There's a good post about Wordpress's permalink structure on the SEObullshit blog. Which led me to reread the Wordpress codex about Meta tags in Wordpress. I realise it's put together by volunteers. But maybe if you ever read that page, add the word not to every sentence ...

Howler 1: Keywords are important

What Wordpress says:

Keywords meta tags, on the other hand, are still used by Google and other important search engines to categorize and rank your website. Those engines compare the keywords with the content, giving you "points" for having your keywords match your content. Keywords are one of the most important meta tags you can add to your WordPress site.

This kind of conflicts with the official Google line:

"Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking."

Howler 2: Use the same meta description on every page

I won't quote the full advice. But it involves adding the same meta description to every page:

With these generic description meta tags, [your] website would be accurately described and that should please just about any search engine.

Which kind of conflicts with Google's official advice:

Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. ... Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.

To sum up

• Don't pay attention to Wordpress's advice.
• Don't bother with keywords.
• Do bother with meta descriptions.
• Do follow my advice to easily add unique meta descriptions to every wordpress post / page.

That's it!

I gave a friend of a friend a bit of SEO advice and noticed google's cache of the site's pages - but not the pages themselves - had a link at the bottom that said "website development" with a link to a web development company (we'll call them company X).

The friend's friend didn't really understand what I was on about but it became clear company X had done a small bit of work on the existing design. And it appears they took the opportunity to go into the CMS templates and add this:

<?phpinclude"ipchecker.php";if(isGoogleBot()){echo '<div><a href="company X's website">Website development</a> ...

Yes, a bit of code that shows a link to Google but not to anyone else. A quick check in Yahoo Site Explorer showed up some more examples.

Now I don't know they did all this without their clients' permission, so I'm not outing them. But I figured someone there should know that we're on to them ...

So I'm running searches every time I get to a new computer for the following terms:

• adding secret links clients site company X
• cloaking company X
  
• going to out you company X
• links footer company X

all of which return one of their pages - and then I'm clicking through, hoping their analytics data will soon start to show these terms appearing ...

Visit petitions.number10.gov.uk and you can create an electronic petition, calling on the government to take some action. Then you get a response, "usually provided there are 500 signatures or more".

So how many people sign these petitions? Not that many. Of the 27,150 closed petitions (ie those that have run their time and haven't been rejected for being duplicates or offensive) the figures are as follows:

• 1 to 10 signatures: 9,337
• 11 to 100: 12,706
• 101 to 1,000: 4,012
• 1,001 to 10,000: 980
• 10,001 to 100,001: 108
• 100,001+: 7

Here it is in (approximate) graph form:

Numbers of votes

Of the 27,150, 1,920 (7%) have reached the 500 signature cut off. You can see currently open petitions here.

Twitter seems to be adding an explanation to some trends, sourced from whatthetrend.com (apparently it did this last September, and I've only just noticed! Having said that, other people on Twitter haven't noticed either so maybe it is new ...). Here's an example for a search on John Terry today.

Explanations added to Twitter trends

Seems a good innovation to me. Should help with some of the more mysterious trends that only carry on as people ask why is X trending.

This is one of those things that I think is new, but feel free to correct me ... (See addition above. Not new at all!)

John Terry's been "nobbing" Wayne Bridge's girlfriend as one of the edits on Wikipedia puts it. Terry got a superinjunction forbidding publication of this story - and of the fact that there was an injunction. This all fell apart on Friday. The case raises some interesting issues:

• Despite the superinjunction, you could find out about the story on Twitter and Google easily enough - both raised the profile of Terry's affair via the trends list in Twitter's case and the Twitter search box in Google's.
• No one seemed to understand the difference between an injunction and a superinjunction - the former banned reporting of JT's conduct, the latter banned revealing there was an injunction. They weren't necessarily both overturned, but there was a widespread assumption you could say what you liked about Terry once the superinjunction was overturned. This wasn't necessarily the case ...
• The Mail and Telegraph seemed to flout the terms of the superinjunction - as did the Press Gazette which decided if wasn't bound as it hadn't seen a copy. This seemed risky behaviour legally - which makes me wonder if the papers were looking for a weak case to try to discredit superinjunctions.
• This superinjunction should never have been granted. What was the original judge thinking?

Google revealed the story via its Twitter search box

Google and Twitter ignored the superinjunction

The superinjunction was overturned at about 1pm or 2pm on Friday. Needless to say, the papers had a field day today (Saturday).

But if you wanted to find out the story on Friday, it was relatively simple to do so. I typed John Terry's name into Google on Friday at about 11.15am - long before the injunction was lifted - and saw the screenshot, above.

Yes, the Google's twitter search box was happily showing people tweeting about John Terry and Wayne Bridge (and there were tweets showing giving full details of the affair). Later that day, they removed the twitter search results - whether this was algorithmic or for legal reasons, I don't know. But type both those names into Google or Twitter search, and it was easy to find the full story.

And by Friday lunchtime, both John Terry and Wayne Bridge were trending topics on Twitter, raising the profile of the issue. If you clicked on either to see what was being tweeted, you'd have found out about the affair instantly.

Shortly after, a judge ruled there were no grounds for the injunction, super or otherwise.

Guardian links to Twitter search for John Terry

As an aside, I noticed that the Guardian, in its coverage of the superinjunction, even included a link in one of its pieces to a Twitter search on John Terry.

They've removed it now (well, I can't find it anyway and probably for the best. You should either have the balls to run the full story or not. I don't think publishing a link to a twitter search is a reasonable half way house.)

Confusion still reigned

Once news that the super injunction had been lifted, no one knew (or perhaps cared) where they legally stood on Friday afternoon (as I've pointed out before about reporting restrictions).

It was reported that the superinjunction was lifted - but not whether there was a separate injunction relating to the facts of the case (ie could you report that JT had obtained an injunction, but not say why?).

Despite this, everyone went ahead and shouted about it all over the internet. If there was a separate injunction, it was finished.

You can see the confusion in the comments on this Guardian story from yesterday afternoon

Seastorm: I've no interest in gossiping about EBJT, but I am a little confused....is the paper concerned now allowed to go ahead and publish the allegations?

Busfield (replying to seastorm): The judgement means that we can now report that there was an injunction. The judge then says that the newspaper concerned will have to make its own assessment of the risks involved in publishing whatever the allegations may be, which will involve considerations of the laws relating to privacy and defamation.

Gooner UK (replying to seastorm): Nope, the removal of the superinjunction means that newspapers are allowed to publish the fact that an injunction is in place, and name the parties involved, but they are still not allowed to publish the subject matter itself.

The injunction still stands, it's just that we now know an injunction is in place. A superinjunction is so damaging because it means we (the public) are deliberately kept in the dark as to the very existence of an injunction.

And bear in mind that an injunction is in theory an act of last resort anyway. A superinjunction adds another level to that, which can be very dangerous in terms of press freedom.

Busfield (replying to Gooner UK): my understanding, and I am not a lawyer but I have spent much of the day talking to one, is that both the super and the injunction have gone. It is up to the paper concerned to decide whether it can publish its story without breaking the laws of defamation and relating to privacy.

The background: two papers ignore the injunction

It's also interesting that two newspapers decide to ignore, or sail very close to the wind with regards to, the superinjunction - ie they ran stories that appeared to be in breach of it.

Mail reports injunction's existence

As the Press Gazette reported yesterday morning (ie before the superinjunction was lifted):

A new “super-injunction” has been used by a Premier League footballer to stop national newspapers reporting his alleged marital infidelity.

The Daily Mail identifies the man only as a married England international.

The Daily Mail today reports, in apparent defiance of the order: "So draconian is Mr Justice Tugendhat’s order that even its existence is supposed to be a secret."

(It's interesting that the Press Gazette felt able to run the story about the existence of the superinjnction stating "Press Gazette has not been served with the injunction." - I would have thought that this was also sailing close to the wind. It knew there was a super injunction, and I'm surprised its lawyers didn't make an attempt to find out the full details.)

The Mail's piece had a couple of nods and winks to Terry's role:

A married England international footballer was granted a sweeping injunction to prevent publication of his affair with the girlfriend of a team-mate ... It could be anyone from the captain of the top team in the land ..."

What, like the captain of England, you mean?

As does the Telegraph

On top of this, the Telegraph had run a piece, too, according to the Guardian:

Yesterday The Daily Telegraph technically breached the "super" part of the superinjunction by reporting that the courts were hiding the identity of a footballer and allegations about his private life. (This piece appeared in print but is no longer online).

Maybe since the Trafigura injunction, newspapers have been looking for a way to kill off superinjunctions. If they wanted a weak super injunction to pick on as a way to discredit them, this seemed a prime example.

Whatever their reasons, nothing seems likely to happen to the Mail and the Telegraph for breaching or nearly breaching this one - unlike in the Trafigura case, it seems unlikely John Terry is going to successfully sue anyone over this issue.

Conclusion

The Mail sums it up well:

In a scathing ruling, the judge made it clear he suspected Terry was more afraid of losing the commercial deals than anything else.

He said the footballer appeared to have brought his High Court action in a desperate move to protect his earnings - rather than the woman with whom he had been conducting his affair.

(And given this, it's hard to see how the superinjunction was ever granted.)

There are legitimate reasons for injunctions and even superinjunctions.

But judges need to think very carefully before granting them. And the British courts and the right to privacy should not be used to protect the commercial interests of a man "crowned father of the year" who at the same time had cheated on his wife with his team mate's partner (and that's only half the story, according to the internet).

So, just as Search Engine Land has issued some SEO advice for Bill Gates's blog (which maybe he didn't need), I thought I'd help the Pope out with some SEO and copywriting tips.

He has just come out (today) and told priests to blog, in the message of his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the 44th World Communications Day:

Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) ....

Here's where he's going wrong (well, he's infallible, but you know what I mean) ...

The Pope needs some SEO

Page title

I think the Pope needs to ask himself how he wants people to find his message. At the moment, the HTML title for this latest message is "Message for the 44th World Communications Day, Benedict XVI", and so this is how the page appears in Google:

How the Pope's latest page looks in Google

Personally, that doesn't look that exciting. What is the message? What's it about? A few words about the content would help.

He could start by looking at what people search for online. I ran a few terms through the Google keywords tool:

• ministry blog
• world communication day
• church blog
• catholic blog

(I didn't include priest blog as that just gets you a load of world of wordcraft pages ...) As you can see from these results, people aren't really searching for world communications day - but a lot of people search for catholic blog and church blog:

Change the title to what people search for

If it were me, I'd change the HTML title to something like:

Catholic Church must blog more says Pope | 44th World Communications Day | Vatican

That should pick up lots more traffic.

Description

There is no meta description set on the page - this is the snippet of text Google usually shows under the result. Because it's not set, Google is picking some text to show, which is why it says:

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI FOR THE 44th WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY. "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: ...

This is quite SHOUTY. The Vatican should set a meta description that sells and explains the page, and encourages the searcher to click through. Something like:

Hear the Pope's message directly as he uses the 44th World Communications Day to call on priests to blog more. Find out what he said and how you spread the word.

URLs

The URL is ghastly:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/communications/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20100124_44th-world-communications-day_en.html

The Vatican should read up on search-engine- / human-friendly URLs.

But also, I'd like to see the Vatican use a "living" URL.

The latest message should be on /world-communications-day. Then each time a new message comes out (there's one a year), the old can be moved to /world-communications-day-number-year (EG /world-communications-day-43-2009). The new one can be put on the living URL - that way the latest message always gets the benefits of existing inbound links and so is likely to do best in Google.

Navigation

The only navigation on the page

There is lots more advice I could offer, but navigation is a key one. When you get to the latest message, there are only three links on the page, as the picture shows - a javascript previous-page link (which does nothing if you come from a search engine),  a picture of an arrow that takes you up a page, and that image which takes you home.

The Vatican need to start thinking about lots more links:

• calls to action to convert (in every sense of the word) visitors,
• links to other sections of their site,
• links in the copy to other relevant pages and so on.

This will help both users and search engines understand the structure of the site and what pages are most important. And just as Jesus broke bread, so the website could perhaps mend itself with a breadcrumb trail.

Copywriting

OK, that's SEO taken care of. Now, we know Jesus spoke in parables - and I think the Pope could learn a lot from that. I know he's infallible, but I'm not sure he's got the common touch when it comes to communicating.

For a start, he needs to use shorter paragraphs (one is 240 words long) and more sub headings, to help people understand and scan the structure of the page. I'd maybe lose the coloured background, too, as that doesn't help with readability.

And talking of readability, I'd like to see shorter words, shorter sentences, more active voice - maybe the odd bullet list? Let's give it a go.

Pope says:

God’s loving care for all people in Christ must be expressed in the digital world not simply as an artifact from the past, or a learned theory, but as something concrete, present and engaging. Our pastoral presence in that world must thus serve to show our contemporaries, especially the many people in our day who experience uncertainty and confusion, “that God is near; that in Christ we all belong to one another”

I'd say it like this:

You must express God’s love for everyone in a way that doesn't sound old fashioned or just academic.

Use new media to make it clear his love is:

1. concrete,
2. present,
3. engaging.

We must show everyone, especially those who are uncertain, that "in Christ we all belong to one another”.

Conclusion

Update: Some more SEO tips for the Vatican.

With some simple SEO changes, the Pope's message could be found more.

With some nods to best practice web writing, he could engage more people.

And maybe next year he could get himself a twitter and record his message on audioboo?

The only way is up. All roads lead to Rome. And just as you can only travel south from the north pole, apparently if you're on the Circle Line, you can only travel east, regardless of which way you're going.

As these pictures I took on the underground (hopefully legally) show:

• If you're going from Victoria to Liverpool Street, you go in an easterly direction.
• Want to go the other way, from Liverpool Street to Victoria? Ah, then you'll be needing to go in an, er, easterly direction.

But Liverpool Street is east of Victoria

Victoria is east of Liverpool Street

Presumably if you can only travel east, we must be at the west pole.

Wouldn't clockwise and anti-clockwise work better on something called the Circle Line? There is an explanation of sorts at the BBC's bizarre H2G2 site.

Despite that being very illogical, there is a reason behind this. The Circle Line stations share its platforms with older Lines, eg the Metropolitan Line, which have quite obvious Westbound and Eastbound direction.

So how do you know which platform to go to? There are three ways of doing this. For this, you need a tube map. Find your starting place, and where you want to get to. Also look at the nearest NR [National Rail] station on the map.

• Check the boards before getting on the platform - ignoring the West/Eastbound text, see if your destination is on the board. If it is, then that is the right platform.
• Guess which platform is the right one and then look on the Electronic sign or the Light Box with arrows on it - these should then read: 'Circle Line via XXXXXXXX', the 'X's representing any one of the stations in between where you are and your destination. For example, if you are at High Street Kensington and want to go to Embankment, the sign should read 'Circle Line via Victoria'. If it doesn't have any of the stations in between where you are and where you want to get to, then you need to use the next step in conjunction.
• Follow the instructions above, up to looking at the Electronic sign - if the sign doesn't read any of the stations in-between, but the correct NR station, then you are on the right platform. For example, you are at Paddington, and want to go to Baker Street. The sign should read, 'Circle Line via King's Cross/St. Pancras'. If it doesn't, then you are definitely on the wrong platform.

Alternatively, it may be simpler to ask one of the London Underground staff. These people are easily recognised by their blue uniforms, and are incredibly helpful in providing accurate information.

This one wasn't, of course.

Searchers in the UK are starting to prefer the US spelling of some words. Although we can still spell centre, colour and theatre, with the following words the US spelling is now searched for more often than the UK version:

• donut vs doughnut
• yogurt vs yoghurt
• fetus vs foetus

Here are the graphs from Google Insights to show this - the blue line is the UK spelling, the red line the US one.

Donut vs doughnut

Donut has been preferred since 2007 or so

Yogurt vs yoghurt

Yogurt overtook yoghurt in 2009

Fetus vs foetus

These were neck and neck until about 2007.

No wonder Google is having problems with spelling if searchers can't spell ...

More evidence that Google has changed how it handles spelling errors. It is now fixing spelling in autocomplete (the list of suggestions it offers as you start to type in the web-based search form). (I think this is new, anyway ...)

Unlike yesterday's example, where Google was just deciding for itself which version of alternative, correct spellings you meant, I approve of this - partly because it's helpful, and partly because the user retains control (so they can search for wrong spellings if they want to).

Here are some examples - plus some where it ought to be fixing them but isn't. Note in each that the list of suggestions include the correct spellings (apart from millennium), even though I have spelled the word wrong.

Correcting common mis-spellings

Weird vs wierd

You type wierd, Google shows suggestions for weird

Acomodate vs accommodate

You type acomodate, Google shows suggestions for accommodate

Acceptable vs acceptible

You type acceptible, Google shows suggestions for acceptable

Greatful vs grateful

You type greatful, Google shows suggestions for grateful

Bellwether vs bellweather

You type bellweather, Google shows suggestions for bellwether

Please get these right however

Could of vs could have

This is not correct English - it should be could have.

There is no such construction as "could of". Please correct to could have.

Millennium - huh?

And millennium has two ls and two ns, however many results you've found for the wrong spelling ...

Right, I think it just can't spell millennium.

Conclusion

Looking at these, and the various other spelling examples that have emerged lately, it seems that Google must be using user behaviour in some way to deal with spelling errors.

For instance, where it observes people search for X immediately after Y (and X is a spelling variant of Y), it might decide to return X results when people search for Y. This probably explains the stationary / stationery issue from yesterday and the weird / wierd etc examples above.

Alternatively, it might be using its "did you mean" spelling correction data and, where people clicked this a lot, it's now just assuming they meant it all along.

I'm not sure it explains Google returning results for optimization when you search for optimisation, but there you go.

What do you think?

I pointed out this morning that the Express was talking utter rubbish claiming that the BBC was keeping up twitter accounts with 0 or 2 followers. The real numbers were in the tens of 000s.

Express thinks following means follower.

It appears the Express has confused following and follower numbers.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Here's what they said:

The BBC Radio 2 site, which gathers messages, or “tweets”, from presenters such as Chris Evans, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr, has no followers.

The BBC Radio 5 Live site, run by presenter Victoria Derbyshire, has just two.

Did they mean these accounts:

• http://twitter.com/onradio2now: 536 followers, but following 1 person
• http://twitter.com/vicderbyshire (Victoria Derbyshire): 3,639 followers, following 2 people.

Yes, they surely did. I wrote this morning that:

it makes it look like you don't know what you're talking about.

The original story. Clowns.

And they certainly don't.