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We all get irritated when we click on a link and it redirects us to the 404 page.  I am pretty sure that the average Internet user has encountered this page at least once.  From the standpoint of the provider – the web site or blog owner – the 404 page should not be disregarded.  [...]

Google has updated its article entitled, “What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?” Included in the update are the benefits of SEO as well as guidelines when choosing an SEO company or consultant.

The benefits mentioned in the article are:

• Reviewing and providing recommendations on your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Managing online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training

Google also offers up 6 questions to ask a potential SEO vendor, but back in March, our own Marty Weintraub posted 48 questions you should consider when signing up for search marketing services. And earlier today, Aaron Shear discussed upsells agencies use to keep clients on board.

When hiring an SEO agency, it’s always important to know enough SEO to make sure your vendor is pursuing the best practices. Google’s article is a good place to start and of course, stay tuned to Search Engine Watch for news and tips in the SEO industry.

A redirect audit looks at the server redirects that are happening on your site, and which sites are sending visitors to links on your site that are being redirected. It also looks at 404 errors (file not found), as well as other server status codes appearing in your site’s log files. In today’s Organic Search Engine Optimization column, “Conducting a Redirect Audit on Your Web Site,” Mark Jackson shows you how a redirect audit can take care of many issues that search engines might be having with your Web site, and may help you recover visitors you may be losing due to technical issues.

Beginning April 1, Google will no longer make exceptions to its policy requiring advertisers to match the display URL in an AdWords ad to the landing page to which it leads. Google’s existing policy already requires that an ad’s display URL matches its destination URL in the AdWords interface and the landing page to which it leads, but exceptions had been made for things like redirects or vanity URLs.

Under the new rules, all advertisers, regardless of past exceptions, will need to show users the same top-level domain in the display URL and the landing page where a user is sent.

The only exceptions allowed will be for using tracking URLs as the destination URL, as long as the URL of the landing page matches that of the display URL. For example, a display URL of www.google.com/adwords could use a destination URL in AdWords of www.trackingurl.com/google123, if the landing page where the user arrives is www.google.com and not www.trackingurl.com.

Display URLs will be allowed to show different subdomains or directories, as long as the top-level domain shown in the ad (such as google.com in the above example) is matched.

There are surely hundreds of different ways that people can mess up their sites. Based on our experience from working with scores of clients, here are the 9 most common problems that we find:

Broken information architecture - These are sites that fail to map the nature of the information they are providing into an [...]

During my recent visit to the Googleplex, I sat down and interviewed Matt Cutts. One of the things I wanted to get a handle on was how Google handles links encoded in Javascript, or that go through redirects.
A lot of time people implement click throughs so they can analyze the outbound link traffic. [...]

The latest ‘weather report’ from Yahoo Search said an ongoing update should wrap up very soon.Priyank Garg noted at the Yahoo Search blog the present update taking place. Webmasters will want to keep an eye on this, and see if their rankings have changed.
Garg also reminded everyone this update would be the first to take [...]

Talk about a maze. I was checking one of my keywords at Yahoo and found down at the number 10 spot a listing for what would appear to be a Google Group covering the subject. The url should have told me something was most probably amiss.
groups.google.com/group/loan-loans-bad-bad/web/currency_trading.html

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This article will be part tutorial, part sweating the small stuff. The tutorial is much, much shorter and more basic than the rest, so we’ll get to it first. AOL needs to hear it.
When you remove a webpage, or move it to a new domain, it’s nice for your visitors if you notify them [...]

Everyone knew the obligatory April Fools Day practical jokes were coming. Some were funny. Some were lame. Some were just flat out bizarre. There were, however, a few jewels that separated themselves from the rest of the ordinary April 1st offerings. Here are the pranks that bear honorable mention.
Matt Cutts: The Hack That Wasn’t
I [...]