WDTalk

Google has changed its algorithms – over 200 times recently, in an effort to return the most relevant results to search queries. Link farms are in their cross-hairs now. In the headlines, J.C. Penny and Forbes.com were both penalized, the former for using paid links to advertise their website and the latter for selling links.

What worked well in the past – will not necessarily work well going forward, especially if you used the following methods to increase the ranking of your website:

• Keyword stuffing
• Fully automated, unrelated and centralized link farms
• Cloaking
• Pages loaded with irrelevant content
• Hidden text
• Made for AdSense sites that consist entirely of scraped content
• Hidden links
• False redirects
• Link wheels

Who wins with this most recently tweak – of Google’s algorithms?

• First, Google wins because HUGE advertising revenues are at stake, and this makes them more relevant and marketable.
• Searchers win because they’ll receive more relevant results to their search queries.
• Ethical website owners win because they’ll receive a more targeted audience open to the products and services they offer.

What should you focus on going forward? On page and off page SEO optimization remain as primary ingredients in any marketing strategy. Optimize your existing web pages, title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions, keywords and content. Follow that with steady growth of organic (high quality) inbound links from relevant sites.

Google’s take on link farms

Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.

Revised January 18 2012

By default, WordPress blogs use a rel=”nofollow” attribute - so when you read of Do Follow Blogs, these are blogs that have used a plugin that removes the nofollow attribute. Comments then that contain links back to the poster count as backlinks for their sites.

To the Search Engines – these links then are simply links. It’s up to the search engines rather to follow that link and pass value to the poster’s site. There is no “do follow” attribute to instruct a search engine that these links must be followed or assigned value. Why DoFollow versus NoFollow? The NoFollow attribute was introduced in 2005 to discourage comment spam.

Quality Backlinks - To a large segment of SEO experts, a quality backlink is a one way incoming link from a relevant (respected) site with higher PR. It’s a link you earn via hosting a great site that delivers useful information (the stuff that people want to link to).  These are also known as natural (real) links. The theory is that more natural links help boost your site’s popularity and Page Rank.

A Word of Caution - Blog spam is rampant, especially for Do Follow blogs. There are some “do follow” plugins that allow you to set how many comments a visitor needs to leave (with the same domain URL and/or email address) before their comment link will follow. The DoFollow Plugin for WordPress options:

Timeout

Comments

Pingbacks, trackbacks and other special comment types

My Recommendation

• Use a Do Follow plugin for your WordPress blog if you enable comments
• Do not add the “NoFollow” attribute to inbound links.
• Only add the ‘NoFollow” attribute to outbound links in widgets like Subscribe or Bookmark Me.

Keywords are words in the content of your website that are relevant to what prospects would be searching for in Google and Bing queries – leading them to your site. Long tailed keywords are three and four word keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever product or service you’re selling. I prefer to call them keywords, then keyword phrases, and finally – extended keyword phrases.

Why are long tailed keywords or extended keyword phrases important?
When prospects use extended keyword phrases in search queries, they tend to know exactly what they’re looking for, which makes it so much more likely that they’ll buy whatever you’re selling once they find your site.

An example – if your business sells exclusive hair products not found in the major chain stores, search queries for shampoo would lead prospects to millions of results – but probably none of them yours. The search query is simply too general.  And the catch here is that if that prospect is searching for shampoo, they’re probably not a good prospect for your product anyway. Using shampoo as a keyword in Google AdWords will probably cost you a ton in advertising dollars, with little return on your investment.

But if you sell Brocato hair products, a search query for Brocato Volumizing Tonic will rank much higher in the search engines, improving your visibility to the world – and in turn, increase your sales.

Taking extended keyword phrases one step further
To capture discriminating shoppers, you should be creating pages based on extended keyword phrases. If you’re a Salon, Car Repair Shop or Web Hosting Provider, there are hundreds of variations of extended keyword phrases that you could use to create unique pages. Each of these pages should have its own title, description meta tag, H1 header tag and content that emphasizes your product or service.

A word of caution
Don’t go overboard on extended keyword phrases or you may SPECIFIC yourself out of business. Of course, if you have 500 visitors to your site looking for shampoo versus 100 visitors searching for Brocato products, which would you prefer? Site analytics have to be matched to conversion ratios.

How do you know what extended keyword phrases to focus on?
The key here, really, is how to determine which extended keyword phrases have sufficient traffic for you to target. Research is paramount. Fortunately, there are tons of programs available. A recent search on Bing for Keyword Analysis Tools returned over 34 million results!

From Wikipedia:

 The anchor text, link label or link text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.

Websites can actually rank for keywords - that aren’t on their site, ANYWHERE. To test this, simply do a Google query for “Click Here.”  I just did and the first result was: http://get.adobe.com/reader/. The term “Click Here” is no where on that page or the page source code, but how many times have you seen the hyperlink “Click Here”  on websites, or used it yourself?

The visible, clickable text in - the following hyperlink, <a href=”http://www.wdtalk.com”>WDTalk</a> is WDTalk (the anchor text).  OK, so why is that important? It all ties into relevancy. Anchor text should contain keywords relevant to the page you’re linking to, and it’s part of Google’s algorithm for ranking pages.

Some examples:

• Free SEO Report – as a link that takes you to an SEO consultant’s website
• Chocolate Cake Recipe – as a link that takes you a Cookbook website.

Multiple inbound links from the same IP - can occur any number of ways, the most common from a webmaster who controls multiple sites under one shared hosting plan. Are inbound links from his domains bad? Not necessarily.

Most inbound links will - carry some link juice, the more relevant – the more juice. Google has some very talented folks manning their algorithms and abuse departments, so unless you’re attempting something ‘black hat,’ I wouldn’t worry too much about Google penalties. When you start accumulating thousands of these links, of course the search engines are going to take notice, especially if they don’t occur naturally, meaning they occur in spikes. I recall one specific provider who took on sponsorship of a popular web hosting forum. Backlinks to his site jumped by the thousands overnight (all entirely white hat), which quickly caught Google’s attention.

Inbound links to second or third level - internal pages on your site lend authority. A balanced approach to inbound links works best, and that includes having the appearance (again) of accumulating naturally.

When the major search engines decided that relevance – should take priority in their ranking algorithms, backlinks took on a whole new meaning. With billions of dollars in future advertising revenue at stake, the quality of search engine results became very important.

Just this morning I received an email – from an affiliate marketer bemoaning that Google had banned 15,000 marketing sites with no explanation. Reading through his email, he was promoting advertising via Facebook. Was his email believable? I think it probably was because so many affiliate marketers use SEO techniques that Google frowns upon, and he was advocating alternative solutions.

A relevant backlink is – a live link which takes the visitor to your website from a relevant third party’s website. That backlink can be displayed either as anchor text or as your URL, or it can be linked from a graphic. Your website’s popularity and page rank are largely determined by the number and quality of incoming links to your site. Traffic from relevant backlinks is highly targeted, but do all backlinks carry the same weight, in terms of SEO power? The answer is NO.

A link is a link is a link – but links from sites with high page rank give your site more “SEO Juice.” To maximize the value of your backlink, I recommend using keyword anchor text that matches the keywords in your URL, title tag, H tags and content. And don’t send all backlinks to your homepage – spread them around your site. Make your backlink relevant to the page on your site it most closely matches.

I don’t think it would surprise anyone to say that the majority of today’s prospects search Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines prior to making a purchasing decision, for everything  from pets to cars & homes. You need to be on the Internet in some fashion so that relevant prospects can find you, because your competitors will most certainly be there in force.  So how are inbound links a part of that online marketing strategy?

Geo-Marketing
Are search queries results exactly the same regardless of location? For example, if I entered “web hosting providers” as a search query in Google from my home in Spanish Lake, MO, would I get the same results as someone from Sacramento, CA entering the same search query? The answer is NO.  In St. Louis, I see local results even when I’m NOT using location as part of my search query, since search engines automatically determine my location. If Google displays local results above your listing, is this a problem? Absolutely YES. 

Link Neighborhoods
Links matter, especially geo-specific links – so much more than the sheer volume of links. The search engines are particularly sensitive to the online neighborhood you live in – meaning they analyze the quality of inbound links and either reward or penalize your site accordingly.  If inbound links to your site are largely unmanaged and originate from known spammers, your visibility on the Internet will be punished.

My recommendation
From the beginning, the search engines have essentially judged sites based on the quality and quantity of their inbound links. Those links influence ALL of your rankings. If you have a blog, moderate your comments and blacklist spammers. I don’t think it’s any secret that spammers are out there in force, trying to line their pockets at your expense. Be proactive – work on the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site – with good anchor text. By that I mean, instead of hyperlinking from CLICK HERE, hyperlink from a keyword, keyword phrase or extended keyword phrase related to a relevant search query, such as BUSINESS CLASS WEB HOSTING.