Is Google having a tough time with their website limit?

If you are one to pay attention to what happens within the Google realm, you might find yourself thrown for a loop these days. As Google updates their results, it seems like they are having some issues dealing with so many new websites popping up.

Indexing 8 billion websites is quite an accomplishment for Google. As they are reluctant to increase this number, they are faced with many challenges in trying to keep some sites within these 8 billion pages while losing some others, after each update they do to their database.

So how do you determine which listings to lose?

We've all heard of the "sandbox theory"! (New sites are added to a group of other new sites until a certain amount of time has passed and you've proven your worth. Once you've proven your site is valuable, Google releases it within its regular search results).

It seems to me that if you don't own a large network of websites that can easily increase the websites link popularity overnight, your newly created website won't get hit as hard and is added to the sandbox for only a certain period of time.

On the other hand, if you do own a large network of websites and increase the amount of websites you have, your newly built website(s) will get hit harder and may take a lot more time and promotional effort to get good search rankings results within Google.

Let's take a look at why this may be true:

1st) It has been long speculated that Google searches through the "WHOIS" data base regularly ("WHOIS" - Contact record of who owns a specific domain name). By doing this Google can now see who owns what and how many domain names they own. By doing this Google can now determine that "Company A" owns 25 websites. This collection of 25 websites can now all be crawled to look for content copying, ghost pages, mimic pages, irrelevant link directories, etc. By knowing that you own 25 websites, Google can quickly determine their worth and rank them accordingly.

2nd) With this knowledge provided by the "WHOIS" data base, Google can also see how many years you've registered each domain name for. For instance, if you register all your domain names for only 1 year, there is a possibility that you don't plan on using these domain names for the long term. Instead, you may be using these new domain
names simply to keep up with new changes on the internet and new standards in search engine optimization.

On the other hand, if you register all of your new domain names for the next 5 years, it is more likely that you are going to use these domain names in the future. This now gives more relevance to each domain name you register for more than 1 year.

I am now recommending to all my clients not only to make sure to register a domain name related to their country (i.e. Canada = .ca), but to also make sure that they register their domain name for 5 years. If you are truly serious about increasing your business online, why would you risk missing your domain name renewals every year and possibly loose your domain name?

Google may also look at how long you've owned this website for!

It may be true that by adding your new website to the "sandbox", Google may also add your website to a "history report". This history report can give their database detailed information about how old your website is. These days, I believe that it takes about 6-8 months before Google updates your "history report". By updating, I mean possibly releasing your website further within search results.

See, this combination of "who owns the domain", "how long will you own the domain name", and "how old is the website", can provide a more accurate report to Google as to whether or not this website will survive, stay the course, or provide great content. Through this "history report" and "sandbox report", your website will go through an "exam" after 6-8 months in order to determine whether or not you are ready to play with the big boys online or whether or not your website has what it takes to succeed online.

Until Google increases the amount of websites it will index within its results, we are all going to have to battle to stay on top. Internet marketing in general is becoming increasingly tougher with every month that passes. It has finally caught up to us and we are now starting to fight a hard battle.

One more thing you may notice:

Google's cache (Snapshot image of your website when it crawls through) is becoming a little wonky lately. One day Google will have an updated cache, the next day it won't have a cache at all, and the following day it will have a cache of your website from 2 weeks ago.

What does this all mean?

When Google crawls a certain page, it looks at everything. Let’s take one specific internal page in your website. This specific page may be ranked 10 different times within the search results for 10 different key searches depending on the content within that certain page.

As Google increasingly fights to keep certain pages, its cache may be having a tough time keeping up and delivering the most relevant cache to date. More times than not, the front page of a website doesn't have a cache at all anymore! This is very interesting. It may mean that your front page may not be the "key" anymore since more and more people are trying to cram everything under the sun within their front page.

It is possible that your "Main Sub-Categories" are weighing higher in Google's eyes for the quality and relevance of your internal content.

What you want to do is to provide a clean map to all your internal pages. Your front page was the best solution for providing a map to all of your pages. Maybe these days, your front page should be used only to link to your main "sub-categories" and also to show your most recent posted content!

I will leave you with this. If you are new online or even an experienced marketer online, buying many new domain names may not be the key to increase your success right now. Buying new domains should be a long term investment. Try increasing the popularity of your already established websites in order to gain more exposure for your business. Owning more domains increases the amount of time and effort you need to promote each one. Like I've mentioned many times before, owning a network of websites is not enough! You need to expand your horizons online, increase your content and create more business partnerships every chance you have.

For more of Martins articles, go here: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

Google Page Rank Is Dead - Part II

In part I - Google Page Rank Is Dead - Or Ist It?

I discussed how Google's Page Ranking System has become obsolete, but at the same time, many business savvy entrepreneurs still give it credit and could possibly discredit or credit your website accordingly to it's rank.

"Let's really go in depth to take our 1st steps towards leaving Google's page ranking behind!"

If you're like 1000's of people online, you've been following page ranking so close for so long, it can be really though for you to break the habit. "No habit can be completely broken, it must be replaced with another".

1st Step: Remove Page Rank From Your Google ToolBar

Google probably won't like me for this one but I recommend clicking on "Options" within your google toolbar, take off "Page Rank".

Congratulations, you've done it. Marketing your website has taken a new turn, a bright road is ahead!!

We can now go back and search online. Before we do, try NOT to think about how a website's importance was measured by Google's page rank, instead take a good look at each site that you visit.

Pay special attention to the content, layout, usability, and friendliness. Do you like it? Why do you like it? Right down things, images, layouts, anything that you like from websites that you pass by.

Create a "Favorites Folder" within your browser, call it "Opportunities". Within this "opportunities" folder, add websites that interest you, or that would interest your visitors.

Combine all these favorite things that you like to form new ventures for your business. Keep GOING BACK to these web resources that you liked and take a look to see if there are any good opportunities for both companies to prosper together.

Web Marketing is never done alone, successful marketing online needs you to create your own "web" to catch visitors with. What better way to do so then by connecting with websites that you like.

Why should we do this?

In order to stay away from Google's Page Ranking all together, we need to replace it with our own "web measurement system" to determine whether or not our company should recommend, swap ads, or do business with the other.

In the end, we won't be selecting websites just because they rank well, we will finally be selecting only websites that we all personally like.

Personal resources create a better world for your visitors. Just remember, many of your visitors have no idea about the world of Google Page Ranking and how you may of been addicted to it.

Building A Personal Ranking System:

In order to personally rank websites, there are a few measurements you can take... Ask yourself these questions when browsing...

* What is their alexa ranking? or Rank from Ranking.com?
Does the site seem to be getting matching traffic with yours?

Does the site you are looking at have incoming links from Google in the same industry as yours? Pay close attention to who links to the websites your research.

* Most Important: Do you get a good feeling when you visit their site?

If you don't, 8 times out of 10, other visitors won't either. I never recommend a website that doesn't feel right. 1st impressions mean a lot more than people think. At times, the internet is a sub-conscious activity and many things that we see make us react to it without even knowing it. You want people to like you and trust you enough to do with business with you.

* Last but not least: Will you be happy knowing that the websites you recommend have a personal touch and your visitors will be better off because of it?

Once we all get in a good groove online and start adding complete personal resources on our websites, the internet will be a better place for all our visitors.

Try and let the larger resource directories within your field to list everything possible, the best course of action for your business is to create something with your own personal touch.

I hope you've enjoyed this II part series!

Google Love - Five Top Tips To Make Google Love Your Site

Trying to fight Google or be cleverer somehow is pointless, destructive and the wrong attitude.

Learn to LOVE Google and work WITH IT instead - and it will send you streams upon streams of people. It's as easy as pie if you follow these straightforward instructions.


1. Google Love ...

Google and all its programming is not some form of enemy - unless you are a piece of web scum, that is.

Google is based on the idea that it should help people FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR.

That's all.

Sit with the statement above. Meditate upon it if necessary. Use EFT.

But UNDERSTAND that a pointless site that has no unique content will NEVER get ANYWHERE with Googly or any other outfit that is using their techniques and methods.

You can buy books and ebooks until your wallet bleeds on "how to trick Google" this and that - just forget it.

Unless you have SOME THING that SOME PEOPLE will HONESTLY WANT and be grateful for when they find it, there is no hope and there is no point in reading any further.

Also, trying to fight Google or be cleverer somehow is pointless, destructive and the wrong attitude.

Learn to LOVE Google and work WITH IT.

If you have the contents, and you follow the most simplest common spider robot courtesy protocols, then it will come and it will index you.

It will be that mystical bridge between YOUR (customers, people, communities, friends) and your site.

That's what it does, that's what it is, that's it's nature and if you know that, then all is well.

You will get good results following the rest of this.


2. Dressing For Google ...

So now, let's have a DECENT website with DECENT content.

A decent website means:

- All the pages and directories have links that work properly and allow Google to slide with immense ease from one place to the other, without ever hitting an annoying dead end;

- All the pages are cleaned up so that you have the absolute MINIMUM of html instructions and nothing that doesn't need to be there, such as vast and pointless java scripts or the truly appalling "mso" instructions;

- All the pages have the right meta tags which ACCURATELY REFLECT what's on them, and including title, content, description, keywords at the very minimum;

- All your pages have proper headings and descriptions and content WHICH MATCHES your meta tags to a T;

- All your images are title and alt tagged CORRECTLY and resident on your own site.


Decent content means:

- Whatever you've got, it is USEFUL. If it is UNIQUE, so much the better, and that's not hard. All you need to is to be yourself and use your own words, even if you are affiliate - write your own reviews, put your own dog's picture on it, be unique, be YOURSELF.

- Whatever you've got, I'm sure there's some people who want to look at it, read it, do something with it. There's billions of people out there. Just make sure YOU KNOW WHO YOUR PEOPLE ARE and write to THEM.

- Decent content also means that what you've got is presented so that both Google and a human being get it what that is all about.

When your website is up and running, test, test and test again. Try every single hyperlink on your own computer, on someone else's and on all manner of different browsers.

Only when you are happy that it all works as it should, we go to Step 3.


3. Let Google SEE You

You need a minimum of 35 decent links going to your site for Google to take any notice of you and start paying attention.

Please be aware that "one link" is just that - http://www.snark.net is NOT the same as http://www.snark.net, which is not the same as http://snark.net, nor even remotely similar to any variation including http://snark.net/index.php

All, each and every ONE is viewed as a single separate link - when you need 35 ALL GOING TO ONE SINGLE ADDRESS to do the magic.

So now, to the "decent links" part.

A site that isn't indexed much by Google or doesn't turn up until page 1,993,990 on a Google search for its kind is WORTHLESS to you.

Find HIGH RANKED directory listings for your site and list your site THERE. This goes for any of the many variations on getting a link from another site, be it a guestbook signed or an article placed. Don't waste your time with anything that itself doesn't turn up on Google's own top ten.

Now, you've got a date with Google.

What we need to do next is to BUILD A RELATIONSHIP - prove our value and worth over time, in other words.

That's the next of our Google top tips - seniority and reliability.


4. Be THERE When Google Calls!

Make sure you've got a decent ISP with 99% uptime or better - that's of course elementary.

Don't ever take your site down for whatever reason and make any changes gradually.

Most importantly, get the best tracking software you can afford and find out who is already coming, and what they are coming for.

That's the key to long term success - to find what you're doing well and then expanding on it. For example, if one person came from Google (or any other search engine) for the term "snark", then build on that. Write more articles about snarks, what to do with them and without them, how to avoid them, collect snark images - in other words, become the first port of call for any snark enquiry.

Build on your speciality some more with a web directory, guest articles, reviews and then we're more than 3/4 the way to a real web presence and Google responding to changes in your site near instantly, which is what we want.


5. Keep Improving ALL THE TIME.

The final success tip is to keep improving ALL THE TIME.

Pull up the html or php you wrote a year ago - I bet you can do better now.

Review your meta tags and your site copy and improve on both.

Name your pages, images and directories better. Improve the content, structure, navigation of your site.

Keep at it with directory listings and submissions - directories come and go, you need to be always there with the "state of the art".

Keep doing useful link exchanges with matching high ranked sites too and keep adding VALUE and UNIQUE CONTENT to your clean and well presented pages.

That's the most important thing of all - to keep at it with continuous improvement.

Follow these steps EXACTLY with a well named new site with decent content - and you WILL see immediate improvement in your Google rankings.

Good Luck and Good Spirits always,

Silvia :-)

Revising Your Site, What Happened To My Search Engine Placement?

As of September, Smartads went through what so many have done before. I changed the entire site. I knew what it meant. It means that your search engine placements your probably so proud of are probably going to be lost in the process.

Sad but true. See, search engines are getting smarter, not only are they getting smarter but they do what you do. When you change a design, se's change your listings!

Typically you change it for a couple of reasons.

1) You don't like the design anymore

2) You've learned knew tips on how to optimize your site better for search engine placements.

3) Your revising your services

Whatever it may be, you're changing something. Now it won't happen right away but eventually, if your site already has a good search engine ranking, then search engines will find out what you've done and follow a process.

But "se's" aren't human? That's correct but they were built by humans. Most se programmers realize that eventually something changes and since they want their search engine to be the best, they try to recognize your changes right away but there's only one problem.

What do they do with the listings you have right now? Well, let's say for instance you are attempting to change everything for the better.

Now let's also say that you HAD a page title called "good rank".

Search engine's previously knew and still think that your page is all about "good rank". Moving along, your new page information is about "Getting a better rank". Your old placements are now wrong in the eye's of search engines. They now realize that something has changed. So what are they going to do?

Dump your old listings and start over! Ouch is right. So why would you ever want to change your site if that's the case?

Well here's some food for thought: Yes, you may loose your existing rankings but your roots are growing. Your new pages are growing bigger and better than before, it just takes a small transitional period to take effect.

For instance, within Google, Smartads had over 580 pages found when looking at all the links listed in Google. Since we changed the entire site, there was a 2 day period where none of our links were listed anymore. Normally, this would have scared me right away if I didn't know that my site had changed.

Not 4 days later, not only where my pages back but the old rotten pages that weren't being used anymore got dumped and the many new pages got listed. Around 680 pages now. That was a jump of around 100 pages that got added. < Cause and effect. >

Here's another example for you. Most of us know about link popularity within Google. You've put all your effort into promoting your main page. All of the links that you've had placed on other sites have a link title of: "Great Ranking Services". Once google saw your link, it started looking to see whether your information on your site is relevant to "Great Ranking Services" and awarded you appropriately.

Moving along a little, you've not only changed your site but you've also changed your link title to better fit the new content. The new link you now add on other sites reads something like this: "Boost Your Search Engine Rankings".

Before you changed your site, you got a GREAT rank for "Great Ranking Services" when people did a search online.

Here's the catch. Now that your promoting a new site, a new page, new content within your page, the old content relavance goes straight down the drain. Search engines have recognized that everything has changed and are not paying any attention to your old links anymore. Yes, they still help your link popularity, but they don't help your content relevance.

See, search engines are consistently trying to improve their content relevance. That's what people want. If they search "gidgets & widgets", they expect to get the best results for "gidgets & widgets".

In Conclusion:

If you plan on changing your site, be prepared to suffer for a small amount of time. Prepare yourself for the worst because the best is yet to arise and prevail.

I understand that we all want better search engine rankings and just be ready to do what ever it takes, even if it means loosing your old se placements for some newer, fresher ones.

I hope you enjoyed my article, for more of my articles, simply follow the link below!

4 Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a web site that needs more traffic. If your web site doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then it will be hard to find.

Since most searchers click on the first few results, you need to make sure that your web site is ranked highly enough so that people can easily find it on the first page of search engine results. Although no search engine optimization company can guarantee a high rankings for your site permanently, often times hiring a web marketing company will pay off many times over. For those of you doing it yourself or those of you that want to ensure your marketing company is doing a good job, here are some tips for raising the search engine rankings of your web site.

1. Content

Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for web sites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. Keywords are an important factor and they should be used throughout the content of your website.

2. Web Site URL

Your web site’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings – you need to do more than just that. But still, it is one of the factors in improving a search engine ranking.

3. Search Terms

Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. If you want a good rank in search engines then these things that may seem small should be considered, as search engines can read the text but not the graphics.

4. Page Title

The title of your page is very important, and if you choose the title properly then it can surely make a big difference in search engine ranking. Terms such ‘free article on safe children's toys’, or ‘contact the children's toy expert today’ are good to use as titles on pages containing such content. The titles themselves are very specific to the page and also may not have much competition being as specific as they are. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you utilize it.

Master these four tips and you’ll be on your way to getting free traffic. Look for other tips to keep your site moving up.

Landing Page Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) doesn’t rank entire pages but elements of them. Each page is a team working together to produce an overall effect. While each page can produce high rankings and spread to each other is one of the best strategies another is to use a landing page strategy. In this case you can use various techniques to bring traffic to one particular page, usually the home page, and from there direct that pages high ranking to your website’s other pages. When a page points to another page is does not diminish its page ranking. It may not be able to give as high a boost if it points to too many pages but this can be compensated for by a good navigation structure.

For the landing page to have its best effect use whatever techniques you can to drive traffic it. Seeking out sites that will provide links to your landing page is a strong strategy. If you can drive enough quality traffic to your landing page, and I stress quality, you can maximize that pages ranking. A landing page with a high enough page ranking can nearly endow the rest of your website with increasing rankings.

This is where a strong navigation structure is vital. You want the landing pages strong ranking to filter around your website and enhance your pages as much as possible. By keeping the in sight navigation links to a minimum you will ensure maximum ranking increases throughout your site.

By using a combination of affiliates, links from other sites, possibly pay-per-click and awesome SEO skills you can drive your landing page’s rank sky high. Get your site up with good content first and then put forth all of your efforts into the landing page. The landing page will be your ambassador and it will seek out visitors and persuade them to come to your site.

How To Trick The Search Engines

How to Trick the Search Engines
In a Zen sort of Way

Everybody is looking for the magic formula that will get their site listed on the first page of Google. Because of this, the internet is full of search engine optimization experts that are willing to take your money once they sell you on their new theory of Google’s algorithm. You have your choice of SEO Consultant to full fledged SEO Corporations all willing to take your money and optimize your site. None of them will promise specific results.

That’s because Google is a very sophisticated search engine and their algorithm changes constantly. Google’s algorithm has one primary goal and that is to deliver relevant content. All of this effort is to identify good websites with quality content and to weed out the sites that are "optimized" to trick the algorithm. Therefore… if you have a good website with quality content then “optimizing” your site may be counter-productive if there's even a slight chance that Google would think you’re using tricks.

That’s right, let Google’s algorithm smell your website optimization techniques and your status as a good website with quality content may be in jeopardy. Google is looking for websites whose webmasters are putting their time and energy in to building and maintaining a good website with quality content not spending their time and energy trying to trick the algorithm. So, the best thing you can do is to put your time and energy in to the reason you built your website in the first place. Whatever that reason may be, it probably was not to learn and practice SEO techniques.

Be organic. Be yourself, even be one with your website. Google likes sites that are organic and built by people with a clear purpose. Understand and embrace the algorithm. Do not fear it and try to trick it. It is there to do good.

As I’ve said before, don’t lose sleep over search engine optimization, lose sleep over conversion rate. Spend your time maximizing your site for your visitors. A good site with quality content will get top rankings naturally.

So, the trick to tricking the search engines is to have no trick at all. How much easier can that be?

If search engine optimization was a major player in your marketing plan, here’s a great site to learn about other website marketing methods: http://www.wilsonweb.com/a/go.to/Ogre

- JD

Creative Search Engine Optimization – A Case Study

Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took on the seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of the root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail in the coffin, the client informed us the business was cyclical with the busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming from the pay-per-click program.

The first step was to change the focus of the site from the home page to the article page. Jumping the tax agency sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try. Instead, we decided to focus on the keyword phrase “business tax articles” and bring people into the site through the article page. Meta tags were optimized and a link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign, however, was a strong article promotion campaign.

Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an article campaign focusing on tax information would meet with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were written, published and submitted to article directories. Since the articles were timely, they were snapped up and published. The articles produced direct traffic to the site as well as numerous inbound links because of the link created in the article byline.

As for the search engines, we focused on everything but Google. We expected nothing from Google because the major content and meta tag changes would take six to eight months to show results per the usual practices of Google. In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search engines produced big time.

In mid-January, the site went to number 1 on MSN under “business tax articles.” By the end of January, Yahoo was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The combination of these listings produced a significant amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.

Can we go on cruise control now? No! With the end of the tax season, the traffic to the articles page of the site has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The promotion of the article page was simply a short-term solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce traffic during the first quarter of each subsequent year, it is not a year-around solution.

Over the next six months, we will focus on the long-term goal of jumping over the tax agency sites for keywords such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant amount of business for the client.

Creativity is often the key to conquering seo situations. Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always the best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive consideration can yield amazing results. It did in this case.