Are You Asking Google to Penalize Your Website?
Striving to get a foothold in search engine rankings is every webmasters goal. In order to get the traffic they need for their website’s survival one must rank highly for some keyphrases in the major search engines, mainly Google. That is why it is critical that webmasters don’t get involved in what Google would consider to be wrong and become penalized for it.
One thing that is considered a definite no-no is the act of keyword spamming. This practice was once used by persons to attempt to increase their keyword density
(a factor used in ranking of web pages) for a specific phrase. Keyword density being
the relative importance of a specific word or phrase to the entire text within a webpage. The more times a word is repeated, the more keyword dense is the webpage for that particular word.
The trick was to place phrases repeatedly within the html code of the page which weren’t seen by people normally browsing that webpage. Of course, the algorithms of the major search engines have adapted now to this attempt at manipulation and anybody trying it will see their webpages penalized for Google page rank and possibly deindexed.
This webmaster is repeating the keyword balloons
The advice here is to not overdo it. Keep the pages of your website relevant by repeating your key phrases but don’t stuff them in irrelevant areas or try to hide them in bits of html code.
Another bad tactic is to become involved with what Google considers to be “bad
neighbourhoods”. In their webmaster guidelines they say
“Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”
According to them webspammers help to devalue the integrity of their index and adversely affected accurate search results. Link farms are considered by Google to be another no-no because persons are using a method to manipulate how many link partners they have. And the goal here is to rapidly increase your link popularity by connecting to numerous persons within a link scheme.
One other thing that has become a sore point among many persons is the common use of paid links services to increase inbound links to one’s site. According to the above statement from Google’s guidelines, this is considered a link scheme and if found out your page rank will be reduced to zero.
Why it has become a major argument is that many high PR web pages were using their status to sell links on their website. Many people see this as a corporate model for their own website and offer links on their site as a service. How could Google look down on others for trying to get links for their site anyway possible? Isn’t it basically a type of paid advertisement?
My thoughts on the issue are that website owners and corporations should always be allowed to monetize their websites anyway they want, once it’s legal. But if a major penalization will result from the use of any of these paid linking systems then stay as far away from them as possible. You might not agree with something, but if it might hurt you in the long run, why continue doing it?
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Creating Fresh Content for Websites
Adding quality content to a website is essential in keeping a website “sticky” for search engines. It keeps visitors coming back for more information and it will ensure that others will link to your site. Your target audience will keep coming back as the website doesn’t remain the same but changes constantly with updates and knowledge they require.
There are some very essential ways that can be used to foster more content on your page. One method which many webmasters use is to write articles or new pages of interest that will keep visitors interested to return. Forums and blogs also add more content and if the author writes regularly he/she can have unique visitors to the website daily.
Most websites place a frequently asked question (FAQ) page on their site for whatever product or service they offer. Information for this can come from questions viewers ask about the website services. It is essential that the sites keep a comments page or support email open for queries from visitors.
Another good method is to interview experts in your field or target market about common issues/problems and include their answers as part of your main page. This will enhance the honesty and popularity factor of the site as the known expert may be seen to be endorsing your website content, product or services. Some people might write an e-book for their target audience and then include the interview as part of the content of the book. Both ways tend to work and adds a creative edge to the information you are giving.
A relatively easy method of keeping content fresh is to include rss feeds on your website. Rssfeeds are basically links for updated content from some reputed website. RSS Equalizer is a tool that can be used to include quality rss feeds on your site. Many links from other reputed sources on your site will also enhance its integrity in the eyes of many search engines.
Many websites offer a monthly newsletter which gives tips, information, promotions and products related to the specified field from their site. This is a good way to keep customers and visitors informed about news updates in your field and offer promotions and services on the back-end.
On the main page of your website you can include regular updated advice or tips on matters pertaining to your field. If you have products selling or services offering, you can apply this to them as well. People love to see new information and titbits pertaining to services that companies offer.
Of late, information provided via the visual format is a hit. It is so much easier for people to understand a quick video tutorial concerning some product or service you offer than just giving written instructions. Videos don’t have to be used as promotions for services alone; they can be used to give how-to guides and practical tutorials.
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Increasing Keywords for Search Engines
When search engines crawl sites on the Internet they look to see how well each site is themed for specific phrases called key words. It is therefore essential to include your key terms and phrases as often as possible on a website. The number of key words on a site compared to the total number of words on the page is commonly known as the keyword density or weight of the page and is a major factor search engines use to rank pages based off key terms.
Search engines will “spider” sites on the Internet and rank them depending on the keyword density of their pages. A useful tool to see and analyze your website’s relevance as perceived by search engines is SEO Spider. It can help to increase targeted traffic to your site from search engines as it employs methods for search engine optimization.
The first place where keywords should be placed is in the head section of the html source code of your website. One should try and place these phrases in the title, description and keyword tags for your site. To get an idea of what this is go to the the top menu bar on your Internet browser. Go to View…. then Page Source/Source. If that specific web publisher is using correct tags you should see something like this at the top of the page:
<html>
<head>
<title> “The Page Title Goes here” </title>
<meta name=”description” content= “Description of the contents of the web page goes here”>
<meta name=”keywords” content= “key terms and phrases for the web page goes here”>
</head>
Placing keyterms in the title, description and keyword tags for your page will ensure that your site is optimized for the search engine spider.
Other Places for Keywords
Headings
Some search engines rank pages based off terms and phrases listed in the heading sections of the pages. The relevance of this relates to the fact that most times headings make note of specific themes and list key phrases in relation to the pages content.
Html codes have tags for headings from <H1> to <H6> which go from larger to smaller headed fonts. Search engines will rank <H1> better than <H2> and <H2> better than <H3> and so on.
ALT tags
Web publishers put alt tags (alternate text) for pictures within their web pages. This allows text to be shown while the browser prepares picture that hasn’t finished loading yet. It also provides alternate text for pictures on browsers that have the option for graphics off.
The html source code for a picture might look something like this:
<img style=”width: 790px; height: 149px;” alt=”alternate text goes here”
src=”images/background.JPG” mce_src=”images/background.JPG”>
Keywords in URLs
One other thing that most people rarely do is make their page links keyword optimized. Putting keywords in your url could look like this:
http://www.your_homepage_goes_here.com/keywords/other_keywords.html
For more information on choosing the right keywords and optimizing your pages for search engines please see the seo course ,Optimize For Search Engines, on the main site
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Linking For Top Search Engine Rankings
The fact that the major search engines now rank websites based on the number of other websites that link to it is well-known for some years now. But many people still don’t know what this can mean for their website and even worse, don’t know the methods for improving the number of links that point to their site.
The reasoning behind this method for ranking is obvious. The fact that others will point to your site for your products or services is an endorsement of your website. In fact, the most important thing about this is not only the number of links that endorse your site but the quality of the linker in the search engine’s eyes.
Complex link analysis by search engines will give websites page ranks which affect how close to the top 10-20 sites they are in the search engine index. Clearly the more websites with better rankings that link to yours will cause your site to gradually increase its own page rank.
The most simplest method to finding link partners is to go to the major search engines, enter search terms related to your own site and pick relevant sites. You should first ensure that you have a page dedicated to links on your own site. Most websites have a page giving contact information. Send the webmaster an email saying you are interested in trading links with their site after first putting a link for their site on yours.
Many websites also have link exchange forms. It makes it very easy for you to place your website URL and description on their site from the form. Of course, a reciprocal link is usually required and it should be placed on your links page or any other relevant page on your website.
A little known method to gathering sites with link exchange forms, is to place the following phrase into a search engine (I usually use Google): keyterm”Please also suggest my link to the LinkPartners.com Directory”
The word keyterm should be changed to a keyword related to the content of your website. For example if your website sells umbrellas you should enter umbrellas”Please also suggest my link to the LinkPartners.com Directory”
Usually a large list of websites with link exchange submission forms will be found.
In order to automate finding link partners and even send emails to hundreds of sites at a click, one should use the software SEO Elite. The software makes finding link partners easy. It also tells you information on each site that you can use to your own benefit such as,
1. the number of outbound links from each site
2. the total number of links on the site that is linking to you
3. the Google rank of the site
4. whether or not the site linking to you is deemed an authority by Google
It is essential in most cases to know these things to analyze your competitors by knowing their own linking patterns.
A free method to getting a lot of links to your website is to join the link exchange Link Metro. You can receive a large number of reciprocal links by joining this free network and remaining active in it. Start off by requesting links from websites similar to yours, then branch off and expand your links page. You will not be penalized for linking with a site dissimilar to yours as long as your links page is arranged under various headings and categories.
A final word about linking. Apart from finding reciprocal links, it is even more important to establish one way inward links to your site. The easiest way is to write articles related to the topic of your site and submitting them to article directories. You should include a short author bio at the end of the article with a link pointing back to your site.