Francisco

Posted by Dr. Pete
Since the Panda update, more and more people are trying to control their Google index and prune out low-quality pages. I’m a firm believer in aggressively managing your own index, but it’s not always easy, and I’m seeing a couple of common mistakes pop up. One mistake is thinking that to de-index a page, you should block the crawl paths. Makes sense, right? If you don’t want a page indexed, why would you want it crawled? Unfortunately, while it sounds logical, it’s also completely wrong. Let’s look at an example…
Scenario: Product Reviews

Let’s pretend we have a decent-sized e-commerce site with 1,000 unique product pages. Those pages look something like this:

Each product page has its own URL, of course, and those URLs are structured as follows:

• http://www.example.com/product/1
  
• http://www.example.com/product/2
  
• http://www.example.com/product/3
  
• http://www.example.com/product/1000

Now let’s say that each of these product pages links to a review page for that product:

These review pages also have their own, unique URLs (tied to the product ID), like so:

• http://www.example.com/review/1
  
• http://www.example.com/review/2
  
• http://www.example.com/review/3
  
• http://www.example.com/review/1000

Unfortunately, we’ve just spun out 1,000 duplicate pages, as every review page is really only a form and has no unique content. Those review pages have no search value and are just diluting our index. So, we decide it’s time to take action…
The “Fix”, Part 1

We want these pages gone, so we decide to use the META NOINDEX (Meta Robots) tag. Since we really, really want the pages out completely, we also decide to nofollow the review links. Our first attempt at a fix ends up looking something like this:

On the surface, it makes sense. Here’s the problem, though – those red arrows are now cut paths, potentially blocking the spiders. If the spiders never go back to the review pages, they’ll never read the NOINDEX and they won’t de-index the pages. Best case, it’ll take a lot longer (and de-indexation already takes too long on large sites).
The Fix, Part 2

Instead, let’s leave the path open (let the link be followed). That way, crawlers will continue to visit the pages, and the duplicate review URLs should gradually disappear:

Keep in mind, this process can still take a while (weeks, in most cases). Monitor your index (with the “site:” operator) daily – you’re looking for a gradual decrease over time. If that’s happening, you’re in good shape. Pro tip: Don’t take any single day’s “site:” count too seriously – it can be unreliable from time to time. Look at the trend over time.

New vs. Existing Sites

I think it’s important to note that this problem only applies to existing sites, where the duplicate URLs have already been indexed. If you’re launching a new site, then putting nofollows on the review links is perfectly reasonable. You may also want to put the nofollows in place down the road, after the bad URLs have been de-indexed. The key is not to do it right away – give the crawlers time to do their job.
301, Rel-canonical, etc.

Although my example used nofollow and META NOINDEX, it applies to any method of blocking an internal link (including outright removal) and any page-based or header-based indexation cue. That includes 301-redirects and canonical tags (rel-canonical). To process those signals, Google has to crawl the pages – if you cut the path before Google can re-crawl, then those signals are never going to do their job.
Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself

It’s natural to want to solve problems quickly (especially when you’re facing lost traffic and lost revenue), and indexation issues can be very frustrating, but plan well and give the process time. When you block crawl paths before de-indexation signals are processed or try to throw everything but the kitchen sink at a problem (NOINDEX + 301 + canonical + ?), you often create more problems than you solve. Pick the best tool for the job, and give it time to work.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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Posted by Colby Almond
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
When I was first introduced to Digg in 2007 I didn’t leave the computer until I absorbed every piece of information that Kevin Rose made available to me. When I switched over to Reddit in 2008, I found the content even more enthralling and gave out upvotes until my fingers bled on nearly ever subreddit. A little over two months ago my girlfriend, Alaina was on her laptop on the couch totally enchanted by some type of site I had never seen before. However, I knew the passion and attention she was giving the site was all too familiar. There she was pinning and repinning content onto her boards like it was her job. As a marketer of nearly seven years, I absolutely knew this “Pinterest” thing was going to be huge. I never would have expected, however, that it would change the world of viral marketing so quickly.
It was during that month of January that Pinterest exploded from a casual social network to an absolute powerhouse of over 10 million users. By this point, it was driving more referral traffic than Google+, Youtube, and LinkedIn. For a social network remaining under the radar for the marketing industry, these are numbers that can’t be ignored.
The Power behind Pinterest

The best way to understand the power behind Pinterest is to compare it to the last ruler of viral traffic: The Front Page of Digg. We all remember the stunning days of 2007-2008 when reaching the front page of Digg was considered a milestone in your career. When developing content specifically for Digg was fun and actually reaching the front page was cause for celebration . . . and panic as your servers soon overloaded with traffic and eventually crashed. Those were fun times, indeed, and I have missed them ever since Digg’s mishap that resulted in a mass migration to other social networks.
I still remember my first Digg front page in 2008; I even printed it out and thought about framing it at that point in my career. Below is the actual data from my first three “Front Pagers” and what I thought would be the best traffic that I could ever drive to a website in a 24 hour time-frame.

In 2008 on a good day the front page of Digg could drive around 30-50 thousand visitors in a 24 hour time span. After the content was off the front page, it often disappeared into oblivion to never be seen again. That was the life of viral marketing back then and a lot of people have said since Digg’s demise that it would never be possible to reach those levels again.
However, I’m here to tell you that in the past two months I have not only reached those levels again, I have completely obliterated the old “Digg Effect”.
Below are the analytics from a single piece of content created for my personal site nearly over two weeks ago geared specifically towards Pinterest. As you can see, there’s a HUGE difference between the two.

Not only did this one piece of content nearly triple the traffic that was produced by the old Digg, but the average time spent on site is nearly 2 minutes and 43 seconds. This is exponentially better than the 12-13 seconds regular content is awarded from going viral on other social networks. The best part about going viral on Pinterest, however, is that once it hits its peak the traffic simply doesn’t stop. With the site’s growth in unique users and ability to “repin” and share, viral content will continue to bring in thousands of daily visitors for up to 3-4 weeks.

So how did I go about getting 46 thousand repins from one piece of content on my personal site? It’s all about the content, baby.
Understanding the Pinterest Community

When I started researching how to better understand the Pinterest community and its users I was met with some criticism. Being told “I’m revoking your man-card” or “you’re wasting your time” were the most frequent. However, as I soon began seeing results my peers began to ask me if I was casting some type of voodoo magic over the Pinterest users. I have played D&D before and I do have a set of dice, however, I am no magic user when it comes to Pinterest.It's not about knowing what women want, it's about knowing what the community wants.
The real secret to understanding the Pinterest community is this: IT’S JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER SOCIAL NETWORK. Just like Digg, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter . . . pictures of cute animals and memes run rampant. While there are some exceptions to this rule, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see something from Reddit hit the popular page of Pinterest. Yes it’s true that throwing up a picture of Ryan Reynolds shirtless or of Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl-ing” a kitten will probably get you thousands of repins, it will never result in any traffic through to your site. The most important thing to remember is that the users of Pinterest are looking to share and repin creative ideas and advice.
There are thousands of infographics being submitted to Pinterest on a daily basis. However, I can count on my hand how many infographics I’ve ever seen make it to the popular page of Pinterest. When it comes to going viral, making the popular page is an absolute necessity in the effectiveness of your content. While infographics might work on every other social network, they just aren’t what the Pinterest users are looking to share. The whole point of infographics is to visually interpret data in a way that’s appealing to the users. While information and knowledge is extremely convenient, it just doesn’t fit in well with the ideals of Pinterest. Every few years there is a change in the trends associated with the design of content for social sites. While infographics have been a hot item for years, they just aren't working at the level I've seen with other content on Pinterest.
That’s why the team at 97th Floor and I are proud to share with you what we believe is the first of a new type of visual content: Instructographics.
Instructographics for Pinterest:

Since the term of “instructographics” has never been used before, I guess I should provide a formal definition. Instructographics are a vertical representation of creative ideas or steps that guides the user to a specific deliverable. It doesn’t matter if it’s a recipe, hairstyle, do-it-yourself project . . . instructographics work on nearly any level. Why do these graphics work better than infographics on Pinterest? It’s simply because the instructographic walks the user through a series of instructions that will result in something useful in real life.

Pinterest is all about the sharing of ideas and the instructographic is the perfect type of content for doing such.
So how does one go about constructing an instructographic? At 97th Floor we use the following methods when setting up one of our many Pinterest marketing campaigns:
Step 1: Find an Idea

For this step it’s pretty simple, just find an idea of a cool concept or creation that you think would go over well in the Pinterest community. The possibilities are endless; however, make sure the idea is something that you’ve never seen before.

Do you have an idea that is just so brilliant that it’s never been seen before? Good, that’s what you’ll need. After you’ve determined exactly what you want to share with the community, get your team together and start brainstorming the processes you’ll need to take to get to a final product. While you could probably make a monster instructographic outlining every single detail, I believe in K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
Step 2: Begin the Design

After you’ve determined exactly what content your instructographic will contain, begin designing a basic step by step vertical guide. It is important to remember to keep the title of your instructographic as visible as possible as it will be the first thing viewed by the users of Pinterest.
Step 3: Upload to your Client Site

Unlike other social networks that give major notice to the URL that the image is uploaded on, Pinterest gives very little attention to this element. As long as the content is remotely similar to the site and looks like it fits it will be just find with Pinterest.
Step 4: Size it Correctly

What’s the difference between 40 visitors to your site from an instructographic and 40,000? The size of your content. As long as your content is longer than 2,500 pixels it will be unreadable by the Pinterest users. Anything smaller and Pinterest will magnify the image so that it's readable on the site (meaning there's no reason to click through to your page). This forces them to click on your submission, through to your page to view the content. If it’s something that’s worth reading and creative, this is a necessity. If it’s longer than 5,000 pixels, then create a simple 300x300 pixel button outlining your graphic. The reason for this is because the “like” and “repin” buttons are at the top of the submission. If they have to scroll too far town to view the entire piece, chances are they aren’t going to scroll up to click on those buttons. For me the ideal image is 600x3000 pixels.
Step 5: Submit and Pin!

When your instructographic is ready to be shared, there are several important elements that you should keep in mind before submitting to Pinterest.
If you're still having troubles understanding the intricacies of the instructographic below is one 97th Floor recently designed for a client which received 14,000+ repins:

The Pinterest Popularity Algorithm

Like every other social network in the realm of the internets, there is a science behind going popular on Pinterest. This is no way considered gaming the Pinterest site, however, it will give your content the best chance possible to make it to the popular board.
Once every piece of content is submitted it is placed onto the top of the specific category pages. Getting to the top of these pages is essential to going viral on Pinterest. Consider these category pages your springboard to the popular page. You do not need an established or aged account to get to the top, however, there are some elements that will block your attempts. Every piece of content is placed onto the top of the category pages barring it doesn’t break any of the following guidelines:

• You’ve submitted within the past hour
  
  • It seems that in an effort to combat spam, Pinterest has limited every user account to ONE piece of content on the category pages per hour. We tell all our clients to hold off on the pinning up to three hours before we’re ready for a content push.

• You’ve hosted your content on Imgur
  
  • I have no idea why Pinterest has done so, but any piece of content hosted on Imgur will not make it to the top of the category pages. I’m guessing this is a maneuver to differentiate themselves from Reddit, however, no one has explained the reasoning quite yet. Just beware if you plan on rehosting content on your site.

Timing the Submission

As with every social network, there is a specific time that you can submit that will give you the best chance of reaching the front or popular pages. Pinterest is no different as their users tend to be more active during different points of the day. The goal as a content creator is to get your content onto the site when it is least competitive yet most effective. With Pinterest this time tends to be between 5-7AM and 5-7PM EST. The reason for this is because the majority of users are either waking up or getting off work to check their Pinterest boards. Since this is the case, you want to submit your content at least one hour beforehand to ensure that it will be visible to the most people at the right time.

Monitoring Your Content

After your content has been submitted to Pinterest and gone viral, it is important that you check the popular boards routinely to see if your content has been rehosted on any different sites or blogs. As the creators of the content you are entitled to every visitor that it receives. Unfortunately sites such as 9Gag have included the “Pin It” button allowing the users to direct 100% of the traffic to their site. I have found that if you ask the user that pinned your content from a site like this to nicely to change the URL, they will abide. While it might seem tedious and time consuming, this is essentially thousands of visitors that your client will be missing out on if you do not follow through.
Conclusion

Pinterest is here to stay and if it’s not in your marketing plans yet, it very well should be. I expect Pinterest to double in size and traffic potential in the coming months. It’s important to remember that while the majority of Pinterest users are women, more men are starting to migrate over due to its easy usability and creative content. Don’t be one of those companies kicking themselves in a few months because you didn’t get in on the trend. They said Facebook would never take over Myspace and Twitter would be useless to social marketing. Experts are saying the same thing about Pinterest right now. I’m here to tell you they’re wrong.

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Posted by Erica McGillivray
It's MozCon time! At SEOmoz, we're proud to announce that tickets for this year's MozCon are on sale now, and our planning is going full-steam ahead. You'll want to put this event on your calendar now.

Join us for a three day deep-dive into advanced search engine optimization, social media, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, analytics, and more.

MozCon 2012 July 25th - July 27th, 2012 at the Westin in Seattle

$899 $699 PRO Members

$1,499 $1,299 Non-PRO

Amazing Content from Industry Leaders

Want to learn something that will blow your mind with awesome? MozCon is the place for you.

"MozCon is like Disneyland for SEOs, jampacked with super-geeky SEO Magic Tricks, and great chances to meet and say hello to others in the search industry." -- Pete Campbell

Speakers for MozCon 2012

• AJ Kohn | Blind Five Year Old
  
• Aleyda Solis | aleydasolis.com
  
• Annie Cushing | SEER Interactive
  
• Cyrus Shepard | Above the Fold
  
• Greg Boser | BlueGlass
  
• Ian Lurie | Portent Interactive
  
• Jen Lopez | SEOmoz
  
• Jessica Bowman | SEOinhouse.com
  
• Joanna Lord | SEOmoz
  
• Jonathon Colman | REI
  
• Jon Henshaw | Raven
  
• Laura Lippay (emcee) | How's Your Pony?
  
• Martin MacDonald | Expedia
  
• Marty Weintraub | aimClear
  
• Matt Peters | SEOmoz
  
• Mike King | iPullRank
  
• Mike Pantoliano | Distilled
  
• Paddy Moogan | Distilled
  
• Pete Meyers | SEOmoz
  
• Rand Fishkin | SEOmoz
  
• Rhea Drysdale | Outspoken Media
  
• Richard Baxter | SEOgadget
  
• Tom Critchlow | Distilled
  
• Wil Reynolds | SEER Interactive

Actionable Tips and Deep Insights

"MozCon is the best online marketing conference I have ever attended. The content is well-rounded and advanced." -- Bekka Palmer, Thunder SEO

We're working hard with our speakers to craft incredible talks just for you. Some of the topics we've been bouncing around, include:

• SEO and Google+
  
• Community as an Inbound Marketing Channel
  
• Cutting Edge Web Spam Research
  
• New Forms of Conversion Rate Optimization
  
• Link Analysis through APIs
  
• SEO Project Management

Roger Mozbot's busy making the schedule and checking it twice. We'll have our full agenda up soon, and you'll find it here.

Three Days and One Amazing Experience

"MozCon 2011 in Seattle was excellent! The new knowledge was plentiful, the planning was primo, and the food was incredible – tons of vegetarian options and lots of snack times! Frequent breaks were necessary to refresh our brains every few hours so we could cram more giant piles of information in." -- Heather Physioc

Besides our programming, MozCon 2012 will give you the chance to meet face-to-face all the Mozzers you've been chatting with in the comments on this blog, in the answers on q&a, by email, customer service questions, or over Twitter.

Grab an engineer and get a hint at a new SEOmoz product. Rickroll Jen in person, or ask Shelly about why someone drew her riding a unicorn on a whiteboard.

And don't forget to hug Roger!





For those of you wondering about the food, have no fear! We'll provide you with breakfast and lunch all three days, appetizers/light meal Wednesday night, and food and drinks at our Thursday night party. Plus, plenty of snackage. You won't go hungry or have to fret about a meal budget.
Celebrate, Moz-Style

After a day of digesting knowledge, put down your laptop and enjoy being in the fabulous city of Seattle and getting to know those who share your passion for organic marketing. We'll be hosting a casual meet-up Wednesday night and a full-on party at the Garage Thursday night. Make some new friends and show off your bowling or pool skills.



Relax at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Seattle

MozCon goers get a discount for the Westin Hotel. And wow, do I have some awesome news for you, the Westin did a big remodel this past winter just for us! (Kidding about that last part.) All their rooms have been refreshed and upgraded. Swanky.

Book your hotel room today!

Plus, if you're coming from the airport, the Westin is an easy-peasy 30 minute LinkLight Rail ride away. Learn more and ditch that rental car.

What's also amazing is that you're within walking distance of Seattle's legendary Pike Place Market, Elliot Bay Waterfront, and... the Mozplex!

"I've been passionately involved in SEO/SEM for nearly a decade, and I can honestly say that MozCon was the most educational 3 days that I've ever experienced in that amount of time. There was a wealth of tangible information and insight that I'm going to be able to utilize in all aspects of SEO. MozCon was simply inspiring." -- Greg Bebezas, OpenText Corporation

Don't Delay as the Early Bird Gets the Best Priced Worm

We listened to your feedback. This year, we're selling early bird priced tickets for 30 days. (Until Wednesday, April 20th at 11:59pm PDT.)

Our early bird pricing will be the largest discount on any ticket to MozCon 2012. If you're looking to save a dime or $200, in this case, purchase your ticket now.

But you don't have to take my word for it...

"I walked into MozCon a great SEO and walked out a thought leader." -- Mike King, iPullRank

Photos by Rudy Lopez

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=yIl2AUoC8zA</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:Y1qxptMqmks:F7zBnMyn0Lo</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:Y1qxptMqmks:V_sGLiPBpWU</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=qj6IDK7rITs</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:Y1qxptMqmks:gIN9vFwOqvQ</img>http://feeds.feedbur.../~4/Q0B7QFt8MI8

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Posted by Erica McGillivray
It's MozCon time! At SEOmoz, we're proud to announce that tickets for this year's MozCon are on sale now, and our planning is going full-steam ahead. You'll want to put this event on your calendar now.

Join us for a three day deep-dive into advanced search engine optimization, social media, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, analytics, and more.

MozCon 2012 July 25th - July 27th, 2012 at the Westin in Seattle

$899 $699 PRO Members

$1,499 $1,299 Non-PRO

Amazing Content from Industry Leaders

Want to learn something that will blow your mind with awesome? MozCon is the place for you.

"MozCon is like Disneyland for SEOs, jampacked with super-geeky SEO Magic Tricks, and great chances to meet and say hello to others in the search industry." -- Pete Campbell

Speakers for MozCon 2012

• AJ Kohn | Blind Five Year Old
  
• Aleyda Solis | aleydasolis.com
  
• Annie Cushing | SEER Interactive
  
• Cyrus Shepard | Above the Fold
  
• Greg Boser | BlueGlass
  
• Ian Lurie | Portent Interactive
  
• Jen Lopez | SEOmoz
  
• Jessica Bowman | SEOinhouse.com
  
• Joanna Lord | SEOmoz
  
• Jonathon Colman | REI
  
• Jon Henshaw | Raven
  
• Laura Lippay (emcee) | How's Your Pony?
  
• Martin MacDonald | Expedia
  
• Marty Weintraub | aimClear
  
• Matt Peters | SEOmoz
  
• Mike King | iPullRank
  
• Mike Pantoliano | Distilled
  
• Paddy Moogan | Distilled
  
• Pete Meyers | SEOmoz
  
• Rand Fishkin | SEOmoz
  
• Rhea Drysdale | Outspoken Media
  
• Richard Baxter | SEOgadget
  
• Tom Critchlow | Distilled
  
• Wil Reynolds | SEER Interactive

Actionable Tips and Deep Insights

"MozCon is the best online marketing conference I have ever attended. The content is well-rounded and advanced." -- Bekka Palmer, Thunder SEO

We're working hard with our speakers to craft incredible talks just for you. Some of the topics we've been bouncing around, include:

• SEO and Google+
  
• Community as an Inbound Marketing Channel
  
• Cutting Edge Web Spam Research
  
• New Forms of Conversion Rate Optimization
  
• Link Analysis through APIs
  
• SEO Project Management

Roger Mozbot's busy making the schedule and checking it twice. We'll have our full agenda up soon, and you'll find it here.

Three Days and One Amazing Experience

"MozCon 2011 in Seattle was excellent! The new knowledge was plentiful, the planning was primo, and the food was incredible – tons of vegetarian options and lots of snack times! Frequent breaks were necessary to refresh our brains every few hours so we could cram more giant piles of information in." -- Heather Physioc

Besides our programming, MozCon 2012 will give you the chance to meet face-to-face all the Mozzers you've been chatting with in the comments on this blog, in the answers on q&a, by email, customer service questions, or over Twitter.

Grab an engineer and get a hint at a new SEOmoz product. Rickroll Jen in person, or ask Shelly about why someone drew her riding a unicorn on a whiteboard.

And don't forget to hug Roger!





For those of you wondering about the food, have no fear! We'll provide you with breakfast and lunch all three days, appetizers/light meal Wednesday night, and food and drinks at our Thursday night party. Plus, plenty of snackage. You won't go hungry or have to fret about a meal budget.
Celebrate, Moz-Style

After a day of digesting knowledge, put down your laptop and enjoy being in the fabulous city of Seattle and getting to know those who share your passion for organic marketing. We'll be hosting a casual meet-up Wednesday night and a full-on party at the Garage Thursday night. Make some new friends and show off your bowling or pool skills.



Relax at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Seattle

MozCon goers get a discount for the Westin Hotel. And wow, do I have some awesome news for you, the Westin did a big remodel this past winter just for us! (Kidding about that last part.) All their rooms have been refreshed and upgraded. Swanky.

Book your hotel room today!

Plus, if you're coming from the airport, the Westin is an easy-peasy 30 minute LinkLight Rail ride away. Learn more and ditch that rental car.

What's also amazing is that you're within walking distance of Seattle's legendary Pike Place Market, Elliot Bay Waterfront, and... the Mozplex!

"I've been passionately involved in SEO/SEM for nearly a decade, and I can honestly say that MozCon was the most educational 3 days that I've ever experienced in that amount of time. There was a wealth of tangible information and insight that I'm going to be able to utilize in all aspects of SEO. MozCon was simply inspiring." -- Greg Bebezas, OpenText Corporation

Don't Delay as the Early Bird Gets the Best Priced Worm

We listened to your feedback. This year, we're selling early bird priced tickets for 30 days. (Until Wednesday, April 20th at 11:59pm PDT.)

Our early bird pricing will be the largest discount on any ticket to MozCon 2012. If you're looking to save a dime or $200, in this case, purchase your ticket now.

But you don't have to take my word for it...

"I walked into MozCon a great SEO and walked out a thought leader." -- Mike King, iPullRank

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=yIl2AUoC8zA</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:gp1HyrOlaEw:F7zBnMyn0Lo</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:gp1HyrOlaEw:V_sGLiPBpWU</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=qj6IDK7rITs</img> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=Q0B7QFt8MI8:gp1HyrOlaEw:gIN9vFwOqvQ</img>http://feeds.feedbur.../~4/Q0B7QFt8MI8

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Posted by psharp
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
“It’s official, Google is broken and my career is over. Time to hide under my desk.”
A bit extreme? Yes. But, if you saw what I saw a month ago, your reaction would’ve been exactly the same. Let me explain.
It was 5:55 pm and I was getting ready to go home after a good day’s work at Practice Fusion. “Let’s just do a quick Google search for Practice Fusion so I can give myself a high five before I head home.” That’s when the panic started.
Here’s what my non-personalized search for Practice Fusion pulled up in position #1:

Do you see what I see?! Ranking #1 for the term Practice Fusion isn’t our high-converting, very helpful homepage….it’s our rarely looked at, poor converting Executive Team page! OMG to the extreme! Plus, where the heck did our Google+ page go?
First thought: “Breathe. Crawl out from under desk.”
Second thought: “Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Google knows I’m in San Francisco.”

“Let’s change that to ‘United States’ and see what happens.”

Aww, that’s more like it. Seeing these results is like being reunited with a best friend, or some really good hot chocolate – it’s warm and soothes the soul. PracticeFusion.com is back on top, and our Google+ profile is showing up. Nice.
Then I tried changing my city to Oakland, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and New York. Every time I got my good results. Why the heck was the location of San Francisco giving me such a hard time?
“Are you responsible for this Lou Seal?!”

“Okay. Good.”
Still in a bit of disbelief I wandered over to Google Analytics to check a few things. First, I wanted to see where natural search visitors to our Executive Team page were coming from. Were most of them from San Francisco?

Short answer: yup.
Next, I wanted to see if the natural search visitors to the Executive Team page were coming in from the Practice Fusion keyword. It turns out that ALL visitors to the Executive Team page came in by searching for Practice Fusion.
Clearly, something is happening. Or, as Martin Lawrence would say…

Normally I’m all for Google local results, but this just seems wrong. Why would someone in San Francisco want to see our Executive Team page over our home page? It seems like a really bad user experience, especially since the Executive Team page has less authority (by far) than our home page.
Executive Page

Home Page

Why was Google doing this? Was it something I said?

Apparently, Google thinks that the Executive Team page will be a good result for people in San Francisco. But, why do they think this? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?”
“The world may never know.”

However, after a lot of research, here’s my best guess. And, believe me, it’s a bit surprising.

Under certain conditions, Google will swap a sitelink for the main search result.

Yup, I said it.
Here’s how I tested it.
On February 7^th I went into the “Sitelinks” section of Google Webmaster Tools and demoted the Executive Team page as a sitelink for our homepage URL. I was working a hunch.

After a few weeks went by, I looked at the results.
Visits to the Executive Team Page from San Francisco

As you can see, about a week and a half after demoting the Executive Team page from sitelinks, it no longer shows up as the first result (even if you’re in San Francisco) and the visits to that page go to zero.

This must mean that Google feels comfortable bumping a sitelink up to the main search result!
But why bump up the Executive Team Page? It’s only a guess, but it looks like it’s because of the sites linking to that page. Of the external sites with links pointing to the Executive Team page, 60% of them have “San Francisco” at least once on the page. Of the sites linking to our home page, only 29% of them mention “San Francisco”. Perhaps this is influencing Google.
Conclusions

• Under certain conditions, Google will bump a sitelink up to the main search result. Potentially, and sneakily, costing you conversions.
  
• One of those conditions might be the content of the sites linking to you and the location of the person searching.

Suggestion

Look in analytics to find the landing pages for your branded searches. If they’re not going to your home page, it might have something to do with your sitelinks. Check it out, you might just save yourself some conversions.

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