SEO Blog

You’re probably tired about reading how evil paid links are by now. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they continue to work; however, criticisms against them rarely come with any explicit examples of the negative impact they can have.

Well, how about this one? Econsultancy yesterday highlighted the case of gourmetgiftbaskets.com, who offer exactly what their name suggests [see: The $4m Google penalty]. They were making huge profits and sitting comfortably in the top couple of places on Google for all of their primary terms. Unfortunately though one day all the rankings disappeared. No word of warning, no apparent reason why, the site just wasn’t visible any more.

The culprit? Paid links of course.
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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Google has been throwing out some pretty odd results recently. Top of the list though is the ability to have numerous results appear for the same site within a search.

Okay, so you’ve always been able to have a few appear pages appear in SERPs, as long as they were optimised for the same or similar terms. This was particularly true for newspapers and similar news outlets. But now it appears that you can actually dominate an entire results page for one term.

Some sleuthing by Malcolm Coles found that Google are treating brand names in search terms as site: searches. True enough, they really are.
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There have been rumours flying about Google Caffeine since it was first mooted late last year. Hearsay took over from facts pretty early on, giving Caffeine a reputation for being a potential SEO killer. Early evidence suggests it is anything but.

Finally rolled out on Tuesday [see: Our new search index: Caffeine | Official Google Blog] Caffeine is a new index system for the world’s most popular search engine. Rather than taking a month to index pages, Caffeine can get it done almost within days, hours and even minutes. It is designed to give new content a platform and remove older, less relevant results. This makes it far more relevant to news providers than it does to most general websites.

The one issue that might come into practice is the fact that stronger sites who regularly update content will be indexed quicker. This is Google’s way of ensuring that authority sites are given priority. In the most part this shouldn’t cause you any undue hardship, particularly as your own pages should now be indexed far quicker than they were previously. Theoretically you could be leapfrogged by these sites when new content is released.
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Whenever people ask about SEO, they tend to just refer to improving their Google ranking. This isn’t a huge surprise, particularly as Google have a 90% grip on the UK search market, but it might be a little short sighted.

Of course SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, not just Google Optimisation. This means you are looking to increase your site’s strength in the eyes of all search engines, not just a select few, or even just one. However, each different engine employs a unique algorithm. There are numerous similarities, but there are also subtle differences.

You might get only a trickle of visitors from the likes of Bing and Yahoo, but every little counts. The danger with being entirely Google-centric is that you can often find yourself falling foul of major algorithm updates, perfectly demonstrated by the recent Mayday issue.
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Google have finally confirmed that site speed has become a ranking factor. On the Webmaster Central Blog, the search giant discusses why it is important that websites are fast, whilst also suggesting a few tools to help you track your speed.

As expected, their algorithm has been updated to incorporate this much-mooted change. This means that websites that are particularly slow may soon find that their rankings suffer as a consequence. Whilst this is clearly an important issue, it isn’t something that you need to be overly concerned with.

I previously discussed a few methods for getting your site up to pace with the competition in a post entitled, Improving Site Speed and Search Rankings. This should give you a push in the right direction when it comes to optimising for page load time. However, you don’t need to panic.
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It might sound painfully simple, but signing up for Google Maps (as well as the Bing and Yahoo equivalents) can be hugely beneficial for your site. Not only will you gain a valuable link back to your site, but you can also ensure that you appear at the top of the SERPs for related searches in your surrounding area.

Local search is a very large part of SEO, particularly now with the mobilisation of the Internet. People aren’t just searching for products and services from sites all over the world these days, they want something local, they want a site that they can visit in person. Google Maps will play a huge part in ensuring that you are able to meet these requirements.
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As Google post net annual profits of almost $2billion, they have not only shown their own dominance of the online environment, but that search engines today are as strong as they’ve ever been.

The reason that most websites are able to source the vast majority of their traffic is by tapping into this extremely lucrative market. Whilst Google make their profits primarily from selling advertising space on their SERPs - through AdWords - website owners need to get traffic through their site to achieve their goals.

It doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to determine therefore that your aspirations and those of the search engines actually mirror one another. A search engine needs people to pass through and click on adverts to ensure their income, you need targeted traffic; the more the merrier in both cases.
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People often question why SEO professionals are so besotted with Google. The honest truth is that it is a relationship borne out of convenience and necessity more than anything.

Google is the benchmark for all website optimisation. It has the biggest audience of any website in the world and therefore has the greatest potential for getting your website noticed. As the most used website in the world, it is hardly surprising that it is also the most popular search engine too – well it goes without saying really. As people are still compelled to use search engines to find products and services, this is where you need to be seen.
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Google Webmasters Tools is a hugely informative and extremely useful application for any web developer, site owner or SEO expert. It has a constantly evolving list of features designed to pinpoint issues within a website, including broken links, both internal and external.

As with all Google products, Webmasters Tools is subject to a number of regular updates. However, one earlier this week will be of significant interest, particularly to those who are interested in optimising their site.
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It might sound like a simple enough thing to do; but you’d be surprised how many companies, large ones and small, have fallen foul of Google. Some people accept their failings and make amends, while others take affront and try to fight the system.

The simple truth though is that Google controls the market. It isn’t quite a monopoly, but with a 90% share of the market, it might just as well be. Playing by Google’s rules won’t hurt you elsewhere either, with ethical SEO you can benefit right across the board.
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