Search and Social Media Weekly News (14th May)
May 14, 2010 Author: Adam Lee
And now for something different from Google…
Google has come up with a new feature aimed at providing inspiration for people tapping search queries into engines.
Apparently you will soon be able to see a list of alternative search queries on the left hand side of your search results page.
So presumably if you search the keyword ‘python’ Google will offer you alternative searches such as snake, lizard, monkey and all manner of other exotic jungle-based animals.
Studies of search behaviour have led to the creation of the new service.
On a similar note…
Just ask Google
The world’s leading search engine is also poised to roll out another search feature which is bound to appeal to fact lovers.
This feature gives you much more satisfying results when tapping in words such as ‘Catherine Zeta Jones date of birth’ (the Zeta Jones example is Google’s idea not mine!)
If you tapped in this query today you would just get a bog standard list of websites with the date of birth put in bold in the text below.
The new feature will filter sources according to reliability, come up with the commonly-accepted date of birth and list the sources which agree on the date.
So what is the Welsh actress’s date of birth? Well, you should never ask a lady’s age but as you have it’s 40.
MySpace looking for a SEO manager
While browsing the small ads on applyforjobs.com while I was whiling away some rare downtime this week, I couldn’t help but notice that MySpace US is looking for a new SEO account manager.
If you’re a “real team player” with “4+ years experience in SEO” and can bluff your way around Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint then maybe you could make the shortlist.
Oh, I forgot to mention that you’d have to re-locate to California in order to do the job. Well, you can’t have everything can you?
Cheat sheets and other ways to build good content
We’re indebted to Search Engine Journal once again for providing food for thought about what constitutes good content on websites.
Under the headline ‘How to add useful content to your site… and get results’ they’ve rounded up tips from some of the world’s leading SEO authorities.
No such compilation of advice could be complete without a contribution from Matt Cutts of Google.
Matt says: “If you’re trying to get exceptional links on crappy content, you’re going to be pushing uphill. It’s much better to have great content that gets those links naturally.”
No less insightful was SEOmoz’s hint to produce cheat sheets to draw extra traffic to your site. A cheat sheet is a guide on how to achieve a specific aim; for instance ‘Five easy steps to becoming a better SEO in order to upgrade your lifestyle’.
Here’s another two tips from me. Firstly include quotes in your posts. It will show that some research has gone into the content, break up the text so that it is easy on the eye and often provide balance to the argument.
Secondly, make sure that the start and end of articles are strong. If someone is reading a block of text they will often read the start and end to get an idea of whether it’s worth looking at in more detail.
More from our SEO news round-up next Friday…
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