My Web SEO

Archive for October, 2010

Has Your Website Been G-Slapped?

Getting to the top of the search engines has never been easy and the bad news is that it has gotten even harder especially if you are trying to peak Mt. Google

Recently with respect to information quality Google raised the bar even higher with another algorithm tweak that effectively reshuffled and in some cases evaporated page rank across thousands of web pages.

Thus if your website’s PR or that of its inner pages recently stole quietly away in the middle of the night with nary a goodbye take consolation in the knowledge that you are not alone; this calamity has befallen countless others.

The latest Google algorithm tweak/update has been pretty widespread and nondiscriminatory in nature targeting both new sites and well established veteran sites too.

In the good ole days it used to be that a gray pagerank bar was indicative of a website/web page that had been banned from the Google index but that seems to no longer be the case. Lately it would appear that being grayedout merely reflects a webpage/website that is under probation of course in certain cases a gray PR band could actually reflect a banned website/web page.

So what does this all really mean?

Google Web Paradise

Understanding Google’s goals and objectives is fundamental to searchengine optimizing your website effectively and correctly within their guidelines. The first thing you need to appreciate is that online search is a business. Google is Top Dog in the search engine business for two very simple reasons:

1. Google returns the most accurate results for any given search query.

2. Of all the search engines Google has the fastest retrieval rate for almost all queries.

Being number one for both the above listed parameters obviously has major advantages; it ensures that more people flock to use your search engine and as has been proven time and time again where the crowds gather the advertisers hover not far behind.

Advertisers want to get the best bang for their buck so they will naturally tend to spend their dollars where they can get the greatest percentage of targeted and relevant eyeballs; which means advertising on the major search engines of which surprise surprise Google is the leader!

Google’s domination of online search is a tangential derivation of the saying “The Richer Get Richer” because as Google gets better and leaves the other search engines floundering in their dust more and more people and advertisers will naturally tend to gravitate to them!

The New SEO Horizon

The first thing that should be understood is that the debate about the existence of the Google Sandbox has been laid to rest once and for all. It exists and has become even more expansive as well as having gotten more rigid!

As of January 2005 Google had over 100000 servers with which to store data in its cache index. The cache index is where Google stores a copy of every page that the googlebot crawls on the internet.

Those web pages that eventually make it into the Google Primary Index the index that displays the resulting listings in response to a query are the pages that have been evaluated as most relevant and qualified for that particular query.

Web pages or websites that Google evaluates to be comprised of largely duplicate material that is already in its index are relegated to the supplemental index the backburner. The supplemental index contains web pages and/or websites that Google considers for all intents and purposes to be irrelevant.

In other words you do not want your website to end up in the supplemental index because nobody will ever get to see it!

In 2006 Google suffered a very major serveroverload crisis. Since then they have acquired several more servers but this new algorithm tweak/update tends to suggest that they are leaning much more towards the principle of efficiencyandquality versus volumeandquantity.

In essence it appears that Google is adopting an approach geared towards maximizing efficiency of storage and organization of data. This by its very nature means restricting the amount of content that gets crawled cached and eventually indexed i.e. saves server space as opposed to trying to accommodate every single piece of data that is drifting across the internet.

This certainly may go some distance explaining the zeal and passion with which they executed operation “gray band” that affected thousands of websites and web pages.

Recovering From Being GSlapped

If your website/web pages have recently been demoted loss of page rank or now shamefully display a grayedout PR bar where once a shimmering green existed then your website has indeed been Google slapped!

So where do you go from there?

There’s a saying that states “understanding the nature of the beast is the first step in divining its true intent” which is just a fancy way of saying: if you know what makes something tick then you’ll be better able to predict its future actions.”

Keeping that in mind it is possible to deduce the following aspects from the May 2007 Google update:

1. A gray PR band will be the norm for all new websites and web pages; in other words think “probation period.” The length of time the PR bar remains grayedout for any particular website/web page is dependent upon a number of factors which include:

a How unique the content on a web page is. Pages that boast highly original and unique content will tend to be released from the gray zone quicker.

b A web page that has a lot of unique traffic will have a shorter probation period note that the origin of that traffic is something the search engines factor in to rule out sneaky play by individuals attempting to game the search engines.

c Links! Links! Links! Yes when it comes to SEO it is impossible to ignore the link factor. A page that “naturally” acquires a good number of topically related links will experience a shorter probation period.

d Greater link activity will increase the importance of the destination page whereby such a web page will tend to attain higher PR quicker. This makes sense because a hyperactive links denotes popularity websites that are popular are so because people find them useful.

e The amount of time people spend on your site is also an important parameter that the search engines take into account. People tend to spend more time on websites that they find useful and the search engines can determine that fact through the use of sophisticated tracking scripts.

Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly difficult to game the search engines the use of blackhat techniques as their algorithms get smarter and more sophisticated.

The May 2007 Google update amply illustrates that Google is aggressively gunning for its vision of Web Paradise which by necessity means smacking down hard on websites that offer little useful function to that vision!

Simply put if you wish your website to advance up the SERPs you need to make it user oriented. Visitor use and appreciation of a website appears to be the single strongest factor in determining that website’s eventual position on the SERPs in Google’s brave new Web Paradise!

About the writer:  Internet Marketing Online

Search Engine Keywords Placement

Search engines are the vehicles that drive what may be customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination your website you need to provide them with definitive and efficient signs that will direct them accurate to your site. You do this by creating carefully approved keywords.

Aspire to the correct keywords as the Open Sesame! Find the exactly correct words or phrases and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too overused the eventuality of visitors reallytruly making it all the way to your site or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do check in decreases dramatically.

Your keywords act as the foundation of your marketing blueprint. If they are not appointed with great precision no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your master plan is to gather and appraise keywords and phrases.

You probably already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately if you haven’t followed certain specific steps you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your line of work network which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most wellsuited keywords from the inside. You need to be able to like your customers. And since you are a line of work owner and not the consumer your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of rushing in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself ask for words from as many prospective customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your specialization and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable opportunity. You will find the words you piece together from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your occupation.

Only after you have assembled as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand you are ready for the next step: appraising.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a limited number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of value visitors to your website. By “firstclass visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a make a buy rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the efficiency of keywords bear in mind three elements: popularity definition and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to ascertain because it is an unprejudiced superiority. The more popular your keyword is the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now buy software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is the greater the search engine position you will need to go get. If you are down at the bottom of the search results the consumer will probably never scroll down to arrive at you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to buy your works or services will arrive at your site.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a great deal of folks enthusiastic in everything from buying a automobile to changing their oil filters you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or twisted fenders being directed to your site. In other words consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will straightaway arrive at you. Not only that but the greater the specificity of your keyword is the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again this requires putting yourself inside the brain of the customer rather than the seller to work out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let’s look at another example such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new town. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you aim at will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of definitive job which keyword would you type in? The second one of course! Using the second keyword targets folks who have decided on their career have the necessary experience and are ready to recruit you as their recruiter rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a complete a purchase and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your arrive at the most specified and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords your service is not done. You must continually calculate performance across a variety of search engines bearing in consciousness that times and trends change as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors without doubt made a complete a purchase.

Luckily some new tools have been invented to aid you judge the vigor of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer demeanor in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to understand which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is a necessary concept: numbers alone do not make a useful keyword; profits per guest do. You need to arrive at keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product fill out your forms or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Working analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine victory. This may sound like a lot of assignment and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your specialization’ rewards.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Larry Schierling is an internet marketer and entreprenuer. He can help you learn the basics of how to get started with your own online business. Click below for his site:Internet Marketing Secrets:http://www.doughvault.com

Protecting Your S E Rankings

Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out and are now on guard for spam pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index.

The bad news is that some high quality completely aboveboard sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the spam net and tossed from a search engine’s index even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do and things you should be sure NOT to do which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity but at the same time you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links bad neighborhoods.

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check and doublecheck all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a Pagerank which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages you may catch their penalty and like the flu it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale.
These sites have not been penalized and their links may grow in value and popularity. However do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages and when it sees these invisible words it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit noverzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example if the background color of your page is gray and you have placed gray text inside a black box the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called keyword stuffing. It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called Keyphrase Density to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case it is easy for keyword density to soar. So if your keyword is renters insurance be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as cloaking. To those of you who are diligent Trekkies this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you?cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is cloaked because it is invisible to regular traffic and deliberately setup to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons such as prevention against the theft of code often referred to as pagejacking. This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of off page elements such as link popularity that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

About the writer:  For more information visit Search Engine Optimization SEO Information