Skip to main content

Posts

Google’s New Algorithm Means for SEO

With its  recent major algorithm change (nicknamed "Farmer"), Google has made a significant effort to improve the rankings of high-quality Web sites in its search results, and to reduce the visibility of low-quality sites. What does this mean for SEO now and how does it change the content landscape?  Kelly Andersson , experienced writer and website developer, talks about this new algorithm's impact on search, ranking, and elancers. Google regularly adjusts its search function – the algorithm programming that determines what you find when you search for something. These algorithm changes are almost never noticed; the February 2011 change, though, devastated some websites' rankings – and thus their traffic. The change was made to reduce the high rankings of content farms on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and to move sites with quality content up in the rankings. And it worked. Why Did Google Do This? In short: user feedback. Customers complained ...

Instant results in search

Well, as you can see the search engines are displaying more and more results that are related to the most recent items in their News search. How many times have you been researching something and you think you’ve found what you are looking for only to find out that the article you are reading is from 2 years ago.. Grrrrr and you thought that vacation spot was nice.  The review you were reading was from 2 months prior to the ‘flood’ they experienced and that review after that is lost somewhere in cyberspace. Herein is the issue. How do you index this kind of data in a way that cant be manipulated. If you tell people certain elements to inclue peopel will lie. If you dont, what will be the standard? when goog gets it? the most trusted sites keep pumping out the data that gets read first? How does this work if some nobody site actually reveals something very important but their site has very few links. These are the challenges. I think when it all boils down it wil...

Good Content is very Important for SEO

Good SEO content has three primary characteristics: Offers useful information presented in an engaging format to human readers Boosts search engine rankings Attracts plenty of links from other sites Note that human readers come first on the list. Your site must deliver value to its visitors and do it in an engaging way. Few sites specialize in a subject so narrow that they have an information niche all to themselves. You'll have competition. Set yourself apart from it with expert interviews, meaningful lists and well-researched resources. Write well or invest in someone who does; your investment will pay off in increased traffic. Although search engines aren't your primary audience, they still influence your page rankings. In the days of early SEO, using keyword-stuffed META tags brought in plenty of traffic. People didn't hang around on a site that promised low air fares and delivered advertisements, but that didn't affect the search engines. Each iter...

Site Health

What is the pagerank? What's the PageRank of the page that is linking to you? What are the PageRanks of some of its subpages that link to other sites? Install the   Google Toolbar   to find out. While some websites may have very high PageRanks for their homepage, the other pages on their site may have a much lower PageRank. Pay attention to the specific page that will be linking to you when considering how good a site's PageRank actually is. Cache status Does the site have an up-to-date entry inside of Google's cache? You can check by searching Google with the command "cache:example.com". A site that doesn't have an up-to-date cache is often a red flag that there is something wrong with a search engine's ability to crawl that site. Link popularity How many entries does the site have? What is its link popularity? Use Marketleap's   Link Popularity Checker   to get some quick and dirty facts about a site's web presence. Number of outbo...

Anchor Text

what is anchor text? Anchor text refers to the words that make up a link; they are the words that turn your mouse cursor into a finger-pointing hand. For example, in the sentence, "I really like to go to   this store ," "this store" is anchor text for the link. why is anchor text important? Search engines gather data by traveling around the web via links, jumping from page to page. Links are the lifeblood of a search engine and are used as key indicators for identifying the topics of the pages they're about to go to. If 100 sites link to a site with the link "Texas Architect" or similar words, the search engine can be fairly confident that the site is about an architect in Texas. Targeted keywords If you want a page to rank for a keyword that is particularly difficult, be sure to focus on getting the keyword in your anchor text. Many newbies will request links to the page they're trying to boost and forget about the anchor text. Whil...

Embrace Social Media Metrics & Objectives

Eighty-four percent of companies surveyed in a recent Facebook survey believe that social signals will be more important to SEO in 2012. The convergence of SEO and social media tactics has meant that social media metrics are becoming just as important as traditional SEO metrics. It is now vital to measure "beyond the Like" and understand the true value of social media interactions. As  BrightEdge  CEO,  Jim Yu , mentioned in his panel presentation, the increased importance of social signals (e.g., Google Search Plus Your World) means it is now essential to look at how, when, and why social signals (tweets, Likes, +1’s, and Pins) influence rankings and position. Creating a Google+ page, adding social plugins (maximize engagement), interlinking deep pages with social media properties, and SEO’ing your social pages are all vital steps in optimizing for the social web and graph. Lee Odden , Author & CEO of  TopRank , makes a great point on matching KPI’s to ...

The New SEO Rules

The New SEO Rules Manipulating organic rankings on Google has become much harder in the last 10 years. And, I’m glad it did. It used to be that all you had to do to rank #1 on Google was to put a bunch of keywords at the bottom of your pages and in your meta keywords tag. As people figure out ways to game the system, Google figures out ways to avoid falling in these traps. And again, I’m glad they do, because otherwise Google’s results wouldn’t be relevant. Now, let’s be realistic: black-hat techniques do work. But for a short period of time. I have a lot of websites myself that I use for experiments, but I’d never do anything risky for any of my clients or my main websites. You have to know when it makes sense to use black-hat techniques, when to use white-hat techniques and when to be somewhere in the middle. My advice for 99.9% of you is: provide exceptional value to your users and Google will reward you for that. You’ll get a lot of organic links, social shares a...