which page to consider as the main authority. It may also divide the authority and page rank, an action that will only take away from the page you’re trying to promote.

There are many ways to create duplicate content. Here are only few::
-    Different URL format for the same page (sort parameters are very popular here)
-    Print versions of pages
-    refid parameters (affiliates etc)
-    Different search query results and navigation issues

The canonical URL tag is a joint initiative of Google, MSN and Yahoo. All three united in order to create a common tag called “canonical URL tag”. This tag lets all the three big search engines know which of the duplicate pages is the main one and it can then pass all the authority, link juice and main focus of the robot to that right page. If there are two similar pages with slight different URLs, a canonical tag placed on the duplicate content URL will tell the robots which page it should promote. As for the importance of this tag, according to Google, “it’s a hint that we honor strongly”.

The canonical tag must be located in the header of the page should will look like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.compucall-usa.com/blog”>.

Why is it different from a 301 redirect?

1. As opposed to a 301 redirect that redirects the page both for the user and the search engine, the Canonical URL tag is just for search engines. Users will still be able to reach and view all your duplicate versions. Hence if you’re only trying to sort the results on a page, you can.
2. The engine will verify that the content is similar and that the use of this tag is justified. In a 301 redirect, you can decide whether the redirect is justified. Regarding how much similar the duplicate pages have to be, Google say that they “allow slight differences”.
3. The 301 URL redirect operates exclusively on a single root domain, so you can’t use this tag to redirect between two different domains.

Unclear issues

The “link juice” question is still unclear – we will have to test it and see the results.
Also, the transitivity of the links is unclear (only Yahoo mentioned that they support transitivity of this tag).

For more information, you can read Matt Cutt’s blog post and SEOMOZ’s blog post (by randfish).

Google Vodka Ad

On the web there are many speculations for the sudden change; some presume the change is influenced by the financial crisis, and that Google is creating new opportunities in order to expand its advertising market.  Google has rejected this claim, and stated that from time to time advertising policies are modified due to advertiser demand. Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Land asked Google about this claim.

Google stated  in return:

The AdWords program policies are developed based on a combination of factors – and in this case, those included user experience, legal requirements and the fact that many hard alcohol manufacturers have been asking for the ability to promote the alcohol-related information on their sites and reach people who seek that information online.

This post was originally written in Hebrew here by Naomi Sela

To make a long story short, I realized that in order to properly SEO Wordpress, then what you really need to do is keep it simple. Have a sound platform or theme, research and write great content, and share it with the community relationships you’ve developed and are actively developing.

Here’s the presentation I gave, Wordpress & SEO, slides only. If you have any questions, please share them with me. I’ll be uploading the video later on when tech gets it done.

URL Rewrite – What is it?

URL Rewrite is an application that changes a dynamic URL, which can be long and full of parameters, to one that has meaning and usually shorter making it easier on the surfers and users to understand what the page is usually about or when it is from. It’s usually easier to remember and quicker to type out. In two words it’s a friendly URL. Wikipedia has some good info and links for more information.

Why utilize URL Rewrite?

Rewriting dynamic URL’s are full of marketing advantages: From having people being able to look at a link and know where they’re heading, to being able to send links via Email without breaking them apart to the SEO benefits that come with it. Rand from SEOmoz does a great job of going into the pros and cons here.

php url rewrite

URL rewrite is probably easiest to do in php. php has a built in module called mod_rewrite, an engine which enables you to set rules and rewrites dynamic URL into static url automatically. All you need to do is make a small change to your .htaccess file on the apache webserver and you’re done. You can find more information at apache.org.

dot net url rewrite

URL rewrite in dot net is a bit more complex. You will need to use an isapi filter as explained by SEOconsultants or use the official Microsoft way.

So what am I getting at?!?!

Where I’m confused is why Google would outright recommend using dynamic URL’s over static URL’s just because of the people that do it wrong. Google wants to make the world a better place and to make search easier and more relevant… so why try to make it harder for people surfing the web to understand where they’re going and remember URL’s!

I think where Google got it wrong, is the method in achieving what it wanted to do. Rewrites can sometimes be problematic. Well instead of trying to educate people on why they might be wrong, try and educate them on how to do it right. It’s not a big issue; most people get it right to begin with. A short post on how to do it would have done more service to the Web.

I think Google called the glass half empty not half full on this one.

SEO Targeted Wordpress Themes

The first and most crucial thing to consider for a Wordpress blog is the theme. Not only because of the importance of the visitors first impression, but also because of how a website’s code can influence the way Google can read you. There are many themes out there, created by people of all kinds. Part of them are designers, others are programmers. Not all of the people that put these themes together took into account the significance of being “friendly” to search engines. The code has to be clean, logical and focused around the content. It is very important that your Wordpress theme be CSS/XHTML validated. Although a great many “SEO Wordpress themes” out there meet this basic requirement, a lot of them don’t (You can always run yours through the W3C Validator if you want to make sure your blog validates). Some themes also have content optimizing tool possibilities, such as the ability to give SEO friendly page titles and much more. There are websites that also give “SEO grades” to their themes, so make sure you don’t pick a theme with a grade lower than 85

SEO Plugins for WordPress

There are many SEO plugins for Wordpress that can enhance your blog’s compatibility to search engines. The most common is the “All in SEO pack” Wordpress plugin. This plugin creates an extension within your Wordpress platform that lets you insert Meta tags into each post. This plugin also avoids duplicate content issues typical to Wordpress and creates titles templates, so you won’t have to optimize your posts titles manually. Simple Tags is another Wordpress plugin that enables you to manage the tags all over your blog.

We can’t really discuss blogs marketing without also mentioning SMO (Social Media Optimization). The Sociable plugin (and there are many other plugins) is a tool that gives your readers the possibility to submit your post to many social communities, social websites and bookmarking sites. Creating a social presence for your blog in the social community is a vital component to any blog. After all we don’t want to get into that debate of if you build them a field they will come right?

Analyze Your Wordpress Traffic!

Finding out how your visitors reached you is a great way of knowing what you’ve done right and what you’re doing that maybe isn’t doing so well. If you can’t do that then you’re going to be more or less flying in the dark. Wassup lets you analyze traffic and users’ behavior on the site. If you’re hosting Wordpress yourself then install Google Analytics or something paid like Clicky.

To sum things up, Design, Content and the Analysis of your blog or site is very important. However, there are marketing aspects that you have to pay attention to. Make sure your blog has social media links and presence, download several SEO plugins and check your theme SEO grade. And the most important advice is – always optimize your blog in order to stay fresh and on top.

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Entrepreneur August Meetup, organized by Mr. Gadi Guy and Ms. Or-Tal Kiriati, will cover different topics around social networking where local entrepreneurs will be able to share in a unique occassion, together with Mr. Pulver, their ideas and techniques, get advice and discuss business models.

Mr. Ophir Cohen, Compucall’s CEO, will also give a lecture about the hottest web marketing trends, prior to Jeff’s speech.
We at Compucall believe that educating and sharing are key for the success of our community.

I’ll show you an example to better compare the main differences between the two main models: the first will charge you for quantity of emails sent, and other that will charge you a fee for the amount of registered users.

Example: I have to send 4 newsletters a month to my 10,000 users listing.

Model 1: I have to pay for 40,000 sent emails.
Model 2: I’ll pay for the 10,000 users, on despite of the amount of newsletters I send.

With the Model 2, I can theoretically send a new broadcast every day and I’ll still pay a flat fee for my 10,000 users only… do your math and calculate how much will it cost with the first option… is it clear which is the method I selected?

Of course it’s not that simple; you must consider other details among value for money like: data safety, deliverability, technology, reporting and a customer support. I recommend you taking a look at GetResponse.

Alright so after a little bit of coercion and reminding people that contracts were up for renegotiation soon (aren’t they always?), I’ve got people writing and landing posts on my desk for review. After reading them, I keep asking myself the same questions:

- Is it any good?

- Will anyone benefit from this post?

- Are they just trying to get me off their backs by giving me this?

- Why did I get myself into this…

So after reading a few good posts and a few just okay posts and keeping in mind that I don’t want to discourage people from writing by asking them “Do you really think I’m going to posts this?” I’ve come up with a set of three standards that my writers (and myself of course) have to apply when writing and editing these wonderful pieces of informative literature that will one day appear on the Compucall Blog:

1. Would you post this on your own personal blog?

2. If this post were written by someone else in the industry, would you digg, sphinn or bookmark it?

3. Since your name will be under the title of the post, would you want this to show up first in the search results if someone Googled your name?

So that’s that, let’s see where it takes us shall we.

So low and behold, we finally have the website almost ready and I casually mention the opportunity to blog and interact at a general employee meeting and guess what (insert generic cricket sounds here).

Alright, maybe people are busy and it’s slipped their mind. So bring it back up at the next meeting, explain the benefits of blogging and then going to other blogs and starting to talk to others with your link pointing to our blog or to your blog profile and starting lasting industry relationships that will grow your knowledge and create great connections for the next SMX or SES. People nod. One person sends me a blog post, another contributes title for a blog post and that’s it. Remember there are 20 people here who are more than qualified to chip in.

This should be fun.