Add URL to Directories

As I was checking the links that have been popping up to SEOmoz, I noted that many come from international SEO communities, forums & blogs. I’m flattered and certainly quite pleased, but it also got me thinking about the value of international links in the eyes of the search engines.

Following this out to its logical conclusion, I surmise that international links could actually lend weight and legitimacy to a site in the eyes of the search engines. If I were an IR engineer, one of the things that could point me to quality sites would be their referencing across geographic and national boundaries. After all, it is much more difficult to build a link manually or purchase a link from a country not your own, especially so on a website who’s language is not your own.

Certainly, blog spam & other types of malicious link building need to be ruled out in order for this usage to be effective, but I think there could be great value to measuring the geographic locations of links to help lend or pull legitimacy from a website. After all, if 500 hundred english language sites all link to you, but your compeititor has links from 10 or 12 different countries or languages, clearly your site is not as “internationally” or “universally” encompassing as your competitiors.

This is definitely something to think about for the future. There’s even a thread on the subject at Cre8asite.

Even a great technological innovation like PageRank will eventually be supplanted. For a web information retreival model, PR has already had a remarkable long life, yet its downfall has been predicted across the web by some of the very best in the industry. Here’s a short list:

• Does Google still use PageRank Algorithm? - from SEW Forums
• New Versions of PageRank Employing Alternative Web Document Models - Research paper from Mike Thelwall & Liwen Vaughn
• How to Fix PageRank - from Threadwatch

As a global popularity model, PageRank also has some inherit flaws. PageRank is ignorant of the temporal nature of the web and links, favoring old content rather than updated or new information. PageRank also uses a flawed ‘random walk’ theory, which does not take into account the purposeful nature of a typical web session. Lastly, PR doesn’t account in any way for the manipulation or commercial interest aspect of the web, and thus ignores the global popularity spam that prompted Google to show PR updates on a quarterly basis.

The great advantage of a sitemap (for SEO purposes) comes from its ability to reduce the number of links that must be followed in order to reach all pages on a site. Sitemaps have a unique ability to garner the attention of search engine spiders and crawlers - making for much faster indexing, and thus, faster rankings.

The boost provided by sitemaps hasn’t been measured in full, but many SEOs suspect that bots may have an innate ability and preference for spidering sitemaps. Several rules govern the construction and maintenance of sitemaps to achieve optimal benefits:

1. Make sure your sitemap is linked to by every page on the site (this ensures even distribution and increases the frequency of spidering.
2. Don’t have more than 200 links on a sitemap page. In Google’s ancient recommendations page, this number is 100, but reports from around the SEO community indicate there is no detriment to having up to 200 links on the page.
3. Try to refrain from external linking on the sitemap page. For both users and spiders, the sitemap has an established purpose as the index of your website’s own pages. Externally linking is a detractor.

Code validation is an issue that has been tossed back and forth in the SEO world for years. The W3C’s standards appear to have the general support of the validation and standards organizations across the Internet, thus leading SEOs to ask the leading question,

Does having validated code help with search engine rankings

The general consensus on the issue has been a resounding NO. Authorities from every forum, SEO company & private sector appear to agree that search engines would be remiss indeed to reward W3C valid code. However, many SEOs have noted that the advatanges from having valid code are worthwhile, regardless of rankings. The most prominent among these being that search engines can understand exactly what your page is trying to say, without getting confused.

To check your own code for validation, visit the W3C’s HTML code validation tool.

The following is a quote of a Google representative writing to JohnGalt of search engine watch forums:
“The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to access this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequently because is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is several months old. If the toolbar is showing a PR of zero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn’t been updated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the Google Toolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the webpage results so there is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero. If a site is showing up in the search results, it doesn’t not have a real PR of zero, the Toolbar is just out of date”
The full forum thread covers several interpretations of the quote. This is some great information to share with those who may be confused about the meaning & importance of the PageRank shown in the toolbar. Taken together with some of GoogleGuy’s comments earlier, SEOs can infer that toolbar PageRank has become quite ancilliary to SEO work.

source: seomoz.org/blog/a-google-reps-comments-on-pagerank-in-the-toolbar

Three phenomenal tools from MarketLeap offer SEOs some great, all-in-one services. The link popularity check is straightforward, but the comparison piece and graphic interface are an excellent touch. The search engine saturation checker and keyword verification are nice additions, although the latter is more of a ranking tool than anything else, albeit a good one.

In the initial testing of the survey, one fact that consistently appears in the results that rank in the top 10 are sites that have been around a long time. Obviously, these sites have had greater time to build links & content, but there appears to be little correlation between these items.

The data seems to suggest that age by itself is playing a role in how Google is ranking websites. I’ll continue to look for other factors that could be a result of age that are influencing results, as age alone seems like an unlikely factor to build an algorithm around.

source: seomoz.org/blog/older-sites-succeeding

10 ways to improve PageRank and search engine rankings

I love this topic because it is hotly debated in every webmaster forum and blog on the planet. There are many different ideas as to what will or will not work and what works on one website does not necessarily work on all websites.

In this article I will go over some of the debated ideas and those that are widely agreed on as well.

First of all I want to point out that Google PageRank and search engine results are not the same thing. You can have a high PageRank and be doing terribly in the search engines for your keywords and phrases. You can be doing well in the search engines, yet have a 0 PageRank.

This is probably the most confusing thing that new webmasters have to learn. It seems that many believe that a high PageRank will get them good results in the search engines.

It is widely agreed that PageRank is part of the algorithm Google uses to rank web pages. However, I believe it isn’t the biggest or most important factor in achieving good results in the Google search engine.

So why does almost everyone chase PageRank and how do you get a high PageRank?

That’s the question everyone seems to be focused on when they should be focused on doing well in the search engines for their keywords and phrases instead. I will go into PageRank first though to answer that question.

Different people chase PageRank for different reasons. Some do it because other webmasters will buy links from them if their PageRank is high. Why would you buy a link on a webpage that has a high PageRank? Because, according to Google watchers and even Google itself, a link to your web page from another web page is like a vote for your page. The more votes you have, the more popularity you have.

Many webmasters take this to mean they need to run out and gather as many links to their page as possible no matter where they come from or how they get them. What you need to realize is that all links do not help you that much. Links from a game website to a real estate website help you very little even if the game website has a high PageRank. Not many gamers out there are hunting for real estate, so the traffic you get would not be relevant either.

Links from a web page that displays news about real estate would be relevant to your topic so you would want a link or “vote” from it. If that real estate news website also had a high PageRank and a lot of traffic you would benefit even more. The web page that links to you transfers a small percentage of its own PageRank to your web page through linking to it. So the higher the PageRank the more it has to transfer to your page.

Another factor that determines how important the link or “vote” is to your web page is the number of outbound links are on the page which links to you.

In other words, if the real estate news web page had a PageRank of 8, but linked out to 100 other web pages, it might not help you as much as a web page that had a PageRank of 7 that links out to 50 other pages. A PageRank 6 that links out only to your page and no one else would probably even benefit you more than the other two pages that link to you.

It takes a lot of links to get any PageRank value. There is no set number because of all of the factors involved. No one can tell you that if you have X number of links from web pages with a PageRank of Y that you will have a PageRank of N. If there was a formula like that, then Google would just change it tomorrow. So don’t run out and buy some guru’s ebook because they say they have uncovered the secret or broken the code.

Providing good content is a great way to get a lot of relevant backlinks. Google’s system is designed for natural growth. Having too many links suddenly pop up leading to your website overnight will not help you. You might find a way to temporarily boost your web pages’s popularity, but Google will slam it back down to nothing as soon as it finds the mistake.

The way to get on top and stay on top is through organic SEO and natural growth. Providing good content means other webmasters who have websites with related topics will link to you without being asked. Providing tools people can use, videos, pictures, well-written articles and text, forums, blogs and other “sticky” material on your web pages will encourage that natural growth. Your PageRank will rise every time Google updates and there won’t be penalties down the road. It takes more time, but good content will help you more than anything else you do.

Now on to more important things like where you get your traffic.

Everyone seems to be so focused on Google that they don’t realize we are on the Internet, not the Googlenet.

1. Google is not the only search engine even though it is the largest by far.

2. Not everyone has to go to a search engine to find you if you promote your website properly.

3. Studies show that for most products, MSN, Yahoo!, and AOL traffic converts to sales at a higher ratio than Google traffic.

4. If everyone else focuses on Google, they leave the door open at the other search engines for you to laugh all the way to the bank on.

This article is about PageRank and ranking high in search engines, not about Google. So think outside the box with me here and actually consider that you can go ahead and rank high in other search engines and directories and make sales without offending the Google gods.

You do not have to build a different website for each search engine as some people suggest. Some actually do this and its okay to do, but there isn’t really a need to do so. The web pages that are optimized the best actually have top 10 results in several search engines including what people term the big three, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

There are several things that make your results better.

Any one of them done separately does not amount to much. However, if you do all of the basics, you can do well in all of the search engines.

1. Does your domain name contain some of the keywords or a phrase that you are targeting? If not, consider getting a new one.

2. Does each page of your website have the same title? If so, give each page a new unique title. Do not just use a bunch of words in the title. Make each page’s title reflect the major key phrase you are targeting with that page. Narrow the focus a little.

3. Do you have a unique description meta for each page? If not, I have just one question. Is every page in your website exactly the same? If it is, there isn’t much hope for you anyway. If it isn’t, then create a description tag for each page that actually describes the content of that page and one that targets the two or three key phrases you will be targeting on that page.

4. Search engines crawl web pages, not websites.

5. Do you have the same keywords meta tag in every page? Again, each page is unique. Use keywords that are actually used and found on that page. The keywords meta tag was never designed for you to stuff it with all the phrases you would like to be found for. It was designed to reflect keywords that are actually in the content of that page. Keyword meta tags may not mean much to Google any more, but they may to smaller search engines.

6. Saying you care only about ranking well in Google is like me offering you a dollar and you saying, “No thanks. I already have a dollar.”

7. Write good relevant text on each of your web pages. Target two or three key phrases per page. Optimize the text for both your visitors and the search engines. There is no set percentage. Just add them wherever you can keeping in mind the words need to also make sense to your visitors or potential customers. Getting a lot of traffic and making no sales is much worse than getting a little traffic and making some sales. Your potential customers come first. The search engines come second.

8. Don’t bother submitting your website to Google or MSN. They will find you. Yahoo! will also, but submitting there once won’t hurt you. Use a tool like submitexpress.com for the rest of the smaller search engines, then submit to DMOZ and DogPile. As you run across directories that are relevant to your topic, you can always submit to those then.

9. Join forums related to your topic. Actually sign up and participate in the forums. Become a member of the community. Be helpful. Answer questions. Discuss your topic. The links in your profile or signature line at the forum are visible, so there’s no need to spam people saying, “Come see my site! I have . . . etc., etc.” If you do, you’ll lose those links because you will just get banned. Follow forum rules and you’ll find those links will bring you a little traffic directly and the links will help you. Also forums get crawled often and search engine spiders will follow links and also crawl your website.

10. Set up a blog. Post to it often. That adds fresh content to your website often. Search engines like websites that are updated regularly. Add other content to your website often as well. New pictures, videos, articles, etc.

If you do just the things I mentioned there on that list, your search engine results will improve over time.

Some of those things may improve your PageRank and search engine results right away. There is no magic pill, no hidden secret in an ebook somewhere, no guru who broke the code that can send you a CD to make you rich overnight. There is only good standard practises that will hold up to the test of time. You will never get rich on the web by taking the “I don’t want to have to work at it” approach.

When people come and ask me, “Why isn’t my website ranking higher in the search engines?” or “Why isn’t Google giving me a higher PageRank?”, I like to ask them, “What have you done to improve your results?” 

Nine times out of 10, they haven’t done much. What will be your answer to my question if I ask you that?

How anchor text boosts your search engine rankings

Anchor text is the hyperlinked words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link.

Here’s an example, reciprocal links, in which “reciprocal links” is the anchor text.

Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you’re linking to.

Here’s why anchor text is so important…

It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.

If you use “click here” as the words people are going to click on, you’re telling people the page is about the subject “click here”. If you use “Part 2″ as the anchor text, your telling the search engines the page is discussing “part 2″.

You wouldn’t want to rank highly for “click here” or “Part 2″.

Anchor text is so important that it’s possible for a page to appear in the top 10 in Google’s search results for a phrase which isn’t mentioned anywhere on the page.

Some blog publishers have fun using “Google bombing” to get pages ranked highly for humorous phrases. If the phrase is obscure, only a handful of links will win the phrase a No.1 ranking. If it’s highly competitive, hundreds or thousands of links might be needed.

[UPDATE: In January, 2007, Google created a new algorithm which reduced the impact of many prank Google bombs, but anchor text is still very important.]

When asking other sites to link to your site, it’s a good idea to provide them with the HTML code ready to cut and paste into their page. That way, you choose the anchor text.

However, if your site is all about purple widgets, you don’t want only “purple widgets” to be used as the phrase in every link to your site. Over-optimizing like that would create an unnatural pattern.

You can use anchor text in:

• External links - links from other sites
• Internal links - links on your pages
• Navigation maps
• Links on your main page. A very important spot.

Remember that real live humans will read your links as well as search engines, so the words in your anchor text need to make sense!

What are backlinks and how do you find them?

Backlinks or “back links” are links from other web sites to your site. They’re sometimes also known as incoming links.

Links from your site to other sites are forward links, usually described as “links” or hyperlinks.

So links going in the reverse direction are backward links, or backlinks.

Google’s free toolbar shows backward links but the results are confusing.

If you have the toolbar installed on your Internet Explorer browser, you can visit a web site, click on the blue “i” and then click on “Backward links” to see what appears to be the number of links pointing to the site you’re visiting.

However, ONLY SOME of the site’s backlinks are displayed.

How to find backlinks using Google

You can use link:example.com

This gives an unreliable sample. For more reliable results, type the following command into the Google search box:

example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com

(Remember to type in your actual site, not “example.com”.)

Doing this shows you pages that link to your site, minus the links on pages on your own site.

(You’ll also see sites that just mention your site but don’t actually link to it.)

BEWARE: A Google backlink check teases us. It does NOT show all the backlinks that Google knows about. Here’s a much better way…

How to find more backlinks using Yahoo!

Go to Yahoo! Site Explorer - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login.

Type the URL of the site you want to explore.

Click on “Explore URL”.

Click on “Inlinks”.

Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks “except from this domain” and “entire site”. This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.

How to find backlinks to an individual page

At Yahoo! Site Explorer, type in the URL at the top of the page, and Click on “Explore URL”.

At MSN, use

link:example.com/page

In Google, it’s not so simple. Try this search:

example.com/page.html -site:example.com

It doesn’t actually give you “links”. It gives you mentions. However, most mentions tend to be links and it’s more accurate than Google’s “link:” command.

How to find backlinks using MSN

At MSN, do this search:

link:example.com

OR link:example.com -site:example.com

At MSN can also use:

linkdomain:example.com which shows pages that link to ALL pages on your site.

How to find backlinks using Alltheweb

At Alltheweb.com, do this search:

link:www.example.com

(Remember to change “example” and you MUST include the “www”.)

How to find backlinks using Hotbot

At Hotbot, type this into the search box:

linkdomain:www.example.com

Search using Hotbot.

Link popularity check

You can check for backlinks by using link popularity sites such as www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

Free backlinks checker

You can find which sites are linking to you by using this free tool, which also shows the anchor text used in the link:

www.helpfulinformation.org/seo-tools/anchortext.pl

Why backlinks are important

When ranking sites, search engines such as Google look at the number and quality of sites that link to your site. Ideally, you want backlinks from sites in your industry that have many popular sites linking to them.

How to get backlinks

Common ways to get backlinks include exchanging links with other sites (reciprocal links) and by placing articles you write in article directories and on other sites.

Perhaps the most effective way of all is to create such a useful, fascinating site that other sites voluntarily link to yours.

FREE way to get links to your site

Check out the free Value Exchange for sites in your category that are eager to exchange reciprocal links with other sites. As the Value Exchange’s popularity grows, it is becoming more and more useful.

In some topics, it will locate only a few potential links partners. In other niches, it can find several hundred potential links partners for you. I highly recommend it.

To avoid the displeasure of search engines, getting reciprocal links should be just one of the strategies you use, not your main strategy. Matt Cutts of Google has made it clear that it’s possible to overdo reciprocal links.

An excellent way to get backlinks

If you want thousands of visitors a day from search engines (and don’t we all!) it’s absolutely essential that you encourage other sites in your field to link to you.

One excellent way to get links to your site is by writing articles for newsletters, which are then published on other people’s sites.

In the book Turn Words Into Traffic Jim and Dallas Edwards give step-by-step instructions showing you how to do it.