By Richard Zwicky Published October 31, 2003, SiteProNews
Wouldn't it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly? Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.
Well, this reality is much closer than you might think.
To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results. Teoma incorporated the technology used by Direct Hit, the first engine to use click through tracking and stickiness measurement as part of their ranking algorithm. More about Alexa below.
How can Traffic be a Factor?
Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. Properly used and combined, this data can make it possible for users, via passive feedback, to help search engines organize and present relevant search results.
Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engine's results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be. For many engines the click through calculation ends there. But for the search engines that have enabled toolbars, the possibilities are enormous.
Stickiness measurement is a really great idea in theory, the premise being that a user will click the first result, and either spend time reading a relevant web page, or will click on the back button, and look at the next result. The longer a user spends on each page, the more relevant it must be. This measurement does go a long way to fixing the problem with "spoofing" click popularity results. A great example of a search engine that uses this type of data in their algorithms is Alexa.
Alexa's algorithm is different from the other search engines. Their click popularity algorithm collects traffic pattern data from their own site, partner sites, and also from their own toolbar. Alexa combines three distinct concepts: link popularity, click popularity and click depth. Its directory ranks related links based on popularity, so if your web site is popular, your site will be well placed in Alexa.
The Alexa toolbar doesn't just allow searches, it also reports on people's Internet navigation patterns. It records where people who use the Alexa toolbar go. For example, their technology is able to build a profile of which web sites are popular in the context of which search topic, and display the results sorted according to overall popularity on the Internet.
For example a user clicks a link to a "financial planner", but the web site content is an "online casino". They curse for a moment, sigh, and click back to get back to the search results, and look at the next result; the web site gets a low score. The next result is on topic, and they read 4 or 5 pages of content. This pattern is clearly identifiable and used by Alexa to help them sort results by popularity. The theory is that the more page views a web page has, the more useful a resource it must be. For example, follow this link today -
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/ traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.metamend.com/
- look at the traffic details chart, and then click the "Go to site now" button. Repeat the procedure again tomorrow and you should see a spike in user traffic. This shows how Alexa ranks a web site for a single day.
What Can I Do To Score Higher With Click Popularity Algorithms?
Since the scores that generate search engine rankings are based on numerous factors, there's no magic formula to improve your site's placement. It's a combination of things. Optimizing your content, structure and meta tags, and increasing keyword density won't directly change how your site performs in click-tracking systems, but optimizing them will help your web site's stickiness measurement by ensuring that the content is relevant to the search query. This relevance will help it move up the rankings and thus improve its click popularity score.
Search Engines Can Use the Click Through Strategy to Improve Results
Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.
Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results.
Is any search engine employing such a ranking formula? The answer is yes. Exactseek recently announced it had implemented such a system, making it the first search engine to integrate direct customer feedback into its results. Exactseek still places an emphasis on content and quality of optimization, so a well optimized web site, which meets their guidelines will perform well. What this customer feedback system will do is validate the entire process, automatically letting the search engine know how well received a search result is. Popular results will get extended views, whereas unpopular results will be pushed down in ranking.
Exactseek has recently entered into a variety of technology alliances, including the creation of an Exactseek Meta Tag awarded solely to web sites that meet their quality of optimization standards. Cumulatively, their alliances combine to dramatically improve their search results.
ExactSeek's innovative approach to ranking search results could be the beginning of a trend among search engines to incorporate traffic data into their ranking algorithms. The searching public will likely have the last word, but webmasters and search engine marketers should take notice that the winds of change are once again blowing on the search engine playing field.
About The Author Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firm's business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geo-locational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
When it comes to pay per click search engines, GoTo.com is the clear leader. Over the years, GoTo has established relationships with many of the top search engines and directories, including Dogpile, Netscape, Hotbot, MSN, Compuserve, NBCI, American Online, Lycos, AltaVista and CNET.
So what does all of this mean to you and how do you use these relationships to your benefit? If you bid on keywords/phrases with GoTo and are listed in one of the top three positions, your site will also show up on the above engines when someone performs a search for one of your keyphrases. For example: Suppose you've snatched up "London vacations" as a keyphrase in one of GoTo's top three positions. If an AltaVista user types the phrase "London vacations" in the search box, the results page will have your site listed at the very top. You'll have similar results at the other search engines that are powered with GoTo listings. A nice way to get a top listing, don't you think?
According to GoTo, the top three bids - which they call "Premium Listings" -get more than twice the number of searches as a regular listing. Let's take a look at just where your site will appear on the various search engines /directories when you secure a premium listing.
AltaVista: To show up on AltaVista's search results page you need to be in the top six bid positions at GoTo. These bids will appearing as "partner listings" on AltaVista's search results page, with the top three bids showing up at the top of the listings and an additional three appearing at the very bottom of the search results page.
America Online: American Online boasts over 2.3 million members. To show up here you'll need to have one of the top three bid positions at GoTo. The links are labeled as "Sponsored Links" at the top of their results page before other search options are listed.
Lycos: The top three listings from GoTo appear under the heading "Featured Listings," before Lycos' own search results. There is also a link labeled "More Featured Listings" that leads you to a full page of GoTo results in bid order. Two more GoTo listings show up in the first ten results under what Lycos refers to as "Web Sites" section.
Netscape: Owned by America Online, they also display GoTo's listings under what's called "Partner Search Results" but only the top two bid positions are shown.
HotBot: The top three GoTo bids show up on HotBot's search results page under the title "Featured Listings."
MSN: After performing a search on MSN, the results page has a link that says "Get the Top 10 Most Popular Sites for [ the keyphrase you searched]". When you click through, the first three listings you'll see are the top three bids from Goto for that keyword or phrase.
CompuServe: If you're in the top ten at GoTo.com, you'll show up in searches at CompuServe. All of their search results appear to be supplied by GoTo and are labeled as "Premium Web Pages."
CNET: If you perform a search on CNET you'll see GoTo.com's top three listings for that particular word/phrase appearing in the right hand column in a box titled "Goto.com Search Partners."
NBCI: NBCi appears to be pulling the top 15 GoTo search results to be displayed on their results page. By clicking "more results" at the bottom of the page, additional GoTo listings are displayed.
DogPile: The first ten results from GoTo.com are displayed on DogPile's search results page. Below those you'll see LookSmart's results followed by Sprinks listings.
FAs you can see, positioning yourself in the top three positions with GoTo can get you some major exposure on many of the most popular search engines and directories online today. If you've been hesitant about opening your own GoTo account you may want to reconsider after seeing how widespread their reach is.
Remember, with GoTo you're not paying for impressions - only for actual click throughs, and the traffic you'll receive is highly targeted. More bang for your buck, so to speak.
By partnering with GoTo and obtaining a "premium listing," you too can be listed at the top of the search engines and isn't that what everyone wants?
About the Author
Merle http://www.EzineAdAuction.com "Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made" Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting! Publishers sell off your excess inventory and Buyers pick up some Fantastic bargains. Go now.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
By Jessica Albon
Copyright 2003, The Write Exposure
You spent a ton of time getting your website just right for Google. And now your site has sunk to the very bottom of the results for several key phrases.
Your traffic has plunged, and, worse, so have your profits. Sure, you know now you shouldn't have relied so heavily on one source of website traffic, but how do you fix the problem?
If your online business has taken a hit from the Florida Updates of Google, read on for five ways to build a broader base so the next algorithm change won't be as devastating.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT THE SEARCH ENGINES It's not the search engine's job to deliver traffic to your website. Rather, a search engine strives to give the best results to each searcher. Think about your site from your visitor's point of view. What information is that visitor looking for? And how can you make it clear up front that that's the information you provide?
Work at providing information from your website and giving the search engines that information-don't work so hard at convincing search engines that your site is what visitors want.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT SITE VISITORS Each visitor to your website is worth a certain dollar amount to you. Whether or not they buy. If you don't already know this amount, now's the time to calculate it. With this number in hand, you can consider advertising and pay-per- click strategies that'll bring more traffic to your website.
If you're looking for stability, seriously consider what a visitor is worth to you and then check into pay per click advertising to bring in the right number of visitors every day.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT FOLLOW UP You've been stalling and hesitating to set up a follow up program. It takes too much time, you thought. And, besides, you were getting that steady flow of new traffic. So you didn't set up anything. And now that you're hurting for traffic, you don't even have a group of people you can offer a promotion to to bring them back to your site. Without a follow up program, the little traffic that's trickling onto your website is lost forever.
Get those people to opt-in to receive updates from you so you can bring them back to your website time and again until they buy.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT WEB PROMOTION Sure, it's easy to hire an SEO expert and sit back and wait for the search engines to bring traffic to your website. But search engines are run by third parties over whom you have no control. And that means relying on them to bring you traffic is risky at best.
Instead, look for ways you can bring traffic to your website yourself. Publish articles on other sites, set up cross- promotions with related websites, go off line for traffic.
CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE Do you think visitors should visit your site and think you're exactly the solution they're looking for? Without visiting your competition, considering their options, contacting your help desk, or having any questions? Good luck.
Instead, set your site up to be a friendly experience for the traffic you do get. Give each individual visitor plenty of support and resources. Not only will this increase the number of visitors who buy, but it'll also increase the number of visitors who recommend your site to a friend.
Ultimately, the responsibility for bringing traffic to your website rests with you-not the search engines, and not your SEO expert. By taking responsibility for bringing the visitors you need in to your site each month, you'll be able to ride out any algorithm changes, shifts in public opinion about specific search engines, and other day-to-day changes in business. Setting up these systems now will start bringing traffic to your site very quickly, and will also have lasting effects.
Want more tips on how to build follow up programs that'll put your profits back under your control? Visit http://www.designdoodles.com for free information on creating newsletters to follow up with prospects.
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
by Diane Hughes © 2004 http://www.probiztips.com
As the economy begins to recover in certain parts of the world, more and more online marketers are looking for affordable ways to drive qualified traffic to their sites. That's why, now more than ever, you need to optimize your site for the search engines.
Have you heard the saying, "Short-term sacrifice for long-term gain"? It applies here. For just a little effort, you can ensure a practically endless supply of visitors to your site for years to come. And the benefits are unbeatable.
Fr.ee Exposure
There is absolutely no cost for submitting to most of the major search engines like Google. That means you get exceptional exposure in front of people who are looking for what you have to offer. Anybody can afford fr.ee.
Targeted Traffic
If you develop your site to focus on specific keyphrases that your customers would use when searching, you can drive extremely targeted traffic to your site. Use tools like Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) to find out which phrases are most often used to locate sites like yours.
Easy To Learn
Search engine optimization (despite what many so-called "gurus" will tell you) is relatively easy to learn. Simply hang out in a few search engine optimization (SEO) forums (http://www.highrankings.com/forum and http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forum are two of the best) and ask questions.
Consistent Delivery of Visitors
People use search engines to find what they are looking for all the time, all day long. In fact, 85% of people online use a search engine when trying to locate a product, service, or information. That means your SEO'd site receives a constant stream of visitors 24/7.
Exposure On Other Sites
Many search engines now offer to provide their search results on other Web sites. If a site that subscribes to Google or MSN's search result service has a similar theme to your site, you could find your URL popping up all over the 'Net.
Overall, for the little bit of time it takes to optimize your site, search engine listings simply can't be ignored. Why continue to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month for paid advertising when you can have a horde of visitors delivered to your site fr.ee? Before you spend another dime on paid ads, take a good, hard look at search engine optimization.
Diane Hughes is an accomplished Internet entrepreneur and editor of the popular ProBizTips Newsletter. Subscribe to her newsletter for more tips, tricks, and secrets of the trade - plus get HUNDREDS of eBooks, software, and tools just for subscribing! http://www.ProBizTips.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
by Stephan Miller
First of all, what type of keywords should you optimize for? A single word, a whole sentence. The actual question is what are people searching for? Here is a breakdown of the most popular type of searches.
Two word searches 29% One word searches 25% Three word searches 24% Four word searches 12% Five word searches 5% Six word searches 2% Seven word searches 1%
What about active verbs? Think about it. If someone types in "buy", "find" or similar words, wouldn't this be an indication that the person is about to make a move, instead of just surf. Although you could go to a top 100 search terms site, why not create your own top 100 active search terms by putting these active verbs into a keyword tool.
People talk to their computers. They will use "I" in their search engine queries sometimes. "How do I find...?" I know I do. I also hold my computer personally responsible when I can't find something or Windows locks up.
People put .com in their searches. Type .com into the Overture keyword tool and see how many websites people know by name but still are attached to using a search engine.
Which sites have a really bad interface? I can name a few, a few big ones. You can find these by typing "registration," "signup", "login", or "join" into a keyword tool. How about "purchase"? If you are doing affiliate marketing you may try these and take advantage of webmasters who should be called webminors.
Although a little bit off-topic, I read somewhere that sponsoring cars for Nascar races is one of the most effective ways to advertise a product. Nascar fans are very loyal. This got me thinking.
Fans are definitely an endless source of revenue. What would they be searching for? A few of the words they may type in are "posters", "zine" and others. Or just type in a celebrity name and "fan" and look for keywords in the pages that come from Google.
Then there are terms that are standard on many sites. When I was looking for places to submit my software, I just plugged "submit pad" into Google. If you are looking for Clickbank affiliates, you might type the product name and "hop."
The point is that the customers you are looking for aren't a computer and they aren't a dictionary. So you can't be either when you search for terms to optimize. You've got to think like someone in need of your product. I bet if you gave it a little time, you can come up with more examples
Stephan Miller is a freelance programmer, writer, and webmaster. Visit the newsletter issue this article came from. http://www.profit-ware.com/newsletter/18Profit122703.htm
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
By Merle http://MCPromotionsPress.com
Google's recent November changes to its algorithm, now known as the "Florida Update, have left many site owners in a quandary. Many who were enjoying top placements, have lost their spots, and apparently, for no real reason.
Now keep in mind, that periodic algorithmic changes are a normal and vital maintenance feature of "ALL" major search engines, but the effect of this particular "Dance," as these adjustments have come to be called, has been truly enormous, and carried with it consequences, still yet unmeasured or understood.
It's hard to tell what kind of "dance" Google was doing,as, to many, it appears to be more of a form of "slam dancing". Algorithms are what are used to rank web pages,and periodic changes are to be expected, but this one is being hailed as the most substantial change at Google in years.
Google is definitely trying to clean the spam from its database, but many innocent people, who claim not to be using illegal search engine optimization techniques,were hurt in the process.
Certainly Google's main goal is to provide relevant results to its users. If they didn't, no one would want to use them for searching. There was no advance warning of the change, but that's pretty normal. No real surprise there.
What is a surprise, however, is that many site owners who felt they were doing nothing wrong, were penalized in the process.
Manipulative behavior is definitely being punished. Google is certainly enforcing their guidelines and has grown tired of those website owners using "spammy optimization" techniques and having little or no real content. Google claims the change is all part of their continued efforts to improve their search engine results, but many others have their own "conspiracy theories" about what lies behind the big change.
Keep in mind that this is all purely speculation:
1) Some say Google is trying to force small business owners to join their "AdWords" Program. Since most of the sites that were hardest hit by the flux, happen to be highly competitive, commercial ventures by nature, there are whispers in the shadows, that perhaps an unpredictable index rating might convince the "freebie" seeker to join "Adwords," in order to obtain an ascertainably better placement.
2) The other theory is that Google is trying to increase their "perceived value" in the eyes of the business world, as a whole, before issuing their IPO. This would make them a far more attractive commodity to potential investors with big bucks.
Certain genres of websites were definitely hit harder than others. That is a fact, which is not even being debated. Anyone can quite easily verify that for them self, with a minimal effort of research. The biggest classifications to suffer from the slam, seems to be:
1) Real Estate Agent Sites 2) Search Engine Optimization Sites 3) Travel and Tourism Sites
It would appear that a lot of the sites, now ranking highest with Google, are more editorial, instead of commercial. Is this purely coincidence?
So why is everyone so shaken up by this change? Well, with over 3 billion pages in their index and with Google powering so many other of the major search engines,they control a lot of the search engine pie. Lose ranking with them, and you lose a lot.
As a site owner with a good marketing plan, you should be using many other promotional / marketing methods, and not putting all your "eggs in the Google basket" so to speak. Those who were using Google for their main source of traffic are definitely hurting right now. Let this serve as a lesson to diversify your marketing efforts.
So what's an "honest" site owner to do? Stay away from irrelevant linking and link farms, and build a quality site with good solid content. Use keywords in the first 250 words of text on the page, but don't go overboard. If, when read "out loud," it sounds funny, it's overkill.
Google outlines their guidelines for building a "search engine crawler friendly" site over at: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
If you haven't read this in awhile, or maybe you never have, you just might want to take an attentive look at it now, in hopes of safely improving your ranking, by conforming to their guidelines.
Google is also now integrating its "Froogle Listings" on its pages, so if you sell a tangible product, then you may very well want to use Froogle as an opportunity to get better placement.
Froogle is an extension of Google's search engine, which many people use for product research, before making a purchase. If there's a Froogle match on an attempted search, the results will show up on the results page. For more on Froogle go to: http://froogle.google.com/froogle/merchants.html
Remember, search engines should only be one small part of your marketing mix. By relying too heavily on any "single" search engine for your traffic, you'll likely find yourself in the position of being irretrievably out of balance and completely at their mercy, whenever such an algorithmic quake is inserted into the index.
So be sure to always use a wide variety of marketing/ promotional tactics, thereby, ensuring that the next time Google goes "Slam Dancing," you don't get an unintentional elbow in the eye or your feet stepped on.
Merle http://www.EzineAdAuction.com "Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made" Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting! Publishers sell off your excess inventory and Buyers pick up some Fantastic bargains. Go now. FREE e-book on how to "Write Winning Ezine Ads" http://www.ezineadauction.com/ebooks/greatezineads.pdf
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Forbes magazine reported that pay per click ads accounted for $1.4 billion in 2002 and are expected to increase to $8 billion by 2008. The fundamental core elements of a successful pay per click program are constant monitoring, analysis, and refinement.
Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.
Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.
Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:
When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?
How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?
What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine?
Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.
It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly, calculating and maximizing your return on investment.
The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the proper target.
Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that don't convert well for your product or services, or falling way down in position during a bidding war.
PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success, but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.
Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and resides in California. For more details, visit his website at http://business-at-home.us
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Copyright © 2003, Scott F. Geld Marketing Blaster.com http://www.MarketingBlaster.com
Search Engine Marketing is one of the most important ways of marketing your business and getting noticed. Most of the people start with search engines and if you are not listed and ranked higher on the most popular ones, then the chances are you would never be even noticed. It is just like having a great restaurant with great menus, but no readers. Where would it take you? Probably "no where"! Search engine optimization and positioning should always be the first and foremost chief concern of any Internet marketing strategy. You should search extensively for information, guidelines, and tips to help webmaster achieve good rankings on search engines. You can search for the latest online tools on the Internet itself to facilitate the implementation of your search engine strategies and plan.
Do everybody know that a website is all about content and product? Yes, they do. Marketing on the Internet through search engine is done through the content you place on your website. Content is like a fire to those flies (i.e. readers here). So when you create your website and decorate it with content, you should keep the few things in mind. You have all the important meta-tags listed in your HTML document and you should also be using the right keywords, descriptions and title for your pages. Beside these, you should also put cool scripts and graphics to make your website stand out in the ocean of information and make it look attractive. Marketing through search engine can broadly be classified under below mentioned heads.
Submission at Main Search Engine
You must first possess a ready website with all the meta-tags in place and ready to be submitted to key search engines. The major search engines where you can submit your website, are listed hereunder:
AllTheWeb.com (FAST Search) AltaVista Google Ask Jeeves Lycos AOL Search MSN Search Direct Hit Yahoo HotBot Netscape Search iWon Inktomi LookSmart Open Directory
Search Engine Ranking
More than 85% of the people get to know about other sites through the search engines. According to a survey by 'Forrester Research', 57% Internet users considered search engines the best way to get on to a website. Email scored the second place by securing 38% of the users; external links third with 35%, and 28% opted for "word of mouth".
Just don't get relaxed here! A mere submission of your site to the search engines is not enough. Unless your site appears in the top 25 of the major search engines, there is hardly any point in taking pain and submitting your beloved site.
According to the April 2000 issue of 'Target Marketing Magazine', the success rate of different mediums is as follows:
Search Engines 46% Word-of-mouth 20% Random Surfing 20% Magazine ads 4.4% By accident 2.1% TV spots 1.4% Targeted email 1.2% Banner ads 1%
Ergo, you would be loosing thousands of potential customers and register millions of dollars in lost profits, unless your web site secures the top position in search engines. The search engines are the most important source of traffic for your web site. Ignoring them would be foolish.
Search Engine Optimization
Link popularity is the most important ranking factor to consider for the search engine if you are trying to improve your position. The best way to enhance your link popularity is by exchanging reciprocal links with other webmasters. The topic being very vast needs a separate section in order to get explained appropriately.
So keep all these in mind and put your best foot forward to help your website reach places and get noticed by classes and masses.
Scott F. Geld is the Director of Marketing for MarketingBlaster.com, a company providing targeted traffic and leads: http://www.MarketingBlaster.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
After Google latest update nicknamed "Florida", many webmasters discovered that their traffic plummeted.
What happened? More importantly what can you do about it? And what will Google do next?
What happened was that Google made an algorithm change on how they rate web pages.
Every time you make a search, Google tries to show the most relevant web pages that match your search term. By being able to give the most relevant results for queries, they have become the most used search engine in the world.
In order to keep out competitors they have to constantly adjust and improve how they judge web pages.
Because this judgment is done automatically using software, many webmaster have been modifying their sites in order to improve their position in the search results. To do this they have exploited different shortcuts and loopholes made possible by shortcomings in the software algorithm.
Periodically Google make changes in order to stop some webmasters to get unfair advantages by plugging one or two of the loopholes.
This is what happened during the Florida update.
With this update Google introduced new algorithms which intended to stop overuse of some search engine optimization techniques.
More specifically they seem to have targeted search terms found in text links also called anchor text. Web pages with good positions in the search result, which had had a disproportional number of in-bound links to them from other web pages with the exact same search term in the anchor text that the page was optimized for suddenly, disappeared from the listings.
The pages did not disappear altogether. Just for the search term that the page were optimized for. For Google, the high proportions of anchor texts with the same text indicate that the texts were put there for one purpose only, to boost ranking.
One suggestion for you is to spread out the anchor text with a mix of different texts to keep your page in the search results. We don't know if your pages will come back after some time if you do this, but it is likely.
Apparently the search result generated after the latest update have been of a lower quality than before. What seems to have happen is that a large percentage of web sites have traded links with one another. This link trade has been done with the same search term in the anchor text that they have optimized their pages for.
The victims more often than not have been commercial web sites that relied to heavily on search engine optimization technique. The search results have been taken over by web sites composed of low quality directory and link farms.
Now, what will Google do next?
I don't know, but TRY TO THINK like Google! This is what I would do if I was responsible at Google for this.
First I think that they will modify and adjust the new algorithm they have introduced during the latest update. Changing the threshold or don't let the "over optimized pages" drop out of the search result so easy, but rather penalize them and put them under the threshold point.
I think, Google have a problem! You see, many "over optimized" sites are of higher quality that those that are not. To simply drop them out and say that there are enough pages for the same search term is not always true.
There is a thin line between optimization and spamming and where this boundary should be.
After this, what will Google do next? It is clear to me that the many low quality directory sites found in Google search results is a nuance to Google and to the average web user.
It is in this area that, I think, they will make the next modifications.
Google rate web pages according to relevance. The level of relevance is judge based on the web page content and/or how popular the web page is in the view of Google.
To get a page popular you need to have links from other pages. This can come from pages on your own site or from other sites.
Ideally these links should be many, come from pages dealing with similar or identical subject or come from pages that themselves are popular. The best is to have many links from pages dealing with the same subject that themselves are popular.
This had led to an intense link exchange active among webmasters. And the primary reason has been to achieve better ratings. The primary purpose has not been to increase the visitors experience value.
This goes against Google's principles.
To quote Google webmaster guidelines: -Make pages for users, not for search engines. -Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. -Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or Page Rank.
To counter this I think Google will target several popularity increasing schemes like:
- Low value directory sites which have been created automatically by robots. These sites contain extracts taken from search engines and directories. Google can easily spot these sites.
- The building of link directories attached to web sites. They are built with link partner extracting software and services. With them you can upload directory structures directly into your site. This way you can build up a massive number of link partners and also identify link partners with high Page Rank values.
Of course, one can say that by doing this you can add to your visitors experience as the directories make it easy for them to find similar web sites. However this is an argument that Google most likely would disagree with.
Web sites using tactics like this are easy identifiable by Google. The directory pages are composed of outgoing links which either have the Title, Meta descriptor or other content directly taken from the web pages they are linked to. Google just have to look at the texts from the directories and the text on the web pages for matching.
Using product or services for this purpose is risking you get banned or at least being penalized by Google.
Will this happen? I think so!
When? I don't know! Anytime soon, next month,..next year! Nobody knows, only Google can tell!
I think Google also will look into reciprocal linking as a whole. Maybe they will start to identify pages with outgoing links on them that link to other web sites and identify which links are coming back from those domains.
What they like to see is spontaneous linking to your site from web owners that regard you as a valuable resource to link to, without you linking back. I believe that they will limit the impact of reciprocal linking, somewhat!
What can you do to improve your web traffic from Google without violating its guidelines?
Build web sites that give value to your visitors. Make it into a popular site, so that others want to link to your site. Build niche information rich sites. Either as mini sites or as larger information sites. Larger sites within a niche are given higher popularity rating than smaller sites by Google.
If you do this your web site will not be affected next time Google make a change. Unless of course your competitor drops out of Google, then your traffic will get a boost.
Per Strandberg is a web marketer and software developer! Currently he operates a web site for backup products and data security information! At http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
