Google SEO guru talks links, anchor text, domains

I knew there was a reason I subscribe to email from Rambling About SEO. In an interview posted today, the blog managed to get some straight talk from Google's Adam Lasnik.

The Google search strategist puts out some choice information on topics often discussed by SEO bloggers. Here's a sample:

• Anchor text from inbound links: "Useful descriptive Anchor text can be great, not only for the user ... but helpful for Google to better understand what that page is likely about. On the flip side of things, (there's the) smell test, and that if something doesn't smell right, smells fishy; doesn't look or seem natural, that's going to certainly raise a red flag for us."


• Domain name wording: "I think people overemphasize the value of good domain names. ... I would say that while a domain name can be a factor in some ways how we view sites, how we view links; I would really say that it is relatively a minimal factor."


• Internal links: "What we found is that sites that have a lot of links, 200, 300, or 500, tend to have links that have not been strongly editorially vetted. We would rather see fewer links that the webmaster has actually looked over, and that they are maintaining to make sure they are still fresh."


• Dueling home-page file names: "If (the Googlebot) sees a page that is pretty much identical to something it has already seen, it will automatically make a determination regarding which page makes more sense, and it will run with this URL. ... In the vast majority of cases, it really has no negative affect at all."

Eric Enge asked the questions. Great job.

This is the kind of communication bloggers, webmasters and SEO providers need from Google, although I don't know why it usually gets done via random interviews like this and hints from Matt Cutts. The tea-leaf reading gets old.

Update: Here's an experienced SEO blogging about the same complaint.

Warning: Graphic images of text

Designers and developers love to incorporate text and headlines into their image files. I finished a project tonight in which one entire page was turned into a graphic. Art, headlines, text, footer, the whole thing.

Looked good to me. But not to Google or Yahoo's search robots. The bots see just the title bar, the file name and perhaps some alt text.

If you write search-engine-aware copy, follow that work through the design process. Look at the finished page via the source code (under View in most browsers). You should see the heads, text and links. If not, find out why.

If you can grab the heads and/or text as a colored block and place it all on your desktop, you're dealing with an image.

Use of search-engine-aware copy is the No. 1 driver of placement on the SERPs -- search engine results pages. (I'm including title bar wording in that.)

Every other web site I've helped as an SEO had this problem of text buried in images. Often key terms appear only in banners that are really images. If you have a custom banner that says "Widgets for Small Business" and the file name is banner.jpg, guess what the search engines register. Java looks great, but has similar issues.

Now comes word that Google is working on a way to read text in images. About time. The technology has broader implications than this, but perhaps a side benefit will be to make SEOs and designers better friends.

Read more about Google's optical character recognition scheme.

Writing alt tags that matter

We all know about alt country, alt rock and now even alt classical, but what about alt tags?

A little background: The alt tag (or alt attribute -- the proper name) describes web site images to someone not able to view them. Such as blind people or dumb search engines.

Alt tags are found in the html code that controls display of graphics. The tags were designed as an aid for people with text-only browsers or those with crappy dial-up connections who turned off the slow-loading graphics. Ah, the bad old days. The alt attribute/tag works for folks with mobile devices or cheap handheld thingies.

The alt-whatever also serves people with disabilities. The computer's audio text application reads them the image description. Say (in a weird electronic voice), "Bill Clinton swears on a Bible photo." Upstanding netizens do a public service by writing thoughtful descriptions. Those who don't flirt with severe karma.

The alt tag's constant companion is the title attribute, which is automatically assigned the file name. Usually the alt area gets this info automatically as well. On Blogger, however, the space is blank. Upload the photo and dig into the html string that results. Look for this: alt="". The micro space between the quote marks is yours. Four-six words please.

Readers usually see the title information by letting their cursor hoover over the image (then the little colored text box pops up). Some browsers also display the alt tag info.

If your photo jpg file is named "mug 29-81," no one benefits. Meanie.

So the savvy and righteous path looks something like this:

• Give images destined for the Internet a descriptive file name such as "Shecky Greene photo.jpg"


• Change the alt tag to a something like a photo caption: "Shecky Greene eats birthday cake photo"

Earlier this week I did:

title='American Gangster Denzel Washington'

alt='American Gangster star Denzel Washington confronts foe'

It takes discipline to consistently write descriptive alt lines, especially when the post has other time-consuming elements. Wish I could say I was 100%.

Perhaps this side effect helps us both:

Good alt tags aid search engines in their examination of your page. The engines have moved away from the once-mighty meta tags and now focus on contextual elements such as the page's headlines, text -- and clues such as what's in the image descriptions. Hmm.

Related post: Avoid the search-engine suicide of important text trapped in images.

Speaking of SEO for blogs ...

This gem came in the morning email, courtesy of Aaron Goldman of Search Insider. It's a quote from the company's recent search summit, down in my home state of Florida.

SEO Demystified

"SEO is not doing one big thing right; it's doing two hundred little things right." -- Dan Perry, Cars.com.

For any of the marketers out there still thinking that there's a silver bullet for SEO, Dan told you to think again. And for those caught up in the SEO Rocket Science Debate of whether SEO is an art or a science or neither, one thing is certain -- it ain't easy to identify, prioritize, and execute two hundred things, no matter how little they are.

Search Insider is one of the better SEO-oriented sites. I recommend their newsletter for anyone interested in growing a blog, but as with any of these insider-tips services, you should give them a Hotmail or Yahoo email address to divert spam. Once you trust them, you can always change to your main account.

Good blog headlines make robots happy

It's tough enough writing good headlines for readers. With blogs, you also need to be concerned about writing for search engines, a tough audience.

Basic newspaper headline style eliminates a lot of search-engine hostile words, such as "the" and "a" and "an." You'll probably find it easy to write heads that way after a lifetime of reading them. Cutting out the small words leaves more room for keywords, which tell the search bots a lot about your blog entry and your blog.

When possible, write blog headlines using one or two of the search terms targeted in your site SEO (search engine optimization) scheme. (You do have a plan, right?) Never let SEO get in the way of writing a headline that makes sense to humans, of course. The readers come first. Copyblogger explores the pros and cons in the post "Do keywords in post titles really matter?"

You should, of course, be using the site's targeted keywords whenever writing for blogs. Never hurts to boldface them, either.