Understand Google’s Guidelines

Meet Google, the “coolest kid” on the cyberblock!

Google is popular, and popularity means it may be tough to get in initially. Even if you do everything right, it could take months to see results, at least if you use their URL submission page. However, there is hope! There’s a method to get indexed in 24 hours, so don’t even bother submitting through the URL page.

But before you get to that, you should know about the guidelines you must follow to ensure that your site not only gets listed, but also doesn’t get banned. Plus, you should learn about elements of your website that Google won’t look at.

How to Get Google to Read Your Keywords First

Google’s bots read web pages from the topmost left corner of your site to the bottom right. However, most sites are designed with all of the links on the left side, and the content on the right. In fact, earlier in this book you learned that this is the recommended website design you should use. Yet the problem with this design is instead of seeing your content first, Google sees the links first. Your links may not be seen to be as optimized as your content.

One solution is to use three panes rather than two. Keep the normal left and right panes, but add an extra pane at the top left of the layout. Don’t put keywords in this extra pane. With this area “blank” when the Google bots read the site, rather than going for the links as they normally would, the bots see that a portion of where the links are is “blank.” This then forces it to read the content first, which is more keyword-rich than the links.

Note that not all search engines read sites this way, which is why this guideline was provided in this special section dedicated to optimizing for Google. You could be on the safe side and use the layout anyway, especially if you do plan to submit to Google, which you should. It doesn’t take away from the look of the site, and by using it you ensure that your content gets read first. If you don’t use it, you aren’t giving yourself the best opportunity to rank highly in Google search engine listings. Making tables isn’t very hard to do. Most word processors and even WYSIWYG HTML editors provide them, so take advantage of it.

Things That Google Ignores

There are some HTML attributes that Google pays no attention to when it goes through its crawling process. While you won’t get penalized if you use these attributes, why waste your time with them if they’re not going to count anyway?

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, as noted in the numbered list below. There are also some elements listed that you will choose not to include.

1. The keywords and description attributes of the meta tag. The keywords and description attributes are read by other search engines. However, the boost you get from having them isn’t as much as if you follow the other techniques, such as proper link building. If you submit to Google only, you may not want to include the keywords attribute, but focus on a smart “upsell” or “positioning,” “branding” of your message in the description attribute. Other search engines use them, so you should go on and include them.

2. The comments tag. The comments tag is an optional tag designed more for the website designer than for search engines or browsers. You use it to make personal notes related to what the upcoming coding does. It’s especially useful if other webmasters are working on web pages that have been started by someone else. Still, it isn’t a necessary tag, so you can omit it if you want.

3. The style tag. This tag has attributes that specify what your site will look like. This deals with styling of your page (CSS). If you’re using extensive CSS, include the file as an external reference.

4. The script tag. This tag lets the browser know that a block of JavaScript code is about to be initiated. While Google ignores the information in this tag, it’s still useful if you want to take advantage of JavaScript. You would use JavaScript when you want to run applets, special programs that run in a separate browser window. Use of this tag may or may not be optional, depending on what your site is for.

5. Duplicate links. If you have duplicate links to the same page, Google only counts the first one.

6. Interlinking to points on the same page. Interlinking involves picking a point on your web page called an anchor that you want another anchor to link to. This practice is commonly used when websites present very long copy on the same page. Readers can click on links throughout the document to jump to other parts of the document. It’s very effective for increasing readability, but it’s another optional device. Worst case, you could break up the copy and make more subtopic links.

7. Graphics, animation and video. Google pays no attention to these types of content, but it may notice the descriptive attributes surrounding them and certainly their URLs.

8. Boolean words. We discussed these earlier. They are words like a, an, the, is, etc. If you’re optimizing for Google only, don’t bother including these keywords.

How Not to Link to Sites That Are in a Bad Neighborhood

Basically, sites that are in a bad neighborhood are those that post on link farms, splogs, or other sites using black hat SEO techniques. Stay away from these types of sites. Do you know that if a person you’re linking to posts on these types of sites, you could get in trouble with Google as well? It’s unfair, but true. And don’t think that because a site has a good page rank today that tomorrow it won’t use black hat techniques that would mess up your site. This is why you need to keep your eye on the sites to which you link.

One way you can do this is to read the page rank bar on the Google toolbar. This is better than using linkvendor.com, because it tells you if a site has been banned, whereas linkvendor.com may not. If the page rank bar is gray, that indicates a ban. However, don’t confuse being banned with having a page rank of 0. Just because a site has a 0 page rank, that doesn’t mean it’s linking to sites in a bad neighborhood. It could just mean that not enough time has passed for the webmaster to get the site to rank high enough in search engines to receive a higher page rank. Recently, for example, there was a proxy problem (now fixed) that erroneously returned sites with a page rank of 0 which in fact were ranked higher.

You can use SEO Elite to determine a site’s page rank. To do this, you first open the program and select radio button 4. Enter the URL of one of your links, then select “Google PR” from the checkboxes. Click “OK.” You’re shown a report that displays the page rank for each of the web pages within the site you’re linking to. Be on alert for those with a rank of 0.As you already know, this doesn’t mean they’re linking to bad neighborhoods, so you’ll need a method to find out for sure. Now select radio button 6. Through this you can see if the site still appears in Google’s search engine listings. Next, select the Google checkbox. If it returns 0, you know the site no longer appears in the search engine listings, and you should stay far away from it.

How to Get Your Site Listed in Google in 24 Hours or Less

Wouldn’t it be nice to start seeing your site in Google’s search engine results in 24 hours or less? It should be first noted that if a site is crawled but not yet indexed, the results aren’t visible to search users. For example, if you enter the full domain of your site with the “http://www.” and your site hasn’t been listed yet, it won’t show up in Google’s results. When your site does get indexed, if you enter the full URL, you’ll see your site listed. This listing contains the URL, the title of your website, and a description.

To get your site indexed quickly, you won’t use Google’s submission form (google.com/addurl.html). Using this method may take 2-6 weeks to get your site indexed.

So, what do you need to do to get your website indexed in 24 hours or less? The first step is to visit Google and enter a broad, generic keyword that’s relevant to your site. This is the rare time that the broader the keyword, the better. Don’t worry about trying to go for niche markets with this step, because you’re going to want to have access to sites with the highest level of traffic. Once you enter the keyword, you see the Google listings. Use the “Page Rank” indicator on the Google toolbar to see what the page rank is (or you could use SEO Elite or LinkVendor, but doing it right from the browser is faster).

To refresh your memory, the higher your page rank, the more websites that are linking to you. Keep an eye out for sites that have a page rank of 5 or higher (with the higher ranking being the better one). Visit each of these sites to see if they offer a link exchange. Remember, if they do they’ll advertise it in the same way you did yours, through a “Link to Us” web page or something similar. Look for the contact information if it’s listed. If it’s not listed, use the Whois utility found through domain name services or SEO Elite to find their e-mail address. Use the same methods of e-mail etiquette you learned about before and send them an e-mail asking if they’re interested in a link exchange. Remember to post their links on your site first before you send out the e-mail. And don’t forget that you can still purchase advertising on the resources given throughout this book.

Just make sure the site you choose has a page rank of over 5. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 5, your site will get indexed in three days or less. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 6, you can get your site indexed in less than 24 hours.

What happens if your site gets ‘blacklisted’ by Google?

What is the impact on a website of being ‘blacklisted’ by Google? Recently the insurance comparison website GoCompare.com faced precisely this dilemma after the search engine picked up on irregular inbound links to its site, causing it to plummet down the rankings.

We are currently seeing a seasonal peak in searches for ‘car insurance’, and the term has increased its share of searches by 31% since the week ending 29th December. Before it fell out with Google, this was good news for GoCompare as the comparison site had established itself as the top website within Google’s natural / organic listings for the term. However, since being ‘blacklisted’ it has dropped down the listings and, at the time of writing, is currently on the seventh page of listings – i.e. well outside of the top 10.

Looking at the data, during the week ending 26th January 2008 GoCompare was the number one site receiving traffic from the term ‘car insurance’, capturing 17.49% of the all search traffic from the term. In fact, the term was so important to GoCompare that it was the number one term sending traffic to the site, accounting for more traffic even than the branded term ‘go compare’. During the week ending 26 January 2008, one in six visits to the site came from the term.

The chart below shows traffic to GoCompare from the term ‘car insurance’ on the left axis, compared to overall searches for the term on the right axis. The area highlighted in red illustrates the impact on GoCompare after the blacklisting had taken effect (during week ending 2nd February).

GoCompare received only 2.31% of all search term traffic from the term ‘car insurance’ during the week ending 9th February, which is an 87% decrease from week ending 26th Jan when it held the #1 natural position on Google. However, as we see from this chart, searches for ‘car insurance’ remained constant during this period.

So what has the impact been on GoCompare’s competitors in the insurance price comparison sector? Confused.com and Comparethemarket.com have shown the largest increase in traffic from searches for ‘car insurance’ over the last two weeks. Traffic from the term to Confused.com has increased by 77% since the 26th January, while traffic to Comparethemarket.com has tripled over the same period.

Search engines are the most important source of traffic to finance price comparison websites, accounting for over a third of their upstream traffic. Ensuring that a website is well-optimised for search engines is vital in such a competitive industry, but this example illustrates the fine balance that needs to be achieved between effective SEO and breaking the ‘rules’.

Five Common SEO Mistakes

Choosing Wrong Keywords

Targeting the wrong keywords is the common mistakes that most people do, even the experienced experts make it. For example, you may optimize your website for the keywords which you think may be best and more relevant and rank number one for those keywords but still may not gain new traffic. The reason is that you are not targeting the right keyword. Reasons that you may choose a wrong Keyword:

   1. Selecting keywords that are very popular. If the keyword is too popular, you have to put up lot of work to bring rankings. For example choosing keywords like car, bike etc.

   2. Choosing a keyword phrase that is too broad. If you are choosing a keyword that is too broad then you might not get the appropriate traffic as a highly targeted keyword phrase.

Choosing the right keyword may make or break your SEO. So make correct decisions while choosing keywords for your website.

JavaScript Menus

For Search engine friendly website, plain text menus are always recommended rather than JavaScript menus. But still using dynamic JavaScript menus are necessary for some websites. Using JavaScript is not bad until you understand that search engines do not read JavaScript and build your website accordingly. If you are using JavaScript in you website then be sure that you create a sitemap or No Script tag for making your links crawlable.

Graphic Header

Many websites are designed with graphic header. We can see websites having company logo occupying the full width of the page. This mistake has to be avoided. The upper part of the page is very important place where you can insert your targeted keywords. When search engines see a graphic image, the prime position is totally wasted there since search engines do not make use of images. And another mistake is that header contains text information in image form to make it attractive. But again text in it cannot be indexed by search engines and will not contribute toward page rank.

The best way to present a logo is to use a hybrid approach - keep the logo at the top of each page and size it that it does not occupy the whole width. Use the rest of the width for the text header.

Pure Flash Website

Search engines do not understand flash and if a website is designed with pure flash then they will see the entire website as a single page. And you may not get the opportunity to optimize different pages for targeted keywords. If you are having a pure flash website, then do follow the below strategies,

   1. Rebuild your website by breaking up the flash file and moving the major sections to its own HTML page. Flash elements can then be included as needed on each separate page.
   2. If you can’t do the first point then you can get smart by using separate URLS by implementing SWF address.
   3. Give more focus on Off page optimization. Concentrate more on the keywords targeted.
   4. Creating a HTML alternative is another best option for Flash SEO. It is not only helpful for Search engines but also for disable visitors for the website.

Importance of URLs

A good URL helps you to rank better in search engines. Dynamic URLs are commonly used in E-commerce sites but the disadvantage is that an URL with keyword can rank better than dynamic URLs with special characters and session ids. Major search engines provide more weightage to page with static and URLS containing keywords. If you are having a website with dynamic URLs then you can use Mod-Rewrite Rule to handle conversion still keeping the dynamic URL.

5 Blog SEO Tips To Start Your Week

I figure most of us dread Monday mornings…the commute, the traffic on the commute, the people…ughh. I’d be willing to bet that Monday is our least productive day next to Friday. But why not start the week with a few little steps that us bloggers can take to better our SEO and start ranking higher in the search engines? They don’t take that long to implement, and once you do, typically you won’t have to bother with it anymore (unless you change themes..but more on that later). So take notes, because here we go!5 Simple Blog SEO Tips

1. Keywords - Have you really sat down and thought about how you want people to find your blog in the search engines? So, so many bloggers start up a blog based on a central topic, and they think targeting “dog training” is enough. WRONG! First of all, the odds of doing well with a highly competitive keyword like that is slim in the beginning anyway, so you need to take a look at some good keywords with less competition. How many of you have a list of keywords saved somewhere that you want to work on? I’d bet some of you don’t. Well, how about you take today to sit down and write out 20 phrases (go for 3-5 words) that you think match your site. There are a couple benefits to this, as you’ll see on paper what your overall theme is about, and you’ve also effectively just made 20 blog post titles that you can (and should) write an article on! Once you have all of these down, head over to this free keyword tool, start inputting your keyword phrases, and see what kind of a search volume each one commands. Look, even if you chose one that gets only 20 searches a day, that’s fine! That means you have a chance at ranking high for that phrase, and also, you stand a chance of gaining an additional 20 visits to your site a day for life! (In theory, of course). Again, write a nice 300-500 word article for each keyword, make sure not to use the keyword too much in the article (use it only in relevant sentences, or it will look like spam), and post it up! You’d be surprised at how much you can benefit from this, and I will cover keyword targeted articles in the future, as there is much more to be said…but this is a start.

2. Sitemap - Although a nice sitemap doesn’t have a direct effect on your rankings, it has a major indirect effect, as it helps the major search engines crawl your site more efficiently and makes them aware of all your content in one nice little file. I’m surprised at the amount of bloggers that don’t have a sitemap, as bloggers tend to have large amounts of pages indexed. Why not make it easier for the search engines to find you? Here is a nice sitemap generator plugin that you can upload, activate, and configure in seconds. It will generate a very well organized xml-sitemap that you can submit to Google webmaster tools (if you haven’t already). Take the time to do this if you haven’t already, it’s very easy, and can help you out tremendously for the long run.

3. Anchor Text - Search engines place a high value on proper anchor text when counting a backlink to your site. If your site is about “car sales”, you want people linking back to you with proper anchor texts with a relevant keyword like “car sales”, or “auto sales”. What I mean is, don’t ever, EVER use “click here” when linking to someones page. I dare say that if you do that, you may as well not link to them at all, because it’s not helping much. So get in a good habit of using relevant and related anchor text when linking out, because not only does it help them, it also helps you! Search engines will find your link much more interesting if it’s properly anchored. If you see that someone used “click here” to link to you (or something equally lame), don’t feel bad in sending them a quick email asking them to change it to a better keyword. It’s beneficial for both parties, and the other webmaster usually won’t mind at all.

4. Clean House - If you’re serious about ranking well for your keywords, pay attention. Google and friends rank your page based upon many factors, some we know, and some we don’t. What we do know is that one factor is the way your code looks on the back end. Search engines do not like dirty, cluttered code, and it can honestly hurt your rankings by having a mess of unorganized code behind that beautiful blog of yours. I know, most people don’t have a clue how to clean up code (me being one of them), but there are many, many people on popular webmaster forums that would happily clean it up and optimize it for you for a small fee. Hire a trusted forum member who happens to be a code monkey to take a look and see what he/she can do for you. This may cost anywhere from $10-$50, so be sure to negotiate the price, and get it over with. Again, if you don’t plan on changing themes any time soon, you won’t have to do this again for a while, and it can reap great rewards as far as your rankings are concerned.

5. ALT Tags - Did you know that whenever you post an image to your blog, that you are given an option to name it, in case the image fails to load? That way, if someone loads your blog, and an image is broken, they can still see what the image was (assuming you named it correctly). It’s called an ALT tag, and it looks something like this:

<img src=”boat.gif” alt=”Big Boat” >

A lot of folks don’t take the time to take advantage of the alt tag text, or they name it something irrelevant. But wait! Did you know that there are SEO experts that have confirmed a slight boost in rankings by naming your ALT text with the relevant keyword? Pretty cool, eh? Now, they’re not saying that it’s going to get you to number one if you use good ALT tags, but it just may give you an edge over your direct competitors. Mainly, the ALT tag is great for image SEO, so make sure you name it what it really is. The above is a good example of how you would name a picture of a big boat. That way when people search for “big boat” in a search engine’s image search, you have a chance at showing up. So start taking advantage of the ALT tag, and when you get the time, you should go back to each and every image in your site and ALT tag them appropriately. You can thank me later.

Just How Useless Is The Meta Keywords Tag?

Depending on who you ask, you’ll probably receive several reasons why the Meta keywords tag is of almost no value to your website (with a few minor exceptions). However, as much as the experts bash the lack of importance of the meta keywords tag - you’ll often hear them say something along the lines of, “But just in case, we put it in a clients site anyway”.That’s huge, because even though the general school of thought across the SEO industry is that Meta keywords simply don’t matter anymore (besides the occasional remote search engine), there are reasons that you should consider including it in your website. I think Russ Jones summed it up best when he said:

“…but two pages with gibberish for content, one with a real keyword in a meta keywords tag, the other without… The one with the keyword will rank above. Which weigh’s more, an anvil, or an anvil with a feather?”

I love that comparison, and it’s exactly the reason why I still recommend to clients/friends that they go ahead and slap a Meta keywords tag in there just in case it comes down to a neck and neck situation in the rankings and you’re looking for every possible advantage you can use (even if it’s exceptionally insignificant).

Another interesting view on the use of keywords in the Meta keywords tag is something that Elisabeth Osmeloski mentioned during a “survey of the experts” at SEOMoz:

“I do believe it is spot-checked for matching up with a page’s content or other SEO elements”

I think that’s a very interesting observation, and who knows, it just may have some truth to it!

Including Meta keywords in the Meta keywords tag was often a way (back in the late 90’s) to influence your ranking for pretty much anything you wanted. Webmasters realized that if they stuff in things like Buy Viagra, Cheap Viagra, and similar spammy words - that it would help rank their spam pages. Of course, I don’t believe this lasted very long, as the search engines wised up to it pretty swiftly for the most part.

That’s why the weighting isn’t worth much (if anything), because it’s just too easy to manipulate. Again, I think the main reasons most webmasters still include it, is because in the construction of a well organized site, it’s kind of “expected” to be there. Like I said before, why not include it? It’s just another way to ‘possibly’ help you out, and it certainly doesn’t hurt anything. Just make sure that you use actual relavent keywords, and not spamwords - because then you may risk getting flagged.

Bottom line - Use the Meta keywords tag properly. It’s considered good practice, and definitely can’t harm you.

Link Building

A great post I came across last week was Neyne’s post about unconventional link attributes. He discusses the temporal element of link value and illustrates this with the results of an experiment he performed. Although it’s (like Neyne states as well) not a sterile experimenting environment, the graphs are pretty interesting to see.

Another great post is Derek Edmond’s recap of Eric Enge’s link session at the SEO meetup in Arlington last week.This post offers a few great tips that you can use to improve your link profile, such as 6 tips to personalize your link request.

And also:

• David F. listed .
• Eric Ward asks himself (and others) if linking experts should go underground.
• Tim Nash dives into link bombing and Google bombing.
• Chris G provides some excellent tips on how to get more bookmarks and better links.
• Have you ever wondered how you can measure the result of a linkbaiting campaign? Use these 5 metrics provided by Chris Winfield.
• David Wallace explains how you can check if a directory listing will have any value.
• Li Evans asks if Google can FINALLY come up with something official about nofollow.
• Building links for a B2B site? Justilien has some great tips.
• Michael Martinez talks about linking theory axioms.
• Aaron Wall shows how you can determine the effectiveness of your internal link structure.
• And the last one is Eric Enge’s interview with Adam Lasnik (which is mainly about links).

Two New Projects!

We have been hard at work on a few new project blogs… I thought I would share them here with you all!

The Fallen Ones Film Blog is a new film news and review site. Our panel of expert reviewers will post weekly reviews of the films as we get them. Please take a trip over to the site and let us know what you think.

Our second new project…. Great American Music Blog is a great friendly site for all things music… from the musician, to the promoters for concerts, and for the fans. News, reviews, and tidbits can all be found here.

Start Driving Qualified Traffic Using Online Directories

Start Driving Qualified Traffic Using Online Directories

Directories are web sites that categorize links into specific groups. Directories are designed to provide visitors with easy access to the best web sites in a specific category.

Directories can be a very useful resource for shoppers and companies. They can drive targeted traffic to your web site, increase your link popularity and raise your Page Rank. This can translate into better sales. Learn the what you need to know before you submit to a directory.

There are three different types of directories that one should submit their web site to. Each type is listed below, along with examples of directories that I recommend.

Free Directories Requiring No Reciprocal Link

These are the easiest directories to submit a link. They require no payment or link back. All you have to do is fill out the form and submit your information. These directories are great because they take very little time and cost nothing. However, they are also the most risky because they can easily turn into link farms. Make sure the site has a high Page Rank and looks like it has restrictions on what types of sites it accepts.

Free Directories Requiring Reciprocal Link

These types of directories are very controversial. Only brand new websites should consider these directories because they are a good way to raise your link popularity up from zero. They are not very useful for established sites though because better link partners can be found. If you own a brand new site and plan on submitting to these directories, it is recommended that you create a “partners” page to keep your links manageable and off of your index page. There is a fine line between reciprocal directories and link farms, so be sure you do not cross that line. As always, be sure the directory is reliable and has a good Page Rank before submitting.

Paid Directories

Most people cringe when they think of paying for marketing and promotion. However, a site is worthless if it has no visitors. Paid directories are a great way to build your link popularity on very respectable sites. Some of these directories also have a reciprocal link option. Although these directories do cost money for inclusion, they normally pay off the best in the long run.

Getting listed in directories is almost as important as a good search engine ranking. This is because these directories are moderated by real live human beings who look at the content of websites that are submitted and place them in the relevant categories.

Also search engines usually spider directory listings, so this is a good way of getting your site indexed on the search engines. This helps to reduce the amount of spam found on the normal search engines.You should try and get your site listed at such places like Yahoo.com, ClearChoiceDirectory.com or some other active directory.

Some education is essential to enlighten you about this form of interactive marketing. Directories aren’t Search Engines; they are web sites or information portals which use analysts on staff to review submissions from companies who want to be listed in their Directory.

Here are some tips

1. Directory listings are a great value, do your homework and find one you like, they provide a long-term listing, unlike Search Engine rankings which are much more volatile.

2. Be patient when submitting to Directories, as most are getting thousands of submissions per monthly - some list you immediately while others will take 30-90 days to actually get listed. Keep an accurate record of sites you have listed on.

3. Never submit a site unless it is ready for primetime, with no broken links, under construction pages, incomplete text, graphics that aren’t loading properly, etc. Indexers are very busy, once they see a site which has problems they will click to the next entry on their list and your hard work is to no avail.

4. Be prepared with the proper marketing materials for this type of a campaign, including a working title for your site which is 6-8 words.

5. Part of the required expertise involved in this process is in the actual category selection - carefully select which category or categories where you think your site fits by looking at others in this category to determine if you fit into this classification.

6. Be aware we are seeing a shift to fee-based submissions to shortcut the process - Yahoo started the trend over a year ago, now LookSmart and other top tier Directories are starting to do the same as well as ClearChoiceDirectory.com which is a popular search engine, shopping portal and Business Blog all in one. The tradeoff is of course minimizing time to market.

7. Want to know if this process has actually done anything for you? Check your log files or web site analysis software and look at where your traffic is coming from.

8. If you are getting significant traffic from a small list of Directories you may want to go back to their web site and pay for their premium listing services to drive more traffic. These enhanced listings services typically enable you to post to a featured listing or add your company logo which enhances your position on the directory, usually only for a few hundred dollars per year.

Recommended Directories-

Yahoo.com ($299 per year)

ClearChoiceDirectory.com ($245 per year with included logo)

Thoughts on Google PageRank

There has been quite some debate in certain circles of the blogosphere with respect to what has been happening with Google’s PageRank (PR). Some websites have experienced a significant drop in PR, some claim that bloggers who make earnings through paid postings have been penalised, some even think that Google, as a monopolist, is censoring a segment of the Internet. One cannot deny that the PR values for a number of websites have changed, but people must also realise what PageRank really is.

For those unfamiliar with the term, PageRank is the heart of a trademarked algorithm that Google uses to power it’s search engine. It’s a link analysis algorithm that is based around gauging the “importance” of a web page by how many other web pages link to it. Not only does it take into account how many pages link to the page in question, but also, their own rank and the number and relevance of pages that link to them. A few years ago, Google made the decision to expose this Page Rank figure to webmasters and users around the web, probably to help them optimise their sites and understand their placing in their index. And this is what is the cause of the problem today.

See, a whole industry has been spawned around PR. If you search for the term in Google, you will find hundreds of websites and companies claiming to be Search Engine Optimisation experts who can help you increase your Page Rank. Not only this, but in the absence of any decent metrics for site comparison, Page Rank has become the cornerstone of all “paid blogging” efforts and people selling space on their website.

And this is a problem. In a pure sense, the PR of a website is no indication of the quality of a website. PR can be manipulated, PR can be bought and sold and website owners, particularly bloggers run the danger of forgetting that what really draws people to the website is the quality of the content there. PR is no measure of “value” that a website brings to the Internet, it’s simply Google’s internal metric which it uses to tailor it’s search results.

I especially find it interesting that people claim that Google is “censoring” the Internet, that it is being “anti-competitive” and that it’s ruining their websites. Page Rank is a comparative index and most of all, the index actually belongs to Google. Your PR may have changed, but does it mean you can no longer find your site when you search for it in Google? Has it actually changed the number of page hits your site gets? Does it make your content less relevant?

My advice to everyone out there is this: Stop worrying about your PR and focus on producing some real, genuine, valuable content. This is what brings people to your website and gets them to come back again. If Google decided to set everybody’s PR to 0, or to stop publishing it altogether (it’s certainly their prerogative to do this), what would this really mean to you, your business and the people who visit your website? Focus on your content, whatever Google does to Page Rank, the market will adjust.

Tags: pagerank, PR, page+rank, links, text+links, google+ranks

ZeroRank - More PageRank Carnage (Round 5)

I have been receiving emails and comments today about yet another PageRank downturn for multiple sites.

Andrew Ooi has compiled a short list of Malaysian sites, many were as much as a PR5 previously, and currently show a PageRank of zero (a white bar)

Examples include:-

Colleen’s Simple Kind of Life and 5xmom

The numbers seem to be stable across multiple data centers

There doesn’t seen to be any change in prominent Search Marketing sites such as Search Engine Round Table and Search Engine Journal, and other popular bloggers such as Emom and Yaro still seem to have their degraded but still “head above water” rankings.

Meanwhile Matt Cutts is playing around with $200 PCs and the negative views of the blogosphere regarding Google.

Meaning Of PageRank Unchanged

Google have had more than a month to change the description of PageRank on their website.

I haven’t seen any change to Search Engine Rankings and there is still no way to request reconsideration without admitting guilt.

The Webmaster Help Center also doesn’t give an option to report that you think Google is making a mistake in their manual evaluation.

How do I request reconsideration of my site?

If your site has previously violated our webmaster guidelines, and you’ve made changes to it so that it now meets our guidelines, you can ask Google to reconsider your site for inclusion in the index.

In addition, if you recently purchased a domain that you think may have violated our guidelines before you owned it, you can use the reconsideration request form to let us know that you recently acquired the site and that it now adheres to the guidelines.

To request reconsideration of your site:

1. Sign in to Google webmaster tools. The webmaster tools Dashboard opens.
2. Under Tools, click Request reconsideration and follow the steps.

Google do now call this reconsideration, not just reinclusion, and Matt notes that you can still be in the index even though you have a penalty, which he updated November 4th 2007

I did find something cool though which I hadn’t seen before, maybe I missed it being reported, or didn’t pay much notice.

I am still being crawled frequently and there are some interesting spikes. It is a pity that the graph doesn’t line up with the scale.

From January people using PayPerPost will be able to use SocialSpark.

SocialSpark Alpha screenshots do still have PageRank listed, and that will likely be removed totally unless Google change their stance.

I still don’t sell PageRank, but traffic hasn’t changed, if anything it has increased as I write more content that people want to read and link to, and it even brings in some search traffic.

Google is making huge mistakes with these updates. I know many people receiving penalties sell links, and I am not trying to defend them.

When you get someone like regular reader Rob, a real expert in SEO, who based on the links he receives should be a comfortable PR4, or possibly a PR5, currently a PR0, because he wrote one paid review using nofollow on the links.

Then you get affiliate marketers like Vlad who may have written a couple of high quality reviews, and sold some advertising.
At the same time he also is an affiliate with some affiliate services which offer SEO friendly “clean links” for their merchants.
For a website owner they are still links from which they will be making money, though the money from affiliate marketing is variable - the links still affect search engines, as do many other affiliate links which feature 301 redirects.

Now whilst Aaron’s issues might be appeased as a result of the recent interchange with Matt, that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Aaron hasn’t been lynched.

To finish I am just going to steal the words of Michael VanDeMar which he posted as a comment on Matt’s Reporting On Paid Links post.

Honestly, Matt… and if your legal team won’t let you answer this, then I understand, but if you are allowed to answer then I (and I’m sure others) would really, really like to know… as the G algo stands now, exactly how much off balance would you say it is due to the insidious act of buying and selling text link ads? How many man hours have you spent combating this crime against humanity, and at what cost? And is it seriously skewing the results that much, that all the efforts spent on it were, and continue to be, justified? Is the algo that fragile?

The other main reason that I disagree with this idea is that you think (or appear to be implying, anyways) that Paid Link === No Human Review. This not the case 9 times out of 10. You should know that.

Update - Official Statement From Izea (PayPerPost)

An official statement finally from Izea (PayPerPost) on their blog regarding Google PageRank Updates.

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

I would like to thank Ted (CEO of Izea) for having the courage to say something about this in public, something it seems Google so far have not managed to do, and rarely do so on an official company blog.

Lisa Stewart of Bigfoot Web Marketing also has an excellent writeup of the decision process on the PayPerPost boards that ultimately led to Ted Murphy making a statement.

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