Internet Search News
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Slow Site Performance Now a Factor in Ranking
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The latest Google Search Algorithms consider site load times as a factor in rankings. Larry Page recently noted that he would like Google pages to load as if you were turning pages to a magazine. No need to freak out if your site pages take >3 seconds to load, but should your host have your site on slower more bogged down servers, you will want to consider a different host, or at least try requesting that your site be reloaded onto a faster server. In fact, demand it!
At Reel Magic Media, We Use Search Engine Stimulating Videos by Adobe Flash
WIRED OR WIRELESS, SITES VIEW BETTER WITH FLASH!We don't ONLY add video to your
website, we add a keyword rich search engine
stimulator! |
Build a Site from the Ground Up for Search (J. Bowers) Part 1
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1. Begin creating a site within the Web 2.0 Standards, I like XHTML 1.5 Transitional, it doesn’t make the most flashy or glitzy website, but it is easily indexed by the SE's (Search Engines), and when each and every vital component I will explain below is employed you will find that sites tend to rank within the top 2% of listings within the respective industry's search results. Flash sites, on the other hand, can be very cool to look at and play with; but because they cannot be indexed, they are not ranked, at all. (Check out the WCAG 2.0, (Web Content Accessibility Guide)
2. Keywords– Perhaps the single most important ingredient in the recipe for successful SE ranking; choose them carefully. Try to imagine the most likely twelve to fifteen words a potential searcher might come up with in order to find your site. My experience has been that more than thirty to forty keywords per four hundred words or so per page will become dilluted, and subsequently the ranking suffers. Far too many keywords, known as “keyword stuffing” will cause “penalties” which will lower your site’s listing position from the search results, or remove it entirely.
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1. Use keyword phrases like (search engine optimization,) three of four words followed by a comma, not simply single words each one followed by a comma as in (search, engine, optimization); phrases can be far more effective as many searchers will employ more than a single word or two to search.
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2. Keywords in proper metadata HTML code format must be located in between the “<head>” and the “</head>” tags or they will be useless.
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3. Page Description- Much like an introductory sentence, write a complete sentence which contains several keywords and a general overview of the entire page.
4. Links– both Inbound and Outbound – Google, for instance, also measures a site by the number of inbound links a site has: ie. how many sites link to your site.
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1. And what percentage of that site’s traffic actually follows that link to your site.
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2. And how long do they stay once they get there!
3. This shows your site’s relevance to what your links or ads assert, and as you may have heard, Google is all about relevance.
5. Outbound Links: How many links to other sites does your site have? You don’t need permission to place a link to Google, or some other worthwhile site on your site, just do so using proper anchor text.
6. And how relevant are they? Just as with inbound links. The algorithms measure the percentage of people who follow those links and how long do they stay at each destination and so on.
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- Google Won't Remove Bad Reviews / Negative Pages About You or Your Business - If you've been involved with the web for any significant amount of time, there is a good chance there may be negative comments somewhere that you're not thrilled about, but are out of your power to remove. Whether it is a page you made in high school or somebody else talking smack about you, you're concerned about your online reputation (as you should be) and would like to see the page removed from Google's index altogether.
The good news
is that honesty eventually pays off!
Some sites can cheat for a month or two and be on top of search
results, but eventually they will be caught and penalized.
7.
Site
Map-
Your site should have an up-to-date site map with a description
of all of your internal links which the SE’s can easily “crawl
or index” so that they can determine where they will rank your
site’s various pages in the search results.
8.
Optimized
Titles Headings File Names and Extensions-
All website pages should by aptly named with corresponding file
names and extensions.
Using the example “hair color” page, for instance, the
folder should be titled “hair” and the page titled “color” or in
a case without a folder the page could be named: “hair-color”
and the word color should be included in each of the descending
headings. All
image files and image source files and the alternative text
descriptions which appear in the “hair color page” should
include the word “color”.
Just try to remember that everything on each page will be indexed, and the more relevant each item is on each page with which it is associated the better the ranking the index will grant.
Look for Part 2 of "Build a Site from the Ground up for Search" (J. Bowers) April 15, 2010
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"Ultimately this leaves you no choice but to amp up your reputation management efforts. Go to the root of the problem. If you can figure out a way to locate and contact them, try and make nice with them, after all, this can be a serious detriment to your business. It won't always work, but just like with the rest of life, sometimes you have to live with past mistakes and acceptance that someone might not like you. -
The Future of Search...Is Ranking Dead?
(see video below...)
At PubCon, President Bruce Clay presented at a session entitled "Top-Shelf Organic SEO" in which he discussed the approaching future of SEO as search engines evolve into more modern ranking methods.
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Universal Search: Bruce says this will be the most significant factor of 2009. Google looks at video soundtracks and converts them to text. They can jump into the middle of videos, scan sites to determine if you have video/streaming images or not. There are a lot of variables in universal search, and some of these variables tell how engaging your site and or listing is.
If you don't have video and your competition does, Bruce thinks we're going to see a big shift in rankings. He thinks if the top ten sites don't have video, they may lose their ranking over night.
Bruce notes that Google has been testing some of these variables, and will really start testing them a lot more in the first quarter, once the holidays are out of the way. He mentions the criticism Google took over the Florida Update, which took place in the month of November, and believes the company wants to avoid that again. He thinks we're going to see a lot of "Google Dances" early in the year though.
Intent-based search: We've been hearing the phrase dropped more and more. In a popular WebProNews interview with Bruce Clay, late last year, he spoke of where search was headed and a good deal of that had to do with personalized search. The SearchWiki side of that has gotten the most attention in this area, but he had some things to say about intent-based search as well.
- Bruce also talked about Google looking up your IP and revising results based on it while making assumptions about the intent of your search. This would have an affect on SEO, obviously. "The page that ranks for a shopping query is an entirely different architecture than the page that ranks for a research query," said Clay.
- Reel Magic Media Creates New
Service to Combat Bogus Reviews
NetGuard is RMM's latest service to deal with the growing number of search pages dedicated to anonymous reviews which can damage an otherwise great reputation.
As more and more consumers flock to sites like Squidoo and Yelp to find reviews on local businesses there are also more and more "bogus reviews" sometimes made by ex-girl or boyfriends of employees and even competitors. These reviews are often taken at face value and discourage would-be customers from ever even trying the company they are reading about. And the worst part is that many business owners don't even know a bad review about them exists, much less that it is having a negative influence upon potential customers.
