Bing has just launched a completely revamped version of their Webmaster Tools for our SEO and webmaster enjoyment and it looks OK, if not quite perfect. Bing’s Eric Gilmore spoke at SMX Advanced earlier this summer about having hit the reset button and started with a blank sheet of paper and really having listened to their forums; building a modern and more simplified architecture. But a quick glance at the various comments on Bing’s community sites shows that they have missed out or lost a few key features.

The new toolset is supposed to offer a simplified and easier to use interface than before and they are focusing on three main topics, Crawling, Index and Traffic data.

During our review of the new toolbox, we were left with the impression that the main reason for the update was to show off their new Silverlight 4 features rather than give webmasters an impressive toolset. Most lacking is the ability to export any of the data for further analysis. However, the tools do allow you to peer into how the spider is crawling the site, and what pages are getting indexed.

Unfortunately, Bing decided to remove the Outbound links and Backlinks reports which did provide some useful information. They also removed the Robots.txt validator which really was a bad move with the upcoming change to their robot name from MSNbot to BingBot. Domain score was also removed, which we won’t miss as it really didn’t mean anything, nor did the Page Score values – good riddance to those tools, we won’t have to scratch our head wondering what they meant.  See what – Anthony M Garcia, Senior Product Manager, Bing Webmaster Tools had to say

Finally we are also missing the language/country information that helped you define where your site should show up for different countries. We’ve used that in the past to help get sites in the correct search results when they were hosted in a different country than the business was located in. Another fail for Microsoft on taking that feature out.

The features they did keep and improved on in some cases are worth using. Here’s a look ath what we now have..

Crawl Data

The crawl section allows you to review up to 6 months of data which lets you see how the BingBot is spidering your site. The Silverlight graphs are admittedly real nice graphs, with easy to use sliders to view the data quickly.

The Crawl Details is an important report that shows you what URLs BingBot is having problems with, or URLs you’ve told BingBot not to index and those they believe to be malware infected.

Index Summary

The Index Summary is a new chart that displays how many URLs of your site were indexed on a day to day basis in Bing. The numbers can be a bit worrying, especially when you see a drop in URLs indexed – however sometimes that can indicate that some problems have been solved, such as duplicate content issues.

It is common to have somewhat large surges in the numbers of URLs indexed, for example the domain in the above screenshot did not implement any changes over the timespan when two thirds of its URLs dropped out and we’ve seen similar drops on other sites during the same time period. You may also find interesting that the site in the example did NOT see a traffic drop during that period with a large dip in indexed URLs. In other words, remain calm if you see a massive dip or gain in this report and be sure to study what you’re seeing.

Index Explorer

Index Explorer is just a fancy way to view what URLs from your site Bing has in its index. It’s also a tool to make it very easy to block a URL, or block the cache for a URL or entire directory. This one looks like it’s going to lead to trouble for some, read on to see why we think so…

Traffic Summary

You will need to validate your site to be able to use these new features. Go to http://www.bing.com/webmaster

While  most of the factors have decreased in relevance, the concept of domain trust is having a greater importance than ever. What do we mean by domain trust and how can you get search engines, especially Google to Trust your domain?

The terms “domain trust” and “domain authority” are bandied about a lot by search engine optimization services today. Domain trust is an expression that’s commonly used these days in SEO circles. Widely recognised as being of significant importance few people are able to offer a clear definition of domain trust and how it can influence search placements.

Here’s an explanation of domain trust, what it means and what you can do to build it. But let’s first have a look at the meaning of the term “trust” ..

The search engines work tirelessly in the pursuit of relevance. The name of their game is to match queries with the most suitable returns. The better they are at it, giving people simple stress free online search experiences that deliver the goods, then the more people will use them. In other words, the more value search adds to users’ lives the more value they add to their market price.

Google runs hundreds of tests against websites and checks numerous signals in order to establish relevance. One of the most important qualities that a web site can exhibit is domain trust.

The more domain trust you have the better you rank.

Domain Trust – Who links to you?

To a large extent domain trust is down to proximity. Google loves high quality websites. Well designed, well structured web sites bursting with great content and blessed with large numbers of satisfied visitors – these are Google’s trusted domains.

The closer you live to trusted domains, in other words the more direct links your site has from trusted domains, the more trust you gain.

Sites one link removed from the trusted domain network will generate 0.01% web spam. Two or more clicks from the trusted domain network and you are moving in circles that deal in unacceptable levels of spam – levels of 1.2% or more.

Domain Trust – Who you link to

It also matters who you link to. If you link to low trust sites, expect this to damage your domain trust. You’re in bad company. Link to trusted sites to boost your own domain trust.

Reciprocal links directories? Don’t do it. Why would any credible website link to a site that spams? It wouldn’t. Google is wise to this.

Domain Trust – Registration information

Google has been official registrar since 2003. Why? So that it can look under the web bonnet and access important web registration information. Being able to identify the owners of websites  means Google can spot themes. If you own 100 sites and Google spots that 75 of them are spam sites then expect this to be reflected in search placements  through

Domain Trust – User Data Signals

Google collects huge amounts of information about what users do on the web – through Analytics, through the tool bar, free wi-fi and through third party relationships. Signals reveal how naturally a domain is behaving. If the data signals are unusual the domain might well be penalised. Normal behaviour indicates a trust.

Follow Google guidelines, prioritise quality design and quality content and allow domain trust to grow naturally.

• Domain Age – it takes time to build trust and the past history of a domain may effect domain trust.
• Link Profile – essentially looking at the range of sites that you link to comparing the good links compared to the bad links.
• Domain Trust of other sites in a PageRank type relationship.
• Social networking (not yet but maybe in the future)
• On page information such as stop words?
• Links from a white-list of sites which is periodically checked by hand for quality? A list of manually checked sites that are unlikely to become untrustworthy overnight, Wikipedia (this rules out being correct as a factor), BBC, CNN, etc.
• Contact information on a page.
• Rate of link growth, natural growth – number of links grows as  a function of time and the number of pages in a site. More content should mean more link growth.  Is there a natural rate of growth for links depending on site size?
• Duplicate Content – a site that steals content from another site would be more likely to be dodgy.
• Bounce Rate – noisy but could be a secondary factor. It has certainly been touted as a possible ranking factor for a long time. A good site would satisfy the needs of its users but this could still be acheived in one page-view.
• Link distribution – how are the links distributed on the  site. Are there any deep links or is the entire link structure concentrating on the home page?
• Long-tail rankings – sites that appear for many long tail search are more likely to have good content than simple web sites.

Top 21 SEO DOs:

1. Make changes that benefit users. Focus on the user and all else (including rankings) will follow.
2. Create and maintain sensible and consistent navigation paths.
3. Be continually aware that each and every page on your site is a potential customer entry point. Think laterally.
4. Label each and every page clearly; describing its content in words your users would most likely employ.
5. Pay attention to detail. Google takes hundreds of factors into account when ranking web pages, and so should you.
6. Continually create content that your users will find beneficial.
7. Inform the search engines of new pages added to your site by submitting sitemaps and providing spider paths.
8. Use text to qualify or augment non-textual content such as images or videos.
9. Continually educate colleagues and collaborate with them in regard to SEO techniques.
10. Continually use data to analyze the impact of SEO techniques.
11. Streamline your code to make it as lightweight and elegant as possible.
12. Ensure there’s one page that is a champion for each of your most important keywords.
13. Pursue direct links from relevant sites aggressively.
14. Insist on site map diagrams and wireframes when developing or reworking templates, sections or sites.
15. Utilize hierarchal structures whenever possible, from individual pages to folder nesting to site navigation.
16. Use CSS liberally and JavaScript sparingly.
17. Be patient. Good rankings take time; quickly-won rankings almost always evaporate.
18. Be transparent with your results: there are no bad rankings, only opportunities for improvement.
19. Remember that everyone associated with your business is a potential link partner, including your customers, your affiliates and your advertising partners.
20. Take the time to read blogs, participate and forums and stay on top of developments in the SEO world. Search engines are dynamic.
21. Research,Research and Research.

Top 21 SEO DON’Ts:

1. Don’t make changes for improved search rankings that negatively impact a user’s experience. The user comes first.
2. Don’t duplicate content, knowingly or through technical carelessness.
3. Don’t use parameters that become part of a page’s permanent URL structure.
4. Don’t create a page that is not linked to an appropriate parent page.
5. Don’t knowingly let a page 404 (file not found). Redirect dead pages to new pages relevant to that old page.
6. Don’t use Flash when HTML can achieve the same user experience.
7. Don’t make your users search for categories: provide a click path.
8. Don’t give away your link love without good reason (i.e., a benefit).
9. Don’t put pages in competition with one another for your most important keywords.
10. Don’t use gray- or black-hat techniques that could put your search engine rankings at risk.
11. Don’t deploy SEO improvements en masse. When possible, roll out changes incrementally.
12. Don’t rely on top-down navigation to direct users to content. Think laterally.
13. Don’t put content in pop-ups.
14. Don’t use splash pages.
15. Don’t use coding techniques that are less than optimal for SEO just because they’re easy.
16. Don’t trust vendors about SEO issues. Their intention is to sell a product, not to improve your search engine rankings. As often as not, vendor SEO “solutions” cause SEO problems.
17. Don’t panic when your rankings take a hit. Rankings fluctuate, and if your rankings don’t bounce back quickly, a considered strategy will work better than a band aid.
18. Don’t take the search engines’ advice at face value.
19. Don’t rely on anecdotal or even expert advice in making keyword selection choices. Use data.
20. Don’t put off until tomorrow what should have been done yesterday. It takes long enough to rise in the search engine rankings, so any delay is amplified.
21. Don’t say “I do SEO”.

Reference : SEOSKEPTICS.com

Yes, just like the title clearly states: Google’s SEO report card, this new release from Google indicated that they focus on some key elements. They believe this report card can answer some of the questions frequently asked.

Actually the report card is for their product teams toimprove on their product pages using simple and accepted optimization. The provided almost a 50-page PDF, of course, ordinary website administrators would found some useful information in order to optimize their site(s).

In Google’s word:

These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users’ experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-to-understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines. From the start of the project we also wanted to release the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters could learn from the report, which is filled with dozens of examples taken straight from our products’ pages.

The report is divided into three parts:

• Subject I: Search result presentation
• Subject II: URLs and redirects
• Subject III: On-page optimizations

SEO Tips from the report:

• The title page should be a maximum of 60 characters
• Longer Titles should be modified using fewer keywords weighted
• The meta description does not flow in the ranking of a page with a
• The meta description should always include two lines
• For Sitelinks is a hierarchically flat links with keywords helpful
• For a permanent redirect should always use 301
• Headings should be used in chronological
• keywords in h1tags has more weight than keywords in h3 tags
• The alt text of an image is similar weight as the anchor text of a link