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The Case for Google PageRank: Perception vs. Economics

By David Jackson in Featured

In my previous article, Google PageRank: SEO Treasure or Fool’s Gold? What the Experts S…I argued strongly against the importance of PageRank and believing in it as a reliable metric. Among the many compelling expert opinions that I presented to bolster my argument, this statement by Google itself made the most sense to me:

“Don’t bother thinking about it [PageRank]. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.” (Source: Google Webmaster Central FAQ)

Perception is a Metric Too

I couldn’t agree more with Google. Analytics, conversion rates and return on investment are much more important metrics than PageRank. However, the undeniable fact remains, there are a lot of individuals who strongly advocate for PageRank. And in the aftermath of my article being published, I received a lot of interesting and compelling dissenting feedback – so compelling in fact, I decided to play devil’s advocate and write this follow up article strongly making the case for PageRank.

Google PageRank: SEO Treasure or Fool’s Gold? What the Experts Say…

By David Jackson in Featured

One of the most controversial, misunderstood, confusing and debated topics in the SEO universe is the importance of PageRank. But let me be specific here. When I use the term “PageRank”, I’m not talking about Google’s 0-10 logarithmic toolbar PageRank, which is nothing more than a “superficial beauty contest” vanity tool – very much out-of-date, and does NOT have a direct impact on a site’s ranking. That fact was established long ago.

Google Removed PageRank Data From Webmaster Tools

In fact, Google removed PageRank data from Google Webmaster Tools back in October, 2009.

Here’s what Google Webmaster Central’s Susan Moskwa said about that move:

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it [from Webmaster Tools] because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.

Personally, I would love to see us remove PR from the Toolbar, but mine is not the only opinion in Google.” (Source: Google Webmaster Central)

How To Use Twitter for SEO

By Kristina Weis in Featured

Links Tweeted on Twitter Matter for SEO

It’s official. Google and Bing include social signals – namely, links that get tweeted on Twitter – when determining rankings in their search results. This was confirmed by Danny Sullivan in his December 1, 2010 post on Search Engine Land, and it was likely a factor for a while before that.

To put this new factor in perspective, Google uses hundreds of signals to determine how it should rank a website. These include inbound links to the site, the title tag of a web page, and site speed.

Getting people to link to your site is really all about having great content that people want to share, whether on their blogs or websites, or on Twitter. As Google and other search engines increasingly take note of social activity and the links shared on sites like Twitter, having a good social media presence will become increasingly important for ranking well in search results.

Do You Know As Much As Google Knows About Your Website?

By Steven Johnson in Featured

Google knows that to retain their reputation as a superior search engine they must provide results better than anyone else.

What can YOU confirm in regards to how prospects navigate your site? Do you have website statistics installed so that you can see the same things Google does?

Google knows exactly how long you stay on a website, effectively your “vote”, in helping Google determine relevancy for future searches. Google knows how popular your site is by how many sites have a backlink to your site, in effect, the internet’s “vote” for your site. Google knows how relevant your site is; they “read” the content like a human.

Putting site analytics in place will give you the exact data you require. For instance, how many unique visits your site has received, where they came from, who sent them, how long they stayed, what they viewed, and which pages caused them to exit. Once you gather these analytics, patterns will be evident.

Most website owners know absolutely nothing about the data regarding their site, making it impossible to make sound decisions concerning improvements. A few keep track of hits received by using a counter, but that is not nearly enough data to determine an appropriate alteration.

In order to make proper modifications, you need to know about site visits. For example, which days of the week does the site receive the most hits? What would be the reason?

Where was the traffic created, through referring sites, search engines or direct visits? Which keywords were typed to locate your site? Which websites directed them to you?

Do you make it simple for visitors to bookmark your site?

Which path brought in the most traffic? Do you capture visitors’ attention with information which has significance and is interesting? What was the number of pages viewed?

Which pages were most popular? What was the length of time the page was viewed? Which browsers are most popular?

Internet Explorer? Firefox? Is your site presenting correctly on each and every different browser? Is there support for your features, like Java?

This is case in point of the least amount of statistics you will require. Next, you should find out how many visits you are receiving from returning traffic vs. new ones. Of the new ones, how many people immediately clicked off your site? (This is your bounce rate.) A significant bounce rate tell you that traffic is finding your site revolting or that you are bringing in the wrong audience. For those visitors who return, are you revising information to keep your site interesting and fresh? Does anyone visit from smartphones? This is the highest growth market in the Internet’s history. Which smartphones are being used most; for example, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and have you optimized for smartphones so that users have the best viewing experience?

Google knows, so should you.

If you do not have analytics installed, go to Google and they will provide the information on how to do so. If you cannot make the time to examine and investigate the data, employ someone who will. If you do not know what Google knows, it will cost you time, lost revenue and overall ROI on your web presence.

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Wetcatwebs.com, Inc. is a cutting-edge website design firm specializing in effective web and smartphone strategies that produce measurable results by delivering a powerful online presence and tremendous exposure. Find out more about SEO and generating qualified leads at => http://www.wetcatwebs.com

Put Your Site in Good Hands

By Alan Rosinski in Featured

There are thousands of web designers and web design companies out there ready to design your website. How can you choose the right one – someone who will understand your business and make sure your site is visible to search engines and your potential customers? Here’s a quick guide to help with the process.

What to Look For in a Web Designer

First of all, take a look at the designer’s own website. Is their information up to date? Browse the site and its pages to make sure the site is functional, and appears to be updated regularly.

Don’t forget to take a look at the portfolio to see what they’ve done recently. See if the sites they’ve created look like something you would want designed for yourself. If you’re looking for an e-commerce site with a shopping cart and thousands of products, check whether the firm has any experience in this area.

You should look for a web designer who knows how to help you get found in search engines. Check for the following:

• Do the websites they’ve created follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices? You can do this quickly by looking at the Website Visibility Report for each website.

• Is the web design company’s own website ranking well in search results? If they show up on the first page of results for a search like “web design [the firm's city],” they probably know what they’re doing when it comes to SEO. You can also check the PageRank of the firm’s home page.

Tell Your Web Designer What You Need

Knowing exactly what you need for your site is the most important part of scoping out the project. If you don’t know what you want from the beginning of your engagement with a web designer, you can both get confused and frustrated – and the project is almost guaranteed to run over time and possibly over budget.

A lot of elements go into any website. Your web designer needs to know everything you want to include in yours so he can accurately scope and price your project.

What’s the main goal of your site?

Start off simple. Let the designer know what the main goal of your site is. What message are you trying to convey, and what is the purpose of your site? Think about what you want visitors to do when they come to your site. A few examples:

• Sign up for an email list
• Download a file
• Participate in a discussion on an article, message board or social network
• Click on ads
• Purchase a product or service

What kind of site do you need?

There are plenty of different kinds of sites out there: e-commerce sites for selling products; portfolio sites for photographers and artists; informational sites with articles or blog posts…and many more.

Web designers specialize in all kinds of different sites. Some designers stick to specific kinds of sites, so find one who’s good at the kind of site you need. Make sure you describe your requirements to any potential web designer you talk to.

Is your website going to sell something?

If so, there are quite a few details that you need to think about. You could have a huge e-commerce site with hundreds of products, or you could offer one special service and sell just one thing. E-commerce sites often have hundreds of pages – if not thousands – with product images and descriptions on each one. You need to tell your prospective web designer what kinds of details you’ll want on each page.

Do you want customers to be able to leave ratings or reviews for products? Do you want them to leave testimonials for your service? Reviews can boost your site’s position in search results, so it’s worth thinking about.

You need to let the designer know if you will be adding content to your site’s pages on an ongoing basis, or if that job will be up to him. Keep in mind that designers charge by the hour for tedious tasks such as adding hundreds of products to a site. You can save a lot of money by doing all this yourself, if you’re on a budget and willing to learn how.

Payment is a critical component of e-commerce. How will the payments be handled? Are you going to use PayPal, or some other kind of software? Integration of different scripts may take more time and cost more money. Discuss with your designer what’s right for your budget, and even more important, what will work best for your visitors. You want to make it easy for them to give you money, don’t you?

What about multimedia?

If you want to include any kind of audio, video, or interactive content on your website, you need to explain very clearly what it’s for and what it should do. Think about what the experience should be like for your website visitors. Remember that creating any kind of interactive experience will take more time and cost more money.

How social will your site be?

Social elements such as message boards, contact forms, guest books, order forms, blogs, or live chat can make your site more interesting and attractive to visitors. They also need to be explained fully to your web designer. Think about how you want these things to look. A web designer can give your blog or message board a custom design – which will cost more – or create them from pre-designed templates, which will be cheaper. Take a look at a few different blogs, message boards and other social elements of other websites, to get an idea of what you want for yours.

What about updates?

Guaranteed: At some point you will want to change some of the content on your site. You may need to update your phone number, change some text, or add new products or articles. Will you want to make simple changes yourself, or are you prepared to have your web designer make changes, and charge you for his time? Your answers will help your web designer determine whether you’ll need a simple content management system (CMS) that you can use yourself, or whether he should use a system that’s intended for a web design pro.

If you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way to getting the website of your dreams.

Need to pick an SEO agency, too? Check out our related article, Choose the Right SEO Company.

This article was originally published by AboutUs.org.

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This article, originally published at AboutUs.org, was contributed by Alan Rosinski of AnimatedWebServices.com.(Visit) Alan owns Animated Web Services, a custom web design service. He also specializes in local SEO for small businesses using Google Places.

On-Page Optimization Tactics You Don’t Hear About – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Ben Jackson in Featured

Backlinking, backlinking, backlinking – it seems to be the only part of SEO anyone ever talks about these days! Let’s get our noses out of everyone else’s sites and back into ours.

On-page optimization is often overlooked and neglected, but your on-page SEO builds the foundation for all of your off-page optimization efforts. We’re going to cover some of the basics here: domain names and title tags, but we’re also going to get to topics less discussed when dealing with on-page optimization. I’m talking about things like stemming, your outbound links, your use of synonyms and more. Let’s get to it!

Domain Name

Your domain name has a powerful effect on how you rank. Having an EMD (exact match domain) for your keyword is going to do a lot for your ranking. However, this is not crucial to your ranking success. Many people, such as myself, choose to have a domain name that they can brand. It depends on what you’re looking to do with your site. If you want to make a small niche site targeting a single keyword, then clearly you will want to get an EMD.

But what if the EMD is not available?

SEO Course: Backlinking Your Way to the Top

By Ben Jackson in Featured

What is a Backlink?

What’s all this hoopla over backlinks? Every SEO forum and blog you stop by is constantly touting the power and necessity of backlinks so they must be a pretty big deal! So what exactly is a backlink? Simply put, a backlink is a link on another website (external) that leads to a page on your website. For instance, a link on this page to a page on another website would be a backlink for THAT webpage.

How do Backlinks Help us Rank?

Think of it like this: backlinks are human citation. In a sense, we decide what pages we, as internet users, want to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) by linking to the content we like. A page with more links of a higher quality than others will rank higher. The part about quality is really important. It’s not just about who has the most backlinks, it’s about where those links are from.

Search Engine Algorithms : It’s Evolution

By Dele Ojewumi in Featured

Heavy Reliance on On-Page Factors – Webmaster Supplied Information

At the outset of the various search engine algorithms, there was heavy reliance on webmaster supplied information in determining search engine rankings. Webmasters submitted their site url’s to the search engines who sent their crawlers to extract a snapshot of the website for inclusion in the data base on its server. This then formed the basis of extraction of relevant information, primarily

- Keyword meta tags which listed webmaster supplied targeted keywords incorporated in the html (source codes) of his website.

- Also, the keywords density on the website was another major consideration.

The idea of webmasters optimizing for the search engines in order to improve search engine rankings first arose about mid-1990′s when webmasters started seeing the necessity for ranking high in the search engines as a funnel for traffic to their websites with an ultimate view of making sales. It thus did not take long before all the initial basis for search engine algorithms was abused by unscrupulous webmasters who made many actual searches become irrelevant for their search terms by using various black hat techniques such as keywords stuffing, inserting meta tags irrelevant to actual web page content, cloaking etc. Leaving search results highly irrelevant for searches would spell the doom of the search engines as search users would find alternative search sources. The search engines therefore had no choice than to deduce other complex and more effective factors as a basis for their search engine algorithms.

Reliance on On-Page and Off-Page Factors

In response to the demands of the time, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were graduate students of Stanford University and later promoters of Google, developed a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. They reasoned that the prominence of a web page was based on the quantity and quality of links on other sites leading to that website.

They considered it more likely that random web surfers browsing the net would likely reach a higher-PageRanked web page via its various backlinks on other sites, than a lower-PageRanked web page.

With Google formation in 1998, this formed the basis of the new search engine algorithms and together with other off-page factors such as hyperlink analysis and on-page factors such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, internal links and site structure, formed major components of the now more complex search engine algorithms, to ensure Google and other search engines avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines when they only considered on-page factors for their rankings.

Webmasters, ever alert to ways of gaming the system, soon set up websites in thousands with a view to exchanging, buying and selling links and transferring PageRank. All sort of link spamming techniques evolved.

Increased number of on-page and off-page search engine algorithms components.

By 2005, Google had increased the number and complexity of the various components in its search engine algorithms calculations. The number is said to exceed 200. It introduced the nofollow tag and announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.

Introduction of Google Instant And Other Measures

By 2009, Google began using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results. Real-time-search was introduced in late 2009 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading search engines made changes to their search engine algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. This new approach to search places importance on current, fresh and unique content.

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Why not visit => www.homebiz-supermarket.com where many internet marketing newbies are attaining internet marketing success. Dele Ojewumi is an Internet Marketer, Chartered Accountant and Economist and the webmaster of => www.homebiz-supermarket.com/profitable-business-ideas/

Time Spent In The Google Sandbox – Still Important To Success

By Tope Adeyemi in Featured

Google denies that they sandbox new websites. Yet, webmasters and SEO gurus alike have been frustrated to no end by the sandbox effect noted when a new website is launched. Google does acknowledge that there may be something in the algorithm that penalizes new websites and gives them lower rankings until they have proven their value. The reasons for such a filter are many and include keeping people from putting up multiple sites with links to one another when one website is what they need. Whatever the reasons behind ending up there, time spent in the Google Sandbox is still important to success.

Whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Google owners or not, they have written into the algorithm a set of filters that manage to establish the quality of a website using time-based indicators. These indicators include the age of the web site or domain, the age of different backlinks and inbound links to the site, and other factors. One important feature to note is that not only new sites are found in the sandbox. Older sites that suddenly get a rush of inbound links are often sandboxed while the value of the links is established.

With these points in mind, many who have paid for SEO services and still ended up in Google Sandbox are wondering what they can do to get out. Sadly, the only true way to climb out is to be patient. Time is actually on the side of those who are in the sandbox. There are several reasons for this.

The first reason is that time spent in the sandbox allows the website owner to work on tweaking any problem that is found with the site so that it is 100 percent ready when page rank climbs to a point where new visitors are coming in large numbers. This is the best time to test and fix any programming errors noted.

The second reason is that it allows you to work on the content of your site and any related sites linked to it. On the internet, content is king and Google is no different on that score. New, keyword optimized content appearing regularly with links that go back to a site that has been sandboxed catch attention and increase the odds of getting out sooner. Of course, these links must be relevant to the material on the website to be of any real value.

It gives webmasters time to establish relationships with others that are considered authorities in their fields. These authorities can include links to a site in their own pages. If these individuals are recognized as authorities in their fields, the value of their links increases dramatically.

Trust is an important part of any business relationship. There are some sites on the internet that are trusted more than others. Links from these sites are seen as more trustworthy by the search engine, and can help boost page rank quickly.

Ideally, you should try for a trifecta by seeking out relevant links from sites owned by recognized authorities in the field who have been deemed trustworthy by Google and users doing business with them. These links can combine in an exponential manner to boost a page ranking significantly regardless of the page’s age.

Another trick to consider is not limiting yourself to Google when performing SEO operations. One can be in the Google Sandbox and still get good organic results on other search engines such as Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.

You can also optimize for more long tailed keyword phrases. The sandbox effect only seems to affect sites that use highly competitive keywords. Therefore, if you sell an item that can be described in the keywords, the longer keyword phrases may help increase page rank. Of course, you must choose keywords that users are likely to type into the search engine.

In a nutshell, to take advantage of these time-based indicators, you should:

1. Get links that deliver the most trust, first.

2. Start your website today and also begin your link-building task as well

3. Target quality 4-in-1 links. This means going for links that are Relevant, Authoritative, from Trusted sources and from High page rank pages.

The Google Sandbox is real, despite denials from Google. These filters are part of the algorithm that assigns page ranks and they do penalize new sites that use competitive keywords. They also penalize established sites that enter into link farming agreements and try to manipulate the rankings artificially. The filters are age related for the age of the domain, the age of the links to the pages, and other factors.

The time spent in the Google Sandbox is important for the success of any web based business. To be more precise, what is done during this time is important. This is an opportunity to work out any bugs in your website that could hurt business. It is also an opportunity to establish high quality relationships with other site owners who can provide links to your site that are relevant, authoritative, from trusted sources, and coming from pages that are ranked highly, allowing you to take advantage of their rank until your own comes into being.

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Tope Adeyemi – The underground Internet Marketing Mogul since 2004.

Does Google PageRank Count Anymore?

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

Being a full-time SEM (Search Engine Marketer) I have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog (not a pretty picture) to jump every time Google twitches. Lately Google has been doing a lot of twitching.

Specifically, the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools.

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true,” states Moskwa. “We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” (Source: WebProNews)

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