I’ve been working on a few health check/utility scripts and since I’ve been swaying towards Ruby as my language of choice recently (I’ve put Python on the shelf briefly), I decided to check out Nokogiri. Stupid name I know, but Nokogiri is a pretty powerful XML/HTML parsing library for Ruby. It was written in the C programming language (which means its quick) and supports XPath and jQuery CSS style selectors meaning no more complicated regular expressions! As with all the high level interpreted languages out there nowadays, Ruby/Nokogiri doesn’t fail to deliver excellent results within a few short lines of code. (more…)
SEO Blog Posts
HTML Parsing with Ruby and Nokogiri
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011Link Building, SEO, Tools, Web Development
The Future of Google+
Monday, August 8th, 2011At the end of June, Google launched Google+, which appears to be the search engines answer to Facebook. Even after a few months, social media enthusiasts can’t seem to get enough of it.
When Facebook launched in 2004, it gained 20 million users in 3.5 years; Google+ reached it in just three weeks! The main reason for this astonishing growth was the large user base Google already had. While the amount of users Google+ has generated up till now is amazing, given the short space of time, it still doesn’t compare to Facebook’s astounding 750 million users or Twitter’s 200 million users. (more…)
Attacking the Long Tail – Why FAQ’s Should Come From Your Customer Service Team and Your Copywriter
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
On more than one occasion recently, we have met with clients who have started to add FAQ content to their website. Not only is this content extremely useful from a usability point of view, but it can also help attract the long tail of search.
FAQ sections are useful areas of content on a website as they help to dispel any fears from a potential customer about delivery, warranties and the like. However, FAQ sections are rarely structured to what the potential customer might ask, and are generally tucked away in a content plan that lands on a copywriter’s desk. (more…)
Global Google Algorithm Investigation – Data Request
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
If you are reading this then you have probably been selected to help take part in a study after you responded to a request for help, by either myself or Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, on the collection of data from Google in your respective countries.
The data collection is to be used to look into the maturity of the Google algorithm across the world in different Google search engines. It is thought that the UK and US have the most up-to-date algorithms in Google.co.uk and Google.com respectively and are the first to experience any tests or changes Google make.
However, how different are the Google search engines in other countries and how should SEO strategies be altered to suit the different algorithms in different locations? (more…)
A Picture Speaks a 1,000 Words
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
This month Google released its new version of image search, accessible by pointing your browser here. At first, nothing looks new. However, it is now possible to drag and drop images from either your hard drive or straight from another website. The idea being that Google will analyse your image and search for similarly related images stored on its servers, which can also be combined with the normal text based search. This is extremely similar to Google Goggles first seen in December 2009 for Android phones. This did a rough version of what the new image search can do now, and was evidently a testing ground for this month’s unveiling. (more…)
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