Why Google Engineers Once Pushed Nofollow PageRank Sculpting

Originally Google created rel=nofollow in what was claimed as an attempt to minimize the effects of blog comment spam on their search results. But the tag never decreased blog spam, it only decreased the ability of bloggers to influence search rankings by leaving back-scratching comments on each other’s blogs.

Matt Cutts quickly extended nofollow’s purpose to include use on paid text link ads as well. But given that Google AdWords sells links (and often to scammers) some people may have seen trade issues with forcing the new proprietary nofollow tag onto the web. Promoting PageRank sculpting gave Google a way to legitimize a tag which otherwise added no value to anyone except search companies.

After enough time passed and Google saw too much collateral damage popping up from rel=nofollow usage, they pulled the rug out from underneath it. Nofollow already had enough momentum, and was a functional part of the web. After a Google employee slipped nofollow into a working draft of the HTML 5 specifications it was time time to clean up the mess and inform SEOs about the nofollow change that happened over a year ago.

Some SEO Professionals Claimed Huge Benefits From PageRank Sculpting

Over the last year many SEOs have claimed that nofollow tests worked amazingly well which show up directly in the bottom line. And ironically, sharing/hyping this incorrect information worked well from a marketing perspective because…

What the SEOs were testing on their high profile public SEO websites was more a reflection of branding and marketing efforts. As they made noise in the marketplace their brand spread and that made more sales. We recently (maybe a month ago?) added nofollow to some links on our site, and we failed to see the lift that other SEOs claimed. And the SEOs that claimed to see the obvious huge amazing lift failed to report the drop off when Google changed how they handled nofollow, which sorta shows the error in the testing method.

Anchoring Keywords

You don’t want to anchor your links like a newbie. This a basic concept in SEO link building, yet it is often forgotten or misunderstood. The basic idea behind Google is that links provide votes for your site and the words used in that link describe your content to Google. So if you want Google to know you’re about “credit cards”, then people need to reference you with the keyword phrase “credit cards”. I’ve shown this before, but I think Allyn Hane does an amazing job explaining the basics of linking.

Anchor Text Distribution

If you site is about “credit cards”, you may be tempted to run out and  only get links for that exact phrase, but this is bad for two reasons.

1. Creates a “Google Bomb” from spamming the same anchor text, which may result in a penalty
2. Limits your optimization to one exact phrase

Too often people only worry about the Google Bomb aspect of spamming one phrase, but it is actually BAD SEO independent of the Google Bomb concept.

The success of SEO is rarely tied to the ranking for one specific phrase. Getting hung up on one phrase is a newbie mistake. Take some time to read my posts on longtail keywords and semantics for SEO.

As an SEO, I would rather rank in the top 5 for 300 different terms, than rank #1 for the best term in the niche. The first scenario would likely provide me more traffic and that traffic is more likely to be targeted.

You can relate anchor text distribution to the idea of keyword density. Instead of repeating one phrase, it is better to mix in multiple related and long tail variations of your keywords.

Examples of Anchor Variations

•    Justin’s blog about Credit Cards
•    Student credit cards
•    Compare credit cards
•    Credit cards for people with bad credit
•    Credit card guide

And yes, every single one of these phrases helps for the primary phrase “credit card”, but they have the added benefit of picking up phrases related to: student, compare, guide, bad, and bad credit. This helps us dramatically increase the number of phrases we can rank for, while also avoiding a Google bomb penalty.

A Natural Link Profile

You’ll see a lot of talk about “appearing natural” when building links. If you anchor your links in a predictable way, it becomes obvious that you have manipulated your link profile. Google hates link manipulation, so you want to stay under the radar.

A lot of people give Google too much credit and claim they have amazing detection techniques. I’ll agree that Google is great at detecting linking patterns, but there are a huge number of sites that get away with it. The problem isn’t if Google can detect it today, but if Google can detect it in two years. I see a lot of sites ranking that are obviously manipulating. The concern for them is that a Google algo update may wipe out their site. The SEO community has seen this multiple times.

To reduce your risk, it is valuable to build a profile that “appears” natural.

4 Most Common Anchors in a Natural Profile

1. Site Name
2. Site URL
3. Owner’s Name
4. Page Title

The majority of webmasters link to other sites with one of the 4 anchors above.

A Fairly Natural Link Profile

Ranked by number of anchors for each phrase

1. Justin’s Credit Card Guide
2. Credit Card Guide
3. Justin
4. Guide on Credit Cards
5. http://awesomecreditcardguide.com
6. Justin’s Credit Card Guides – Tips & Advice
7. Credit Cards
8. Credit Card Reviews
9. Student Credit Cards

A Link Profile That Is Not Natural

1. Credit Cards
2. Credit Card Reviews
3. Student Credit Cards
4. Bad Credit Credit Cards
5. Credit Card
6. Credit Card Guide
7. Compare Credit Cards
8. Justin’s Credit Card Guide
9. Justin’s Credit Card Guides – Tips & Advice
10. Justin
11. http://awesomecreditcardguide.com

So anchoring is important, but be cautious when you anchor your links, so that you do not over optimize your backlink profile.

Tips to Improve Your Anchor Distribution

1. Don’t anchor the exact match of your main keyword more than 25% of the time
2. Use your site title as the anchor periodically. (If you do your title right, this should still be a keyword anchored link)
3. Get people to keyword anchor when they reference your name.  Instead of “from Justin’s blog”, ask them to say “from Justin’s SEO blog”
4. Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to identify related keywords and work through them as anchors
5. Focus on having a diverse mix of anchor text combinations instead of many links on a specific term
6. Do stuff so you actually earn real natural links (lol…gasp…). If you have natural links being produced, then you don’t have to worry as much about “appearing natural” when doing SEO because your natural links are already creating diversity for you and will mask your link building.

I hope this helps you guys when you’re getting anchored links for your site. I have many more post coming in the better backlinks series. If you’re interested in keeping up on these posts, I recommend subscribing.

Besides delivering a critical blow to competitive balance of two highly recognized and respected companies, it has inadvertently created a new form of optimization.

That’s right. PDF optimization.

The main technology that Adobe wanted from Macromedia was Flash. Now that they have it, they will be able to incorporate all the power of Flash into a PDF. With one fell swoop, they have changed the face of search engine optimization.

As a site owner, I can now potentially have my entire site reside within the content of a PDF. Sure, it was textually available before, but now I can even have compressed video, dynamically generated content and visually appealing content conveniently wrapped up into the web’s only cross-compatible portable platform.

No more worries about having a Flash player installed - that will be incorporated into the PDF reading software. No more worrying about needing Quicktime and Media Player versions of video clips. They’ll all be in Flash.

Not only is the PDF web friendly, but it is also PDA and Kiosk ready. Now content can be delivered anywhere to any device that can read a pdf. It can also be included on CD’s, DVD’s and even your cell phone.

From a user perspective, this is awesome. From a search engine perspective, it is great to push boundaries, but we may also see the end of optimizing for client sites, instead a client will pay a one-time fee to optimize a pdf.

Anyone who makes a living optimizing sites can see the potential loss of revenue as companies move forward and place their marketing efforts into promoting a pdf instead of a web site.

Why would a company not embrace this? While it’s a true a site like Amazon would not be able to take full advantage of this, they could embed pdf optimization for dvd’s and cd’s sent to your cell phone, based on previous selections you’ve made.

It’s a marketer’s dream, and it makes a buzz agent’s job even easier. Word of mouth marketing will be coupled with a portable demonstration of the product or service being sold.

While the general public may not become aware of this technology for a few years, those who reside on the cutting edge will find great ways to use this in promotion.

Now instead of just watching a movie trailer, you could also have the script, actor bios and studio contact information. Maybe even after the movie gets released, you could get your pdf updated with box office results.

The benefits of storing information in a pdf are huge. Instead of storing all of that information in a database, you have everything you need as a portable document. No worries about server stability, access to the database or even an internet connection.

By embracing this new development, it will be another service you can add to your seo repertoire and allow for your business to adapt to this emerging technology.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues - www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

Most article marketing programs on the Internet are cost very little and are worth even less. There are several factors that distinguish our article marketing campaigns for you:

Quality information: Even thought we try to rely on you to provide the bulk of the information (who knows your business better than you?), we organize the information into an article that is useful or unique or both – something that people would want to read and that other webmasters would want to post on their websites, unlike the majority of drivel that passes for “content” in the article banks of the Internet. Here is a sample article. Here is another sample.

Correct writing: This probably would go without saying, except that the Internet article banks are full of poor spelling and incorrect grammar and word usage. Guess how many webmasters want to republish that trash?

SEO Optimization: Our articles are optimized for the search engines, to help your website rank better. A quick browse through the article banks, and you can see how few such articles actually are properly optimized.

Natural link-building: This is so important. You get to place a link in your articles…or more than one if you pay attention. We pay attention, not just to the number of links, but to the quality of links. The big challenge the search engines have is to weed out and discount automation from its rankings. We automation-proof your articles, so that they will stand up to whatever algorithm changes the search engines will undertake to devalue the links your competition are building through automation (or what might appear to be automatic submissions). The extra work involved in automation-proofing the submissions process is why we can’t – and won’t – compete on price. We believe that every penny you spend on those cheap article submission campaigns will be wasted in the long run. Your article marketing campaign for just $1000 with us will stand the test of time.

If like all websites, unless you are in the dark ages, you have images on your website then make them work for you. By editing the ‘ALT’ tag you can give the images a name which contains keywords so to be useful when search engines spiders trawl through your sites html code.

If your website was on classic car sales and you label your images as ‘car 1′ this will have very little impact for the spiders but if you try naming a picture of an Aston Martin as ‘classic Austin Martin’ this would only serve to help your sites rankings. But also important to naming your images is that not all visitors to your website will see it the same way that you see it on your screen. Some businesses and users do not view images on sites and turns those functions off.

By turning images off on their browser this allows for faster speeds when visiting sites and controls what employees can see. By giving ‘ALT’ names to images that say what they are you will enhance the visitors experience as well as helping to increase your ranking. When working with images on your website, you will need to optimise images either using a program like Photoshop or one online. When a visitor to your website has to wait for photos to load, they may quickly decide against waiting even one second longer. Remember, the longer it takes for a page to load the quicker the visitor will want to leave. Keep page loads within a few seconds if possible.

Now look at your website. Many web surfers will visit a website for only a few seconds before they make a decision of whether or not this site will have what they are looking for. Some surfers don’t even wait for the page to load before leaving a website. You need to give them a reason to stay by telling them the most important information in a quick and fast way.

Think of a newspaper, they can not tell you the whole of the newspaper on just the front page. They put headlines that guide you through the paper. These headlines grab your attention. This same process can be used for website optimisation. Try bullet pointing the information so visitors can quickly see what your site can offer them

Put navigation links on the bottom of your sites pages too. Very useful if you have pages where users need to scroll down a long ways.

Don’t add useless pages or extras that distract visitors and confuse them. Your website will be wanting to either get contact details or sell something. Having an about us page is nice to have but trust me these are very rarely if ever read. The same applies to scripts which are not necessary like background music or snow falling on the screen. Incredibly tacky and annoying for visitors.

As a professional designer for many years I know that flash websites are just not going to rank as well as their ‘html’ counterparts. The reason is rather simple, search engine spiders can’t trawl them as there is no code there for them to read. They are also looked upon rather unfavourably as not everyone can view them unless they download the plug ins necessary to view flash video. Although this is becoming more common and more and more people are downloading the plug ins, it just is not currently viewable by everyone as the standard ‘html’ websites are. It’s all looks but no substance.

Now we get onto keywords, the hot subject. Choose key phrases rather than individual words. Think what would people type to find your website. Ask friends & family too. If you sold cars in Kent, UK don’t choose ‘cars’ as a keyword, try ‘Kent secondhand cars’ or ‘car dealerships Kent’, about 10 to 13 key phrases are sufficient. Don’t keep repeating words over and over again. Also, unless you are a major corporation such as Nike or Xerox, you need not mention your companies actual name in the keyword or description tags.

The description tag should also contain some keywords in there and be about 25 - 30 words but don’t over do it. This description is important as it shows up in searches. This brings me onto the title of your pages. Don’t just say ‘Home’, put in a few keywords there too. This title tag is shown above the description text on search engines so write wisely. For a car dealership it would be more effective for a visitor to Goggle to see a title tag that says ‘Find second hand cars in Kent, everything from cars, 4×4’s, to trucks’ rather than ‘Dales Motors’. See what I mean, which would you click?

It is very important to make sure you do not have any ‘dead links’ or ‘broken links’ from your website either linking within your site or to another one. This infuriates visitors and does not look good when search engines come to dead links while trawling your website. Dreamweaver can check for broken links with it’s own software but there are many free online broken link checkers out there.

As we end this article on Optimising Your Website, I would like to remind you to keep your sites navigation simple and its purpose clear. Do not add useless extras which will only distract visitors and maybe even persuade them into not coming pack. Get your free ebooks here.

On their own, SEO and social media efforts offer companies attractive opportunities for reaching new customers, which is how many marketers implement them.

When you look at shifts in consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing, there’s no arguing with the intersection of search and the social web.  Searchers expect to not only find what they’re looking for on search engines, but to interact with the results, whether it’s through commenting, voting or sharing. As a result, social media affects SEO in numerous ways, creating opportunities for marketers.

For a step by step guide on creating a Scial Media and SEO Roadmap, take a look at this recent article from Mashable. Below is a partial exceprt:

From a marketing standpoint, you can look at the benefits of SEO and social media two different ways:

First, implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content is leaving money on the table. Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking.

For example, the popular blog about student loans and college financing from Wells Fargo identifies 29 keywords in its Keyword Meta Tag and doesn’t rank in Google’s first page for 26 of them. Those that do rank are variations of the blog’s name.

While there is a generous amount of cross linking within posts, a basic blog template optimization effort leveraging keywords and other minor adjustments could improve search traffic for this site substantially - without any compromise in content quality or user experience.

Social interactions and media sharing amongst social network participants create the kind of content that can improve a brand’s visibility within search results through profiles, videos, blog posts, or other media. A good example is Stormhoek wines’ first page Google rankings including blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

On the flip side, implementing SEO programs without leveraging the content distribution and linking benefits of social web participation makes link building for SEO an uphill battle. The nature of the social web encourages participation: sharing, voting, commenting & linking. Popular social content gets exposure, traffic and can result in a substantial number of relevant inbound links.

As an example, the famous Blendtec iPhone video which as received so much attention on social media sites, has attracted over 6,000 links resulting in a top ten ranking on Google for the word, “blender”.
Throwing keywords at social media tactics isn’t quite the same thing as developing and implementing a plan to reach specific goals.   Link drop social media tactics can have impact but are difficult to sustain. For long term value from effort, marketers should follow social media best practices as wel as the fundamentals:

1. Identify the specific audience they’re trying to reach - behaviors, preferences for content, sharing, media types, etc
2. Set specific goals and objectives that can be measured
3. Work out a strategy for reaching those goals with the intended audience
4. Figure out which mix of tactics will support and execute the game plan
5. Put proper measurement tools in place and identify what events and outcomes to analyze

For a step by step guide to creating a SEO Social Media Roadmap, check out the full article on Mashable, “Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success”.

Essentially, Google Squared is a major overhaul of Google’s search capabilities. Rather than merely spin out a list of websites in order of most relevant down to least relevant, Google will actually analyze the data, and organize the search results in a more intuitive and workable format-a spreadsheet of sorts. Now, you can use dynamic filters (beyond just “and” or “not”) which will make the information more relevant, including how updated it is, or how specifically related it is. Perhaps you can call it “smart searching.”

Already, Google has successfully experimented with this type of searching. For example, type in “time in Dubai,” and at the very top of the search results page, next to a clock icon, will be the exact Dubai time, regardless of where you are located. Or, try “Weather in Chicago,” and you will get an instant four-day forecast, complete with current conditions, plus high and low temperatures. Google “Tiger Woods score,” and find out his last tournament, his points, and his ranking. This is the kind of refined, targeted, and useful information that Google Squared can deliver.

According to reports, users can change the visual format of the search results in order to best suit their needs and searching habits. A “wonder wheel” feature will display a graphical ordering of related searches. While you may know the name “Tiger Woods,” you may not know his biggest sponsor, his next tournament, the names of his kids, or what his net worth is. The Wonder Wheel will automatically supply users with additional information based on related searches.

The new search features mark a key development in Google’s already-dominating search engine presence. You may not be able to exactly determine “what should I do in life?” from a Google search, but you might get a spreadsheet with some good options.

These past few weeks I’ve watched how things played out in the blogosphere after breaking the story of Google’s new “unavailable_after” tag.  I have to say that what I learned was extremely interesting and educational to me!  I have been writing articles for the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and other publications for many years and have seen bits and pieces of my work get picked up in various places; however, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when you break an important news story.

Sharing What I Learned

As with most of my more popular newsletter articles, requests for republishing started coming in soon after it was published.  What made this one different was that many of the more popular bloggers in the search marketing space picked up the news quickly — and then things really went crazy.

A Google search this past weekend for “unavailable_after” brought up 93,000 results!  I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there weren’t any results for this phrase previously, or at least very few. 93,000 pages all mentioning unavailable_after and, presumably, my original article.  Pretty cool, eh?  Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as it appears at first glance.

The Rankings Letdown

For one thing, I kind of expected that my original article would be showing at the top of the search results, but it wasn’t even close! Although, when I looked at it with my SEO eye, I had to smack myself because there were good reasons why it wasn’t in the top.  For one, the unavailable_after tag wasn’t the focus of my article since it was a synopsis of everything Dan Crow had discussed at the SEMNE event.  For another, “unavailable_after” wasn’t even in my article’s Title tag, again, because it wasn’t the focus.

But What About the Links?

I did think that all the links pointing to the original article should have given it more “oomph” to rank for that phrase despite the fact that the article wasn’t optimized for it, but apparently they didn’t. The good news is that the article does rank #1 for “getting into Google” as one would expect, which in the long run is probably much more important!

My SEO Efforts

I was still intrigued (and slightly annoyed) about not ranking for “unavailable_after,” so I added it to my Title tag and the top headline to see if that would have any effect.  As of today, Google hasn’t re-indexed the page, so the jury is still out on that one.  I also began reviewing the pages that were showing up before mine in the search results. What I found was an enlightening look at the SEO blogosphere. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always pretty, and at the end of my review I was pretty disgusted with some bloggers.

The 10 Types of Bloggers

Here are the results of my review and the 10 types of bloggers I found.  You’ll notice that they range from good to bad to sleazy.

1. Good: People who ask permission to reprint your article and add a bio with links back as requested.

These are people who are generally looking to add some content to their own sites.  They usually republish the article in full, and are happy to add whatever bio and links you specify.

2. Good: People who republish without asking permission but at least link back to the original article.

I don’t really have a problem with the folks who haven’t asked permission if they at least have the courtesy of linking back to the original article.  Sure, it’s not as great as controlling what the links say in a bio, but it’s generally fine.

3. Good: People who blog about something you wrote and who link to your original article, providing their own unique commentary or spin to go with it.

This is the best type of blog post as it isn’t a complete dupe of yours, and it gives credit where credit is due.  Watch out, however, as sometimes these types of blog posts are critical of what you’re written.  Personally, I have no problem whether people agree or disagree as that’s the foundation for blogging.

4. Okay: People who blog about what some other blogger blogged about, and link to both the original article and the blogger’s commentary.

I probably should put this one in the “good” category — as it really is fine — but it still is irksome when the secondary blogger’s post seems to get more credit than the original piece.

5. Bad: People who blog about what some other blogger blogged about it (as in #4 above), but who link back only to the blogger and not the original.

I was surprised at how prevalent this one was.  I don’t think that most people intend to snub the original author, but it happens a lot! Sure, you could say it’s okay because the post they DO link to posts that link back to the original, but that’s just not good enough. I strongly believe that the original writer should get credit where credit is due in a more direct manner.

6. Bad: People who blog on the topic and then Digg their OWN post instead of the original.

I almost put this in the “sleazy” category, but I guess it’s sort of borderline.  It seems to me if the topic is Digg-worthy, it should be the original article or post that gets Digged.  Unfortunately, that’s often not the case.

7. Sleazy: People who don’t ask to republish but do it anyway, and don’t even link back!

When they don’t even put the original author’s name on it, I believe it’s copyright infringement.  If they do mention the author’s name, but never link back to them in some manner, it’s pretty sleazy in my book.

8. Sleazy: Scrapers who link or don’t link, but add contextual link ads and other crap to the content.

Unfortunately, this is extremely prevalent these days.  I would guess that a good portion of those 93,000 results in Google fall into this category.  I can’t imagine those pages actually get any traffic, so I’m not sure what the point is.

The next 2 don’t quite fit into the good, bad, or sleazy categories, but were additional types I noted:

9. Strange: People who blog but somehow get their facts wrong.

One post got the name of the organization (SEMNE) wrong and called it SEMPO.  I’m not sure why or how, as it was right there in black and white. I don’t believe there was any malicious intent going on, but it was strange nonetheless.  (It was corrected immediately upon notification, so that was good!)

10. Dumbasses: People who just blog it cuz everyone else is.

Good blog posts are good for a reason.  Simply writing about something because everyone else has is not a good blog post.  ‘Nuff said!

And on that note, I implore you to look at your own blogging practices to see if you fit in any of the categories above.  If so, here’s hoping it’s one of the good ones!

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you’re redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.
2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those “someones” are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.
3. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker or Google’s Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation,” as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.
4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let’s say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they’re looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child’s stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as “preschool toys.”) Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site’s navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.
5. Program your site to be “crawler-friendly.” The search engines can’t fill out forms, can’t search your site, can’t read JavaScript links and menus, and can’t interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You’ll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you’ll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There’s nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard <a href> tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)
6. Label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Don’t make them guess what’s at the other end with links that say “click here” or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.
7. Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market’s needs, and make sure it’s copy that the search engines can “see.” This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our Copywriting Combo for exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)
8. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page’s unique Title tag. Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you’ve written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it’s on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.
9. Make sure your site is “link-worthy.” Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site’s overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without your even asking. It’s fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.
10. Don’t be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too much about rankings. If you’ve done the above 9 things correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a Google Analytics for free, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won’t hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don’t simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!