SEO Rocks

Google has announced a change to its page layout algorithm in a change that instantly made me think Google were being very hypocritical. The new layout will affect pages that have little content but lots of advertising above the fold when a page loads.

I instantly thought of me using my netbook, or the millions of people now using 10″ tables or smaller, the amount of times a google search has been assessed with only PPC on show and loading youtube with ridiculously large adverts across the top.

When you read into it more however, this is not what Google is gunning for, Google are penalising website that make it hard to find the content on the website, if the page loads and the content isn’t visible with a scroll or makes it hard to access content then they are dropping.

Google has said that 1% of searches are effected, initially a small percentage, but this is still a large amount of searches. Thinking more about it, it dawned on me that it’s mainly file sharing websites that use this trick. The download links are generally at the bottom of the page, they have a timer on them to use, the links are always smaller than the adverts, adverts generally dominate the top of the page.

This seems a little coincidental that on the day Megaupload is taken down by the Americans, Google directly affect the rankings of most other popular file sharing websites.

I did try to fight this idea with myself by thinking all they are going to do is improve the page layout of these websites to make it easier to download from them. I don’t think this could be the case, most of these websites will have enormous running costs which are being paid for by advertising in prominent pages on the website. If the download link becomes clear, then massive amounts of revenue will be lost on these websites and who knows if they will be able to sustain operation. I dont believe enough people would pay for the service to cover the loss in advertising revenue.

I did try to perform a few searches to screenshot for this blog post, but i couldn’t even find the websites im talking about in a search, all i got presented with at the end of the search as this.

Jump To: Google Penalty | Filter | Duplicate Content | Hacked | Google Is Wrong!

You have a website so people can use it, for that to happen it needs to be found, to be found, you really have the best chance being in Google (other search engines do exist).

You spend months, years building up your website then one day you realise that the amount of pages Google has indexed for your site is going down. Your first reaction is to panic and shout at someone, then you might perform a google search about de indexing and why!

There are many reasons why your website may start to be de indexed, below are the most common reasons i have seen and how to fix them.

I need to say to this point that there are several levels of penalty that i refer to, I have been told that ‘google filters’ do not exist and they are simply penalties, however i disagree and below you will see my thinking as to why there is a difference.

Google Penalty

A google penalty is when google have withdrawn your website from its index. The main reasons for this is a direct breach of Google’s guidelines, serious things like, Cloaking, being part of a link farm or generally using any aggressive black hat techniques. If you have been penalised then the chances are its for something you have done and you would normally know what has happened.

How To Detect

Detecting a penalty is easy, simply do a site command and it will show you if you have received a penalty. if you wanted to check this website then simply past the code below into google.

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Google in the last couple of weeks has introduced personalised search for all of its users. In the past personalised search has been a feature that only worked when a user was logged in.

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SEO is an industry with many varying levels of knowledge. Some websites need very little work to rank well, and little knowledge to help them along. other websites need more of an expert eye casting over them to see what the problem is.

If you have a website and you need to optimise and take on some internet marketing then the internet can be a great way to learn the basics. There are many many websites out there that will teach you SEO and if you just Search for help there will be plenty available. I have found in my day-to-day work that a lot of people are now doing this.

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Technorati Claim String: TSY6NAYM3HQS

Google has started to put location information into its search results in the green bar next to your URL.

I have only noticed today that it has happened but after a little searching i found that it was announced on the Google Central blog on the 1st December.

If you have search results that are .com, .info or any other TLD that doesn’t identify location then Google has started to add the location of the website to the results. I can however only find one working example of this and it seems that the only way to get this to work is to set the Geo Targeting in Google Webmaster Tools. continue reading »

Twitter has been around for a little over 3 years and within that 3 years it has become a sensation that has taken over the internet. I couldn’t find any exact figures for the amount of users twitter has but the articles i read reported between 25M and 32M users. For a website that took 2 weeks to build it can safely be called a sensation.

Working with the internet every day of the week it is easy to forget that some people don’t use the internet so much! Using twitter every day makes you forget that some people have never used it in there lives!

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I thought i would share a find ive had with everyone which i think is one of the best WordPress plug-ins ive seen for a while.

WPtouch iPhone Theme simply changes the theme of your blog to make it much more friendly and readable for people visiting on smart phones.

The idea is a very simple one and its nothing new but in a time when everyone can use the internet on a phone then i think it has become a must.

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A problem i have recently come across was a website that had been cached with a port number in the URL e.g. www.example.co.uk:12345. This was created for a website that used a load balancing server so the developers of the website could access a specific server.

Problems arose when somehow Google started to cache the website with the port number appended in the URL. It wasnt long until the rankings of the website slipped. As you can see having this port number in the URL basically duplicated the website which we all know is not good for SEO.

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Earlier this week i had the privilege of attending the SEOMoz seminars in London. I have been following #ProSEO on twitter and have read many peoples thoughts. I’ve never been to an SEO seminar before to rate this one against but the consensus was that it was a really good, advanced seminar and i would have to agree. I went into the seminar expecting and hoping that i already knew a lot of what they were going to tell me but at the same time i would be learning different ways to achieve and look at things from a different angle and overall that was the feeling i had when i left.

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