Ross and John discuss the Three Major Ranking Changes that have affected the Evolution of Search Engines, where search engines are today, and how they affect you.
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SEO 101
Evolution of Search Engines
Ross and John discuss the Three Major Ranking Changes that have affected the Evolution of Search Engines, where search engines are today, and how they affect you.
Our Sponsors:
* Producer Brasco: As digital professionals and business owners, we understand the critical importance of a secure and high-performing website. That's why I want to talk to you about Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider that delivers exceptional speed, security, and reliability.
Kinsta's infrastructure is optimized for WordPress, ensuring your site loads lightning-fast and ranks well in search results. They utilize Google Cloud's premium tier network and C3D virtual machines, which significantly boost performance. In fact, Kinsta customers often experience up to a 200% increase in site speed just by migrating to their platform.
Security is paramount, and Kinsta provides enterprise-grade measures to protect your valuable data. They are one of the few WordPress hosting providers with SOC2 certification, guaranteeing the highest level of security for your website.
Kinsta's MyKinsta dashboard offers a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your site efficiently. From cache control and debugging to redirects and CDN setup, MyKinsta simplifies website administration.
For SEO 101 listeners, Kinsta offers specific advantages. Their platform is optimized for speed, a crucial ranking factor in search engine algorithms. Their security measures protect your site from malware and hacking attempts that could damage your online presence. And their expert support team is available 24/7 to assist with any technical issues that may arise.
If you're serious about your online presence and want a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, security, and support, I highly recommend Kinsta. Visit kinsta.com today to learn more and take advantage of their limited-time offer for new customers. That's k-i-n-s-t-a dot com.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
- Duration:
- 36m
- Broadcast on:
- 15 Jun 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
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And do not reflect those of the staff, management or advertisers of webmasterradio.fm. Any rebroadcast or retransmission of this program without the express written consent of webmasterradio.fm is prohibited. Welcome to SEO 101, your introductory course on search engine optimization. So, turn on your computers, open your minds, grab your mouse and get ready to get back to the basics. Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm. This is Ross Tunds, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my co-host is John Carcut, the SEO Manager for MediaWiz. How are you doing today, John? I'm doing great, Ross and yourself. Awesome. I'm guessing Florida is a sunshiny heaven at the moment. It is awesome. We just got past little rough patch of rainy weather, but this is going to be an awesome weekend. I'm looking forward to it. Good weather, sun, beaches, all that fun stuff. Oh, I'm sorry, you're in Canada, I forgot. Oh. Hey, we got the sun, we got a lot, it's just, you can't really go in the water too comfortably here, that's all. That's true. And I'd like to take this away, air conditioning any day. Well, everyone, today we're covering a topic that kind of makes, I think both of us, pretty sentimental. We're talking about how search engines have changed from John and I started out and where they are today and what that means to you. So to get things started, I guess we sort of whipped up the three major changes. I don't know how you'd put these together. I guess, John, what you said, these are the major changes that affected how rankings worked. I guess that's the case. Yeah, I think it's more about how the engines change the way they rank things opposed to the actual changes in SEO, because there's tons of major changes in SEO over the years. But this is, I think, a good synopsis of the major points in the way that pages were being indexed and ranked. So, yeah, well, and the first one, I mean, it was, you know, back in the infosick days, we were just talking about that a moment ago, I mean, to me, running every team, back in '90s. We all loved Ink Tomi. If you don't know what Ink Tomi is, Ink Tomi used to be a separate company that did nothing but crawl the web and gather information about web pages and instead of having their own search engines, they just sold their database to other people. It was an Ink Tomi database. And it was fun to deal with. Yeah. And you got a good ranking there. You pretty much got a good ranking in a few places, and I was saying to John, I could literally make a change in a site and go back in an hour or an hour or even less sometimes. I think the best was about 10, 15 minutes and see the change in ranking, just for making a change in a bid. It was great. You know, the big-- Quite easy to influence, too. Yeah. I was going to say quite easy to influence. And right at the beginning, I guess the first big change that I remember noticing was a lot of stuff was keyword stuffed. I mean, people were getting a top ranking without much work at all, just by adding multiple words of this-- multiple incidences of the same word to get that ranking. I mean, it was just-- so it was a joke. And the big one, I guess, was at that time the search engines started to realize this and managed to figure out how to edit this out. To me, that was the first true step taken from a search engine span. I mean, I guess it was probably the first really big search engine span. And-- Yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. It was-- the engines at first, they just decided, let's just index everything and throw it up there based on what's on the page. And they started realizing people would take advantage of that by doing that keyword stuffing. They had to really-- to make their quality listings, to make their search engines relevant, they really had to take control of that. And it took the first steps back then, but it really didn't happen completely until Google came along. And that was the big change. I mean, when Google came out, the search engine market changed. And the main reason was because of how they-- the indexer pages and how they get rid of all that spam and all that keyword stuffing. And I'm sure most of you-- I hope most of you are all familiar with PageRank. And PageRank was the big difference at the time. And just to give a brief background, just in case some of you have a really new dance, you know, PageRank is based on people linking to your content, not just the keywords in the new content, but who thinks your content is important by a reason of linking to it. So when they added that into the algorithm, that's when it took off. The results were much more relevant, and the span was much, much harder to do. Unimpossible, but much harder to do. A little bit of trivia about PageRank, in case you don't know. Most people think PageRank itself is named after just the fact that it's a PageRank. It ranks individual web pages, not true, not true at all. It was Larry Page's ranking system, so they named it PageRank after him, just a little bit trivia. Hey! I did know that. I learned something new already. I love it. Okay, so that was essentially number two, I mean, the fact that they changed just from ranking by content, then now they added trust to that. So, you know, how many people trusted your content by linking to you. So all of a sudden, it became a two-fold process. You had to be somewhat good or fake it, and that's where the next level of search engine span came in, and, you know, it was as usual quite rampant, a lot of people were making a lot of money, and they went a little wild on that, and I guess only over the last year or so, as Google tried to really clamp down on that, or maybe two years, but I mean really started making an effect on it, and through trying to block as many paid links as possible. But that even wasn't, and I was big, but we figured number three would be universal search, so incorporating video, news, images, and other social media into search results. Well, having that happen, that was massive. All of a sudden, search engine rankings were no longer what they used to be. There's not just a top 10. Now there's a mix. Actually, Bing is a good example of that. If you guys are familiar with the new search engine from Microsoft, where I actually am giving them big kudos. I think it's pretty cool. They've done a good job. I mean, it means work, but it's a good start. Yeah, and so I told you just to add to that, Ross, it literally, when universal search came along, it literally changed the face of search and the results. So instead of just having text and you're listing the pages, now you have blog posts and news, and travel, and video, and images, and it just completely changed the way search was presented to the users, and really affected us, by the way. Yeah, definitely, and I thought it was pretty cool. I mean, I like the fact that, well, for example, I found out of the day that I'm getting a PR4 link back to my site because I've got videos on YouTube. So my actual destination page for Step 4 has a PR4 linking back to my site. That's great. That's just an incidence of a benefit of me getting into universal search, because what I did is start putting our images or videos from interviews I did, interviews I had of me, all that stuff I put on there. And then I put those on my site, too. Everything is like a big cross promotion, but it's all working out well for us, it works out well for Google, because they get to offer a way more diverse set of results that's kind of cool. I mean, you remember you doing this, what was it, Star Wars Search? What Star Wars Search? I've done so many. Yeah. You could like type in Darth Vader or something, and pictures, I think they're the example they use when they first launched universal search, so you type that in, and you see pictures of Darth Vader, and then there were videos intermixed with the results, and we're like, "Whoa, wow, this is cool. Not just seen Darth Vader." That's pretty cool, too. But you're right, but now we have to figure out, as the SEOs, we have our clients are coming to you and say, "Well, I want my video to show up on the results." So now we have to know how to do that as well. What are some of the kind of things that you're seeing from universal search that you're able to use, Ross, on a regular basis, where you're getting your most bang for your buck, I'd say. Well, I think I'm going to leave that till we finish our break. SEO 101 will be back right after recess. Does your website need a bailout looking for conversion rate stimulus package? Do you need a website improvement to do list? On Target, a subscription service from Future Now and Brian Eisenberg monitors your website 24/7, analyzing the actions of every potential customer. It gives you a to-do list. It tells you exactly what to fix and how to fix it so that more of your visitors do what you need them to do. On Target, pricing starts at $1,000 a month. See more at futurenowink.com/ontarget. I'm Brian Eisenberg, and I approve this message. Hey, have you got the number for Jerry's pizza? Look it up on localpages.com. Localpages.com, or what if I wanted a business number in Miami? Localpages.com. 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These are available 24/7 to help you optimize your content for maximum exposure to over 70 million people in the U.S. alone. If this were a real PRWeb release date, your website would have so much traffic you'd be tempted to duck and cover. If you have an online marketing emergency, go to PRWebAuthor.com for 25% off, PRWeb, the premier online news release and content distribution service, mobile presence, Wednesdays at 1 p.m. eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, or on demand anytime, inside the internet marketing channel, only on webmasterradio.fm. Okay, class, take your seats and no talking. He says his over, and SEO 101 is back in session, only on webmasterradio.fm. Welcome back to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm, but John Karkut, SEO manager for MediaWiz, and myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing Inc. Before the break, we were discussing some of the major changes that have happened and how search engines ranked content over the years, at least since we started back in '97. Are you even before that, were you, John, or is it 95? It was way earlier than I want to admit, it makes me old. Right, right, right, right, oh, I won't touch it, okay, so we were just going to get into what really provides the best about the universal search, and that is pretty much where we're at now, universal search. I mean, it's really taking hold, yes, if Google brought in what was the last year or two years. I don't know, I can't keep track of time anymore, but it's been a couple of years now, yeah. Anyway, it's making impact, but I thought it was pretty slow. Some stuff still doesn't have any universal in it all, but then again, we look at Bing or something like that, which is now 100% universal. I don't think there's a search where you can just get rankings unless you're particularly looking for that. And that's a good example of how I think Google will ultimately be, not that they're going to be calling Microsoft any day soon, but the concepts are there. Best bang for my buck. I would say YouTube so far. YouTube and local, you know, you submit yourself, submit your website or your company, I should say to Google local, and when you do that, let's say someone types in Web Marketing Victoria. Nothing necessarily will show up in terms of local, but if you type in Web Marketing Victoria BC, it shows that you're really looking for a region. All of a sudden Google will show the local results, and in our case we are, we've tried to get a ranking for that. We're there. We're in the top five. And I'm sure from the same degree on your end too, right? Yeah, and I really love that local research. The local search box, I think most people call it the one box. I've heard it called a number of names, but that map right at the top of those listings with all the like, I think there's the 10 boxes and everything. There's 10 listings if there's that many in the area. I actually personally love using that when I'm looking for something that's a wonderful tool, and it's definitely one of the bigger, to me, one of the bigger aspects of universal search that I like, I agree completely, YouTube, and not only YouTube, a lot of video results. I'm seeing video results come from a river. There's a couple of big ones out there other than YouTube that I can see, you can see them listed in there with the little pictures. For a while, you could actually view the video in results, and then they took that away, and I think they might have even brought that back, so we could actually view the video right there in your search results. Do you know Ross, can you still do that? I actually haven't tried it since they, I mean I did it when they first released that. I thought that was kind of cool, but I never really thought it would be cool to do my everyday thing, so I can't see what they've done that or not. I didn't even take it away, there you go. There you go, all right. One of the other ones I like in universal search is the news results. If you have a client or a site that publishes a lot of content on a regular basis that can be kind of considered news-ish, even sites like celebrity gossip sites get into Google news for news type of sites, and you can get a ton of traffic if you're able to get your client or your own sites listed in Google news, and if it's a topic and there's news about it, and they put that news thing at the top of the universal search, there's usually two or three sites they link to, that's a great traffic source, a lot of exposure from a universal search perspective as well, so the news is good, and then of course there's always images, images work too, if you have it on your site, if you have a big gallery or you're using them constantly on all your content, images pop up frequently for universal as well. Do you use Google base in universal search much, Ross? I haven't had too much exposure to that on an ongoing basis have you done it much? No, I've done a lot of reading on, you know, and I've seen case studies and such, but I've got a couple clients that do it, I just, they've never needed my help, it's so simple to use, and it's just a matter of porting your feed, and in fact I think one of them uses the Yahoo shopping service and their actual platform, and it's automatically indexing that, so it's pretty cool, and as a result, they definitely see results, I was actually looking at the Google base page recently and I said, put in Google base, see in search results, something like that, it's so simple, it is, it's apparently that simple. I think, and I know there is a certain optimization to that, and personally I'd have to say if anyone wants more, no more about that, I would do a little more reading on it, I haven't done enough of it to say I could really give a lot of opinion, do you know the optimization principles of it? I know it's all feed based, so they pull all of the optimization, you really just have based on your feed primarily, I don't think they have much, they probably have a little bit of landing page interaction, but most of it's based off your feed. I do know, I saw, where was that, it was at Scary SEO last year, we were in the middle of a presentation, and someone was talking, it was a PPC presentation, and someone was going through it, and Google base ads actually showed up in paid advertising as well, they could expand the PPC ad, and there was this Google base stuff under there, so Google base from universal search standpoints, not only affecting organic search, it's also affecting paid search now as well. Wow, that's very cool, yeah, certainly something I'd like to explore more, let's get into some of the stuff that people can do, we talked about the stuff they can get in there, but how do they do it? So let's start with images, if you don't mind, I'll take that along, essentially I learned a few tips on this that seem to be working, when you're adding images to your page, if you want to get a little bit of extra, I guess a little extra space in the search engines, and hopefully affect universal search results with your own images, you want to use things like picture of, when you're trying to describe the image in the alt attribute, so that's the alternative, essentially description of the image, put in their picture of a car, or picture of this particular product, or image of, and what that does, a lot of people are searching picture of image of, that way you can show up in certain search results, and indeed also, Google considers the content around the image as well, so if protents, you, I don't know, maybe your image, you could actually go for different targets, your image has a different slang term describing it, or even the normal term, and then around it, the content around it actually uses a slang term, so you can get multiple rankings for the same image, it's quite in depth, I was pretty excited when that all came out, because images can say, well, they can say a thousand words, millions of words, it's pretty cool. Again, the file name of your image plays a part in it too, doesn't it, Russ? So if you have the, if you have an image of a celebrity or somebody, or a box of cereal or something, if you put the name of that in your file name, that'll help as well, believe. Yeah, I can't believe I forgot to mention that. Yes, it's actually probably a core, I mean, you can easily fudge an alt attribute, but really the image name, you could fudge too, but there's not much point, it's generally going to be more honest and not regarding Google's all about that, they want to make sure whatever they're showing is accurate. And I've had some people tell me that they want to make sure that the text is not only the alt attribute, which I personally do the alt attribute is just as important as the file name is, I know it's a little easier to spam, but they really do look at that a lot, and your tip about picture of image of is a good one. But the title attribute of an image, people ask me about that all the time. And I, correct me if you think I'm wrong, Russ, but as far as I know, as long as I can remember, they've never used the title attribute for anything. So I don't believe it would help much at all if you're going to go and if you're going to try to optimize your images to do much with the title tag inside of it. It's not the page, but the image itself, the image title. There may be an argument that if you don't have an alt, if you're missing the alt attribute and you just have a title that maybe it would be used, but I've never tried that. So I don't know, but I'm sure that would be an easy thing to research. It would be kind of interesting, actually. Now, how about RSS using news? Do you want to take that? Going into the news feeds via RSS, so universal serves news or blog feeds via RSS. Actually, you can get into both of those results, universal results using RSS. So if you have RSS set up on your site, and if you don't, I definitely recommend it, even if you don't want people subscribing or have a site where you think people would subscribe, if you set up these feeds, for no other reason than submit them into the engines that'll pull through them through the blog, networks that'll index your contents based on your RSS, for no other reason, set them up for that. The easiest way that I've found to actually set up an RSS feed is to use a CMS that already has one built in, like WordPress or a lot of the forum software, tons of it have RSS built in. Take advantage of it. Yeah, okay, so I'm actually add to that in a sec, but before we do that, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll touch a little more on RSS. SEO 101 will be back, right after recess. Looking for a new way to build backlinks and traffic back to your website? 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They've just made ink magazine's list of the fastest-growing private businesses. They've exhibited and sponsored at my conferences from the very beginning. Bruce has got that long-standing search engine relationship chart. Hadn't been out there with the code of ethics, been a search engine expert in the field for ages. But did you know that BruceClay can do more than help you? With just SEO, they can do PPC, web analytics, web design, marketing strategy, promotion and branding, everything you need for success in the online marketplace, you can check it out from the professionals at BruceClay Incorporated. For over 10 years, offices worldwide, they've got answers you need, check them out today at BruceClay.com. BruceClay Incorporated. Fired up with Gordon Roodo, Mondays at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, or on demand anytime inside the Culture and Business Channel, only on Webmaster Radio.fm. Okay, class, take your seats and no talking. Recess is over and SEO 101 is back in session, only on webmaster radio.fm. Welcome back to SEO 101 on webmaster radio.fm with John Carcutt, SEO manager for MediaWiz and myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing Inc. Before the break, we're sort of touching on how to make your blog work for you. Essentially, make it in RSS work so that you can get some universal rankings. Now, what I found with that is using feedburners great. And I guess, you know, one thing I should pause on first is what is RSS? Yeah, there's going to be people that don't know what that is. Good point. I think we just get so entrenched in what we're talking about here. But there's a few different, I think there's two different ways of putting it. But real simple syndication is the one I like to call. There's another one as well. But that's what it's abbreviated for. And it's really what it is, is everything you put in your blog, if you have RSS feed, it automatically gets abbreviated or the whole thing gets put in there, depending on your settings. The actual article gets put in there and it's added instantly. As soon as you update and add something to your blog, it's updated instantly. Anyone who's following that gets immediately notified or has that information up here. It's fantastic, because there are actually search engines out there or search bots of sorts that are RSS aggregators. They're going out there and finding these feeds and they use your content and they love to post it. So it's great. You know, if you've got good leads in there, good information, but you also have the link to your own content that's fabulous. But yeah, it's feedburner. Feedburner is awesome. It's by Google. So obviously, anything by Google, you got a bit of an advantage. So if you get in there with Google, you're going to kick some butt, because it's got some fantastic stats and analytics as well. Anything to add? Yeah, actually, Feedburner was really, really good even before Google bottom. So, they had a really good base to be in with. But there's actually a lot of the blog search engines. I'm Technorati, Google Blog Search. The best way to make sure you get into those are through our RSS feeds. And people will submit your sites. You have a ping in a lot of blog services where you can just tell the sites that you've updated. But the RSS feed is definitely the way to go there. And if you want to have news, if you want to get into the news section of Universal Search, you have to have an RSS feed. Well, you don't have to. It's much easier now with an RSS feed. You used to be able to do it just by tagging your URLs. But now they have a very specific feed that you can send into Google News to get that done. Yeah, I remember the day I was very ecstatic. We got back in the day when you had to get approved to be part of Google News. And we got approved. And they got their feed and that was the same day. You still have to be approved to get into Google News, unfortunately. Oh, do you actually? Yeah. Actually, I'm going to take that back, not unfortunately. But yeah, it's a pretty extensive process. You have to submit your site. It's relatively easy to do. But it's not just, you know, open range anymore. You still have to go through and get the whole approval process done. Even like, you know, searching Google Blog and news, Google Blog. No, for Google Blog. No, that's separate than the Google News section. That might be the same as well. Yeah. I think they actually transitioned us to Google Blogs after a while, I think. Well, that's an insult or not. I don't know. That's a good question. I'd better call your, let's call Matt Cuts and ask him. Yeah, yeah. That'll go well. So, you know, in short, really, go local. I'll make sure you get a local subscription as well. That's, that's something that, what is the URL again? Do you remember, John? Is it local.google.com or Google.com? The easiest way to do it is to go through maps.google and find in there, and find your place and you can claim it through the maps.google.com. It's really easiest way to do it. And it's also a good way to do it that way because you can check to see if someone else has already tried to claim your site as their own or your, your location, I should say, as their own. So, if you haven't done that, you know, if you've just, really, the first time you've heard about the, the, the local search listings and being able to actually claim your location as your own and it's open to engines, go check, check your listing, go check your address on Google Maps just to make sure if someone else, a competitor or someone near you has an accidentally claimed your location. It's something you want to stay on top of. Fortunately, it's pretty tough today because I do, um, at least I would have hoped they are. It hasn't changed. I don't think when I did it, we had to either receive a mail, a piece of mail and then, and put a code online so it actually be sent to this address or, uh, the other option was a phone call, I believe. That's true. That seems easier. Well, it is easier. The, the card is very pretty foolproof. It's hard not to do that because it gets mailed to the address and the location. The phone call, however, I was at a presentation. I was at a presentation for an SEO meetup down here in South Florida. We were talking about local search and I was, I was presenting and I mentioned, you know, that they do the both the phone call and the card and, and while I was presenting the rest of the presentation, some of the, uh, somebody in the audience said, well, I'm going to try to see if I can do this to, to the, the location that we were sitting at. It was like a, it was, it was a, it was an old restaurant that wasn't a restaurant anymore. I had this beautiful balcony overlooking the water and so we had our meetup there and so he went in and he verified the, the empty restaurant location because he put in his phone number and they called him right back and it, because he said he put in any phone number he wanted, he put in his cell phone. So you got to be able to pull that one. Don't go do that, by the way. I probably shouldn't have told you how to do that, but hopefully they fixed that. I've disappointed. Actually, I would have thought, you know, if that was the case, they'd make it a little more foolproof and just make it the card option. But I do know, I've had a little bit of experience with the, the Google local search team. I do know that they're trying to allow third party validation of the site. So there's, there are larger companies out there who have thousands of locations. And as it is right now, each and every location has to handle that validation on their own. So they're putting in the system that I know they've been working really hard on making it better. And I know this third party validation is, I think it's a beta, private beta right now somewhere. So it'll be easier for people with lots of locations to get that done and hopefully more secure overall. Oh man, they could sure, you could sure use that. And I know they've been working out for a couple of years, easily, because I remember actually writing about that and going, what the hell is we had some clients, I believe, that had multiple, like we're talking hundreds of locations and they want to get in there and I'm like, okay, well, that's going to take some time. And you couldn't add more than one. You couldn't get a so-called corporate local account or anything like that, at least if it was, it was certainly hidden news to me. Well, hopefully they're fixing that. No doubt. It's just definitely a weakness. I mean, local search could be a show in zone Ross believing. It's a lot of stuff going on with that. It's true. And the other thing that I'd like to touch on, and speaking of the whole another show on his own, but social media, I've seen tweets appearing more and more often in search results. And the tweets being people who have posted on Twitter and used words that are relevant to the search, Google does index on Twitter. And it's paying off, obviously. I have some quite a few showing up. Have you run it? Yeah, Ross, I'm glad you asked that question. Specifically because Facebook has actually done something just over the past weekend where they opened up their accounts. People can get vanity names. So instead of having Facebook.com/user/number, number, number, number, your name, you're actually going to be able to get Facebook.com/JohnCarcut. And that is going to make a huge difference in the search results, you know, the universal search and seeing that social media stuff in search results because not only, you know, you have Twitter that's going to show up because of your name, you'll have your Facebook much more available as far as a search result because the URL is going to be much stronger towards your name. So a lot of these places have vanity names built into them from a social networks standpoint. If it's a person or if you have a social account for your business or your brand, those show up really well in the search results because of the vanity names. That's interesting. And one thing I've been working on a bit with another client was trying to make his Facebook, you know, the public Facebook page for his profile a little more informative and optimized. Man, they got a lot of work to do on that. I tell everyone they should definitely get it and anyone listening, you know, if you haven't got it, make a public page for yourself because it's good. It doesn't show anything. In fact, even if you wanted it to, it doesn't show anything super private. But the nice thing is, hopefully, they'll be able to enable it so you can add certain things like we like to add feeds. They can do a feed, but it looks like garbage. I mean, in other words, you could actually input your RSS feed from your blog and have it show up there. You can actually get that feed showing up in different places. You can even have it automatically posting to Twitter. So you automate a lot of this process and you can get multiple audiences for one piece of work, which as you know, it's huge. We all got a lot to do. So anything that can make that easier is a good thing. And I think tying this into the overall theme of the show today with the changes in the search engines, you know, used to be when you and I first started out, we had to worry about our site. You know, we wanted to make sure our site, the pages of our site were indexed for the terms we wanted to index for. Now we not only have to worry about our site, we've got all this other social media places where our company or our brand is being exposed on the internet is now also part of our responsibility in the search engines to make sure that stuff is being represented correctly and, you know, showing up whenever possible from a branding perspective. So it's expanded from this our site to everywhere that the company or the person is online. So they're also in open search now. It's a little scary. Someone tries to hijack your stuff. It sure you make things difficult for you. So definitely go out and get your names and ever something major social comes up, take it and sit on it at least. So even if you're not going to use it, you don't want anyone else to use it. I've heard many people say, I don't want to take it. I'm not going to use it, but just take it. Cyber, cyber squatting is not only on domains anymore. Social profiles, people can be you. It's pretty scary. Well, thanks a lot, John. As usual, this is an awesome show. I think we're going to have to expand on a few of these easily. It's just an enormous topic, but it was fun. I agree. I agree. It was fun to reminisce too. Definitely. Well, on behalf of myself, Rastan, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and John Carca, SEO Manager for MediaWiz. Thank you for joining us today on SEO 101 on webmaster radio.fm. We hope you tune in up for our show next week. [Music]
Ross and John discuss the Three Major Ranking Changes that have affected the Evolution of Search Engines, where search engines are today, and how they affect you.
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