FEATURE: Branding, SEO & The Vince Update

by Fernando Chavez, April 15, 2009

Over the past couple of months there has been a lot of discussion in the SEO world about Google's "Vince" update. Although the change occurred in the second half of January, the discussion in the wider SEO community did not begin until Aaron Wall posted a blog entry on February 25th about Google seemingly placing "heavy emphasis" on branding in their search results (http://www.seobook.com/google-branding). Google, through Matt Cutts, confirmed that an algorithm change did occur. However, Matt stopped short of calling it an update, labeling it instead a "simple change".

Regardless of what you call it, a change did occur in January to Google's algorithm and it did affect the rankings for some queries. But what changed? Does Google prefer branded sites now? And most importantly, is there anything that you should do differently for SEO?

Despite the ranking shifts that were pointed out in Aaron's original post, I don't feel that we should assume Google intentionally increased the rankings of branded sites. I think that the most reasonable explanation is that they made a change that was intended to eliminate the effectiveness of certain spam. At the same time, they may have increased the relevancy value of certain SEO factors that would have influenced big brands as well. The side effect of two such tweaks could very easily be an increase in rankings for branded sites for certain keywords.

Although I spent an entire weekend contemplating the issue, I came back to the office on Monday confident that something more logical (at least in my mind) was in play. Whenever I'm debating a Google algorithm issue, the question I always ask myself is what makes most sense from a search quality standpoint. In the case of branding and its potential effect on rankings, does putting an emphasis on brands improve Google's results? I would argue that it doesn't. While emphasizing certain brands might be more helpful for some searches, it certainly would not make the results better for every potential query out there. And Google will rarely make such an algorithm update unless they are confident that it will improve search results across the board.

Not Update for Brands

I got validation for my initial conclusions while doing research for a segment that I recorded with Susan and Virginia on SEM Synergy (jump to the last six minutes). During my research, I came across a video that Matt Cutts made as part of the GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube account that was created at the beginning of this year (http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp). In the video, Matt answered a question from a user about the tweak mentioned in Aaron's blog. Watch it now if you haven't already.

As is typical of Matt and everyone at Google, he was not specific in his answer. However, he did say a few things that I think are noteworthy. Here are several quotes that I found particularly interesting (in order):

"We don't really think about brands. We think about words like trust, authority, reputation, PageRank, high-quality ... "

"And so the Google philosophy on search results has been the same pretty much forever."

"But it affects a relatively small number of queries ... it's not like it affects a ton of long-tail queries."

"I don't think of it as putting more weight on brands. We really don't think about 'brands' in search-quality that much."

"But it's not that we always try to return brands, we try to return whatever we think the best results are for users."

"And so what you should be doing doesn't change."

Conspiracy theorists will say that of course Google is not going to say that they do not think about brands. They wouldn't tell us what they did, right? Although I agree that Google is not going to say what they did, I've also found in my experience that they don't directly lie. They are often vague when they don't want to tell us something, but I've never seen evidence of them outright lying. The quotes above are fairly direct in my opinion, at least when it comes to branding.

Other Possible Explanations

So if Google didn't set out to improve the rankings of branded sites, what did they do exactly? I can think of two relatively simple tweaks that could have been made that would have improved the rankings of established brands:

• They increased the relative value of link age and/or domain age. Well-known brands in general have been online much longer than a lot of other sites. Thus, many of the links going to those sites would be older, increasing their relative value compared to links to newer sites.
• Google may have increased the value of text content that's on the linking page outside of the anchor text. They may have also slightly decreased the value of anchor text. It's also possible that they did both. The end result of any of these three scenarios would be that branded sites that had a lot of links from relevant pages but bad anchor text would have seen a bump.

Both of these tweaks would be pretty common and are quite possible. Another scenario that is slightly more far fetched is that Google has now found a way to associate certain words that appear together often, even if there is no link going to any particular domain. For example, let's consider one of the examples mentioned by Aaron in his post. Radio Shack's Web site started ranking for the phrase "electronics" after this change was made. Interestingly, it now ranks #1 for that keyword.

The two possibilities I mentioned above would have helped Radio Shack. However, by doing some searches in Google you can see that "electronics" and "Radio Shack" have been used an extraordinarily large number of times on the same page. Take a look at the following Google queries:

"radio shack" electronics -site:radioshack.com (≅2.5 million results)
intitle:"radio shack" intitle:electronics -site:radioshack.com (≅4,000 results)

The first query returns all the pages in Google's index on which "radio shack" and electronics both appear on the page. The second query returns all the pages in Google's index that have "radio shack" and the word electronics in their Title tags. The number of results for both of these results is pretty high considering I eliminated pages from the Radio Shack Web site.

The interesting thing that I found when I reviewed a lot of the results from these queries was that many of them did not actually link to www.radioshack.com. This tells me that Google is possibly viewing these terms as related or synonymous in some way and thus the Radio Shack site is getting a bump for that query. I can't think of how it could be programmed algorithmically, so it's hard for me to say that's exactly what's going on. However, that would certainly explain a jump from nowhere in the top 10 to number 1 in the last few months. The ranking factors I mentioned would have had to have been turned up tremendously in terms of relevancy value to account for that type of jump.

Assuming this type of association is what is coming into play, it could explain why Matt would have said that the change "affects a relatively small number of queries ... it's not like it affects a ton of long-tail queries." It's much less likely that Radio Shack would appear so often with long-tail keywords. Thus, they wouldn't start ranking for any long-tail terms as a result of the change.

Change in SEO Strategy?

Regardless of what was actually changed by Google, the most important thing to do is determine if the change alters your SEO strategy. I always ask myself the following question when I learn about something Google tweaked: does this change what I do? Nine times out of ten, it does not.

There aren't too many things that will have a significant effect on your site's rankings. Increasing internal relevancy is as simple as tweaking Title tags and non-hyperlinked body content and combining that with optimal internal linking. Once you've finished that process, you'll want to extend upon your strategy by adding inbound links from related third-party sites. When it comes to the SEO for a particular keyword, there's not much else to it. The only thing that changes is how effective each of these things is. But regardless of how much Google discounts these things by tweaking their relative value, these core factors are still the shortest path to optimal rankings.

This recent update does not give me any more reason to recommend branding than I did before. Successfully creating a brand for yourself or your company should always be a goal because it is good marketing practice. However, SEO should never be your main purpose. Keep in mind that SEO benefits would only come from successful branding, not any attempt at branding that you throw out there. In my estimation, the only way branding can possibly affect your site's rankings for a particular query is if your brand becomes essentially synonymous with the search query. So much so that the keyword you are targeting appears on Web pages with your brand name throughout Google's index. But that is a long-term byproduct of successful branding that will happen naturally. You won't be able to make it happen.

For permission to reprint or reuse any materials, please contact us. To learn more about our authors, please visit the Bruce Clay Authors page. Copyright © 2009 Bruce Clay, Inc.

BACK TO BASICS: XML Sitemaps Defined

Part One: Pairing Traditional Site Maps with XML Sitemaps

By Bradley Leese, April 15, 2009

At Bruce Clay, Inc, one of the things that we strive to do in our everyday client work with is getting the pages that we consider important into the search engines. In order to provide the search engines the most complete look at what is in a site and give those pages the best chance to be indexed, it's necessary to create maps of your site's pages. There are two ways of doing this. The traditional way is to create an HTML site map but in recent years search engines have developed the XML Sitemap protocol to assist in spidering. Google in particular has embraced the format and created several variations that enable them to easily discover all manner of content varieties. The first part of this two-part series merely outlines the basic differences between HTML site maps and XML Sitemaps and gets you started on creating your own XML Sitemaps. The second will tackle the variations that Google has created in order to better help you serve them content.

HTML Site Map Page(s)

A traditional HTML site map communicates to site users and search engine spiders how the site's information is organized. Essentially, the purpose of the site map is to document the site content relevance. If a site owner identifies errors when attempting to match the site map to the structure of the site and reveals that the information is confusing or in an unempirical format, the site needs to be reorganized in order to provide clear subject expertise. HTML site maps are extremely important for usability. Your visitors will find your site map when they can't use or don't understand your navigation.

Take a moment to view Google's site map for a clearer understand of their recommendations in their Webmaster Guidelines section.

Webmasters FAQ Getting Listed Googlebot Guidelines Incorrect Listing Rank Questions Removals SEOs Submit your site Webmaster Central

Site Map Restrictions

HTML site maps' purpose was always to lead the search engines to identify and (hopefully) conclude that the site's navigation and content were proof alone that the site was worthy of high keyword rankings. There are many limitations with the HTML format, not least of which is the somewhat restrictive format that Google outlines in its webmaster guidelines:

Design and Content Guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Make sure that your <title< elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML.
• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Large sites will have trouble fitting their entire site within the confines of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and documented above and, of course, Bruce Clay writers have long offered solutions on how to combat these obvious issues. Following the design guidelines exactly leads to either not listing every page on your site in your site map, or creating nested site maps that may not be crawled entirely. Either way, most site maps are just pages of links with good anchor text but very little in the way of content.

The most important thing to know about using site maps successfully is that Google does not expect you to list every page on your site within your site map. Now large site owners will scoff at this statement with loud pronouncements that this is obvious and everyone should know that if they are an Internet marketer. However, this recommendation might give you pause. After all, wouldn't it be wise if you could document all the pages on your site despite their volume to verify that the search engines have access to site information? The answer is yes, and that is where the Sitemaps Protocol comes into play.

Sitemaps (XML)

XML Sitemaps - usually called just Sitemaps - are a way for you to give the search engines information about your site. There are three ways to point search engines to your XML Sitemap. You can use your robots.txt file, you can submit it directly to the engines using their submission forms or you can issue an HTTP request to the URL provided by the search engine. You can find how to build your Sitemap, and the full Sitemaps protocol at http://sitemaps.org.

Sitemaps (XML) Page(s):

• Allows Google, Yahoo and MSN to locate all the site's content
• Informs the search engine when content changes
• Shows spiders deep content that is unable to be found in a normal crawl process
• Tells the spider the date the content was last modified
• Assigns the importance or priority of information

In some cases, Sitemaps are helpful if your site has dynamic content or pages featuring technologies like AJAX or Flash that might not be easily found and crawled during a normal spidering process. While the search engines have increased leaps and bounds in their ability to follow links in Flash, supplementing those links with an XML Sitemap can make your life easier.

An XML Sitemap is also useful if your site is new and has few links to it or if your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all. Because Google and the other search engines discover new pages by following from link to link, poorly or under-linked pages may have a harder time getting spidered and indexed. An XML Sitemap provides those URLs to the search engines directly so that they can spider them and consider them for indexing.

Using a Sitemap provides additional site information to Google, which complements Google's normal methods of crawling. Sitemaps allow Google to crawl a Web site in a much more timely fashion. Google does state, however, that there is no guarantee that URLs from a Web site's Sitemap will end up in the Google index. Web sites are also never penalized for submitting Sitemaps.

Dynamic XML Sitemaps Do Not Replace Static Site Maps

After pointing out the differences between these two site map / Sitemap formats it may seem the traditional format is obsolete. This is, however, explicitly incorrect. Traditional site maps and XML Sitemaps work best when paired together, creating a stronger and fuller picture of your site for the search engines. In addition, the HTML version will be useful for your human visitors as well, since they might use the site map pages to navigate their way around the site if your global navigation is confusing or broken.

Sitemaps are for Spiders and Site Maps are for Silos

It is vital that this seemingly minor distinction is taken into consideration. XML Sitemaps do help prioritize which sections of the site are silos and which sections are supporting or sublevel content sections; however, they do not explicitly silo. Only site maps (HTML) succeed in this task when properly nested throughout the Web site. Consider that Google requires link text in order to clearly identify silos and subdirectory content.

Site maps (HTML) are cached by search engines, which means they'll show up in the search results, something that could be useful to your site in the long run.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://www.google.com/sitemap.html&hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291US305&strip=1

XML Sitemaps on the other hand are only a batch of links to be followed. They're not human readable (unless the human is particularly fond of reading code) and they won't pass any link equity. They are strictly for search engines. The upside is that because you don't have to worry about any pesky human eyes, the code can be extremely efficient, and things like font size and text content are not a concern.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/sitemap_index.xml

It's clear that the best way to build up your site is to make both a traditional HTML site map as well as an XML Sitemap. You can add your XML Sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools.

Sitemap Guidelines

Sitemaps all adhere to the same general guidelines; a Sitemap may contain a list of URLs or a list of other Sitemaps. If a Sitemap does contain a list of other Sitemaps, it can be saved as a Sitemap index file using the XML format provided for that file type. For those with larger Sites, be aware that an XML Sitemap index file cannot contain more than 1,000 Sitemaps.

There are also size restrictions for URLs and file sizes in a Sitemap file. A sitemap file cannot have more than 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 10MB when uncompressed. If a Sitemap has more than 50,000 URLs or is too large, it can be broken into several smaller Sitemaps. These limits make sure that the Web server is not overloaded by large files.

Just like the best practice for linking within your site, all URLs in your XML Sitemap must also be referred to the same way every time. If a site specifies its site location as http://www.peanutbutterville.com/, the URL list should not contain URLs that begin with the non-www version, http://peanutbutterville.com/. Likewise, if the site location is named as http://peanutbutterville.com/, the URL list should not contain URLs that begin with http://www.peanutbutterville.com/.

Direct image URLs should also not be included in the Sitemaps as Google indexes the page the image appears on, not the image itself directly. If your URLs include session IDs make sure that you strip those out for the XML Sitemap. The Sitemap URL must also be readable by the Web server where the Sitemap is located, and may only contain ASCII characters. An XML Sitemap containing upper ASCII characters, certain control codes or special characters such as * and {} will receive an error and can't be added.

It is possible to create a specialized Sitemap for certain types of content. However, certain Sitemaps are only accepted by specific search engines. Next month, the second article in this series will be covering the following types of Sitemaps which are specific only to Google, so Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search and Ask won't be able to read them:

• Video Sitemaps
• Mobile Sitemaps
• News Sitemaps
• Code Search Sitemaps
• Geo Sitemaps

For permission to reprint or reuse any materials, please contact us. To learn more about our authors, please visit the Bruce Clay Authors page. Copyright © 2009 Bruce Clay, Inc.