KPI Web Design SEO

Will a blog boost my website’s search performance?

Blogging is yet another way in which you can build links to your website. So theoretically, yes, a blog will boost your search performance. The more links you have to your website the better your website’s search performance will be. And, the better your search performance, the higher your website will rank in Google’s search results for your desired keyword or keyword phrase.

Set up a Blog

There are two different ways in which you can set up a blog. It is recommended that you do both:

1.  Host a blog on your own private server.

-    Regularly updating the content on your website’s blog will ensure that the search engine spiders continue to visit your site.

2. Use other websites that allow you to create free blogs on their servers.

-     Examples of these include blog.co.uk and wordpress.com. These particular websites are frequently used by millions of internet users from all over the world. Therefore, Google recognises that they are both important and popular which results in them achieving a Page rank of at least 5/10.

-          On these blog websites you can add your own posts with links back to your site.

-          You can gain a large amount of targeted traffic through the blog’s own internal search.

-          Bookmark your blog posts: this will boost their Google Page rank.

Fundamentally you must have a wide variety of links to your website. In regards to blogs specifically, create many of them, and on different blog hosting websites.

Depending on competition, using blogs alone can get you the traffic that you are looking for. However to do even better in SEO we recommend that your website have many different link sources. To find out more about other ways of link building take a look at some more of KPI’s blog articles.

How are Google combating ‘Black-Hat’ tactics?

What are black hat tactics?

Black-hat tactics are ways of achieving high rankings in the search engines with underground techniques; they cheat the search engines into believing that their website is more important than it actually is.

Examples of these include:

-  Off-topic link exchanges

-  Exact match domain names and few poor quality links

- Link farms (where operators create/buy old domains and convert them into bad quality one-page sites for link building)

Do they work?

Black hat tactics do not work out well in the long run. As much as they may help the website in the short-term, it is likely that they will get caught out by Google eventually. A legitimate website that has been built through hard work, real links, good content and effective marketing strategies will always be valued better by the search engines. It is better to be fair and avoid the ‘cheating’ techniques rather than worrying that your website may be penalised or banned.

Google’s attitude to spam

Recently it seems that Google’s Web Spam team has paid less attention to combating black hat tactics than in any previous years; the bad quality directories and the off-topic link exchanges have made a comeback since their shutdowns in 2007-8.

So why have Google’s methods of combating web spam got worse rather than better?

1. The Web Spam team may be less capable now than they once were: the internet is getting bigger and bigger, more and more complex, and demand in search is getting even higher. Therefore, the constant increase in web users may be proving too much for Google to handle.

2. Often Google will let spam pass while they develop a new algorithm to defeat the new layer of spam (such as link manipulation.) However this seems unlikely: this is perhaps the longest time that Google has gone without releasing an update for this. They did release the May-Day algorithm, but this had only small impact on website’s search performance – it did not target link manipulation.

3. Link manipulation and web spam have got more and more common: there are a large number of good quality websites that also use black-hat tactics. Consequently, Google cannot penalize a technique or sites using it without reducing the quality of their index.

May Day Algorithm: Penalty or Update?

The May Day Algorithm was a change made to Google’s ranking algorithm.

Initially, it was viewed as a penalty. This was because the new change meant that some websites lost 90% of their traffic from Google for keyword phrases with long tail keywords (three or more keywords). One website affected by the new algorithm was a 13 year old site with a Google PageRank of 7 and 400,000 backlinks. Obviously this was a very well established website – so why did it begin to lose traffic?

Identifying keyword phrases requires a lot of computing power and a lot of memory. Before the new algorithm was introduced, Google says that it guessed the most appropriate pages for long keyword phrases based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new change in the algorithm has given Google the computing power to index long tail keywords on web pages more accurately, instead of using other simpler keywords on the page.

So, if words don’t appear in the right order in keyword phrases, the web pages must be edited. The new algorithm will not get listed for a mixture of the keyword phrases – it will only get listed for the keyword phrase order that you’ve written.

So, is the May Day Algorithm a way of penalising websites, or will it boost websites’ search performance in the long run?

How do I make sure that the search engines list my most important web pages?

If you want to achieve good results from the search engines, then your most important web pages must achieve higher rankings in the search results. How can this be done? The main factor the search engines depend on is the structure of your website’s links.  By following a few simple rules, your most important web pages will receive the most visits.

Link to the important pages

• The most important pages of your website should be easily accessible to the web user, with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks needed, the more important that web page is.
• Use clear and specific links on your website. You should give specific links to the most important pages of your website, not just the generic website address.
• If you want a certain page of your website to be found from a certain keyword, then links from other pages of your website should contain that particular keyword. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the linked web page will be listed for that keyword but it increases the relevancy of the page for the keyword.

Exclude the unimportant pages

• Get rid of broken links on your website. Check for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages.
• Use the nofollow attribute. The search engine robots will not follow links with a nofollow attribute as they are classed as unimportant.
• Use the robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing.

If search engines don’t have to go through the unimportant pages of your website, then the other pages with more importance will get more attention. The fewer links on a page, the more important a single link to another page will be.

How do you avoid negative comments about your company appearing on Google’s Page One?

No matter what you do, it is inevitable that some customers will not be satisfied with your company’s services. This may lead to them writing negative comments about your company on their blogs or on other websites. In addition, your competitors may write fake comments about your website as a way of damaging your company’s reputation.

The only way to circumvent this issue is to find out what caused the customer’s initial upset. If it is genuine negative feedback from a past customer, then ask them what the problem was and how it could be resolved. You could also send the webmaster a polite email requesting that the negative comment be removed.

Promote good reviews

If the webmasters do not cooperate, then you must promote web pages listing positive comments about your company:

• Build links to these websites from your own. The more links there are to pages with positive reviews, the more chance these pages have of appearing higher in the search engines.
• Use social bookmarking websites. If you bookmark websites with positive reviews on Digg or Delicious for example, the more chance these websites have of being listed higher on Google.
• Request testimonials; then create a page on your website where you submit the good testimonials. You could also request that they submit their testimonials to common review sites like consumerreview.com or epinions.com.
• Write articles about your company to boost your search performance on websites like aboutus.org or you could even attempt an entry into Wikipedia. As these two websites are both highly regarded, you will have a better chance of these pages being discovered by search engine users. If you do this, along with other SEO methods (http://www.kpib.co.uk/blog/?p=18) your company’s website will be listed first on Google rather than the websites with the bad reviews.

Google Buzz

What is it?

Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool incorporated into Gmail accounts. A feed is sent to the users’ inbox where they can access all public activity published on Buzz. Some believe that it was created so that Google could compete with other social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter.

Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organised in ‘conversations’. Other features include:

• We Feel Fine- esque Buzz Mood: an application that parses Buzz updates for emotion-related verbs. It then relays them to the viewer with animations.

Current mobile platforms supported are devices running Android 1.6+, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, Openwave, and S60. Mobile users’ posts may include text and a photo.

Privacy issues

In mobile devices, Buzz tags posts with the user’s current location; it does not allow users to specify it. It also integrates with Google Maps so users can see who is around them; posts made through Google Maps are public, and can be seen by anybody else using the software.

By default Google Buzz publicly discloses a list of Gmail contacts that the user has most frequently emailed or chatted with. If this feature is not disabled, sensitive information may be revealed. However after these revelations, Google has made the option of disabling public sharing more prominent.

Google has also changed one of Buzz’s features from “auto-follow” to “auto-suggest”. This allows users to choose whom they follow, and, therefore, who is revealed on their public list of contacts. Moreover, users who have never created a Google profile have no way to make their list of contacts or other information private.

Read more about Google Buzz at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

How do I make sure that my SEO is effective?

There are many different factors to work on in order to ensure that SEO is effective. It is a difficult process; one minor error affects the entire website’s search performance. However by following a few simple rules, this situation is easily avoidable:

Hidden errors

A website often contains unnecessary errors that prevent the search engine spiders from crawling it.

- The web server should return a ‘200 OK’ code when visited by the spiders; if an error code is returned it will not be indexed.

- The HTML code must be error free; some HTML errors can prevent your site from being indexed.

Images and Flash animation

The main content of a website should be shown through text. Although images and flash animation improve the website’s appearance, search engine spiders do not understand them. Additionally, flash does not work on the new Apple software (Ipads and Iphones).

Content

Avoid including articles or affiliate links that can be found on other websites. A website’s content should be distinctive and trustworthy; if you know a lot about a particular topic, write detailed facts about it. This will make the spiders believe that your website is the best place to visit for information on that topic.

Site planning

The site’s architecture should be carefully planned. If there are a group of web pages that are all related, it shows the search engines that the website is more than just a random collection of web pages.

Keywords

Top listings in Google are achieved by using specific and effective keywords.

- Longer keywords are more search engine friendly. Specificity is crucial; specific keywords direct more potential customers to your website.

- Shorter keywords are less likely to direct a potential customer, and are far more competitive.

Link building

Back links guarantee a high search engine rank. Links have a great deal of impact, and the more targeted the link, the better.

Search Engine Spider:  A computer program deployed by the search engines to collect data from the internet.

Keyword: A word or phrase associated with your company that web users type into the search engines.

Back links: Links that web users make to your website from other websites.

It takes time to optimise your Search performance

SEO takes time and commitment to achieve top listings on the major search engines. Many webmasters still believe that they will be on Page one immediately after submitting their website to Google. It may have worked in the past, but it does not work anymore. The search engines spend time updating their index by discovering the website and its links.

Website content must be updated on a regular basis. Regular updates show that the website is important. If the content is interesting to the targeted audience, then users will build links to the website. This is the only real way to help search engine performance with links. The fundamental rule is: the easier it is to get the link, the less it influences the website’s ranking.

Website content must contain relevant and specific keywords. These particular keywords can be discovered by running short term PPC ad campaigns. These campaigns track conversions and find out which keywords are searched for the most. The most effective keywords help the website appear higher in the listings which attracts more customers. It is better for the website to use less competitive keywords before incorporating more competitive keywords. During this process, Google will deem the website trustworthy. This is essential; without the search engines’ trust the website will not do well in the rankings.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation

Keyword: A word or phrase associated with your company that web users type into the search engines.

PPC: Pay Per Click

Will web page speed become a more important ranking factor?

Google’s Matt Cutts recently suggested that Google may soon pay more attention to the speed of a web page in their ranking algorithm; Google seems to believe that faster websites in the search results make the searching experience better.

What can you do to make your web pages faster?

Choose a reliable web hosting company that has fast connections to the Internet. Your web site should be hosted on a web server that is be easy to reach and has a good level of availability (up time).

In addition to choosing a fast web host, the following will make your web pages faster:

• Combine external JavaScript code files into one file; the fewer files the web server has to serve, the faster your web pages will load.
• Compress your JavaScript code to make the JavaScript file smaller.
• Combine external CSS files into one file and compress your CSS files to make the CSS file smaller.
• Enable gZip compression if your web server supports it; your web hosting compaqny may have yo do this for you.
• Try to keep the number of images on your website to a minimum and compress your images. Most image tools allow you to choose the compression rate when saving an image for the web.
• Put tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets at the end of your web pages.
• Analyse your web pages to get an idea of the speed of your website and compare your website to the websites of your competitors.

Is it a good idea to use the loading time in the ranking algorithm?

Fast loading web pages are good for search users, but using the web page loading time in the search results ranking algorithm could cause problems for smaller businesses:

• Businesses will be forced to choose faster and perhaps more expensive web hosting providers if they want to be found high up in the search results.
• Businesses with a low income or from a country with slow Internet connections won’t be able to compete.
• The big websites will get bigger and the small websites will get smaller.

Health Warning: the role of the page loading time in Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t clear yet so the above points are speculative.

It is always a good idea to optimise the loading time of your web pages, regardless of the effect of loading time on your search results rankings. The faster your web pages load, the more visitors to your website are likely to see the contents of your pages.

Web surfers are impatient people; the average web surfer expects immediate results. That is enough reason for your website to be fast loading.

Don’t overlook making sure your web pages also contain clearly arranged content that is easy to read. You should assess the readability of your web pages; you can even calculate a Flesch/Kincaid readability score, the higher the score, the more difficult your web pages are to read.

Google's duplicate content patent

Google has been granted a patent named Duplicate document detection in a web crawler system. The patent explains how a content filter from the search engine can work with a duplicate content server.

What is duplicate content?

The patent’s definition of duplicate content is:
“Duplicate documents are documents that have substantially identical content, and in some embodiments wholly identical content, but different document addresses.”
The patent describes three scenarios in which duplicate documents are encountered by a web crawler:

1. Two pages, comprising any combination of regular web page(s) and temporary redirect page(s), are duplicate documents if they share the same page content, but have different URLs.
2. Two temporary redirect pages are duplicate documents if they share the same target URL, but have different source URLs.
3. A regular web page and a temporary redirect page are duplicate documents if the URL of the regular web page is the target URL of the temporary redirect page or the content of the regular web page is the same as that of the temporary redirect page.

A permanent redirect page is not directly involved in duplicate document detection because the crawlers are configured not to download the content of the redirecting page.

How does Google detect duplicate content?

According to the patent description, Google’s web crawler consults the duplicate content server to check if a found page is a copy of another document. The algorithm then determines which version is the most important version.

Google can use different methods to detect duplicate content. For example, Google might take “content fingerprints” and compare them when a new web page is found.

Interestingly, it’s not always the page with the highest PageRank that is chosen as the most important URL for the content:
“In some embodiments, a canonical page of an equivalence class is not necessarily the document that has the highest score (e.g., the highest page rank or other query-independent metric).”

How does this affect your website?

If you want to get high rankings, it is easier to do so with unique content. Try to use as much original content as possible on your web pages.

If your website must use the same content as another website, make sure that your website has better inbound links than the other websites that carry the same content. It’s likely that your website will be chosen as the most important URL for the content then.

If your web site has unique content, you don’t have to worry about potential duplicate content penalties. Optimise that content for search engines and make sure that your web site has good inbound links.

It’s hard to outrank a website with good optimised content and many good inbound links.