Google and Spam Detection. What Google Knows About Spam

What Google Knows About Spam 10 Minute Video

Visit: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/what-google-knows-about-spam/

If you didn’t attend Web 2.0, you can watch Matt Cutts, the Google Guy ten-minute keynote about “What Google Knows About Spam” (and several other keynotes) on blip.tv. I’ll embed the keynote below as well

So if you want a great introduction to "What Google Knows About Spam" then spend 10 minutes watching Matt's Web 2.0 keynote video. It will be the best 10 minute investment you make all week.

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/

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 Uses New Method To Detect Duplicate Content

Google's new method to detect duplicate content

Google doesn't like duplicate content. The reason for that is that the top 10 search results should offer users a choice of different web pages.

Google's new patent application on near duplicate content describes a new method how Google tries to keep its users from finding redundant content in the result pages.

Content may be duplicated for a variety of reasons

There are many reasons why content is duplicated on more than one page, or why documents are very similar:

The content of a web page is available in different formats: web page, printable page, PDF, mobile phone page, etc.

The content of a web page is syndicated, for example news articles or blog posts.

The content management system (CMS) displays the same content in different locations. For example, an item might be listed in a "Size" category and in a "Color" category.

The website owner offers mirrors to make sure that a website does not slow down when many people want to access the same page at the same time.

Someone stole the contents of a web page to reproduce it on other websites.

To avoid showing the same content more than once in the search results, search engines try to detect these duplicate pages.

What's in the patent application?

The patent application describes how Google tries to detect duplicate or near duplicate content at different web addresses. It seems that Google might combine several existing methods for detecting new duplicate content to identify more duplicates on the Internet.

The new patent application shows that Google is serious about detecting duplicate content issues. This new patent application is only the latest step in Google's attempts to detect duplicate content. For example, previous steps can be found here (PDF) and here.

What does Google do when it detects duplicate content?

It's hard to tell what Google will do when they find duplicate pages. There are many instances where duplicated content is used for a legitimate purpose.

If Google only removes the duplicate pages from the search results for a certain query that might be okay. If Google penalized duplicate pages by removing them completely from the index, Google might risk not being relevant for very specific queries and it also might penalize the wrong pages.

It's likely that Google will pick the web page with the best reputation and the best inbound links for the search results if it finds more than one page with the same content.

What does this mean for your website?

If you want to get high rankings, it is easier to do so with unique content. Try to use as much original content as possible on your web pages.

If your website must use the same content as another website, make sure that your website has better inbound links than the other websites that carry the same content.

Peak Over The Shoulder of An SEO Guru...

Peak Over The Shoulder of An SEO Guru...

http://www.ecombuffet.com/Webinar/

Learn The Insider Tips That We Use To
Dominate The Engines and Drive Massive Traffic For Clients.

"Search Engine Optimization Step By Step – We Reveal It All"
You’ve read the books, listened to the conference calls, read the reports and critiques on your site but you’ve never peaked over the shoulder of our Director of SEO and watched her work! Now you can.

For the first time ever we are doing a special exposé – a live Webinar where we reveal our SEO techniques.

You are truly getting an inside look at Bonnie's work. You'll not only watch her work, but you'll get play by play - as she explains optimization each step of the way. It'll be like sitting right there in her office. You may even hear her dog Lucy barking in the background.

Why are we letting you in and revealing our optimization process?
The truth is, we would love for you to hire us to handle your SEO but we know not everyone can afford it, and not everyone wants to outsource.

So, rather than not do any business with you at all, we realized it would benefit us (we are in business to make money after all) and more importantly YOU if we opened the door to Bonnie’s office and shared all of this vital information with you.

You might expect to pay a thousand dollars or more for this kind of personal, insider information. It’s definitely worth that and more! We are willing to offer this special Webinar one time only at the hugely discounted rated of $147 per person – but only for a limited time. Go here for full details: http://www.ecombuffet.com/Webinar/

So, how does your web page get selected to be the one we optimize during the Webinar?
Sign up for the Webinar today and we will select one person at random to be featured as the web page that gets optimized live on the Webinar.

This amazing opportunity at this low price is not something that comes along every day – in fact, I have never seen something like this offered at such a low price before. Act now before the price increases. This Friday, February 29, 2008 the price will go up to $247 – a full $100 more.

The date hasn’t been set for the Webinar yet, but it will be a Saturday. If you regiater for the event but are unable to attend live, it is OK – you will receive a copy of the live Webinar that you can watch any time, over and over again!

Sign up today for only $147 to watch a 10 year optimization expert at work. You’ll learn step by step everything she does to optimize a web page. http://www.ecombuffet.com/Webinar/

Google Postion 6 Penalty

Google backs out of the position 6 penalty

Some weeks ago, we informed you about Google's new position 6 penalty. At this time, it was unclear why Google assigned this penalty to some websites.

The theories were that Google considered usage data when calculating the rankings and that Google had a better understanding of word and phrase relationships.

Was this just a bug in Google's algorithm?

In a discussion about this problem, Google's Matt Cutts recently wrote the following:

"When Barry asked me about 'position 6' in late December, I said that I didn't know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We're in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks."

This statement means two things:

It seems that Google made a mistake that sent many position 1 rankings to position 6.

Google has released a patch for this.
Indeed, many webmasters who experienced problems with the position 6 penalty reported that their rankings are now as good as before.

What was Google trying to do?

Even if Google says that the position 6 penalty was not intended, it is clear that Google tried to do something with the results.

What was it and will Google continue to do this without the unwanted position 6 effect?

The changes might have something to do with Google's increased integration of Universal Search in the results. In addition to the normal 10 web page results, Google now often returns results from Google Images, Google Maps, Google News or other Google services.

The way Google integrates Universal Search results into the normal search results changed during the last weeks. These changes also might have caused the temporary position 6 problem.

If your website has been affected by the position 6 penalty you can relax. Your web pages should have regained their high positions by now.

7 Ways To Improve Your Web Site Link Structure

7 Ways To Improve Your Web Site Link Structure

The internal link structure of a website is a search engine optimization factor that is often overlooked by webmasters.

Why does the link structure of your website has an effect on your rankings?

The internal link structure of your site allows you to spread the link power of your home page to the individual pages of your site.

For example, if 1000 other websites link to your home page, then your home page has a certain link power that can be spread to the other pages of your site. If you link to 50 pages on your home page then each page will get 1/50 of the link power. If you link to only 10 pages, then each page will get much more link power passed to it (1/10).

The more link power a page receives, the more likely it is that the page will get high rankings on search engines. Your internal link structure allows you to direct search engines to your most important pages.

How to improve the internal link structure of your website

There are several things that you can do to improve the rankings of special pages on your website:

Make sure that the most important pages on your site can be reached with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more important it looks to search engines.

Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all pages of your website that are related to that page. The easiest way to get related links to a web page is to link from your own website.

Use your targeted keywords in the links to these pages. Make sure that you use keywords that are highly relevant and targeted.

Show search engines for which keywords your web pages are relevant.

Make the links on your website absolute. Do not link to mypage.htm but to www.yoursite.com/mypage.htm. If other people scrape your web page contents, you'll get backlinks from these sites.

Add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren't important for your search engine rankings. For example, your privacy policy page or the web page with your terms and conditions probably needn't be listed in search engines.

The fewer links you have on a page, the more important is the single link to the other pages on your site. If possible, remove unnecessary links from your web pages.

Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing. This is very similar to tip 5. If search engines don't have to parse your unimportant pages they can take a close look at the pages for which you want to be ranked.

Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages. You might want to use the link checker that you can access in the new IBP 10 beta.
By optimizing the structure of how your web pages pass their link power, you can influence how search engines treat the content of your website.

Once you have optimized the link structure of your website, you should try to get more links from other websites.

It's hard to beat a website with a great internal and external link structure.

SEO Tip: Update Your Web Site Several Times A Week

Update Your Web Site Several Times A Week

Remember that you can get much more relevancy for "content freshness" than you may expect.

Content freshness: Don't just dump a bunch of new content on your Web site, but consistently add new articles or content on a regular basis. Watch how the search engine robots behave when you start doing this consistently.

So, spend some time each day, or at least 2-3 times a week to make updates to your web site. The time spent will be well worth it

Absolute Link Advantages With SEO

Absolute Link Advantages With SEO

An absolute link contains the whole URL for example:
http://www.your domain-name.com/your-page.html

It is said to be absolute because it can link to the pages absolutely from anywhere on any Web site.

A regular link may only include the page name ie. your-page.html without the Http://www. This type of link will work within the Web site but not anywhere else.

The absolute link also has the benefit of passing a measure of PR or Google PageRank on to the page it is pointing to.

So, when doing links within your web site, try and use absolute links and not the easy, lazy way of just the page name link. The 2 extra seconds it takes to make a 'full' link will pay off in the end.

OnTheAvenues SEO Consultant

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Optimizing for Secondary Supporting Keywords

Optimizing for secondary supporting keywords can be a golden mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most popular keywords, there will be far less competition (and probably more hits) for pages that are focused on the minor words or synonyms.

For example, "real estate in Mississippi" might have much less action than "real estate" by itself, but if you are operating in Mississippi, you could get less volume in traffic but considerably more refined traffic. Also do not under estimate the value of working with acronyms. For example "real estate MS" or for example "Victorian homes in NJ" short for New Jersey

We see real estate sites that achieve top rankings in a few shport weeks by using secondary supporting keywords. For example, a site we did for a realtor in Phoenix AZ that receives over 400 page view a day for such terms as:

modern camelback corridor lofts
westgate az living
biltmore court phoenix
price per square foot for a condo in phoenix
44 monroe
encanto district homes phoenix
chateux on central
urban mansion arizona
chateaux on central
44 monroe phoenix
biltmore phoenix homes
biltmore arizona new upscale high rise for lease
modern camelback corridor lofts
zips codes of historic districts in pheonix
condos on central in phoenix
paradise valley mls search
downtown phoenix, az zip code fq story
encanto historic district arizona zip code
summit condos phoenix
real estate for sale f.q. story
historic phoenix
biltmore townhouses phoenix
palmcroft in phoenix arizona
az mls free
phoenix mls
arizona new homes/cave creek
free arizona mls
central phoenix home search

In short, generic terms are not always the best. Look outside the box when selecting keywords

If you need your real estate site optimized to achieve better rankings, be sure to contact OnTheAvenues

Using ALT Attributes Correctly

Using ALT Attributes Correctly

Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, provides some useful tips on how to optimize the images you include on your site, and how simply providing useful, accurate information in your ALT attributes can make your photos and pictures more discoverable on the web.




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!

SEO Tip: Title Tags

SEO Tip: Title Tags

Have a look at the most recent page you are working on. Can you identify just one single benefit that your content is offering?

Whether it might be a "special low cost" or perhaps the product you sell is a "time saver." Think about how you can possibly move whatever the benefit is, right up into your Title tag where you will have it visible within the search results.

The result should be a Title that includes your keyword phrase but also reads well and compels the reader to take action and choose your link over other competing links regardless of where you rank in the top 10 results. By highlight a benefit or trigger into your Title tag, you can increase your click through ratio for the page.

Write in a compelling fashion and try to get your triggers and benefits right up in the Title for searchers to see.

SEO Tip: Keep Your Web Site Sitemap Current

SEO Tip: Keep Your Web Site Sitemap Current

Put links to new pages on your site map. Make sure you link to your site map from every page of your Web site.If there's a corresponding page on your site that you can use to link to the new page, do so.

Mention the new page on your blog. Do you have a directory associated with the particular topic dealing with the content of this new page? Add a link on that page.

Just make sure that you give the search engines multiple ways to find all of your most important pages and never assume that a search engine robot will always find you through your home page.

How Pharmaceutical Affiliates Sites Can Achieve Top Organic Rankings

How Pharmaceutical Affiliates Sites Can Achieve Top Organic Rankings

If you are planning to make income from a Pharmaceutical affiliate, you need to do much more then load up their template website and hope that you will be found by searchers. You need to spend the time to work the site and market the site just as you would any business veture. The below article from iprosect provides excellent tips, which we highly suggest you follow as we know it does work, on how you can succeed with an affiliate Pharmaceutical website.

How Pharmaceutical Marketers Can Leverage Web 2.0
By Elizabeth Dillon
Search Marketing Specialist
iProspect

Pharmaceutical marketing is a different animal. Marketers in this field have to overcome a myriad of challenges, including strict legal guidelines, consumer beliefs, and stiff competition from thousands of other pharmaceutical companies. Given that climate, it is easy to understand why conducting a successful pharmaceutical search marketing campaign has unique challenges.

Fortunately, Web 2.0 has opened up new opportunities for search marketers in this industry. In fact, considering the fierce online competition that pharmaceutical marketers face, having a presence in social media is practically a necessity. Today there are several options that search marketers can leverage, including video optimization, online community sites, shared blogging, and more.

Where should you begin?

Start by utilizing what is already on your site. For example, many pharmaceutical websites host videos - on patient stories or doctor's advice - but are not making the best use of them. Smart marketers will leverage the power of social media to fully capitalize on these digital assets. To do so, ensure that your videos appear within the search results by optimizing them with keyword phrase-rich meta data and URLs. Then submit them to video hosting sites, such as YouTube. By taking advantage of these networks, your brand can be placed in front of thousands of attentive users who otherwise might not find your website. If they find the content valuable, it's likely that they will share the video with friends. This can jump start a viral brand awareness campaign.

What else can you do? Identify some social media networks that you think could be a fit. But before you dive in, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Do Your Research

First, the venue you choose be in alignment with your target audience. Take the time to study some of the channels you are considering, and get a sense of its users, the topics they post, and the products/services that would be appropriate for them. For example, you may want to research websites where users are actively looking for health or medical advice - such as iMedix.com - where members are able to assist each other by sharing their experiences, and ranking medical content.

Actively Participate

Next, you need to find a way to participate within these online communities - post comments, create symptom quizzes, or health checklists. When users find a resource or company that is consistently interacting with the online community, they see that brand as loyal and attentive. This type of networking can build a strong connection with users. But to keep that relationship going, your content needs to be fresh, engaging and useful.

Play by the Rules

Lastly, think beyond tactics. Ultimately, you want to become a trusted member of the community. To accomplish this, not only do you need to contribute in a meaningful way, you also need to play by the rules - this includes openly disclosing yourself as part of a pharmaceutical company. Don't underestimate the importance of this as each online community has its own culture, and set of unwritten rules for what is - and isn't - acceptable on the site. Moreover, online communities don't hesitate to meter out punishment to those who don't abide by the rules (They can be particularly spiteful to marketers who pretend to be users.) Given that, you would be wise to study how other marketers participate, and assess the response their efforts generated within the community. Smart marketers will emulate what works and do it in a total transparent fashion.

Create a Blog

Blogs offer pharmaceutical marketers another viable path to capitalize on social media. Like a community site, a blog can create a destination for users - a place where they can find out more about a drug and the disease or the condition it treats. If the blog is accurate, comprehensive and current, users will see it as a reputable source for support and a place to learn.

The bottom line is that pharmaceutical marketers know all too well that it's a jungle out there, and that they need every advantage they can get. The savvy ones are finding ways to embrace social media, incorporate it into their overall search marketing efforts, and benefit from all it has to offer.

Converting Your Web Visitors To Buyers. Do Not Hide Prices

Converting Your Web Visitors To Buyers. Do Not Hide Prices

We all hate surprises, especially when we're shopping online. Don't hide the price and don't hide the shipping cost.

Some online merchants may do this on their sites, but it doesn't mean you have to. In fact, if you clearly state the price when a merchant isn't, then you're doing the potential customer a service.

If you can state on your page that Product A costs $50, tax is an extra $5 and Shipping is $10 then the potential customer can dance merrily through the shopping cart without being stopped in their tracks by extra costs.

If a customer knows from the very beginning that to get Product A delivered to their door is going to cost $65 then their brains and credit card are prepared for the dreaded process of the shopping cart and parting with their money.

Also, remember people in other countries. If Product A is only shipped in the USA and Canada then state it early on. You're not going to lose a customer as they can't receive Product A anyway, but you do gain the trust and respect of that person as you've saved them the hassle of going through the whole shopping cart process only to find at the last page, in the small print, that they don't ship to the UK.

If you want to know how to get high search engine rankings without offending search engines, take a look at OnTheAvenues.

SEO Secrets Revealed By Top Google Staff Video

SEO Secrets Revealed By Top Google Staff Video

From blogging to site content, links from other sites, sitemaps, Google webmaster tools, meta tags, Google base, indexing and more. This is a nice 10 minute video interview with Matt Cutts 'the Google guy'

Value Of Website Content. Value Of Blog Content

When is the last time you added value of your website content or Blog content.

Far too often we are thinking only of those search engine spiders. The good news is that fresh new content that is created to be of value for your website and blog readers, also makes EXCELLENT "spider food."

Do a little research and watch for some topic areas that you think would be in high audience interest reading.

Then write some brand new, original fresh, content based on:

1. Your audience's true interests.
2. Something that has a genuine value or "useful quality" for your readers.

3. Do a mild re-write for optimization purposes.

Try creating a series of 10 brand new articles, tutorials, interviews, FAQs or whatever you feel would benefit your website readers based on your research.

BUT Do not put all 10 articles online at once.

But begin to put each new article or page up (one per week for 10 weeks.) Pick a specific day of the week and add one new article each and every week consistantly on that day.

Not only will you notice more people finding your Web site, but watch what this does for improving the regularity of those spider visits. You are stepping up the quality of your content for your readers, but because of those fresh, original and engaging articles that you have written, you're giving the search engines a buffet of delicious spider food. Steady, consistent updates over a period of time produces frequent spider visits.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Tip: Obtaining Top Visibility For A Web Page

Obtaining Top Visibility For A Web Page

What is the next most important aspect to obtaining top visibility for a page? If you said "conversion" you are right.

How are your high performance pages converting for you.
Are there things you could do to help you convert more of your traffic into sales?

You bet there are. Here is an easy tip that you can consider on your busy pages that are ranking well, but may not be converting to well.

Obtaining Top Visibility For A Web Page Tip:

Did you know that the right kind of graphic on your page can help you fulfill your page's objective? If using an image of a person's face, try to find one that is looking into the eyes of your visitor with a happy expression (just like the picture on this blog entry....is that a face that states HAPPY) . People relate to the human face (particularly around the eys.) Try not to have your image glancing downward (which can signify someone feeling depressed.) Smiling happy people are who your audience will relate too and you might be surprised how effective the right image can contribute to your sales, if you put it on a page that has the traffic already coming in to it.

The most profitable Web site are those that are:
1. Easily found and
2. Able to compel the visitor to take action right now.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998. http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/ Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant