Jay Gaulard Blog

Matt Cutts, Internet Companies, Entrepreneurs and Search

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Matt Cutts 3 Step Process to Building a Really Good Site

This post is a combination of transcribed content from video recorded at a PubCon 2007 evening session that featured Matt Cutts, my organization of that content, and related resource links for websites or articles Matt spoke about during his presentation.

The offices of today’s leading internet companies

Charl’s post showcases some really innovative workspaces at some of the hottest Internet companies today. These workspaces are generally informal and designed to bring people together rather than keep them locked away in their small, grey cubicles.

The Twice Shy Entrepreneur

A number of venture capitalists I’ve spoken with have said that too many “old guard” entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it’s hurting their startups.

Top 10 Worldwide Rising Search Terms - Google

Earlier this week Google released the fastest rising search terms in the US. I have received the fastest rising search terms Globally from Google and there are some interesting conclusions to point out.

Facebook Wakes To Find Its Members Making Money - G-A-S-P!

Looks like Facebook does nont like people making money off their own profiles.

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

I was doing a little research this morning on search engine ranking factors and came across a great web page.

The page is pretty good. I read it almost to the bottom (it’s kind of long). If you are into SEO, this should do you some good. Here, check out the first line…

This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization.

Now, that is something that might help your website.

Here is my favorite line. Paul should get a kick out of this. It pertains to HTML validation…

Validation? Please, oh please, make it go away. Validation zealots just plain freak me out. Walking under ladders, breaking mirrors and stepping on cracks probably has more influence on your SERPs than validation.

I like that one.

Popular Websites For eBusiness

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

I thought this was interesting. I just found this article on Digg.

The article lists the top 25 eBusiness websites based on a few factors. I like this list, because I have visited a few of these websites. I do get a little jealous because I hate to see these huge numbers from other websites than my own. I mean, hey, more power to ya’, but still, it’s not me. Oh well.

Here is the list of the most popular eBusiness websites. I have probably visited the top six at some time or another.

If you are into SEO, eBusiness and things having to do with being a webmaster, you might want to bookmark this.

Sitemap Location in Robots.txt

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

Yesterday, I was updating my website sitemaps in Yahoo! Site Explorer and came across a post in their blog called, “Webmasters Can Now Auto-Discover With Sitemaps.”

This got me thinking, so I did a little more homework. Basically, this semi-new feature allows search engines to auto-discover website’s sitemaps. The syntax looks like this…

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

All you have to do is to add this line to your robots.txt file, or course, with your URL inserted instead of the example one above. This helps, because there are many search engines that now recognize Google sitemaps, but have no idea where yours is. Ask.com is a big one.

I found some resources and decided to list them here for you…

- Sitemap hint in robots.txt
- Sitemaps XML format
- What’s new with Sitemaps.org?
- Robots.txt Checker

Article Directory List

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

I would first like to say that this post is sponsored by ArticleHub.US and Article Leeg.

Anyway, I found the grand pappy of all article directory lists. Right now, there are 590 article submission websites listed on this page, with more being added every day. When I was looking last week for these types of websites, I found a bunch, but none as eloquently laid out like this. Many of them had multiple pages and all that. What a pain in the butt.

Ok, I’m outty.

List of Free Article Submission Websites

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

If you are looking to promote your business or website, I thought I would give you this list of free article submission websites to help you out. Please feel free to leave a comment with your own site if you have one to add…

ArticleHub.US - http://www.articlehub.us
Amazines - http://www.amazines.com
Article 99 - http://www.article99.com
Article Alley - http://www.articlealley.com
Article Leeg - http://www.articleleeg.com
Article City - http://www.articlecity.com
Article Codex - http://www.articlecodex.com
Article Word - http://www.articleword.com
Articles Base - http://www.ArticlesBase.com
Articles House - http://www.articleshouse.com
Articleware House - http://www.articlewarehouse.com

By the way, if you would like to list your article submission website here, leave a comment. If you would like to list it in our Wiki, please click here.

Google and SEO

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

I do love SEO and I respect Google. I am always poking around picking up little tidbits of information here and there. So here’s what I picked up for today. Let’s just say that I have been doing a LOT for reading. I think I have a headache.

- Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist
- 156 SEO TOOLS - The Tool Place - Free SEO TOOLs - All In One Place!
- SEOmoz | Beginner’s Guide to SEO
- Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
- WordPress and SEO | The undersigned

SEO : Blogging

Search Engine Optimization

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

As a web professional, I am always looking for tips and tricks on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. New things are popping up every day and I don’t want to miss any of them.

Well, today I searched Google for “html seo optimization check.” I like to run my pages through various automated page checkers to see what they say. I think lots of people do this…well, because there are lots of page checkers.

Just a word of warning…SEO has attracted many crazy conspiracy theory type people. These guys are just waiting to pounce on that little tidbit of information that will rise them to the top. These people write about SEO like there is no tomorrow, so just be careful when you read this stuff and think like a filter…that is, if a filter had a brain.

My search today came up with a pretty decent page that I thought I would share. It is a good guide for beginners and also valuable for those of us who have forgotten what in the world we are doing. It’s easy to lose sight in this field.

Anyway, the link is “Search Engine Optimization.” Have a read.

Do W3C Compliant Web Pages Affect SEO?

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

I suppose this is the question of the day.

I am currently working on some of my websites’ HTML code…trying to clean it up. The code itself is about three years old and a bit bulky. I am noticing a lot that doesn’t need to be there. The main thing I am coming across has to do with tables. When making an HTML table, you deal with a few tags, but the most frequent one you will come across is the “td” (table data) tag. For some reason, the developer used all “th” (table header) tags. I am not sure if there is much of a difference when it comes to SEO, but I am fixing them all to be “td” tags anyway. Also, I have a lot of nested tables. I can clean that up when I am really bored…one day.

Well, that had nothing to do with what this post is about. This may be more on track…since I am going through the pages, I thought it might be a good idea to run the pages I am working on through the W3C Markup Validation Service. Whether or not getting my pages closer to W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Compliance will have any effect on my rankings is to be seen. I don’t think it will, but I sure will let you know if it does.

What is W3C Compliance? Well, here is a great page on W3C Compliance and SEO. Give it a read and you may learn a little something. Here is a good thread on compliancy too.

What I am coming across when I run pages through the validator is many of my “alt” attributes are missing. No big deal…I’ll just put them in. There are a few more little things, but I am still coming up with about 40 something errors per page. Now, I am not going to be one of those people who sit up all night perfecting their websites to be 100% W3C Compliant, because the outcome isn’t sure to have much of an effect on my ranking anyway. When working on projects like this, you can go crazy. I know a guy who has a pagerank of 1 and has become absolutely obsessed with his site’s W3C Compliancy. I want to meet him, grab him by the shoulders, slap his face and tell him, “Dude, your site has no ranking whatsoever. Why in the world are you going crazy with this stuff?” This is an example of two things; 1. How many webmasters don’t keep their eye on the big picture, and 2. How violent I become when I am exposed to idiocy. And just to let you know, no, I have never met this person, he is a frequent writer on a web forum I visit a lot.

I had a little conversation with Paul this morning, who is into the web thing more and more these days. He is striving to break a million too. I mentioned that I was going to write a post on how (if) W3C Compliancy affects SEO. Before I could finish the sentence, he said, “No.” I told him that I wasn’t even finished talking yet and he became heated and through me out of his office. Just kidding, but he did say no.

He has been down the road of attempting to validate his sites and tells me it didn’t make much of a difference. So what does make the difference? Ahh, well, if you wanted to know that, I would have to ask for a teensy bit of money.

Google Pagerank Prediction - Multiple Datacenters

Monday, April 30th, 2007

This is a fun little tool. If you’re into SEO (that’s search engine optimization) and watch your website’s pagerank every month, then you might get a kick out of this. There are tons of websites out there that offer Google Pagerank Prediction or Predictors. they claim to predict what your site’s pagerank will be in the future…or after Google’s next update.

Just visit the site and type in your URL. You may either be pleasantly surprised or tragically shocked. Please take it with a grain of salt though…it has yet to predict one of my sites correctly, except when it says my pagerank will just stay the same. Also, I think all the sites use the same tool, so there is little use jumping around from site to site trying to predict the highest pagerank.

If you want to see if Google is in the middle of an update and you suspect that your pagerank will change, just check out the Google Multiple Datacenter Pagerank Check.

Enjoy!