Typo Squatting At Amozon.com

THE OWNER OF AMOZON.COM

If there’s a way to exploit the system, hackers, crackers and other black hats will find it.

Domain Hijacking – A Brief Explanation

Most domain owners are familiar with domain hijacking. Hijacking involves taking over a domain name and using it for unsavory, even illegal online practices. How can someone just take over a domain, you ask?

One of two ways. They can just use it. In an email, for example, a bad guy can use your domain name to provide the appearance of respectability. However, the link contained in the email takes the reader to someplace other than your site, usually someplace in the dark corners of the w3.

The other way black hats can rustle your domain is to contact the registrar – often the web host – and ask to update the owner’s personal information – a new address, telephone number and so on. And believe it or not, there are domain name registrars who actually make these changes! Now, your domain is registered to someone else! Just like that.

With a hijacked domain, bad guys can use your good reputation or well-known name to drive traffic to their site. And, you probably wouldn’t expect a thing until sales dried up completely.

Typo Squatting

Typo squatters take advantage of search engine users’ carelessness when typing in keywords. So, some evil doer might register Amozon.com, something close to the popular and legitimate Amazon.com. You know that typo squatter’s domain is going to get more than a few hits each day.

And when unfortunate search engine users type in Amozon.com, they’re connected to the bad guy. From there, the innocent user can be redirected anywhere. Often, they’re redirected to porn sites or get-rich-quick sites. In addition, important information, like the users’ email addresses, are now available for sale to spammers.

Typo squatters create a variety of misspellings, then register all of their variations in bulk to save money:

- the dot typo, e.g. amazo.n.com

- character replacements, e.g. smazon.con

- character omissions, e.g. amzon.com

- character permutations, e.g. amzaon or amaozn, for example

- character insertions, e.g. amazoln.com

These deliberately misspelled domains can then be parked on a server. There’s no need for an actual web site. All typo squatters need is a place to park two or three hundred domains.

The Google Adsense For Domains Program: Here’s Where The Real Money Is

This is where typo squatters can make some big money. The Google Adsense for Domains program enables users to split Adsense for Domains revenues derived from advertising served up on parked domains. No website required.

So, all the owner of Amozon.com has to do is take on a ton of Ads by Goooogle (you’ve seen them) and s/he splits revenues generated by legit ads placed on other domains. And this isn’t chump change. We’re talking big bucks and Google has been slow to respond to the problem. That means that thousands of legitimate Adsense participants are actually splitting fees with typo squatters.

Google’s slow response to typo squatting can be attributed to the fact that it doesn’t hurt Google’s bottom line. The company apparently doesn’t care about who gets the Adsense revenues as long as the program continues to expand. And it is.

Enter Microsoft’s HoneyMonkey

The fact is that Microsoft has taken the lead in tracking down typo squatters with the introduction of HoneyMonkey, a Microsoft exploitation detection system that spiders the web on a regular basis searching for exploitation points in the company’s numerous software programs.

Using the HoneyMonkey system, investigators have been able to track down numerous typo squatters. However, enforcement of existing laws is nil. Making it even harder to punish these black hats is the fact that they change web hosts often, migrating their misspelled domains from server to server.

The Hosting Solution

Web hosts are in the best position to detect typo squatters and boot them out of business. Squatters register lots of domains at once, all are variations of spellings of popular sites. (Even Google has been victimized by typo squatters.)

Squatters don’t have web sites. They just park their domains and load them up with Google Adsense links, sit back and collect that PPC revenue.

The prudent hosting service monitors for typo squatting and reports suspicious activities, or simply boots the squatter off the server. That’s why it’s important to go with a host who’s up to speed on typo squatters and takes steps to eliminate this growing problem.

Ask any potential web host how it deals with typo squatters. If you don’t get a satisfactory answer, or if all you get is stony silence from the other end of the line, keep looking for the host who knows the most about this ‘spelling’ problem.

Need some help finding a reliable web host? Call or click me and let’s chat. Your first mistake can be your worst mistake. Later, Webwordslinger.com.

Content Syndication: Get Linked In

Get Linked In

Do a little Google research and you’ll quickly discover that there are a million e-books, seminars and webinars about building links to your site. If your site isn’t plugged into the grid – a stand-alone – you’re all but ignored by search engines because your site has no context. Search engine spiders can’t determine your site’s taxonomy – the categorization of the site into a class or group based on the site’s topicality.

Search engines look for links to and from your site. If you have a lot of reciprocal links (link exchanges), you score some points but you’re not knocking ‘em dead. Spiders know a link exchange when they encounter one so a reciprocal link has less value than a non-reciprocal link – an in-bound link without an outbound link connecting back.

The Value of the Non-Reciprocal Site Link
Spiders crawl a site and assess what they find based on top-secret formulae called algorithms. These algorithms are complex weightings of various site components. So, for example, content that changes often (green content) is a plus built into the search engine algorithm. Thus, a site that provides fresh, informational content scores higher than one that’s as stale as last week’s doughnuts. Spam – useless gibberish created just to attract search engines – loses you points in the SEO Sweepstakes, too.

Now, there are plenty of search engine optimization (SEO) pros willing to take your money to show you how to improve or optimize your site so that it moves up in the search engine rankings. Less face it, if your site is entombed on page 68 of Google’s SERPs you won’t generate much organic (search engine driven) traffic.

One thing that spiders look for in assessing the quality or usefulness of a site is the number of non-reciprocal links connected to that site. Why? Because it’s an indicator of quality and utility. That’s why other site owners are recommending that their site visitors click off and go to your site. Quite a feather in your cap, eh? Collect enough non-reciprocal links and search engines may come to “see” you as an authority site. This coveted designation moves you right to the top of search engine results pages.

Bottom line: spiders use links as a measurement in site assessment. The more quality non-reciprocal, inbound links there are, the higher the site ranks (page rank or PR).

Content Creates Links
Good, fresh content is a highly-prized commodity on the world wide web because search engine spiders like to see up-to-date, relevant information for their users. Spiders take snapshots of each website they visit. It’s called the cache view on SERPs. When a spider crawls a site, it compares the cache with the current content. If nothing has changed, your content will ultimately be considered stale and, as a result, you’ll fall in the SERPs.

Every site needs new content and one way they get it is through article syndication.

Web Article Syndication
If you’re an expert on the subject of your web site, you can develop non-reciprocal in-bound links through article syndication. It’s perhaps the least expensive, most effective means of improving your site’s search engine ranking.

There are sites like goarticles.com and ezine.com that syndicate content within a wide variety of categories. This content (articles) is posted by the author and is free for the taking by any web site for display.

The way you benefit? Part of the deal is that any site that uses your article must provide a link back to your site. At the end of an article on antique watches you’ll see an author’s box that says something like:

Author John Smith is an authority on antique watches and offers free
appraisals at johnsmithantiques.com

That’s a non-reciprocal link which is given more value than a simple link exchange.

The Benefits of Web Content Syndication
The most obvious benefit, from the SEO perspective, is that every site that picks up John Smith’s antique watch article must provide a non-reciprocal, in-bound link to Mr. Smith’s website. So, if Smith’s article is picked up and used by a couple of dozen web sites, he’ll end up with a number of inbound links from a single article.

Now, if Smith then writes an article on antique sideboards, posts it on goarticles.com or some other content syndicator and gets picked up by more sites, the number of non-reciprocal inbound links continues to grow.

Onceagain, these inbound links are considered more valuable by search engine spiders than plain link exchanges. The fact that a site has linked to you without a reciprocal link is an indicator that your site is worth visiting, at least according to the referring site owner. In addition, you’re becoming a recognized authority on the topic pf your site. A two-fer!

Some Precautions
Perhaps the most important precaution is to limit the number of sites that post one of your articles. One thing spiders don’t like is duplicate content so if your article currently appears on 20 different sites, you’ll get credit for the in-bound links but the value of those links will be diminished because of that duplicate content. It’s all over the web!

Make sure you track the sites that are picking up your articles. Just Google your name or the title of the article to see what pops up. Visit each site to make sure that the promised link back to your site is there. Also make sure that your content isn’t being used for illegal or unscrupulous purposes. You write a piece on options investing and all of a sudden it’s being used as a “testimonial” by some sleazy scam artists selling options contracts to little old ladies. You have the right to request the removal of your article and most sites will comply. If they don’t, notify the syndicator who may deny additional content to the offending site.

What If I Can’t Write?
This is one links-building strategy that works. There’s enough cyber world evidence to prove that. However, if you can’t string words together to create a useful, informational article, find someone who can.

Your spouse, neighbor, even your kid might have a hidden writer just waiting for the chance to blossom. Or, you can find SEO copywriters on sites like guru.com and elance.com. Some of these professional writers (be careful who you choose) know how to craft an article that’ll get picked up by lots of sites that are topically related to your site. Keep track of how many sites run the piece at one time so you don’t overexpose it. You can find that information on the syndicator’s site.

Finally, to amortize your costs in money and/or time, re-use articles. After you’ve removed a piece from the syndication list, wait 12 months and repost it. You’ll pick up a bunch of new sites willing to publish the piece and you’ll have a bunch of new, non-reciprocal, inbound links that’ll make your site shine in the eyes of search engine spiders.

Whoever Said, “There’s No Such Thing As Bad Press” Was An Idiot!: Reputation Management

 

YOU'RE AN IDIOT!!!

Whoever said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” was certainly not talking about the world wide web. Today, more than ever, disgruntled consumers can trash your product and/or your site using blogs, forums and on-site reviews! That’s right, take a look at Amazon’s product pages. You buy something, don’t like it, you can write a review that will appear on that product page. Now that’s useful information.

 

Of course, you can also write a rave of some product but either way, Amazon leads in customer reviews – a good thing when the reviews are good, the death knell when they’re bad.

What many site owners don’t realize is that bad press can hurt you with lower search engine rankings so it’s not something you want to ignore.

What happens if a dissatisfied customer is talking trash about your site all over the w3? Or worse, what can you do about a competitor who posts slams and slander on blogs about your horrible customer service and overblown prices. Well, it isn’t easy (a good reason to always keep the customer satisfied) but there are things you can do to make a bad situation better.

Ask Nice
Let’s say someone’s posted a slam of your site on another site’s blog. One thing you can do is contact the site owner, explain your side of things and ask that the blog entry be removed. The site owner may take pity and do you favor. On the other hand, if that site owner is your #1 competitor, chances are he’ll rub his hands with glee at your misfortune. But it’s worth a shot.

Tell It Like It Is
Make positive posts about your site to counteract bad press. There are plenty of sites today that let you tell the world about who you are, what you do and why you’re the best choice. Checkout aboutus.org and post the positive. There are other sites that give you a chance to show your best side.

Social Book Marking
Not only is this a great way to spread the word to counteract bad press, it’s a great way to increase site traffic for zero dollars. Sites like del.icio.us enable you to create an account after which you can post pretty much anything you want – a great way to counteract bad press from other sources. Social book marking is a significant aspect of the new Web 2.0 drive to build a more interconnected online community and every webmaster should take advantage of social book marking sites, like craigslist, to tell the world just how great his or her site is.

Build Your Own Blog
Blogs help sites rank better in the SERPs. It’s fresh content and it’s easy to add a blog to your site. First, see if your web host offers blogging software as part of the toolbox some hosts provide to their clients. The better ones do. If not, visit squidoo.com. Here, you can create your own site blog. Make entries, acquire free content from sites like goarticles.com, upload product pixs and make a name for yourself – a good name!

Your online reputation can be crushed by a few negative comments posted on blogs and forums. The w3 is partially driven by the gossip factor so counteract the bad gossip with positive, helpful entries on your site blog. It’ll make a difference.

Become an expert
Yahoo and Google both have features that allow people to post questions which “experts” then answer. Experts are volunteers willing to share their knowledge and experience with the world.

Do you have a specialty? One related to your web site? If so, sign on as an expert in that area and establish your creds.

Write, right?
If you can write a few articles about aspects of your business, industry, services or products, you can syndicate those articles, each of which will have an arrow pointing right back to your site. This is a great way to build links. Even more, if you write enough of these articles, you come to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

So, how do you go about syndicating? There are websites that provide free, downloadable content to websites with the stipulation that the link back to your site must appear along with the article. Get a few dozen articles out there and you’ll soon discover that you have a lot more inbound links than you had previously.

Add your site to directories
Google has a directory (based primarily on the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org). Yahoo maintains a site directory. Even Microsoft maintains a small business directory. Once you’ve launched your site and it’s been indexed, you’re eligible to seek inclusion in one or more of these directories. It’s a good move to boost web site credibility.

Track your reputation
This is so cool. Google offers a free Alerts service that notifies you every time your site’s name comes up – anywhere on the world wide web. Blogs, forums, press releases – Google covers the entire digital landscape and reports back to you each time your site is mentioned. The free service covers the top 50, most relevant results. If you want to go deeper, you can subscribe to Google’s Alert services which will deliver the top 200 most relevant mentions of your site (or you or your competition). It’s the easiest way to keep track of your on-line reputation – and what the competition is saying about you.

The Power of SEO
Search engines like Yahoo and Google rule the web – at least the commercial aspects of the web. If you have a commercial, on-line business, the better optimized your site is for search engines the better you’re going to rank on the search engine results pages.

There are about a million books that’ll tell you how to improve your site’s SEO and lots of free articles to show you how to improve your page rank (PR). If you have the time and the inclination, read as much as you can about current SEO practices and tactics to discover ways of improving your site’s page rank.

If SEO isn’t your cup of tea (too many numbers) hire an SEO professional to optimize your site for search engine spiders. This involves a number of factors and may also cost a few bucks. Additionally, it may take up to six months to actually see any significant results. But, if all else has failed, hiring an SEO expert may be the only way to go to regain your search engine status.

Fast Track to Good Press?
Sorry, there is no fast track to undo negative press in search engine results pages, whether it’s deserved or not. It’s a process but a worthwhile one, especially if you’ve spent a great deal of time and money to build up your e-biz.

However, the faster you get to work on article syndication or getting your site listed in a directory, the quicker your reputation will improve.

Things move quickly across the web and a bad reputation – whether true or not – is not going to help your site or your business. No, you can’t eliminate the problem of bad press but you can go proactive and generate some good press to counteract the negative.

The key is to move quickly and decisively to protect your hard-earned reputation.

Five Negative Search Engine Ranking Factors: BAM!

 

ARE YOUR CLIENT SITES GETTING THROUGH TO SEARCH ENGINES?

Webmaster and hosting blogs are jam-packed with hunches, guesses and opinions on Google’s ranking factors. The most powerful search engine in the world has been dissected, desiccated and analyzed by hundreds of experts and still controversy reigns.

 

Some of the more contentious issues include: server accessibility (get a good web host), quality of site content, domain extensions of sites linking in and outbound links to lower ranking sites. The experts can’t seem to agree on what counts in these areas.

SEOmoz is a great site for information from the ecommerce digi-sphere. Here, you’ll find some of the best information written by some of the most knowledgeable SEO professionals. Sure, there’s bound to be bias and debate, controversy and even the occasional name calling, but it’s all good.

In compiling its lists of positive, controversial and “known” negative ranking factors within the Google search algorithm, SEOmoz.org queried 31 well-known experts on their opinions and one thing is certain: no one individual has it all figured out. The ranking factors employed by the Googlistas change as Google’s math geeks and coders build ever-more sophisticated algos designed to provide more raw data and more pertinent data from spiders.

The Top Five Negative Ranking Factors
So what do the cyber-pros identify as the most negative ranking factors within Google’s current algorithm? They’re listed below but note, take these Google negatives with a grain of salt.

It could all change tonight while you sleep.

Negative Ranking Factor #1: Googlebots can’t access your server.
If the site is down for more than 48 hours, which is often the case with low-rent web hosts located half-way around the world, a site’s Google ranking drops like a stone.

If your host server is down a lot, search engines don’t want to recommend the site to visitors who will see a 404 error message that the site is unavailable and can’t be accessed.

The solution? Find a host that delivers not only a 99.9% uptime but also has local tech support, backup emergency generators and multiple layers of server side security. You’ll spend about $7.00 a month for quality shared hosting. Double that amount for quality dedicated service if cross-server attacks are a concern. Don’t let a few bucks a month keep your site from higher rankings. It’s just not cost effective.

Note: Server availability as a ranking factor is one of the most contended topics among SEO professionals who spend much of their time trying to out-think Googlebots, so even the experts can’t agree on this one.

Negative Ranking Factor #2: Duplicate or Similar Content.
Most experts do agree on this one.

Repetitious content is a stone-cold killer. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up a useful piece of syndicated content of interest to your readers. The warning, here, has to do with site text. A programmer can always upload a syndicated article. However, body text should change from page to page, providing a more useful visitor experience.

Of course, duplicate content can be tagged with a designation, but too many of these “do not enter” signs is also a negative ranking factor. Bots want to be able to crawl pages and when you keep them off of critical content pages, it’ll have a negative impact on your SERPs ranking on Google.

Negative Ranking Factor #3: Links to low-quality sites.
SEO survey contributor, Lucas Ng, sums it up nicely: “Linking out to a low quality neighborhood flags you as a resident of the same neighborhood.”

It’s not just about links and plenty of them. It’s more about the quality of the links on a site. So, link up to sites in nice neighborhoods. On the web, Googlebots know you by the company you keep.

Negative Ranking Factor #4: Links Schemes and Links Selling.
Google’s algorithm employs probability modeling in determining bought-and-paid-for links, which doesn’t always equate to an accurate view of a site’s actual linking activity. Even so, Googlebots make assumptions programmed into the algorithm.

A site with a broad menu of links to diverse sites won’t fare well come spidering time. These links farms are easy for bots to spot. The key to avoiding being mis-indexed by Googlebots is to avoid too many links, try to link to higher-quality-more-visited sites and never buy or sell links. It could mean another web site fatality.

Negative Ranking Factor #5: Duplicate Title/Meta Tags.
Search engine algorithms employ numerous filters to identify everything from questionable links to duplicate content that appears on numerous site pages. The same thing is true of a site’s HTML code. Too many duplicate title tags and duplicate meta data can hurt you.

Survey participant, Aaron Wall, stated, “If a site does not have much content and has excessive duplication, it not only suppresses rankings, but it may also get many pages thrown in the supplemental results.”

Bots read code and if the same title tags show up on page after page, if title tags don’t match page text, or if meta data is cut and pasted into every site page, these crawlers take offense according to some experts.

However, there’s another whole school of thought, here. Many SEO pros and site designers believe just the opposite is true – that title tags on each page create numerous entry points to a site, and because each page is indexed separately, the site maintains a larger presence on SERPs.

The key appears to be in the duplication of inserting repetitive title and meta tags. If the content doesn’t change on a particular page, that page doesn’t call for yet another title tag. However, when topics and functions do change from page to page within a site, title tags do help spiders identify the page’s purpose and do provide greater site access to potential visitors.

What NOT To Do With This Information
The wheels are spinning, aren’t they?

You and a million other site owners are weighing negative ranking factors and the impact these factors have on their SERPs position on Google.

Forget it. Let it go. The time you spend trying to reverse engineer your site to appeal to the perceptions of a collection of 31 SEO professionals would be better spent on search engine marketing – promoting to humans.

Oh, sure, you can migrate your site to a host with a much improved uptime and, in this case, you should regardless of what Googlebots like and dislike. You should migrate, not because bots will like you better, but because your customers will like you better when you’re there when they need you.

Same with cheesy links. Disconnect from garbage sites, links farms and any site that ranks lower than your site in page rank (PR). That’ll take five minutes of your time and it’s something you should do, again, forget the bots, do it for your site visitors seeking to further their web searches through links on your site. Help out site visitors because it’s just good business.

But, if you’ve got duplicate content on site, perhaps as RSS feeds, content syndication or hosted content, it seems counter-productive to remove this useful information from the site. Bots recognize these ephemeral links and their time-saving value to visitors by providing good content all in one place, even if it does appear on a few other sites.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned here. Lesson #1: Even really smart people who study the activities of Googlebots under controlled conditions can not agree, ultimately, what negative ranking factors are programmed into that passing Googlebot.

Lesson #2: (And the most important lesson du jour) Don’t try to outwit a Googlebot. Don’t rebuild your site to mitigate negative ranking factors. Take the obvious steps by going with a reliable host, cutting links to unattractive sites and so on, but don’t spend time reverse engineering your site based on the opinions of SEO pros.

Spend your time promoting your site to humans. Do it ethically. And over time, your site will receive an improved rank on Google’s SERPs – guaranteed.

Guaranteed? You betcha. “Length of time a site has been up” is one of the positive ranking factors. The longer you remain hooked into the web, the higher your Google ranking.

It’s just a matter of time.

 

Need some juice for your site? Squeeze me at my website and let’s get some traffic on your website. It’s always a Webwordslinger gig.

Google Gadgets: Learn From The 800-Lb. Gorilla

GOOGLE: THE 800-LB. GORILLA

You want Google to love your website. This search engine alone accounts for 46% of all searches so when you consider that there are virtually thousands of search engines (granted, many topic specific), controlling a 46% share of all search engine users makes you “the cat that everybody’s rapping ‘bout.” And they are.

The webmaster community and Google don’t always get along and that’s understandable. For most webmasters, Google is a prime source of site traffic but if there are too many obstacles to Google success, of course there’s going to be feuding between search engine and those professionals who rely on search engines for their livelihoods. Every time Google tweaks an algorithm, some sites gain, some lose ground – and the reasons are rarely clear.

So, Google put together Webmaster Central, a blog for site owners to post gripes, offer suggestions, identify glitches and otherwise interact with the people behind the search engine. (We can only assume there are people behind Google. Verifiable proof is slow in coming. The entire company could be bot-run for all we know.)

The Google Webmaster Blog and You
Google knows it must keep site owners happy and who or whatever is running the company recognizes the need to interact with professional SEOs, SEMs, coders, designers, graphic artists and every new technology that takes a giant leap forward such as remote site syndication (RSS) that changed the way information was distributed over a weekend.

So, this is where you go to ask questions and get answers from other site owners. Google answers. From regular users like you – the owner of a small, once active site that has mysteriously disappeared from Google SERPs overnight. What happened? And how are you going to pay the rent if your e-store has disappeared from Google’s ever-expanding index?

Posting to the Webmaster Central Blog is a good place to go for quick answers from real people. And that usually means you’ll get an answer you can actually understand rather than an earful of techno-babble from some chip head.

This is also the place where Google introduces new features for webmasters. Just a while back. Google let loose improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools.

Here’s how the Googlistas explain it: “After our initial release, we saw clear interest in the gadgets, and plenty of suggestions for improvement. So we’ve spent the past several weeks working on various areas. The biggest improvements are probably for those of you with more than one site: when you add a new tab of gadgets, your gadgets will now default to the site you were viewing when you added them to your iGoogle page. Additionally, gadgets now retain settings as a group, so if you change the site for any gadget in a group, the next time you refresh that page, all the gadgets will show data for that site. And gadgets now resize dynamically, so they take up less room.”

Functionality has also been improved with the addition of Top Search Queries for your site, very helpful in refining a keyword list. “The data from the Top Search Queries allows you to quickly pinpoint what searches your site appears for and which of those searches are resulting in clicks,” according to Google.

Other new features that improve site performance analysis include a smart, geo-targeting function. This enables you to create several site skins for regions around the world if you choose. This geo-targeting gadget also produces a map overlay of where your visitors are coming from – right down to street level if you’re only seeking local business or referrals. Your site may be hot in Australia but bombing in the UK. There’s got to be a reason. This Google gadget helps isolate what’s working where, by region, with incredible specificity.

And if you’d like Google’s opinion of your numbers and your conclusions, click on Analytics Help Center for a ton of Google-centric info. All good in determining what Google likes and dislikes about your site.

Another tool from Google is the URL Remover. You log on to your administrator’s console over coffee and scan through your stats for the overnight, and you discover that your “Content by Title” section – a back office only function – has been inadvertently Googled, indexed and displayed on Google SERPs, giving anyone (including competitors) more than a quick peek at your business. They can read everything because it’s been spidered and indexed.

Using the new URL Removal Tool, you can quickly remove those private pages from Google’s index and tell spiders that this information is off limits as in DO NOT SPIDER.

Google Webmaster Help
This is one very cool tool. One that is certainly bookmark-worthy.

Google Webmaster Help provides tips and suggestions for improving your site in the eyes of what Google calls “benevolent Googlebots.” Hey Boys, those bots ain’t so benevolent if they mis-index my site because of your messed up classification taxonomy. Even so, when you have as much influence over online success as Google does, you get to call your bots “benevolent” even if they are mindless snippets of programs that chew through letter strings.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good, useful information here from the people who make the algos. So, it’s worth a visit just to see what’s new, what’s working and what you should do about your precipitous loss of PR when you changed the home page text. Something Happened. And this is the place to find out what.

The Google Webmaster Help section also has a very robust, informed community able to answer FAQs from other site owners. You don’t have to wait for Google to get back to you. Ask an SEO or other web professional using the Webmaster blog for fast facts fast.

Today, there are 107,738 messages, questions and answers on crawling, indexing and ranking; 14,019 posts on the new Google gadgets listed above, so you see that these help pages see a lot of activity and should be a part of your daily web scan.

Go To the Source
Google sets the rules and no matter how strongly these rules are debated among site designers, SEOs and other web professionals, the rules are the rules. One way to stay current is by joining the regular online discussions that Google offers. You can check the schedule of upcoming discussions and mark them so you don’t forget. It’s a great way to meet the Googlistas and your counterparts who are trying to figure out how to perform better in the search engine sweepstakes.

Visit webmaster blogs like the one you’re reading now, especially targeted at those just venturing into ecommerce. Some webmaster blogs are highly technical (more for coders than site owners, actually) while other webmaster blogs provide information on everything from digital selling to site design tips.

But if you want the skinny – the unvarnished truth – go to the source. Go to Google and become a member of the Google webmaster community. Download the free Google analytics and join in with companion site owners to let Google know when a problem arises.

With Google controlling almost half of all searches, it’s good business practice to learn what Google wants.

The Power of On-Site Links

You can’t swing a comatose web head without running into the stalest advice in all of SEO. Get quality, inbound links to improve site ranking with search engines. Yawn! What else ya got?

'Slinger's Linking His Way to Success

 

 

Okay, inbound links work in a lot of ways – creating credibility, trust and the chance for designation as an authority site so, yeah, inbound non-reciprocal links help, and there isn’t an SEO pro or newbie who doesn’t know it.

What you don’t hear a lot about is on-page links – links seen on every page of a web site. Links that connect visitors to other site pages.

Redirects and On-Page Links
Redirects are not held in high regard by search engines. The long-held impression that redirects are black hat tactics is still there. And, there are hackers still trying to hi-jack sites using invisible, on-page redirects. As soon as a visitor accesses the hacked site, s/he is redirected to another site page or even web site from the link provided in the SERPs. Redirects, such as a 301 (permanent redirect) or 302 (temporary), are cause for suspicion and can mean instant death for a web site.

There are plenty of legitimate uses for redirects. A blog, for instance, may send out a conformation of post receipt before redirecting the visitor to the blog and post itself. This kind of redirect is beneficial to visitors, providing useful and reassuring conformation and therefore, not all redirects are bad.

Here’s the deal: if the redirect has a valid purpose – one that an SE bot understands – redirects aren’t a problem. In fact, on-page links are nothing more than redirects and your body text should use them to help visitors navigate.

Embed Text Links Deep In The Site
It’s easy to optimize a site page for bots. The SEO industry still contends some search engine weighting factors, but there are many that enjoy almost universal acceptance by SEO pros.

That’s why some site owners optimize a page for bots and bots only. 5% keyword density, perfect title and alt tags, perfectly balanced informational content – the kind of content bots like to see. This page is then buried deep in the site with lots of links to more user-friendly pages within the site.

The deep site page, perfectly optimized for bots, won’t be attractive to humans (necessarily) with keyword dense text, no graphics (bots don’t read graphics files) and with a perfect title tag. This is a high ranking page according to metrics analysis because the content is information, as opposed to sales copy and again, it’s bot-o-mized in the page’s HTML.

Once the visitor reaches this highly optimized page, he or she is automatically redirected to a page that’s designed to appeal to humans rather than bots. These automatic redirects are usually permanent (301) and susceptible to bot interrogation and even page penalty.

Use On-Page Links to Avoid the Appearance of Impropriety
Use links to redirect visitors. Links are, in fact, redirects and they can be used to help visitors find the information, goods or services they need, and help index a site faster and with greater accuracy. If you do it right, you can get all desired pages indexed on the first pass by a Googlebot. For human visitors, it’s all about on-site links placement that strikes a chord or hits a nerve and generates a response to take action.

Example: A fire extinguisher site publishes an informational piece on home safety, providing good, quality advice. Quality, high-ranking content. This page is one of the high-ranking, deeply placed pages that draw visitors in. Now, instead of using automatic redirects, the savvy site designer will use contextual links to trigger a response from the site visitor.

Within the article, of course, is the recommendation to keep a fire extinguisher in the house. (Completely off the subject, you should have a fire extinguisher on hand. It saved my house.)

Anyway, the article provides a link in context to (1) generate a response and (2) compel action to that response. So, to move the visitor off the highly-ranked page, a short paragraph, based on the keywords entered to access the highly-ranked page, is used. For instance:

“Fire danger in the modern home is a reality, putting you and your family at risk every day. A small, properly-charged fire extinguisher can save your home and the lives of your loved ones.”

This deeply-embedded link then takes the reader directly to the products page for home fire extinguishers. The highly-ranked informational content draws attention from bots. The links draw the attention and direct the flow of visitor traffic once the site has been accessed, leading visitors to the precise page they need.

Use On-Page Links at All Site Access Points
A visitor can reach a well-connected site any number of ways – via directory, indexed as individual links in SERPS, links from other sites and, if you’re doing everything correctly, maybe even some organic traffic.

Obviously, the more access (doorways) to a site the better. However, how a visitor got there is indicative of what the prospect is searching for. If the prospect reached the site through the Directory of Insurance Brokers, that visitor may or may not land on a home page depending on the query words used in the directory search.

“Low-cost high risk car insurance,” as the query phrase, displays a link with that exact headline. The searcher clicks on the top-ranked link, reads a short “Let us show you how to save $$$ on high-risk pool insureds, and a click takes the visitor to the car insurance zone page where additional links continue to direct the pathway taken by the visitor, i.e.

“High risk insurance will cost more depending on just how complicated your driving history is.” , (especially if you’re a local broker looking for local business).

Directions for Humans, Street Signs for Bots
These on-page links direct visitors to precisely the information they’re looking for. These links also provide pathways for search engine spiders that are trained (programmed) to follow links.

Links direct spiders to the far corners of a site, deep into the corpus. However, it’s just as important to make it clear what pages are off limits to Googlebots and other snippets of spidering programs.

Keeping Spiders Out
Spiders don’t just crawl. They follow the mathematics within the algorithm that directs their movements. They follow commands as well.

You can designate certain pages as to keep spiders out of your private business, or keep bots from indexing pages that are in beta at the moment and not quite optimized for indexing.

Or, if you want to close off large sections of a site to spiders, create a robot.txt file that identifies the pages of a site that are NOT to be indexed or accessed by spiders. The fact is, Googlebots are unleashed on any site visited by a user with a Google toolbar so there’s nothing you can do to keep bots from crashing the party.

A robot.txt file, placed in the site’s root directory, will make it clear to spiders what they can and cannot see. It’s the safest way to keep the relentless, “Terminator”-like Google bot from reforming from liquid into a dangerous cyborg once again. And believe it, bots “…will be back.”

Each page of a site should be analyzed from both the bot and the human perspective. Use embedded links instead of automatic redirects to avoid raising the suspicions of bots who think redirects are “icky.”

And place these on-page, intra-site links for maximum effect – either at the point when user need is identified, at all entrance points to the site, on the order form and the contact page.

On-site links are invaluable for helping visitors and helping bots. And together, that’s very helpful to the success of your site.

Top Five Negative Ranking Factors

Okay, I admit it. No one can agree with absolute certainty that these negative ranking factors are the worst Google can deal out but according to a survey conducted by SEOmoz.org, the negatives are sure to drag down your site and your client sites. 

 

What do Google bots hate most?

So what do the cyber-pros identify as the most negative ranking factors within Google’s current algorithm? They’re listed below but note, take these Google negatives with a grain of salt.

 

It could all change tonight while you sleep.

Negative Ranking Factor #1: Googlebots can’t access your server.
If the site is down for more than 48 hours, which is often the case with low-rent web hosts located half-way around the world, a site’s Google ranking drops like a stone.

If your host server is down a lot, search engines don’t want to recommend the site to visitors who will see a 404 error message that the site is unavailable and can’t be accessed.

The solution? Find a host that delivers not only a 99.9% uptime but also has local tech support, backup emergency generators and multiple layers of server side security. You’ll spend about $7.00 a month for quality shared hosting. Double that amount for quality dedicated service if cross-server attacks are a concern. Don’t let a few bucks a month keep your site from higher rankings. It’s just not cost effective.

Note: Server availability as a ranking factor is one of the most contended topics among SEO professionals who spend much of their time trying to out-think Googlebots, so even the experts can’t agree on this one.

Negative Ranking Factor #2: Duplicate or Similar Content.
Most experts do agree on this one.

Repetitious content is a stone-cold killer. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up a useful piece of syndicated content of interest to your readers. The warning, here, has to do with site text. A programmer can always upload a syndicated article. However, body text should change from page to page, providing a more useful visitor experience.

Of course, duplicate content can be tagged with a designation, but too many of these “do not enter” signs is also a negative ranking factor. Bots want to be able to crawl pages and when you keep them off of critical content pages, it’ll have a negative impact on your SERPs ranking on Google.

Negative Ranking Factor #3: Links to low-quality sites.
SEO survey contributor, Lucas Ng, sums it up nicely: “Linking out to a low quality neighborhood flags you as a resident of the same neighborhood.”

It’s not just about links and plenty of them. It’s more about the quality of the links on a site. So, link up to sites in nice neighborhoods. On the web, Googlebots know you by the company you keep.

Negative Ranking Factor #4: Links Schemes and Links Selling.
Google’s algorithm employs probability modeling in determining bought-and-paid-for links, which doesn’t always equate to an accurate view of a site’s actual linking activity. Even so, Googlebots make assumptions programmed into the algorithm.

A site with a broad menu of links to diverse sites won’t fare well come spidering time. These links farms are easy for bots to spot. The key to avoiding being mis-indexed by Googlebots is to avoid too many links, try to link to higher-quality-more-visited sites and never buy or sell links. It could mean another web site fatality.

Negative Ranking Factor #5: Duplicate Title/Meta Tags.
Search engine algorithms employ numerous filters to identify everything from questionable links to duplicate content that appears on numerous site pages. The same thing is true of a site’s HTML code. Too many duplicate title tags and duplicate meta data can hurt you.

Survey participant, Aaron Wall, stated, “If a site does not have much content and has excessive duplication, it not only suppresses rankings, but it may also get many pages thrown in the supplemental results.”

Bots read code and if the same title tags show up on page after page, if title tags don’t match page text, or if meta data is cut and pasted into every site page, these crawlers take offense according to some experts.

However, there’s another whole school of thought, here. Many SEO pros and site designers believe just the opposite is true – that title tags on each page create numerous entry points to a site, and because each page is indexed separately, the site maintains a larger presence on SERPs.

The key appears to be in the duplication of inserting repetitive title and meta tags. If the content doesn’t change on a particular page, that page doesn’t call for yet another title tag. However, when topics and functions do change from page to page within a site, title tags do help spiders identify the page’s purpose and do provide greater site access to potential visitors.

What NOT To Do With This Information
The wheels are spinning, aren’t they?

You and a million other site owners are weighing negative ranking factors and the impact these factors have on their SERPs position on Google.

Forget it. Let it go. The time you spend trying to reverse engineer your site to appeal to the perceptions of a collection of 31 SEO professionals (teh survey takers) would be better spent on search engine marketing – promoting to humans.

Getting Slammed By Google: It’s Easy

It doesn’t take much to make a Googlebot angry. And it certainly doesn’t take much to confuse one of these script-bits that swarm the web like those killer ants. And while there is no absolute consensus on the negative ranking factors employed by Google, there is general agreement on how to avoid getting slammed by the search engine that controls 46% of ALL web searches – the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. 

So here are some common, agreed-upon slams Google can give you.

1. Lack of site access. If your host server is down, your site is down and if your site is down, visitors can’t reach you. Google won’t send its users to an inaccessible site. To avoid trouble: (1) go with a reputable host and (2) avoid launching until the site is complete.

2. All text appears in a graphics format like gif, jpg or bmp. Spiders are as dumb as a box of rocks. They can’t read anything in a graphics format. To avoid the problem, keep critical information in HTML format and provide description tags for all graphics.

3. You’re living in a bad neighborhood. You’re known by the company you keep on the web – in two ways. First, by your inbound and outbound links. Too many low-quality links gives you a bad name.

Further, though contestable, if you’re using a shared hosting account, your site is on the same server as 1,264 other client sites. A server that’s stuffed with porn and overseas drug company sites doesn’t exactly make your site shine, does it?

4. Keyword stuffing is bad for site health. You can overstuff an HTML keyword tag, you can overstuff on-site text (keep keyword density at no more than 3%), HTML meta data, headers and headlines. Any overuse of keywords is a bad sign to spiders.

5. Redirects raise suspicions. Not all redirects are bad. Some serve useful purposes. For example, when you submit an information form online, you might immediately be redirected to a confirmation page with a short note stating that “If this page doesn’t redirect you click here” message.

That’s fine. This isn’t: a site page is designed for one purpose only, to appeal to spiders. It’s a perfectly optimized, single site page buried deep within the site. Because the page is hyper-optimized for crawling, there are no graphics, there is no useful information – it’s simply a highly-optimized page of site code.

Because the page is highly optimized, it ranks highly on Google SERPs. That means it pulls in a great deal of organic traffic. However, as soon as a visitor clicks on the SERP link, s/he is immediately redirected to a page designed for humans. It happens so fast, you won’t even notice. This kind of redirect is bad form to spiders. It’s not nice to fool with Google.

There are lots of other missteps Googlebots look for: invisible text, too much cross-linking within one site, dynamic pages – the list goes on and on. The fact is, it’s easy to get slammed – and not even know why!

To learn more, visit Google’s Webmaster Central and get the information straight from the source.

editor@webwordslinger.com