Web Experience & SEO Blog

More on the HP.com Home Page…

2008-06-03T16:55:00Z

Posted by : Nandini Nayak

In the spirit of Web 2.0 and the “forever Beta” concept, we are doing some additional testing on the US Home Page this week and in the upcoming weeks. Having gathered a full two months of data on the new design we are working on further optimizations.

During this period some of you will receive the previous design and some of you the new modified design. This will help us understand how traffic is being directed and give us additional baselines for further improvements.

You may argue that we are changing too often, but continuous experimentation is the only way we learn how to optimize traffic flows. HP users come from all over the spectrum from consumers to small businesses to large corporations to name but a few. Getting the page “right” to drive traffic to the most relevant areas of the site “correctly” requires constant tweaking and analysis. Marketing and industry events often have effects as well.

This project will always be going on and will never be completely finished.

Blog Platform Migration Notice

2008-05-21T19:40:00Z

Posted by: Nandini Nayak and Tanya Vaughan

We would like to inform you that all HP blogs will be migrating to a new and improved platform over the next week. Starting May 23 we will not be posting to our blog and won't be able to receive any comments submitted until June 1. Please hold any comments until our new site is live. Thanks for your patience.

SEO Standards – I’ll Jump on this Bandwagon

2008-05-20T19:49:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

I just received the Summer edition of Search Marketing Standard magazine (which I love because it’s hard copy – thank you!) and was flipping through the pages when I stumbled across a quick article by Tom Dahm on SEO Standards: Is Now the Right Time?

From Tom’s article there are both arguments for SEO standards and against. I agree that some standards would be nice if only to have something or someone official backing up what I tell my colleagues at HP every day. I’m often faced with commenting that it’s an “industry best practice” which, frankly, just sounds weak a lot of the time.

I can see where it might be challenging to agree on some standards but if you have the right people on the standards board I think many SEO best practices could be wildly agreed upon and put into a standard format for all to reference – again, if only to provide another resource that says “yeah, this is a good tactic that is acceptable or encouraged by the engines”. And just because there are standards, does not mean everyone must or will abide by them (or even read them). Take the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example – how many web sites adhere 100% to what the W3C recommend? But I think most would agree that it’s a good resource in the industry.

Working as an in-house SEO requires a lot of justification for things that we SEOs know need to be done. But making the case for certain SEO tactics or strategies to the rest of the organization, whether it be IT or marketing, is often difficult as you’re usually asking them to take your word for it. It’s hard enough that I can’t tell you exactly what the cost benefit of adding a site map to the site is but when I can’t even reference a body that is deemed to be “the source” it’s even more challenging. Sure, I can say my agency said so but we all know how well that goes over in an industry that, unfortunately, may have a tarnished reputation in the eyes of some thanks to some agencies that either don’t know what they’re doing or are black hat.

Whether or not the industry will ever come together and decide to build some common best practices into standards, I agree that companies, at least large companies, need SEO Standards. When I started my SEO job, setting SEO web standards was one of the first tasks I set out to do in order to develop a solid program.

The HP.com SEO web standards (which are part of a broader web standards guide) are available to all our developers and internally so that anyone creating content or developing sites for HP.com can reference them and ensure they are abiding by what HP considers SEO best practices. The standards aren’t just a rules guide either. Every SEO standard we have in place starts with education about what the standard is and why it’s important for SEO. Then we document the best practices to employ. We don’t tell anyone how many keywords to use on a page but we can give great guidance for which an otherwise SEO novice may not have any idea.

One more really important reason for having internal SEO standards for your company is due to the potential of black hats or misinformed agencies making their way in to sell SEO to someone who isn’t knowledgeable enough to ask the right questions or challenge some of the theories or practices (especially when it comes to “automated SEO” – please.). While we have agencies of record for search, I’m always hearing about this or that agency coming in and giving this great pitch about SEO and how we need to do what they said right now!

That’s when standards come in handy so we can clearly document what is and is not acceptable on HP.com.

So the debate goes on – SEO industry standards or not. But SEO standards for large companies are a must!

New Home Page for HP.com now available to everyone.

2008-04-21T06:27:00Z

Posted by : Nandini Nayak, Director, HP.com Site Design & Research

I am glad to see some talk on the blog circuit regarding HP’s new US Home page which went into full production earlier this month. There are those who critique us from a visual perspective and attempt to “date” us as if this was about a fashion trend, others give us more credit for trying something new. As usability practitioners, we cannot design by random opinion, we have to let the data speak for itself. Ultimately, it is about whether our users can find the information they seek as efficiently as possible and whether we can communicate to our users what we have to offer in a useful, useable and engaging way.

Our data tells us that we have made significant progress from where we started.

We went through substantial amounts of validation research. We conducted several rounds of in- lab and remote usability testing, eye movement studies and rating scales. We put all this data together to guide our design. We finally put the design through a limited in-production test that I mentioned in a previous blog post. What you see is a result of this work.

Most users gave us very positive reactions to the visual design and scale values were significantly better for the new page. Some were surprised by the change, but we all know change is always surprising, even disconcerting perhaps. But your best usability “gurus” will tell you that as long as you have created a model that keeps the information scent strong, the design will succeed. Every user we tested was able to get to the information they needed using the task oriented navigation, using the segment oriented navigation or using search. On some tasks we made substantial progress in directing customers to appropriate locations.

So what’s really different?

We actively sought to promote content that we knew, through our analytics, was important to users in a task-oriented way (Shop for..; Support & Drivers and a new category of content that we introduced called ‘Explore and Create'..) We continue to have the segment based navigation as an alternate navigation path.

We use some new techniques to reveal content. Users don’t always have to click to see new content, content comes to the user as they explore different links. It is a responsive interface avoiding some of the pogo sticking that occurs when users inadvertently click on links. We have used this feature to reveal not just textual menus but rich imagery that goes with the topic.

We know there are popular notions that tell us that home pages should be a full link list index page of the site. We needed to create a balance, providing broad views of the content with one that actually engages rather than overwhelms users. We have moved away from a link heavy presentation to one that reveals content in chunks as the user explores the different options. Our design creates a balance between being information rich and engaging at the same time.

We have also moved away from “thumbnail” style imagery that some sites apparently favor to images that actually reveal detail . We have found that user engagement with these images is substantially improved. And we have brought a connection between the different media messages we communicate to our different audiences with the stylistic features of our imagery and headlines on the home page.

We believe our users are pleased with the outcome and you will see us continue to improve and refine both the home page and the rest of the site.

Google Site Search

2008-04-02T19:37:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

First let me define Google Site Search in the context of this post. What I’m not talking about: (1) Embedding code into your site to enable Google site search on your site (2) using “site:domain.com” commands in Google search boxes to see how many of my domains pages are indexed. What I am talking about specifically is the site search box that is embedded into a company’s branded, number one search result in the Google SERP. For example, see how a search for “Time Magazine” has an embedded search box below?

Ok, now that we’re on the same page, let’s talk about this new feature Google has implemented – not for every site, and in fact for seemingly very few. I imagine they are still testing and learning. It seems, in fact, that the embedded search feature is only being tested for new sites for now (I only found examples on Washington Post, Time Magazine, New York Times and Forbes – notably missing the embedded search box: Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek Magazine).

First, how does Google decide when to embed the site search box in the search result? I haven’t seen anything official from Google discussing the feature so please share if you have anything.

Second, though, is the question as to whether the embedded search box is intended to better the user experience or is it to generate more revenue for Google AdWords? I think that is the debate among advertisers and bloggers but how about we ask basic searchers who aren’t so entrenched in search as to be thinking about motive or intent?

Recognizing I’m entrenched in search and may be biased, I’ll share my opinions/thoughts (subject to change) about this new feature.

If HP branded search results included an embedded search box I’d probably suggest to HP that we request Google remove it. Why? Several reasons:

HP has invested far more in our on-site search experience than Google has.
We have our own spider and internal rules for what we want indexed and served both organically and in our one-click and HP recommends sections (for more popular search queries) to our customers.
We’ve done our own usability studies, have analyzed our on-site data and click paths and we’ve built that into our search experience.
We also know that someone intending to search for content on a site, is expecting results only from that site. That is not the case with Google’s site search feature.

In the example above, if you type in the search box in the Time Magazine result above and select the button that says “Search time.com” you would expect that results will all come from time.com right? Well, not exactly. Several paid ads may also come up in addition to the organic results from the domain time.com. This is the part that is confusing and seemingly up for debate. Why present additional paid ads to a user looking for content on a particular site?

Some people argue that a searcher can type the function “search query” site:domain.com to get the same results so it’s not really a new feature and what’s the fuss anyway? You can also click the “more results from domain.com” link in some brand results that performs a similar function but doesn’t seem to return any paid listings.

Some propose it’s a poor user experience. Some marketers are unhappy about the potential of losing a customer who was clearly interested in their brand to a paid ad that came up after using the site search functionality. Others contend that if the user is distracted by the paid ad they weren’t that loyal anyway. But what about those people who just don’t know the difference between a paid ad and an organic ad and simply trust Google to provide them with the content they are looking for. The button did say “Search time.com” after all.

I suspect that several users don’t realize that the sponsored listings across the top are paid advertisements. And if they do realize this, they still think that those premium placements are still more relevant than the ones down the right column. I hear all too often that people ignore the listings on the right but not the ones at the top because those are “more relevant”.

So who really cares if there are clicks on the ads after a site search is performed? Well, Google does because they get paid more. The advertisers who are both getting the clicks and losing the clicks care too. But does Google care more about the user who trusts their results are the most relevant? Maybe. It seems less and less ads are being served the more I test this new site search feature. Like HP has more information on users of our site I’m sure Google has more info on their and will use that to determine how they want to move forward with this feature.

SEM, SEO, and On-Site Search Collaboration

2008-03-26T04:44:00Z

Posted by: Laura Dansbury, Global Hp.com On-site Search Program Manager

The last time I talked about collaboration between the 3 areas of search, I noted that the communication required between HP SEM, SEO, and On-Site search managers to prepare for a panel presentation was a learning opportunity.

Michael Martinez recognized that this idea could be extended to a formal process:

If you have more than 1 person managing any aspect of your search visibility you need to have regular meetings to see what each person is doing AND to see if they can help each other innovate, leverage resources, and improve efficiencies. If there are only 3 people handling your search visibility they should be making presentations to each other once a week, at least once a month, in a formal meeting environment. It would be good to include non-technical people in the presentations to ensure the B.S. degrees don’t show themselves.

Michael’s insight about the need for regular meetings is spot on. Let me give an example of how we make this work. Tanya, Vicki, and I meet twice a month to catch-up on all things search. Sometimes we have new data to share, sometimes we are just looking for help with a search puzzle, sometimes we have an idea for a new project, but it is always good to hear the opinions of someone wearing a different search hat.

The best collaborations come when more than one of us has a similar problem. We get much better traction when 2 or 3 of us are highlighting and escalating the same issue. We have more data to prove our case, a higher expected ROI from resolving the issue, and the power of peer pressure. For example, how important is it to correct a syntax error on the description and title tags of a particular web section? Maybe the description tags could be considered less important from an SEO perspective because frequently the major engines choose to show a snippet from the content body rather than the description tag. But for on-site search, we show the description tag in the search results. So it’s very important to update the description tags if there’s an error. Together, Tanya and I can do a much better priority assessment than if we approached this issue independently from just our own focus area.

Hiring In-house SEOs and SEO Agencies

2008-03-24T14:18:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager, HP.com

When I sit on panels at conferences and have conversations outside the panels I often get asked whether I think it's better to have an in-house SEO or an agency. My answer is always "both" but my recommendation is start with a good in-house SEO.

I realize for a small company with a small web site it may not make sense to hire a full-time SEO in house and also retain an agency, so for this post, I'm speaking more from a perspective of a mid-to-large organization with a large web presence.

I wrote a blog post about the topic of bringing search marketing in house in September 07 so I won't restate any of those comments as to why it makes sense to bring search marketing in house. However, once your company decides to hire an in-house SEO, what experience or qualities should they look for? I've talked to a few recruiters to try and help them find the right people and I can see why it's difficult for them to narrow it down. I see lists and groups of self-titled SEOs all over LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking and job sites and sometimes I run across names of people I know - either through networking or having had worked with them - who I would never consider to be an SEO. Sure they might have dabbled in it - hiring an agency to do an SEO project a time or two or they managed paid search so naturally they are also an SEO but does that really make them an SEO? Not even close.

Not all SEOs are the same so be careful if/when you decide to recruit one. A true SEO will have looked at your site and likely be telling you where you have areas of opportunity in the interview. A true SEO will challenge any agency they work with to answer tough questions and debate topics that haven't been fully answered. A true SEO also doesn't throw every SEO topic or question from the company over the wall to their agency, but rather answers most thoughtfully and completely from their own perspective. A true SEO sees opportunities within the company to which an agency will never have insight. A true SEO shouldn't need an agency for much more than collaboration, trouble shooting and bandwidth; the SEO agency should simply be an extension of the team the in-house SEO manages.

So how do you find a "true" in-house SEO?

I believe there are certain types of people that will naturally be good at SEO whether they are experienced yet or not. I can tell when talking to someone if they are truly interested in learning and really digging in or if they just want to land a job that makes them highly marketable. This is what sets apart a great SEO from a fraud (caveat emptor - it's easy to be a fraud in an industry few hiring companies are yet to fully understand).

Then should you recruit an expert or just give someone in the company the SEO job? You really can do either one but you have to be careful in either instance to make sure you get hat individual who has what it takes to be a true SEO - and in many cases "what it takes" is desire and as cliche as it sounds - passion. It's harder to gauge whether a newbie will retain the desire long-term but anyone who has been doing real SEO for a while - or even trying to learn about it - will have some strong opinions, thoughts or questions on topics beyond title tags. Once you start interviewing candidates you'll get a feel for whether they have the right attitude because if they do, you'll probably have a hard time getting them to stop talking about it. SEOs are geeks and many of the best SEOs don't stop at their own company's web site. There are a lot of great SEOs and great potential SEOs out there - be patient and find the right one.

Now that you've hired your in-house SEO, how do you select an agency? Well, fortunately, you've got an expert now to ask the right questions in the RFP process. If you haven't hired an SEO in house yet, do your homework and know how to ensure you select a solid, experienced SEO agency.

Search day at eTail 2008 in Palm Springs

2008-02-26T19:36:00Z

Posted by: Laura Dansbury, Global Hp.com On-site Search Program Manager

Tanya, Vicqui Chan from the HHO store, and I recently attended the first day of eTail 2008 together. We presented the afternoon panel discussion on the 3 pillars of Search: SEO, Paid Search, and On-site Search. It was a great experience for all of us. We are all on different teams. And we would not normally attend a conference together even if we were for cost-savings reasons. But I think the best learning experiences at conferences come from the hallway conversations with peers and coworkers between presentations. We tend to think it is wasteful to send more than one person to an event per team. But I think it is wasteful to ignore the insights and inspirations that occur when people facing the same challenges step away from the office and try to see the bigger picture at the same time! It also ignores the benefits of teambuilding and opportunities to discover new resources.

As we prepared for this event, we discovered new ways we could collaborate beyond what we were already doing. In fact, the brainstorming that occurred was probably the best part of the entire event. We are sharing data, looking for mutual research opportunities, and rethinking long held assumptions. But what about the event itself?

It was first time we have ever seen a conference session combine all 3 areas. We had an enthusiastic reception from the conference organizers when we proposed this topic. At the event, there were about 75-100 people in the room from all the top online retail companies. We started by answering questions that were prepared in advance but quickly moved to open questions from the room. Tanya took the most questions since the majority of the audience was focused on SEO. But Vicqui and I had our share too. Really the biggest challenge was knowing when to stop talking and take the next question because there was so much we could say. The moderator tried to get us to disagree with each other's answers - just to mix it up a bit - but it didn't work. We really have far more synergy and impact when we collaborate than when we focus narrowly on our own fields.

As we talked to the participants we found that even smaller companies are not looking at search holistically. They have different people focused on the 3 areas of search and little or no collaboration. Frequently on-site search is managed by an IT team, SEM is done by a marketing team person, and SEO is the domain of a person on the web team. Sometimes landing pages are duplicated and there is inter-team competition for the same keywords. Once someone lands on a page, the focus is on conversion. But what happens if they search again? Are they lost, what didn't they like about the landing page, do they need more information? How can this step of searching again feed into the design of landing pages and the choice of keywords?

I'd like to hear from other medium and large size companies that have an on-site search program along with SEM/SEO staff. What are they doing to share ideas? Why aren't they collaborating? Or are they different from our eTail audience? It would be great to take this panel presentation to a few larger SES, SMX, and other search conferences and hear audience reactions. Is this a strength unique to HP or is there more we can learn from other search teams?

Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?

2008-02-14T15:46:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

I recently read an article in Website Magazine entitled Landing Pages: SEO vs SEM, written by Aaron Kupferberg (it was on page 12 of the February edition for those of you who enjoy reading hard copy - as I do - once in a while). It was an interesting perspective and while I don't disagree - especially with the example Arron provided - I do want to provide my perspective on this particular topic.

First, I have a pet peeve about referring to "Pay-Per-Click" or "Sponsored" search marketing as SEM because I consider SEO to be a form or search engine marketing and hence falls under the umbrella of SEM. That aside let's get into the different perspectives on landing pages.

I'll start with the example given by Aaron which was Zappos. He differentiated landing pages for SEO and PPC because of the business Zappos is in and the primary products and services they're known for delivering. (I'm personally a big fan of Zappos so very familiar with their site!) I believe Aaron's point was that for the search term "shoes" Zappos' home page naturally comes up high (#2 for me) in the list of organic results because of their popularity for on-line shoe shopping. And since the home page isn't entirely focused on shoes now that they've expanded to offer clothing, bags, watches and accessories it makes sense to provide a very targeted "shoes" page in the sponsored results.

However, what about all those search terms for which Zappos home page does not dominate top listings in organic? For example watches. Doesn't it then make sense for Zappos to build a really well optimized page for watches that also serves as the landing page for not only sponsored listings but on-site search as well?

This is where I think you have to think about search as a holistic experience - considering sponsored, organic and on-site experiences together. By developing these pages that serve all these search avenues you save money and time on development and maintenance of these pages and you are much less likely to create a confusing experience for searchers who may enter your site from paid search one day and natural or on-site search - using the same or similar keywords - the next. You can also learn from the conversion and actions of all visitors and then break it down by search pillar to see how conversion rates and actions compare.

If companies started to look at organic search the way they look at paid (Specifically around developing new pages to address certain keywords), I think they'd realize there are gaps that need to be addressed for both organic and on-site searches as well.

Google Sitelinks-Why Won’t Google Let Us Designate Sitelinks for Our Domains?

2008-01-28T18:44:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager, HP.com

Has anyone else tried using the Google Sitelinks feature in Google Webmaster Tools? I love the idea of it and as soon as I heard about it of course I ran out and submitted my requested edits to update the HP.com sitelinks to what we feel would be a better customer experience – not just for HP customers but for Google customers as well. At HP, we know what portions of our web site are the most popular and what make the most sense to provide in a consolidated search result for someone looking for HP on the web so I was eager to give Google my input. Unfortunately they only wanted to hear half of what I had to say.

In case you aren’t familiar with sitelinks, it’s a feature Google has added to more popular brands in that if you search for a brand e.g. Yahoo!, you see additional links as part of the first result from that brand’s domain:

In adding this user-friendly sitelinks feature, Google also gave the webmaster the ability to block certain links from the sitelinks for that domain in case they were providing links you didn’t feel appropriate for your domain or customers.

When I originally viewed our sitelinks they were pretty good – nice work on the automation part Google. I only had two changes to submit. Basically I wanted to remove a duplicate site and one that was far less popular and relevant and would be better replaced by our consumer store which wasn’t currently on the list (maybe because it’s on a separate subdomain?).

When you “block” links from your sitelinks in Google webmaster tools, there are free form fields where you are requested to enter reasoning for the removal. I figured if this was a free-form field, surely a human editor was reviewing it and would take my input into consideration. So in blocking two links I suggested replacements that made more sense and better represented all of our HP customers – thus providing a better, more relevant customer experience.

The pages I wanted removed were eventually removed – I think it took a couple of weeks but they’re gone. And they did add one of my suggested links – but not with the appropriate link text so it’s actually quite misleading as to what the destination page offers. Also, I think the “automation” took over once again and replaced one of my blocked URLs with another URL that points to the exact same page. Back to square one.

This is what the HP.com sitelinks look like today in Google if you search “HP”:

Unfortunately, Office Store and Office both go to the same place – and ironically it's not the business store as the link would imply but our “Home and Home Office” store – which is really the consumer and home office store and would be better represented by a link that indicated such. Our business store link, which used to be in the list, is now gone.

Today I will once again make an attempt to revise some of these links for more appropriate ones in hopes that Google will take my word that I know what customers coming to HP.com are most interested in.

I’m not sure at what point my manual intervention will override automation but what we at HP would suggest for our sitelinks is going to be a better, more relevant experience for our customers and Google’s so what would be the harm in my designating my own sitelinks?

By the way, I also noticed that some pretty popular sites don’t have sitelinks.

This is the message you get if Google has not generated Site Links for your site:

“Google has not generated any sitelinks for your site. Sitelinks are completely automated, and we show them only if we think they'll be useful to the user. If your site's structure doesn't allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don't think that the sitelinks are relevant to the user's query, we won't show them. However, we are always working to improve how we find and display sitelinks.”

In fact, when I search for Google, I don’t see any sitelinks for them (although I believe they’ve had some in the past based on the descriptive screen shot they use in the Links feature of Webmaster tools).

There are a few other well-known brands for which I’m surprised not to see sitelinks yet they do appear for lesser-known brands. If a site is ranking number one for their brand name, and they would like to add sitelinks for their brand, why not let them add the ones they find most relevant to their customers?

I realize this is a work in progress for Google but this is one of many instances where allowing more input by the webmaster makes more sense for Google customers than Google trying to automate evertying thus requiring webmasters to guess what it is they need to do to generate the most relevant sitelinks automatically. This is probably true for most sites, but for Enterprise sites in particular, it is not feasible to redesign home pages to test how sitelinks will appear. We either need clearer direction as to what generates these or we need to be able to provide them.

Again, love the new feature Google. Here's to hoping we can have more input so your searchers and our customers can better find what they're looking for.

An updated home page design for HP.com!

2008-01-18T22:06:00Z

We are testing an updated design for the home page of HP.com with a small percentage of users who come to the site. Some of you may have seen this already.

Why are we doing this you ask? Well, a home page is never perfect and it is constantly under pressure to perform better. HP has the unique privilege of having one of the broadest offerings of products and services in our industry serving a wide variety of customers from consumers, micro and small businesses to large enterprises. The home page has to work for all our customer segments and product lines. If we try to put all the important links onto one view it is somewhat overwhelming. While the current home page is functional, we believe there is opportunity to make it simpler and more task oriented, revealing content as users request it. We also wanted to use some new design elements to market our products and services more effectively.

So, in the spirit of continuous experimentation we are once again testing.

If you have seen this updated page please give us feedback. Or respond to this blog.

Yahoo!'s Dynamic URL Rewrite

2008-01-17T20:49:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager, HP.com

It’s the new year already – and 17 days in! I’ve been MIA on the blog front but not for lack of good intentions. I have a few topics in my head but carving out the time to jot them down requires my laptop be offline and at least a 1.5 hour plane ride. Hence this post I write on my way home from some internal meetings.

I few months ago I posted a blog around the topic of indexed URLs with tracking parameters. I’m pleased to say I’ve seen one of the major search engines address in full force. My comment in the previous post was really an observation and follow-on question as to whether Google figured out a way to eliminate some of HP’s duplicate URLs generated by tracking parameters (primarily for marketing reasons). The bigger question was, however, in their mass deletion of duplicate content created by these tracking parameters were they nice enough to consolidate the link popularity to the base URL?

I never really got the answer to that question but meanwhile Yahoo! has been busy developing a tool within Yahoo! Site Explorer that allows me to directly communicate to them exactly what tracking parameters to ignore – thus removing duplicate content in their index while combining all link popularity to the base URL. It also solves other issues like over-measuring referrals for a campaign because the marketing URL with the tracking parameter was indexed and served in natural search results. This is a great feature and, while I’m excited that Yahoo! has provided this as an option for SEOs, I’d love to see the other engines also provide such functionality.

The feature on Yahoo! is called “Dynamic URL Rewrite” and I encourage any webmaster or SEO to provide rewrite information through Yahoo! Site Explorer. Once we saw this released we quickly jumped on it and we’ve seen a significant drop in indexed URLs with our tracking parameters and an improvement in ranking for many of the pages where proliferation of the tracking URLs was a significant problem. Bravo Yahoo! for developing a feature in your toolbox that solves a common problem for the engine, the webmaster, the site SEO, the marketers and the searchers!

PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas

2007-12-17T18:22:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager

I’m finally getting around to blog about my experience at PubCon – catching up after nearly a week out of the office is rough! But now that I have a moment to reflect (and I’ve had some time to recover from several days in Vegas!) I’m ready to share my experience.

In a nutshell- I’m glad I went. How’s that for starters? I’ve now been to SES a few times and SMX Advanced in Seattle so I have basis for comparison and PubCon was every bit as good in some of the same and some different ways. Sure the Google party as part of SES San Jose is hard to beat, but then again, so is Vegas if parties are what you’re interested in. Back to the conference…

The longer I’m in the search marketing industry, the less I take away from the actual conference sessions – even though that is where I learned so much to get where I am today (newbies read: conferences are a must!). Not saying I know it all but I know enough that much of the content is familiar. That said, I always take away a few “A-HA’s” or ideas that kick-start my energy when I get back.

And even though the sessions aren’t the part of the conferences where I get the most value any longer, I find a lot of value in the networking and conversations surrounding the sessions. That’s a big reason why I still attend them – so I can take away conversation pieces and ideas but also find those birds of a feather who have a similar challenge or interest. Being able to talk to other enterprise SEOs is key for success in managing SEO for a global, enterprise site and what better place to do it than a search geek gathering like PubCon?

PubCon didn’t fall short of my expectations at all. I was pleased to find a lot of seasoned experts on the panels as well as in the audience. There were reps from the engines in some of the SEO sessions which is always a benefit of attending search conferences. I had a chance to corner Google’s Maile Ohye (who was on the SEO and Big Search panel) to make the case for better geographic targeting capabilities for enterprise companies. Unfortunately, until bulk verification is available it’s just not feasible for global companies with complex web infrastructures and hundreds of subdomains to use the tool to set geographic targets (or frankly many of the other features in Webmaster Tools). (Sidenote: I’d love to hear if anyone has found a work-around for this as there is a lot we can share with the search engines to help them more efficiently index our site so they serve more relevant content to their customers.) Again, back to the conference…

A few things I like about PubCon:

Session rooms were plenty big enough. I was able to walk in right when the session started and get a seat that wasn’t on the floor or in the doorway. It was nice not to have to show up ten minutes early to find standing room only.
The people in attendance seemed to be a little more advanced – at least in the sessions I attended. As a result the questions were more advanced and provided more value.
PubCon mails you a DVD of the presentations after the conference. For some reason I really like having a DVD with all of the presentations. I think because the only time I really would take time to look at them would be on the plane when accessing them via the web isn’t an option (and apparently neither is my planning ahead to download them!).

Ok, back to the parties… I really didn’t go to many of the parties. I stopped by the cocktail reception on the first night to do some networking and talked to quite a few people but I wouldn’t call it a party. On Thursday though, I did make it to the Microsoft adCenter and Live Search “Party Like a Rock Star” party at the Ghost Bar – which was very nicely done. I even got a photo with Billy Idol and Gwen Stephani – What? They were impersonators? Who knew!?
Did you go to SES or PubCon? Would love to hear your comments!

Why I’m planning to attend PubCon instead of SES Chicago in December

2007-11-19T13:43:00Z

Why I’m going to PubCon instead of SES Chicago in December

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

As most of you search geeks know, SES Chicago and WebMaster World’s PubCon are occurring at the same time this year – the first week of December. A lot of us on the SEMPO In-House Committee were conversing about who was going to which conference and why. I’ve decided to go to PubCon over SES…

First, I’ve been to SES three times now. I went to SES New York in April and before that I had been to SES San Jose two years in a row. I learned something from each one although the longer I’m in this industry the less I learn each subsequent time I attend – but that’s to be expected right? If you haven’t been to SES before though, I’d highly recommend it. I think Friday was the last day for early bird pricing so if you missed it you might want to scrounge up a discount elsewhere (maybe join SEMPO – you get a 15% discount as member – not to mention all the other great member benefits). Also, SES is offered multiple times per year and usually my preference is the San Jose event because it’s the biggest and easiest for me to get to travel-wise.

Another, and really the primary, reason I’m going to PubCon is because I’ve never been. I’m looking forward to seeing some new speakers I’ve never seen before as well as some of my favorites from previous conferences I’ve attended like SMX and SES. Obviously I’ll be interested in the SEO tracks, especially as they relate to Enterprise level SEO but I’m really looking forward to SEO and Big Search. I’m also particularly interested in International and European Site Optimization as that’s something you don’t get exposed to much without leaving the States. Matt Cutts always puts on a good gig so I’ll want to catch the keynote coffee chat with him on December 6. I love to see how he handles some of the crazy questions he gets from the audience. And finally I want to branch out of SEO and look more at social media so I’ll try to catch Monetizing Social Media Traffic on Tuesday. Vanessa Fox is speaking on that panel so it will be great to see her in her new role at Zillow as well as catch up on the latest Buffy happenings. I didn’t forget I owe you a drink Vanessa (can I say that in my HP blog? Guess we’ll find out!)

And what really pushed me over the fence I wasn’t really on to begin with was having to choose between Las Vegas or Chicago in December. Love you Chicago but by December I’m ready to warm up a bit!

If you’re going to be at PubCon maybe we’ll have a chance to meet. I always enjoy meeting other people in the search industry – especially SEOs - so if you see me wandering the halls between sessions say hi!

Which conference will you be attending?

Google’s New “Set Geographic Target” Tool – Close but Not Quite…

2007-10-31T19:11:00Z

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

I have to admit, when I got the notice from Vanessa Fox (previous Google Webmaster Tools product manager) about the ability to tell Google my preferred geographic location, I was ecstatic! This has been a challenge I’ve been trying to address for some time both directly (to the extent I can get any Google facetime) and indirectly through blog posts about International Web Content and Search Engines and pestering of Google personnel. Unfortunately the recent addition of the “Set geographic target” feature in the Webmaster Tools doesn’t quite work for many global web sites.

The feature is a great addition; don’t get me wrong. I applaud Google and other search engines when they allow web masters to tell them a little about their sites to help aid them in their indexation process. (In fact, Yahoo! recently announced a new Dynamic URL Rewriting Tool that’s something webmasters have been wanting for a long time.) However, the new feature in Google’s webmaster tools doesn’t allow for much customization – meaning it was developed to address a few sites that are using subdomains to identify country target. So now, it seems, Google will not only look at top level domains (TLDs) and hosting IPs to determine geographic relevance and inclusion in country-specific indices, it may also look to subdomains that a webmaster has identified as being associated with a particular country or region.

But what if a web site is a truly global web site and uses directory structures (file names) to identify the country and language? Are those still ignored or perhaps will this be the next feature added to the Webmaster Tools within Google? Let’s hope for the latter – and the sooner the better!