Posted by Admin on October 26th, 2007 — Posted in Search Engines
by jondey
Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.
This update seems to have revolved around three main areas: domain age, backlinks and PageRank.
Domain Age
It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weight to the age of a domain and, in this SEO’s opinion, disproportionately so. While the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and innovative ideas. Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.
On this tangent I have to say that Google’s use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to “sandbox” sites on day one to insure that they aren’t just being launched to rank quickly for terms. Recalling back to the “wild west days” of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that insured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.
After a period of time (let’s call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small influence on a site’s ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site’s whois data. This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a disproportionate weight. In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.
This change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We’ll get into the “when” question below.
Backlinks
The way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some adjustments in the latest update as well. The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old. This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.
The way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant link. Non-reciprocal links lost the “advantages” that they held over reciprocal links until recently.
Essentially the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the current environment, building a reasonable sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.
PageRank
On the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some of it’s importance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google’s part and shows a solid understanding of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site’s importance. That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn’t appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.
A fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gague a site’s trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weight from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it’s weight in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more evident
In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the …
Conclusion
So what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues we’ve seen rise out of the most current round. This shouldn’t surprise anyone too much, we’ve been seeing regular updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.
But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly feel that an aging delay or “sandbox” is a solid filter on Google’s part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from 2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004. After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a very slight weight. This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.
As far as backlinks go, we’ll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high quantity, less relevant links. Google is getting extremely good and determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm issues has more to do with the weight assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a links relevancy.
And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.
In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we’re going to see a shift back to last week’s results (or something very close to it) after which they’ll work on the issues they’ve experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you’ve enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don’t pop the cork on the champaign too quickly and if you’ve noticed some drops, don’t panic. More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you’ve used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.
About the Author Interview Question answer Portal http://www.interviewghost.com UK
No Comments »
Posted by Admin on October 22nd, 2007 — Posted in Search Engines
by Kevin Gallagher
Introduction
I have read a lot of articles over the years telling me how to get better rankings in Google. Some of these articles where full of good advice and some where not. Here you will find insightful truths about getting better rankings in Google that I personally have found to be true after years of research.
1. The Quick solution
First the bad news, unfortunately there are no quick fixes in creating higher rankings in Google. You have to have a lot of patience in the search engine optimisation game. It will take months for your tiresome efforts to come to fruition.�That’s why it’s important to get things right from the start and plan out your strategy.
2. Keyword Research
Keywords are the most important part of search engine optimisation. You must do your keyword research before starting your website if you can, as this will form the basis of all your search engine optimisation.
There is no point going for broad keywords for example ” website design” as there is too much competition for those keywords and you will find vey difficult if not impossible to reach the top spot in Google. You are much better using long tail niche keywords. They will have a smaller search volume, but it will be easier to obtain top position.
People are more likely to find what they are looking for with long tail keywords, for example if someone needs a website they may type into Google ” web design” and visit a few websites. They may then discover they also need hosting and a domain name. They will then do another search for “website design hosting and domain name services” for example, and this may be your niche keyword or key phrase. How do you find keywords that people are searching for? Well a good free tool can be found at http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ or if you want something more professional you can use http://www.wordtracker.com/ an excellent service for finding niche keywords. You should try and get at least 10 keyword phrases.
Once you have found your keywords do a search with them on Google. First of all look at how many results there are. If it’s in its millions them maybe your keywords are not that good and would be too competitive. If you can find keywords with results at about 50,000 then you could be onto a winner.
You should also check out your competition. Click on the top result for your keyword in the SERPS (search engine results pages) and check out their pagerank. This will give you a rough idea of what you need to achieve to get top placement. Also you should check to see how many links they have pointing to their website as this will also give you a rough idea of how many links you will need to get to the top position. To do this in the search box type link:followed by the full url and you will get a list of websites that link to that domain but it’s a good idea to do this in the Yahoo search engine as they give a more extensive list of back links.�Google will only show you a percentage of their links, usually of pagerank 3 or higher. Remember these are only rough estimates as every website is different and less, more relevant links will achieve better results.
3. Optimising Meta title tag
Google sees the title tag as the most important and relevant part of the webpage it retrieves. This is one of the few things you have any control over in Google’s search results. The title tag is the underlined header for your result in the SERPS, it also appears at top of your browser window. Keep this descriptive and readable, but at the same time include your newly found niche keywords. Google will also highlight the keywords in your title that where included in the search query.
4. Optimising Meta description tag
The description tag is the description of the webpage, which resides under the title tag in the results. Again use your keywords in here, maybe some of the lesser ones you discovered. This is the only other part of the results you have any control over. Google will also highlight the keywords in here that match the search query. Again remember to keep it descriptive and readable.
5. Domain names
If you can, try and include your main keywords in your domain name, as Google will highlight them when they match the search query. This can give your ranking alittle boost as this will show that your website is relevant to the search query.
6. The open directory project (DMOZ)
You should always submit your website to DMOZ as it can take an age to get listed in here and Google uses these results in its organic results sometimes.�I recently wrote an article discussing this topic and some people commented on thisand said that they haven’t submitted to DMOZ and their
7. The importance of Content
Content is very important. If you have ever changing fresh unique content on your website relating to your topic Google will love you for it and other websites will link to you.�In return this will increase your rankings, but you should really be doing this anyway. A website with no changing content is a dead website. Your content should contain your keywords, but don’t spam your content with your keywords. Use them at the start and end of your webpage and sprinkle them in-between. Also use them in your header text and even bold a few as this shows Google that these words bear more importance.
8. Pagerank the green menace
Why are people so obsessed with that little green bar on the Google tool bar? Well I’m here to tell you that you can stop obsessing about it right now. The thing about the pagerank bar is it can be at least 3 months out of date as Google only updates it in roughly a 3-month cycle. Only Google knows your true pagerank, which changes all the time. Google regularly spiders your website and scans for new content and links to show the most relevant content in its results. Therefore pagerank is pretty inaccurate. The only advantage of that green bar that I can see is for exchanging links. You can get a rough idea what a websites ranking is and you can decide whether or not to exchange links.
The other thing people get confused about is that it’s called pagerank not siterank. What I have determined is that your website will get assigned a pagerank figure and then it will be distributed through your indexed pages, for example if your website gets a figure of 5 then your home page may get a pagerank of 3 and your other pages get a 2 or maybe a 1 and so on. If these other pages also have links to them this will increase their own individual pagerank.
9. Linking
Reciprocal links are easier to come by but in the early stages when you don’t have a good pagerank will be more difficult. Once your pagerank increases you can be more selective of the pagerank you exchange with. One-way links are better than 2 way links but one-way links can be harder to obtain. Why should someone put your link on their website, what’s in it for them? You can do this by writing articles like this one, and submitting it to article websites, social media websites or on your own blog, but remember to include an author’s bio including some links to your website. Don’t forget about the guys starting out when your green bar starts to increase. If they have a website with good quality content then you should consider linking with them. Remember we all need to start somewhere and page rank of 1 is tomorrow’s pagerank 5. Try and keep your link to relevant websites as Google likes this and you will receive quality traffic from these websites for years to come. Also I have found a great little tool to check if your potential link partners are linking to bad neighbourhoods, which Google may penalise you for linking to. The address is:
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm
rankings are fine. This may be true but one thing you should remember is that lots of directory websites use DMOZ results, which in turn will get you more one-waylinks.
10. Blogging
Blogs are loved by Google as they have lots of text and are constantly getting updated, so start your own blog on your website. Include articles, stories and any thing that’s related to your website. If you give people something of interest they will come back for more and link to you. That’s all for now, take care and good luck! And remember you only get out of something what you put in to it.
About the Author Kevin Gallagher is the managing director of Umbrella a custom website design company in the Scottish Borders providing small business website design , website builder software
No Comments »
All Rights Reserved