Some amazing information about the Google algorithm can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/google-historical-data-patent

All the information is from these sources:

1. The patent from US Patent and Trademark Office - US Patent #20050071741 – Information retrieval based on historical data
2. From SEOChat Forums - Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data – Sandbox Explanation, Aging Delay?
3. From Threadwatch - Google’s War on SEO – Documented
4. From SearchEngineWatch Forums - Does New Google Patent Validate Sandbox Theory?
5. From HighRankings Forum - New Google Patent, Must Read
6. From SERoundtable - Sandbox Explained by Google? “Information retrieval based on historical data”
7. From Search Science (Xan Porter) - New Google patent proves “sandbox” exists

I, like most developers love the idea of one day having all web browsers display content in exactly the same way, not just because of browser standards, but because of HTML/XHTML standards as well. So this article on A List Apart really intrigued me.

Molly makes several arguments that I think we would all agree with. If you found that article interesting, I would suggest checking out a couple other of the “A List Apart” articles. They are all very well written and meaningful to read.

So many well thought out insights that we come across in our daily work lives – like the separation of content and form argument.

This could keep me busy for a long time.

According to research by Hitwise, as of December 2008, the top four search engines are (in order) Google (72.07%), Yahoo (17.79%), MSN (4.10%) and then Ask (3.15%). Each of these search engines provides a method for you to track how your site is doing in their results.

1. The first step is to make sure you have a robots.txt file and that it allows search engines to index your site.
2. The next step is to setup a sitemap, based on the sitemap protocol. This gives the major search engines a list of what pages you would like indexed and how you would like them to be indexed.

With those two steps complete the major search engines will be able to better find and index your content. To track how your site’s indexing is going for each engine, the steps are pretty much the same. Create a login, verify you own the site through either creating a file on your site or updating a meta tag, submitting a sitemap, and then tracking results:

• Google: Google.com by far the most popular search engine, provides Google Webmaster Tools. I like Google’s tools the best, as it not only provides statistics, but lets you view how individual pages, if there are any indexing errors, and allows you to diagnose your site. I think it provides the most information and I use it in combination with Google Analytics to track my traffic results.
• Yahoo: Yahoo.com provides Yahoo Site Explorer for its users to track their sites indexing. This tool provides a method to submit a sitemap and see your site indexing statistics but not much else. I still have an account registered to track how I am doing statistically.
• MSN: MSN.com provides Webmaster Tools to access indexing information. They provide a cross between Google and Yahoo tools as far as depth of information goes. While they have more information than just the statistics offered by Yahoo, it is not to par with Google’s offering.
• Ask: Ask.com does not provide a webmaster login but states that simply creating the appropriate robots.txt and sitemap files are all you need to do to help your listings. More information about Ask.com sitemap submission here.

Using these tools, why it will not increase your search ranking, will help you see how you are doing and diagnose areas of improvement. They are great tools to see how different SEO techniques are improving how your site is indexed.

The method I was using is no longer working. Google returns a “Forbidden” message now.

It was previously using the return from this link: http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=6488814576&features=Rank&q=info:www.matthewstevenkelly.com

What is your websites Google Page Rank? A sites page rank shows how important Google says it is for search results. The higher the page rank, the higher and more likely the page will display in a search. Additionally, every page has its own individual page rank. With a good internal site linking structure when one page obtains a higher page rank it will pass it on to all other pages in your site. You should check your home page as well as many different pages throughout your site to see what your overall page ranking is.

Wikipedia actually has a great overly technical description of the page rank algorithm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

This site has a few sections that need to be secure when data is transmitted between the server and local computer. I implement an SSL certificate to accomplish this encryption. However, the issue arose as to how I ensured every time someone visited those pages they were using SSL. If I forgot even a single link to those pages and left the link as http:// instead of https:// users would get to the page unsecured. Additionally a user could always simply manually enter the URL into their web browser’s address bar without the https:// as well. The solution of course is for the web server to detect if the user is viewing the secured page with http:// and redirect them to https:// if they are.

Server Requirements:

1. Apache web server
2. Uncomment the mod_rewrite LoadModule call (LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so) in the httpd.conf file
3. Make sure AllowOverride is set to “All” instead of “None” in the Directory section of the httpd.conf file

Since this site is powered using Apache web server I can perform this switch over using mod_rewrite and the .htaccess file:

All you need to do is create a file called “.htaccess” with the above contents and put it in the directory of your web server you need to switch to SSL (remember that your server must first be configured to use SSL). This is a great feature for webstores, etc. Simply create a directory called “secure”, place all of your web store files in that directory along with the above .htaccess file and you have just ensured your web store is always using encrypted HTTPS communication. The alternative, trying to manage every link into the web store pages, is a nightmare (I’ve done it before).

Take note that since Windows will not allow a file without a name stored on your hard drive, you will need to name the file “htaccess.txt” locally and then rename it after uploading it to the web server using the FTP program used during upload.

I always found tag clouds interesting. I think it will be fun to watch this “cloud” grow as posts continue.

So why is this in the SEO section? Tag clouds organize your pages into categories that cater to the specific word they are targeting. They are the Web 2.0 version of keywords. They add navigability to the site which helps both search engines crawl your pages, but more importantly, users trying to find the material that is relevant to them. Click on the word “SEO” below to see all the posts related to… SEO.

It should be noted that tag clouds aren’t just for blogs, they work for any site with lots of content. Large corporate sites that use tags include Amazon and Flickr. If your site utilizes the pretty much useless meta-keywords (which has been defunct for years but is still somehow touted by “SEO Experts”), now is the time to upgrade to tags and the power of the tag cloud to bring usability and improved navigation to your site. Add the SEO benefits, and it’s a no-brainer.

I just updated my web site pages with the new Google Analytics tracking code snippet. It fixes a rare javascript pop-up error message by using a try-catch snippet. If you are familiar with object oriented programming languages, try-catch statements are nothing new. If you aren’t familiar… well the Google article gives you everything you need to know.

For more on javascript try catch statements:
http://www.w3schools.com/jS/js_try_catch.asp

Have you updated your snippets?

Technology is changing fast, and to become complacent is to risk irrelevance. Here are some of the methods I use to keep in touch with how technology is ever changing:

• Participating in Experts-Exchange. This has me answering questions in a wide range of technological areas. To solve many of these problems I need to research the solution, and try it out on my own before posting an appropriate response. This gives me a lot of hands on experience and keeps me finding new and different solutions to ever changing problems of the computer world.
• Subscribing to multiple Microsoft blogs via RSS on MSDN and Technet, such as the Microsoft Security Response Center blog. I read blogs like these daily to get the latest information on what is going on in the industry. By setting these kind of blogs onto my homepage with an RSS reader I am able to get information from multiple sources and read further about titles that interest me. I also subscribe to email alerts, such as the Microsoft Security bulletin to keep up with new security threats to PC systems. Microsoft doesn’t dominate the blogosphere, however, and other great blogs that I subscribe to including Google’s Matt Cutts. He posts a lot of innovative information about google and other search engine topics.
• Using and participating in organizations that promote technology standards. I am a large proponent of HTML standardization and other such efforts to bring standards to technology implementation.
• Using multiple web browsers. As of this post I have Internet Explorer 8 beta, Firefox 3, Google Chrome and Apple Safari for Windows. Right now I use Chrome, but as updates are added to other browsers, I may change. For a long time I used IE and then switched to Firefox before settling on Chrome when it was released. I use these installs to verify how webpages I code appear in different browsers. This is also very helpful when trying to solve a browser specific issue for a friend or on Experts-Exchange.
• Furthering my education, by working on technological certifications. The biggest one I am working on right now is the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certification. More will definitely come after that one is completed.

How do you stay up to date?

Tonight I passed the W3 Schools HTML certification correctly answering 66 out of 70 questions. The certification can be verified here:
http://www.refsnesdata.no/certification/cert_diploma_html.asp
Username: matt@matthewstevenkelly.com

The HTML Developer Certificate is for developers who want to document their knowledge of HTML 4.01, XHTML, and CSS.

To pass the examination the developer must have a fundamental knowledge of:

• The Hypertext Markup Language – HTML 4.01
• The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language – XHTML 1.0
• Cascading Style Sheets – CSS1 and CSS2

It is based off of the standards produced by the World Wide Web Consortium

More infomation about the Consortium can be found here

The most important aspect of a website’s search position (beyond of course its content – which is and should be considered the most important) is its search engine friendly-ness.

Here are a few ways to make sure your website is search engine friendly:

1. Provide meaningful content. This is by far the most important factor. No matter how well formatted your website is, without meaningful cohesive content, no one will link to it or view it, and inbound links are very important for successful SEO. I found this little gem on highrankings.com: Without any links at all pointing towards your site not only will it not rank very well, but it won’t even stay in the index. Tis the way of the web. The search engines expect people to link to things those people find to be of value. So if no one ever links to your site they make the (correct) assumption that it has no value to their users. – Randy. Please keep in mind that only relevant links really improve your rankings, and therefore link farms and paid links, etc are generally a bad idea.
2. Check for broken links. These not only appear unprofessional to web visitors, they hamper a search engines ability to index your site. There are many commercial programs which can automatically and periodically check your site. Free web services exist as well: http://validator.w3.org/checklink
3. Make sure your HTML/XMTL and CSS is standards compliant. This helps solve a lot of display issues when visitors with alternative (non-Internet Explorer) browsers view your website. It also ensures search engine crawlers will be able to properly decode your site for their indexes. For HTML validation see: http://validator.w3.org/. For CSS validation see: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
4. Analyze your pages for speed and performance. This is more for search engines than for users with slow internet connections. The faster a search engine can spider through your site, the more pages and more often they can index your content. Check out analyzers like this one:
   http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
5. Make good use of HTML structural elements. This means having descriptive title meta tags that match your page content, using heading tags (h1, h2, h3) for important title text on the page, keeping stylistic elements in a separate CSS file, using alt tags for images, among other things. This helps search engines understand the overall intentions of your content, and therefore index it better, bringing more relevant results to its users.
6. Create a sitemap. This lets search engines know what pages are available for indexing, and can help get new pages indexed quicker. The standard major search engines use is sitemaps.org
7. Track your progress and results. This will help you adapt your content to what your visitors are attracted to your site for. Google Analytics is a great tool: http://www.google.com/analytics/. Simply add a small javascript tag to your sites pages and you will have instant access to information such as what your viewer audience is like and what they are interested in on your site. It is a very powerful tool, and even more powerful when you trend results over several months, so get started right away!
8. Keep up to date. Read SEO blogs. Participate in SEO forums. Search engines are constantly changing, and therefore search engine optimization is a fluid process as well. I personally recommend these blogs.

What methods do you use for your site?