What Google Wants - Branding With SEO - Owning The Discussion

The other day Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt stated that the Internet is a cesspool and that the way to succeed online is through branding and discussion. While I have been complaining for a while about how Google’s SERP’s are watered down, it is nice to see them actually agreeing, and doing something about it. Since Google has cracked down on sites that sell link juice it has been increasingly more difficult to obtain quality inbound links that are relevant to your content. So what is a webmaster to do?

I had a discussion with a friend of mine, Christian Sterner the CEO and founder of Wellcomemat a video portal for videoagraphers, and we were talking about Universal Search and how to best leverage all of wellcomemat.com’s user generated content. I was pushing the commenting, telling him that they need to reward users that ask and answer questions. It was then that he said something that really put the whole thing into perspective: “the best sites online, OWN THE DISCUSSION on their topics”. That really puts the whole thing in a nutshell. I have proven time and time again that sites that push out quality content and that have users that ask question in the form of comments, rule the SERPs for their topics.

How To Own The Discussion

While Google is pushing branding, which I agree with to an extent, I have always pushed content and comments as I have found that WordPress posts historically get into the SERPs quickly, but tend to fade away over time. UNLESS THEY ARE HEAVILY COMMENTED. It was through this information that I found a great WP Plugin that takes the most recent comments and allows you to put them in a sidebar widget. I use that along with another plugin that lists the most popular posts based upon commenting. By putting both of these in the sidebar of the homepage of my client’s blog, I have seen an increase in placement for ALL of the posts that were linked from the home page through BOTH the popular posts and recent comments.

We all hate comment spam, and I am not in any way shape or form suggesting that you spam other peoples sites with comments. I am stating that you need to get comments going on your own site. You need to break the ice and ask and answer your own questions at first so that users see their questions will be answered in a timely manner. If you can get users to ask questions on your posts, you will OWN THE DISCUSSION.

Social Network Marketing at one time was a great source of inbound links, but that has changed since Google strong armed them into nofollowing their outbound links. Now social network marketing is good for exposure and traffic building, and of course branding, but little else except for a couple of document sharing sites. While SMO and social network marketing are still part of the game plan for SEO, we are focused more with on page optimization and commenting to drive discussion. Feel free to give us a call if you want to get started owning the discussion on Google. 727-251-2058

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Google Page Rank Hits Thousands Of Sites

Many webmasters woke up to lower Page Rank and fallen rankings this morning as Google does another PR update. Over the weekend Google updated its Page Rank toolbar meter. Usually this doesn’t effect rankings simultaneously, but this update is different! Some websites that lost PR also lost substantial placement as well. As I was checking my client’s rankings after the update, I noticed quite a few competitors’ sites had fallen. Looking at their PR confirmed that this time Google followed through with it’s threat against sites selling links, and not only lowered Page Rank, but rankings as well.

Websites that have quality unique content were the beneficiaries of updated Page Rank on their newer content. Some WordPress pages that I created 3 weeks ago now have a 4 PR. This is the fastest update I have seen in years. If Google continues to make quick Page Rank updates that coincide with changes in the index, then they will go back to being the most relevant search engine. I have been complaining for a while about Google’s watered down results, but this could be a new turn towards Google being able to get spammers and scrapers out of the top results.

Duplicate content and ad only sites that steal content are one of the top 10 Internet Plagues, and the one that irks me the most. We provide only unique and researched content for our clients and there is nothing worse than someone stealing your content and making money off of it with ads. Hopefully these sites will fall all the way out of Google!

Google Everflux - Dancing Days Are Here Again

Everyone is talking about the new buzzword of the year “The Google Everflux”. What is it? Google used to roll out updates to their index slowly, over a week or so, which would cause many webmasters heartburn. This phenomenon was coined “The Google Dance” by the SEO pundits out there. The index was in flux, updating the SERP’s seemingly at random.

That is now replaced by what seams to be DAILY UPDATES! Google’s index is changing constantly now, causing many of us to need daily reporting on search engine placement. It’s almost as if Google got some steroids from BALCO and injected Googlebot with them.

How To Take Advantage Of Google Everflux

With Googlebot speeding around the Internet and indexing faster than ever, what is a webmaster to do? The answer is in Web 2.0 applications that provide your site with fresh and unique content on a daily basis. Of course having the systems in place are only the first step. You have to write all that content, and that can be quite a challenge to site owners that don’t have writing skills.

If you don’t have a blog attached to your website… GET ONE NOW.

If you have a small website, say under 25 pages, that is static, convert it to a WordPress system. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, give Get Found Now a call at 813-907-7688.

Google Page Rank Updates Toolbar

Last month Google updated Page Rank on sites throughout the Internet. On Matt Cutt’s blog he stated that Google is updating the Toolbar Page Rank. The question is how does the update reflect search engine rankings and is the update valid with all types of Page Rank, or is it just as related to the Google Toolbar?

There are a few tools that webmasters can use to track their Page Rank other than the Google Toolbar. I personally prefer the FireFox extension: SEO For FireFox Extension by SEO Book. Not only does it have important info like PR and Google cache date, but also everything from compete.com rankings to Yahoo backlinks. There are also services out there that will tell you what your Page Rank is and even allow you to put an icon on your site showing off your page rank. The problem with them is that they also get their information from the same source which is the toolbar.

Even if you set up an API or a PHP script that pulls info from Google’s servers it is still calling the results from the toolbar so we have no way of knowing if the Page Rank was only updated for the toolbar or has Google updated the Page Rank where it really matters - in their index? Is this something that you really need to care about? To answer these questions we first need to look at Page Rank, what it is and how it works.

Page Rank Explained

Page Rank is a Google proprietary and patented algorythm that is based upon a pages inbound link count. It not only counts links, but gives those links credit based upon the Page Rank of the linking page, how many other links are on the page and the overall authority of the domain. Now I am sure I am going to get a bunch of negative comments from experts that will say, the domain doesn’t factor in Page Rank. Well anybody that thinks that is an idiot. The domain, length of time at the existing IP, amount of time the domain has been purchased and other factors absolutely factor into Page Rank on both sides of the equation. Both the destination page and the link originating page factor into the overall rank of the page. How this relates to a pages rankings in the index is another matter altogether.

Page Rank itself is used as a guideline by many webmasters as link value for link exchanges, popularity of a page in the search engines and importance of certain keywords to the overall domain. By using the backlinks feature of the Page Rank in the Google Toolbar you can see the links coming into a page of any site. This is a huge value when doing a competitive analysis.

Page Rank Updates On Internal Pages or Posts

The updates on internal pages as opposed to the overall domain are a lot more frequent these days. I did notice that several of my newer systems did get Page Rank, but none of my existing sites (older than 3 moths) had updates on the domain, just on internal pages. All WordPress systems have Page Rank on articles up to July which is pretty damn good. I think I prefer them updating internal pages often more than the domain since all my WordPress systems have a continuous flow of content.

As long as you keep the content flowing, you will get higher Page Rank eventually. I have noted that there are plenty of sites out there that have placement, but no Page Rank. I also noted that there were quite a few sites that lost Page Rank. In fact about half of all the sites bidding on Pay Per Post no longer have Page Rank. My research is limited to technology blogs, but they were pretty much across the board stripped of their Page Rank!

Page Rank Updates At The Domain Level

Did domains get updated as well as internal pages? They used to, but I am seeing more internal updates than domain level updates. There are some sites within my network that are less than 2 months old that have scored Page Rank. In fact if you look at SEO By You, you will be surprised to see that this site which is just an empty WordPress site has a 2 PR! Yep not one lick of content except for the Hello World crap that comes with the system. What does that tell us?

Page Rank Does Not Matter!

Google Webmaster Center Adds Content Analysis and Sitemap Details

Google has added some great new features to their Webmaster Center. If you don’t use Google’s Webmaster Center and you care about your search engine placement, then you are missing the boat. For a detailed look at Google’s Webmaster Center read my post “Google Webmaster Center Updates ” from September 07.
Google actually is now pointing out things about your site that it doesn’t like. You can probably assume that these would be the same things that Yahoo and ASK don’t like about your site as well. I think it is mighty nice of Google to take the time to actually help us improve our rankings rather then taking away marketing tools like text ads!

Google Webmaster Center Content Analysis Tool

The new tool can be found in the Diagnostics part of the Webmaster Center. The graphic below will show you the main parts of their Webmaster Center:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Content analysis shows you three things that you need to know about your site:

1. Meta Title - how is your title tag? Is it too long, too short, make sense? These questions and many more are answered for you by Google.
2. Non-Index-able Content - this is pretty cool as it will point out to you the stuff on your site that Google can’t spider. Things like flash or script-laden pages, also images that have no “alt” tags. This is important now that everyone is using video. Google also has a new Video Sitemap that you can use to properly index your video content.
3. Meta Tag Issues - this tool focuses on the meta description which is very important for you to be able to control the description that appears for your pages within Google’s SERP’s.

The graphic below shows an example of what the Title tag and Meta Descriptions look like:

By using these tools you won’t automatically jump to the top of the ranks, but they will help you get your site tuned up and as good as it can be in the eyes of Googlebot. The graphic below gives you a look at the non-index-able content section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I highly recommend to all webmasters that they take advantage of these and all the powerful tools that Google is giving you.

Google Webmaster Center Sitemap Details

I surely hope that all of you avail yourselves of XML sitemaps. XML is probably the most significant programming language to a webmaster that wants search engine placement. Both XML sitemaps and XML-RPC are a gateway to higher rankings, especially within Google. Read my post Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing for more info on these tools.

Google’s Webmaster Center was initially built for site owners and optimizers to submit XML Sitemaps. It is great that they are continuing to add more and more tools to help us out, and the new Sitemap Details is a nice add-on. Below is a snap-shot of the Sitemap Details section:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it is true that the URL’s submitted in your Sitemap don’t necessarily reflect all the URL’s that are in Google’s index, it is better than doing a site: search.

Google also added a couple of new languages for those of you that don’t like English. I got the graphics from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

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