However, there are some Google ranking factors that most professionals agree affect site positioning on Google SERPs. However, these are opinions, find out for yourself how these apply to projects you’re working on.

Recommended Steps to Improve Google Ranking

1. Use keywords in HTML title tags. Probably the most significant factor for a site regardless of the competitive landscape, the title tag must be consistent with content in the page for best results. The more keywords in your title, the less effective this factor, be judicious.

2. Create quality anchor text for inbound links. At one time, according to some SEO professionals, quality anchor text was an essential component of a well-ranked site. After all, this is the text the user opted to see by clicking a link on another site. Most SEOs still contend that quality anchor text is a highly significant, positive ranking factor. If not for spiders, for visitors clicking in as well. Obviously the text should be relevant to the destination page for best results; that’s where your on page optimization comes in to play.

3. Increase link popularity. Link popularity takes into account the number of inbound links present. Link authority has less relevance, though it is still a factor depending on the competitive landscape. Link popularity is based on a global count of links from all sites. However, quality links are still critical to creating site authority; authority means ranking for more phrases than you intentionally target.

4. Hang in there. The age of a site is an important positive weighting factor according to many SEO professionals. It’s certainly a reasonable assumption. Failed sites are dropped as soon as the hosting subscription ends. If a site has been around for 10 years, the owners must be dong something right, especially if link popularity is steady developed over the years. Unfortunately for site owners, there’s no way to speed up the aging process – except hanging in there.

5. Increase the popularity of internal links. These links direct visitors to helpful, related content. They’re important in providing visitors with a positive on-site experience. Search engines view on-site link popularity as a sign that visitors like what they see and want to learn more.

7. Build deep links. Deep links are relevant to the topicality of the target page or keyword. The relevance of these inbound links matters to a site’s Google ranking. However, please note point 3. The sheer number of inbound links is a factor as well. Quality deep links carry more weight and add credibility to a site.

8. Connect with sites selling to the same demographic. Create a number of links with sites within your topical community. This helps visitors further their searches – something Google likes very much.

9. Keep old links. Google looks for web stability. The older the link, the more trust it has. It indicates a happy relationship with the site owner linking in who recognizes the value of sending visitors off-site. Google watchers suggest a three to four month time window for spiders to determine that this is a well-established, long-term link that has value to visitors of both sites.

10. Use keywords in body text. Make sure that keywords receive prominent display in headlines, headers, sub-heads. It’s important that the keywords used in HTML text on page match with keywords used in the site’s meta data and title tags.

Not Recommended

1. Don’t use session IDs in URLs. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, an easy way to track customer information, but here’s the problem. Each time a spider crawls the site, a new URL with session ID is created. The spider now has two, or three or more URLs all showing duplicate content. Go back to Go, do not collect $200. Don’t confuse this with pages that may have a couple GET variables in them; avoid that when you can, but just avoid having your pages containing session IDs.

2. Choose a reputable web host. The most potent negative ranking factor is server accessibility. If your server, located in Timbuktu, is inaccessible to spiders, it’s inaccessible to visitors. Down time soon becomes down and out time.

3. Avoid duplicate content. Googlebots employ filters to detect duplicate content. Now, if you opt to post some syndicated articles, you’re providing a service to visitors. However, a bot will recognize that content (it’s already appeared on 400 sites) and you’ll see a drop in traffic rank.

4. Jettison low-quality links. Google assesses the character of your site by the company you keep so keep good company by unlinking from (1) links farms, (2) sites with absolutely no quality content and (3) otherwise low-quality sites; e.g. FFA (free for all) sites.

5. Avoid any kind of links deception. Googlebots aren’t smart, but they can detect some paid links and a variety of links scams, including generated links. If a Googlebot suspects links fraud, your site may be penalized and sent to the basement or banned altogether.

6. Avoid a log-in before visitors and bots access “the good stuff.” Log-ins can easily confuse a bot who won’t be able to access quality content hidden behind a log in. Even though users with Google toolbars will be unknowingly suggesting new URLs to be crawled as they surf about, having teasers for the content your monetizing by subscription will help your SEO.

7. Avoid using frames. Horizontal and vertical framesets <frameset> are commonly used by designers to present more than one page of a site on the screen at the same time. However, frames are also bot traps. They can get in but they can’t get out, making it impossible for them to index a site – at all! Tell your developer to look at using iframes if possible or absolutely necessary.

8. Avoid duplicate title/meta tags. Title/meta tags are a valuable resource for site owners to expand access points to a site. Using title tags ensures that more pages are indexed and listed in Google’s SERPs as distinct links. All good. Unfortunately, too many duplicate title tags on pages in which the content topic hasn’t changed, is redundant and a waste of the bots time. Use tag your pages uniquely and judiciously.

9. Do not keyword stuff. Even though search engines no longer give much weight to keyword tags, keyword stuffing continues. Select 20 to 30 keywords – top-tier and long-tail – and focus on them. Keep keyword density in body text at no more than 3%. The old 5% rule still led to on-site gibberish – obviously these figures vary by competitive landscape.

10. Do not let quality slip – even for a day. Spiders crawl sites with greater frequency and sophistication and index updates are common as changes to a site are implemented. During periods of construction, be sure to keep spiders out of staging areas that have yet to be completed <nofollow> or block with robots. These works-in-progress may cost you points in the ranking sweepstakes.

Google controls 46% of all searches. Doesn’t it make sense to give this search engine exactly what it wants and delete what it doesn’t want?

Rhetorical question.

Here are the 7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert as stated by the presenter Shawn Moore.

1. Content is King
   What your content says, what your images and video show not only give users a first impression, but those items are also important to how a search engine is going to interpret your website.
2. Navigation and Architecture
   Looking into the way that your menus and internal linking structure are important. Can the web crawlers see and index your navigation? Or is it in JavaScript or Flash that may not be as search friendly?
3. Blogs
   Using a blog is just another way to generate more content for the search engines to index and use to rank your website.
4. Quality and Keyword Rich Inbound Links
   The number of links you have is important, but the quality of those links is more important. Get links from relevant sites and ensure that those links are using keyword phrases and not just your website address or business name.
5. Database
   Shawn said that choosing the right database for your site is important. Some are not search engine friendly and that choosing the wrong one will cause lots of issues down the line.
6. Electron Press Releases or Optimized Releases
   These releases give your site more exposure in search engines and the keyword rich links in the content can help increase your rankings.
7. Domain Name Strategy
   It was recommended that, if you can, choose a domain name with keyword phrases in it as it’ll give an added boost in search engines. You can also purchase additional domain names and forward them onto your website. Try thinking about what a user may type into the address bar of their browser and then register that domain for easy access.

Some of the tips are well known, others were a bit questionable to me. I’m still trying to figure out how a certain type of database can hurt a site as it’s all about how the content is displayed on that page and the URLs used that is the part to be concerned with.

Overall, the session was a good one for those just starting out in the industry.

Comments

Please explain to me why millions of websites rank fine without doing this and now all of sudden we should start doing this? Is this to help our websites? Is it to help Google crawl our websites? Will our websites suffer if we don’t do this? I would answer no to most of these questions.

As we all know the nofollow attribute was created as a blog comment spam condom. It was since progressed into a paid link condom and most recently into a tool that webmaster could, should (lol) use to help control PR flow through our websites. Are we to believe that those that are not employing the nofollow tag on our website in some way is going to underperform on Google? Rubbish. Are we to believe that we should just go out and nofollow pages we dont want to rank thinking this will help the pages we do want to rank? Rubbish.

If you never used the follow tag for the rest of your life you will rank fine. True. Focus your efforts on ideas and techniques that a tried and true. Most that think that PR sculpting works have NEVER even tested it.

You don’t have to “sculpt” PR on your website by not passing link juice to your privacy policy, terms of service or about us pages. It is mind blowing to me that you would not want these pages not indexed or ranking for keywords anyways.

I have said before that nofollow seem to be nothing more than a band-aid on poor internal navigation. And SEOs expect to fix this by managing PR flow using nofollow. The whole idea is really crazy making. SEOs want to manage something that they cant even begin to explain. Is a great quote from Micheal Martinez clearly explaining why you can’t do this:

“I would agree that the concept of managing PageRank flow through link sculpting is mathematically acceptable. But PageRank flow is not what people in the SEO community are thinking about. They’re focused on PageRank value, and that’s an entirely different concept.

PageRank flow is a series of events. The flow may occur within one set of calculations or across multiple sets of calculations. Think of each set of calculations as an internal PageRank update. Maybe it happens every day. Maybe it happens every week. We don’t see it.

It’s extremely naive and foolish to propose that anyone in the SEO industry can manage a process none of us can see.

As far as PageRank value is concerned, people in the SEO industry can only look at Toolbar PR data. Whatever that value really means is irrelevant because it’s all we have to work with. It’s not only an imprecise measurement of the actual value Google calculates for a page, it’s not updated very often (recent events notwithstanding, unless Google goes back to more frequent Toolbar PR updates).”

I recently created a post on WPW on this very subject and I am looking for forward to responses:

Does PR Sculpting Work?

WebProNews video also has a nice video from Stephen Spencer on the topic:

SMX West 2008: Stephan Spencer Subscribe to our feed!

I got into a nice discussion on Sphinn recently on the topic as well:

Sphinn: Understanding what the “No Follow” tag can do for your site

Here is the thread that explains what the nofollow tag can do for your website, blaaaah:

Understanding what the “No Follow” tag can do for you

Finally here is the truth on the PR Sculpting ideology from Michael Martinez:

SEO Nonsense – Sculpting PageRank Builds Muscle

SO this is my called out to anyone that can show that PR Sculpting alone is a SEO technique that should be recognize and implemented by most websites. I am sure I won’t get many responses worth anything substantially new on the topic. With good unique content, proper internal navigation and solid back links you don’t need to worry about nofollow.

UPDATE: This post from Micheal Martinez really says it all about this PR Sculpting issue.

Yes, Virginia, your contact page DOES need 500 links – SEO Theory – SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Point 1 – We live in a bubble. 99% of the world doesn’t know what nofollow is and probably will never know until the W3 add it as proper markup. So are we to believe that Google has granted SEOs ONLY this special attribute that can help us rank better. No. It is only for Google benefit, not ours.

Point 2 – The theory has not been tested enough and probably can’t be properly tested since to many outside forces effect rankings. That is why this 2nd order effect has no bearing. No has proven that spending a few minutes using nofollow helps your website do any better. Google is simply telling you that is will. Google said it was OK to do it, doesn’t mean you should or even if it works. Remember the end benefactor of nofollow is Google themselves, NOT your website.

Point 3 - External nofollow: The web and Google’s algorithm was built on the concept of linking one document to another. Now we should continue to do this, but in way that does not pass search engine value through the link? Who is benefiting here? The SE algo only. This really goes against why the web was built on links.

Point 4 - Internal nofollow: I simply default to this post by Michael Martinez: Yes, Virginia, your contact page DOES need 500 links

Point 5 – PR is not tangible. One page doesn’t have 100 PR credits that you can feel free to divvy up as you like through internal linking. It is not that simple. The point I am trying to make is that these SEOs are trying to say they can sculpt something like PR. We all know toolbar PR is crap and internal PR is not known so…where does one get off saying they can sculpt something they don’t know?

Comments

Normally, one would expect this phenomenon to be observed on Fridays but it appears to be different today.

So if Google is unfolding an update, be cautioned as you might find your ranks to change from what they are now to something different the next day.

Comments

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.

Comments

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

Tag:

Regardless of all the reasons to jump on the scoring bandwagon as a way to determine web site value, I refused on the grounds that I wanted genuine worth, not forced.

There’s many easy ways to take advantage of Google’s methods for deciding which web sites are the most valuable. When they created algorithms based on link popularity, they devised the means to manipulate and play upon our “human-ness”, such as self esteem and personal attachment.

Nobody likes metric values placed on something that may be an extension of who they are.

Business owners will do whatever it takes to get their web properties on top of search engine results. Search engines know there’s nothing worse than that feeling of being “ugly”, “unworthy”, “unimportant”, and “not worth linking to”. Several rank solutions are offered such as paying for inclusion. This is advertising and it’s not free. An inexpensive alternative, especially for startup sites, is networking via links. When done with integrity and logic by skilled experts such as Debra Mastler and Eric Ward, reciprocal linking produces positive results.

When the linking process became automated and later evolved into paying for links based on a site’s “PR score”, Google apparently woke up. Why did it take them so long? Why is Google suddenly waging war on web site owners who “wheeled and dealed” to promote their web sites? It’s not as though paying for search engine exposure is something new. Search engines have been taking money from corporate sites for high SERP placement, behind the scenes, since search engines were first invented.

Small and medium web sites have been forced to resort to all sorts of tactics, creating the search engine marketing industry as a result. It’s hard to believe any search engine would punish SEO’s, when it’s they who bring in tons of revenue by connecting their clients to Internet search.

Not every web site owner chooses the search marketing “fast track” to rank. Some remain organic because it suits them. I’m one of them, which is why I never did link exchanges or cared about PR scores. It takes longer to be noticed when you take your time and “do good”, one on one, day by day, heart to heart, soul to soul.

Much, much longer…and I’m not saying it’s the right choice for a business. If I was just starting out now, as opposed to 1996 when I came online, I’d be making different marketing choices.

Wanting to Hold On to the Genuine

I feel that my web sites and business services are an extension of myself. I can’t be something I’m not. I’m unable to use other web sites to make me look better by paying to be on them.

Search engines have a unique way of judging and analyzing web sites. I don’t happen to believe they do this well or accurately.

Take Cre8asiteforums, for example. It was slapped by Google too. For some reason, our PR score went down. We’ve never purchased links, paid for ad space or paid for inclusion. We host ads from two places – Google and Text Link Ads. We don”t earn much money from Google or TLA, but what revenue we have earned, we turned around and gave it away to educational facilities to help fund internships or those who needed financial aid to study with.

How can an algorithm understand intent?

How can any search engine gauge and measure truth, honesty, and those moments when people interact, site to site, link to link, with good intent? Can search engines monitor comments and place value on sites this way? I wouldn’t want this. Everyone knows it’s far easier to complain on the web. Site owners know web site feedback is largely negative, rather than “Hey, great work!”. Should algorithms put more weight on user generated content in determining site or page value? How would we control that?

I’ve come to think I have this idealist view on Internet technology and “bots” that decide the worth of web site properties. I stubbornly believe they can put me into this tiny box and give me any label they wish, but, search marketing or no search marketing, I’m not going to let them change who I am.

If I’m a “PR 0″, I’m not any less of a human being worth getting to know, link to or do business with.

Sure, I’m not an “A-List blogger”. I’m not one of those top usability companies. I’m not a famous conference speaker. I have a terrible habit of volunteering my time, rather than being paid for it. My sites rank well because of years of being out there, being who I am, and not pretending to be something else. I can be shy at first. Definitely klutzy. I’m terrible at remembering names. But when I do my work?

I’m worth every penny.

A tool bar will never know this about me.

Comments

Now, normally I’d be front and center on all these ego games but here the real truth is that Page Rank has been dead for years. That’s why I never even looked at it anymore.

Here’s why: back when Google started Page Rank was a pretty global thing. If you had a PR of 6 or 7, it’d apply equally to everything. That’s why, back in 2004, if you did a search for “offshoring” you’d find my blog in #3 position because I had a lot of inbound links so Google just assumed I was relevant for offshoring too.

Not true.

In the past few years Page Rank has gone from something that’s global to something that applies to each keyword differently.

So, while I am very highly relevant if you do a search for “tech blogger” you won’t find me any longer on offshoring.

The problem is that Google can’t really show you your real Page Rank anyway. How would it? It would need to ship you a spreadsheet to explain how you rank for each keyword.

Now, since we’re all talking about this, two other issues. First, bloggers were showing up too high in searches anyway. In comparing to my friends we got lots of traffic from Google that we didn’t deserve. The problem is that traffic isn’t good anyway. Put it this way, let’s say I showed up high in a search for Saturn Cars (since I’ve written about them). Most people wouldn’t have found much value in that post and even if they did they wouldn’t have stuck around to be a regular reader.

I’d rather show up for when you’re searching for tech or geek stuff. That’s the audience I want to be in front of.

Oh, and if you sell links to try to game Google you deserve to be knocked down the list a few pegs.

Comments

Tag:

Surviving The "Google Shuffle"

Over at Search Engine Land, Eric Ward offered some sensible tips on how to handle such a scenario. He writes," Two weeks ago, for the fourth time since last October, a site showed up in position one at Google for the search term ‘link building strategies.’

"Now, this is a keyword phrase that I have ranked first or second forever, and it annoys me if I don’t rank well for it. Given my history and focus, if I can’t rank high page one for that phrase, then send me and my Link Moses Linking Commandments packing."

While annoyed by the drop in page ranking, Mr.Ward did not panic and did some research on the issue instead. "The site that was showing at position one above me was a link spamming service from another country that was so bad it was funny. I did a little research and found thousands of junk links. A week later, my site was back at position one, page one. The other site was gone."

Mr. Ward advises that if this happens to your site not to worry. Google may give the site a high ranking for a few days but will eventually recognize it as not being credible. He adds that you should be more concerned if a site that is outranking you is a true competitor.

Jennifer Laycock, from Search Engine Guide weighed in on the issue with some solid points as well. "I’ve seen sites suffer temporary drops in rankings with no corresponding drop in sales. On the other hand, I’ve seen sites experience a drop in sales without any change to their search rankings. Why? Because the rankings and sales, while related, are not directly tied to each other"

She offers three tips concerning page ranking.
1.) Diversify your traffic sources
2.) Focus more on sales and conversions than rankings
3.) Don’t freak out (or celebrate) the moment that your rank changes