Search Engine Optimization
Overthrow Wikipedia Results
As most of you may have noticed, WIKIPEDIA is ranked on the first page for almost every term. In most cases, they provide a fairly thorough explanation about a topic. In other cases, it provides a terrible user experience. For example, if someone is search for “accounting sofware,” it is very likely that they are [...]
As most of you may have noticed, WIKIPEDIA is ranked on the first page for almost every term. In most cases, they provide a fairly thorough explanation about a topic. In other cases, it provides a terrible user experience. For example, if someone is search for “accounting sofware,” it is very likely that they are actually looking for accounting software and not a 10 page description about it. Well Blue Hat SEO has created an excellent blog post about overthrowing WIKIPEDIA results
Related Blogs
Improve Your SEO Rankings With These Basic Tips
TopRankBlog goes back to the basics and discusses three basic tips to achieve high SEO rankings. They are as follows:
Research keywords
Apply researched keywords to your website in page titles, meta description, paragraphs, headers and links.
Find sites related to your topic and let them know about your site. Don’t do this artificially. Create content worth talking [...]
TopRankBlog goes back to the basics and discusses three basic tips to achieve high SEO rankings. They are as follows:
- Research keywords
- Apply researched keywords to your website in page titles, meta description, paragraphs, headers and links.
- Find sites related to your topic and let them know about your site. Don’t do this artificially. Create content worth talking about and YOU WILL GET LINKS naturally.
It’s definitely easier said than done. For more information, read the entire TopRankBlog article.
Sitelinks in Google Webmaster Tools
What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.
Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you [...]
What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.
Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you the ability to block specific Sitelinks. You are not able to modify the Sitelinks, or add to the list of Sitelinks. To block Sitelinks, login to Google webmaster Tools and click “Links” > “Sitelinks.”
Can I Influence the Sitelinks?
There are a couple of ways to influence Sitelinks:
- Your website should be easy to navigate and users should understand how to drill through your site. It should be EASY to find the information they are looking over through a meaningful hierarchy. If a user experiences difficulties navigating through your website, chances are that a search engine will as well.
- When you submit your XML sitemap to Google, you can set the priority of each page, 1 being the highest. The higher the priority, the more important the page is. Google may not use this data but they will definitely consider it.
I found the information on Hochman Consultants pretty useful. Here’s what they say:
I’ve worked on a number of sites with Sitelinks, and these sites are similar in the following ways:
- Site ranks first for the keyword(s) that generate the Sitelinks listing
- Easily spiderable, structured navigation
- Fairly high natural search traffic
- High click through rates from the search results page
- Useful outbound links
- Inbound links from high quality sites
- Site age is several years or older
Here are some more helpful links:
Provide Feedback on Sitelinks
How does Google compile the list of links shown below search results?
How To Get Google Sitelinks
This stuff has been around for a while but it’s never too late to brush up.
Are Your Images Labeled?
Lee Ogden wrote an excellent article regarding Organic SEO - specifically keywords within articles. He makes some excellent points.
Here’s one:
Using keyword research to flavor the content, whether it’s verbal, in print, in video or audio can all influence how the outcome of the PR action is available through search. Using keywords during an interview [...]
Lee Ogden wrote an excellent article regarding Organic SEO - specifically keywords within articles. He makes some excellent points.
Here’s one:
Using keyword research to flavor the content, whether it’s verbal, in print, in video or audio can all influence how the outcome of the PR action is available through search. Using keywords during an interview for example, can influence how the print version of that interview is discovered on site search or general search engines.
The thing to keep in mind is that if a digital asset (text, image, video, audio) can be searched on, then it can be optimized.
He brings up an EXCELLENT point regarding digital assets. Google images has been sending me a crapload of traffic for an images site. It is extremely important to optimize the ALT tag keywords of your images and also named the images according to the picture. For example, if you have a picture of a dog jumping, name it “dog_jumping.jpg” and create a descriptive alt tag. Read Google’s article about Using Alt Attributes Smartly for more information.
Here is a quote from the above link:
Update: Some of you have asked about the difference between the “alt” and “title” attributes. According to the W3C recommendations, the “alt” attribute specifies an alternate text for user agents that cannot display images, forms or applets. The “title” attribute is a bit different: it “offers advisory information about the element for which it is set.” As the Googlebot does not see the images directly, we generally concentrate on the information provided in the “alt” attribute. Feel free to supplement the “alt” attribute with “title” and other attributes if they provide value to your users!
Here is another great article about Optimizing Your Site For Google Search. Here’s a snippet of the article:
Most importantly enable enhanced image search in google sitemasters tools. Find it under Diagnostics / Tools / Enhanced Image Search
. I’ve JUST started using this a month ago so I can’t comment on it yet but I’ll keep everyone posted.
Google has also released an image labeler (a while ago). It works like this:
1) You click “Start Labeling” and you are automatically paired up with someone
2) Google shows you an image. If you see a picture of a house, Google will give you exclude words that you can’t label the images with.
3) You start entering words that describe the picture you see.
4) Once you and your partner enter a tag that matches, you move onto the next image. The purpose is to get as many points as
possible. The REAL purpose is to help Google identify what the images are.
Visit Google Image Labeler
This is all pretty old news but I’m sure someone out there will learn something from this.
Buying Links - Is It Worth It?
Today we’re going to talk about a very sensitive subject - buying links. Google has made it crystal clear that they are NOT into paid links. They’re so much against it that they’ve created an easy-to-use form so that you can report any offenders. You can check it out here. Google dislikes paid links for [...]
Today we’re going to talk about a very sensitive subject - buying links. Google has made it crystal clear that they are NOT into paid links. They’re so much against it that they’ve created an easy-to-use form so that you can report any offenders. You can check it out here. Google dislikes paid links for the following reason (taken from their site):
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
* Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the a tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt fileGoogle works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
You can read the full post here
Here are some thoughts.
1) What prevents a competitor from buying links on five different sites and reporting me to Google?
2) Instead of forcing millions of webmasters to do it their way, why don’t they modify their algorithm. Google should penalize bad links. If you are buying advertising on a website and it is providing a GOOD user experience, who really gives a rats a**. Isn’t that what Google’s all about? A good user experience?
3) What if I purchase a link on a PR1 or PR2 website? There is no PR to pass. Well there is but its pretty darn low. Sometimes I will buy advertising because its targeted towards my audience, not because of the PR.
I honestly could care less about my PR. I look at the traffic, demographics and other valuable information to grow and retain the customer base.
Saying that, I WILL be implementing a no-follow where I have posted advertisers links because I don’t want to get my ass banned. I will probably lose the advertisers but what can I do. BIG BROTHER is watching.
Choose Your Keywords Carefully
Go to Google and type in a keyword, any keyword. For example “flights.”
When I searched “flights,” in Google, I received a total of 257,000,000 results. Now search for “flights to dallas.” You should receive 493,000 results. Notice the competition is much less when you’re keywords are long-tail? Be VERY careful when writing copy for your [...]
Go to Google and type in a keyword, any keyword. For example “flights.”
When I searched “flights,” in Google, I received a total of 257,000,000 results. Now search for “flights to dallas.” You should receive 493,000 results. Notice the competition is much less when you’re keywords are long-tail? Be VERY careful when writing copy for your site and forming link parterships. You’d be crazy to try to rank for something generic like “flights.” It’s possible to achieve high rankings but play with long-tail keywords and you may see faster success.
The Power of Anchor Text
Link anchor text is super important in your linking strategy. When creating your website profile with LinkExchanged.com, put some serious thought into your website title because your linking partners will be placing this on their websites. Make sure that your website title is keyword driven but also highly related to your website. For example, if [...]
Link anchor text is super important in your linking strategy. When creating your website profile with LinkExchanged.com, put some serious thought into your website title because your linking partners will be placing this on their websites. Make sure that your website title is keyword driven but also highly related to your website. For example, if you sell engine parts, your website title might be “Cheap Engine Parts.”
Pick a few keywords that are highly related to your website…don’t saturate your description with too many keywords. In the future, LinkExchanged! will have the ability to include multiple website title phrases.
One other important note…do NOT link to unrelated websites. This will negatively affect your ranking because you are attempting to SPAM the search engines.
What Determines A Quality Link Partner?
Building link partners is like building a business relationship. When you create a business relationship, there are gives and takes. It is a 50/50 proposition. For example, you may own an “engine parts” website and you might be linking to a radiator website. You’re sending traffic to a related product in the same industry (automotive) [...]
Building link partners is like building a business relationship. When you create a business relationship, there are gives and takes. It is a 50/50 proposition. For example, you may own an “engine parts” website and you might be linking to a radiator website. You’re sending traffic to a related product in the same industry (automotive) and this will benefit both parties in different ways.
But before creating a link partnership, have you done your homework? Have you made sure that the link partner is good for your website? Creating a check list would be extremely beneficial. It allows you to decide which websites to link to. For example, here are a few things I would make sure of:
1. Does the link partner have a link from their homepage to their links page?
2. Does the link partner have good quality content?
3. Do they have related links?
4. Will their website benefit your end user? Will your website benefit their end user?
Spend a few extra minutes reviewing your link partners website and you will feel better about linking to them. Don’t link to anybody. You need to consider your websites reputation. Think about the traffic you are sending and vice versa. Search engines will consider you a big “player” if you have QUALITY links pointing to your site. Using an effective checklist can help you find better link partners and will drive higher quality traffic to your website.
