51 Web Page Elements That Yahoo Looks At For Ranking Web Sites

Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?

A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.

Why can usability be important to search engines?

The patent application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:

"It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize.

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called 'clutter.'"

Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.

Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?

Yahoo's patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:

Total number of links
Total number of words
Total number of images (non-ad images)
Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
Dimensions of page
Page area (total)
Page length
Total number of tables
Maximum table columns (per table)
Maximum table rows (per table)
Total rows
Total columns
Total cells
Average cell padding (per table)
Average cell spacing (per table)
Dimensions of fold
Fold area
Location of center of fold relative to center of page
Total number of font sizes used for links
Total number of font sizes used for headings
Total number of font sizes used for body text
Total number of font sizes
Presence of “tiny” text
Total number of colors (excluding ads)
Alignment of page elements
Average page luminosity
Fixed vs. relative page width
Page weight (proxy for load time)
Total number of ads
Total ad area
Area of individual ads
Area of largest ad above the fold
Largest ad area
Total area of ads above the fold
Page space allocated to ads
Total number of external ads above the fold
Total number of external ads below the fold
Total number of external ads
Total number of internal ads above the fold
Total number of internal ads below the fold
Total number of internal ads
Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
Total number of sponsored link ads
Number of image ads above the fold
Number of image ads below the fold
Total number of image ads
Number of text ads above the fold
Number of text ads below the fold
Total number of text ads
Position of ads on page

According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.

What does this mean to your web pages?

Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.

Google has a similar patent application with the name "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents" so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don't have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.

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Best Practices When Moving Your Site To A New Domain

Google Provides Best Practices Advice When Moving Your Site To A New Domain

Source: Webmaster Google Blog: Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team

Planning on moving your site to a new domain? Lots of webmasters find this a scary process. How do you do it without hurting your site's performance in Google search results?

Your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user, and to make sure that Google knows that your new pages should get the same quality signals as the pages on your own site. When you're moving your site, pesky 404 (File Not Found) errors can harm the user experience and negatively impact your site's performance in Google search results.

Let's cover moving your site to a new domain (for instance, changing from www.example.com to www.example.org). This is different from moving to a new IP address; read this post for more information on that.

Here are the main points:

Test the move process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect those pages on your old site to your new site. This tells Google and other search engines that your site has permanently moved.

Once this is complete, check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google's search results. When you're satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site. Don't do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it's not a good user experience. A page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but gives your users a consistent and transparent experience. If there won't be a 1:1 match between pages on your old and new site, try to make sure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

If you're changing your domain because of site rebranding or redesign, you might want to think about doing this in two phases: first, move your site; and second, launch your redesign. This manages the amount of change your users see at any stage in the process, and can make the process seem smoother. Keeping the variables to a minimum also makes it easier to troubleshoot unexpected behavior.

Check both external and internal links to pages on your site. Ideally, you should contact the webmaster of each site that links to yours and ask them to update the links to point to the page on your new domain. If this isn't practical, make sure that all pages with incoming links are redirected to your new site. You should also check internal links within your old site, and update them to point to your new domain. Once your content is in place on your new server, use a link checker like Xenu to make sure you don't have broken legacy links on your site. This is especially important if your original content included absolute links (like www.example.com/cooking/recipes/chocolatecake.html) instead of relative links (like .../recipes/chocolatecake.html).

To prevent confusion, it's best to make sure you retain control of your old site domain for at least 180 days.

Add your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verify your ownership of it. Then create and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site. This tells Google that your content is now available on your new site, and that we should go and crawl it.

Finally, keep both your new and old site verified in Webmaster Tools, and review crawl errors regularly to make sure that the 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn't showing unwanted 404 errors.

We'll admit it, moving is never easy - but these steps should help ensure that none of your good web reputation falls off the truck in the process.

Source: Webmaster Google Blog

Slow Loading Web Site Can Affect Rankings.

Slow Loading Web Site Can Affect Rankings. Test Your Web Site Load Speed

Did you know that if a page takes too long to load, it may not be spidered by the search engine robots. Try and ensure your pages load quickly.

How quickly? Consider how fast the major search engine pages load.
Are heavy graphics slowing your load speed? Try a test with http://www.optiview.com/

Google Sitelinks. How To Get Listed Under Google Sitelinks

How To Get Listed Under Google Sitelinks

Many webmasters wonder how they can make Google display additional Sitelinks for their websites. What exactly are Sitelinks, how can you get them and are they worth the effort?

What are Google Sitelinks?

Google Sitelinks are a collection of links that appears below the result of a website. These additional links link to main pages of the website. They are randomly and automatically chosen by Google's algorithm.

Sitelinks only appear for general search terms. You'll get Sitelinks if you search for "HP" but you won't get Sitelinks if you search for a term like "HP printer supplies". Sitelinks show up most often for searches on brand names.

Which links does Google use for the Sitelinks?

Google seems to use the first level links on a website for the Sitelinks. That means that all links that are not present on the homepage of your site won't be used as Sitelinks.

The links should be descriptive text links or image links with a descriptive IMG ALT attribute. JavaScript or Flash links are not considered for Sitelinks. Google uses 2 to 8 links for the Sitelinks of a website. Unfortunately, it's unclear how Google assigns the number of links to each website.

The text that is used for the Sitelinks can be the text that are used for the link (anchor text) on the homepage or the title of the linked page. It seems that Google prefers links that appear at the top of a web page.

How can you get Sitelinks for your website?

Unfortunately, there is nothing certain about Google's Sitelinks. The following factors seem to influence whether Google displays Sitelinks or not:

Your website must have a stable #1 ranking for the searched keyword. Other websites don't seem to get Sitelinks.

Your website must be at least 2 years old. It seems that younger websites don't get Sitelinks.

The number of searches and the number of clicks that your website gets for a certain keyword seem to be considered. Keywords that aren't searched often enough don't get Sitelinks. It also seems that your website has to get many clicks for the searched keyword.

The number of links that point to your website with the searched keyword as the anchor text seem to influence the creation of Sitelinks. Sitelinks only seem to appear for the main keywords of a website, not for all keywords for which a website is listed.

If your website meets these criteria Google might assign Sitelinks to your website for your most important keywords.

Sitelinks can be a nice addition for searches for general keywords but they usually won't appear for searches that consist of two to four words. These words are the most important keywords for website promotion and search engine optimization.

People who search for multiple word keywords are more likely to purchase goods or services than people using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).

Free SEO Tool To Check Web Site Customer Focus

Free SEO Tool To Check Web Site Customer Focus

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs versus your needs?

Remember that your Web site should be built for your customer with words spoken just for your customer.

Visit the "We We Monitor" to see how customer focused your Web site copy really is.
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

4 Easy SEO Tips For Top Ranking Success

4 Easy SEO Tips For Top Ranking Success

Avoid the following things which can get you in trouble with search engines:

-Don't use hidden text or hidden links.
-Don't employ cloaking or lightning fast java redirects.
-Don't load up your pages with irrelevant words.
-Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content

Google Gets Out Of SEO Biz. Leaves SEO To The Pros

Google Gets Out Of SEO Biz. Leaves SEO To The Pros

Google to cut DoubleClick jobs, sell Performics piece
The layoffs and business unit shuffling are significant but expected

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service April 02, 2008

Less than a month after closing its DoubleClick acquisition, Google announced on Wednesday significant but expected changes in the ad services company that include reducing its staff and selling part of its Performics division.

Google will lay off or offer "transitional roles" to about 25 percent of DoubleClick's U.S. workforce, a source familiar with the plan said. The person, who asked not to be named, said that staffers offered a transitional role would be employed in a contract position for a certain period of time

Google acknowledged that DoubleClick's staff will be cut without offering details about the number of positions eliminated. "Since our acquisition of DoubleClick closed on March 11, we have been working to match and align DoubleClick employees in the U.S. with our organizational plan for the business. As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company. Today, we are laying off some DoubleClick employees in the U.S. and placing others in transitional roles," Google said in a statement.

Prior to the layoffs announced Wednesday, DoubleClick had 1,500 employees worldwide, including 1,200 in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Google has decided to divest itself of the SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) group within Performics, a move that had also been anticipated. Providing SEO and SEM services puts Google in some potential conflict of interest situations that could damage its relationship with independent SEO and SEM firms and with Performics clients.

"It's clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users," wrote Tom Phillips, director of the DoubleClick integration process, in an official blog posting .

Google doesn't yet have a buyer for the Performics business, but it has "received preliminary interest" from some current partners, according to Phillips. "Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold," he wrote.

Google will retain Performics' affiliate marketing business and integrate it into existing Google operations, Phillips wrote.

SEO and SEM firms, which provide services for improving Web sites' search-engine rankings and running effective search-engine ad campaigns, had been vocal about their displeasure at having Google, until now a partner, turned into a competitor via Performics.

A key concern in the SEO area was that Performics would get special access to inside information about Google's search-engine algorithms, putting independent SEO firms at a disadvantage. Meanwhile, there was concern that Google would push its in-house Performics SEM services at highly discounted prices, or maybe even for free, in competition with SEM service providers.

A potential conflict of interest situation involved the conceptually divergent missions of Performics and Google's ad sales business. Performics is supposed to get its clients the highest return on investment from their paid search campaigns -- spending as little as necessary to achieve their goals. But Google's business is to sell as much advertising as possible. This, critics pointed out, could lead Performics to put Google's interests above those of its clients.

The Performics SEO services also put Google in the business of taking money from clients in exchange for helping them rank better in search-engine results, something Google has always vowed not to do. Moreover, Performics provides paid inclusion services into search engines that engage in this practice, in which a company pays a search engine to include its Web site in its index. Google has always been highly critical of paid inclusion services, and doesn't offer them.

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Signals that Google uses to rank web pages

Signals that Google uses to rank web pages

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO posted his April Fool's I am sorry post to everyone today. Below is from his post:

To make up for playing pranks today, I recorded a brief movie about some of the signals that Google uses to rank web pages. We publicly say that Google uses over 200 different signals in our ranking algorithms, but we don’t always talk about them much. If you’re interested to hear more about the signals that Google uses, here’s the recording. (check it out)

Matt Cutts Said,
April 1, 2008 @ 10:32 pm

Oh, I think I got the wrong url for the video. Let me find the right one..

Added: this is the right video.

Free Google Wake Up Kit

Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit!

Google Calendar, offers users a "Free Wake Up Kit" to help users get out of bed in the morning.

"The 'wake up' notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used," the fake announcement from Google read. "The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters."

An 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button on Google Calendar schedules random dates.

(Credit: Google)Google Calendar also added one of Google's famous "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons to its scheduling tool, creating random events on calendars that inevitably involved dates with celebrities. (Except I didn't really feel lucky. I was only offered "dates" with Tom Cruise, George W. Bush, and South Park's Eric Cartman. None of them are really my type.)

Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit!
Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? We do, too. In fact this problem became so serious at times that it sometimes resulted in lacklustre attendance at team meetings. To help solve the problem we've created an innovative solution called the Google Wake Up Kit.

"I could never wake up on time to get to our team meetings. But thanks to the new Google Wake Up Kit, I'm always on time now!"
Pedro C. In combination with the kit, you can receive a new type of notification from Google Calendar, called the "wake up" notification. This notification is relentless in ensuring your timely awakening from restful slumber.

The "wake up" notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters.

By the way: APRIL FOOL!