Blog•
on February 28th, 2011•
I’ve been keeping a close eye on changes that Google has been making as a result to some recent news coverage.
On February 12th, the NY Times released an article that described how JC Penney’s had been tricking Google’s ranking system by ranking #1 for a number of keywords it should have never ranked for. I knew after this article that Google would have more of an incentive to find companies using black hat techniques, or techniques frowned upon by Google. Sure enough, Google enacted some changes last week and this past weekend offered the first glimpse into the effect of these changes.
This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that these changes had indeed affected a number of companies. According to the article, Google is attempting to remove website pages that contain a few keywords and a ton of advertisements.
Google has a high incentive to display the best results per search. If they don’t, searchers go elsewhere and Google loses advertising money.
So, what do you do as a site owner who wants to build their status in Google? Backlinking is still a very important part of high rankings in Google. So, how do you get good links?
From what I understand, here are the scenarios in which linking is legitimate:
- When it has actually been requested that the other website add the link.
- That you don’t purchase hundreds of your own websites and then load them with links.
But, the best tried and true way to get back links is to have great, compelling content that people WANT to link to. That should be the first part of your linking strategy.
Blog•
on September 16th, 2010•
In case you’ve been in a cave the last few weeks, Google just introduced an upgrade to their search process that delivers search results instantaneously as you type. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a test drive – http://www.google.com/
So what does this mean for you as a Google user and for you as a business owner who has a website. Here are a few thoughts:
First of all, as a Google user, you’re search results will be coming in much faster. 2-5 seconds faster. As you are typing, Google is giving you suggestions.
As a website owner trying to gain customers/users through Google, this changes the playing field a bit. While Google giving suggestions while you are typing help you as a user, they also direct people certain ways within their search. This was present on Google previously, but the suggestions show up in the search bar as you type. So before, someone might have come to your website because they typed in a long search string. Now, they will be guided towards specific top searches. They will still be able to type in their full search, but choosing one of the available options will be faster. Thus, more websites will be chasing fewer top keyword options.
This is smart on Google’s side as more people will be competing for fewer top keywords, making ad revenue go up for people paying bigger money for the top keywords.
I want to make one thing clear here. Google has not changed their algorithm. So, the work you’ve done in the past for Search Engine Optimization will still be valid. But more sites will now be chasing after the top keywords that Google directs the user to.
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