Web Cosmo Forums / Search Engines / Google

Sandbox Effect, Real or Hype?

webdigo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:19:54 GMT

The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (which is a holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence. Webmasters with new websites claims that their site does not show up on Google search for keywords because its sandboxed. New pages of old websites are not effected by sandbox effect.

There are many different opinions about Sandbox Effect. Some says that the Sandbox Effect doesn't actually exist. Some says that the search ranking behavior can be explained as a result of a mathematical algorithm, rather than a decided Sandbox Effect policy.

Those who believe the sandbox exists observe that it can sometimes take up to a year or longer for a website to be promoted from the Google sandbox, while those who do not believe in a sandbox explain this duration as simply the time it takes for Google to calculate rank of the pages of a new site.

Regardless of interpretation, it is widely accepted that new Websites and Web pages do wait longer for ranking in Google than other search engines in general.

Meta Description Does not Play a Role in SERP Ranking

webdigo — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:16:11 GMT

Meta description does not play a role in determining SERP rankings in Google. Only they are to be used determining the small summary Google shows for the site.

Any thoughts?

GOOGLE Bot Can Crawl More Now!!

Amirmullick3 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:18:02 GMT

Google's GoogleBot is now able to crawl forms and they say they can now "scan" Flash and Javascript.

That's big news!!

All those links could be crawlable now that were previously not found due to javascript.

Quote:

Crawling through HTML forms
Friday, April 11, 2008 at 10:50 AM
Written by Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy, Crawling and Indexing Team

Google is constantly trying new ideas to improve our coverage of the web. We already do some pretty smart things like scanning JavaScript and Flash to discover links to new web pages, and today, we would like to talk about another new technology we've started experimenting with recently.

In the past few months we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn't find and index for users who search on Google. Specifically, when we encounter a <FORM> element on a high-quality site, we might choose to do a small number of queries using the form. For text boxes, our computers automatically choose words from the site that has the form; for select menus, check boxes, and radio buttons on the form, we choose from among the values of the HTML. Having chosen the values for each input, we generate and then try to crawl URLs that correspond to a possible query a user may have made. If we ascertain that the web page resulting from our query is valid, interesting, and includes content not in our index, we may include it in our index much as we would include any other web page.

Needless to say, this experiment follows good Internet citizenry practices. Only a small number of particularly useful sites receive this treatment, and our crawl agent, the ever-friendly Googlebot, always adheres to robots.txt, nofollow, and noindex directives. That means that if a search form is forbidden in robots.txt, we won't crawl any of the URLs that a form would generate. Similarly, we only retrieve GET forms and avoid forms that require any kind of user information. For example, we omit any forms that have a password input or that use terms commonly associated with personal information such as logins, userids, contacts, etc. We are also mindful of the impact we can have on web sites and limit ourselves to a very small number of fetches for a given site.

The web pages we discover in our enhanced crawl do not come at the expense of regular web pages that are already part of the crawl, so this change doesn't reduce PageRank for your other pages. As such it should only increase the exposure of your site in Google. This change also does not affect the crawling, ranking, or selection of other web pages in any significant way.

This experiment is part of Google's broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users. By crawling using HTML forms (and abiding by robots.txt), we are able to lead search engine users to documents that would otherwise not be easily found in search engines, and provide webmasters and users alike with a better and more comprehensive search experience.

This is big news, and will spark a new generation of searching!

How to link between your own sites

webdigo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:12:19 GMT

Its very common that lot of webmasters have multiple websites. Its also natural that webmaster would interlink the sites to drive traffic from all sources. So whats the best practice for linking between your websites?

First thing to know is, all your sites would be treated as separate websites. Same rules apply as like if you are linking to somebody else's website.

Now problem is if website A links to B, and B links to A that makes a loop. Thats considered a network. Are you gonna get penalized for this? No. You won't get penalized for any cross-linking strategy. You may hear different opinions on this, but from my experience I can tell you the answer is NO. Because I have done it.

So how would you link? There are many options like site wide link(link from all pages), link from home page only, or link from selected few pages. Best approach on this is linking from pages that are related. As per current SEO practices links from related pages gets most credit, even from pages with no PR.

If the sole purpose is driving traffic I would also suggest using a rel="NOFOLLOW" tag on the link.

Google is not for everybody!

webdigo — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:07:45 GMT

Few days ago I met a businessman in Harvard Square, Harvard University Campus. He been in business for long long time. He does silver jewelry business. Few years back he got somebody do a cheesy website for him that sells those jewelry. He been struggling with that for years. He was looking for some help from me on his website.

During the conversation I asked him what advertising methods he uses. He said he uses Google AdWords. And only AdWords. I asked him how was the ROI (return of investment). He said with his last campaign spending 700+ dollars he got two orders of less then hundred dollars.

Whats wrong with this picture? [b]ROI is really bad.[/b] Main problem with this gentleman's strategy is he was using something that needs some skills, which he does not have. Using ppc programs like AdWords need skills to pick the right keywords so they don't end up paying too much. Its a trial and error process picking the best performing keywords, discarding the non-performing keywords. While this may increase the sales a lot if done right, a business can also loose lot of money if done wrong.

[b]Here are few suggestions to New PPC advertisers:[/b]
- Before you jump on PPC advertising like Google AdWords or so learn how it works and learn how you can maximize the ROI. All those systems offer a good amount of help pages, read them.
- If you can't do it, get help from people who can do it right.
- There are alternative advertising solutions like [url=http://www.webcosmo.com]free classified ads[/url]. Explore if those advertising solutions can help you without spending much.

Google knows all

exelor — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:52:00 GMT

[b]How did they know? xD[/b]

via: Psychoprogs

Indexed in 60 seconds

mit — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:24:08 GMT

Hey guys, just to tell you - my post has been indexed just in 60 seconds by Google.

[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2091/2347276712_560779e751.jpg?v=0[/img]

Google is very fast in indexing now...:)

Can a website with NO or Less PR rank well on SERPs?

webdigo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:30:33 GMT

This is a question lot of people want to know, specially when they are new in SEO.

Lot of people think high PR websites rank well for granted for competitive keywords. And low PR websites does not.

In real thats not the case. "PR does not have anything to do with ranking on SERPs". SERP ranking depends on many factors. Content, backlinks are few to mention that greatly effects the SERP ranking. Even a website with no PR can rank very well for competitive keywords.

Make a logo for Google

webdigo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:49:42 GMT

Google has started a competition making a logo for Google. The Doodle 4 Google competition is open to all students in U.S. schools from kindergarten to grade 12 (including home schoolers).

The competition will be judged in the following brackets:

* Grades K - 3
* Grades 4 - 6
* Grades 7 - 9
* Grades 10 - 12

Winners will be offered prizes.

Check out more from here [url=http://www.google.com/doodle4google/index.html]http://www.google.com/doodle4google/index.html[/url]

Google in Desperate Attempt to Monetize YouTube

webdigo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 01:46:38 GMT

Google seems to be in a Desperate Attempt to Monetize YouTube. After spending quite a bit of money to buy youtube, now they are launching an API to allow users access to YouTube library. Earlier they have started selling ads on youtube videos. Its gonna be interesting to watch what else they do.

Google Desperately Trying to Gain Ground in China

webdigo — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:24:50 GMT

Google hasn't been shy about its ambitions in China: It desperately wants to own the market. In fact, just this week Eric Schmidt was in Beijing, trying to drum up interest in a redesign of the local Chinese web property.

Meanwhile, Google has made little progress. It's been creamed by Baidu (in terms of traffic), and the company is scrambling to catch up. But if Alibaba.com is really looking for somebody to buy the stake currently owned by Yahoo (as reported by Reuters), Google would likely be the perfect fit.

"The Chinese market is strategically important for Google, and Alibaba would be a valuable partner. Google also has plenty of cash and could write a check for it," says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics.

Some background: Yahoo agreed to buy a 40 percent stake of Chinese web company Alibaba.com for $1 billion in August 2005. Alibaba.com CEO Jack Ma, had previously vowed to squash Yahoo and Google "for fun."

Google AdManager Launches Limited Beta

exelor — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:54:38 GMT

Google quietly allowed new users to apply for there ad serving platform today. This is probably the first Google product since analytics that I am really really excited about.

So what is it? Basically Google Ad Manager is a hosted solution similar to OpenX (formally known as OpenAds… and even more formally known as PhpAdsNew). I guess that is the easy way to say it. The bottom line is that they are going to destroy OpenX and everyone like it with this product. I really like the OpenX guys. They were guests on my radio show not to long ago. I would have much rather seen Google aquire them but… I guess that did not make business sense.

Anyway so what this will do is give you a easy to use platform to sell your ads on your website. I have said in many many many posts, panels, and speaking at conferences that Adsense is one of the worst ways to monetize your blog and direct ad sales was the best way. The only issue with doing ad sales yourself is you need a person to handle it (if you dont have time) and also you need to maintain the ad server.

What are the other features of Google Ad Manager? Well the first things that come to mind is the analytical data on your site. You will be able to give advertisers data that Google can provide. Demographics/geotargeting/ctr and all kinds of things. Also having a easy place where users can “self serve” is a massive benefit.

I think the benefits are pretty obvious but you can read about all of them here on the features page.

So what are the negatives? Well the only one I can really think of is privacy issues that come with it.

So if its free what does Google get out of it? Well for 1 you can use Adsense to backfill your inventory. I think the biggest feature is just getting more users into the Google system.

So you better go and sign up for admanager now. I suspect these invites will be hotter then gmail and ypn (if you remember those selling on eBay) to the right people.

From there FAQ:

1. What ad management problems is Google Ad Manager designed to solve?

Many publishers with direct ad sales experience the following problems:
* Confusing, slow, and complicated workflows
* Inflexible site tagging
* Uncertainty about which ad source to deliver to optimize yield
* Unreliable inventory forecasting
* High ad-serving costs

In response to these challenges, we designed Google Ad Manager to offer you:
* A clear user interface: Increase your staff’s efficiency and productivity.
* Simplified tagging: Tag your site only once.
* Yield optimization: Automatically maximize your CPMs.
* Reliable inventory forecasting: Always know what inventory is available to sell.
* Higher ROI: Save costs, because Ad Manager is free.
2. Is Google Ad Manager right for me?

Please consider Ad Manager for your business if you:
* Operate a website with reserved and network ad inventory.
* Sell your ad inventory directly to advertisers (or plan to sell directly to advertisers in the future).
* Want to improve the efficiency of the sales process and feel confident in your forecasting.
* Need a consistent way to deliver ads that make you the most money.
* Find that some of your inventory always remains unsold because you couldn’t accurately forecast availability.
3. Is Google Ad Manager really free?

Yes. There are no sign-up, ad serving, feature, or support costs for Google Ad Manager.
4. Does Ad Manager require exclusivity?

No. Ad Manager doesn’t require exclusivity. You’re free to use other ad management
and ad serving products along with Google Ad Manager or switch to another provider at any time.
5. Will I be restricted to AdSense as my ad network?

No. You can use any ad network you like. With Google Ad Manager, you can optionally enable AdSense to deliver the best-paying ad source for each impression.

How To Request Reconsideration With Google

webdigo — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:34:47 GMT

This is a common case scenario for many webmasters; Google imposes some penalty to websites e.g. PR drop, SERP drop etc. In order to reconsider any penalties Google have imposed on your site, Google wants to know three things:

1. [b]What you did wrong.[/b]
Explain to Google what you been doing wrong as per Google. Admitting that it was a mistake may help.

2. [b]That you have corrected the errors.[/b]
Explain to Google what measures you have taken to fix the issues.

3. [b]That you won’t make the mistake again.[/b]
Google wants to hear you say that you aren’t going to make the mistake again. That means if you got penalized for doing PayPerPost, you will have to say you won’t write any more sponsored posts. If you got penalized for selling Text-Link-Ads, you need to say you won’t sell them again.

Once you have properly done the request for reconsideration, Google will take at least a few weeks to get to it. A search engineer will probably then check your site to see if you have corrected the errors that got you the penalty in the first place. As long as you have corrected everything they’re penalizing you for, it’s likely that they will undo the penalty.

Multi Data Center Page Rank Prediction Tool

webdigo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 01:28:46 GMT

Looking for a good multi data center page rank checker tool. iwebtool seem to be a crap; most of the time down. Anything else?

Keywords in Domain Name

webdigo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:59:20 GMT

Its a common sense thing. Even people with very little knowledge on Internet and Web knows its good. And so does search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.

Personally I am against giving any credit to a site for having the keyword on domain name. Possibly it makes the job for SE easier to figure out what the site is about; but that does not necessarily conform the quality of the site. May be in future SE will change their algorithm on this.

For now if you want to get little extra credit for SERP rankings get a domain with your niche keywords on it. If you can't find the competitive keywords, try synonymies.

Google Trends to Get a Peak on Search Trend

webdigo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:32:30 GMT

Most of you probably know of this tool. Mentioning here for those who doesn't know.

Using Google Trend tool you can see how well a keyword is doing as per search volume. If you are starting a website its probably a good idea take a peak on how the market trend is; if its going up or its going down.

[url=http://www.google.com/trends]http://www.google.com/trends[/url]

Page Rank Tool: List Your Favorite

webdigo — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:37:27 GMT

Lets make a list of Page Rank checker tools.

One from me:
[url=http://www.iwebtool.com]http://www.iwebtool.com[/url]

Google Trying Search Box in SERPs

webdigo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:47:31 GMT

Looks like Google is doing experiment with a new thing on its SERP results. It shows a search box with the rank 1 site. Seems like its not available for all keywords. Its only available for very popular sites like flickr.com etc.

Try these url to check:

[url=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flickr&btnG=Search]http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flickr&btnG=Search[/url]

[url=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=onion&btnG=Search]ttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=onion&btnG=Search
[/url]

How you feel about Google these days?

webdigo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:14:51 GMT

Just few months back Google been the most lovable search engine to all webmasters; still is to many. After they started cracking down all the sites that are selling or using links for biasing PR, lot of webmasters literally hate them. I can understand the reason. Directory websites were growing like fungus, everywhere. Now their earnings are way down in the basket. Some text link sellers, blog review sellers are also effected.

Considering all these and other issues, how you feel about Google?

Why your site gets crawled late?

webdigo — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:43:27 GMT

I have seen many websites Google crawling regularly. Why Google bots takes so much time time (6-8 days or so) to crawl? What should I do on my website so that it crawls regularly?

You need lot of content to get crawled more often. 6-8 days is normal. I have a site with more then 50K pages, gets crawled in that rate. So you can see its normal.

Sites like social networking sites adds thousands of pages everyday. Even on news websites like cnn.com content changes daily. SE knows that. Only sites like that get crawled at a faster interval.

Content Splitting

webdigo — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:38:07 GMT

If you have a big size content, lets say an article, is it good idea to keep it all in one place or split it?

Google gives credit for having more number of pages in different ways. If you have more pages your site gets crawled more often.

Best idea would be split the content in some pages and link to each other with keywords or page number(keyword would be a better option).

List of what Google knows about you

webdigo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:46:43 GMT

Here is a small list of what Google know about a person. The list may grow or shrink depending on what you do with Google.

1. The Websites we own.
2. Bank Account.
3. Profession.
4. Visitors to his website. (A lot of information about them, this can let them calculate a lot of things)
5. A lot of information about you also goes in the websites that you visit that use google analytics code.
6. Arial view of your house. If you have used google maps, you must have gone to check your house and must have gone to it a lot of times to show your friends and stuff. Or maybe worse marked it as “My House” .
7. They know his personal connections, like his friends and his friends and a lot of information about them too.
8. his full name
9. His verified Postal Address.
10. the web sites I visit, frequency of visit etc (this can be done through the google toolbar, which goes to their server to get the pagerank values etc.)
11. The Country that he lives in.
12. The browser that he uses.
13. The OS that he uses.
14. His video preferences.
15. the communities he belongs to
16. Credit Card information (In case of adwords)
17. Search Terms that you target
[b]
SOURCE:[/b] [url=http://realwebserver.com/my-articles/google-knows-too-much-about-us-cant-they-use-this-information-to-rank-our-sites.html]http://realwebserver.com/my-articles/google-knows-too-much-about-us-cant-they-use-this-information-to-rank-our-sites.html[/url]

U.S. Military Restricts Google Maps

webdigo — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:27:43 GMT

The U.S. Department of Defense put Google on the defensive last week when it issued a communique to make it clear that the roving photographic vehicles Google uses to acquire Google Maps Street View images aren't allowed on U.S. military bases.

In pursuing its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," Google inadvertently ran afoul of the military's mission to maintain security for its personnel and sites.

The DOD took action when Street View images of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, appeared on Google Maps. Google introduced Google Maps Street View images for San Antonio in February.

Google removed the pictures at the request of the military. Fort Sam Houston is not open to the public.

Google spokesperson Larry Yu said it was against Google's policy to seek access to military installations or otherwise private facilities. "Our policy is to stay on public roads," he said. "A driver broke that policy."

Google Page Rank Not Changing

Manik — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:45:52 GMT

One of my sites staying at PR 3 for almost 9 months so far. I have more then 22000 backlinks, 30000+ pages. I get PR prediction tools predicting it to be a PR 6, which of course never happened.

Anybody got a clue what's going on?

Matt Cutts discusses how to optimize your site for Google

webdigo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:12:17 GMT

Google guru Matt Cutts discusses how best to optimize your site for Google. Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. He is currently the head of Google's Webspam team.

Should you get links from high PR sites?

webdigo — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:32:04 GMT

There is a saying "get quality links not quantity". You may have heard that. Used to be high PR sites mean higher quality.

But thats not the case anymore. Google gives more credit to backlinks from relevant sites these days.

Lets say you have a site on games. You can get a link from PR7 advertising site, also you can get a PR 0 games site. Which one you should take? With current Google preference PR0 games sites would be your best choice. You got my point.

Get Your Blog Google Ranked in 30 Days or Less

exelor — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:16:26 GMT

Get Your Blog Google Ranked in 30 Days or Less

Blogs have been around long enough to become standard elements of the web landscape. They’re easy to construct and manage, they create fresh, user-generated content and, if well-executed, blogs draw crowds and the attention of search engines.

Whether starting out with a new domain name, or a domain that’s been around for a decade, you can rank your blog on Google if you just do what Google wants you to do. So here are 25/50 tips to get your blog ranked by the world’s biggest SE.

50. Build your own or move to Wordpress. Wordpress is a blog platform that’s open source (free), robust, extensible and easy to use. Add Feedburner, which equips site owners to broadcast RSS feeds and develop user metrics. Next, synch up Google Analytics and a sitemap plug-in to simplify populating the blog and developing useful, actionable metrics. Also, make sure your blog is pinging Technoratti and other social media sites like digg.

49. Don’t worry aboutpage rank. PR is highly over-rated as a yardstick of online success. Connectivity within a web community and expansion through content syndication and guest blogging are more critical to building site credibility than page rank. PR will take care of itself over time if you do it right.

48. Make a difference, or at least have a clear purpose. Differentiate your content on every post. Cover lots of editorial ground.

47. Use a conversational tone. Dry, starchy academic writing is strictly for the textbooks. Write words that people “hear” instead of read.

46. Provide a “Tell Your Friends” link on your blog. Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together. So, if one of your regulars shares an interest in philately, chances are s/he has other friends with an interest in stamp collecting.

45. Study the competition. They’re studying you. Check out SpyFu to do a little undercover work on search analytics employed by competitor sites and their visitors. You can’t touch the content but you can’t copyright an idea, either, so pick up some new paths of thought from others in your site’s arena.

44. Remember SEO basics. Use provocative, keyword-rich title tags, meta keywords and descriptions, and only link to high-quality sites. Never over do it. Keep your posts relevant, natural, accurate and, above all, current.

43. Don’t stuff blog post titles with keywords. It’s a form of keyword stuffing and spiders hate keyword stuffing. The ratio in headlines should be ~40% keywords, ~60% non-keywords.

42. Submit your URL to blog directories. There are “best of the web,” and paid directories, like Yahoo, and free directories like the Open Directory Project. Every directory listing is another link to your site and another way visitors can find you. Just google them to find more.

41. Create blog categories that contain keywords, i.e., Ecommerce, SEO, Affiliates, etc. for use with a “site hosting” or “site design” blog.

40. Content quality counts. Research topics about which target readers want to learn. Write something new, useful and relevant. And don’t forget to regularly update older posts. Things change fast on the web so last year’s “next big thing” is this year’s hackneyed cliché.

39. Vary topics, content length, relevancy and posting times. However, be consistent, as well. Keep blogging. It can take time for a blog to catch the notice of a search engine spider.

38. Get guest bloggers. Add links from their blogs and establish your site’s link community. There are people within your web neighborhood with opinions and good information. Contact them to invite submissions to your blog and your site in general.

37. Don’t use duplicate content. The only duplicate content that appears in your blog posts are quotes, and they should be identified with quotation marks.

36. Call posters by name. If Bob M. from Athens, Georgia, posts to your blog, recognize his contribution with a “Thanks, Bob” at the end of your response.

35. Make friends with other bloggers in your commercial, business or NFP space. Ask to become a guest blogger, or seek endorsements from the “names” within your site sphere.

34. Send a personal note to posters. Not all bloggers have the time to do this but if you can send a personal email thank-you note to a poster, you’ve increased the chances of that poster becoming a member of your site community.

33. Encourage viral link building. Take a stand. Introduce the coming paradigm shift in web commerce, provoke controversy. It sells. Just ask Ann Coulter.

32. Ensure the blog is optimized for Technorarri. Claim your blog, set an avatar and pings, use tags where appropriate and be sure to ping various blog tracking sites.

31. Don’t place ads on your blog, yet. If you feel you must (you’re seeing nice PPC revenues), determine that your site’s HTML is optimized to position those ads at the bottom of each blog page.

30. If your blog isn’t pulling, have the code reproduced so it’s as semantic, accessible and code-to-content optimized as possible. Also, hire a code expert to position content above ads or any other content in the site markup.

29. Ignore Alexa. A lot of new site owners rely on Alexa for site metrics but remember, Alexa is a popularity metric since only Alexa toolbar users contribute data — and that’s a less-than-universal test population.

28. Build credibility. Publishing authorities on your site’s topicality usually does the trick. Once blog credibility is established, identify trends, solve new problems and gradually expand the topic range of your blog.

27. Buy or build a hot blog design and submit it to design galleries. Hire a site/blog designer, or bring your vision to fruition. This enables your blog to appear five or six demographic iterations from your home site, expanding the site’s reach outside the immediate site community. This creates new marketing channels fast.

26. Develop some friendly contacts on social media sites and participate in the community. Ask contacts to promote your blog content. Also ask for contributors. People love to express their opinions.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site’s content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there’s always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets — from green rookie to wizened old vet.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody’s got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn’t do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they’d like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There’s lots of open source software (OSS), mortgage calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it’s fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don’t take up a lot of room. If you aren’t an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Never use clip art.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You’re the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there’s plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like Helium, Ezine and Go Articles are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don’t direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site’s archives. Point them to the new news.

9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it’s of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.

7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There’s a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives: (1) it shows that there’s a human behind the blog; (2) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and (3) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it’s also the polite thing to do, as well.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you’re optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include LinkedIn, MeetUp and MyBlogLog. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They’re also useful in building beneficial online relationships – not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time

Once you’ve got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

So, blog.

via: [url]http://www.w3-edge.com/weblog/rank-your-blog-30-days-or-less/[/url]

A Dedicated IP Address Help Better Ranking?

webdigo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:27:38 GMT

This issue is debated over and over in many places. If you ask you will get different answers; some will say yes, some no. So here is my opinion.

- Dedicated IP Address DOES NOT help rank better; helps taking off your money.
- Dedicated IP gives some technical advantages for web developers only, not search engines.
- 99% websites are run on shared hosting which are not using dedicated ip address, and many of them rank very well. You can find plenty of example online. Search engines like Google know this.
- According to Matt Cutts, who works for Google, "Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses." In case you don't believe me, you can trust him :)

So why people spend money buying dedicated ip? Most buy it for having lack of knowledge. Many buy it to feel safe from "Bad Neighborhood". Some have it because it comes with the dedicated hosting package(not always).

Simply put its a peace of mind. Shared ip versus dedicated ip primarily a business question, not a SEO question. Now its upto you which route you take.

www and non-www

Manik — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:45:42 GMT

This is a well-known issue that harms website ranking; in SERP and PR both.

Few days ago when I was getting my site analyzed by a tool, it told me the www site got more then 23k links and to my surprise the non-www has more then 19k links. Thats something I wouldn't want for sure, so I took care of that.

Wondering if any fellow webmasters have seen any improvement on PR or SERP by taking care of this problem?

Getting Indexed on Google

webdigo — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:36:19 GMT

I have seen lot of webmasters get hard time get their sites indexed. Specially for new sites.

To speed up things best technique is getting your link on a site that is crawled pretty often. Social networking sites could be an ideal place for this. Since they have content changed very fast, they get crawled often. Submit your pages to social networking sites, and chances are your site would get indexed within 24 hours or so.

Now ranking better is a different issue. If you wanna see your site indexed within top 10 you probably have to do way lot more work.

Why PR is low with so many backlinks

webdigo — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 09:46:44 GMT

You can build tons of backlinks. And you probably expect your PR get a roller coaster ride with your big number of backlinks.

Wrong. Google recently put more emphasis on link relevancy then quantity of links. Getting links from high PR sites doesn't really matter more.

Lets take an example. Lets say you have a site on women's beauty products. You have built links from all high pr sites and other sites wherever you can. Lets say you have managed to get 45,000 backlinks. Another site on same niche built 250 backlinks only; but all from womens beauty product sites. Who gonna get high PR? If your sites doesn't have enough links from relevant sites like the other, the other site gonna have high PR then your site.

So key is get links from pages where the content is related to your niche. Happy PR hunting!

Is Page Rank Updating?

webdigo — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:50:02 GMT

Its been a while Google Page Rank been acting crazy. For many PR was in a halt for long time. Anybody seeing any changes on PR?

Tools to check Google Ranking for Keywords

webdigo — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:49:28 GMT

There are some tools out on the net that gets you the rankings on Google for different keywords. To mention here are few you could use:

[url=http://www.arizonadesertliving.com/google.php]http://www.arizonadesertliving.com/google.php[/url]

[url=http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/google_top_1000_serps_checker.asp]http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/google_top_1000_serps_checker.asp[/url]

Please note that these tools are not accurate all the time. Results seem to vary slightly. Its always good idea to check manually if you need the ranking for any serious work. But of course they are handy to get an idea.

John Chow Slapped Harder

webdigo — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:29:08 GMT

JohnChow.com is showing up as a PR3 in many data centers, down another point from the PR4 he was earlier this month. JohnChow.com was a PR6 site about five months ago. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because John continues to sell advertising that passes PageRank. John doesn’t care anymore because his blog is already very popular.

Page Rank Changing For Many Sites

webdigo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:17:35 GMT

Here we go again. Lot of sites seeing changes in PR. I have checked quite a few sites for looking at the number of backlinks; most showing 0, although I know they have thousands of backlinks. Lot of people are seeing PR fluctuations.

Since PR works as a status symbol, lot of people go nuts over this. Its time again, those people gonna start cheering and shitting on Google PR :)

Got Page Rank Back

webdigo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:57:14 GMT

Whatever reason it is, Google Page Rank is active really unpredictable way. One of my blogs used to have PR3. Then month or so it was PR1. Now its PR3.

For blogs its really important to have PR, from my point of view. Reason is lot of people gets interested leaving a comment just because of the PR value. At least I got the PR back.

Difference Between Google Indexing and Cached

webdigo — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:24:12 GMT

There is a difference between a site indexed and cached in Google.

A site indexed in Google means that Google have seen it and have listed in the search results.
A site cached in Google means that Google have saved a copy of one or more pages of the site on their servers.

How often should you update your site?

webdigo — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:35:32 GMT

Sites that have content changed frequently gets crawled more often. You may have noticed sites that gets crawled often ranks better for long-tail keywords.

Its a question asked by many webmasters how often should the site be updated.

Answer is simple actually. Use Google webmaster tool to find out the time interval between the crawls. Lets say your site gets crawled every 7 days. Then you should update your site within that time.

Now question is does it help on SERP rankings for competitive keywords. I don't think so. Ranking for competitive keywords take time, just updating the site frequently won't help; you need to do more. But you may get some good rankings from long-tail keywords. If you have noticed traffic from long-tail keywords is a significant part of the total traffic.

Google Search engins

chris07 — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:26:08 GMT

Google Blogsearch Best blog search engine going

Google Directory Same as DMOZ

Google Groups Good for obscure information

Google Images Yahoo image search is superior

Google Local Local to the UK that is.

Google News Adequate. Good for email alerts

Google Personalised Tailor results to your interests

Google Scholar Good(ish) for academic stuff

Google Trends Who is looking for what?

Why Google is better then Yahoo and Other Search Engines?

webdigo — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:53:06 GMT

Why Google is better then Yahoo and Other Search Engines?

Your opinion.