Anyone who has developed a website hoping to quickly achieve a high ranking in the search engines, especially Google, has probably discovered that the task is much more daunting than they originally thought. That is because new websites and even existing websites must prove to Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines that they are worthy of being ranked high.
There are many factors involved in getting a website ranked high in the search engines, including good, relevant content that gives visitors the information they are searching for along with strong link popularity.
What Exactly is Link Popularity?
Many people think link popularity equates to the number of incoming links a website has linking to it. In other words, how many other websites are linking to your website.
But, link popularity is much more than just the number of incoming links you have coming to your website. Factors can include, but are not limited to, the quality and type of website linking to you, whether you link back to that website or not, the reputation of the website linking to you, and if it appears that you paid for the link or not. And Google has just made the distinction between quality links vs. non-quality links even more pronounced with their latest algorithm update.
On a very simplistic level, a website’s link popularity is designed to increase as the number of other websites linking to your website increases. Google’s original inspiration with this concept was based on the fact that Google believes if other websites were linking to your website, you must have something good to link to. In other words, others are giving your website a vote of confidence.
However, as in all aspects of Search Engine Marketing, website owners and SEO specialists found ways to manipulate Google’s Page Rank (Google’s indicator of your link popularity.) Many website owners actively seek other websites that will “exchange” a link with them. “If you link to me, I’ll link to you.” So many times the links are completely irrelevant to the content on the two sites. The reciprocal link arrangements are simply established in order to try to increase their link popularity and thereby their Google Page Rank. There have been entire businesses built on helping websites exchange links with each other to boost their Google Page Rank.
Of course Google is not blind to this manipulation of their algorithm. So it goes without saying that they would eventually figure out a way to help stop, or at least minimize the abuse of their link popularity approach to ranking websites.
How Does this Affect My Site?
Google has adjusted and refined their Page Rank algorithm many times in the last few years. After the latest algorithm update you can pretty much count on your reciprocal links being discounted or completely ignored. Links that have been “bought” on other websites have also been discounted, so I wouldn’t bother spending the money if someone tries to sell you a link on their website to link back to your website. (The main exceptions to this statement are quality directories that charge to be submitted and added to their directory. Most quality directories are normally worth the money they charge due to the benefits you receive from the directory listing.)
“Run of the site” links are also being discounted or ignored by Google. Those are links that someone puts on every page of their site to your website to make it appear that there are a lot of pages linking to your site. Again, you’re better off just having one link to your site from a page that does not have a lot of other outgoing links on it as opposed to having a link from every page on another person’s website.
Get Quality Incoming Links
So how can you increase your link popularity and thereby your Google Page Rank? You’ll need to do it the old fashioned way – by developing a website that people want to visit and link to. Of course, there are also some good opportunities to help people (and Google) find your website so they can have the opportunity to find out just how good it is. Press releases, articles, and quality directories all provide excellent opportunities for strong incoming links to your website.
If your press release catches others attention, you can receive some strong incoming links each time you submit a newsworthy item. Just make sure you really have something to talk about in your press release or it will be ignored.
Articles help to not only build quality content on your site, but you can submit your articles to a variety of article directories that allow others to find what you have written and link to your site as an expert on a particular subject.
Quality directories not only provide good links back to your site but they can also land you a high ranking in a search engine results page. There have been many instances where a website may not be listed on the first page of Google for a search, but the directory listing for that website is listed on the first page. Having that high ranking in the directory is certainly better than no ranking at all! In the end, it’s all about bringing visitors to your website when they are searching for your products for services. And directories can help bring you that traffic.
So, bottom line, you can help boost the rankings of your website through good, quality content coupled with a strong link popularity which you can obtain naturally through your online press releases, articles and quality directory submissions. It takes time for a website to build a good reputation in the search engines, but the long-term benefits are worth the time and effort. Trying to achieve high rankings through questionable practices and shortcuts can work for a while but it will almost always come back to haunt you once your tactics are discovered by the search engines and your site is penalized or removed.
Many site owners dream about adding deep social features allowing users to interact with their friends in external communities. However the cost and know-how required to script against various sites' APIs have traditionally been prohibitive for all but the largest publishers. Google's Friend Connect bridges the programming gap by offering standardized tools to facilitate "richer social experiences" to mid and small size publishers. But what are the benefits to the average site owner? Why does this matter?
Background First
The Friend Connect "preview release" announcement today may foreshadow, in palpable terms, the ultimate street level impact of OpenSocial platform-thinking. Though not fully aimed at data portability objectives," webmasters will download cross-site "widgets" using a wizard starting sometime later today. The "social gadget" engine will generate turnkey code which includes "built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community."
According to the press release any site which deploys Google Friend Connect widgets will be able to "see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more."
Site Owner Benefits
These new tools will engage visitors and drive traffic by offering opportunities to interact with friends who publish their activities to other social sites, a technique many of us practice to various degrees. However Friend Connect offers all of this functionality without hiring a team of programmers...just download the widget, hook it up and rock.
Visualize your users inviting their Facebook and other social community friends (contacts) to "join" them to participate in your site. Users can them "publish back" to other social communities they're active in, making the promotion of your content truly exponential as it ripples amongst friends of friends, etc... While this type of viral propagation has long been in the vocabulary of social media publishers, in past years activity has been largely limited to closed-loop thinking. In other words, what happens in one site stays in the site absent specialized configurations and a lot of know-how.
Already cross pollination add-ons like the StumbleUpon Facebook Application mingle multiple social site experiences to where recommending a site on SU results in publishing the thumbs-up to your FB profile for all of your friends to see. There are many third party widgets which accomplish similar ends including WordPress Twitter Plugs which automates pulling tweets into your blog and creating new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
It takes a lot of research to put together custom suites of such tools. The excitement surrounding Friend Connect is in regards to standardization, expanding reach and lowered cost to make a wide array of previously unavailable social integration available to mid and small size publishers
On Monday, June 16, 2008, before the start of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, Canada, there will be four search engine marketing training classes. While each of the half-day SEM training workshops costs CAD 795, if you register for a full day, the cost is CAD 1,395.
That?s a savings of 195 Loonies ? which is worth between 97 and 98 Toonies. (SES Toronto Conference Chairman, Andrew Goodman, has been trying to help me translate American into Canadian, but Search Engine Strategies Global Content Director, Kevin Ryan, thinks it?s a lost cause.)
Seriously, why would you want to take a search engine marketing training class or two ? independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto?
There are three key reasons.
First, you?ll be provided with ?guided, hands-on exposure that puts theory into practice in a highly interactive environment,? as it says on the Search Engine Strategies Toronto website. These SEM training workshops will be taught by Debra Mastaler, Todd Malicoat, Adam Goldberg and Liana Evans, and I can personally vouch for three of them. (While I don?t know Adam Goldberg personally, he?s an ex-Google Insider who started Google?s Inside Sales team in NYC in 2003. So, I?ll give him the benefit of the doubt.)
These search engine marketing experts will provide you with the tools and techniques you need to become (or remain) outstanding in your field. (I know there?s a joke about a guy who is out standing in his field, but I forget the punch line.)
In the end, you?ll not only walk away from the search engine marketing classes with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you may also ?jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how,? as the SES Toronto website puts it.
Second, all four of this year?s SEM training workshops are brand new. Compare them to last?s year?s line up of search engine marketing training classes. There are absolutely no repeats.
In Track 1, Debra Mastaler of Alliance-Link.com is teaching ?Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques? from 8 a.m. to noon. And Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleing is teaching ?Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths? from 1 to 5 p.m. (I love the use of alliteration in the titles of their SEM training workshops.)
In Track 2, Todd Malicoat of Stundtdubl is teaching ?SEO Tools? from 8 a.m. to noon. And Liana Evans of KeyRelevance is teaching ?How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns? from 1 to 5 p.m. (Just because they don?t alliterate their titles doesn?t mean their search engine marketing training classes won?t be fun.)
I interviewed Todd and John Marshall of Market Motive at ad:tech San Francisco a couple of weeks back, when Market Motive announced it has teamed with Search Engine Strategies to provide online classes for training in search marketing, web analytics, and web conversion techniques.
Todd also talked about his SEM training workshop at SES Toronto. Check out the video interview below.
Stundubl?s Todd Malicoat's Upcoming Session at SES Toronto
There?s a third key reason why you would want to take a search engine marketing training class or two ? independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto. (There are always three key reasons to do anything. Hang on a second, I?ll remember it.)
You get a lunch break. (No, that?s not it. The lunches are getting better at all of the Search Engine Strategies events, but that?s not a reason to take workshops covering optimization and advertising strategies, analytics, tactics and best practices.)
Oh, now I remember. Whether you?re a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you can?t afford to miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about the latest developments in search engine strategy. (I thought I was having a ?senior moment? there.)
No matter where you are on the SEO or SEM learning curve, you?ll leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level. ?Something that never looks bad on your permanent record,? according to Greg Marmalard in Animal House (1978).
See you at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre Hotel, which is a different venue than the main Search Engine Strategies conference, which is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, which is attached to the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel. (Was that clear? Check Google Maps.)
If you've wanted to ride the social media marketing wave by adding social features to your website, but the economy has you worried about spending lots of money on apps, then get excited. Google is again coming to the rescue by offering a free service for you to get your social media game on.
After Google's Campfire One event tonight, website owners will be able to utilize Friend Connect (http://www.google.com/friendconnect). Basically, it's social applications for the coding-challenged. Visitors to sites using Friend Connect will be able to "see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more."
David Glazer, Director of Engineering at Google had this to say: "Google Friend Connect is about helping the 'long tail' of sites become more social. Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there's an emerging wave of social standards -- OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making 'any app, any site, any friends' a reality."
What do you think about Friend Connect? Plan to add it to your site? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Matt Cutts is Google's Genghis Khan of Spam. He probably slaughters more search engine spam sites in one week than Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Napoleon combined killed people in their conquest of the known world.
While we don't have any proof that's true (Google doesn't release spam stats), we can all agree that Matt Cutts is the world's most famous spam killer with more kills to his name than any other search engine spam cop.
Matt's pictured here in a Halloween pic from his blog in full frontal punk rock mode.
So if you want a great introduction to "What Google Knows About Spam" then spend 10 minutes watching Matt's Web 2.0 keynote video.
It will be the best 10 minute investment you make all week.
Don't forget to leave a "thank you" for Matt here or on Matt's blog. Either way, he'll see your comment and respond if he has time.
Has there been a change in the SERPs? You might find out about it first - from Twitter.
Twitter has been breaking all sorts of news lately, from weather events to earthquakes. Now, it's becoming a great source for finding out about possible search engine updates.
This morning, I read the following:
@alscillitani: anyone else noticing their rankings change several times over the last 24 hours in google. Up, down, back to up, ??? weird!!
@danlondon: @alscillitani I am seeing a few rankings bounce around. what is up?
This is a great way for Search Engine Marketers to put social media to use. It's easy to think that social media must be used for marketing and sales, but remember that tools like Twitter are great for networking and keeping up with the industry.
What are your thoughts on Twitter and search engine marketing? Let us know by leaving a comment!
Nielsen has released data showing the popularity of social networks being used via mobile phones in the UK. Here are three key takeaway points:
Almost half (44%) of UK mobile phone subscribers belong to an online social network. Of this group, one in four (25%) use their mobile phone for social networking-related activities
Around 812,000 Britons each month, or 1.7% of all UK mobile subscribers, visited a social networking website using their mobile during the first quarter of 2008
Facebook is the most popular site for mobile social networking, being visited by over half a million Britons (557,000) from their mobiles, or 9% of all UK Mobile Internet subscribers
Kent Ferguson, Client Services Manager, Nielsen Mobile had this to say about the data: ?Social networking is already a global phenomenon, and mobile could be the next big thing in the space. Large numbers of people are interacting with their social networking profiles while they?re on the move. There could be increased consumer demand for mobile social networking driven by the flat fee price plans offered by the leading operators that give subscribers unlimited mobile Internet access.?
So what do you think? Are social media and mobile phones colliding? Leave a comment and let us know!
Who won Survivor last night? Powerset doesn't know.
Okay - maybe that's an unfair question for Powerset since the aptly-named Parvati Shallow only won Survivor Micronesia last night. It might be easier to ask "Who is Parvati? The answer: in Sanskrit, "parvati" means "Mountain's daughter" one of the names for Shiva's wife, the Universal Mother.
So what is Powerset? That's a much more intelligent question to ask.
Powerset is the much-hyped beta natural language search engine metaphor-challenged mainstream media call the Google Killer. That means you can type questions in a search box the way you normally ask them. (Think Ask Jeeves 1.5)
That doesn't mean natural language search or Powerset can kill Google, or even commit assault and battery on Google.
Powerset launched with a smart concept: better search results than Wikipedia's own search box. So the play is a "non-Google Custom Search Engine" for Wikipedia. Let's see about what Powerset can can do..
"What is Powerset?" we asked. Powerset separates results by combining the primary keyword (Powerset) with related verbs and nouns from Web pages and Wikipedia. Here's the answer we weren't looking for from Powerset itself.
Factz from Wikipedia: we found the following about Powerset
Powerset opened : community and Powerlabs.
Results for Powerset opened community
Powerset (company) In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007.
Results for Powerset opened Powerlabs
Powerset (company) In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007.
Results for Powerset displayed advertise
Powerset (company) (Powerset is not currently selling or displaying any advertising.)
Results for Powerset searched language
Powerlabs Let's roll, is a prerelease of Powerset's general natural language search.
Wikipedia Articles: results 1 - 10 of 78
1. Powerset (company)
Powerset is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the Internet.
2. Power set
In mathematics, given a set S, the power set (or powerset) of S, written , P(S), or 2S, is the set of all subsets of S. In axiomatic set theory (as developed e.g. in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is postulated by the axiom of power set.
6. Powerlabs
Powerset Applications Currently, Powerset has released two applications: Powermouse and a beta of its search engine.
Only when you click on the expand snippet (powermouse) miniviewer button, do you find the answer you're looking for (sort of):
Powerset (company)
Powerset is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the Internet.
The company's stated desire is to build a search engine to compete with Google and Yahoo which would act on a user's questions, as opposed to keywords. For instance, a user who wanted to find out which U.S. state has the highest income tax would enter "Which state has the highest income tax?" at Powerset, as opposed to "state income tax" at Google. The advantage to the user, aside from using questions similar to what one person would ask another verbally, is that a natural language search engine would, depending on its underlying programming, return a result that is more relevant to what the user seeks
Powerset is limited by the poorly-written Wikipedia entry. The comparison to Google doesn't work. If someone's searching for the state with the highest state income tax, they'll type in "highest state income tax." No one would type in "state income tax" in Google if they'd type "Which state has the highest income tax?" in Powerset.
At this stage in beta, Powerset can be considered a search engine survivor.
But unless the technology yields better results -- and fast -- people will think of Parvati and Powerset as "shallow" contestants.
If you're interested in pay-per-click marketing, you've no doubt checked out our Content Advertising column by SEW Expert David Szetela, founder and CEO of Clix Marketing. If you're looking for more advice from David, you can find it via his brand-spanking-new podcast airing on Webmasterradio.fm beginning today, "PPC Rockstars."
The show will be broadcast live on Mondays at 4:00 PM EDT, 1 PM PDT, 21:00 GMT, and available for download soon after. In each week?s show, David will feature a current or future PPC Rock Star, and have a discussion about one particular aspect of PPC advertising. David's first guest is one of PPC?s brightest stars, Matt Van Wagner of FindMeFaster.
Whether you're optimizing a page for the first time or tweaking a page to improve your rankings, it can be tempting to give a page an extreme makeover. From title tags to keyword selection and density to link building, sometimes an SEO may feel the pull to change it all in the hopes of getting a quick return.
But making a bunch of changes all at once is not a prudent process. When multiple changes are made simultaneously, it's difficult to know what is contributing to any changes (declines or increases) in rankings.
Instead, try focusing on one change at at time. So what should your first change be? It can vary from keyword to keyword. Using SEO tools can help you perform competitive intelligence to figure out which metric is most likely to have the greatest impact for a given keyword, as well as analyze your site for strengths and weaknesses within those metrics.
Have an optimization tip to share? Think I'm completely off-base? Leave a comment and show us how it's done!
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