Google +1, Does This Impact My Rankings
15/9/2011 2:48
Google's 2011 Content Algorithm Change Could Impact Your Ranking
2/2/2011 18:59
Earlier this month, Google made public that they will release several new anti-spam algorithms this year. The first algorithm update has just been released and it deals with content farms.
What are content farms?
There are two slightly different definitions of content farms:
1. Content farms are scraper sites that aggregate the content from other sources to get high rankings for a variety of long tail keywords. These sites don't have unique content and they only aggregate the content from other websites to get clicks on their AdSense ads.
2. Content farms are websites that produce low quality content in bulk. This content is often produced by workers from low-wage countries. The main purpose of these sites is to get high rankings for as many keywords as possible to get clicks on the AdSense ads that are displayed on the site.
Sites that copy the content from other websites often ranked higher than the original site in Google's previous algorithm. That's why Google released the algorithm update.
Google's own Matt Cutts confirmed the new algorithm:
"[I mentioned] that 'we're evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content.'
That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week."
Less than 0.5% of search queries have significantly different results
Googles Matt Cutts also said that most surfers won't notice the change:
"This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice.
The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content."
The algorithm doesn't seem to be perfect yet
In an online discussion, many webmasters complained that their original sites have suffered while low quality sites still rank well:
"It doesn't matter if it is all 100% unique with tons of backlinks and really well laid out or simply an image. Everything got whacked. Our out of date non unique ad filled sites are humming along FINE. So what's the message here Google? Write an in depth article that takes 3 days to complete and is linked to by hundreds of companies and gov agencies and loose all positions sitewide while our out of date halfbaked and useless content does fine?"
Should you change your web pages?
Google doesn't like spam. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to do three things:
- Create a high quality website that you plan to keep for long time.
- Optimize the pages of your website so that both website visitors and Google and indeed all the search engines see what they want.
- Attain as many authority and theme related links as possible to show Google that your site can be trusted.
Spammy and black hat SEO techniques often deliver quick results but they only work for a short time. If you plan to build a lasting online business, then the SEO Authority can help as we focus on ethical search engine optimisation methods.
One of our key checks during a website audit and analysis is to ensure nobody is scraping your original content and using it for their own advantage, which in turn may affect your rankings. If you have any concerns about how this Google update will impact your business and rankings, contact one of our SEO experts today.
Improve Your Existing Backlink Profile
6/1/2011 14:15
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Getting links to your website is one of the most important and one of the most difficult tasks that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google.
If you want to improve the rankings on your website on Google, it is often much easier to improve your existing backlinks than getting new links to your website.
Step 1: Correct links that point to your old domain names
If you changed your domain name in the past, chances are that some people still link to your old domain name.
The links to your old domain name should redirect to your new domain with a 301 redirect to make sure that the links and the visitors that come through these links aren't lost.
Unfortunately, backlinks through 301 redirects do not pass the full link power to your website.
For that reason, contact the webmasters who link to your old domain name and ask them to link to your new domain. This will increase the effect of the links on your website rankings.
Step 2: Correct links to broken pages on your website
Check your website statistics and redirect all links that go to a non-existing (404) page on your website to an existing page on your site so that the visitors aren't lost.
As above, it's even better to contact the webmasters who links to the non-existing pages and ask them to change the links.
Step 3: Try to improve the anchor texts
When you're contacting other webmasters to tell them that they link to your old domain name or to a broken link on your website, you can also suggest new anchor texts for your links (the anchor text are the words in a text link that points to your website).
If the links to your website include the words for which you want to get high rankings in the anchor text, your chances of getting ranked for these keywords increase.
Step 4: Suggest other relevant websites (not so strange as it seems)
This might sound like a strange advice but it can help your rankings: when you contact a webmaster and ask for a link, you might also suggest other websites that are related to yours. If the website that links to your website links to other websites that are related to your website topic, it's more likely that search engines will find your website relevant to that topic.
Step 5: Check the links and the navigation on your own website
If you want to see certain pages of your website in Google's search results, these pages should also be linked from your own website pages. If a web page is hidden in the navigation of your website then it's less likely that this page will get a good position in Google's results.
Your website should have a clear and logical navigation that emphasizes the pages that you want to see in Google's search results.
High rankings on Google are the result of good inbound links and optimized web page content. Our complete link building packages and solutions offer you quality links with maximum return and with huge cost savings. |
Recover Google rankings after malware attack
22/12/2010 18:44
Today we’ve added a new notification to our search results that helps people know when a site may have been hacked. We’ve provided notices for malware for years, which also involve a separate warning page. Now we’re expanding the search results notifications to help people avoid sites that may have been compromised and altered by a third party, typically for spam. When a user visits a site, we want her to be confident the information on that site comes from the original publisher.
Here’s what the notification looks like:
Clicking the “This site may be compromised” link brings you to an article in our Help Center which explains more about the notice. Meanwhile, clicking the result itself brings you to the target website, as expected.
Google this week announced how it will now handle sites that have been compromised. Google says - We use a variety of automated tools to detect common signs of a hacked site as quickly as possible. When we detect something suspicious, we’ll add the notification to our search results. We’ll also do our best to contact the site’s webmaster via their Webmaster Tools account and any contact email addresses we can find on the webpage. We hope webmasters will also appreciate these notices, because it will help you more quickly discover when someone may be abusing your site so you can correct the problem.
Of course, we also understand that webmasters may be concerned that these notices are impacting their traffic from search. Rest assured, once the problem has been fixed, the warning label will be automatically removed from our search results, usually in a matter of days. You can also request a review of your site to accelerate removal of the notice.
If you see this notification appearing on your site’s listing, please take a look at the instructions in our Help Center to learn how you can begin to address the problem. Together, we can make the web a safer place.
Following a malware attack, that has gone un-noticed for some time, you will find that your rankings will have dropped. If after the review as mentioned above, you do not recover your inial ranking, conatct one of our consulatnats whom have experience in regaining lost search engine ranking.
New Google Search Patent Granted
20/10/2010 18:27
Google has been granted another patent last week. The patent describes how Google might categorize web pages and search queries to deliver better results.
Why does it make sense to categorize web pages and search queries?
The same word can have multiple meanings depending on the context. Google wants to return the correct result based on the intention of the web searcher. The following example is given in the patent application:
"Cleaning Supplies," "Lawn Care," "Maintenance," and "Decorative," represent subcategories and can also reflect specific items. [...]
"Brooms," "Mops," "Vacuum Cleaners," "Rakes," "Mowers," "Flamingos," "Gnomes," reflect the specific items to which individual documents and potential search query terms are associated.
The category hierarchy could equally be defined as a list with each category including a full item description. For instance, "Flamingos" could be expressed as a list item, "Household>Lawn Care>Decorative>Flamingos."
How does Google categorize web pages?
When Google indexes a web page, Google might assign a ranking score and a category score. In this example, a web page about flamingos would be compared to other pages that contain the word "flamingos".
Depending on the other words on the web page, the page would be given a category score and a ranking score for the given category.
According to the patent, the categories for pages and queries can be created manually, through an automated process, or by a combination of both methods.
What does this mean for your website?
If you want to make sure that Google categorises your web pages correctly, you should use many different and related keywords that describe the topic of your website on your web pages.
The more different words that are related to your website topic appear on your web pages the easier it is for Google to categorise your pages.
We can help you with keyword research to ensure all of the relevant and popular terms used to locate your products/services are identified. We can then create website copy to optimise against these keyword phrases. The more pages you optimize, the more likely it is that Google will find your website relevant to that topic and that you will get high rankings for the keywords on the individual pages.
Be ready for Google changes because you can bet that your competitors are doing just that. Contact Us today.
