Category: Search Engine Optimization

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Can You Still Place Organically In Your Industry?

This is the million dollar question isn’t it? In today’s search arena can you and should you even work to improve organic placement or should you instead just concentrate on pay per click advertising. Personally, I think that the answer straddles both sides. This is what I recommend for organic placement and good website visibility.

Do Everything Right Consistently

  • That means improve the quality of your content on your website. Write with your reader in mind.
  • Make sure you are blogging under your own domain so you get the spider benefits.
  • Look to add new articles, white papers, and thoughtful insights regularly to your website pages.
  • Syndicate some of your content on article syndication sites.
  • Do a monthly e-newsletter and archive it back on your website.
  • Get going with social media and try to become an active part of a community.

Invest in Pay Per Click Advertising

  • Put money into Google AdWords. Don’t break the bank, but make sure you have a presence and are using it to your advantage.
  • Make sure you are using conversion tracking and have phone calling enabled with your programs.

You’ve just got to cover your bases in this changing world of search engines. You simply can’t go wrong with these approaches, they are simply sure to pay off in the long run in regards to organic placement, link building, and website visibility.

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Google to Re Rank Overly Optimized Websites

Matt Cutts from Google dropped a bomb this past week. According to Cutts Google is set, in their upcoming algorithm, to re rank in their organic search placement websites that have been overly optimized in an effort to “level the playing field”.

Here’s what Matt Cutts from Google said in another exchange on the topic:

 “We are trying to make  GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those  who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links  or go well beyond what you normally expect.” Read the full article.

What does this exactly mean to website owners?

Well if you have really worked over your website for keyword density, aggressively worked to build inbound text links with very specific anchor text, your website may be hit with a Google search penalty filter in the upcoming three months as their new algorithm rolls out.

What should you do now?

We recommend a careful review of your home page now before your website is dropped or pushed to the 100th page in the search results to see exactly what may need to be changed to be more Google-friendly with this new content focused push. If you have built strong keyword density on some terms on your home page, now’s the time to remove some of the usages and make the content more readable.

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Does an XML Site Map Help or Hurt Organic Placement

If you can’t include an XML site map on your website for some reason will this hurt you with search engines? My unequivocal answer is NO.

Although we do recommend the creation and registering of an XML  site map with both Google and Bing (by using their Webmaster Control Panels), to not add one is not a serious blow to your potential organic placement on search engines.

Search engine spiders do not need your created XML site map to spider your website. They will by their very nature spider your home page and then follow the text links in your home page to auto discover the other pages in your website. If your website navigation is not text based or is encapsulated in images or Flash then text links to your key inside sections as well as your own website HTML based site map should be provided on your home page. These links will typically appear in the footer. Doing so insures that you feed search engine spiders a way to travel and discover the pages in your website.

So if you can’t create an XML site map for some reason for your website all is not lost. Just make sure that you have created text links in your home page content that point deep inside your website.

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Google Announces Another Algorithm Update Biased Against Ads

Just this past Friday, Matt Cutts, a key engineer at Google, announced an algorithm update for Google that is biased against ads. Although this update doesn’t have a name yet (and it will soon), it is a filter to remove websites from Google’s index that are top heavy on advertising.

The Google Webmaster Central blog spoke in-depth about the algorithm. You can read the full article from this link. Here’s what Google says about the change:

“In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a web page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.”

“We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. “

Google again is reasserting that content is key to relevancy and thus to organic placement. With too much “stuff” above the fold (what is visible on your screen before you have to scroll), you will now be dinged by Google in the search results. Take heed as you don’t want your website or blogsite that is even heavy with images to be caught in the filter.