Welcome to the Q&A Forum

David,

well explained. Excellent post +1

Jarno

I agree with both these answers.

Start by reading the beginners guide to SEO -> make a plan for your site as you read the pdf and start implementing this.

After that Matt is completely right. Make sure visitors want to return and share your site with their friends.

Also use the web-master tips from google web-masters and bing web-masters for your site statistics. Learn how to analyze your analytics and take note of key factors here.

And be patient. Sometimes it take a while to rank well for specific keywords (also due to the facts Matt has described for you). Take note of this. Follow the white-board Friday video's and blog carefully, take notes and do something with the tips and pointers.

kind regards

Jarno

James,

what you could do i just add a section to your homepage stating: Newly Added Content or something like that and their link to the new page using your keyword. We've tried this with some of our clients and it works just fine and besides your not spamming or participating in illegal activities that way.

hope this helps

Kind regards

Jarno

Dear Tahire,

one of my own websites uses mainly long-tail keywords up to 4 words. What we noticed over time is that in some cases people all of the sudden stop searching for that term.

1. have you tried editing your location in Google? This influences that ranking tremendously here in the Netherlands so it should also do that in the States. This could give you false positions in the SERP's

We had a term, "boerencamping nederland" that we rank good for but 2 years ago the term wasn't searched. Last year we got about 50,000 visitors via that term in one year. This year, 0 visitors. All of the suddon people started searching on boerencamping drenthe, boerencamping flevoland and other terms. Strangely enough. How can you explain authentic search behavior of humans? Good question. I can't answer it. I tried to imagine it but couldn't come to the conclusion. I just adapted on the new search terms.

For the domain preference setting, you could use a .htaccess rerouting the non-www to www or the other way around. Google can still say that you did not define a favorite one (we still didn't and this causes no problems).

Hope this helps a bit

kind regards

Jarno

@Adam,

did you apply any Seo methods that aren't white hat? Perhaps bought links for a couple of bucks? What efforts did you take for optimization?

If you could let us know perhaps we can give some direct advise on how to change the rankings for you again.

kind regards

Jarno

thanks for the notice on the matter. Had not seen the other posts yet. Can't really say how this impacts search in the Netherlands for now. It will probably be a couple of months again before the update hits europe.

When it does, i will let you know off course.

kind regards

Jarno

I got a couple of pages with more then a 100 pages / links on them and thus Seomoz gives me warnings for those pages.

For some categories i have over a hundred of pages. I listed all these on 1 sitemap (html) because it is a quick overview for visitors which pages there are. Is it smarter to split them up or is that pollution of the Internet (almost identical pages).

If i did so i would use rel="canonical" link to the first page (the original) but is it wise?

Mozter,

personally i would make it like you said it would be: url:/US/stock-trading-software/supertrader

Don't implement the keyword more then once in the domain name including the extensions and folder because it could be interpreted as keyword spam.

this is what i would do.

Daniel,

though i can imagine your thinking in this i do not agree with you. One of our main websites is focused on camping at the farmer (in dutch it's like: kamperen bij de boer) and we have a domain name that is similar to that. So our website:

www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com is build for user but it does use the exact keyword people are looking. If Google changes the algorithm to penalize websites that use keyword "stuffed" domains then my website, build for users, would be demoted. That's not fair is it?

I do agree with you however in some cases. There are a lot off websites that keyword stuff the domain or use - to separate domain names from competitors. So in some cases i totally agree with you but there are still some websites that have a domain name that is the main keyword. What would happen to them?

Aran,

for example  it could mean the number of times the keyword is displayed in a page. I might think i use it naturally but Google might decide otherwise..

on the article of searchengineland some of the feedbacks enroll external linking to your site. By buying links to your competitors your might invoke them as harmful websites. I don't think Google is stupid but it could be influential.

Off course it goes without saying that the only way we are going to find out what it entails it buy waiting for it and then testing. I agree with your white-hat theory. Keep using white-hat and you should always be fine.

Aran,

i totally agree with you on the points you made but since Google is letting out more and more information about wanting to level the SEO market I was very curious as to what other SEO's think about this.

I can image that Google is going to make a point out of a lot of things but there are some factors that SEO's use that can be an issue. That is what i can imagine about it anyway.

thanks for the reply

I just read this interesting article about a new Google Penalty that will be up in the next upcoming weeks/months about Google making changes to the algorithm.

The penalty will be targeted towards websites that are over optimized or over seo'ed. What do you think about this? Is this a good thing or is this not a good thing for us as SEO marketeers?

here's the link: SEL.com/to-much-seo

I'm really curious as to your point of views.

regards

Jarno

Dear Brendan,

this should not make for any problems. We also use it on different websites for theming. Our theme is camping so we use the main keyword/theme word on most pages description which in turn should not be any problem.

To be sure you could always interchange the position of the standard text (if this is not done automatically using a CMS).

So no problem at all.

bristol,

you are completely right, quality links outrank poor quality links any day. It's even so that when you can get 10 high quality links to your website for a keyword e.g. Vacuum cleaners from website with high authority and high PR them self that your competitor maybe need to get a 100 lower quality links to get to the same result. So image what would happen if you can get a 100 or even 500 good quality links to your websites? Your competitors would have to try to get about a 1000 to 5000 links for the exact same result. And when Google decides that quality is even more important then quantity these numbers might even go up more. Quality is everything to Google.

Yes it is very smart to get links to the deeper pages of your website. Keep in mind that tier 2 or 3 pages on your website also link to your homepage so there still is a link-juice flow. That's why it is a smart on-line strategy.

Staying on the example of vacuum cleaners if your deeper pages are brands of vacuum cleaners you should make sure you get high quality links to those page stating: "brand-name vacuum cleaners" e.g. for Philips Vacuum Cleaners you want the inbound links to say exactly that. Since you also name your primary keyword you keep on topic of your site which in turn results in better rankings for your primary keyword. A fun game isn't it?

When sending e-mails to websites for high quality links you could always try something like this:

"Hello.

Let me introduce myself first...introduction.

We noticed your website in our search for Vacuum Cleaners and we must say, our compliments on a piece of art (suck up some more)

Maybe you'll find this an interesting link to share with your community:

yourlink.co.uk

I'm really hoping you would share this link on your website and in return i will inform my community about yours. (this generates a possibility for a 3 way linking so you link to them from another website-> which is your "community")

Hope to hear from you soon

Kind regards/Best Wishes or whatever you want to conclude with,

Yourname

Yoursite.co.uk"

I use a similar version of this in the netherlands in dutch so i translated it roughly for you. I think you can get where to change the specifics? You could also search on this Q&A forum for "e-mail linking" or "e-mail baiting" because i know i saw something about this here earlier. Can't find the link right now.

I do not know if this is allowed in the UK to send to people but maybe you can adapt it a little so it should be fine. I don't know all the laws over there.

Hope this helps

Kind regards

Jarno

Dear Bristolweb,

in some way it still does. Page Rank as you know is being build be gathering links to your websites. PR from the linking website to your own flows over a little. The same goes with Domain Authority and other metrics.

The more people "vote" on your website the better Google will have to like your site because people told Google this is what we would like to see.

So:

quality linking to your websites increases page rank - > more quality links improve your metrics -> more quality links improve your position in Google.

If you really want o improve your pages rank or page rank or whatever name you want to use you could commit yourself to a on-line community asking question, answering questions about the subject of your website. Linking to it from the community helps a lot and also spend time on link building. Use the tools provided by SEOMoz to check out your competitors and make sure you get a link on that page. It could only help not harm your site (not completely true but it's all about the essence in here).

So to sum up my advise:

Yes, PR of pages rank is a (very small) factor in the Google Algorithm so it's still important.

Should you focus on it? In a way: Yes. As I already explained PR is mainly build on the number of "Votes" that go to your websites. So getting more Votes improves your PR and improve the amount of traffic (when you get quality votes) which in turn is a factor in the Algorithm.

Focus on gaining good quality links to your website. It will help!

Hi Alhallinan

I think the essence will stay the same for us. As it is said in the article Google will try to respond with better results to queries so it may even turn out good for white hat seo's.

Lets say a person types in "speed after tuning GMC" Google will answer that person with a webpage that contains the answer. This is how I interpret the information given in the article. So in any case it could turn out good if you really tell usefull information on your page.

That's just what i think

Maybe the mistake of putting the logo in the H1 is done by the software (it does happen). otherwise i agree

Hello Mark,

some say that IP adress is a factor for ranking but mainly in the sence that linking from the same ip adres to other websites with the same adres doesn't do much. Having a own server with a own ip adres is better (linkbuilding wise).

others say that ip adresses are only used to determine the country your websites is located and nothing more.

I don't think you can say for sure that it does affect your results but as long as you make sure that links come from other ip adresses i don't think it will harm your website

JellyFish,

i think the best way to approach this is to use every possiblity provided by Google Webmaster including blocking Googlebot to crawl your pages. Then it should take some time to dissapear. You could also 301 redirect your pages (17 is not that bad) to other pages you want to rank higher with.

2. if you ever get back to were you where is not certain and can't be said by anyone. I think their is a good chance that you can get your position back but i't can't be said for sure.

I never encountered this before but i can image the problem your client is having.

hope this helps

kind regards

Neooptic,

what software package do you use? You call it SEO Friendly but when i look at the source code of your page it is not. A lot of Javascript code in the page, a lot of hidden form field etc.

This could be the problem.

And indeed, sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools, resubmit you website might also work, or keep on linkbuilding as it should do the trick eventually.

kind regards