The Google Sandbox Explained
September 2, 2010
Introduction
The Google Sandbox is a metaphorical term to explain why most new websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Very few people know for sure if the ’sandbox’ actually exists, but it seems to be a filter added to the Google algorithms sometime around March 2004.
What is the function of the Google Sandbox?
The generally accepted principle behind the Google Sandbox is that it enables Google to filter out ‘Flash-in-the-Pan’ websites from those that offer good quality, up-to-date content. It is within Googles interest to ensure that the results it displays to its users within the SERPS lead to highly relevant, up-to-date, useful websites Relevancy is key to the search engines success so it will take all steps it can to ensure the relevancy of its search results. Filtering out new websites and monitoring them may allow them to provide more accurate results within the real SERPS.
Do the Search Engines Know Your Website?
August 29, 2010
Are you considering a search engine promotion campaign to improve your website’s search engine visibility? To aid in your decision, have you checked your website to determine its search engine awareness?
Perhaps you may be thinking why do I need to check my website? Do you remember going to the doctor for an illness? Hopefully, your doctor performed some tests to diagnose your illness before prescribing your medication. If not, you may have gotten some very undesirable results.
In the case of your website, you need to diagnose the patient and determine the extent of your website’s search engine visibility. Based on your findings, you can decide to focus on standard search results or paid search results.
Your checks should be done in the Google and Yahoo search engines since they are the major search engines in today’s marketplace. As an option, you should consider MSN since they have recently released their search engine. It is only a matter of time before they are considered a player, if not already.
Search Engine Optimization: What Is It?
August 22, 2010
Search Engine Optimization is the creation of a web page, purposely designed to rank well with the Search Engines.
If you want traffic to your website then you must Optimize your website for the Search Engines.
Search Engine Optimization is a necessity if you want a huge amount of traffic flowing to your website.
Traffic from the Search Engines is one of the best (And most abundant) forms of traffic. Most people use Search Engines to find what they are looking for. I do and I bet you do too.
You simply cannot afford to pass this up. If you do, then your competitors will be way ahead of you, taking customers which you could have had.
However, if you are going to undertake Search Engine Optimization I STRONGLY recommend that you do some extensive research before you start trying to create the “perfect” page for the Search Engines.
If you don’t do enough research then you will find bits of Optimization information, but will it be correct or will it heavily penalize your website, or even completely ban it? If you end up doing the wrong thing, this is what can happen.
What Is Search Engine Optimization And Why Do I Need It?
August 15, 2010
Purchasing web design service is confusing with all of the different buzz words floating around. In an earlier article I discussed the differences between custom web design and web design based on templates. Another service being pushed by many web developers is search engine optimization (SEO). It has become a huge field in the last few years despite the fact that many purchasers of web development services are not clear on what it is or why they need to consider it in the making of their site.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Nearly every internet user finds new web sites using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. You go to their site, type in what you are looking for and usually find it in the top two or three results. What goes on behind the scenes of every internet search involves complex software intelligent enough to figure out which pages are the most relevant to your search. If you are looking to buy a product online, you will search for the product name and typically buy it from a company who comes up near the top of the result list. Search Engine Optimization is the process of figuring out which search phrases, or "key words", potential customers might use to find what you are offering, and then doing whatever is necessary to move to the top of the search results so that these searchers visit your site.
The Search Engine Of The Future: Mobility Has A Pricetag
August 9, 2010
We all know the ease of using a search engine to garner information from around the world in microseconds. We’ve gotten accustomed to accessing these for the price of our hookup to the internet, be it dial-up, cable or wireless. But as more of our world connects via wireless media, what is included in our ‘free look’ may be changing.
Mobile phones are taking over the world. There will be 1.7 billion wireless subscribers by 2006 according to Strategy Analytics. Interestingly, among the so-called “first world” countries, Europe has the most wireless customers and the United States the fewest. Not even in consideration is China and her billions–yet! Your company webmaster might be advised to take a closer look at fee-based advertising, because there is likely to be extreme competition for the key slots in any search result in the very near future.
In many parts of the world, a fixed line telephone is still a luxury. That is not the case with mobile phones, which are getting cheaper by the day. Add to this, access to the world wide web from a PC requires a great deal of hardware, most of which is costly. Conversely, access from a cell phone can be facilitated by a variety of different technologies and the target market for your company will soon be available to the tiniest of villages in the remotest part of the globe! The only constraint will be whether your website is correctly positioned on the web’s search engines.
3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins
August 2, 2010
My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine marketing sins. Starting with
===> Inadequate Keyword Research
Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?
Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form. For example “dog dishes” rather than “dog dish”.
Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.
Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.
Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most out of that day.
Search for your target keyword in Google.
Googles New SEO Rules
July 28, 2010
Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as “Allegra”, has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.
Over-optimization may have played the biggest part in the dropping of seo- guy.com from the top 50 Google results. Filtering out web sites that have had readability sacrificed for optimization is a growing trend at Google. It started with the Sandbox Effect in late 2004, where relatively new sites were not being seen at all in the Google results even with good keyword placement in content and incoming links. Many thought it was a deliberate effort by Google to penalize sites that had SEO work done. It’s a few months later and we see many of the ’sandboxed’ web sites finally appearing well for their targeted keywords.
Valid HTML code is crucial to Search Engine Optimization
July 21, 2010
Why valid HTML code is crucial to your web site’s search engine optimization efforts and subsequent high rankings:
Many webmasters and newcomers to web page design overlook a crucial aspect of web site promotion: the validity of the HTML code.
What is valid HTML code?
Most web pages are written in HTML, and as for every language, HTML has its own grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and each document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules.
Like any language, HTML constantly changes. As HTML has become a relative complex language, it’s very easy to make mistakes … and we do know by now the favorable weight the new MSN.com beta search engine places on proper coding practise.
HTML code that is not following the official rules is called invalid HTML code. Why is valid HTML code important to search engine optimization and your whole marketing effort?
Search engines have to parse the HTML code of your web site to find the relevant content. If your HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find the content on the page, and there ends your seo efforts and quest for high rankings of that page.
Google Page Rank - Important Or Just Another Number?
July 15, 2010
In my last newsletter I wrote about how your websites Alexa rating is not actually that important to the success of your online business. In this issue, I want to look at another popular statistic - Google Page Rank - and ask a similar question - is it that important?
First a quick overview as to what the Google Page Rank actually is…
Google Page Rank (or PR as it is often referred to as) is simply an indication of the number of websites that link to a specific website. It also attempts to indicate the quality of those links. PR ranges from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the ‘best’ PR and 0 being the ‘worst’). The vast majority of small business websites will usually find they have a PR of between 0 and 5.
To calculate a particular sites PR, Google uses a fairly complicated algorithm based on the number of web links that it is aware of that link to the site in question. This algorithm will also take into account the PR of the page that is providing the link, thus a link from a web page that has a PR of 7 will be considered more valuable than a link from a page with a PR of 4.
How to Build Massive Keyword Lists
July 10, 2010
As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.
Why?
Because according to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, a guy who really should know what he’s talking about, over 50% of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before. He also said: “When performing a search most surfers give a 2-4 word query”.
So here are my top 18 recommended ways to build massive keyword lists:
1. Visit your competitor’s web pages and look in the title and meta tags.
2. Search for brand names in Google’s Sandbox. This will return additional keywords that searchers entered when using the brand name. You can also enter regular keyword phrases and get related keyword phrases that have been searched on Google.
Link: https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
3. Look over your past customer testimonials, and see if there are any keywords you can use. This strategy lets you get inside your customer’s mind to produce more market centric keywords.
