Month: February 2013

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Getting Google to “Trust” Your Website

Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.
Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.

Getting placement on Google.com is affected by a number of new factors so getting Google to “trust” your website, when compared to other sites, is extremely important. This “trust” factor is also known as “web authority”. When Google considers your website an authority on a topic, it will place your site higher in the organic search results.

So, how to you get Google to “trust” your website and give it “authority”?

1. Make sure your are transparent about what you sell and your services. Explain what you do and provide informational content about your services or products in a way that does more than just “sell” your own services.

2. Make sure you have a privacy policy that covers tracking, technology, remarketing, what you do with information, and if you lend or sell information to a third part.

3. Get blogging on a regular basis to provide value to readers –  not just about your own services, but about your industry, why something is important, current news in your industry, and share your point of view. I like blogging three days a week as it keeps search engines coming back on a regular basis to find new content.

4. Start now building Google AuthorRank either through the rel=author tag or the rel=publisher tag pointing to Google+ properties. By doing this important step you legitimize your online voice tying your website, blog, off site articles all to your Google verified property. This is a very important step to Google’s “trust” factor.

5. Share off domain using social media. I personally like using Twitter, Google+, Google+ Communities, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Make sure the content you create there is share-able and information rich. Don’t use social sites just to parrot back sales and marketing content from your website. Work to engage and add value.

Although our own services aren’t a good match for every business, we may be a good match for your needs. I invite you to check our our services to see if we might be able to help you to start building “trust” with Google now.

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Authorship Versus AuthorRank on Google

Authorship versus AuthorRank
Authorship versus AuthorRank

Although these two terms seem similar in fact they are very different. Here’s what to know about each.Authorship
This is not new, but linking your name, website and personal Google+ page together to have your photo appear in search results next to your content is new. Authorship is the online brand that you are establishing to let others know on the Web when something has been created by you and solves much of the problem of letting others scrape your content and passing it off as their own. It’s a way that Google is able to determine that something you wrote is really yours.

By linking your website, articles, and personal Google+ page you verify for Google that content is truly yours.

AuthorRank
This is new. Google’s toyed around with this under different names AgentRank and AuthorRank. In a patent disclosure from Google over three years ago I first saw the use of Agent/Author Rank. I however thought at that time it would be done with a meta tag not the algorithm element that it appears to be. At that time the patent addressed questions such as who issued the content first and so was the owner.

Google has revealed just last week that AuthorRank is real. It is no longer a question mark, and does impact search results.

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” Eric Schmidt Executive Chairman of Google

AuthorRank is more of a part of the algorithm that Google uses to rack and stack search results. It places importance on locations of content, social sharing, and authority of an author.

Both Authorship and AuthorRank are important new elements of web visibility and share-ability that will impact your organic placement now and in the future.

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Should You Be Using Certain Phrases in Your Anchor Text on Your Blog?

Confused about Google version of what web spam is?
Confused about Google version of what web spam is?

I had a blog client just recently send me a list of 5 phrases that he wanted used in his blog posts with all links regardless what they were to point to his home page. This blog post will educate you on why you may not want to use this “old” SEO tactic any more on your blog.Placing on Google has really changed in the last year. It used to be that keyword density and smart use of anchor text in blog posts really worked to boost your Google.com placement. However, now using these same tactics of building keyword density and repeating the same anchor text in blog posts over and over can be considered web spam by Google and can end up winning you not better organic placement but a Google smackdown!

I found this terrific article at the Internet Marketing Blog called “Google Web spam “Penguin” Over Optimization Penalty Hits” It is a good article and one that you should read for more information about what Google considers web spam.

Here are my specific recommendations to my clients on the topic of web spam.

  1. Don’t send your blog writer phrases to use any more. Let us know what is important, but it we use the same phrasing over and over again in your blog posts you will be nailed by Google.
  2. Let the blog writer mix up wording and phrasing so that content reads naturally.
  3. We won’t be working to build keyword density in a blog post as this may really come back to bite you.
  4. We still want great catchy titles in fact this is more important than ever for share-ability of your content.
  5. Allow the blog writer to point to the correct page on your website not just to your home page. Deep linking is good!

Remember the Google spider and algorithm is so smart… you don’t have to spoon feed content, phrasing, keywords, or links. Let content be natural to read, on topic – yes, but not redundant, create great content that is now shareable and authoritative.

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Where Did All My Links Go Google!

Just this past week Google gobbled up and spit out links in the Google Webmaster Control Panel. We’ve had clients go from 12,000 inbound links to under 3,000. What’s happening with Google now?

First, there has been chatter on the web as recently as Friday, February 8th that there was a glitch in recording link numbers in the Google Webmaster Control Panel, but does this account for such a big drop or are there other things at play?David Anderson in an article at SiteProNews thinks that there is a consistent erosion of Google honoring and giving you credit for inbound links that continues to impact website even post Penguin.

“Links remain important, but their overall value has diminished. Worse for SEO specialists, quality links have to be earned. Google stripped sites of many links they deemed forced, purchased or otherwise tainted and now makes it harder for sites to gain links. Content marketing and social media marketing are usurping SEO’s dominance in link-building as Google now rates links based on perceived value — a link from an article published in a high-authority magazine or shared on Twitter — gets more Google love than links from ezines and directories.” Read this interesting article in its entirety.

Note what David says is the new way inbound links are credited through high authority sites and social media – this is the essence of co-citation which appears to be the new way to garner search engine placement.

Add to changing link numbers and the difficulty in getting them to be high enough to make and difference and the growing impact of not being able to see the keywords that generate your website traffic in Google Analytics and you’re left wondering just how can a website owner get placement on Google with Google continuing to change it’s ranking formulas.

David Anderson doesn’t really answer that question (how to remediate Google placement) in his article just paints a fairly bleak picture for website owners and SEOs who are operating in this new environment. However, there is hope for savvy marketeers who are using content creation, social media, and Google+ to combat the new version of a Google smackdown that is impacting all websites