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.

Many in the SEO world have long questioned the neccessity of re-writing dynamic URLs - those that pull content from databases - into static URLs that appear to end with a finite .php/.asp/.html/etc. A dynamic URL is often criticized by search optimizers because of the difficulties search engines have had indexing and reading them in the past.Currently, however, Yahoo!, MSN, Google & Teoma all have dynamic pages in their index and in the top search results for many different searches. It would seem the issue with search engines has dissipated. However, the usability issue of dynamic URLs still exists. From a user perspective a URL in the form of - http://www.site.com/page.html is considerably friendlier than a URL written as http://www.site.com/page.php?ID=2&TAGformat=945bb399ls3.

No matter if it’s posting the URL to a website, sending it in an email, or writing it on a notepad for later, the dynamic URL is something that is distinctly unfriendly for users. The advantages of mod_rewrite and other tools that allow for the conversion of dynamic URLs into static ones may be lessened by the new abilities of the search engines, but they are not altogether gone.

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 duplicate content penalty has been around for several months, perhaps even a full year, but SEOs still aren’t fully aware of how dangerous and malicious this tactic can be.

The penalty starts when Google or another search engine finds an exact duplication of a certain amount of web content on two URLs. In order to avoid both ranking well and diluting the diversity of results the search engine provides, one of the pages/sites is penalized, pushing it down in the rankings. Usually, the site with fewer in-bound links, smaller pagerank, more recently added to the index, etc. is the one that suffers the penalty.

Wily spammers have been taking advantage of this by duplicating hundreds of thousands of pages of web content on old, large, established domains, pushing thousands of smaller sites out of the rankings and taking their place by stealing their content. This practice is commonly called content-theft. It is unique from page-hijacking which uses a re-direct process to take over a page’s URL.

Naturally there is a defense and response that can be taken, but it is plagued with inaccuracy, very time-consuming and not always resolved to the satisfaction of the site owner.

You can resolve the issue by contacting Google and requesting that they remove the offending pages. The first step is to file a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) complaint with Google through their DMCA page. If you follow the instructions carefully, you should be able to get a response from Google indicating they will look into it. Resolution for my complaint took approximately 6 weeks.

Duplicate content is a nasty penalty and one that can severely hurt your rankings. If you suspect your content is being stolen, take immediate action - just make sure you do it properly.

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.

An excellent thread at SEOChat is helping to uncover an uncomfortable phenomenon at Google - sites that rank well are very, very old. While this has been speculated about for many months, these are the first publications of any scale to be released.

Read the thread - Proof Of Search Position Based On Age Of Domain?

Then, check out the great tool for checking the age of up to 10 sites at a time - Find Age of Website Tool. Using this tool and a variety of other factors, I have generated some data about Google’s neophobia. Don’t miss - Age of Sites & Google’s SERPs.

source: seomoz.org/blog/age-of-websites

What is SEO? Search engine optimization explained

SEO stands for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer”.

English folk call it “search engine optimisation”.

If you stop and think about it, it’s an odd phrase because we don’t optimize search engines, we optimize web pages for search engines.

However, hardly anyone talks about web page optimization.

I’d better warn you that, although I earn a good living from affiliate programs as a result of getting free traffic from search engines, I don’t claim to be an expert search engine optimizer.

But I do know where to go for expert information.

What follows is a brief introduction, a rough guide to optimizing web pages so they’ll be found in search engines.

Three things you must learn about SEO

1. The most important thing to understand is that you should take the time to learn SEO skills before you build a web site. SEO is NOT something you tack on afterwards.

Right from the first bit of HTML, the first word you write, you need to have search engine optimization in mind.

If you ignore this warning, you risk owning a site that ranks poorly and you’ll have to do a lot of rejigging to improve it.

A marked exception is if you’re using Site Build It! to build your site. It’s a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting tool used by thousands of small businesses and affiliates. It allows you to concentrate on creating good content and not worry about the techie stuff. It actually teaches you SEO skills as you build the site.

2. The second most important thing to learn is that search engines look at on-page and off-page factors.

Fiddling endlessly with your site won’t help you at all if no one is linking to your site. You need lots of high quality, relevant links to your site if you want to rank well.

3. Which brings us to the third most important point which, sadly, many people overlook…

Build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, it will be much easier to encourage other sites to link to your site.

Google Community

forums.addurltodirectories.com is a forum which discusses everything related to Google - including AdSense, Gmail, Orkut and SEO.

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?