Google, Bing and Yahoo have just announced the launch of Schema.org, which is a new way for webmasters to provide information about their websites in a clear, structured way that all search engines understand.  Similar to the Sitemaps.xml structure which allows all webmasters deliver a single sitemap for all search engines, we will now be able to ‘tag’ data in websites to provide across the board information about the data that is contained.

You’ve probably already seen the results of such markup in Google with the use of rich snippets in search results for recipes (see below), reviews, movies and more.

Supported markup type for rich snippets include:

• Reviews and Ratings
• Shopping and Products
• Events
• Restaurants
• Books, Movies and Music
• Recipes

A full list of schema is available at http://schema.org/docs/full.html. Schema.org also provides lots of information and examples on how to set up your web pages to include the markup.  Google Webmaster Tool also has help and a handy tool to test your markup.

So, let’s get busy with schema markup!

As Google continues to use website loading speed as a signal of website quality for ranking purposes, Google Analytics has added a site speed indicator to reporting. This is a big win for users of Google Analytics. Not only will we be able to see how page loading times are potentially affecting our SEO efforts, but we will also be able to see how it affects the user experience and conversion rates over time.
Read the rest of this entry »

The latest update to the Google search engine results page (the SERPs as we like to call it) sees Google integrating the website listings with Google Places for local searches. To see what I’m talking about search for any business and append it with your local town or city.
Read the rest of this entry »

The latest buzz in Google-land the past month or so has been Google Instant. So what is it, and how does it affect us a web searchers, SEOs, and website owners?

What Is Google Instant?
Google Instant shows you search results as you type rather than waiting for you to finish typing your query and pressing the ‘Search’ button.  It still provides you with auto-complete options to help you find common search queries faster, but the big difference is the lightning-fast search results it provides.
Read the rest of this entry »

As website speed is becoming a hot topic for webmasters due to speed becoming one of the many factors used to rank websites in Google, Google recently released some excellent statistics which can be used a benchmark.

Google analyzed over 4.2 billion pages and of those, Google considered about 380 million pages of those coming from “top sites.” It is not clear from the report what Google defines as “top sites” though.
Read the rest of this entry »