Author: Nancy McCord

Nancy McCord is the President and resident blogger for McCord Web Services LLC. She has been providing global web services since 2001. She is a web designer, search engine marketing professional, and search engine and blog expert. She lives in Maryland just south of the Washington DC metro area.
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Watching New Meta Tags

I am always on the watch for new meta tags that are being tested by search engines. I like to be an early embracer of new technology. If you are unsure of what meta tags are in common place use right now, here is a great primer and list for you to consider using on your website.

Two new meta tags that I am watching and just getting ready to implement on my own site are two that Google released recently mainly for use on Google News. They are syndication-source and original-source. These two tags inserted in your source code in the head tag allow you to notify search engines that you are the creator of content on your website. You can read more information about both in this interesting article.  Why not just use the canonical tag? Well, Google says it best and here is the quote:

“We felt the options currently in existence [the canonical tag] addressed different use cases and were insufficient to achieve our goals. The more accurate metadata that’s out there on the web, the better the web will be.”

Google is pretty clear that they are just using these new tags for Google News right now, but if you are a unique informational content author such as myself, it is a good thing to make your content as the originator so that scraper sites that steal your content will not get credit for your hard work. Google does say that they are evaluating the wider use of these meta tags, but has not embraced them for you use in their regular index.

Here is how you would actually use the tag in your head tag code:

meta name=”original-source” content=”http://www.mccordweb.com.com/weblogs/2011/04/23/watching-new-meta-tags”

I personally feel that I will most likely use both to just cover all bases, but remember these tags are not being widely used right now by Google’s index. Will they use it? Possibly, but I am willing to try anything to tag my content as my own.

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Watching Your Site for Malware Intrusions

Website owners need to keep an eye on their website and blog to make sure that they are not unknowingly spewing malware onto the Web. Not only can this be bad for your site visitors, but you can actually get your website blocked by Google for allowing malware downloads; even if you didn’t know that it was happening.

If you have a blog on your site, there are lots of free, cool plugins that monitor your blog and help you to keep it safe, but how about a website? I found one tool recently that allows you to scan your website files for malware. It is called Sucuri. You can visit the free online website scanner here. I recommend not only scanning your root directory, but some of your top traffic directories as well just to make sure you are malware free.

Another tool you can use for malware monitoring of a website is the Google Webmaster Control Panel. To use this Google service you will need to verify your website ownership by downloading and then uploading to your server a small file. Once in place, Google will scan your site and you can review its malware detection results.

In many cases I have found that Google is very slow to report if you have had a malware attack. Eventually they will notify you if there is a problem, but it may be woefully late, and your notification may actually be that Google has banned your site in their index. I personally recommend a much more proactive and early prevention focus.

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Google Toolbar PageRank Indicator is Bogus

I have several customers who monitor their website’s Google Toolbar PageRank. In fact, they do not take action on links unless the site has a favorable Google Toolbar PageRanking.

First off, it is important to understand that Google does not show your real organic PageRank in the Google Toolbar. Additionally, the PageRank in the Google Toolbar is not the same as PageRank on Google.com. Confused yet?

Here are the quick notes you should remember about the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator:

  • PageRank changes by page and not by website.
  • Each time Google crawls your site your Google.com PageRank may change.
  • For each search query entered on Google.com, Google delivers the pages in order of true PageRank not Toolbar PageRank.
  • Toolbar PageRank is not the same as PageRank.
  • Google does not show the real PageRank for any site so as to prevent SEO firms from working the system.
  • I have found that Google updates Toolbar PageRank infrequently sometimes once in six months.
  • A Toolbar PageRank of three could not carry the same real world Google PageRank as other three rated sites, there are more factors at play.
  • A high Toolbar PageRank does not mean a high Google.com PageRank.
  • You can probably now disable your Google Toolbar if you were using it for SEO position referencing.

I have found a terrific article at The Search Engine Journal that really digs deeper into this topic and would highly recommend that you read it. It debunks some of the misconceptions webmasters and website owners have had about the importance of the Google Toolbar PageRank. I personally do not use the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator for any decisions about my own website.

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CHMOD Server Setting For Improved Security

If you need to keep your blog secure or just want to make sure you are doing the most to keep website hackers at bay, you’ll want to review these Apache server settings to keep your content and website safe.

CHMOD Explained
“CHMOD is a UNIX term for a server operation to set or change the mode of the file access permissions. When executed, the command can change file system modes of files and directories. The modes include permissions and special modes.”

If you click into the CHMOD Server Permissions website linked above you will be able to read what permissions should be used for which cases.

As a rule of thumb typical website pages should be a CHMOD of 644. Your blog’s wp-config.php file should be 600 or 660 to keep secure. The bottom-line on CHMOD is that using your FTP agent you can right click on any file or directory and change the file or access permissions. Make sure before you start changing things that you review CHMOD Explained and keep track of what you have changed so if need be you can revert back to a prior setting if needed.