PageRankTM (PR)

PageRankTM (PR)

is a numeric value that represents how important a website is online. Google becomes the idea that when a web site places a link (link) to another, is in fact a vote for the latter.

The more votes has a page will be considered more important by Google. Moreover, the importance of the page that casts the vote also determines the weight of this vote. In this way, Google calculates the importance of a page thanks to the votes received, taking into account the importance of each page that casts the vote.

PageRankTM (developed by the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin)is the way Google decides the importance of a page. It is a valuable data because it is one of the factors that determine the position will have a page within the search results. It is not the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is one of the most important.

Keep in mind that not all the links are taken into account by Google. For example, Google filters out and discards the links of pages devoted exclusively to put links (called 'link farms').

In addition, Google admits that a page can not control the links that point to it, but you can check the links page to other pages in place. Therefore, links to a page can not harm it, but it links a page to place penalized sites may be harmful to your PageRankTM.

If a site has PR0, it is usually a site penalized, and may not be intelligent to put a link to her.

One way to know a page is PageRankTM download it the Google search bar (only available for MS IExplorer). Bar appears in the one shown in green PageRankTM value on a scale of 0 to 10. PR10 websites are Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, and Google. You have a full list of PR10 sites.

Algorithm

The algorithm 'PageRankTM' was patented in the United States on 8 January 1998 by Larry Page. The original title is "Method for node ranking in a linked database ', and was assigned patent number 6,285,999.

PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page. PageRank can be calculated for collections of documents of any size. It is assumed in several research papers that the distribution is evenly divided among all documents in the collection at the beginning of the computational process. The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.

A probability is expressed as a numeric value between 0 and 1. A 0.5 probability is commonly expressed as a "50% chance" of something happening. Hence, a PageRank of 0.5 means there is a 50% chance that a person clicking on a random link will be directed to the document with the 0.5 PageRank.

SERP Rank

The Search engine results page (SERP) is the actual result returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The SERP consists of a list of links to web pages with associated text snippets. The SERP rank of a web page refers to the placement of the corresponding link on the SERP, where higher placement means higher SERP rank. The SERP rank of a web page is not only a function of its PageRank, but depends on a relatively large and continuously adjusted set of factors (over 200), commonly referred to by internet marketers as "Google Love".Search engine optimization (SEO) is aimed at achieving the highest possible SERP rank for a website or a set of web pag

Tips to Get First Page in Google Ranking

Go to first page of search results on Google is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, many are still doing bad things to improve their ranking.
It is not possible to obtain in the first 10 rankings on Google using a single strategy. To get a good ranking on Google you must work on all elements of your site.
Here are the five strongest factors known to affect the position of your site in Google search results:

Factor 1: Web Accessibility

It is useless to optimize your web pages so search engines can not access them. Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors, so search engines will not index your website.
The HTML code of your web pages must be free of errors and your web server should return the correct response code. The content of your web pages should be readable by search engines.
Before you start optimizing your web pages, make sure search engines can read the contents of your web page.

Factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant Web sites in search results. Your site should not be a collection of copies of web pages that already exists. If you want to obtain first page rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be linked.
Your web pages must show Google that your site is relevant for a certain topic. All pages of your website must be linked. If possible, users must reach a page from your website with a maximum of three clicks.
The links and directory structure of your website should enable search engines to categorize the content of your website.

Factor 3: Keyword

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you will not succeed in your online marketing campaign.
Optimize the pages of your website different key phrases. The more you optimize your site pages, the better.
Start with highly targeted keyword phrases that consist of many words, eg “Google first page positioning. When you have the best rankings of these key phrases targeted proceed with more general words such as “Google positioning.
When you have the best rankings for these key phrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as “positioning”.
In general, targeted keywords have a conversion rate much higher than generic keywords, meaning you get more sales per visitor with “Google first page position” with “positioning”.
Also consider the type of visitors you attract with a keyword. These people are interested in information or want to buy?
Our company can advise you on the words that sell. We can provide the best keywords you should target in priority for your business.

Factor 4: content

Your site will be very difficult to get a better ranking on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links can be found on dozens of other sites.
Differentiate your website from others by creating unique content and trustworthy. Write your own articles on the topic related to your website. Your site must be useful to users.

Factor 5: links from other sites

It is not possible to obtain high rankings on Google without having links from other sites. The more links pointing to your website, the more likely it is that your site has good positions in search results on Google. The links to your website should be on web sites trust and your business.
If a page Web site for your business is a link to your website then the effect of link ranking in search engines is higher than the effect of a link is unrelated to your sector.
He must also know that if you have links on social networks and that if many users add your website to social bookmark sites, then your site could merit a higher ranking.
A small error in one of these elements can destroy all your online marketing strategy. For this reason, it is important to know what you’re doing and not doing anything with your SEO.

SEO Interview Questions

I’ve written a few questions that might help structure a SEO interview or even help someone get an SEO job. I think though, there are a great deal of ways to answer many of these questions. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing example answers but I think as long as you have a clear idea of the kind of answer you expect to hear back then this should do the trick.
A SEO interview needn’t be a long list of technical questions (as I expect many people might have differing perspectives anyway) but rather a chance for you, as the interviewer, to understand their technical SEO skills, depth of knowledge and interest the candidate has in SEO.
Some people might also disagree with the ethics of asking some of these questions, but feel free not ask them if, of course, you don’t want to.
SEO Interview Questions
Death by interview has been known so I wouldn’t recommend asking all of these questions. Pick and choose at will…
Open-ended SEO questions
1. What is your favourite aspect of SEO?
2. What is the most difficult aspect of SEO for you?
3. What has been your biggest mistake in optimising a website for search engines?
4. What has been you biggest success in SEO?
5. Do you have your own website(s)? What are they? What is their purpose? How effective have they been?
6. What business sectors have you previously worked in as a SEO?
7. What is the most competitive sector you have worked in as a SEO specialist?
8. Do you like Matt Cutt’s?!
Knowledge of the SEO Industry / engagement in learning about SEO and engagement with the SEO Community
9. What is your favourite SEO website/blog, and why?
10. Who do you most respect in the SEO industry, and why?
11. Who do you least respect in the SEO industry, and why?
12. Which website do you go to learn something new every time?
Analytics
13. What Analytics packages have you used?
14. Talk me through the process of setting conversion goals?
15. Explain the process of advanced segmentation and an example of why you might use this?
16. If you could develop a new feature for an analytics package that is not currently/easily available what would it be?
Algorithms
17. Please explain the PageRank algorithm…
18. What is the most important aspect to you of the PageRank algorithm for link-building?
19. What is page segmentation?
20. What is LSI / LSA and its relevance to SEO?
21. Explain to me how phrase-base algorithms work? Clustering?
22. Describe any perceived differences in the main search engines?
23. Have you noticed any algorithm changes lately that you believe to have affected your rankings? How do you work to protect your online visibility?
Keywords
24. What process do you typically go through when researching keywords?
25. How could this process be improved?
26. How do you carry out competitive analysis of keywords/SERPs as part of the keyword research process?
27. When targeting keywords on-page, discuss some considerations you might make?
Accessibility
28. What factors hinder search engines access to a website’s content?
29. What is the most responsible way of using Flash?
30. Tell me how you might use the Robots.txt file?
31. What is the difference between an xml sitemap and an html sitemap?
On-page Ranking Factors
32. If you were reviewing a landing page, what on-page ranking factors would you consider?
33. How would you analyse the strength of that page as part of the site?
34. Are you competent with HTML and CSS?
Onsite Ranking Factors
35. Talk me through factors you would consider in building an optimised website. (Possible answers might include the discussion around information architecture, site structure, title tags, link structures, keyword relevance, etc).
36. What are onsite ranking factors for building a successful landing page strategy?
37. Please provide examples of blackhat SEO techniques?
38. What are your thoughts on blackhat SEO techniques? What, if any, have you used, or tested?
Offsite Ranking Factors
39. What would the perfect inbound link look like?
40. What do you like and not like about link-building?
41. Explain to me your involvement in link-building in the past?
42. What approach to link-building have you had most success?
Linkbait Development and Marketing
43. Would you consider yourself as creative?
44. Have you ever successfully carried out a linkbait campaign for a client / in-house? What was the success?
45. Talk me through the process you might go through in developing a linkbait strategy?
Copywriting
46. Are you confident writing and publishing content online?
47. Please provide examples of the content that you have written. What was the purpose of this content and what keywords were you targeting?
SEO Tools
48. What keyword research tools do you use and why?
49. What is your favourite ‘SEO tool’? Why?
50. Do you think SEO tools are effective in competitive markets? Why?
Testing
51. Have you carried-out split-testing / multivariate testing of content?
52. What did you learn from this process?
Image Optimisation
53. What factors can you do to encourage the chance of ranking for images?
54. What is hotlinking? How can this be successfully optimised?
Video optimisation
55. Have you ever carried out video optimisation?
56. What are a few considerations of optimising video content?
Social Media Interview Questions
Open-ended Social Media Questions
57. Which social media sites do you most like? Why?
58. Which social media sites do you most dislike? Why?
59. What has been your biggest achievement in SMM?
60. Do you feel that you are well connected in Social media spheres? Does your social media account carry influence?
61. Do you prefer to use the same pseudonym across your social media profiles? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
62. When did you get into social media (and marketing)?
63. What is your oldest social media profile?
64. Would you ever sell or buy social media profiles?
65. What has been the most effective social media marketing campaign you have been involved in? How was it effective? Metrics / exposure / links?
66. How do you effectively use social media to support SEO campaigns, or vice versa?
PPC Interview questions
67. Although not strictly SEO, the understanding of the cross-over of visibility in paid-listings can be very important for effective SEO campaigns.
68. Have you worked on/with PPC accounts? How did it go?
69. How do you integrate PPC and SEO?
70. What considerations might you make when carrying out paid search competitive analysis?
Business Acumen and ROI
71. What are the key performance metrics you have previously reported to clients?
72. What are effective metrics for highlighting return on investment from SEO?
73. What would you like to change about the SEO reporting process?
74. What other areas of business present opportunities for organic search visibility?
75. If your SEO efforts aren’t getting the visibility you would hope, what would you do?
Pitching for Business
76. Have you prepared proposals for SEO clients?
77. Have you presented proposals to SEO clients? How did it go?
78. What was the biggest mistake you have made in a meeting with a client?
79. What is your greatest strength when presenting to prospective SEO clients?
Retaining Business
80. What do you think is the most important factor in retaining a client?
81. From the previous company that you worked for, what was one process that they could have improved in retaining and gaining clients?
Closing questions
82. Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
83. What are you salary expectations? Availability? Etc, etc…
84. How did you feel the interview went?!

5 Ways to Improve Your Local Business Website

When customers don't stay on your website for long, it's hardly surprising you fail to connect with them and build the trust needed for them to get out their credít cards and purchase from you.

The great news for you is there are tons of quick and easy - usually free ways - to make your website more appealing to your customers.

Here's 5 you can apply today.

1. Site Search

When you have more than 20 pages, it's a good idea to add a search facility. If you have a site search, make sure it's prominent. Usability guidelines tend to prefer the upper-right corner of the page. Keep the button label simple and clear - "Search" still works best for most sites. Don't unleash your powers of lateral thinking and swap in a word like "Retrieve". Keep it simple.

To Do: Just using your search, try to find 3 pages of content. Is that process "quick, easy and straight-forward?" Or is it "hit and miss?"

2. Ensure Your Web pages Can Be Skim-read Easily

Few people read word for word online; the vast majority skim-read to get a sense of the page before they read any of it in detail. Make it easy for visitors to skim-read your content. Always use headings and bullets to break up text.

Think about it. If a heading is not relevant for your visitor, they can easily skim down to the next heading, making it straightforward for them to get directly to the information they need.

Always keep your text in manageable chunks, not an unbroken wall of words like insurance small print, so it's easier for customers to look up what they want right away and with confidence - which is critical if they are making a buying decision.

To Do: Give your website a quick review and make sure all your text is broken up into clear, manageable sections.

3. Keep Your Styles & Colors Consistent

Make sure people know they're still on your site by being consistent - confuse them and you'll lose them. Keep the look and feel of your website sections consistent and avoid any radical changes. Visitors can get confused and think they have left your site accidentally.

Layout, headings, and styles should be consistent site-wide, and colors should usually have the same meaning.

For example, don't use red for headers on one page, red for hyperlinks on another, and red as standard text somewhere else.

To Do: Ensure all your web pages appear to be part of the main site and that they are consistent with each other. Are there any "nasty surprises" depending on the part of the site you're in?

4. Use Emphasis (bold, etc.) Sparingly

It's a fact of human psychology: try to draw attention to everything and you'll effectively draw attention to nothing. We've all seen that site, the one with a red, blinking, underlined "NEW!" next to everything. Don't be that guy or gal.

Remember, if your site's graphic design is counter-intuitive and doesn't help visitors get something done quickly, it's going to make your site much slower and difficult to work with.

Slow, awkward sites don't ever, ever, delight your customer or create a good rapport online.

Visitors will be back at the search engine in seconds if they find your website "complicated" or "busy".

To Do: Ensure your website is only highlighting critical factors you absolutely need your visitors to gaze at or clíck on in order to meet your online business goals. Menus, buy buttons, opt–in boxes and so on.

5. Keep Your Ads & Pop-ups Unobtrusive

Ads are a fact of life, but integrate them nicely into your site. Don't try to force ads and pop-ups down peoples' throats; you'll end up creating frustration for your visitors. Also, do people a favor and make your ads clear. If you blur the line between ads and content too much, your content may suffer, since many people have developed "banner blindness" when it comes to surfing, and might overlook some important content by mistake.

To Do: Double check if your popup window is significantly increasing your opt–in rate. If it isn't, you could be annoying present and future customers unnecessarily.

Final Word

Always make sure you view your website through the eyes of the customer and not through your eyes, the website owner.

Make sure there are no red-flags on your site that are going to frustrate, confuse or bore customers. Keep everything nice and simple to make sure your visitors enjoy spending time (and money) on your site

How site index by Google Sitemap

Google has implemented a cutting edge method of crawling web sites for its search engine index. This unprecedented method of indexing web pages is known as Google Sitemaps, and it is quickly growing in popularity among webmasters and SEO agents and managers due to its ability to get an entire web site indexed quickly and to pick up errors in the links coming into and out of a web site.

Google Sitemaps consists of placing the URLs of your pages along with important information regarding how Google should index them into an XML document. This information is then read by the Google Spider and the pages are normally indexed quite quickly, assuming that they are coherent to Google's standards for indexing pages (and also assuming that the sitemaps conform to Googles Sitemap Criteria which will be explained a little later).

There are two primary types of Google Sitemaps. The first is a list of pages in a website and the second is a list of sitemaps in the website. Google has limited the number of URLs in its sitemaps to fifty thousand URLs. This may sound like a lot, but for some of the more intricate web sites, fifty thousand URLs may not even make a dent in what they want indexed.

This led to the advent of the Google Sitemap index file which can index up to one thousand sitemaps. If you do the math, this means that you could have one thousand sitemaps with up to fifty thousand URLs in each sitemap which allows for fifty million URLs to be placed in your Google Sitemap scheme. But wait, there's more. Who ever said that you can't have an index of indexes? You could actually make an index of a thousand index files which are all indexes of a thousand index files. Basically, there is no limit to the number of URLs that you can hold in your Google sitemaps.

Now that you understand the power of the Google Sitemap you're probably asking yourself how to create and implement a Google Sitemap. The first step is to simply create your sitemaps. Here are the templates which are also available at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . For a sitemap file use the following format:






http://www.example.com/
2005-01-01
monthly
0.8



http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12&desc=vacation_hawaii
weekly



http://www.example.com/catalog?item=73&desc=vacation_new_zealand
2004-12-23
weekly



http://www.example.com/catalog?item=74&desc=vacation_newfoundland
2004-12-23T18:00:15+00:00
0.3



http://www.example.com/catalog?item=83&desc=vacation_usa
2004-11-23



Everything here is pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the changefreq and the priority aspects. The change freq asks how often you think the page will change on average. The possible values for the change freq option are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. The priority aspect basically just asks how important the particular page is in your website. The value can be anywhere between 0.0 and 1.0. If you decide not to specify a priority it will default to 0.5.

To create a sitemap index file follow the following format:






http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz
2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00



http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz
2005-01-01




This is all pretty straight forward but it leads me to my next point. You notice that the file names all end in .gz. Google allows you to compress your sitemaps so that they take up less of your disk space when you place them on your site and less of your bandwidth when Google downloads them (which it seems to do approximately once every 9 hours or so). You may only use .gz compression. If you try .zip, it won't work.

Now all that you really have to do is submit your sitemap to google. In order to do this you must go to Google Sitemaps and log into your Google account. If you don't have a Google account, you can create one. Once you log in you will be allowed to submit your sitemap into the google index. At some point within about 24 hours of your submission, Google will give you the option to place a small HTML file onto your website so that it can confirm that you do, indeed, have access to editing the site. Once you have done this it will begin to provide you with statistics regarding your google sitemap. (Note that even without this feature you can see when google downloaded the sitemap last and what the status of the sitemap was at that time.)

How Google Sitemaps Fits Into Search Engine Optimization

According to Google, the Sitemaps utility is free and will continue to be - yet it's almost as good as the paid inclusion service offered by rival search engines. So how can you take advantage of this great service?

First of all, you should create a Google Account. Although you can still use Google Sitemaps without an account, you need one before you can use Google's tools to check your site submissions. Once you do that and go to sitemaps.google.com, you'll be guided through the process.

Google Sitemaps has a very helpful question and answer page that will give you the help you need - the answers to most questions people have can be found right there. Good luck!

Backlinks for Search Engine Optimization- How Important are They?

Backlinks are a key component in search engine optimization. Search engine consultants talk about the importance of backlinks for achieving higher search engine ranking. That’s because the more one-way backlinks you have leading to your website, the more important the search engines believe your page to be.

There are two types of backlinks: one-way links and reciprocal links.

One-Way Links are basically backlinks that only go one direction. Maybe it’s a link that goes from your website to another website. Or maybe it’s a link that goes from another site to yours. Either way, it’s only going one way.

Reciprocal Links are backlinks that go from one website to another, and then back to the original website.

It’s important to differentiate between one-way back links versus reciprocal links. Many search engine optimization experts believe that one-way back links are more valuable than reciprocal links because they’re much harder to earn. The thinking is that since they’re harder to earn, they must be more valuable, which means other people think very highly of your site. If people think highly of your site, it must be an important site, which means the search engines will give it a higher ranking than those sites that do not have a lot of one-way backlinks.

As search engines like Google grow and improve, they’re putting more emphasis on how popular a website is, not whether they use all the right keywords. This popularity is measured through one-way backlinks. They’re like votes to Google, and search engine ranking is more like a popularity contest: have a lot of links to your site and your site achieves a high ranking. The easiest way to find the number of backlinks that lead to your site is to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the following command:

link:www.abce.com

You will be shown a list of all the websites that have backlinks to your own domain. If you want to see who has links back to a particular page on your site, then type in the whole URL to that individual page.

Although no one can be sure of the exact algorithm Google and Yahoo use to rank sites, it’s commonly believed that if a website has more backlinks, it will achieve a higher search engine ranking. There are other factors that go into the whole search engine ranking, but backlinks are one of the more important ones.

But it’s important you have good quality backlinks, not just links that appear on any page you can find, like a link farm or sticking a comment on a page that has nothing to do with your website at all. That is, if you sell hammers, don’t put any backlinks on a page that sells children’s shoes.

That’s because search engines like Google have started cracking down on link farms and backlinks spammers. The search engine spiders know how to tell the difference between backlinks on a link farm and links on a quality website. If you are caught spamming, you will be dropped in the rankings, or possibly even dropped completely from Google’s index.

So you need to pay attention to the quality of your backlinks, now more than ever. One way to do this is to make sure you use the proper anchor text in your backlinks. For example, do not ever hot-link the words “click here.” What you’re basically telling the search engine spiders is that the website is about Click Here. Instead, use the keywords about the site that the backlinks are leading to. If you’re creating backlinks to a site about hammers, put the word hammers in your links. “Click here” isn’t about hammers.

In short, if you want some great search engine results, be sure to include backlinks as part of your search engine optimization strategy. You’ll see it pay off with improved search engine rankings.

Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds

You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.

More Is Not Better In Link Building

Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.

Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must

When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.

Pay Attention To Links In And Out

Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.

PageRank Isn’t Everything

Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.

Concentrate On Site Relevance

Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickeys. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.

An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious

Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?

Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.

Does Social Networking Matter?

We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.

It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.

Are You Getting Clean Links?

When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.

When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”

It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.