Tag: Search Engine Optimization

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Google Rolls Out the +1 Button

This past week Google released access to the +1 Button. If you have not added it to your website or blog yet, here’s a link to the code generator. If you don’t know, Google has said that +1 button votes will be used to raise your position in organic results. Here’s what Google specifically says about that issue:

“Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For  example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search
quality. For +1’s, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

That’s pretty big news! If you want to read all the FAQs here is a link to the help section on Google. Right now you have to sign u in Google Labs to have the +1 results be shown in your own personal Google.com search results. What is great is that you can +1 something right from Google.com or if the website has the +1 button installed, you can +1 it right from their website page.

We are encouraging all of our clients to get the +1 on their website and blog. We’ve only run into one problem with installation. In only one case it appears that there is an onLoad issue with other scripts that are showing on the page, but that is just one website out of several we’ve installed so far.

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Duplicate Content Revisited

To move up and stay up in the organic search results you have to have a content and link building program. When it comes to syndicating your own content there are a few guidelines that Matt Cutts of Google recommends.

“I would be mindful that taking all your articles and submitting them for syndication all over the place can make it more difficult to determine how much the site wrote its own content vs. just used syndicated content. My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.”

The bottom-line is that you need to tag the location of your original content so you will get credit from Google as being the author. This is especially important when you are using article syndication sites. We even recommend posting the content on your website first when possible and then a week later at the syndication sites. Now this tactic is not always possible, but if you can you’ll want to post on your site first.

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Canonical URLs: The WWW Quandary

To help improve your organic search placement it is important to let Google and other search engines know how you want your links returned and how they should index your website. Should it be linked and named as http://McCordWeb.com or http://www.McCordWeb.com? Specifically I mean in the example is there a www or no www in the URL. Deciding which way you want your links to show and be indexed is just another aspect you should address when you get serious about organic search placement. This issue is called canonical URLs.

I personally like URLs with the www. In all my content, all my links, all my code, I am consistent. I always use a www. You may prefer no www, and that is fine, just make sure that everything you do reflects this decision. The key is to be consistent everywhere. In the Google Webmaster Control Panel, you can tell Google how you want them to link and index your website URLs. This is key to making sure that the do not index both version of your website.

Additionally if you are on a UNIX server I install in the .htaccess file a script to rewrite URLs to my preference. Here is the script to add using my domain name as the example. Make sure to change to your own domain when you do the installation.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mccordweb.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mccordweb.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I have found a great article that very clearly explains this topic on www.searchengineoptimizationx.com and recommend it to you for further reading. This is an important issue for search engine placement and so really deserves your further consideration and action.

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The Google Farmer Update Impact

adword-confusionTwo weeks ago and just then tweaked last week by Google, the Farmer algorithm update clobbered a number of website in regards to organic search placement. There was complaining in all the major webmaster forums. In fact the complaints were so loud that at the end of last week, Google announced that it would tweak the update to minimize that had been felt on many legitimate websites.

It is not unusual for Google to tweak an algorithm once it was launched. Several years ago an algorithm update was so serious that it started the naming of updates. It was called Florida. It has become famous in my sphere for screwing up placement on many, many websites. Google has gotten better about including web professionals in their updates. Although we’ve only received advanced notice on one algorithm update in recent history, it is not uncommon for Google to release an algorithm and then tweak it based on the blow-back from pros in the industry.

For our clients, we did not experience significant drops as this change was really created to drop the placement of scraper sites, those with duplicate content across the Web, and sites that are not actively catering to readers. If your website has dropped from this important update, now’s the time to very carefully address your content creation strategy and create a systematic way that you are building thoughtful and informative content for your readers.