Google Acquiring Twitter for More Than $250 Million Valuation?

Either Google is acquiring Twitter this week or Michael Arrington is desperate for traffic and stirring up rumors. I think that given the buzz around the Twitter Google news, the former is in the making. Arrington posts on TechCrunch that two trusted sources have confirmed that Google and Twitter are in talks for Twitter to be acquired by the search and communications company.

If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google - the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Google - they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question - where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively.


Of course, there are sound connections between Stone, Williams and Google, as the same team behing Twitter launched and sold Blogger to Google close to 5 years ago. I was under the opinon however that another Google acquisition of a Stone Williams property was never to happen again. We’ll have updates on this rumor throughout that day.

How To Optimize Your Page Titles For Singular & Plural Terms

Most SEOs will agree that the title element is your strongest on-page element, and optimizing the title is critical for rankings and traffic. However when the keyword or phrase you are targeting has both a singular and plural version, many people have a difficult time optimizing for both. Novices decide to create a page for both the singular and plural version or just target the one term usually with the higher search volume. However with some careful planning it is possible to get both versions in your title tag.

For example lets assume you are an SEO consultant. Chances are you want to rank for both phrases [SEO Consultant] and [SEO Consultants]. However creating a separate page for each one would be awkward from a user point of view, as there isn’t really a need for two pages with content that will ultimately be very similar. In this case what you would want to do is find a way to get both versions in your title tag without it looking keyword stuffed. You could do something like this:

John Smith SEO Consultant, SEO Consultants

While that does have both terms it’s awkward and spammy looking. Here’s an alternative that is better:

SEO Consultants: John Smith SEO Consultant

The words are identical; however by changing the order it becomes much more readable and useful. Let’s try a commercial example:

Discount Disney Vacation, Disney Vacations

Again the wording is awkward, looks keyword stuffed and appears spammy. However by changing the order and adding a word we can come up with something much more useful:

Disney Vacations - Planning a Discount Disney Vacation

Experimenting a bit more you could even come up with something more useful and purchase driven:

Disney Vacations - Find A Discount Disney Vacation Online

The next time you are trying to target singular and plural phrases or phrases that are very close, look for ways to add an extra word or two, experiment with word order, and incorporate some natural language into your title. With a little effort chances are you’ll find a way to get both singular and plural forms of your keywords into your title, and be more click enticing.

How Google analyzes the top keywords on your website ?

Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages.

Google's new patent filing describes a way for website owners to view the top phrases that Google assigned to their website. The patent shows that Google finds the most important keywords on a website with a phrase-based indexing system and it describes a method that could allow website owners to add additional related keywords.

How does Google find the top keywords of your website?

All major search engines index web pages based on the individual words that they find on the page. If certain words and phrases appear together on the same page, search engines assign a topic that is related to these words to the page.

For example, the words "Paris" and "Hilton" are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, the words "Tiger" and "Woods" are associated with golf.
Google's patent application indicates that Google might plan to tell you what they believe are the top keywords for your website and let you suggest changes to these phrases.

How can Google find the relation between words?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word "Paris" and the word "Hilton" then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.
Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for your website?

Google does not allow you to suggest your keywords through a form yet. That means that you must use other methods to tell Google for which keywords you want to be listed on Google's result pages. That's why search engine optimization is so important.
Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant to a special topic:

*Use a meaningful site architecture
Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.
Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

*Create web pages that use different relevant search terms
If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "shoes" then it's not enough to mention the keyword "shoes" on your website.
You must also use related keywords such as "sneakers", "boots", "sandals", "footwear", etc. to show Google that your website is relevant to the general topic.

*Find out why other pages rank higher than yours
If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. Modern search engine algorithms require you to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords to get the best possible rankings in Google and other important search engines.

9 factors that affect your website usability and SEO

Optimizing web pages for search engines does not mean creating special pages for search engines. Optimizing web pages for search engines is often the same as optimizing web pages for web surfers.

If you do it correctly, your website will be attractive to both web surfers and search engine spiders. The following list shows nine factors that can improve the usability of your website as well as your search engine rankings.

1. You should have fast loading web pages
Usability: Web surfers don't want to wait for web pages.

Search engine optimization: Search engines can index your web pages more easily.

2. Your web pages should be easy to read
Usability: It's easier for web surfers to read your web pages.

Search engine optimization: Near-white text on a white background and tiny text is considered spam by most search engines.

3. The contents of your web pages should be clearly arranged
Usability: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make your web pages easier to read.

Search engine optimization: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make it easier for search engines to find the topic of your web pages.

4. Your web page images should use the image ALT attribute
Usability: Web surfers with images turned off and visually impaired visitors will be able to see the content of your images.

Search engine optimization: Search engines cannot index the content of your images but they can index the content of the IMG ALT attribute.

5. You should use custom 404 not found error pages
Usability: If your 404 not found page contains links to other pages of your website or a search form then people might remain on your website.

Search engine optimization: Proper 404 error pages make sure that search engines index the right pages of your website.

6. Your website should be easy to navigate
Usability: Clear and concise navigation links that are easy to find help your website visitors to find content on your site.

Search engine optimization: Clear and concise navigation links that contain your keywords make it easy for search engines to index all of your web pages.

7. Important content is above the fold
Usability: Web surfers with small computer screens can quickly see what your web page is about.

Search engine optimization: The sooner your important content appears in the HTML code of your web pages, the more likely it is that it will be indexed by search engines.

8. Your web page titles are explanatory
Usability: If web surfers bookmark your web pages, a clear web page title will help them to find it again.

Search engine optimization: The web page title is one of the most important SEO elements. It should contain your keywords and it should look attractive so that web surfers click on it when they see your web page title in the search results.

9. The URLs of your web pages are meaningful and self-explanatory
Usability: It's much easier to remember a web page like www.example.com/support than a web page like www.example.com/123123-werwc.php?2342234.

Search engine optimization: If your URLs contain your keywords, this can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Dynamic URLs with many variables can lead to problems with search engine spiders.