For nearly three decades, search engine optimization followed a predictable, binary contract. A user entered a query, an engine compared it against an index of crawlable documents, and a ranked list of hyperlinks appeared. Today, that paradigm is collapsing. With the rapid adoption of AI Overviews,
Go deeper into Nik Ranger's Shenzhen SEO talk with her complete 6 part framework. Learn to diagnose AI impact and proactively influence models with actionable strategies for the new era of search.
In a surprise discovery, we found that query itself is the biggest predictor of how much CTR will deviate from the site's position average.
A novel approach to address this involves boosting rare features within the embedding space to improve re-ranking.
An incredible 30 minute video about machine learning and link building.
When a user requests information, ChatGPT can utilize a browser tool to fetch real-time data from the web. The process starts by either issuing a search query through a search engine (Bing) using the search command, or browsing one or more sites directly. Search Function When retrieving information,
Introducing a domain authority metric which balances popularity and centrality.
Google Chrome utilizes a machine learning model for address bar autocomplete. This article lists all signals for the auto-complete function.
Discover how Chrome's built-in convolutional neural network analyses product images for shopping intent and sensitivity.
Google is integrating Gemini Nano, its lightweight AI model, directly into Chrome and Android devices.
The anonymous guy who leaked Google's repo information wiped out the most valuable strategic resource in the history of SEO and rendered it near worthless. Imagine a history in which Alan Turing speaks to the press announcing they've cracked the Enigma. What do you think the enemy forces would do wi
If you haven't been testing SGE before it gets released, here's a quick guide we've set up that literally takes 2 minutes. Pictures included to make it even easier! What is true as of November 2023: Google has taken a ground-breaking leap with the introduction of the Search Generative Experien
Our data indicates that question-based queries have seen the biggest drop during the May update.
Learn effective web content writing strategies to boost reader engagement, including the inverted pyramid technique, concise writing, visual elements, and linking to credible sources.
Download Dan's presentation from SMX and request access to exclusive bonus material.
Demonstration of effect hidden content has on rankings. This includes tabs, accordions and other common content expansion mechanisms.
Make an edit. Open your Local Guide profile. Go to your edits tab. That's it.
Full Data Download For a company that constantly preaches the importance of good user experience, Google has been unusually stubborn about one matter - labelling paywall in their search results. The issue is not even up for a debate, anyone advocating for good user experience understands that someth
Users say they hate ads, but every marketer knows that they also click on the ads. The assumption is that well-timed ads that match users needs and interests are "good" while disruptive, irrelevant or poorly timed ads are "bad". Google's search results contain arguably "good" ads, they tend to be re
This is a small-scale case study with no control group involved. The aim of the test was to see if a small number of links from relevant sites and pages can impact rankings and traffic of a page with a low volume of traffic and low competition terms. Experiment Start: October 2019 Experiment End: Ju
A Twitter poll shows that the main reason for guest blogging within our industry is to get links. More than half of our respondents participate in guest blogging with link building being the main motivation for most. Google has been clear about guest blogging for links. It's inorganic, manipulative
What types of things frustrate you when shopping online? Among the top nuisance factors in online retail are various interruptions such as advertising or pop-ups followed by shipping , pricing and website speed . Additional findings surfaced in this study offer insight into less talked-about issues.
January 2020 Core Update is significant in the sense that it triggered permanent SERP volatility that hasn't been observed since the period between 2017 and 2018.
Our survey of 1,000 Australians in October 2019 shows that most respondents read online because it's free and convenient. Most of them do it to keep up with news and stay up to date with current affairs, but another big category is research. Types of research may include: Information and answer seek
Ads and interruptions are the two major factors contributing to negative content experience. In October 2019, Dejan Marketing research team conducted an open-ended survey involving 1,500 Australians. We asked them to describe what frustrates them the most when reading online content. In 40% of the s
Google has introduced fresh data in Search Console and is visible in both the graph and the data table. The data can be less than 24 hours old.
In order to improve the quality of the web and most importantly, lead by example, Google should apply rel="sponsored" to its current and future sponsored links.
Dejan Marketing team surveyed 1,500 Australian Google users and asked how long they review search results before they decide which website to visit.
Google's original content updates come soon after Australian Digital Platforms Inquiry matching many of the proposed changes.
Google Discover can send a lot of traffic, but is underutilised by marketers. To be included, your page must "peak and sustain" user interest.
%%excerpt%% Survey of 1008 users finds that majority (71.2%) find auto-play videos annoying.
%%excerpt%% If there are multiple instances of the same document on the web, the highest authority URL becomes the canonical version.
%%excerpt%% An SEO test was conducted on three sets of mobile-first websites with similar authority. Our results show that content hidden behind tabs and accordions remains devalued.
Third most volatile day in 2018, stronger flux than "Medic". Impacts desktop more than mobile.
I spoofed the back button in Chrome and sent people to my version of search results and competitor websites where I recorded everything with Lucky Orange.
1,500 Mechanical Turk workers were instructed to: search for [money term] search for [money term, test site brand] click on [test site] I wanted to see if a follow-up search and high CTR had any impact on Google Suggest and rankings. While we did notice a spike in clicks and impressions, Google
This article describes what happened when we removed our link disavow file.
Most web users skim and scan through web content looking for items of interest.
Our hypothesis was that quality content can rank well without links for low competition queries. The experiment showed that wasn't the case.
Add spaces before and after filter words which may belong to a longer word (LA, plaza, poland) to improve accuracy of search query output.
Most people have no idea what AMP icons means in Google's search results. Some even think it's a warning signal.
If you're interested to know how Google "understands" the page you're on, touch and hold the home button (circle). Tap "What's on my screen?"
Creating reasonable traffic projections based on CTR optimisation and rank increase opportunities.
A guide to finding expected click-through rates for any website based on its performance in search results.
CTR optimisation is a process of conversion of turning more impressions into clicks through increased snippets attractiveness.
Four out of five readers are going to scan for key items of interest or abandon the article entirely. My job is to persuade you to stick around.
Analysis of signals of trust on the web from the 2017 survey conducted by DEJAN Marketing.
The list of signals web users rely on when deciding whether to trust online content or not.
TL;DR - Show people a photo of your product and ask them what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for it.
Smartphones are no longer research-only devices, people use them to make transactions and buy things.
New research shows that organic links on the web often exist for explicitly promotional reasons.
We asked 144 SEOs to cast their vote on risk and effort boundaries they follow.
Today I discovered an interesting bug in Google's auto-suggest feature which is triggered by incomplete words in long form queries.
Google search now returns a wrong canonical URL for the Search Console highlighting a bizarre URL for an FTP site that never existed.
Tell our readers a bit more about you, your experience in online marketing and your current position. I have been in the Online Marketing space for 9 years now. I started with link building in 2005 at MelbourneIT. Currently I'm Senior Manager for SEO & Content Marketing at Sensis where I'm charg
Google result volatility was at an all-time high today. Algoroo has never recorded anything this big.
Today's level of activity is like nothing we've seen in 2015. It's bigger than Penguin 3.
At 2.45 roos this is the most volatile day since the newsworthy content update back in June 2015.
If a piece of content really important don't hide it in any way on your page. Display it clearly visible for both users and search engines.
Characters such as ฏ๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎ and ค้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ display in SERPs almost like an arrow or a scratch on the screen.
Redirecting four of our popular blog posts to a commercial page lowered its rankings in Google.
Dan and I spent a few days in Poznan to attend the Search Marketing Day conference. We spoke three times during the two day conference and you can find our slides below. Things I learned in Poznan I learned how modern mass scale cloaking campaigns are made that are designed to dominate entire first
When starting a link building campaign and keyword research the basis of good research is to first analyze market defining keywords or MDK’s. In order to get to those SEO keywords that people will search for and that will convert your traffic you need to define your market on the web, and we do that
Google has introduced two updates to rich snippets including global support of product rich snippets and HTML input inclusion in rich snippet testing tool. Product Rich Snippets Product rich snippets give us the ability to display price, availability, ratings and similar extra information to our cor
Bing made a new move to improvem the data provided to webmasters through Bing Webmaster tools. The new change affected the activities widget found in the Bing WT dashboard. Vincent Wehren wrote in the announcement post : “For the metrics Clicks from search, Appeared in search, Pages crawled, and Cra
Note: This article was first published on Moz Blog . This version does not use hypotext functionality and will be used to test the performance of hidden content in Google's search. Question : How does a search engine interpret user experience? Answer : They collect and process user behaviour data. T
Users might trust them more and hence you might get more traffic, but there’s no inherent ranking benefit at all.
Our research shows that only one in five people read web content word for word. Majority scan, skip and only read key items of interest.
Download slides and access exclusive bonus material from Dan's creative SEO talk at WordCamp Brisbane.
Content could increase rankings, even without links. Personalisation affects rankings, and there is strong evidence that click through rate does too. Content can play a role in influencing both of these, and yet there is still a fixation on links. One of the most common challenges I face with client
Google gave no preference to visible content in our test but it's still the best practice to show any important content in the visible part of the page.
Duplicate content on your site can cause problems with search engines indexing your content and in extreme cases can result in a penalty. In this video we explain what duplicate content means and how you find it on your site. Done with this one? View the next video: Making Sure Your Site Loads Quick
Mobile now a ranking factor As everyone is no doubt already aware, having a mobile friendly website is now officially a ranking factor for searches from mobile devices. We already espouse the benefits of having a mobile friendly site to our clients (though at the moment we're guilty of a little hypo
If you have multiple pages from the same domain appearing in Google's search results they will count as a single impression.
Redditors have caught onto the fact that Google includes reddit in their news results and are currently having fun.
What happens when Google starts indexing voice, audio and video content.
Our aim was to determine whether phrases surrounding non-link URL citations on the web act as an off-site ranking factor. For the purpose of our experiment we had 42 citation pages indexed. Each page contained a written URL of our test document with a test phrase in its proximity. We then observed t
PDFs are black holes of link juice, but won't worry we have a fix for that.
Engaging on other people's posts through +1's, reshares and comments leads to brand and profile discovery and can result in new followers.
We have new data which shows that the 25th October spike wasn't part of the gradual Penguin 3 roll-out.
Our tests show that anchor text from deleted links can continue to impact a page for at least six months.
Algoroo records a first serious SERP tremble since Penguin 3.0 roll-out in Australia. Another Panda update or post-Penguin refresh?
It looks like somebody at Google decided to give the little used +Post Ad feature a little boost.
Find out which ten Google updates had greater impact than Penguin 3.
We used to link feely on the web and anchor text has always been a matter of context and choice. And then Google happened.
We're often asked how to design a great call to action. In this post we show you how the big boys of the internet do it with 18 of the best.
Michael Betteridge, General Manager of Marketing at Wotif offers us a tantalising insight on their inner works and offers his digital vision of the future.
It's easy to get caught up in day to day stresses. We explain why it's important to stay positive, and how you can do just that.
A little-known property of Google Books search highlights co-occurrence as a ranking signal.
Knowledge Vault is a probabilistic knowledge base developed by Google.
Interview with Stuart Myerscough, Head of International Marketing at AirAsia.
We've been a target of various negative SEO campaigns, but this morning's email tops it all.
Algoroo reports a high level of turbulence in Google's search results after more than 2 months of silence.
Jim Munro spotted an interesting anomaly in Google's search results the other day, a case of Google indexing its own search results. This is not something you see every day. I went to investigate and noticed that all Google's URLs returned in this search query had one thing in common - //. The next
The Google search partners network is made up of sites that partner with Google to show Google ads to their visitors. On search partner sites your search ads can appear on search results pages, on site directory pages or on other pages related to a users search. You have less control o
By embedding a tweet into your page you automatically apply for the "Related headlines" feature on Twitter.
Warning from Australia. Algoroo is showing 17th of May as the second most turbulent day since the Penguin update in May 2013.
Can anchor text influence uninformative title tag replacement?
A detailed analysis of Google+ platform with case studies, actionable tips, statistics and a visual guide to little-known features.
A photo of my lunch went viral on Google+ over the weekend with 28,616 views, 312 +1's and 54 comments and I had no idea why.
Google+ wants real identities for both humans and organisations. There can be only one!
Today I'm going to share a dead-simple Google Webmaster Tools hack that will help you split up pure organic traffic from Google's local results.
Last week I shared a quick 3 question survey asking what metrics SEOs are reporting to their clients. I started this to help me with another article I'm writing, and this is just a quick report of the results to say thank you to all those that took part, and particularly to the SEO Hangout Panel and
It's a known fact that young users no longer hang out on Facebook as they used to, but now there's some scientific proof to it.
The 6th strongest SERP fluctuation we've seen in a year and the first major result shake up in 2014.
An interactive post in the Google+ stream is similar to a basic shared post but adds a call-to-action button and support for deep linking.
Temporary link schemes based on random link placement work a bit like this: Spam the web with links. Delete them soon after that (to avoid penalties but feed the algorithm). Count money. But there's a problem with this plan. Google's webspam team is aware of it and they do take action against it. In
An improvement to our top search queries data was applied retroactively on 12/31/13.
How we will search the web in the next decade. Google 1 1998-2000 We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible, George Santayana When Google started in 1998 many fell in love with it. I
Matt Cutts comes out with a video that said the 25% duplicate content is nothing that small business need to worry about.
Everything you type in Facebook's post text box is being recorded and stored regardless of whether you post it or not.
Algoroo has measured the highest recorded level of SERP flux in Google since Penguin 2.0. The jump happened on the 17th of December, following a week of intermittent fluctuation in results. Our team has already investigated the cause and there doesn't seem to be a reason to believe this was a layout
November 27th brings the fifth biggest recorded change in Google search results in 2013.
I tend to talk about the importance of content till my clients want to punch me in the face. I can understand why. Creating "great" content can be hard without client input. After all, you're an expert in SEO, not warehouse racking (contender for the most boring industry and yes, real client). It us
As the internet becomes the primary source of communication between consumers and businesses, whether it be for social conversation, information provision or sales of products and services, being able to market your business successfully on the web is crucial. Image Credit: mkhmarketing This is part
Algoroo has measured a significant ranking flux on Friday after a relatively stable fortnight indicating at a possible algorithmic tweak at Google.
Look at this perfectly looped image sequence. It's link building, chain making, Futurama, factory... it's satisfying, and hypnotic. Google, however, won't be able to link these concepts well enough unless it's fed structured semantic data. They must find creative ways to correlate "strings" and unde
Is there any evidence to suggest that Google might use QR and EXIF data to discover new URLs? Our tests say no.
Understanding the nature of organic links on the web: An overview of eight primary contextual link environments.
This article explains how to crawl a single domain and generate a complete list of all external anchor text used.
Google understands when a site has been moved and can consolidate PageRank and social signals accordingly without any canonicalisation or 301 redirects.
It seems that the level of search result volatility never restored to it's pre-Penguin 2.0 state.
We're often asked how to design a great call to action. In this post we show you how the big boys of the internet do it with 18 of the best.
With over 1 billion active users as of this year, Facebook is no doubt the social network to master for marketers. However, for most company Facebook accounts, the focus isn’t generally on the number of “likes” or “fans” earned. While a Facebook “like” shows engagement, it’s the great content and th
We tested Google's newly employed layer of protection against rapid spam entry into SERPs.
In the sea of SEO tools industry it is getting more difficult to find quality tools and distinguish them from the rubble that is being dangled before us. But from time to time a new tool emerges that we instantly sink our teeth to, one of those tools that got our attention is NerdyData search engine
Whether Google Webmaster Tools link data is reliable enough for a successful link cleanup or not in not a new topic in the SEO community.
My favourite trick to gauging engagement on the posts that I share on Google+.
If you're running a small-to-medium sized website, visualising website architecture isn't difficult. What do you do if your website exceeds 1,000,000 pages?
302 redirect where you'd expect a 301. 404 that's not really a 404. Google only redirect loop! Read to find out how to spot these SEO issues!
Data Source: Algoroo We process search query data for thousands of keywords on a daily basis and observe fluctuations in their position. By adding both ups and downs into a single movement score we're able to map the change levels on a daily basis. Algoroo has been collecting data for over a year no
Google's results seem to change during weekends and then revert back to a week mode. We're investigating to find out why and how.
HyperPagerank is an adaptation of the original PageRank formula designed to work in a hypergraph environment.
Discussing the importance of Public Relations in the field of Online Marketing - 'Joining the dots' between the online marketing space and the real world.
If I'm honest, I was guilty of some ignorance. I didn't realise the mountains of crap that blog owners are subject to. It's like hordes of the un-dead...
Google released Enhanced campaigns way back in February (by the way, February is way back in internet years) as a way to: simplify AdWords, improve usability and add a few new features. Most importantly however, this introduction was primarily due to the quadrupling of mobile web traffic over the la
The obvious answer would be create valuable unique content that your users will love and share. What if that’s not possible?
Changes to Google Webmaster Tools emphasises the importance of Schema markup and make it easier than ever to use. Expect to see more rich snippets...
Tired of writing thoughtful and articulate blog posts. Irritate your friends and alienate your readers by following these 8 simple tips.
So...., what's new? Many may be familiar with the existing Google Analytics platform, its evolution over the years since its release in 2005, its benefits and indeed its flaws. Currently in beta, Google have released a Universal Analytics tool set features to their well known analytics platform. The
Performance Reviews are quintessential to the successful operation of any business, but having an official review process in place is sometimes easier said than done. At Dejan SEO, we've introduced formal half-yearly performance review process a while ago. Since we don’t have a HR department,
An example of a successful cloaking tactic which appears to be a sneaky A/B test.
Google's latest Penguin update doesn't seem to detect unnatural link surges or anchor text abuse from expired domain link networks.
Algoroo was off the scale yesterday, we don't even have a gauge that goes that high in our roo metric widget.
Why do we still see these “SEO friendly texts” on eCommerce websites in 2013?
SEO presentation by Dan Petrovic at WordCamp Melbourne 2013.
Dan Petrovic appeared on ABC as a representative of Australian Science and one of the first five sponsors of Mars One initiative.
Algorithm Update - the next leap!? Called Penguin 2.0 internally at Google, the latest updates to roll out in the next week or so aim to have a significant impact on web spam tactics and the value these methodologies impart to SERPs and a sites authority, even more so than the last major update. Wil
It started in Australia as many webmasters and SEOs noticed a Venice-like update and now it looks like we're looking at a global algorithm change.
Whilst presenting at SMX Sydney, Dan had the chance to speak with Rand about the challenges faced in a changing industry. Rand gives us some great insight.
Mining your raw server log files for valuable keyword and search engine ranking data.
If you have a multilingual eCommerce website you need to check if you've made any of these 7 deadly SEO mistakes!
Content creation can be tough & knowing where to start near impossible. In the post we share some straightforward ways of getting started.
Real-time Analytics reports visits to cache as your organic search traffic and Google's search pages as your own.
How does blog post word count affect the level of social sharing? Our custom-built WordPress plugin gives us all the answers.
SEO Experiment: How does text near a link impact on Google's perception of the linked page?
Using Google's link disavow tool without following up with a reconsideration request is as good as a placebo.
Dealing with background noise, tedious tasks and interruptions while finding balance and achieving optimal results.
Been told you need to add content to your site, but you're not sure why? We explain the importance of content & how SEO has changed over the years.
Content rejuvenation is the process of further development of existing content on your website, targeting pages which are already popular in search engines.
Google+ posts you share with limited circles will not be showing in Google's non-personalised search results. What about the link value?
This article discusses the problem of diminishing keyword data and suggests innovative ways of using the available data in the future.
Is it possible to confuse Google into noindexing your pages with combined use of rel="canonical" and "noindex"?
Sorry to bring the bad news guys, but it looks like Google's dumped as much as three quarters or your link profile from the latest link report in Google Webmaster Tools.
Google pushes AdWords Express for Google+ pages through a subtle ad in the information sidebar.
Author Rank is a popular concept in the SEO industry and one of the hottest topics in 2012. But does it actually exist? We ask John Mueller from Google.
Webmasters and SEOs often rely on link data from well-known third party tools but forget to dip into search engines' own data.
Google+ has been tidying things up with rel=nofollow. Are they getting ready to make a greater impact on search results in 2013?
Helping charity and non-profit websites reach more visitors through SEO, user experience and strategy.
The content of this article goes a bit like this: Download BitTorrent -> Something, Something -> Profits! There's also a picture of a cute cat in it.
This SEO experiment is designed to test people's clicking preferences once textual content is removed and replaced by plain outlines.
An in-depth post discussing the importance of natural language conversation in human-computer interaction and long-term predictions on evolution of Google.
Google may choose to ignore some of your links if they don't trust them.
SEO industry has a knack for turning perfectly legitimate marketing disciplines into... something spammy.
Challenge #2 Past SEO challenge hangouts: Challenge #1 Watch Dan Petrovic & Martin Reed in Dejan SEO Challenge Hangout. We'll be testing SEO knowledge of webmasters from around the world with more than 30 questions in three difficulty levels. Audience votes for their favourite participant in the
John Mueller from Google explains that webmasters should be able to rely on Google Webmaster Tools for link clean-up.
This page is part of an experiment designed to test Google's ability to handle tabbed content.
Is it worth getting a link from an authoritative domain and/or high PageRank page which has thousands of outgoing links on it already?
In today's hangout with John Mueller from Google we found that Google tends to ignore content which seems to be off-screen, including tabs?
Impact of link rejuvenation on page's performance in search by changing the format of existing links to create new ones.
In our two recent experiments we created a number of pages copied from other domains, both cases got much attention but it seems it also got the attention of Google's search quality algorithm. Today we've received the following message: This is good news for all webmasters out there and a sign that
What if I told you that you can see your competitor's links as if you owned their Google Webmaster Tools account?
Search result hijacking is a surprisingly straightforward process. This post will go over theory, test cases and offer ways to protect your content.
The objective of this experiment was to determine whether there is a connection between the ratio of "circled" and "in circles" and page position in internal Google+ search. Often you will find that very popular pages follow only a handful of others and they tend to rank high on Google+ searches. Co
We're seeing signs of thin-repetitive content finding its way back into Google's index. Is Panda going soft?
In today's hangout with John Mueller we busted another SEO myth - negative impact of bounce-back to search results.
I'll let you in on a little secret. I like to analyse websites made by ex-Googlers to see how they do SEO.
Google has finally released their link disavow tool enabling webmasters to report inorganic inbound links for their domains. This document contains a step-by-step guide with screenshots and a list of best practices including potential problems associated with the use of the tool. [styledbox type="ge
Dejan Research Labs have created a new type of link research and analysis tool enabling fresh link discovery and record keeping. Fresh Link Finder is designed to assist whitehat SEOs and webmasters in keeping track of newly generated links to their content. The tool produces daily reports of all new
We analysed 7825 keywords across 172 domains and the average click-through rate (CTR) for the first position in Google was 36.15%. Analysis Explanation Using a CTR analysis tool which works directly with Google Webmaster Tool data export we observed thousands of different keywords and how their posi
I want to begin this post with its high-sounding title by bucking the trend regarding what the worldwide SEO community says and regarding what I generally claim. In a certain sense I am going against what I myself believe, but that is precisely the point: “What we believe in and our general convicti
You could be running a 100% whitehat site and still receive a notification of unnatural links, thanks to ORM spam. What's ORM? Show the good stuff, hide the bad stuff - that's the basic principle of online reputation management (ORM). Search engine results are a big part of what ORM process involves
This Tuesday just past, the 11th of September, the Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and his 'Chief Digital Officer' Kieran O’Hea , held the Brisbane Digital Strategy Forum in conjunction with Brisbane Marketing at the Sebel and Citigate in the Brisbane CBD. Industry leaders from various sectors were invited
By factoring in bounce rate data in calculation of PageRank values, Fabien Mathieu and Mohamed Bouklit create a new and enhanced ranking algorithm. In their research paper titled "The Effect of the Back Button in a Random Walk: Application for PageRank", Mathieu and Bouklit (LIRMM) propose an enhanc
Learn from the best they say, so I decided to run an SEO audit and analyse the architecture of Google+ to see if I can learn anything useful.
Here's what happens when Google+ offers you a vanity URL. Dejan SEO page was offered a custom URL so we took some screenshots. First, you will notice a dark gray bar saying " Your page is preapproved for the custom URL: google.com/+PageName [Claim URL] Learn More". Note: Their " Learn More " link se
We tested the influence of small-scale click-through-rate on position of two pages on two new domains in Google. Two freshly registered domains (A & B) were used. What did our test involve? 1. Search Google for "keyword" 2. Click on domain B in results. Test Length: 2 Weeks Participants: 100 Bot
SEO experiments can help us gain a better understanding of how search engines operate and information gained can be used for competitive advantage. However, in order to make valid and reliable findings which can be applied to 'real world' projects, proper methodology and reporting should be used. Th
Have you ever done any guest blogging? Here's a few tips on how to stay safe and avoid breaching search engine guidelines. Choose Wisely Google has 25,270,000,000 pages in their index. Imagine a tiny little fraction of their index to represent your guest blogging opportunities. That fraction would s
Is Google purposely randomizing things just to mess with us? Let's take a look at one patent and two SEO experiments. In March 2011, I wrote an article outlining an interesting phenomenon I observed with PageRank distribution in a controlled test environment. Linked to a number of similar instances
This is an inspiring article for those involved in optimising eCommerce site and struggling with content quality. You run an online store and have hundreds or even thousands of products. You’re pretty happy with its structure, pages are canonicalised, conversions are decent and you just need some mo
Australian Business Awards recognise Dejan SEO for outstanding achievements in marketing strategy and execution. We are honoured to be the recepient of the marketing excellence award in recognition for our hard work and innovation in the industry. Dejan SEO was awarded together six other outstanding
A lot of webmasters judge the popularity of their content by observing the number of links pointing to their pages. The problem is that a footer link from a single domain can create 100,000 links. This does not carry the same value as if 100,000 websites linked to your page. Here's what Google Webma
Here's our digest of the most important clarifications from the most recent post on unnatural link notifications. Recent unnatural link notification messages [2] issued by Google caused much confusion among webmasters and few were certain of their purpose and severity. Last week Matt Cutts offered a
Why is it that the first thing we think of when traffic goes down is that we've been penalised by Google? Penalties are a relatively rare thing and apply only to a very tiny fraction of the web, when a penalty strikes though, there is no doubt about it - the effects are devastating. No wonder so man
Stop! Is your link outreach targeting total strangers? Start with your Twitter followers instead, but do it the smart way. I see many SEOs and link builders reach out to people without leveraging existing relationships and connections. In a recent article I talk about scanning referral traffic to ge
Referrer traffic monitoring. A great tactic for building good links which won't harm your website. [blockquote type="blockquote_quotes" align="right"]Ask yourself a question, why did these people link to me and how can I earn more of these links?[/blockquote] This one is real nice and easy, and ever
This is a simple and effective tip for all of you who sell products online. Get free social media shares and earn natural links by leveraging post-purchase excitement. I Bought Something Cool Something very, very exciting happened today. I bought a Nexus 7 (16GB) tablet from Google after reading rav
Interview with a celebrity science fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer, and his plan to beat PageRank. Note: This interview is a follow-up to an article titled " Work of Fiction Inspires a New Search Engine ". For those of you with less than 10 minutes to spare, here's a quick teaser: I am a hard S.F.
Does Google use written (non-linked) URLs as a ranking signal? Dejan SEO team investigates with a simple experiment. The Almost Link The web is full of plain text URL references and to me they are the missing link in the link graph. Consider the differences between text links and text with written U
I have to say that I am a bit fed up with all this "correlation does not equal causation" talk and wish to bring something new to your attention. Authors of awesome articles rich in research, analysis and data, often feel compelled to inject the correlation ≠ causation clause. It should be obvious t
Five awesome features and options in Bing's 'phoenixed' webmaster tools and how they compare to Google Webmaster Tools. #1 - Link Explorer This tool allows you to slice and dice your link profile much like Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO do. For example, you can specify anchor text and find all d
Is consolidation of social signals possible? Dejan SEO team investigates with a simple test including the rel="canonical" element. One of our recent fun graphics got a respectable amount of exposure in social media, however if we load a comment # for that URL the likes, +1's and Digg counts would re
We asked 2,190 Google users if they noticed any changes in Google results since Penguin. This is what they said. Google implements countless changes and tweaks to their search results over a single year and most users don’t notice more subtle changes such as order of websites in search results. Marc
Google goes one step further in attempt to become an intelligent search engine by introducing their knowledge graph results. " Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons .", Google. Predictions for 2012 Earlier this year I predicted the three key improvem
We've been waiting for more semantic results from Google since the acquisition of Freebase. Well now it's here! State of Search reported on interesting types of search results starting to show in Google so we went to investigate further. Our initial search queries were around business people , polit
Our previous SEO experiments hinted at a possibility of Google (purposely?) shuffling the results out of expected pattern. This time we investigate what happens on a larger scale and use 100 images for our test. The Experiment We started by creating a row of numbers in Excel (1-100) and used conditi
Learn about the key elements behind our most successful enterprise SEO campaigns. Enterprise SEO brings a whole new set of challenges on top of usual set of best optimisation practices and one of the most momentous obstacles with large-scale campaigns is the sheer scale of things. The General Rule o
Let's take a look at some of the confirmed ranking factors and find out the reasons behind Google's social focus. Part 2 of the Search Quality Series by Dejan SEO Our first search quality article discusses the link graph theory, co-citation, social graph, knowledge graph and top-level spam detection
Researchers are working on ways to discover fake reviews by detecting organised groups of review spammers. [blockquote type="blockquote_quotes" align="right"]Over the years, opinion spamming has become a business. People get paid to write fake reviews. Such people cannot just write a single review a
Review of the first empirical study of Google+ platform in the context of selective sharing. Real-World Sharing & Social Networks Sharing information is a crucial part of human interaction and communication, however in the offline world we manage the information we disclose in a natural and effo
In this article we describe quantitative metric-based link spam detection in a collection of analysed domains. Accuracy and co-relation ranges from 60 to 90 percent with adjustment of different quality parameters. Our technique is still considered to be 'work in progress' and may not be fit for accu
Google clarifies webmaster questions around potential conflicting nature of rel canonical and hreflang annotation. Briefly about rel="alternate" hreflang="x" Websites which serve the same content in multiple languages can utilise the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" annotations to help Google decide whi
Theory behind evaluation of search result quality through algorithmic treatment of the web index. Read on and discover some of the fundamental forces behind search engine rankings. Part 1 of the Search Quality Series by Dejan SEO Introduction There are different types of graphs on the web, useful to
We knew it already but now Google confirms. Pages which give errors such as 404 or 500 eventually drop out of index and lose PageRank and are unable to accumulate or pass any search engine signals. "If a URL becomes an error, for example a 404 or a 500, we will try to keep it indexed for a very limi
Today we noticed a way to potentially inflate the amount of (not provided) keyword in Google Analytics. Traffic from links on https://www.google.com and some of its subdomains will be treated as organic traffic with the keyword (not provided) and not as referral traffic as we would expect. Update: G
Google is determined to level the playing field, reward good content and punish the cheaters. How will they achieve this? There is plenty going on at Google at the moment but let's highlight three key elements relevant to this article, even though they may not be as obvious at first: Improved spam d
Duplicate content is not a recent SEO issue, although the Google Panda update in February 2011 certainly upped the potential adverse effects duplicate content can have on a webmaster’s SEO efforts. Prior to the Panda update, the crawlers in Google’s search engine algorithm relegated duplicate conten
The next stage in Google's product evolution is undoubtedly unification. Google's many projects and shatterlings spread over a decade of development in a frantic search for the next big thing are coming back home, empty handed. Now they're merging into a single universal product, bit by bit every pi
OK, so you've secured some quotes for link building and SEO work, compared prices and thought about value for money. Since you don't have time and patience for all this fancy content development, outreach and networking you decide to go with a cheap link building company or hire a few amateurs on El
The official Google search blog announced a record number of changes in February 2012. One of them is the way they interpret links after dropping one link-based signal which was used for years. Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. W
When I was little I asked my grandfather how he makes his wooden sculptures. He told me that his job was to carve out the unneeded bits from a lump of wood. What's left is the artwork. Google isn't that different. In order to produce good results you have to carve out the bad ones. In this article I
Dejan SEO team is working on link graph visualisation methodology in order to develop link and social network analysis framework aimed to solve risk assessment challenges, influence calculation and social graph analysis. The big bright dot is Dejan SEO, scaling down in colour intensity with each nex
Google webmaster central hangouts are a great way for webmasters to ask questions and provide feedback to Google's webmaster team. How much can you fit into a single session? A lot apparently. For those who have missed this week's hangout we've prepared a summary of discussed topics. Discussion Summ
This is a quick checklist of factors which Google could use to drive their "Google Suggest" auto-complete feature. When users type in a search query Google tries to complete that query by selecting suggestions from many different datasets. Do they really understand the topic or make judgement on the
In a recent SEO experiment we tested several cases of title tag replacement in Google and discussed elements which are used for replacement and when it may happen. Today we found another great example with some additional insights as to how Google may perceive information on the internet from the se
Search for intitle:"Untitled Document" in Google and you will find plenty of websites with missing title tags. Worry not though as Google looks for hints of the page's main theme elsewhere in the document and inserts it into search results instead of the title. So which elements can be used as a sub
After Panda consumed much of the ' bamboo ' on the web, MuffinTop algorithm update was supposed to mop up the rest. There are still a few 'evil unicorns' frolicking around in the flowery meadows of Google's search results. In this article I describe two of them - one from standard search results, th
Google Webmaster Tools gets an UI and minor functionality upgrade, a nice touch in series of interface improvements which started appearing last year. Probably the most exciting two new functions are: 1) Download the chart data 2) Show n Rows And now a real bonus! My requests have been heard [1] and
Even in the pre-Panda SEO world faceted navigation was a double-edged sword. Today though, if you let this monster rule your website bad things can happen - on a mass scale. How can webmasters understand how their website architecture truly looks like when they struggle to visualise it? The above im
The most important things to remember - for 2012 and also for the next decade in the social web - are not even about cool tools. There are numerous predictions these days by experts in different fields of information and communication technologies concerning what 2012 is bringing to the Internet. Th
A Sitemaps main purpose is to help robots find pages of a site that might not be able to be found otherwise. Having a Sitemap would make sense if you have a site with high volumes of pages, bad structure or poor internal linking. If you’re Dave the local plumber and your site is only 5 pages, it is
It seems, with the development of the internet, and supporting technology in our everyday lives, our time is more and more precious. This is why many of us are so accepting of taking time out of our hectic schedules (even if it is a few minutes) to digest information in the form of an ‘image’ as an
This is a transcript from a Google+ discussion on a recent anomaly we spotted in Google search results. Two separate but obviously linked terms ("temporal" and "dreaming") are bolded when adding the word "plot" afterwards. AJ Kohn (blindfiveyearold.com) and Bill Slawski (seobythesea.com) provide som
Phrase potential calculator is a tool which analyses CTR, rankings and traffic volume data and helps discover phrases of high value. The calculator uses data from Google Webmaster Tools and/or Google Keyword Tool. What you see here is keyword output from a report generated through traffic data sourc
Author: Dan Petrovic, https://dejanmarketing.com Digital information preservation is a hot topic and a fertile ground for many bubbling solutions and models in both practice and theory. One of the emerging issues revolves around the fact that there is more information being produced today than we're
This study focuses on analysis of link building workflow and delivers a practical framework for process optimisation. Research activities which lead to this study were conducted in the period between January 2009 and June 2011 by Dan Petrovic and a team of no less than twenty link builders at Dejan
Broken links are an old problem but also a great opportunity for many websites. In this article I will outline practical ways you can look at broken links in SEO context to improve your rankings, protect your reputation and provide great user experience. Internal Broken Links Linking own content and
The smart phone has become widely popular in recent times and some statistics indicate that around 60% of us could be using them by the end of 2011 here in Australia. While that figure is considerably more than I would have guessed before doing the research, it's not a huge surprise when I consider
Yesterday Google released an article on the official Google Analytics blog [1] outlining a new change to the reporting of organic traffic which was rolled out at the same time as the article. Basically, Google claims that they are now trying harder to “protect” their users by no longer reporting the
According to Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil [1] we're at the dawn of technological singularity. According to their theory, in a few decades (circa 2045) technological advancement will reach a critical mass and result in an explosion of advancements in fields of science and technology. The Faith of Se
A recent Search Engine Land article [1] by Matt McGee seems to be getting a lot of traction in the SEO community, but the misleading title triggers wrong interpretation. In a recent YouTube video [2], Matt Cutts from Google answers a question about impact of spelling and grammar on site quality: "Do
Link anatomy visualised. Downloads: Full Size PDF: Link Anatomy Visualisation by Dejan SEO Single Page Flowchart Version: Link Anatomy Diagram Feel free to share and distribute this document.
After speaking with someone recently about the different types of media that a company or organisation can make use, I thought I should put a short article together to cover this in more detail. To clarify, this article is pertaining to forms of “online media” only and is not written with traditiona
During my career in Search Engine Marketing, one question that keeps popping up every now and again from clients is “should/why are we bidding on our branded keywords, we are at the top anyway”. Yes, I don’t disagree with the “at the top” statement one bit, however I fully disagree with not bidding
According to our casual observations site: command in Google tends to sort URLs by their length among other criteria (candicates: indexing/caching date, content, uniqueness...etc). To test how this work with pure URLs and minimal content we conducted a test with the following parameters: Test Date 2
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Article by Dan Petrovic, https://dejanmarketing.com/ A great evening with the Friends of the Library brings a fascinating discussion around the promises and challenges of digital data. Four industry experts shared their insight and knowledge around information pre
Learn the different ad delivery methods in AdWords to see what method is best suited for your campaign.
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This basic guide explains how to properly structure your AdWords account hierarchy to achieve great results.
Today we've noticed a new type of email sent to a webmaster on Google Webmaster Help Forums. It was sent by Google Search Quality Team as a way of notifying the site owner that there are some links pointing to their site which may seem unnatural and as an attempt to manipulate PageRank. This is the
Article by Dan Petrovic Two years ago Grzegorz Czajkowski from Google's system infrastructure team published an article which didn't get much attention in the SEO community at the time. It was titled " Large-scale graph computing at Google " [1] and gave an excellent insight into the future of Googl
August 9th Update: As reported by @alexasigno, Google has just introduced a new SERP layout for branded terms which looks like this: More compact version is available for some Australian domains such as Flight Centre: -- SERPs (Search engine result pages) are a familiar sight to all internet users,
To create an accurate morph sequence it was important to correctly map the key points on each set of blending faces. For example, placing a marker in the corner of an eye of one face may initially result in a wrong marker placement on another face. Adjustment of each element helps software map the k
There has been very little original research in the area of position-based clickthrough rates ( CTR ) in search engine result pages ( SERP ) and most SEO companies still quote outdated information (http://www.seoresearcher.com/distribution-of-clicks-on-googles-serps-and-eye-tracking-analysis.htm) wh
There has been much talk about domain hyphenation with Google's response vague as usual. Dejan SEO team put this to test and in conclusion non-hyphenated domains have an advantage over hyphenated ones. For test specifics and results read on. [styledbox type="general" ] Update Results of this test we
In February of 2011, Getprice.com.au published a survey of almost 3000 Internet shoppers. According to the study, more Australians are shopping online than ever before. This trend began in 2009 , when the global financial crisis forced Australian consumers to look for bargains on a wide variety of t
Author: Dan Petrovic, https://dejanmarketing.com During our exhibition at CCA-Educause, Sydney our team (who sponsored the event) had pleasure of meeting many delegates, librarians, educators and presenters. Increased awareness of fast-moving technological trends resonated throughout the event, yet
One tricky thing about SEO as a marketing discipline is that it's not an exact science and we're dealing with proprietary algorithms which grow more complex each year. Despite the strong community in the industry and contributions to common knowledge, SEO professionals struggle to see the whole pict
Research paper on use of search engine optimisation techniques in conjunction with content and design to influence user behaviour online. Practical applications of this study can be applied in a variety of online marketing activities and disciplines including SEO, user interface design, usability, i
Online industry can be difficult for even the toughest guys on the block. One moment you think everything is going fine for you, you are doing your own thing, SEO your website by the book, starting to see progress, expecting that first page and eventually top ranks in the next few months. So what ha
Dan Petrovic, founder of DejanSEOm has been featured at the Young Entrepreneur Awards
Our happy customers are located around the world including Australia, Germany, France and the United States. They include companies of all shapes and sizes, in many different types of industries, offering everything from accommodation to gifts and IT services. The graph on the left shows a sharp inc
