How to get indented listings for your website on Google

1. How to get indented listings for your website on Google
Wouldn't it be great if your website was listed twice in Google's top 10 results for your most important keywords? Although Google usually shows only one page from every site in the top results, it is possible to get two listings if you do the right things.
What are indented Google listings?

Indented listings on Google's search results pages can give your website additional exposure. Having an indented listing in Google's search results means that you'll have two listings for your website in the top 10 results in Google instead of one:

These indented listings are also called double listings. Google explains these listings like this:
"When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it."
It's obvious that your website will get more clicks and more visitors if it is listed twice in the top 10 results. Most webmaster don't know how to get these results. That's your chance to get a step ahead of your competition.

How to get indented listings for your keywords

To get an indented listing for one of your keywords, do the following:
You must have a web page that already has a top 10 ranking for that keyword. If you do not know how to get top 10 rankings on Google for your keywords, use this tool. Create a second web page on the same domain that links to the first web page that has the top 10 ranking. Optimize the second page for the same keyword as page one but use different content. Link from the first page to the second page with your keyword phrase in the anchor text. If possible, use a contextual link within a body of text rather than a site-wide navigational link. Get inbound links for the second page. Depending on the competition for the keyword, a few high-quality links can be enough to get the indented result.
Repeat step 1 to 4 for as many keywords as you want.

If your website has two links on Google's result page, then it will represent 20% of the organic results instead of the regular 10%.
That means that you'll get more clicks and more visitors. It would be foolish not to optimize a second page for your keywords. Start here to get top 10 Google rankings for keywords that attract buyers.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Battle of the search engines

"I decided to check in on the major search engines to see how well each one handles the question 'who won the Kentucky derby.' My list of search engines included Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, and Ask.com. [...]
The winner is Live Search from Microsoft by a nose. Ask.com was definitely #2. Not only did Live Search present me with the most recent winner of the Kentucky Derby, but the additional info presented alongside the results were spot on."

New Google patent: how to judge the value of a link

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Axandra news archive: 31 August 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Google has been granted a new patent some days ago. The patent can give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of the links to your site on your Google rankings.

In the news: Google's John Mueller talks about duplicate content and Google's terms of service, there might be another Google algorithm update and more.

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1. New Google patent: how to judge the value of a link

Google has been granted a new patent with the name "Determining quality of linked documents" some days ago. The patent might give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of a link on the search engine positions of a web page.

What is the patent about?

Here's the official abstract:

"A ranking component ranks documents, such as web pages or web sites, to obtain a ranking score that defines a quality judgment of the document. The ranking score of a particular document is based on the ranking score of the documents which link to it and based on affiliation among the documents."

According to the patent description, Google could rank the backlinks to a web page differently based on the relation of the pages to each other.

For example, links from pages that have the same author might have less influence on the rankings of a web page that have no affiliation with the linked site.

The patent also contains an image that illustrated how the related of web pages might be:

How does Google limit the value of a link?

According to the patent, Google might do the following:

Google assigns a maximum value to links that come from affiliated pages.Google might assign individual values to links from independent pages.

That means that three links from an affiliated website carry more value than a single link but the total value of all links from the affiliated website is limited.

How can Google recognize affiliated web pages?

The patent shows a number of methods that Google can use to determine the affiliation of web pages:

Interlinking: websites that are more closely interlinked to each other than the average pages on the websites might be considered to be affiliated. Hostnames: web pages that have the same domain name or subdomains that are on the same domain are probably affiliated. IP addresses: if the first two or three components of the IP addresses are identical, the web pages might be affiliated. Visitors: web pages that share many visitors during the same browsing session can be considered to be affiliated.

What does this mean for your website rankings?

Although Google has been granted the patent this month, they filed it a few years ago. That means that the methods described in the patent probably have been in use at Google for several years.

Basically, the patent confirms the previous recommendations in our newsletter and in our SEO software IBP:

Try to get high quality backlinks from as many different websites as possible.Do not participate in automated linking schemes.The quality of the links is more important than the quantity of the links.

If you haven't done it yet, download our SEO software tool IBP now and optimize the links to your website as well as the content of your pages. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer is based on Google's latest ranking algorithm and it tells you what is needed to get high rankings on Google with the current algorithm.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's John Mueller: how to prevent duplicate content

"Using the robots meta tag with 'noindex' ('follow' is implied, so you don't have to specify it separately) is a fairly good solution. [...]

At any rate, I would definitely not recommend using the robots.txt to disallow crawling of those print pages since that would make it impossible for us to see the meta-tag and to recognize that the content is the same as in the article pages. [...]

It probably makes sense to prevent a print-version from being indexed (as it is now), but past that I don't think it's necessary to tweak it further with a rel=canonical. It might however make sense to place the rel=canonical on the individual pages (pointing to the preferred URL for that particular page) to prevent duplicate content such as that found in the last search."

Google's John Mueller: using Google Translate can violate Google's TOS

"Just want to add a word of warning here -- using automated translation tools to directly create content for your site could be seen as creating auto-generated content, which would be against our Webmaster Guidelines.

Instead of just taking the output of a program like Google Translate, I'd strongly recommend at least having it corrected before putting it online. While Googlebot may initially fall for some Spanish keywords in your text, your users are not going to appreciate content that has been automatically translated and published without a review."

How Google cost me $4 million

"Without a bit of advertising, sales of gift baskets had grown 400 percent. [...] Then, one day, he woke up to find that Google, the source of 80 percent of the company's revenue, had banished his site from its search results. [...]

This was right before the holiday season, when we typically make 40 to 60 percent of our annual revenue. It was really, really devastating."

Editor's note: being on Google's first result page can have a major effect on your company's revenue.

Discussion: Mayday-style long-tail update happening again?

"We spotted Mayday a few days before it became widespread. I am seeing the same type of update happening again on our largest property. Another large scale whack to longtail is in the works this week. [...]

For one of our sites with millions of pages we been effected largely and in fact a lot of spam sites have taken over the 1st position. And backlink analysis show pure comment spam. I hope its just some dance because of some links that we built."

85-90% of search traffic comes from organic search

"EcoMowers has only 5% of this market, and primarily generates traffic through PPC and SEO channels. In fact, he gets 50% SEO traffic through organic search, and 50% through paid search.

Now, given that the Web's traffic is 85-90% organic search, it is clear to me that Andy has not yet leveraged SEO to its fullest potential, and doing so would give him the biggest bang for the buck at this point. To get from 5% market share to 20% market share in his market Andy clearly has a low-hanging fruit in front of him."

Editor's note: get your share by getting your website on Google's first result page.

Search engine newslets

Google Realtime Search now has its own page.Yahoo's July 2010 retail insights.What's a good way to kick off a new RSS feed? (video)Discussion: exact long tail phrases in the title are not ranking well.23 walls of Googley.Discussion: are Google AdSense ad links more powerful than other formats?Bubble blinders: the untold story of the search business model.Find out what’s hot on search with the Google Beat.Google tests centered layout.Is Google objective?Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"Our results are more consistent and higher."

"Over the years we have tried many SEO methods on our site at www.freebears.com, including high-priced US companies, low-priced companies in India, and rather random in-house methods.

While we have varying levels of success, the cost was too high. Then we decided to try IBP. Since we started using IBP our search results are more consistent and higher than with any of our previous SEO options.

We especially like the easy way we can track search engine rankings and see the effect of page changes.

The suggestions that IBP makes for improving rankings have also helped us. We recommend IBP for anyone who wants to understand SEO and wants to stop wasting money by having someone else do their SEO for them."
Gary, http://www.freebears.com/

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You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."

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First aid: how to recover lost rankings on Google

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Axandra news archive: 28 September 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

That's one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. This article will help you to get back your old search engine rankings.

In the news: Google's new keyword tool is out of beta, information about the impact of Google Insight based on statistics, there might have been a Google ranking algorithm and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

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1. First aid: how to recover lost rankings on Google

It's one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. This article will help you to recover your lost rankings on Google.

Possibility 1: Your website has been penalized by Google

To check if your website has been penalized by Google, search for "site:yourdomain.com" (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name) on Google.

If Google does not display any pages of your website, then your site has been penalized.

Google only penalizes websites that use spammy search engine optimization methods. For that reason, you have to remove all issues that might have caused the problem:

1. Remove all on-page spam:

Remove hidden or nearly-hidden text on your web pages. Reconsider any use of display:none and visibility:hidden that you use in the CSS code of your website. Check your web page titles, the meta tags and even the HTML comments on your web pages and remove any elements that might be interpreted as a keyword stuffing attempt. Remove any unnecessary redirects, links to dubious websites and all duplicate pages from your website. If you use cloaking or bot blocking scripts on your server, disable these scripts. Many bot blocking scripts keep legitimate search engine spiders away. Make sure that your HTML code is clean and that your web pages look nice. Don't use any automatically created doorway pages.

2. Fix all off-site issues:

Off-site issues are often the reason for ranking penalties and they are more difficult to fix than on-page issues.

If you participated in automated link exchange systems or if you paid a cheap overseas link building service to get links to your website then it's likely that these links have been flagged as spam links by Google.

Google does not like automated link systems at all. Remove all automated link systems from your website and try to make sure that these linking systems do not link anymore to your site.

If you purchased links to improve your rankings, try to get rid of these links. Paid links do work to some extend but they can get your website in trouble when Google finds out that you use paid links.

3. File a reinclusion request

When you are sure that all spam elements have been removed, you can file a reinclusion request.

Keep your reinclusion request short and to the point. Be friendly and explain what you have done to clean up your website.

Possibility 2: This is a change in the ranking algorithm

A ranking drop does not necessarily mean that your website has been penalized.

1. You redesigned your website or your website is relatively new

Google also temporarily downranks websites after a major design change (source). In that case, you don't have to worry about the ranking drop because Google will give you your old rankings back after some time.

Of course, you must make sure that your new website design can still be parsed by Google and that your new web pages still contain the keywords for which you want to be ranked.

2. Other websites are better than yours

Search engine optimization is not a set-and-forget thing. Your competitors might have improved their websites so that they now have better content and better links than your site.

No website can keep its rankings forever. Re-analyze your web pages and optimize the content of your pages so that it is compliant to Google's latest ranking algorithm.

Also improve the backlinks that point to your website. The link builder in IBP can help you to get better links.

Losing rankings on Google is hard for any website. If you do the things described above, chances are that you will get your rankings back as quickly as possible.

If your website doesn't have top 10 rankings on Google yet, optimize it with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you what to do so that you get first page rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's updated keyword tool is out of beta

"We've combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it 'The Keyword Tool.' [...]

We've also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners."

Discussion: was there a smaller Google ranking algorithm update this month?

"I have seen a sudden drop in rankings for my most traffic generating keywords on Google UK, whereas my competitors' keywords haven't dropped. [...] I'm in the UK and I've seen some of my sites drop too today, I suspect a shake-up. In my experience it sometimes settles back to normal after a day or two."

Multiple domains vs subdomains vs folders in SEO

"Multiple domains are used when we want to be very GEO targeted and when we have enough content and resources to support all these websites. [...]

Subdomains are used when you have different products and services that you want to present by using a different website structure [...]

The folders are the most common, easy to use and all purpose solution. It is the safest method in terms of SEO and Web Development. You should use folders when you have a relatively small website and when you want to maintain the authority of the domain in the main categories."

The impact of Google Instant (based on statistics)

"Nine out of the eleven sites saw increases in 7+ word keywords. Eight out of eleven sites saw decreases in 2 and 3 word keywords. [...]

The data, so far, suggests that Google Instant might be pulling people away from 2 and 3 word keywords and towards 6 and 7+ word keywords. This shift doesn't appear dramatic, but there appears to be a slight shift toward long tail keywords."

Google uses AI to make search smarter

"Imagine a very near future when you don't forget anything because the computer remembers [...]

Artificial intelligence innovation could directly affect Google's revenue, which rose to $23.7 billion last year. Take Google Instant, a new search tool launched in early September that uses AI to guess what a person is searching for as they type keywords into the search box."

Search engine newslets

Google's own Chrome browser inflates Google Analytics data.Google turned 12 years old.French court convicts Google and boss of defamation.Social media: Digg's traffic down 26% after the redesign (Reddit is the winner).Wolfram Alpha announces an Android app.Eric Schmidt: Forget Apple, Facebook, Bing's our biggest problem.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

"IBP has saved the telephone charges."

"Our small company sells craft beer in French throughout France. Most of our business goes through our website. So it was important that we get a good rank in search engines like Google.

We started groping and experiment; Internet is full of information, often contradictory, for the optimization of website. Of course, we had knowledge, like everybody.

We knew a lot about page titles, meta description, H1 tags, but what to choose? Which factors are most important? And it was unthinkable to take a phone call to our biggest competitor 'hello, we would like to know how you have optimized your site'. IBP has saved telephone charges.

With IBP, we got second place for our main keyword in Google, and the rankings for other keywords continue to grow.

We have multiplied our visitors and sales. All this would not have been possible without IBP and today we can only congratulate ourselves for having it."
Ebeer EURL, www.ebeer.fr

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Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

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How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?

1. How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?Google has announced a major change in the way that they handle search results by including synonyms for some words that may be used in queries. How does this affect the position of your web pages in Google's search results?


Why is it important that Google can deal with synonyms?

Google aims to display the best results for your search. For that reason, it is important that Google's algorithm understands the words that are used in the search query. An important part of understanding the words is to understand synonyms.
Synonyms are words that can mean the same thing, for example "pictures" and "photos". People searching for "sunset pictures" are probably also interested in web pages that contain the words "sunset photos".
A problem is that words that can have different meanings. For example, the word "case" can mean "occurrence", "instance" or "example". It can also mean "box" or "container".
The word "guitar box" might be a synonym for "guitar case" but "O.J. Simpson box" is not a synonym for "O.J. Simpson case". Google's measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports.

What has changed?

According to the posting in Google's official blog, Google has improved the way that they detect synonyms. For example, the algorithm can now find 20 possible meanings of the search term "GM".
GM can mean General Motors, George Mason in [gm university], gamemaster in [gm screen star wars], Gangadhar Meher in [gm college], general manager in [nba gm] and even gunners mate in [navy gm], etc.
Google also made a change to how the synonyms are displayed. The searched words and the synonyms are now displayed in bold in the search results. Web pages that contain only synonyms of the searched word can also be displayed in the search results.

Do you have to change your web pages?

If you optimized your website as explained in previous issues of our newsletter and as explained in the IBP manual then you don't have to change anything. Here's a reminder:
1. Think out of the box.
Don't just use the technical terms that you use in your company. Think about the words that other people would use to describe your product. For example, don't just use "rhinoplasty" but also "nose job" and "nose surgery".
IBP's keyword research tool will help you to find the best keywords for your website.
2. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords.
The more pages you optimize, the better. It is much better if one web page is highly relevant to one keyphrase than somewhat relevant to many keyphrases.
Don't stuff a single page with keywords. The keywords should fit naturally in your web page content. Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to find out where on your web pages you should use your keywords.

Different people use different words to find the same things. Use different ways to talk about your website topic and optimize as many pages as possible of your website.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the weekGlobal search market grew 46 percent in 2009

"The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute. The U.S. represented the largest individual search market in the world [...]"

Google highlights answers and expands snippets for events

"Last year at our second Searchology event, we announced Google Squared and Rich Snippets [...] Today, we're kicking off the new year with two improvements based on those technologies. First, we're applying the research behind Google Squared to add a new "answer-highlighting" feature to search, and second we're expanding Rich Snippets to include events."

Friendfeed results appear in seconds on Google result pages

"I just got my phone's stop watch ready and posted the following sentence into Friendfeed [...] Refreshing web search twice in brief intervals, the sentence was already appearing, and I hadn't even pasted my explanatory comment to Friendfeed yet. The watch showed 13 seconds had passed, but it might have been appearing earlier."

Bing adds breaking news & trending queries to autosuggest

"Our research shows that approximately 45% of search queries result in either a user conducting an immediate re-query, or abandoning the page altogether. [...] we recently incorporated breaking news and hot trending queries within autosuggest. Updated every 15 minutes [...]"

Microsoft boosts Bing search privacy

"Microsoft [...] will delete the [IP] addresses logged by its servers for Bing search queries after six months [...] Google said it would start anonymizing IP addresses after nine months [...] and cookies after 18 months. However, Google's anonymization method, removing the last of the four sets of numbers in an IP address, has been criticized as insufficient."
Related: Microsoft to delete Yahoo search data after 3 months.

Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website

1. Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website
The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google's search results.
For example, if many people use the text "buy blue widgets" to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase "buy blue widgets" in Google's search results.
The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

this is the link text

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:
1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel="nofollow" attribute don't pass the link text to Google. Example:
great keyword
You can use IBP to find out if the websites that link to you use the nofollow attribute: start IBP, click the "Links" button and click "Check links".

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won't be able to index the link correctly. Example:
great keyword
In this example, there's a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.
Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google's Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won't consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:
great keyword
The web server redirects "http://www.example.com/page.htm" to "http://www.example.com" with a 301 redirect. In that case, it's likely that Google won't use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:
This is an example. The link text great keyword will be ignored by Google.
The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is "This". The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.
If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:
This is an example. The link text great keyword will be ignored by Google.

New Google patent: the reasonable surfer and your links

1. New Google patent: the reasonable surfer and your links
Last month, Google was granted a patent that states that the different links on a linking page have a different effect on the linked pages. How does this affect your website and what do you have to do to secure your rankings?


What is the patent about?

The patent describes that the value of a link seems to be based on the probability that a web surfer would click on the link. Here's the summary from the patent application:
"Systems and methods consistent with the principles of the invention may provide a reasonable surfer model that indicates that when a surfer accesses a document with a set of links, the surfer will follow some of the links with higher probability than others. This reasonable surfer model reflects the fact that not all of the links associated with a document are equally likely to be followed. [...]
Examples of unlikely followed links may include 'Terms of Service' links, banner advertisements, and links unrelated to the document."
When Google finds links on a web page, it classifies the links. Some links on the indexed page have more value than others.

How does Google classify the links?

To determine the value of a link, Google analyzes several things:
Features of the link: color and size of the anchor text, link position, number of words, how commercial the text is, length of the linked URL, link type (image or text), context of words Features of the linking page: URL of the page, number of links on the page, presence of other words on the page, match between the topic of the link text and the other words on the page Features of the linked page: URL of the page, associated websites, words in the URL, length of the URL User behavior data: language and interests of the user, used search query terms, frequency of link selection, navigational actions (forms completed, links selected, etc.)

Where does Google get the user behavior data from?

To get the user behavior data, Google can use the Google toolbar. According to the patent description:
"[Google's toolbar] may record data concerning the documents accessed by the user and the links within the documents (if any) the user selected.
[...] may record data concerning the language of the user, which may be determined in a number of ways that are known in the art, such as by analyzing documents accessed by the user.
[...] may record data concerning interests of the user, which may be determined, for example, from the favorites or bookmark list of the user, topics associated with documents accessed by the user, or in other ways that are known in the art.
[...] may record data concerning query terms entered by the user. The web browser or browser assistant may send this data for storage in repository 430."
There's quite a lot of things that Google records when you surf the web with the Google's toolbar installed.

How can you improve the links that point to your website?

Of course, you cannot influence all links that point to your website. If you can, you should consider the following things:
Your link should be in the regular text of the linking page. It should not be in the footer or another navigational elements. If possible, the link should be "above the fold". The anchor text should contain words that are related to your website. Use the keywords for which you want to get high rankings. The link texts should be natural. Anything that looks like manipulation might devalue the link. Avoid commercial words in your links. Terms like "buy now" and similar commercial phrases might devalue the link. The link should be on a related page. If you sell shoes then a link from a web page that deals with shoes will have a higher impact on your search engine rankings than a link from an unrelated website that links to all kind of web pages.

The Google patent confirms that not all links are created equal. Although the patent has been granted to Google last month, they filed it several years ago. That means that the methods described in the patent might have been used by Google for years.
If you want to know which ranking algorithm Google uses today and if your website is compliant to Google's latest ranking algorithm, analyze your page with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The Top 10 Optimizer will tell you in plain English if the links to your website are okay and it will also tell you what exactly you have to change.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week
More search engine statistics

"Google accounted for 72.17 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending May 29, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.43 percent, 9.23 percent and 2.14 percent, respectively. [...]
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing April 2010 with May 2010, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines."
Editor's note: these numbers confirm that it is very important that your website can be found on search engines for the right keywords.

"Google's new Caffeine web index heralds a new age of possibilities for the search engine. [...] The fortunes of whole companies and countless careers live and die by their rankings in search results. [...]
'With Buzz, our mathematical models were awfully good, but they didn't know the nuance of human relationships,' says Singhal. 'That was a privacy mistake, which we accept. Mea culpa.'"

Google's John Mueller says the noscript tag can cause problems

Yesterday, Google's John Mueller told a webmaster in an online discussion that the noscript tag can look suspicious to Google:
"One of the problems with noscript is - as others have mentioned - that it's been abused quite a bit by spammers, so search engines might treat it with some suspicion.
So if this is really important content, then I wouldn't rely on all search engines treating your noscript elements in the same way as normal, visible, static content on your pages. If this is 'just' for comments, then that might be worth considering regardless, especially if the alternatives are much more complicated."

Google's John Mueller says that you shouldn't hide links

In another discussion, Google's John Mueller writes about hiding links from Google in JavaScript:
"You're hiding links from Googlebot. Personally, I wouldn't recommend doing that as it makes it harder to properly understand the relevance of your website. I also doubt that you'd see any kind of visible change with regards to PageRank.
Ultimately, that's your choice, just as it would be our choice to review those practices as potential attempts to hide content & links."

Google's Street View Wi-Fi data included passwords, email

"Google did indeed record email access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages [...] Google also told CNIL that the data collected by the Street View cars is also used by other services, including Google Maps and Google Latitude, which allows users automatically transmit their location to friends, and to track others who choose to share their location via the service."
Related: Connecticut to lead multistate probe of Google

Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google

1. Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google
A number 1 ranking in Google's search results for the right keyword can mean a lot of visitors and a lot of sales. That's why so many people want to be on Google's first result page.
Unfortunately, many people still don't know what it takes to convince Google that your website is more relevant than the millions of other websites on the Internet. There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google's first result page:
Rule #1: Don't try to fool Google

Google wants to return the most relevant web pages for a search query. They want to provide the best answer to a search query.
If you try to get a high ranking for a keyword for which your web page isn't really relevant then you won't get good results. Actually, you might be accused of spamming. If your website consists just of ads and affiliate links then it will be extremely difficult to get good rankings.
Make sure that your web pages will answer the questions of people who search for your keyword. The better your web pages match the interest of the web searchers the better rankings you will get. It takes some time to create good content but it will pay off in the long run.

Rule #2: Your web pages must show Google that they are relevant

A website about used car parts cannot get high rankings for a keyword such as "brain surgery". A high ranking for the keyword "used car parts" would be very beneficial to that site.
The problem is that Google must be able to find out that your web page is relevant for the keyword "used car parts". For that reason, you have to optimize your web pages. Optimizing your web pages simply means that you make it easy for Google to find out what your website is about.
When Google visits your web pages, it will analyze the following elements of your web pages:
The URL structureThe title tag and the meta tagsThe body textHeadline tagsImage alt attributesYour site architecture and the internal linking structure of your siteThe outbound linksMany other factors in the HTML code of your web pages
Each element can contain your keyword and show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. This doesn't mean that you can simply insert your keyword in these tags and that's it.
You can also over-optimize a website and that can get your website banned from Google's search results. It's important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency. Analyzing dozens of web page elements can be very time consuming. IBP's top 10 optimizer can help you to do this quickly and easily.

Rule #3: Other websites must confirm that your web pages are relevant

In addition to optimized web page content, Google heavily relies on the links from other websites to your site. Basically, the other websites have to confirm that your website is relevant for a special keyword.
The more websites link to your website, the more visible it will be to Google. The more other websites use a special keyword as the linked text in the links to your website, the more important is your website for that keyword.
A web page that has been optimized for the keyword "used cars" can also get high rankings for the keyword "pre-owned cars" if enough websites link with that text to the page.
It is also important that the other web pages are related your site. If a website that is about vintage cars links to your "used car parts" website then this will have a bigger effect on your search engine rankings than a link from a candy shop website.
A link from a web page that only links to car related web pages is also more valuable than a link from a web page that links to all kind of pages. Getting the right links is crucial if you want to get on Google's first result page. IBP's link builder helps you to get these links.

Rule #4: Your website must have a clean history

The age of your domain and its history will also be considered by Google. A domain name that has been around for a long time will get high rankings more easily.
However, if your domain name has been used by spammers before, you might still suffer from the ranking penalties that have been applied to the previous content.

If you follow the rules above and change your web pages accordingly, your website will get top rankings on Google. It cannot be done over night but it's definitely something that can be done within a few weeks if you do the right things. slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static."

Google Caffeine is live: what you need to know

1. Google Caffeine is live: what you need to know
Last week, Google officially announced that their new web indexing system "Caffeine" is live on all Google pages. What does this mean for your website and do you have to change anything on your pages?


What is Google Caffeine?

Google Caffeine is the name for the new method that Google uses to index web pages. In contrast to Google's old method, Caffeine can index new web pages faster:
"Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before."
Google changed they way in which they index the web because they want to show new pages more quickly in the search results.

What is the difference between the old system and Google Caffeine?

Google's previous system updated the search index in batches.
"Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks.
To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you."
With Google Caffeine, Google's search index is updated continually:
"With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index."
That means that new pages will be displayed in Google's search results sooner if they are relevant to the search query.

What do you have to change on your web pages?

Caffeine is not a ranking algorithm update. It does not change the way Google ranks web pages. Caffeine just means that new pages will be shown much quicker on Google's result pages.
To get your own website on Google's first result page, analyze the web pages that currently have top 10 rankings on Google. The pages that now have a top 10 ranking on Google have done everything right to please Google's latest ranking algorithm.
Analyze the top ranked pages and check how and where they use their keywords. Also check which web pages link to the top ranked pages and how they link to the top ranked pages.
Doing this is a lot of work if you do it manually. For that reason, we developed the Top 10 Optimizer. The Top 10 Optimizer automatically analyzes the web pages that currently have high rankings for your keywords and it compares them to your own website.
You will also get detailed instructions on how to change the content of your web pages and the links to your site so that your site will be listed in Google's top 10 results.

Five things you have to do to get high Google rankings

1. Five things you have to do to get high Google rankings
If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you must do the right things to succeed. You have to work on many different factors to make sure that your website performs better than the sites of your competitors.


Step 1: make your web pages accessible

Search engines must be able to access your web pages. If search engines cannot parse your web pages then they will ignore your site and you won't get good rankings. Check the following points to make sure that search engines can access your web pages.
Your web server must not return an error code when search engine spiders visit your web pages. If your server returns an error code, search engines won't index your site.
Your web server should return a "200 OK" code to search engine spiders. You can check the status code that your web server returns to search engines with IBP's search engine spider simulator.
You should also check the HTML code of your web pages. While most HTML errors don't cause problems with search engines, some of them can prevent search engines from indexing your site.
The fewer HTML errors your web pages have, the better. You can access a HTML validator in the "Tools" section in IBP.
The content of your web pages must make sense to search engines. Don't use images or Flash to present the main content of your web pages.
To find out if your web page content contains all the elements that are needed to get a listing in Google's top 10 results, check your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer.
Your robots.txt file must allow search engines to index your web pages. If you accidentally blocked all bots or all directories of your website (this can happen with a simply typo in the robots.txt file), search engines won't list your website.

Step 2: use a meaningful site and information architecture

A good site architecture shows search engines that your website is more than just a collection of random web pages.
Use folders and logical linking to show search engines which pages of your website are related. Search engines should be able to find out that a group of web pages on your site is related to a certain topic.

Step 3: choose your keywords wisely

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps that determines whether your SEO campaign is a success or not.
It's best to focus on longer keywords for search engine optimization. One word keywords are less likely to convert to a sale and they are also much more competitive. Details can be found here.
IBP's keyword tools help you to find the keywords that will work best with your site.

Step 4: work on your website content

Web sites that only offer articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other web sites will have a hard time to get good search engine rankings.
Try to create unique and trustworthy content that separates your web site from the others.
Write about things you know. If you're an expert in a special field, write as much as possible about that field to make sure that your web site becomes the best resource for that topic.

Step 5: work on your backlinks

Without good backlinks, it is impossible to get high rankings on major search engines. The links that point to your website have a major impact on the position of your web pages in Google's search results.
Try to get as many links as possible from related web sites. The more targeted the link, the more it will help your search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization can be tricky because a small error in one element can destroy all of your other efforts.
Take a look at the checklists in our free search engine optimization eBook to find out how your web site can get top rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other major search engines.

Top 5 elements that you need for high rankings on Google

 1. Top 5 elements that you need for high rankings on Google
Getting listed on Google's first result page is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately, many webmasters still do the wrong things to improve their rankings.
It's not possible to get top 10 rankings on Google by focusing on a single strategy. Getting listed on Google requires you to work on all elements of your website. Here are the top 5 factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results:
Ranking factor 1: website accessibility

It doesn't make sense to optimize your web pages if search engines cannot access your web pages:
Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors then many search engines won't list your website. The HTML code of your web pages should be error-free and your web server should return the correct response code. The contents of your web pages should be readable to search engine spiders. Details can be found here.
Before you start to optimize your web pages, check if search engines can read your web page content. You can do this with IBP's spider simulator. Double-check your robots.txt.

Ranking factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant websites in the search results. Your website shouldn't be a collection of random web pages. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be related.
Your web pages should show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. All pages of your website should be linked. If possible, web surfers should reach any page of your website with a maximum of three clicks.
The links and the directory structure of your website should make it easy to search engines to categorize the contents of your website.

Ranking factor 3: keywords

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you won't succeed with your campaign.
Optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. The more pages of your website you optimize, the better. Start with very targeted keyphrases that consists of many words, for example "find inexpensive hotels in brussels". When you have top rankings for these targeted keyphrases, proceed with more general keywords such as "hotels in brussels". When you have top rankings for these keyphrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as "hotels".
In general, targeted keywords have a much higher conversion rate than general keywords, i.e. you will get more sales per visitor with "find inexpensive hotels in brussels" than with "hotels".
Also think about the type of visitor that you attract with a keyword. Are these people interested in information or do they want to buy?
Use IBP's comprehensive keyword tools to find the keywords that will work best with your site. You can find further information on how to find the correct keyword type in the IBP manual (PDF).

Ranking factor 4: content

Your website won't get high rankings on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other websites.
Separate your website from the rest by creating unique and trustworthy content. Write your own articles about the topic of your website, publish them on your own website and make your website a useful resource.

Ranking factor 5: links from other websites

It is not possible to get high rankings on Google without having links from other websites.
The more links point to your website, the more likely it is that your website gets good positions in Google's search results. The links to your website should be from trusted websites.
If a web page that links to you is related to your own website then the effect of that link on the search engine rankings of your website is higher than the effect of an unrelated link.
It also helps if social bookmark websites link to your website. If many people bookmark your website on social bookmark sites, then this is a sign that your website might deserve high rankings.

Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling more

1. Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling moreIf you advertise your website on Google AdWords, chances are that you found out that you can spent a lot of money on AdWords without getting a lot in return.
The reason why many people spend much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads is that they use the wrong settings in their campaigns.

Long tail keywords convert better and there are a lot of them

Several studies found out that long tail keywords have a much higher conversion rate than single word keywords. Long tail keywords are very specific keywords that consists of 4 or more words.
According to a recent Hitwise study, more than 18% of searches contain five or more keywords. In addition, Google says that "20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones [they] haven't seen in at least 90 days, if at all."

The wrong long tail keywords will just cost you money

The facts above indicate that it might be a good idea to use broad match for all of your keywords. It's just not possible to include all possible keywords manually in your campaigns. Google recommend to use broad match with your keywords:
"Broad match is a great way to capitalize on those unexpected, but relevant queries. When you include a keyword as a broad match, your corresponding ad is not only eligible to appear alongside queries with that exact spelling, but it can also capture keyword expansions that include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords."
Unfortunately, it's not that easy. If you use broad match for all of your keywords then your ads will be shown for a lot of unrelated searches and you'll pay a lot of money without getting something in return.
For example, the word "tiger" would be used for searches regarding Tiger Woods, the Siberian tiger, tiger sharks, the town Tiger in Georgia, etc.
For that reason, it is important to exclude the long tail keywords that are not related to your website.

Negative keywords will increase your conversion rate

You can enter so-called negative keywords in your Google AdWords campaigns. If a long tail keyword contains one of your negative keywords, your AdWords ads won't be displayed.
For example, if you enter "-free" as a negative keyword, your AdWords ad is not displayed if someone searches for free things. Negative keywords are an excellent tool for excluding Internet users looking for free items only.
You can also use negative keywords to display an ad for specific target groups. An insurance broker might want to exclude people who are searching for books about insurance. He could enter "book" and "books" as negative keywords.
If one of your keywords has multiple meanings ("tiger" would trigger "tiger woods" and "siberian tiger", "tiger shark", "tiger, georgia") then you should add negative keywords that remove the unrelated searches.

Broad match can help you to get more customers but you have to be very careful with that option. If you use broad match with your keywords, don't forget to use negative keywords so that you don't pay for unwanted traffic.
Many more tips on how to improve your AdWords ads can be found in our eBook "Writing Successful AdWords". If you don't want to use broad match, the keyword manager in IBP can help you to quickly create long tail keywords that target specific groups and regions., said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment."

 

How to tell Google that your website is not about toads

1. How to tell Google that your website is not about toads
You know what you sell and you know the topic of your website. Are you sure that Google puts your website in the right category? If your website is about shoes, Google still might think that it is about frogs and toads.


If Google puts your website in the wrong category, it will be very difficult to get high rankings for your keywords.
How to find out what Google thinks about your website

To find out what Google thinks about your website, perform a "similar" search for your domain. Enter the following in Google's search box:
related:www.domain.com/ ~domain.com
Replace domain.com with your own domain name and make sure that there is no spacer after the colon. On the result page, Google will show you websites that it finds related to your site.
If the websites on the search result page are related to your website then everything is okay. If the websites are about totally different topics, then you have a problem and Google probably won't display your website in the search results for the right keywords.

Why does Google put your website in the wrong category?

Suppose your website is about selling shoes. If your site is linked by other websites that link to your website and other websites that are about frogs and toads then Google might think that your website is related to frogs and toads.
It's important that the other links on the web page that links to you are related to your site. If you're listed in the "Shoes" category of an Internet directory then all web sites in the same category are usually also about shoes.
When search engines look at this page and check the links to other sites they will think that your web site is related to shoes. That means that it will be much easier to get high rankings for search terms that are about shoes.

Is your website in the right co-citation category?

The other websites to which your link partners link influence the ranking of your website on Google.
Here's an example: web sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 all link to the web sites A, B, C and D. Although A, B, C and D don't link to each other, Google thinks that A, B, C and D are related to each other because the same web sites link to them:

If A, B, C and D are all linked from 1, 2, 3 and 4 they might be related to one another, even though they don’t directly link to each other.
If A, B, C and D are all linked by many other web sites, they have a strong relationship. The more web sites they are linked by, the stronger the relationship.
If you are the owner of website A, you should make sure that web sites B, C and D are related to your site.

What does this mean for your website?

When you build links, make sure that the page that links to your site also contains other links that are related to your website topic. The more pages of the other site are about your topic, the better.
If the link to your website is in a good neighborhood then it will be much easier to get high rankings for your keywords.

A new search engine from Ex-Googlers challenges Google

1. A new search engine from Ex-Googlers challenges Google
A new search engine with the name Cuil.com launched yesterday. Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and it is pronounced "cool". Could Cuil be the new Google killer that so many companies tried to build?
What's special about Cuil?

During the past few years, many search engines have tried to be the next Google. None of them has succeeded. The difference between these companies and Cuil is the team that stand behind the project:
Anna Patterson: worked on Google's search indexRussell Power: worked on Google's search indexLouis Monier: founder of the AltaVista search engineTom Costello: worked on IBM's WebFountain project.
The team behind Cuil knows search very well and they have worked behind the scenes at Google and other major search providers.

Why does Cuil think that it's better than Google?

Cuil has four major claims with which it wants to distinguish itself from Google:
1. Cuil claims to have the biggest index
Cuil claims that its index is bigger than Google's and that this is necessary if you want to return relevant results for topics that aren't very popular.

2. Cuil thinks that popularity is not as important as Google says
If Cuil's concept of indexing succeeds, PageRank and linking might be a thing of the past. Cuil thinks that popularity is useful but not for very complex searches.
According to their website, Cuil tries to analyze the content of web pages and to put it into a greater context.

3. Cuil uses a new results page format
Instead of a long list, Cuil returns the results in three columns and it adds images to the search results when possible.
Cuil also offers roll-over definitions and offers ideas to refine your search.
4. Cuil does not collect user data
In contrast to other search engines, Cuil does not log any personally identifiable information. IP addresses, names or cookies are not stored.
That means that user data cannot be turned over to others. AOL published private user information in August 2006 and Google currently has to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom.

Are the results really better than Google's?

In our test searches, Cuil returned quite good results. Whether they are better or worse than Google's results probably depends on the query and the needs of the searcher.
Cuil seems to understand the different meaning of words. For example, if you search for "tiger" then Cuil will return results for the animation, the operating system with that name, the golf player and companies with that word in the name on the first result page.

It's hard to tell whether Cuil will be a Google killer or not. There's more to it than simply having a large index and good search results. If that was enough, Yahoo would have a much bigger market share.
Google already did a blog post in reaction to Cuil so the new search engine seems to be something that Google gives a lot of attention.

The effect of your URL structure on your Google rankings

1. The effect of your URL structure on your Google rankings
Does Google care about the position of a web page on your server? Does it make a difference if a web page is in the root directory of your website or in a sub directory? How does your URL structure influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

Trailing slashes and sub directories

A popular assumption is that Google prefers pages that are in the root directory of a website.
If an URL contains many trailing slashes (meaning the page is placed in a sub-sub-directory) then Google might not think that the page is important in relation to the other pages.
Although this statement is often repeated in SEO forums, it is probably not true.

The visibility of a web page counts, not its position

If a web page is linked throughout your website and if the page has inbound links then the web page will be indexed and ranked by Google without any problems.
Most web pages on today's websites are created dynamically and the URL that is displayed in a web browser presents only a virtual site structure that is not really available on the server.
As there are no real folders on the server, search engines won't find a valuable ranking signal if they look at things like presence or absence of directories.

What does this mean for your website?

If you want to show search engines that a page on your website is important, link to it from many other pages of your website so that it can easily be found.
A page that gets many links (both from your own website and from other websites) will get the attention that it deserves from Google's indexing robot.

When you should care about the structure of your URLs

1. URL stripping can cause problems
Rumor has it that Google uses URL stripping to index web pages. That means that Google shortens the path to an URL to find new pages on a site. For example, "www.example.com/folder/keyword.htm" would be shortened to "www.example.com/folder/".
If you use dynamically created URLs then you should make sure that all virtual folders return real web pages a "404 not found" pages. Otherwise, Google might think that you have many faulty pages and/or that your website has a low quality.

2. Shorter URLs can be better for your website visitors
Although most web surfers don't pay attention to the URL in the browser address bar, shorter URLs can enhance the user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to remember and they can improve the direct type-in traffic.

3. Short URLs get more clicks
A search marketing study found out that web surfers clicked short URLs twice as often as long URLs in Google's search results. Long URLs are cut off in Google search engine result pages. Web surfers cannot see where they are going to go and this can decrease the click-through rate.
4. The URLs of your web pages can contain your keywords
The words that appear in the URL of a web page can influence the position of the web page for these words. For that reason, it can make sense to rewrite your URLs so that they include the keywords for which you want to have high rankings.

Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to find out if the URL structure of your web pages prevents them from getting top rankings on Google. In addition to the URL structure, the top 10 optimizer will analyze more than 75 factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results.
You will get detailed and concrete advice on how to change your web pages so that they can be found for the keywords of your choice on Google's first result page.

How to get much better results with Google AdWords

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking another look at Google's AdWords system. Most people pay much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads. There are some AdWords statistics that you might not know.
In the news: Bing users are more likely to click on ads, just like all search engines, Bing does not like Flash, Silverlight and images, Google introduces a new AdWords feature and more.
Table of contents:
We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Best regards,
1. How to get much better results with Google AdWords
Google's AdWords system is a great way to get more website visitors. However, Google is also a business that needs to make money. That's why most people pay much more for their AdWords ads than they have to.
Open an AdWords account today. Your money might be gone tomorrow.

Many people who start with Google AdWords are surprised how fast Google takes their money and how little results they get.

Google's AdWords program is very popular and the competition is fierce. It has become difficult to find affordable keywords and it has become even more difficult to write ads that return a positive ROI (return on investment) if you don't plan your ads correctly.
Google AdWords offers many good ways to get targeted visitors at a good price. Unfortunately, Google AdWords also offers many ways to waste money very fast.

Plan your ads, save money and get much better results

If you take the time to optimize your AdWords campaigns, you can dramatically lower your monthly AdWords bill while increasing your revenue at the same time.

To help you to optimize your AdWords campaigns, we have just released the 7th edition of our eBook Successful Advertising With Google AdWords.
The eBook covers everything that you need to know to create successful Google AdWords. You'll learn how to:
select the right keywordshow to write profitable adshow to price your adshow to optimize your landing pageshow to conduct a testand much more
A detailed table of contents can be found here.
You can purchase the eBook for its regular price on our AdWords eBook website or for a discounted price if you buy it in a bundle with IBP.

Interesting AdWords statistics
Hundreds of thousands of businesses advertise on Google AdWords but 80% of Google's US revenue comes from about 1.5% of the advertisers (large companies such as Amazon, eBay, BizRate, etc., source: SEMrush). The overall industry average click fraud rate in Q2 was 12.7%. That's down from 13.8% for Q1 2009 and from the 16.2% rate reported for Q2 2008. (source: ClickForensics)Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. The paid clicks in Q2/2009 were up 15 percent year-over-year, but down 2 percent from the first quarter. (source: Google Q2/2009 earnings summary)
If you want to lower your monthly AdWords bill while increasing your revenue at the same time then you should get the AdWords eBook now.
Editor's note: We'll continue with our regular articles next week.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Are Bing users twice as likely to click on an ad than Google users?

"According to a study by search-advertising network Chitika, visitors who arrive at sites from organic search results on Bing are 55 percent more likely to click on an ad than if they arrived from Google.
Chitika looked at the clickthrough rates from 32 million ad impressions across its network of more than 50,000 sites in a week in July. Visitors from Bing clicked on an ad 1.5 percent of the time on average, versus a 0.97 percent clickthrough rate for Google visitors and a 1.24 percent clickthrough rate for Yahoo."

Official Bing statement: images and Flash and script, oh my!

"Don't put important text content into graphics. The search engine bot can't see image file content as you and I can. To the bot, references to images are merely links to external, binary files in the HTML code, the contents of which can't be indexed. Keep your page's important content (the stuff you want indexed so it is discoverable by search engines) in text form within the webpage. Use images instead for illustrations, photos, designs, and other, non-text elements on the page. [...]
The same recommendation goes for animations in the form of Flash and Silverlight. These are great technologies to use to present videos, instructional information, entertainment, and much more. But don't bury your useful text content within animations. Use them as enhancements of, not replacements for, your on-page, text-based content. [...]
Don’t use script or images for site navigation. Bots can’t read script. They can’t execute it to see what happens. That’s why you need to be judicious in your use of script on your site."

"Setting the right bids in search marketing does require some calculations. [...] Cost-per-action measures how much advertising spend is required to get one action (in this case, one buyer). Most of the variables are fixed, but you control the cost per click and, therefore, the number of clicks you receive."
Editor's note: A much more detailed overview on how to price your PPC bids can be found in our AdWords eBook.

"Location extensions allow you to 'extend' your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. This new feature will be fully available in the coming weeks, with some advertisers having access to the feature starting today. [...]
Once extensions are set up, we'll dynamically match your business locations to a user's location or search terms and show the address with your text ads."

"The name is 'world wide web', but it's not always. What are some of Google's services that will only work in one country, or a limited set of countries? (Unless perhaps you route around the block – geolocation by IP, as it's often implemented, is not an impossible hurdle.)"

Search engine newslets
Some webmasters think that Google might have updated its algorithm.Stealth search engine Blekko raises $11.5 million.Search engine ChaCha raises another $4 million.Former Googler Sanjeev Agrawal to lead just-funded mobile search startup Aloqa.Has your Google web history been hacked?Chinese search giant Baidu posts gains.Zoom photo navigation in Google street view (video).For Mozilla and Google, group hugs get tricky.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
3. New IBP 11.5 now with Google's keyword tools

Based on user feedback we have improved the keyword manager in IBP 11 so that it now supports the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool in many different languages.

In addition to the unique keyword database of KeywordIndex.com, IBP 11.5 now also supports the keyword tools of Google AdWords. That means that you can now get the number of searches for keywords in many languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and more.

IBP 11.5 is currently available in a beta version. We plan to release the final version of IBP 11.5 within the next four weeks. Click here to get the beta version of IBP 11.5.
Note: IBP version 11.5 will be a free update for you if you have the current version.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

Three tips to compete with established websites on Google

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking a look at three tips that will help you to compete with established websites on Google.
In the news: Google releases the results of an eye-tracking study, Google experiments with the search result pages, a study shows the importance of being listed in search engines and more.
Table of contents:
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1. Three tips to compete with established websites on Google
Old websites have a big advantage over new websites. Websites that were around several years ago had far fewer competitors and it was much easier for them to get high rankings in that environment.
As these websites have been around for a long time, search engines trust them more and they had a lot of time to get inbound links. If you have a new website, it will be difficult to compete with these established sites.

It is possible to compete with the big players if you have a new website. Here are three tips that will help you to compete with established websites:
Tip 1: Use less popular versions of your target keywords

It's nearly impossible to get high rankings for competitive keywords. Of course, these keywords should be included on your web pages but you should also optimize your web pages for less popular keywords that are not targeted by your competitors.
If your competitors target the keyword "pizza new york" then you might optimize one of your pages for "pizza newyork". Even if your version of the keyword gets only a fraction of the original keyword, you will still get more visitors than before.
It is much better to rank #1 for a slightly less popular keyword (you will get some visitors) than to rank #60 for a very popular keyword (you will get no visitors).

Tip 2: Optimize your web pages for as many keyword variations as possible

Repeat tip 1 with as many keywords as possible. For example, you might use "best pizza in new york", "recommended pizza restaurant new york", etc. Even if each keyword delivers only some visitors, you will get many visitors with all keywords combined.
Another advantage of getting high rankings for many of these long keywords is that your website becomes relevant to a topic. The more high rankings your website has for keywords that are relevant to a topic, the easier it gets to get high rankings for more competitive keywords.
Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords and optimize as many web pages as possible. People who search for long keywords are usually people who really care about the subject. These people are more likely to buy something and they might also link to your site.

Tip 3: Create web pages just for getting links

Some web pages on your website should generate revenue, others should help you to get inbound links. The more inbound links your website has, the easier it is to get high rankings.
Create web pages that solve the problems of the web searchers. Write "how to" articles about a very special topic. These web pages often get many inbound links. Of course, you should also actively build inbound links.

Getting high rankings for a new website is not difficult if you choose the right way. Do not attack the big players directly. Start with many related keywords and then proceed to the more competitive keywords.
Focus on both optimizing your web pages and getting good inbound links. Your website must have good optimized content and good inbound links if you want to get high rankings on Google.
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Google publishes some results of their eye-tracking studies

"Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query."

Google tests a new interface for Google Suggest

"[Google runs] an experiment that simplifies the interface for Google Suggest and adds Google's search buttons below the list of suggestions. [...] This is not the only experiment for Google Suggest: other changes include the direct access to the top result for navigational queries, direct answers and suggestions from your search history."

Google tests a new branded local one box in the search results

"[Google tests] a new Universal Local Search Result; the Branded Local One Box. The new Universal Result appears to only show in Firefox, for regional brand related searches. It requires that the searcher is in the same general area as the business."

"The results show that on-line retailers have a very strong presence, representing well over 30% of the listings shown [...] With consumers' search activity growing to more than 10 billion searches each month and Forrester Research reporting that 24% of all off-line purchases are influenced by the Internet, the importance of a strong search presence is clear."

"As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends. [...] For instance, the group said, a phone left in a repair shop could be secretly enabled. Or someone could give another a Latitude-enabled phone as a gift."

Search engine newslets
AdSense testing larger font in ad units.MSN/Live Search adds a fourth ad to the top of the search results.Pay per post: Google uses every trick to beat Yahoo in Japan.Google accused of invisibly deleting blog posts on the RIAA's say-so.Is Google the next victim of creative destruction?There's still room for Google killers, study says.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
"My site rocketed to the first page on Google."

"In 2 weeks, with the help of IBP my site rocketed from no rankings to the first page of Google for one of our main keywords - 33,000 searches per month and 12 million competing sites!"
Steven Arsenault, eDateTravel.com

"Within a month I went from page ten to page one on Google."

"I started using IBP last year. I was skeptical about how it could guarantee top 10 rankings on Google but gave it a try anyway.
Within a month I went from page ten to page one on Google. I have since used it to fully optimise my site and I am seeing a good increase in rankings and traffic!"
John Scotland, http://www.roomsininverness.co.uk/

Do you want to have top 10 rankings on Google?

High rankings on Google mean more website visitors, more customers and more sales. Watch the video for further information:

160,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

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Our web host 1&1 Internet is quite a big company in the web hosting and domain world. It has over 7 million global customers, hosts more than 5 million websites, and has registered more than 10 million domain names. No small task in the competitive world of web hosting.

With more than 40 different hosting and domain products, for both business and personal use, 1&1 has something for every budget and skill level.
If you like the free features (free domains, free PPC ad money, software, site add-ons, generous bandwidth/storage and more) that come with 1&1 hosting, we know you'll love the price. 1&1 offers both Linux and Microsoft hosting starting at $3.99 and domains from $8.99 as well as monthly specials.
The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.
You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."
All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
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Official Google statement: the effects of outbound links on your website

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Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking a look at an official Google statement about the effects of links from your site to other websites.
In the news: Links from .edu or .gov domains have no special value, search engines (and webmasters) might benefit from the economic crisis, Microsoft won't make Yahoo another offer and more.
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We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.
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1. Official Google statement: the effects of outbound links on your website
Last month, Google published an official statement about linking out to other websites. Some webmasters still think that linking to other websites might have a negative effect on their Google rankings. That is not the case.

Links to other websites can have a positive effect on your website if you link to the right websites. Here's a summary of Google's statements:
The good side of outbound links

Relevant links to other websites can help your website visitors. For example, you could provide your readers in-depth information about similar topics or you could offer your readers your commentary on existing resources.
Outbound links can also help your credibility. Links to the right websites show that you have done your research and that you have expertise in the subject manner. Good links to other websites can make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics.
A very positive effect on links to other websites is that they help you to build relationships with other domain experts. If you send visitors to another website then that website might send visitors to your website in return.

The bad side of outbound links

Links to other websites can have a negative effect on your website if you don't monitor to which websites you link. According to Google, unmonitored (especially user-generated) links and undisclosed paid advertising outbound links can reduce your website's credibility.
If your website allows user comments or other user created contents, then you should make sure that these comments are moderated and/or you should add the rel="nofollow" attribute to user generated links.
Google doesn't like paid links. If you accept money for outbound links, you should also add the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link.
Google recommends not to have more than 100 links per web page. Too many links on one page confuse your website visitors.

Should you worry about the PageRank of the linked website?

Google makes it very clear that you shouldn't worry about the PageRank of a website as long as you are linking to a website you believe your website visitors will enjoy.
It doesn't matter if the linked website has a lower PageRank than your website as long as the website is somehow related to your site. According to Google, webmasters should consider outbound links as a common sense way to provide more value to their users, not as a complicated formula.

If you link to good websites, outbound links will have a positive effect on your site. IBP's link builder helps you to find good related websites, it helps you to build relationships with other websites and it also helps you to increase the number of inbound links to your website.
Further information about link building, how to get good inbound links and how to avoid common mistakes can be found in our free SEO book.
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2. Search engine news and articles of the week
Links from .edu and .gov domains have no special value

Many webmasters and marketers think that a website will get a ranking boost on Google if it has links from .edu or .gov domains. Google's Matt Cutts and Google's John Mueller recently said that this wasn't so:
"This is a common misconception - you don't get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you're not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn't have any PageRank. [...] We generally treat all links the same - be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites."

Google tries to improve search quality with an improved user interface

"The role of 'user experience' research is to try and get the inside story on what people do when they search. We're constantly asking: What's the user's experience of search? What works and doesn't work for them? What are they looking for? What DO they want?"

Search won't fall off cliff as online ads slow

"Although the slowdown threatening to drag out two quarters or more has hit the online ad industry, search could remain the bright spot in an otherwise dismal scenario. [...]
Economic hardships have led consumers to use search engines more as they evaluate shopping options and compare prices."

Ballmer rules out new bid for Yahoo.

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday that Microsoft is 'not interested' in making a new offer for Internet company Yahoo, despite Yahoo's share price currently sitting at less than half what Microsoft initially offered. [...]
'Look, we made an offer, we made another offer. It was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us, and we moved on.'"

Google at 10: searching its own soul

"As Google recently turned 10 years old, some analysts and investors began to say the company was suffering from early signs of maturity. Google’s growth rate, while still brisk, has slowed significantly and is expected to slow more because of the economic slowdown."

Search engine newslets
Microsoft tries to steal Verizon deal from Google.Google improves its AdSense ad filter.Google CEO on Obama tech czar job: No thanks.Google and Microsoft executives trade jabs.Hitwise ranks election traffic to news sites.Russian company to sue Google for $3 billion for contextual ads technology.Google's China market share to grow in 2009.Microsoft in web search deal with Sun.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
"This only took us approximately 3 months."

"I began working in SEO in 1998 with one of the first Internet hosting and marketing companies. Working with Ken Stubbs, the first President of ICCAN, and Glenn Davis of www.openvision.com I was responsible for SEO for large US companies like Wilson Sporting Goods, Fortune Brands, and others.
Our group was at the cutting edge of SEO at the time and still is today. Today I own www.1contemporary.com, an online and store based import/export dealer of high-end modern designer European Italian furniture. 1 Contemporary Furniture is the 3rd oldest website under the keyword 'contemporary furniture, Italian furniture, designer furniture, and european furniture. We ship to 50 states and around the world over 40 of the most renowned names in the industry world-wide.
For the past 7 years www.1contemporary.com has been at the top on the first page of our keywords and we remain so today thanks to IBusinessPromoter."
Gill Fisher, President, 1 Contemporary Furniture

Get your website in front of more than 160,000 readers

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

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The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.
You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."
All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
Back issues:
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How to create trust for high Google rankings

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're taking a look at things you can do to show Google that they can trust your website. Trust is important if you want to get high rankings on Google.
In the news: Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts uses his own website to test Google's way to handle 302 redirects, does a link still count after it has been removed from a website and more.
Table of contents:
We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Best regards,
1. How to create trust for high Google rankings
Trust is a major factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Some websites can get high rankings on Google for nearly any content they publish while other websites cannot get high rankings at all although they have optimized web page content.
A high trust level is crucial if you want to get high Google rankings

The reason why some websites do better than others is trust. Some websites have managed to reach a very high trust level with Google. That helps them to get higher rankings on search engines than you do.
Google doesn't want to list spam sites in the search results. For that reason, it is important to show Google that your website is for real, that you're not a spammer and that you plan to stay in business for a long time.

Here are some things you can do to show Google's algorithm that it can trust your website.

1. Things you should consider about your domain name

The age of a domain is important to Google. When you start a new online business, consider buying an old domain name if a suitable name is available.
If you start with a new domain, buy it with a renewal period of two years and more. You show Google that your domain is not a throwaway domain by doing so.
Check your WHOIS records and make sure that the contact information is correct. Do not use exotic top level domains. If you are in the USA, use .com, .net or .org. If you're in another country, use the official top level domain of your country.
Don't overuse hyphens in your URL. For example, www.keyword-keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5.com might look spammy.

2. Things you should consider about your website content

Make your contact information easy to find on your website. List a full address and not only your email address on your website. The more information about your company can be found on your website, the more likely it is that it will be considered a real business.
Your website should have a privacy policy and terms and conditions (if applicable). Both should be linked from your sitemap.
Don't use doorway pages. They annoy search engine spiders and website visitors. Doorway pages are a clear indicator of a low quality website.
If possible, keep the HTML code of your web pages below 100 KB so that search engine spiders can crawl it easily. Regularly update your web pages to show Google that your website is alive.

3. Things you should consider about your links

Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If your website gets 2000 inbound links on a single day then Google might think that you try to game the algorithm with a link system.
The links to your website should contain your keywords but they should not all contain exactly the same link text. If all links to your website used exactly the same link text then this would be a red flag for Google.
Do not use paid links. Google does not like paid links and they might penalize your website if use them.

If Google trusts your website then it will be much easier to get high rankings. Of course, your website still needs optimized web page content and good inbound links. IBP can help you to get both.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's Matt Cutts uses his blog to test 302 redirects

"Why do I suspect some ultra-secret Google we get 302s right test is going on? [...]
My site makes the perfect guinea pig. I laughed when Greg Boser got everyone to link to mattcutts.com instead of http://www.mattcutts.com. He was trying to mess me up and cause duplicate content hijinks, but little did he know that I was the guinea pig for the www/non-www setting in the webmaster console."

Discussion: How long does the juice flow after a link is removed?

"A friend of mine had this exact situation. His site got a 'cool site' type of link from someone's PR9 home page that lasted for a few weeks. Once the link was gone there was no residual effect that we could discern, although the PR6 link from the archives was a nice addition to the mix.
Alas, that company was bought out, and their site went off the air, archives and all. Lesson learned: high PR links are nice while they last but a backlink profile with lots and lots of small links will be more stable."
Editor's note: You can use this tool to create a stable link profile.

"Google is to privacy and respect for intellectual property rights what the Taliban are to women’s rights and civil liberties: a daunting threat that must be fought relentlessly by all those who value privacy and the right to exercise, within the limits of the law, control over the uses made by others of their intellectual property. [...]
Google promotes copyright theft and voyeurism and lays the foundations for corporate or even official Big Brotherism."

"We launched a new format for story pages on Google News. These are the pages you see when you click the 'all news articles' link of each cluster of articles which cover the same news event - or 'story,' as we say on the Google News team. [...]
Our new story page enables us to highlight more sources and provide our users with more ways to experience the news."

"Google.co.ma, the domain name for Google Morocco’s search portal, was taken hostage by hackers earlier today reportedly for several hours before the problem got fixed (it’s working fine again now).
We got a bunch of tips about it, and the situation lasted long enough for lots of people to take screenshots of the website the domain name briefly pointed to due to the hack."

Search engine newslets
New search tool aims at answering tough queries, but not at taking on Google. MSN City Guides gets a facelift with Live Search.Watch out Google, Obama's antitrust chief is looking to make an example.Yahoo data center planned for New York.Google talking to New York Times, Washington Post about… something.Google plans space exploration gadget to help mobile phone users study night skies.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.
You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."
All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com/