Web development, design, and site optimization

I was recently posed a question about Search Engine results. Specifically relating to Google and how sometimes the top result provides more details than other listings. I found that I did not have an answer. Through the help of some people on Twitter I was able to find at least some of the answer.

Enjoy!

One of the features Google introduced in early 2006 in order to enhance its user experience, was the addition of sitelinks below the snippet for the number one natural result. The snippet is the 2-line summary that appears along with the link to the website. Sitelinks are additional links to deeper pages or directories within the main site that is listed at number one for the search term. The image below shows an example of the snippets visitors see when searching for ‘MSN’ in Google:

Criteria for Appearance of Google Search Result Snippets with Sitelinks

No one knows for sure how Google determines when to place snippets along with the number 1 listing. There are, however, numerous theories, all of which agree on following points:

• The Google snippets are directly related to site traffic
• Not all number 1 search listings are accompanied by snippets
• Sites with traffic levels above a certain level are usually listed with snippets. This minimum level is not yet known.

Sites with high traffic might not include snippets in the listing if the most relevant page being served is not the homepage. E.g. searching for ‘Ford Mondeo’ in Google UK brings up www.ford.co.uk/mondeo at number one, without snippets, whereas searching for ‘Ford’ in Google.co.uk brings up www.ford.co.uk with the snippets.

Courtesy of http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/google-snippets.php

Another great tool I came to find today. This takes a look at the text on your website and the keywords and suggest alternatives that you may not have thought of. This is good information for testing keyword combinations and their effects on your search rankings.

Synonyms Keyword Suggestion

Here is a new Wordpress plugin that DropTheMike.com is testing out. Enjoy!

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images in your posts with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.

TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

Download

• Download: SEO Friendly Images

Installation & Usage

1. Upload the whole plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2. Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.
3. Use the Options page to modify ALT and TITLE options.
4. You are done, SEO Image does everything else

SEO Friendly Images options recognize two tags %title (post title) and %name (filename of the picture). By combining these two tags and additional words (photo, picture etc..) you can create relevant alt and title tags automatically for all images.

Here is a live example of the plugin (active on my blog). The image that has title and alt replaced with “%title” and “%name %title” respectively resulting in “SEO Friendly Image” for title and “example SEO Friendly Images” for alt.

South Florida SEO Meetup - Beyond Keyword Research from Davide Di Cillo on Vimeo.

David Snyder posted a very good article today on his blog that asks the question, what should come first (SEO or Site Usability)? David then goes on to try and answer this question or at least provide his opinion on the subject. It is a lengthy post, Dave please go give your wife and kids a visit before they forget who you are, but definitely worth a read as well as a plug on any social site you may belong to.

My opinion on the matter is that in general I would give the slight edge to SEO. If you can get people to your site, unless usability is really atrocious, you will succeed. Now you may have both good SEO and good usability and still fail, your offering may just not be good enough to put it nicely. SEO will help get first timers to your site, usability will keep them coming back.

Here is an excerpt from Dave’s post:

It is the chicken before the egg of the online industry.

Which comes first usability or SEO?

Designers and developers often take one stance on the issue, and SEOs another. I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer. Despite how many in our industry present information the only way we can quantify any degree of success in what we do is by measuring how profitable a web property is (I know not all websites operate for revenue, but who cares about them?).

Profitable sites have been built without sound search engine optimization.

Profitable sites have been built with poor usability.

Neither of these points can be argued.