Yesterday I posted about the negative impact the Google Panda changes are having on all sorts of websites, and with each day that passes, more webmasters are realizing they have been affected by the black and white bear of search. I thought it might be useful to offer a few tips on how to fight back for those sites that have been affected. Please bear in mind (no pun intended), that these tips are based on general research and my experience of the changes.
Eliminate Spammy On-site Links
If you have spammed your footer or sidebar with longtail keywords in an attempt to gain extra “Google points” then you may well have felt the force of the panda. Unless these links are linking to relevant and visible pages in your sitemap, then this could be a reason for Read more
How important is off-page optimisation compared with on-page optimisation? I get asked that question a lot and whilst it’s a good question I am reluctant to answer it because I feel it isn’t the right question. What we should be focussing on is how rankings are weighted between the two rather than one being more important than the other. On the face of it, off-page is more important because 70% Read more
It really is about time. Yahoo Answers always had the potential to be very useful as a web site promotion service if the internal search facility was more efficient. Yahoo Answers is the most popular Q&A on the web and it certainly is very useful if you want an answer. But if you are looking to search out topics and create some decent back-links for your web marketing strategy it has always been long-winded.
Well the good news is that some major changes have been made. You can now conduct search by relevance and time. This enables the user to keep a date log of Q&A previously searched. There is also an option to search by number of answers. These options were available previously when browsing categories but not when searching the search results pages.
On the left sided menu there are several new search options. There are also additional filtering options for ‘number of answers’ and ‘date submitted’ menu dropdowns. See the diagram below:
You can even save your searches and have a daily email delivered with new questions that match your search (see the diagram below). This is great for monitoring topics surround your business and keeping your finder on the button to answer them immediately. You can also monitor particular keywords. For more information on these changes you can read the Yahoo Answers blog post . This will serve as a neat web site promotion service for marketers and business owners alike, and of course for what the facility is meant to be; a general knowledge resource base.
Yahoo Answers is no longer an effort to maintain as part of your web site promotion strategy. Now the facility is set up to contact you when you should be responding, rather than spending hours trawling through endless posts to little avail.
When you first visit a professional SEO consultant they will begin by analysing your website and getting a feel for just how search engine friendly the pages are. Many experts will spot problem areas at a glance, but some things take a deeper analysis to diagnose. One simple check that all specialists carry out is a diagnostic page analysis to see how Google views your home page and other pages of your site. Successful website marketing relies on how Google interprets your website and in turn this directly affects your rankings. This is a test that you can carry out yourself by taking a look into Google’s ‘text cache’. Read more
Ask any search engine optimization expert and they will tell you that without a doubt one of the big 3 SEO must do’s is the title tag. Title tags are weighted as part of your overall SEO score and they provide a chance to plug particular keywords and your company name. A title tag is an HTML tag with text describing a specific web page but is not displayed on the actual webpage. If you are using internet explorer you can see the title tag in the blue bar across the top of the screen, please see the example below. Read more
With a disappointing second quarter her cards were already numbered, so today’s sacking via a telephone call won’t have come as much of a surprise to the now ex-Yahoo CEO, who will forever be remembered as the woman who ended Yahoo’s love affair with search. And for me this is the real story here.
With all Yahoo search, except display, now powered by Microsoft, what does Yahoo really represent and where are they going from here? This past week saw the launch of their new mail system, but is even that too little too late. Users have left in their droves in recent years as Yahoo mail bug reports continue to overflow, not to mention suffering heavily at the hands of Googlemail and its all encompassing facility. Even the Yahoo Site Explorer tool is set to be cut down this month, adding another self-inflicted wound to a tough few years. Read more
Lately we have been focussing on a myriad of topics pertaining to SEO. These have included, how to choose an SEO company, how to utilise Facebook and Twitter and SEO mistakes to avoid. So today I thought I should say a few words for those wanting to be on the other side of the fence, those wanting to start a search engine optimisation firm of their own.
Becoming a search engine marketing specialist is no mean feat, there is an ocean of knowledge to attain and the learning curve is endless. But for the purpose of this post let’s just presume you have the credentials in the bag already Read more
The internet has pretty much made the paperback dictionary redundant, I mean who has the time to get up from their computer, grab a dictionary and flick through those annoyingly thin pages and small print to find a definition, certainly not me!
Which is why using search engine services for word definitions is so much more efficient. At one time I used dictionary.com, but then even that became long winded and I switched to simply typing my query into Google. Not one to complain (er-hem), I found having to type “define: word” or “word definition” long winded, I longed to just switch tabs, type in my word and hocus pocus my definition would appear.
Well my prayers have been answered. Google have recently added “implicit triggering” of the dictionary result, so for example, a search on the word “annoying” shows a dictionary result at the top of the page as follows:
In my opinion this is a marvellous little adjustment, and out of all the search engine services Google always seems to be striving hardest to respond to consumer needs. It won’t improve my search engine optimization, but, not only does it mean less typing, it means less arthritic pain in my fingers as I grow old. For those of you who weren’t aware of the Google dictionary in the first place this is what one would have previously had to type in for an instant word definition:
Or
It is indeed the small pleasures in life that bring us the most joy, and even though it won’t help your search engine optimization in any way I hope you find this little innovation as rewarding as I did. Just think, if I hadn’t of blogged this you may still have been typing in two words instead of the required one for a long time to come.
Imagine that, seeing your pages listed highly in Google, but receiving precious little traffic. You might as well give up hope, surely? Wait! Before you get too demoralised, there are a number of reasons why this horrid situation can occur.
1. You Don’t Rank Highly At All
You might not actually be ranking highly at all. You might just be seeing an illusion based on your personal search history. Do the following and then re-search:
Make sure you are logged out of your Google account
Use the “&pws=0” parameter to limit personalization
Try a different browser: Firefox/Safari/Google Chrome, etc Read more
Late last week I sent out an update on Google’s Farmer algorithm change, and while the change comes as a pleasant change for websites being plagiarized by content farms, there is some concern by websites that churn out daily content. Web owners are concerned they might be labeled “the farmer” should another site copy their work or house similar content. So how does one avoid being considered a low-quality publisher in the eyes of the search giant?
Don’t Stress Over every Single Piece of Content
Google wont just label you a farm based on one piece of content, so if you have one article extremely similar to twenty other sites in a particular week I wouldn’t worry too much. If this is happening on a daily basis, however, then you might want to have a word with your editorial team and consider some drastic Read more
Yesterday I posted about the negative impact the Google Panda changes are having on all sorts of websites, and with each day that passes, more webmasters are realizing they have been affected by the black and white bear of search. I thought it might be useful to offer a few tips on how to fight back for those sites that have been affected. Please bear in mind (no pun intended), that these tips are based on general research and my experience of the changes.
