Posts tagged search engine rankings
The Keys to Freedom: When Will Google Remove My SEO Penalty?
Mar 18th
Google SEO penalties are more common than you might realise. They also happen to well-meaning website owners more often than you might realise! Google’s algorithms are designed to catch actions, not intentions, and so there are many honest webmasters out there currently serving time behind Google bars. It can be frustrating not knowing when your sentence will end, though – today we explore Matt Cutts of Google’s advice about how and when SEO penalties are removed. More >
5 SEO Myths Conspiring to Kill Your Rankings
Mar 10th
Well-structured, expert SEO help is essential to the success of just about every site on our big, blue internet nowadays! Yet, there are still so many myths and misunderstanding that we encounter regarding SEO … sometimes these misunderstandings cost rankings, sometimes they cost money, sometimes they cost entire businesses. At least make sure that you understand these five things about SEO … More >
Taking Over the World: Setting up Your Site for Effective International SEO
Feb 18th
The Internet is the great equaliser, allowing small businesses to compete with large, and everybody to put forth their own opinions. While there are some advantages to being a big fish in the WWW pond, there are also some tricky issues to contend with. The first of these is hosting and targeting for international websites – today we explore some SEO based recommendations for businesses that are trying to take over the world! More >
How to Redesign Without Killing Your SEO
Apr 9th
For most website owners, managing a redesign while keeping internet marketing rankings intact is one task that is just a bit too technical. What your internet marketing firm has on hand is the book “68 Best Practices for Redesigning a Site Without Loss of Rankings’. Today we give you the ultra-short version 
.
Changing URLs
It is not well understood that Google does not rank domains, they rank pages. So, if you change from a .asp platform to a .php platform, all of your URLs will change, and as far as Google knows, you are a completely new site.
URL changes are managed with 301-redirects on your old pages, and eventually your new pages will start building up their own Google juice. The way you manage the redirects depends greatly on your site size and purpose … expert internet marketing advice highly recommended.
Adding Flash
Your site is doing well, and you can finally afford to add some Flash. As long as you don’t go overboard, and don’t include basic, necessary info with in Flash, you should be alright.
Changing content
Do this with ultimate restraint, if you already had great rankings. If your site wasn’t showing up in the top ten or twenty, then you can rewrite with gay abandon!
How NOT to Get a PR10
Feb 23rd
Ironically, the site pr10(dot)com ranks extremely highly for search terms like “how to get a pr10″. This would be unsurprising … if it weren’t for the fact that every piece of ‘web marketing’ advice on the site is very, very thickly veiled sarcasm. I would almost think the authors deliberately wanted to drop the Pagerank of every site other than their own by using these tactics! So, in retaliation (and courtesy of pr10(dot)com), here is how NOT to get a pr10. Optional subtitle – How to get dropped off the Google index.
Google - not as antiquated as they once were
1. Use hidden text on your site
The suggestion is to colour code your text so that the text is either the same as the background colour, or visually very close. The example given is to use 00FF33 and 00FF66, so that Google will index your keywords on the page but humans can’t see them.
2. Use full stops as links
Put full stops down the bottom of every web page, each one linking to Google, to Yahoo, and to your own site.
3. The ever-increasing non-magical Pagerank
Sorry, this tip is so ridiculous that I have to quote directly from pr10(dot)com:
“This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:
Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1
Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then – if you link it back to page 1 – it starts all over again. I can’t even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don’t abuse it too much – or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.”
4. Use lots of meta keyword tags
Having your meta keyword section stuffed with your keywords may have helped several years ago (and to be fair, the pr10 site is copyright 2002), but nowadays the technique does little to nothing. You won’t get de-listed, but you will have wasted your time.
5. Link to a Google page that contains all the inbound links to your site
This supposed magic trick just doesn’t work! The in vitro data is not supported by in vivo testing. You are supposed to link to pages that link to your sites using “link:www.whatever.net”, thus listing all of the inbound links for that page and pushing up their Pagerank, and therefore your own.
If these tips didn’t seem so much in earnest, I would laugh at them … as they are published on the net, I certainly worry that they’ve irrevocably hurt many people’s SEO rankings.
4 Mega SEO Mistakes!
Jan 28th
SEO is one of the most popular subjects on the internet … alongside that other ubiquitous three-letter word that starts with ‘se…’! This prevalence of information often leads people to believe that SEO is quite a simple task – one that they can do effectively themselves if they read a few blogs. While you are often in a good position to do much of the legwork (writing press releases and website copy, helping with keyword research, etc), there are some common DIY SEO mistakes that really do NOT help your web marketing campaign! We look at the top 4 today.
Using Black Hat Techniques
You don’t have to be an evil Google manipulating monster to fall for what seems like an easier way to get search engine rankings … and which might anger the giant of web search! A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when DIY-ers use what looks like an easy way out. These quick-fixes are almost always considered black hat, and will get your site banned or penalized in Google when caught.
Meaningless Meta Tags
Many, many people that write their own meta tags don’t realize that this is the only piece of text that search engines display alongside your main website title. It should contain your keywords – if only to tell searchers that the page is relevant to what they were looking for.
Correlating Content
Aside from on-page SEO, including your keyphrases in your site copy helps reassure visitors they have come to the right place, and helps tone down bounce rates (percentage of visitors that leave within a few seconds).
Ignoring the Power of the Address
Your URL is one of the most powerful weapons in your SEO arsenal – use it! You should spend at least as much time brainstorming and refining your URL ideas as you do on your entire site content.
4 Extra SEO Keyword Research Tips
Jan 26th
Keyword research is one of the most important bases of your internet marketing campaign – it is one of the pillars that helps decide whether your campaign will succeed or fail, and it is critical to get it right the first time! We looked yesterday at 4 of the essential activities that you should engage in when deciding on the keywords you’ll use in your internet marketing – today we give you four bonuses.
1. Think about vertical search terms to use
In your keyword research brainstorming session, you probably whittled your list down to fifteen or twenty general terms that describe your entire business (for example, bathroom fittings, public restroom furnishings, etc). However, there are a number of ‘vertical’ searches that are common within every industry, that you can often capitalize on. These can be broken down into categories:
- Local terms (so add your city, your state, or your country to one of your general keyphrases. If your keyphrase is ‘search engine optimisation’, your vertical alternatives could be ‘search engine optimisation Melbourne’, ‘search engine optimisation Victoria’, or ‘search engine optimisation Australia’
- Products that you stock, including brand names and even model numbers, in some cases
2. How does querent intent relate to each keyword?
What phase of the decision-making process is a person searching for a particular term likely to be in? What phase of the decision-making process does that part of your site serve? You need to think about this to determine how much return you’ll get from particular keywords.
3. Check out the PPC data, even for your organic search terms
Even if you aren’t interested in doing PPC advertising at this stage of your SEO campaign, it is always helpful to know which keywords show the heaviest competition in the PPC arena. These trends certainly cross over into natural search.
4. Check out the related searches
Most major search engines have their own version of the related searches tool. If you just want a few ideas, check out Google’s. Simply type your term into the search box, click the ‘Show Options’ link up the top, and then hit ‘Related Searches’ down the page a bit.
4 Top SEO Keyword Research Tips
Jan 25th
Keyword research is one of the first concrete activities that you complete in an SEO campaign, and one of the most important. Trying to move too quickly here, or acting on assumptions rather than research, can taint your whole campaign and remove the value of all of those dollars you put in. Keyword research tips are many, says Yoda – today we look only at the top 4.
Keyword Research - not a precise science
1. Relative Search Volume
When you first startedt on the process of determining the keyphrases that will best serve your SEO and web marketing needs, you probably got out a big piece of paper, called everyone into the same room, put on the coffee and fluffed up the sofa cushions, and said ‘Troops – Brainstorm!’. You’ll have a heap of different phrases relating to your business – the nest step is to determine which of these consumers are searching for the most. The top phrases are not necessarily the ideal ones to go for if they don’t represent your business as well as others – but you need the information.
So, check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, the MSN Keyword Research Tool, and Wordtracker.
2. Keywords in season
Check when your keywords are in season. This won’t be the only deciding factor on whether you should use a particular word for your web marketing, but it will help guide which ones are more important. For example, if the term with the highest average yearly volume shows an enormous peak in November and December, but is flat the rest of the year (and you don’t like competing at Christmas time!), it won’t be as high on the list.
3. Examine the competition
Look at the domains that rank in the top five spots for the terms you are targeting – perhaps for your top five keywords. Check out their Pagerank, and number of inbound links.
4. Think about emerging trends
Knowing the lexicon of current events and trends is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. Find out exactly what people are talking about with site-specific tools like Google News Trends, Blogscape and Twist for Trends in Twitter. This may add to your brainstorming list, or it might indicate which keywords would make your SEO campaign more likely to succeed.
SEO and the Changing Google Algorithm
Jan 13th
Much like raising children, SEO is a discipline where the playing field, and the rules, keep changing. It is one of the reasons that there is so much misinformation about it on the web, and one of the major reasons that people turn to SEO professionals to sort it all out. Today we check out how the game plan for SEO has changed over time, by exploring the changing Google algorithm. These rankings are a selected view of our personal opinions about internet marketing, including our observations about which activities get which results.
We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:
- Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
- Anchor text used in external links
- Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
- Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page
2004 – Back in Aught-Four!
- Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
- Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
- Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
- Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP
2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!
- Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
- Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
- Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
- Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google
2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past
- Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
- Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
- Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
- Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.
This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.
The Way Search Engines Work
Nov 25th
How search engines work may
seem an ambiguous matter for most people but before delving into how this
method works, you might want to know if you really need the power of search
engines, foremost, in your online business.
Do you really need to be
recognized by search engines? In this new era of doing business and carrying
out various transactions, the answer is a definite “yes”. Search engines
simplify the work of a person wanting to find particular subjects or products
from over a billion web pages in the Internet, which is considered a vast
library of information and a source of endless opportunities. If you are
looking for specific information, then the only thing to get reliable help from
is by the search engines. You need a search engine when you are clueless about
something and the most relevant thing to do is let the search engine find
anything about a certain topic for you.
A search engine refers to an
automated program, called crawlers, spiders or bots, allowed to run free in the
Web. These “bots” are unleashed so that they can perform meticulous surveys on
every webpage they come across, and archive these sites into their databases.
Upon collection, the information given in each website is analyzed and indexed
so that whenever someone types in a word or phrases into the search engines,
all information is scanned from the database and results are given in an
instant. The search engine results page
(SERP) will start with the best site and from there the ranking is determined.
A website that contains
original contents will be given a higher rank in the search results. The bots can
blacklist your site and get penalized if they are copied from other sites.
Search engine rankings provide websites the visibility they need. Furthermore,
it will be easier for readers to remember your web product which gives the
possibility for you to heap sales and get a quick return of investment.
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