Over the past week, most people have noticed significant changes in the SERPs at Google. Web sites that previously held number one positions have dropped to number 89, and some web sites have disappeared off the Google results pages altogether. As is the case with all major Google updates, SEOs have been panicking in forums and there has been much discussion about one topic in particular: reciprocal linking.
The first thing you have to do to understand the direction in which Google is taking with this update, is to get into the minds of the people who run it. Something that is so often overlooked is the fact that Google (and any other search engine) is first and foremost, a business. The reason they offer the service they do, is to make money, to make stocks soar and to keep shareholders happy. Google?s income comes from many sources, but the main one is advertising. In order to be able to sell their advertising real estate for a profitable price, the ad space needs to be seen. In order for the ad space to be seen, many, many, many people must visit the Google web site and use the Google search engine. In order for Google traffic to be at such a level, Google must offer a great, if not the best, search engine service.
So, how does Google offer, or attempt to offer, the absolute best service possible? By having the most relevant, and most useful search results.
Useful and relevant web sites are sites that are extremely visitor-friendly, sites that offer a lot of quality information in many different forms, from RSS feeds, to articles, to forums. Sites that are organized and have developed, naturally, a respect on the internet. A great example of such a site is About.com - search for any topic on About.com and you get a page with a lot of information on that topic and many, many links to other web sites that carry further information. It is, undoubtedly, one of the best places on the Internet to go for information.
Now, here?s where it gets tricky. In the past, Google has evaluated web sites by looking at areas of the site that are easily manipulated by webmasters and SEOs, such as meta tags, alt tags, keyword density, page titles, etc. We all know this has changed. Google has begun to reward sites with a more natural approach to these areas, and to penalize sites that have been over-optimized.
The key now, is visitor-friendly, natural web sites. Google will attract more repeat users, and thus, more advertising capital, if their search results always yield web sites that have the information searchers are looking for and are easy to use and understand.
Natural web sites are web sites who?s page titles reflect the page content in an easily understandable way. They are web sites who?s keywords meta tags contain only the words that apply to the page content. They have description tags that reflect the content in a concise, easily understood way. They have image alt tags that describe the image properly. Most importantly, natural web sites are web sites that develop a natural link popularity. That is to say, they don?t have someone working on finding web sites to swap links with. This is an unnatural linking strategy. A natural linking strategy is to offer a good, resourceful web site and have people link to it of their own accord because it?s such a great resource. Such a strategy also includes linking out to quality web sites that offer further information on your web site?s topic, whether or not they link back to you. This is a huge indicator that the goal of your web site is simply to offer the best information possible to web site visitors.
Cross-promotion will happen naturally as well, and links that are a result of cross-promotion are still considered a natural linking strategy, and as a result, Google or any other search engine cannot not outlaw reciprocal linking all together. But you have to be extremely picky about the sites you decide to engage in cross-promotion with. They must be very relevant and should have a decent presence on Google. Stay away from automated linking programs, link farms and most importantly, exchanging links with excessive amounts of web sites. Your links page should look like an excellent place for your visitors to go should they require further information on the topic your site deals with.
In short, the most important factor contributing to your Google ranking, is visitor-friendliness. Amassing enormous amounts of link exchanges simply does not work anymore. You absolutely must have your web site visitor?s needs foremost in your mind. If you meet those needs, you will be rewarded both in your rankings and in repeat traffic.
About the author:
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs - http://www.abalone.ca, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/
Google?s New Direction - Could Your Linking Strategy Be Hurting Your Rankings?
What Is The Google Sandbox Theory?
Ok, so over the past month or so I've been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I'm going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month.
You guessed it... What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you'll be an expert on the good 'ole Google Sandbox Theory and you'll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.
Before I start explaining what the Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:
The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or the benefit of years of observation.
The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2005 , after a major Google index update (something known as the old Google dance).
Without being able to verify the existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.
Almost everything that you will read on the Internet on the Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a widescale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining the nature of the Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given the demand on resources).
Thus, as I'll be discussing towards the end, it's important that you focus on ?good' search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick ?get-out-ofjail' schemes which are, after all, only going to last until the next big Google update.
What is the Google Sandbox Theory?
There are several theories that attempt explain the Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, the problem is simple. Webmasters around the world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.
In fact, the most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from the index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.
This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and the website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from the Sandbox effect.
Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.
Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after the February 2005 update, codenamed ?Allegra' (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near the top for their keywords.
This was a major update to Google's search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was the apparent ?exodus' of websites from the Google Sandbox. This event gave the strongest evidence yet of the existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what the Sandbox effect was about.
Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox Effect
A common explanation offered for the Google Sandbox effect is the ?Time Delay' factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from the Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling the effects of the Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were ?released' in the ?Allegra' update, this ?website aging' theory has gained a lot of ground.
However, I don't find much truth in the ?Time Delay' factor because by itself, it's just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is the de facto leader of the search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.
Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from the Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape the Google Sandbox effect during the ?Allegra' update. Along with shattering the ?Time Delay' theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a ?link threshold' theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from the Sandbox.
While this might be closer to the truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped the Google Sandbox effect without massive linkbuilding campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from the Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.
This concept is known as ?link-aging'. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from the Sandbox based on the ?age' of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be the most likely explanation for the Google Sandbox effect.
The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is the website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as the website itself, yet if you have don't have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from the Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don't you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results ? some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in the Sandbox even after the ?Allegra' update.
How to find out if your website is sandboxed
Finding out if your website is ?Sandboxed' is quite simple. If your website does not appear in any SERPS for your target list of keywords, or if your results are highly depressing (ranked somewhere on the 40 th page) even if you have lots of inbound links and almostperfect on-page optimization, then your website has been Sandboxed.
Issues such as the Google Sandbox theory tend to distract webmasters from the core ?good' SEO practices and inadvertently push them towards black-hat or quick-fix techniques to exploit the search engine's weaknesses. The problem with this approach is its short-sightedness. To explain what I'm talking about, let's take a small detour and discuss search engine theory.
Understanding search engines
If you're looking to do some SEO, it would help if you tried to understand what search engines are trying to do. Search engines want to present the most relevant information to their users. There are two problems in this ? the inaccurate search terms that people use and the information glut that is the Internet. To counteract, search engines have developed increasingly complex algorithms to deduce relevancy of content for different search terms.
How does this help us?
Well, as long as you keep producing highly-targeted, quality content that is relevant to the subject of your website (and acquire natural inbound links from related websites), you will stand a good chance for ranking high in SERPS. It sounds ridiculously simple, and in this case, it is. As search engine algorithms evolve, they will continue to do their jobs better, thus becoming better at filtering out trash and presenting the most relevant content to their users.
While each search engine will have different methods of determining search engine placement (Google values inbound links quite a lot, while Yahoo has recently placed additional value on Title tags and domain names), in the end all search engines aim to achieve the same goal, and by aiming to fulfill that goal you will always be able to ensure that your website can achieve a good ranking.
Escaping the sandbox...
Now, from our discussion about the Sandbox theory above, you know that at best, the Google Sandbox is a filter on the search engine's algorithm that has a dampening influence on websites. While most SEO experts will tell you that this effect decreases after a certain period of time, they mistakenly accord it to website aging, or basically, when the website is first spidered by Googlebot. Actually, the Sandbox does ?holds back' new websites but more importantly, the effects reduce over time not on the basis of website aging, but on link aging.
This means that the time that you spend in the Google Sandbox is directly linked to when you start acquiring quality links for your website. Thus, if you do nothing, your website may not be released from the Google Sandbox.
However, if you keep your head down and keep up with a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and keep adding inbound links to your website, you will be released from the Google Sandbox after an indeterminate period of time (but within a year, probably six months). In other words, the filter will stop having such a massive effect on your website. As the ?Allegra' update showed, websites that were constantly being optimized during the time that they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for targeted keywords after
the Sandbox effect ended.
This and other observations of the Sandbox phenomenon ? combined with an understanding of search engine philosophy ? have lead me to pinpoint the following strategies for minimizing your website's ?Sandboxed' time.
SEO strategies to minimize your website's "sandboxed" time
Despite what some SEO experts might tell you, you don't need do anything different to escape from the Google Sandbox. In fact, if you follow the ?white hat' rules of search engine optimization and work on the principles I've mentioned many times in this course, you'll not only minimize your website's Sandboxed time but you will also ensure that your website ranks in the top 10 for your target keywords. Here's a list of SEO strategies you should make sure you use when starting out a new website:
Start promoting your website the moment you create your website, not when your
website is ?ready'. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your website to be ?perfect'.
The motto is to get your product out on the market, as quickly as possible, and then
worry about improving it. Otherwise, how will you ever start to make money?
Establish a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and follow it religiously. For
example, you can set yourself a target of acquiring 20 links per week, or maybe
even a target of contacting 10 link partners a day (of course, with SEO Elite, link
building is a snap). This will ensure that as you build your website, you also start
acquiring inbound links and those links will age properly ? so that by the time your
website exits the Sandbox you would have both a high quantity of inbound links
and a thriving website.
Avoid black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or ?cloaking'. Google's search
algorithm evolves almost daily, and penalties for breaking the rules may keep you
stuck in the Sandbox longer than usual.
Save your time by remembering the 20/80 rule: 80 percent of your optimization can
be accomplished by just 20 percent of effort. After that, any tweaking left to be done
is specific to current search engine tendencies and liable to become ineffective
once a search engine updates its algorithm. Therefore don't waste your time in
optimizing for each and every search engine ? just get the basics right and move on
to the next page.
Remember, you should always optimize with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.
Like I mentioned earlier, search engines are continuously optimizing their algorithms in order to improve on the key criteria: relevancy. By ensuring that your website content is targeted on a particular keyword, and is judged as ?good' content based on both on-page optimization (keyword density) and off-page factors (lots of quality inbound links), you will also guarantee that your website will keep ranking highly for your search terms no matter what changes are brought into a search engine's algorithm, whether it's a dampening factor a la Sandbox or any other quirk the search engine industry throws up in the future.
Have you taken a look at SEO Elite yet? If not...
What's stopping you?
Now, get out there and start smoking the search engines!
About the author:
If you liked the lesson above and want to learn more about SEO, visit http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htmand get your free copy of "7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!" right now! Brad Callen
SEO Elite
How Important Are Back Links?
When setting up your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google there are several factors you need to look at in order to obtain a high rank on their search engine. Of course your content and meta tags must be inline with positive density percentages and reciprocal links. Google then takes your website and performs a mathematic equation and places a numeric value on your website depending on one of the most important features, reciprocal or back links.
A back link and reciprocal link are identical. They both say the same thing to the Google engine, that your site should be ranked higher in the order because other people find value in what your website has to offer, thus they provide a link to your site. In turn, you keep a closed loop by reciprocating the favor to the other website by extending the same courtesy of a back link. Thus creating a solid network connection. Google likes to see interconnectivity and will reward your website well for planning it this way.
There are drawbacks to the equation. As things change a website that you are affiliated with may drop a hyperlink or a page may get accidentally deleted. When the Google robot goes through your website and finds a dead link it notes that you aren?t keeping good care of your website and punishes your web rank by reducing its point value. If you wish to know what your sites current point value is download The Google Toolbar and search for your website www.yourwebsitename.com in the box and perform a Google web search. Upon reading the full URL, Google will go directly to your site first thus pulling up your home page. There on the toolbar will be a page rank for your website between 1 and 10. 1 being a less visited and noted website and 10 a site that screams traffic 24/7.
Some of the individuals you share reciprocal links with may in fact scan all their links for continuity, should they receive a bounce back for a broken link on your website you can be assured you will receive an email from them. Keeping your website in balance with other sites you share links with will keep the Google engine happy. If you go off and add a company that is not Google friendly, meaning they have no back links you may also lose points.
About the author:
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.comVisit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.