Google Highlighter Tool for Structured Data Is As Easy As Point, Click, and Tag

Google’s HighLighter Tool A Game Changer

Early this December, 2012; Google made waves in the internet marketing world by introducing their newest webmaster tool, data highlighter. The Google Data Highlighter Tool will remind you of a simple website building interface such as Wix and can be referred to as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) platform in terms of its simplicity.

The highlighter tool will be used for webmasters to literally “highlight” content on a website in order to mark it as structured data for Google to index in search results. Think Google should know that your local business is hosting an event next month? Then use this tool to highlight this event on your website and Google will show this “extra information” in search results. (Here’s what’s going on in San Diego this week. Search term: San Diego events)

“Extra information” that you want displayed in search results next to your website listing is known as rich snippets. And in the past in order to have any rich snippets displayed from your website would require the editing of HTML code on numerous pages of your website. (Nobody wants to edit HTML code) But now with the Google highlighter tool you no longer need to edit any code what so ever. Instead you just click, highlight, and tag content on your website and Google does the rest.

Check out this tutorial video of the Google highlighter tool to see what we’re talking about.

As the video explains not only is the highlighter tool super easy to use but Google believes that if you highlight 5-10 pages of your website accurately and have similar content structuring on other pages of your website, that the highlighter tool will be able to automatically index the rest of your website for other “rich snippets”. So if you have many calendar events on different pages of your site then you only have to highlight a few before Google finishes highlighting the rest automatically. Unbelievable right?

Now for all you old school rich snippet experts who have been practicing the art form for many a day and would like to break out your digital highlighter this instant and start marking up product pages, authors, events, music, people, and places all over your website in some sort of frenzy….. let it be known that currently the Google highlighter tool is only available in English and can only help webmasters highlight relevant calendar events. So you’ll have to take a deep breathe and wait patiently for Google to roll out this feature to all rich snippet categories. But you better believe the game is on once Google does. Race you to it?

For now highlighting calender events on your website is a good place for anyone and everyone to start in order to understand the tool better: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

SEO Takaway: The Google highlighter tool really suggests to webmasters the need for consistency throughout website design. The simplicity of this tool should stress the creation of “rich snippet” content such as events, individual product pages, places, authors, and such.

First time you heard about this tool? Respect your elders then and share this amazing content by using a social button below! What goes around, goes around.

How to Tell A DoFollow from a NoFollow Link

Seo Services

The Importantance of Building DoFollow Links To Your Site

Some time ago Google gave website owners the ability to designate links on their website as DoFollow or NoFollow. DoFollow links tell Google and other search engines that they should follow the direction of the link and index the relationship between both websites for consideration in rankings. NoFollow links tell Google to ignore the link completely therefore not rewarding the linked-to website with a boost in ranking.

The designation of DoFollow and NoFollow links provides website owners with the ability to link to other websites freely without the worry of passing away too much ranking authority. NoFollow links have also helped to combat spamming techniques when it comes to blog commenting. (We are all familiar with the old school SEO strategy of leaving a blog comment for the mere opportunity to link back to your website rather than for genuine interest of conversation.) The majority of website owners now enable a NoFollow html relevance tag for the purpose of deterring BS blog comments.

So the question for SEO’s becomes, “How do I know which blogs, social bookmarking sites, article submissions sites, and other websites use DoFollow links- so that Google will reward my efforts for building a link back to my site?“

A FireFox Plugin that Distinguishes DoFollow from NoFollow Links

There are a few different ways to determine whether a website grants DoFollow or NoFollow links.

1). Ask the website owner

2). Search through the website code for relevance tags

3). Use a Firefox plugin/ applications

For starters you can always ask the website owner if they grant DoFollow or NoFollow links. Sometimes the website admin doesn’t always know the answer to this, is unreachable for questioning, or doesn’t provide you a truthful answer. So then there is option two. You can visit a website and then search the site for the relevance HTMl tag that designates whether a link is DoFollow or NoFollow. An example of what a line of code might look like for a NoFollow link would be:

<a href=”http://www.bostonwaterdamagesupport.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Boston Water damage</a>

Where as a similar DoFollow link would not have the relevance tag = nofollow and would look like.

<a href= “http://www.bostonwaterdamagesupport.com/”>Water damage Boston</a>

The problem with looking through code is that you are literally looking at code which not many people like to do and which is also time consuming not to mention also hurts your eyes. This brings us to option three. Use a Firefox plugin which highlights DoFollow links in purple font and NoFollow links in pink font. Using this Firefox plugin you can visit any site and quickly determine which type of links it uses and whether it is worth your time as an SEO to go ahead and build a link back to your target site.

Download the plugin here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nodofollow/ but not before you leave us a comment down below.

What do you think of the plugin? Will it become a part of your SEO toolbox?

Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights Discusses SEO and The Top Organic Listing

New data from a 2011 quarter four survey organized by Compete.com tells us that the tipping point for seeing a massive jump in website traffic comes as the result of earning a top organic listing in Google. Data from the survey shows that approximately 85 percent of all SERP listings shown are organic, with 15 percent appearing as paid advertisements. Additionally we have learned that 55 percent of all SERPs have ads.

If You Don’t Finish First, You Finish Last

Ricky Bobby from Talladega nights always says, “If you don’t finish first, you finish last.” While many of us thought he was referring to professional race car driving what we have learned at Dinomite is that he was actually referring to organic listing placement. It turns out that the top organic listing receives 53% of all page clicks while the second place organic listing receives only 15%. The third place link gets 9%, the fourth place sees 6% percent, and the fifth place link is only clicked on just 4% of the time.

But lets go back to that difference between first and second. The first place listing receives an incredible 53% of all clicks while the second listing only sees 15%. That is a gigantic difference that in a short period of time can separate two competing businesses by thousands if not millions of dollars resulting from inbound leads and increased brand exposure depending upon the industry. Multiply this difference by six months or even a few years and the what you’ll find is that businesses with a top organic listing compared to their second place competitor will be the Michael Jordan of their industry while the second place business will have to settle as the Karl Malone. Although both Jordan and Malone are household names, I don’t think Nike or Hanes ever signed Malone to an endorsement contract and I don’t believe you’ll ever see somebody wearing Karl Malone sneakers.

How To Generate Business Leads With a Blog Comment

Online marketing is all about strategy. It is about the effectiveness of your efforts. It is not about quantity as much as it is about quality. And there is so much going on in terms of content via all the different social networks, bookmarking sites, and within the search engines that it is easy to forget your marketing strategy while you are out surfing the internet. Did you know that the average person spends over 2 hours a day browsing the internet? That is over 14 hours a week! That is a lot of personal time. Now granted it is enjoyable to surf the internet, network with your friends, and visit random websites, but is it helping you generate more leads for your business?

How to Surf The Internet For Fun and Still Generate Business Leads

There is a way to surf the internet and simultaneously generate more leads for your business. The strategy looks something like this:

  1. Comment on every article that you read. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with the content of the article. Just comment to begin with. By doing so you are leaving a footprint in the digital landscape for which people can trace back to you.
  2. Do not use your name but rather your email. When you are commenting on a blog post and are forced to fill out a form with your information prior to commenting, do not use your name in the name field. Instead use your best email address. The reason being that your answer in the name field of the form normally shows up with your comment. So if you use your email address and leave a smart comment then other readers might see it and decide to email you for business.

*Always use your email in the “name field” of a commenting form so that your email address and not your name shows up with your comment. Now other readers can email you should they desire.

* Now look at Cathy’s comment down below. She filled out the “name field” of the form with her first name which appears above her comment. The problem is that we have no way to contact her should we want to unless we want to spend our precious time looking for her on Facebook.

That’s no too hard to do is it? Now that you know how to generate business leads with a blog comment it is time for you to drop a comment on this post. Increase your digital footprint and let us know if you are familiar with any other great strategies for generating leads online?

GoDaddy’s Servers Crash – How To Protect Your Business Website

GoDaddy Server’s Crash Result of Hacking Mastermind

Millions of websites crashed this morning (September 10th, 2012) as the result of a mastermind hacking group referred to as Anonymous. One Anonymous member is taking credit for bringing down GoDaddy’s servers. The individual tweeted that this was not a group effort but rather the result of his own efforts on behalf of the Anonymous group. Check out these screenshots of social media conversations covering the event.

How to Protect Your Business Website

In 2012 the only way to truly protect your business website is to frequently download and store backup files of your website content on a hard drive and on your personal computer. The truth is that the cloud is not 100% safe and never will be.

To safeguard your business website and any and all important online information we recommend you download and keep a backup file of all this information. Keep a backup file on your personal computer as well as on an additional hard drive or disc.

Best Security WordPress Plugin

At Dinomite SEO we recommend that all WordPress website owners use the Backup Buddy premium wordpress plugin to protect and save the entire content of their business website in a secure manner. Backup Buddy is our choice for safeguarding our website and does two things for you. One on a daily basis it will store your website files in the cloud on a different server from your host. And two, it allows for an easy and quick download of your files to store as a hard copy outside of your computer.

Click here to check out Backup Buddy!

What are you doing to protect your business from potentially losing its number one digital asset?

Social Media Vs. Search Engine Marketing

The big internet marketing discussion over the last few years has been whether social media marketing or search engine marketing provides the greatest ROI. The debate is a certainly a good one and one which has become more difficult in 2012.

Search Vs. Social – Who is the real Winner?

In the past search engine marketing provided a greater ROI than social media. However the digital landscape has changed greatly in the past year and in 2012 it is nearly impossible to have a social or search strategy without the other. Social signals, local citations, and online reviews have gained tremendous importance in ranking algorithms and will continue to play a major role in your inbound marketing efforts.

Today, Google factors in video, Yelp reviews, and your social network before returning search results. Therefore your search engine optimization strategy must include video production, video distribution to Youtube, as well as brand management over sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Yelp.

Although the video above shows search and social to be rather even as far as total marketing value, which do you feel provides a better ROI for your business?

Why Google Loves Mobile Responsive Website Design

Before we jump into the necessity of building a mobile responsive website in 2012 lets first answer the question, what is a mobile responsive website? A mobile responsive website is essentially a website that will format itself to be most cohesive with any browser and on any device be it an iphone, ipad, Android, tablet, mini-tablet, ultra-tablet, awesome-tablet, or any soon to be internet friendly device. Think of responsive website design as the ability of the website to respond to any viewing device along with any viewing browser for the ultimate viewing experience.

Better Experience, Better Ranking

Responsive website design will provide all of your website visitors the best possible experience viewing your webpages. No longer will your business require independent mobile website design. No longer will business owners and marketing departments have to budget for an additional monthly premium to have an SEO-friendly mobile website. Instead it will be the responsibility of marketing directors and business owners to understand that they must require responsive website design on all forthcoming projects as the foundation of their mobile SEO efforts.

Why Does Google Prefer Responsive Design?

In the end the goal of Google’s search algorithm is to return the most valuable results to the end user. Value to the end user implies webpages that contain useful and accurate information, relevant information, are easy to navigate, are easy to read, webpages that are fast loading, and that are reputable. If the end user has a good browsing experience then Google has done their job. But how does a positive browsing experience relate to a better organic ranking?

In the past year Google updated their search algorithm to factor in positive user experience as ranking criteria. Websites with analytics that suggest a positive browsing experience are rewarded with higher SERP. Positive browsing experience analytics include numerous social shares, above average visitor time on a website, a low bounce rate, and a high return visit per user on average.

Bring It Home – Why Is Responsive Website Design Preferred?

Google wants their end users to be happy. End users are happy when they have a positive browsing experience. A positive browsing experience implies a website functions properly no matter what medium or device is used to visit the website. Responsive website design implies a website will look and function perfectly no matter what combination of pad, phone, tablet, computer, or web browser you use. So….when a website looks awesome even while using a mobile device- that site will most likely provide a positive browsing experience for which Google will reward with a higher ranking.

On the official Webmaster Central Blog, Google made this statement in regards to their favoritism of responsive website design,

“Using responsive web design has multiple advantages, including:

  • It keeps your desktop and mobile content on a single URL, which is easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to and for Google’s algorithms to assign the indexing properties to your content.
  • Google can discover your content more efficiently as we wouldn’t need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.”

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this post. Have you made the jump to mobile responsive website design? Do you have plans to in the near future?

View Most Recent Links Using Google Webmaster – SEO Tool

Matt Cutts Tweets New Google Webmaster Tool

The head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts, decided to publicly announce the release of Google Webmaster’s new “link finder” tool just yesterday evening. Cutt’s tweeted, 

“You can now download links from Google *sorted by date*. Nice. Look for “Download latest links” in console UI. Pass it on!”

The new links tool shows you where your website is receiving the most current links from. Monitoring the quality of your inbound links is important to your SEO campaign and thus this tool will come in very handy.

How To Access Most Recent Links in Google Webmaster

Here are some easy to follow directions for how to access your recent links assuming you are logged into your Google Webmaster account.

1). Click on traffic on the left hand side of  your dashboard (screenshot to the right)

2).  Click on “links to your site”

3). Click on the “more” button under Your most recent content.

4). Click on “Download latest links”

And that’s it. Once you click “download latest links” up pops the option for the format of your download and your set. Now it’s time to analyze the quality of inbound links for which you are receiving and to dump the poor quality links that may negatively affect your rankings should you keep them.

SEO ACTION TIP: Should you find a high PR site linking to yours (ex. ESPN links to your site) consider composing a new blog post reviewing that ESPN linked to your site. Then in your blog post link to that page of ESPN’s site from where they link to your site. Create a triangle of linking pages with ESPN in order to further boost the ranking authority of their link to your site.

Not sure where to build links to start your SEO campaign? Here’s a hint. Start with social _______ sites.

Google and Bing Control Search Market Share with Record High

Yahoo Hits Market Share Low in 2012 While Google and Bing Sky Rocket

Last month in June of 2012 ComScore announced ground breaking numbers in regards to market share for the three big search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing. While Google and Bing experienced all time highs for marketing share in June, Yahoo experienced an all time low since the engine was established. For 10 straight months Yahoo search volume has declined and is showing no signs of potential recovery.

Google and Bing now control and even more substantial portion of search with Google trail blazing the way. Here are the market share numbers from June.

  • Google: 66.8 percent in June, up from 66.7 percent in May; an all-time high for Google
  • Bing: 15.6 percent in June, up from 15.4 percent in May; an all-time high for Bing
  • Yahoo: 13 percent in June, down from 13.4 percent in May; an all-time low for Yahoo

Implications for your business?

Local SEO Action Tip: With Google controling 67% of search as a local business you need to have an SEO strategy for local optimization. You are loosing business every second that you aren’t on page one. Check out our Google local business strategy guide for tips on how to improve your local ranking.

Competitive SEO Action Tip: If your business involves is not geo specific and involves reaching a broad audience then a strong online presence is crucial. Traditional marketing is often times too expensive to reach your entire target audience and so online marketing becomes the best complete  marketing strategy. Check out this article on 3 Reasons Why SEO is Crucial for Large Businesses and take action.

SEO for Startups – What Google Recommends

Small Business SEO Strategy

Calling all marketing managers and online marketing coordinators for startups and small businesses. Google has released a surface level strategy guideline for handling your search engine optimization efforts. This video covers all those considerations that you should take into account prior to website design such as the importance of site structure, functionality, and content layout. You will also learn about Google Webmaster tools, analytics, and the basic tactic of using anchor text within your webpages.

Don’t let your boss assume you don’t know anything about SEO! Watch this quick 10 minute video and start making the right moves for your company yourself. Maile Ohye of Google does a great job explaining SEO in case you are worried you will get lost.