How to write a bad meta description
April 17th, 2009
Let’s face it – the meta description is a much-travelled element. It also attracts a great deal of controversy in SEO circles. Should you use keywords? Is it solely for increasing clickthrough rate? Let’s look at what you shouldn’t do with your descriptions – and perhaps the best approach to a meta description will be more clear. Read the rest of this entry »
The <title> element: writing titles for SEO
February 5th, 2009
For on-page SEO, there is no more important part of a page than the title element. In just a few words, you need to craft a summary of your page’s content in a way that both capitalises on popular search queries, and encourages people to click through to your page. Read the rest of this entry »
The Reaction Engine is back
February 5th, 2009
After a long hiatus, the Reaction Engine is back under active development, with a new codebase, and several new tests.Documentation is also being added on a regular basis, to provide best practice guidelines for the SEO tests the tool conducts.
Watch this space for details!
Why does network information such as IP address matter for SEO?
July 25th, 2007
Here’s an example network information report from The Reaction Engine as of v3b1:
| Test | Result | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Parent Site | www.google.com | This (sub)domain ‘owns’ the content of the URI, and is the subject of the network tests below |
| IP | 216.239.59.103 | IP addresses can identify site owners and connect seemingly unrelated sites |
| Location | US | Where a site is located affects its perceived audience, especially if it uses a non-regional domain name (e.g. .com) |
| Reverse Dns | gv-in-f103.1e100.net | Reverse DNS usually identifies the ISP or company behind a website |
| Spam Blocklists | Not listed | Sites that send email spam are more likely to be spam themselves |
| Server Software | gws | Server software may be more (Apache) or less (IIS) configurable to improve performance |
Now, you may ask, what’s the significance of this? Can this information really affect search engine performance?
The limitations of automated SEO testing
July 24th, 2007
As the creator of an automated SEO tool, this may seem like a strange subject of choice, but if you use the The Reaction Engine and similar tools (SEO Workers is a good one) it’s important to understand the major benefits and conversely, the major limitations. Read the rest of this entry »
Reaction Engine version 3 beta 1 released
July 23rd, 2007
Today is the release of The Reaction Engine version 3. Once again this is a complete rewrite from the ground up, and another (probably failed) attempt to improve visual appeal. Read the rest of this entry »