Wednesday, 14 March 2012
The role of pigment in the printing inks - Blog
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Friday, 13 January 2012
Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories
Matt Cutts and I have a beautiful relationship - I relentlessly pester him and he gives me answers to questions that are pestering webmasters. It's a cross between symbiotic and vampirical (vampiristic?). Thankfully, Matt has once again let me suck away some of his precious time to address some big issues. After this, I think I'll let him have a rest and probably go after poor Tim (his website is so lonely).
I've posted a list of six questions I asked Matt, 3 of which he answered (answers, or lack of answers, are in bold). This is followed by some discussion on these and other topics that warrant a mention, and may be serious news to many folks (they certainly were to me).
- Why was John Chow's website (johnchow.com) penalized in the Google search results?
- A) John engaged in manipulative link acquisition (buying links, affiliate linking, etc)
- B) John's site consistently provided links to paying companies without using nofollow
- C) John's site engaged in other manipulative practices on-page – cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc.
- D) He said mean things about Google and we're soft-shelled here at the 'plex
- E) No answer provide by Matt
- Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love?
- A) Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages
_
(Matt's precise words were: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt'ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There's no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow'ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.)
_ - B) Sometimes – we don't generally encourage this behavior, but if you're linking to user-generated content pages on your site who's content you may not trust, nofollow is a way to tell us that
- C) No – nofollow is intended to say "I don't editorially vouch for the source of this link." If you're placing un-trustworthy content on your site, that can hurt you whether you use nofollow to link to those pages or not.
- A) Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages
- If I have a website in Spanish that serves Spanish speakers in Mexico, Spain, Latin America & the United States, how does Google recommend that I tell them my content is relevant to searches in all of those countries?
- A) Host a single site in any country you want, but use a general domain extension like .com, .net, .org, etc. Then, acquire links from sites in all of those markets and Google will realize that your content is intended for an international, Spanish-speaking audience
- B) Build a website for each country, but host them anywhere so long as they are registered with the proper top level domain. Feel free to use the same content on each, as duplicate content filters only apply to a single country.
- C) Build multiple websites for each country, host them individually in each country, register them on different top level domains and create unique content for each (even though the content might technically be exactly the same). Then, link build and market each site in each individual country separately. Don't interlink excessively between these sites.
- D) Use a single site for now and target your largest potential market. Then, give us some time to work on this issue – we'll have greater functionality for single sites targeting multiple countries/languages in the near future.
- E) No answer provide by Matt
- Google has noted in the past that a maximum of 100 links per page was wise and would insure that all of the links on a page would be crawled. Does this rule still apply or is there some flexibility?
- A) The rule is still a good one – even very important pages with lots of PageRank should stay away from linking to more than 100 other pages.
- B) There's some flexibility. If you have a high PageRank page with lots of link juice, we may spider well beyond 100 links per page – possibly even 2-300 depending on how valuable we feel that page to be.
- C) The rule really only applies to pages of low importance/PageRank. Googlebot now regularly can crawl 150-200 links per page without breaking a sweat and those numbers can be even higher for pages we consider particularly important.
- D) Although we may crawl more than 100 links per page (maybe even many hundreds), we don't recommend linking to that many because of the dilution of link juice that occurs. Instead, use sub-navigation pages to help ease the link per page burden.
- E) B & D
_
Matt's exact words - The "keep the number of links to under 100" is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we're not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that's less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it's a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don't overwhelm regular users.
- What is Google's position on the value of generic web directories that market to webmasters as a way to boost link strength, PageRank and relevance? Would you largely agree or disagree with my assertions about the value of generic web directories on the subject?
- A) While Google certainly feels that many directories are valuable, those that are built with SEO purposes in mind are generally viewed as somewhat manipulative and we make an effort to see that their value is limited. We're generally in agreement with your post.
- B) Google doesn't treat SEO directory sites any differently than any other sites – if their PageRank is high and their content is relevant, we pass just as much link value and anchor text weight as any other similar link. So, we differ a bit in opinion with your post.
- C) Mostly A with a little B
_
Matt's exact words - We tend to look more at the quality of a directory than whether it is SEO-related. Of course, plenty of directories that are targeted only for SEO don't add that much value in my experience. I talked about some of the factors that we use to assess the quality of a directory in an earlier post athttp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
_
"Q: Hey, as long as we're talking about directories, can you talk about the role of directories, some of whom charge for a reviewer to evaluate them?
A: I'll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I'd ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn't speak well to the quality of
the directory.
- If there is a fee, what's the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.
_
Those are a few factors I'd consider. If you put on your user hat and ask "Does this seem like a high-quality directory to me?" you can usually get a pretty good sense as well, or ask a few friends for their take on a particular directory."
- Are pages with "noarchive" treated any differently than those without the tag?
- A) Yes, Google may not treat links, content or other factors on a page the same if it has the "noarchive" tag.
- B) No, these pages are treated the same as a page that permits us to archive.
- C) No answer provided by Matt
BTW - For the remaining unaswered questions, Matt responded:
The rest deserve longer answers and I'm too swamped to do a full reply, or the question is not how I'd pose it, so multiple answers (or none) could apply or the answer is more nuanced.
So, I guess I need to work on my question-posing abilities.
Here are the big takeaway points from my perspective:
- Nofollow is now, officially, a "tool" that power users and webmasters should be employing on their sites as a way to control the flow of link juice and point it in the very best directions. Good architectural SEO has always had some internal link structuring work involved, but nofollow and Matt's position on it makes it clear that for those of us who are professionals, we can be use it intelligently without a downside risk.
- For pages with many, many links, sticking close to 100 links per page is probably still a very good idea, though high PR and link juice pages can certainly get more pages spidered. I note that on a page like the Web 2.0 Awards, well over 200 links are being followed and passing link juice (at least from what I can see).
- Directories (and all websites) that link out need to be very, very careful of who they link to, as this is a big way that Google's algorithmically identifying and discounting paid and other types of links they don't want to count. For really solid evidence on this, check out SEOmoz's ownrecommended list - the page is indexed at Google, but can't rank for its full title tag, we're not even ranking for the phrase in quotes. Why? I'm almost sure it's because of someone on the list that we're linking out to that Google doesn't like. I don't think that's a hand penalty - I think it's algorithmic. Full disclosure on this - SEOmoz used to be a directory operator, with a junky piece of crap called SOCEngine. We've officially shut it down at this point, even though it's been barely active for the last 2 years, as it would be totally hypocritical to operate a low quality directory and then proclaim that they're not worth paying for.
2012 Will Divide SEO Practitioners Into Two Camps
A lot has changed this year in SEO. Google’s algorithm has always had changes, but this year ushered in perhaps some of the biggest and most important changes that will segment SEO professionals right down the middle. This isn’t about the old white hat versus black hat division either. This post will fundamentally redefine what a 2012 SEO professional should look like while identifying the cause of the division. So, what is causing SEOs to be divided into two camps?
Important Google Algorithm Changes & Noteworthy Search News
- Google Caffeine Announced (Jun 2010)
- Google & Bing Admit to Using Social Signals (Dec 2010)
- Google Panda Announced (Feb 2011)
- J.C. Penney, Forbes & Overstock.com get caught doing black hat link building (Feb 2011)
- Google +1 Launched (Mar 2011)
- Subsequent Panda Updates 2 – 2.5.2 (Apr – Oct 2011)
- SEOmoz Releases 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors Report (Jun 2011)
- Google+ Social Media Platform Launches (Jun 2011)
- Google Limits Keyword Search Query Info (Oct 2011)
- Google+ Pages Launched (Nov 2011)
- Google Caffeine Update “Freshness” (Nov 2011)
SEO Implications
On the surface, the above individual updates might not seem like a big deal. However, collectively they throw a monkey wrench into the work of the traditional “Technical SEO” professional.
Due to the above, aggressive link building becomes much more risky. Content lacking brand and social signals becomes less important. Duplicate, poorly written and keyword stuffed content become pariahs. Content lacking freshness is less likely to rank well. Lastly, tracking SEO results have become more difficult due to Google’s SSL rules.
Camp 1: The Technical SEO
These are the traditional SEO practitioners. The people who owned the first page of the SERPs for most of the last 10 years. Many of them still own the SERPs today. However, it’s becoming much harder to maintain and they’re seeing their high rankings begin to fall. The Technical SEO is an expert at all things on-page and off-page.
They also tend to be experts on the programming side of search engine optimization and can rattle off dozens of obscure, yet tiny, algorithm-effecting technical tactics. In some regards, their tactics can be considered “gaming” the algorithm. They’re also experts at reading analytics.
A subset of The Technical SEO is the black hat practitioner and most of these folks don’t subscribe to content is king values.
Camp 2: The Inbound Marketer
The Inbound Marketer is a hybrid of three disciplines – Technical SEO, social media marketing and content marketing. Gianluca Fiorelli coined this SEO practitioner as the Inbounder in his SEOmoz article, Wake Up SEOs, the New Google is Here.
This new 2012 breed of SEO practitioner is best prepared to take advantage of Google’s changes mentioned above. They are best positioned to achieve the highest rankings for the largest number of keywords for the campaigns they work on over time.
Dan Zarrella, in The Science of SEO, recommended to companies not selling pills, poker or porn to hire content writers and producers in lieu of technical SEO practitioners. This recommendation bolsters the SEO camp of the future – The Inbound Marketer.
Marketing Take-a-way
Which camp will you fall into in 2012? Here’s a better question – As a company, which SEO practitioner will you hire in 2012?
It is very important for you to vet any and all SEO vendors in the future to determine which camp they reside in. Otherwise, you may burn through your marketing budget for very short-term ranking results instead of building momentum for long-term sustainable rankings. Worst case, you may wander too many deviations from Google’s algorithmic mean and get banished from the SERPs altogether.
For help making the transition from Technical SEO to the Inbound Marketer, download our Blogging Optimization Playbook. It contains technical SEO, social media optimization and content marketing tactics.
Image: Leo Rynolds
Venn Diagram: SEOmoz
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Stamping tools
Stamping tools are hard tools made with hard materials like steel. Usually hot stamping die is used for stamping metal surfaces. Die is the tooling used to produce a stamped part. A die set assembly has male and female components that actually produce the shaped stamping. Stamping die stamps the design on the metallic surface by using moulding process.
Stamping can be fun when done right. But, you have to have the right stamping tool for precision metal stamping. Latest stamping methods are affordable and provide creative stamping solutions. Stamping tools can be used for stamping metal, foils, wood, leather and plastic. Stamping tools companies usually provide.
Metal Stamping:
Metal stamping tools and stamping dies are used to produce high volume sheet metal parts using press. Parts can be stamped from any ductile metal to create and achieve almost any desired configuration.
Metal stamping is generally performed on materials .020" to .080" thick with tolerances to ±.001. The process also can be applied to foils as thin as .001". Stamping is also done by machine press. The metal is placed between the press plates and pressed against each other. This deforms the metal into the desired shape.
Die Hot Stamping:
The Die Hot Stamping process is described as relief printing and as the name implies uses printing plates with raised images. Hot stamping is used in graphic arts, plastics and packaging industries. Die hot stamping is versatile. It can print onto all wettable materials - paper and board, thermoplastics and duroplastics, leather, textiles, wood and many other materials.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Laser Toner Cartridges Tips
Laser toner cartridges are acclimated in laser printers, fax machines and copiers to aftermath a ample aggregate of clear adamantine copies. Laser toners are accessible in assorted colors admitting atramentous is the best accepted aback atramentous toners are hardly added big-ticket than atramentous toners. There are several types of toner cartridges; they accommodate remanufactured cartridges, OEM printer cartridges, accordant toner cartridges and toner refills. They all accept their advantages. Remanufactured toner cartridges are professionally fabricated and additionally accommodated all the requirements in affection and reliability. Back alive on a bound account a being can advance in these cartridges, which may not be cast fresh but aftermath about agnate after-effects to fresh cartridges. Not alone do remanufactured cartridges save the user a cogent aggregate of money but are also, friendlier to the environment, aback the action of remanufacturing keeps the cartridges chargeless from landfills. Laser cartridges are acceptable for active offices aback they accredit the user to book added copies than added cartridges. They can be acclimated on best if not all types of press papers. Laser cartridges are economical aback they aftermost continued and affairs them calm with remanufactured inkjet and printer armament recycling or refills allows the client to save at atomic 50%. Photocopier and fax suppliers are additionally offered at actual reasonable prices.
There are several advantages of affairs Toronto laser toner cartridges, fax food and added armament accompanying food anon from the internet. Primarily, the affection of the cartridges is affirmed to altogether accommodated or alike beat its requirements. They accommodate affection articles whether they are remanufactured toner cartridges or cast new. Best online suppliers aback up their articles with warranties and a complete chump achievement guarantee. Online suppliers additionally accommodate cogent discounts and the user saves alike added back affairs aggregate atramentous or atramentous toner cartridges. A being can absolutely abate amount added by affairs bushing kits. Online suppliers additionally accept a advanced array of bushing kits and cartridges from best of the above brands and a user is not acceptable to absence whatever alternative they are in need.
The accessibility of affairs backup cartridges and accepting them delivered is allotment of the accomplished account accustomed from online suppliers. If a user is not annoyed with the achievement of a dell toner cartridges or any added food he or she can acknowledgment them for a fresh one. This additionally applies to those that shop for cartridges that accept been remanufactured. If they acquisition that they do not accomplish to the accepted of aboriginal cast articles they are appropriate to acknowledgment them and access a replacement. Online supplier's admonition their buyers on how to shop for articles from altered brands in the appropriate combinations and accommodate accepted advice on which cartridges are acceptable for accurate printers.