Ha … Google’s changed their logo to a barcode! I fired up the Barcode Scanner app on my G1 to decrypt it and guess what, it’s Google in barcode.

I’d been making some updates to the blog and loaded up Google (because it’s my default page). It’s hard to miss, but there Turns out the original barcode patent was filed October 7th, 1952 by Wallace Flint.

‘Social media’ is the new craze because of how large sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are getting. The web has been social since it’s existence, it’s all about communication and getting information from one place to another. Forums were around way before MySpace. These concepts aren’t new they’ve just been implemented in a way that makes it easier for people to connect.

In real life, the more social someone is the more friends they have. The more connected and active you are in your community the more popular you are.

When thinking about search and how to get traffic to your site, the answer is simple … just be more social. Find people who share your interests on Twitter, reply to them and start a conversation. Find blogs that discuss some of the same things you do and comment on them, linking to your blog (with your name, not keywords). Post interesting and relevant content, often. Be active inside forums targeted at your subject of choice. Link to other bloggers from your site, trust me they’ll notice.

Search was originally strictly about content. Google changed that up and realized backlinks are a better indication of what a site is about and not the actual content contained within the site. But lets think about what exactly Goolge has in it’s database … EVERYTHING. They have link data, on-page site data, RSS feed data, email data, browsing history (via their toolbar and web history) and the list goes on and on. One of things we know Google takes into account when ranking content is freshness. It looks for when content on a page was last updated, and the newer, more active pages get ranked better than less active ones (considering everything else is equal). So, it’s not that far of a stretch to think that the more active a website is everywhere on the Internet, the better it will rank considering those places it’s active are relevant to the content it’s targeting, links or no links.

I guess what I’m trying to say is just get out there! Be social in a relevant context (in a way Google can index it) and a nice side effect will be improved rankings and more traffic.

The canonical tag is simply a way to silence webmasters.

Yesterday at SMX West it was announced that Google, Yahoo! and Live have agreed upon a method to help webmasters define original content within a site. The canonical tag is a meta tag used to tell search engines which page to list in SERPs when multiple listings of the same, or very similar content exist in their databases.

On-site duplicate content has been a big issue since the beginning of the web. There are lots of things that could cause search engine spiders to index the same content at multiple locations. URL canonical variations (http://www.exmaple.com vs. http://example.com) is the most common issues, but there are others. This is a good explanation of the canonical tag and how it’s implemented.

In september the Google Webmaster Central Blog published a fairly extensive post on how search engines handle on-site duplicate content in hopes of dispelling a lot of the rumors and speculation circling the issue. Despite how clear the article was, and all the other resources on the web, there were still LOTS of questions about the issue.

As new webmasters come into the space trying to understand SEO and mitigating duplicate content the easy thing to do is ask Google. If you’re site is set up correctly duplicate content shouldn’t be an issue. The canonical tag, is not the end-all be-all of duplicate content. You still need a sitemap, good URLs, redirection from the www or the non-www to the correct path, etc. This tag is simply an easy answer to the duplicate content question.

What do you think? Have you implimented the canonical tag yet? Is it really THAT important considering all the other things that still need to be done?

GetListed.org is the right tool at the right time. If you have a business that relies heavily on local searches, local referrals and local customers definitely take advantage of this site. The price point is perfect – FREE.

The premise behind local SEO is that the more your business is mentioned, reviewed and listed across the web the more ‘local authority’ search engines think you have with regards to a given search. Having a claimed and thorough listing with each major search engine will do a lot to benefit the exposure your listings get.

The great thing about GetListed.org is that this local seo tool can help anyone do this. The founders, Patrick Sexton and David Mihm, did a great job of making this tool easy and informative enough for anyone to use. The site cleanly walks people through the process of detecting and claiming their listing. The site gives you the option of signing up or not. If you do sign up, you can keep track of multiple listings and track how they’re doing through the dashboard.

Once you set up the dashboard with all your listings, it gives feedback on the current listing quality and provides step-by-step instructions on how to improve. The site also has other resources which provide fantastic information on how to do local seo if you’re interested in learning this stuff yourself. The good thing about this tool, is that it provides immediate feedback on your efforts.

GetListed.org is definitely worth your time to learn and use. If you’ve used this tool, let everyone know what you think in the comments. If there’s something better out there, then tell us! Or if you simply have some thoughts of your own, the comments are all yours

Oh … I installed the Google Friend Connect widget (to the right there —>>>) yesterday, show your love and join!!!

Yesterday I posted about how SilverPlatter.info could do a few things better with regards to how their site is structured. One of the things that came up is how they need to optimize their profile pages. Personal search results are very important to people these days. Some have even coined the term ‘online reputation management’ to describe the process of making your personal SEPRs better. Lets take a look at how websites can be optimized for their member profile pages.

If your site is trying to foster community, or if you allow people to create profiles, there are things you can do to get those profiles to rank when someone performs a personal search. Personal searches are a perfect example of a Long Tail keyterm. Not a lot of people are searching for ‘chase granberry.’ According to LinkedIn, my profile has shown up in search results nine times in the last week. Lets assume that five of those times people were actually searching for ‘chase granberry.’ So, on average, I’m guessing my name is searched for 20 time in a month.

I’m going to use Pandora as an example here, because I love the service and want their profile for me to rank better. They need to change a few things before my Pandora profile is even going to have a chance to rank above my Twitter account. Pandora has over 7 million registered users according to CruchBase. Lets guess on average any one person will have their name searched for 10 times in a month. That’s 70 million searches Pandora has a chance of ranking for in any given month. That’s a lot of potential, but one they haven’t even tried to realize.

With any decent sized site you should always have a sitemap file. When you have a sitemap file, you’re telling every search engine out there which pages are ‘officially’ under your domain. You can associate priorities with these, and content update frequencies. The update frequencies are important. The more your site is updated the more relevant you are. For a site the size of Pandora a Sitemap file is a must. This file can easily be generated dynamically and updated daily, as new member profiles are created, and current member pages updated. So … Pandora http://pandora.com/sitemap.xml????

It’s also going to be beneficial for Pandora to create a member directory with a link to it from the homepage, so that spiders can reach any member page within only a few clicks. You want Google to find your content as easily as possible. Having both, a Sitemap file and an HTML directory will do the trick.

Just for kicks, lets take a look at how many Pandora member pages Google has in it’s index. Not even close to 7 million.

So, now that we know Pandora needs a sitemap file, and an HTML member directory, lets take a look at how they’ve structured their profile pages. I’ve been pretty active on Pandora lately, you can find my pandora profile here. I’ve actually gone through and filled out a decent amount of account info. More than most I think. When you sign up for Pandora all it asks for is an email address, and that’s how they’re classifying account ownership. They don’t make people fill out their full name. They need to start. Here’s their signup form …

It looks like they’ve kept the registration process as simple as possible, but they should at least make people give up their name.

How lets take a look at how their search result looks …

Lets take a look at how Facebook’s profile looks on Google …

First, Pandora is using my account nickname in their title tag. The only reason this is ranking for me at all is because I chose to use the nickname ‘chase.granberry.’ They need to use my name in their title tag and their description tag so Google will display these when my name is searched.

Recommended title tag for Pandora:  Chase Granberry | Pandora

Recommended description tag for Pandora:  Chase Granberry uses Pandora to discover new music. He last listened to LCD Soundsystem Radio on February 3, 2009.

This puts our target term first in the title tag and the description tag. This also updates the description tag every time I listen to Pandora, so not only is the content on my profile going to be fresh, which humans can see, but my description tag content is going to be fresh as well.

The URL structure that Pandora uses is also based on member’s nicknames. The URL for my profile should be …

http://pandora.com/people/chase-granberry/

I should have a favorite songs page at …

http://pandora.com/people/chase-granberry/favorites/songs/

I should also have a favorite artists page at …

http://pandora.com/people/chase-granberry/favorites/artists/

I should have a friends page at …

http://pandora.com/people/chase-granberry/friends/

This page should be sorted by most recently active friends so that when Google crawls my favorites friends page it take their spider to different profile pages each time, and that content is always fresh.

I should have a station page at …

http://pandora.com/people/chase-granberry/stations/

And obviously all these pages need different title and description tags.

I was to cover one more concept here that’s very important … profile completeness. Getting people to fill out their profile encourages massive amounts of user generated content. Pandora easily allows people to create user generated content from the songs and artists they bookmark and the stations they listen to, but incenting people to develop a complete profile is important. It’s going to be even more important for Pandora because a good amount of their subscribers don’t even have full names on their profile. If they want to take advantage of this SEO technique they’ll need to get creative about getting people to update their profiles.

So, if you’re reading this and know someone at Pandora please forward this post on. I’d really like them to do better, because I don’t want their service to go away, and ranking for personal searches will help a lot.