Thepipbuzz

This article explains why the proportion of "keyword not provided" visits to most websites is increasing, and gives you options for finding out what keywords people are searching for when they reach your blog. Why the percentage of not-provided search visits to your blog has increased If SEO is important for your blog , and if you therefore watch the Stats > Traffic Sources tab in your Blogger dashboard or your Google Analytics results, you'll probably have seen that proportion of your search-visitors whose keyword is "not provided" has gone up a lot recently, to be more-or-less 100% of your Google search traffic.   (In the Blogger Stats tab "not provided" isn't shown - but the number of visits per keyword is now massively less than the vists from Google.) This is no accident: Google is now witholding the keywords that people use, and (says that) this to protect your visitor's privacy. The issue has been widely discussed in sites like Search...

This quick-tip introduces the Google Webmaster Tools structured data testing tool, which gives you a view of how your site looks to the search-engines. Today I discovered that Google Webmaster Tools offers tools for testing the structured data on your website. I haven't seen any announcements about it, just noticed it there when I was looking for something else - so I'm not sure if it's really new, just new-to-me, or I've been lucky enough to get a it before most people do. You can find it here (or at least that's where I'm finding it):     http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets Once you're at that page, you can paste in either an URL (your own, or someone else) or some HTML, press preview - and the system will show you how the meta-tags , open-graph tags and o ther Google-supported structured data on your site looks to Google.   This isn't important for many bloggers - but is very useful information if SEO matters for your blog . And you ...

This QuickTip is about the new types of "things" which the Data Highlighter tool knows about. In December 2012, Google introduced the Data Highlighter (DH) - this is a tool that lets you point to items in your blog posts LINK and use them to teach Google how you write about certain things. Now they have announced that this tool has been extended to cover schema.org definitions of seven new types of things: Products Local businesses Articles Software applications Movies Restaurants TV episodes The basic instructions for using the DH tool have not changed: visit Webmaster Tools , select your site, click the "Optimization" link in the left sidebar, and click "Data Highlighter". Google now advise that " The tagging process takes about 5 minutes for a single page, or about 15 minutes for a pattern of consistently formatted pages. " After you have done some tagging, you can verify Google's understanding of your structured data. If Google has und...

This article introduces Google Webmaster central's first-steps-SEO cheatsheat, and explains how the points in it apply to Blogger. Google have produced a "first steps cheat sheet" for people who've got a blog or website, " but never gave search much thought ". They describe it as a "short how-to list with basic tips on search engine-friendly design". It lists things you can do which may " help Google and others better understand the content and increase your site�s visibility ". You can find it here . (It's a one-page PDF file). The Webmaster Central post where it was announced said to " read it, print it, share it, copy and distribute it " - so I'm going to tell you how the points listed apply to Blogger users. One caveat:   As I've explained previously, SEO (aka search engine-friendly design) is totally irrelevant for some bloggers .  Unless you know that being found in search-engines is important for your blog...

This quick-tip is about the Webmaster Tools Tool Data Validator tool - which is an easier way to "teach" Google about the way things are described on your blog or website. Recently, Google announced a new feature in Webmaster Tools called the Data Validator. This is like a simpler way for website-owners (which is what bloggers really are) to tell Blogger about structured information that they put onto their sites - by point-and-clicking at the information on screen, rather than by learning the intricacies of Rich Snippets and the snippet testing tool . What they've released so far is just an English-language tool for events - "such as concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, shows, and festivals". To use it you need to visit Webmaster Tools, select your site, click the "Optimization" link in the left sidebar, and click "Data Highlighter". And obviously you need to have verified the blog in Webmaster Tools before you start, and to do the ...