Tag: Google

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Is AuthorRank or BrandRank Coming for Businesses on Google?

Is AuthorRank or BrandRank coming for businesses on Google?  That’s an interesting question and one that I feel Google is leaning toward based on the chatter online, but one I doubt we will see this year. What exactly is BrandRank? First, let’s start with a little bit of detail.

AuthorRank passes SEO juice.
AuthorRank passes SEO juice.

This past year Google really pushed AuthorRank as a way to verify authors and help to build credibility of content. It all starts with a personal Google+ page, a tie-in to your website, and then tagging of your content you may write around the web. When properly done, you will see a face next to an article and SEO juice flows from links to the owner’s website, to the Google+ page, and pushes results higher in personalize and organic placement. It is a real boon for writers such as myself.

Google understood that there are many businesses where this benefit of authority of content would be valuable, especially for big companies/brands. So it quietly rolled out rel=”publisher” in addition to rel=”author”. For brands and companies the ability to tie together a website, blog, Google+ Business page using the publisher tag makes terrific sense.

However, Google has already stated that it won’t be putting a face or brand icon next to any of these results, at least not for right now. With Google really pushing AuthorRank, I would expect them to do the same with BrandRank, but more judiciously and most likely not this year. I just don’t think that they want to dilute what is happening with AuthorRank yet, but I feel that BrandRank  will come in the relatively near future.

In the meantime, I would strongly recommend that you position yourself early and start working to develop BrandRank if it is meaningful for your business. Preferentially use AuthorRank if it makes sense to your business or BrandRank if you are a medium to large business.

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Interesting Tidbits on Local Search Results on Google.com

Google has focused on delivering more location specific searches in their index partly because of the new focus on mobile, but also because this is what users want. As a result a new focus on search engine optimization to place on location specific keywords has bloomed into a major industry.

Here are a few tidbits that you may not have been aware of in regards to location specific placement on Google.com.

Introducing rel=publisher.
Local Placement in the 7-Pack

1. When you check the placement for your site, if you see a map next to your listing then Google is delivering location specific results which may be different than non-location specific results. The map is the key! But Google will only now show seven results in this local grouping. Not ten sites as it used to do so.

2. If when you do a search for your site and you are not in this 7-pack group, take a look at your website, about us page, and all your social media to review and assure that you are adding location specific keywords to help tag your site with the geographic information needed to place in this important grouping.

3. When Google has more than seven sites that it may want to show in the 7-pack, it will show results based in closest proximity to where it can identify that the end user is located. Additionally I have found that Google will “rack and stack” these listings based on the number of reviews. If your competitors are located nearby to you and they have more reviews that you, your listing may never show in the 7-pack.

4. You can’t place in the 7-pack if you are not geographically appropriate to the search query and end user. This is the biggest misunderstanding point for website owners. If you are located in Columbus, you cannot place in the 7-pack for Cincinnati – you do not have a local space and will never be able to get there. This is a big issue for national selling services. Google simply will not show your results in these location specific searches but rather local businesses.

For more in-depth information you will want to check out this great article at SiteProNews by Tina Courtney-Brown.

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Cross Linking Domains You Own

Cross Linking
Cross Linking

This question comes up a fair amount when we have business owners who have multiple website – “Should I link and cross link my various web properties?” First, most website owners would simply do this without thought and there is no reason why you should not if you have one or two website properties. In fact, it makes perfect sense to do so and you may actually get some backlink benefits from doing this.

There are however some situations where doing so will be a negative for your organic placement. Here are when you should be careful doing so.

  1. If you have several websites but you do not reveal that you own the properties and you are actually trying to appear as if you were different businesses, I would not cross link the sites.
  2. If the content is the same on the web properties, I would not cross link the sites.
  3. If the businesses are totally different, say one is to sell dog toys and the other is to provide web consulting. I would not cross link the sites.
  4. If you have created many, many, keyword domains and you are trying to use cross linking these multiple sites for organic placement improvement. I would not cross link the sites. You may have been able to do so before and received a benefit, but not Google is identifying sites using this tactic as link spam and is actively penalizing their organic placement on Google.com.
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Buying a Previously Used Domain Name

I’ve had a few clients buy previously used domain names when they become available. If you’ve ever considered doing this make sure you watch this important video from Matt Cutts the voice of Google to the SEO industry about the dark side to spamming and how this may impact the use of a previously used domain. http://youtu.be/lGUw9oS5csI

The bottom-line is that if you do not check to see if your prospective domain has been used to deliver spam, you may get burned. Matt even recommends checking the webmaster control panel tied to that domain and website to look for messages from Google.

If you see all kinds of spammy and questionable links pointing to and from this domain, it is by far better to start with a fresh unused domain. Even if a website is new with all new files, the Google algorithm behind the scenes may be penalizing this domain and you’d never know until you simply could not get placement when you started to use it.

The last two domain purchase I was involved with for transfers only, were both over $10,000 for the purchase. I doubt either site owner had investigated the domain and how they had been used before money exchanged hands. Be careful and when in doubt don’t put your money down go with a new domain.