How to deal with bad inbound links

Official Google statement: how to deal with bad inbound links

Many webmasters think that low quality links or links from spammy websites can have a negative effect on the ranking of their websites on Google.

The problem with links from spammy websites is that it is very difficult to do something against them. For example, a competitor could add your website to a link farm network or the competitor could spam with your URL.

Google statement

Google has released an official statement about spammy links

This month, Google published an official statement about low quality links in their webmaster blog. Here are the main statements:

1. Linking is a significant factor in Google's ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements.

2. If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that.

3. It the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don't worry and focus on the links that are under your control.

4. Google recommends to optimize the many factors than influence indexing and ranking. The top 10 optimizer in our website optimization tool has been designed for exactly that task.

It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in the search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.

5. Google says that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time and that they may not be considered by Google's ranking algorithm.

6. If you want to make sure Google knows about the spammy links and is valuing them appropriately, you can report them to Google with their spam report or paid links report forms.

What does this mean for the rankings of your website?

Low quality links are usually links from low quality websites. These website usually have low Google rankings and they cannot pass much ranking power to other websites. For that reason, you shouldn't worry too much about links to your website that you cannot control. Better focus on the following:

* Create high quality web pages with a good website navigation and optimized web page content. Make sure that all web page elements contain the right information so that Google will list your website for the right keywords.

* Try to get high quality links to your website. The more high quality links your website has, the less impact have links from spammy websites.

To get an overview of the websites that link to your website, select IBP > Links > Add sites > Find existing backlinks to your site in our SEO tool IBP. IBP will show you the URL of the web page that links to you, the anchor text, the PageRank, TrafficRank and IP address of the linking pages and more.

IBP will also show you the websites that link to your competitors, blogs that could link to your website and much more.


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search engine optimization seo sacramento

The abstract of the publication shows that PageRank was meant as a way to fight web spam:

"Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine's results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam.

We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good [...]

Our results show that we can effectively filter out spam from a significant fraction of the web, based on a good seed set of less than 200 sites."

Today, all major search engines use some kind of TrustRank

Although Google does not use the official term, most professional search engine optimizers are quite sure that Google and all other major search engines use the same concept to improve the quality of their search results.

That means that it is not enough to get as many links as possible. It is also necessary that your website gets links from the right kind of websites and that search engines trust your site.

Trust

How to become a trusted website

There are a few things that you can do to show search engines that your website is trustworthy:

1. Get links from seed sites or from websites that are linked from seed sites

Seed sites are websites that are manually marked as trustworthy by the search engine owners. For example, if Apple.com has been chosen as a seed website by the search engine a link from Apple.com will have a positive effect on the TrustRank of your website.

If Apple.com links to website X, website X links to website Y and website Y links to your website then your website will still get a good TrustRank.

2. Get an old domain name with a good domain history

The older your domain is, the better. If your domain has been online for several years, this is a signal that the website owner is serious about the site and it's less likely that the domain is used for spamming purposes.

Your domain name should not have changed the owner too often and it should not have been used for many different topics. Of course, it also should not have been used by spammers in the past.

3. Get links from related websites

Does your website get links from related websites and does it link to other related websites? Is your website a lonely island with no links from and to other websites or is it integrated in a network that deals with a special topic?

4. Don't link to spam websites

You should not link to websites that are known spammers or to websites with dubious quality. If you link to such a website, you show search engines that you support them and that your own website should not be trusted too much.

5. Get many links from social networks

The more often your website is mentioned on social media websites, the more likely it is that your website is a trustworthy high quality website. The more votes your bookmarks on social media sites get, the better.

6. Offer good content and stay away from certain topics

It is not likely that a website that consists of only one page is an authority website. If your website has many pages that contain great content about a special topic then it is much easier to get a good TrustRank.

If your website deals with a special topic, then it's likely that it never will get a high TrustRank. These topics are the topics for which you receive the most spam emails.

If search engines trust your website, it is much easier to get high rankings.

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Google's human reviewers: real people judge about your Google rankings

Google's human reviewers: real people judge about your Google rankings

Most people think that Google purely ranks websites by using mathematical formulas. Google even has an official statement about the way that search results are calculated: "A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted." Not everything is done by software robots at Google If you read the above quotation carefully, you'll see that Google relies "heavily" but not fully on computer algorithms. In a recent interview, Google's Engineering director Scott Huffman explained that a lot of human reviewers (probably 10,000) manually review Google's results: "Every day, we are looking at a random sample of grades that we think represent the queries we get from users. Evaluators look at the quality of each result relative to those queries." Real people take a look at Google's search results and they tell Google which websites they don't like. If your website looks spammy, it might be reported to Google by these people. Google's algorithm is constantly changing Google constantly updates its algorithm based on the feedback of the human reviewers: "The evaluation site ratings that we gather never directly affect the search results that we return. We never go back and say, 'Oh, we learned from a rater that this result isn’t as good as that one, so let's put them in a different order.' Doing something like that would skew the whole evaluation by-and-large. So we never touch it." That means that a website won't be automatically removed from the search results if a human reviewer finds it inappropriate (unless it is an obvious spam page). It does mean that Google's algorithm is constantly changing and that you have to keep your website up-to-date with Google's latest algorithm. You have to keep an eye on your website rankings A website that has high rankings on Google today might lose these rankings tomorrow based on Google's ever-changing ranking algorithm. As a rule of thumb, websites with many inbound links and good content that is related to the searched keyword will remain much longer in Google's search results than websites that obtained their high rankings through tricks. If you use spammy SEO methods, you can quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods: Spammy websites can be detected by Google's human reviewers and your competitors can report your spam website to Google. If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you'll get a much better performance in the long run: Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings on Google. It will backfire on you. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to keep an eye on Google's changing algorithm. You should check your website regularly to find out if it is compliant to Google's current algorithm. If you create a website that is compliant to Google's algorithm and only use ethical SEO methods then your website will get page one rankings on Google and it will keep these rankings as long as possible.

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Reciprocal links: are they great, crap or something in between?

Reciprocal links are discussed controversially among search engine marketers. Some think that reciprocal links are great, others think that they are a waste of time, another group thinks that reciprocal links work to some degree.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

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How to get your website above the regular results on Google - without paying for it

How to get your website above the regular results on Google - without paying for it

For many businesses, it is very important to be listed in Google Maps. If you offer a service or a product that is relevant to a special area, you might miss many visitors if your website is not listed in Google Maps.

Your website can be listed on page one, above the regular results

This summer, Google changed its algorithm so that the search results automatically include local results if relevant:

"We like to make search as easy as we can, so we've just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don't type in a location. When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you."

These local results are often displayed above the first regular result on the result pages:

Google Maps Local

If your website is listed in the local results, it will be listed above the regular results on that page and people will also see the exact location of your business.

Quick access to your company information

If web surfers enter your company name in Google (for example "cafe habana, nyc") they will get your company information at the top of the search results, above all other results on the page:

Google Maps Local

As you can see, Google will also show user reviews about your business in the results.

How to get listed on Google Maps

You can submit your website to Google Maps through Google's Local Business Center. Login to your Google account and click "Add New Listing" to enter your company information.

How to optimize your Google Maps listing

There are several things that you can do to get a better listing on Google Maps or to make your listing stand out. You can enter your business information in Google Maps for free but to be listed at the top of the list, you have to optimize your entry.

* Enter as much information as possible about your company. Include important keywords in your description. Also add information about opening hours, payment types, etc. Choose the best possible category for your website.

* If possible, include images and videos to help your listing stand out. The more information you provide, the better.

* If your business location is in the center of the town, it is more likely that it will appear at the top of the list.

* Submit your website to other local directories. Google Maps compiles its local results by crawling and parsing data from other online directories and databases. A good position in online yellow pages can cause your listing to be placed higher on the list.

Tip: you can use IBP's directory submitter to submit your website to Google Maps as well as to many other directories and local search pages. Start IBP, click on "Submission > Semi-automatic" and choose "Directories > Local Search" in the list.

IBP's local search submitter

The more local directories list your website, the better.

* Optimize your web pages for local content. Add your city and state name in your web page title. You can also use local meta tags to tell search engines the location of your website. IBP's website optimization editor can add regional meta tags and meta GEO tags to your web pages.

* Get positive reviews. Encourage your website visitors to write positive reviews about your company on Google Maps. More stars can mean a higher position.

If you follow the tips above, your website will get a good listing in Google Maps. Do not spam Google and describe your business without exaggeration. Include your keywords in your company description but don't overdo it.

In addition to being listed in Google Maps, it is important to be listed in the regular results on Google.

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Five steps: How to outrank your competitors on Google

Five steps: How to outrank your competitors on Google

To get high rankings on Google, it is not necessary to have everything that Google expects from a great website. You just have to be better than your competitors.

If you have a website with optimized web pages, it is usually the quality of the links that make the difference. The following tips will help you to get better rankings than your competitors:

Step 1: Find out who your competitors are

Search for five of your main keywords on Google and write down the URLs of the websites that rank best across these keywords. These websites are your main competitors on Google.

Step 2: Check the anchor texts of these websites

The next step is to find out how many of the links to your competitors contain your target keywords. To do this, enter the URL of a competitor in IBP's link manager (IBP > Link > Add sites > Find websites that link to your competitors).

IBP will find all web pages that link to your competitors and it will also show you the anchor texts that are used in the links. IBP enables you to sort the found websites by link text so that you can quickly see which link texts are used.

Required action: Your website should have more inbound links that contain your target keywords than the websites of your competitors.

Step 3: Check the PageRank spread of these websites

Although the official PageRank number that Google displays in its toolbar is a flawed metric, it can still help you to find out why some websites rank higher than others.

If you've used IBP to find the web pages that link to your competitors ((IBP > Link > Add sites > Find websites that link to your competitors) then you also have the Google PageRank of each site that links to your competitors.

Click the PR column header in IBP to sort the found websites by PageRank to find out how many links from high PageRank pages your competitors get.

Required action: If your competitors have more inbound links from web pages with a high PageRank than your website then you should try to get more high PR links. IBP can help you with that.

Step 4: Check the top level domains of the inbound links

If you want to get high rankings on Google.com.au then it might be important to have many inbound links from .com.au websites.

Required action: If you target local Google versions (Google.com.au, Google.co.uk, etc.) then your website should have more inbound links from websites that use the corresponding top level domain than your competitors.

Step 5: Check the content of the linking pages

Google prefer's websites that get links from related websites. If you sell shoes then a link from a fashion blog is much better than a link from a website about puppies.

Required action: Your website should have more inbound links from related websites than the websites of your competitors. IBP's link builder can help you to find web pages and blogs that are related to your site.

If you follow the five steps above, your website will get better rankings than the websites of your competitors.

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Do paid links really affect your Google rankings?

Paid links: do they really affect your Google rankings?

Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or can you get in trouble if you use paid links?

What does Google think about paid links?

Google is very clear about paid links. They don't like them. Google even has an official form that enables webmasters to report paid links to Google:

"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it.

Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

A recent problem

A webmaster recently reported problems in Google's webmaster discussion forum:

"Today I found that my entire site has dropped out of site in search results. I have a site that received over 2,000 search visits per day and today that has stopped."

It turned out that the website has many affiliate links and other links to advertisers that looked like paid links to Google. Unfortunately, these links were not marked as paid links and Google penalized the website for having the paid links.

What does this mean for your website?

You should avoid paid links if you don't want to get in trouble with Google. If you do buy or sell links, make sure that the links contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. By using that attribute, you show that the paid link is for advertising purposes only and that you don't want to manipulate your website rankings with the link.

While Google doesn't like paid links at all, they also make clear that links are very important:

"Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating."

For that reason, you should try to get as many good links to your website as possible. The quality is more important than the quantity.

Links that point to your website are a very important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results. The links that point to your website should be from related websites and they should contain the keywords for which you want to get high rankings.

Do not manipulate the links to your website by buying links and do not join automated link systems to increase the number of links to your website. There are many ways to get good links (related websites, blogs, social bookmark sites, directories, etc.). IBP helps you to get them all

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Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?

Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google's results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don't have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It's not necessary to get as many links as possible. It's necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.

2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.

3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.

4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.

5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.

6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

There are many things that can improve the response rate of your link request messages. Details can be found in our free SEO eBook. The eBook covers everything from finding potential link partners to optimizing response rates and it also contains a checklist that helps you to get started as quickly as possible.

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Sacramento SEO tactic for low and high competition

The right SEO tactic for low and high competition

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition.

The effect of different SEO tactics on the position of your website in the search results

If you target long keyword phrases with little competition, then the relative value of on-page web page optimization is very high.

For example, if you want to be listed for the search term "buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville" then it is enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don't need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase.

The more competitive the targeted keyword is, the higher is the effect of inbound links on the position of your website in the search results:

Diagram: the effect of the tactic on your search engine position

The importance of an SEO tactic is not the same as its relative effect on your search engine positions

By taking a look at the chart above you might get the impression that web page optimization is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimizing the contents of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings.

By optimizing a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimized for that keyphrase (which is usually the case) then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.

For example, the website www.cnn.com has 46,600 inbound links according to Google. Although CNN.com has so many inbound links, they do not rank for the keyword "buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville" because the website has not been optimized for that keyphrase.

If you want to get high rankings for a keyphrase, the first step is to optimize one of your web pages for that keyphrase. Then work on the links that point to the optimized web page to outrank other websites that have been optimized for the same keyword:

Diagram: the importance of different SEO tactics

Which tactic should you use for your website?

1. The best web page optimization tactic:

When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don't have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords.

For example, start with the keywords "buy sneakers in knoxville", "buy cowboy boots in knoxville", "buy pumps in knoxville", "shoe shop knoxville", etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic "shoes".

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as "buy shoes" or even "shoes".

The more pages of your website you optimize for different but related keywords, the better.

2. The best link building tactic:

It's not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links.

Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase.

Don't focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won't help your website as much a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority.

If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor.

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Seo Service Sacramento - link building do's and dont's

Official search engine statement: link building do's and dont's

Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of Bing's document can be found in this article. The importance of link building The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe link building as follows: "Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building." In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process: "Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business' most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!)." Things that you can do to get good links to your website Here are the things that Bing recommends: You should develop your website as a brand and brand it consistently. People like to link to high quality websites. You should find relevant bloggers, industry websites and product reviewers and make them aware of your website. You can publish concise and informative press releases online. You can publish expert articles in article directories. You can participate in relevant conversations on blogs and forums and add a link to your website when applicable. You can use social networks to connect to industry influencers. Your profiles should contain links to your website. You can use email newsletters to notify people about new content on your website. You can launch a blog or a forum on your website. You can participate in relevant industry associations and their online forums. You should strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry while promoting your website. The link manager in IBP can help you with most of these tasks. It finds relevant blogs, related websites, directories, etc. It also helps you to contact the other websites, keeps track of your contacts, etc. Warning: the following things will get your website in trouble Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn't like to be cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters: Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time. Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog comments. Your web pages contain hidden links. You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems. Paid links point to your website. Known spammers link to your website. Your website links to known spammers. Here's what Bing does when they find suspicious data that is related to your website: "When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index." Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear about this fact: "Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable, inbound links is not a couch-potato task."

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Google patent: how Google deals with duplicate content

Google's duplicate content patent

This month, Google was granted a patent with the name Duplicate document detection in a web crawler system. The patent explains how a content filter from the search engine can work with a duplicate content server.

What is duplicate content?

The patent contains a definition of duplicate content:

"Duplicate documents are documents that have substantially identical content, and in some embodiments wholly identical content, but different document addresses."

The patent describes three scenarios in which duplicate documents are encountered by a web crawler:

1. Two pages, comprising any combination of regular web page(s) and temporary redirect page(s), are duplicate documents if they share the same page content, but have different URLs.
   
   
2. Two temporary redirect pages are duplicate documents if they share the same target URL, but have different source URLs.
   
   
3. A regular web page and a temporary redirect page are duplicate documents if the URL of the regular web page is the target URL of the temporary redirect page or the content of the regular web page is the same as that of the temporary redirect page.

A permanent redirect page is not directly involved in duplicate document detection because the crawlers are configured not to download the content of the redirecting page.

How does Google detect duplicate content?

According to the patent description, Google's web crawler consults the duplicate content server to check if a found page is a copy of another document. The algorithm then determines which version is the most important version.

Google can use different methods to detect duplicate content. For example, Google might take "content fingerprints" and compare them when a new web page is found.

Interestingly, it's not always the page with the highest PageRank that is chosen as the most important URL for the content:

"In some embodiments, a canonical page of an equivalence class is not necessarily the document that has the highest score (e.g., the highest page rank or other query-independent metric)."

How does this affect your website?

If you want to get high rankings, it is easier to do so with unique content. Try to use as much original content as possible on your web pages.

If your website must use the same content as another website, make sure that your website has better inbound links than the other websites that carry the same content. It's likely that your website will be chosen as the most important URL for the content then.

If your web site has unique content, you don't have to worry about potential duplicate content penalties. Optimize that content for search engines and make sure that your web site has good inbound links. It's hard to outrank a website with good optimized content and many

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Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?

Last week, the Rimm-Kaufman Group published a study about long tail keywords. Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each.

Long tail keywords usually consist of several words and they have a low monthly search volume.

What did the study find out?

Google AdWords advertisers with monthly expenses ranking from $15K to $750K per month were analyzed in the study. All of these advertisers had well managed Google AdWords accounts.

Here are the key findings:

The importance of long tail keywords varies. For one company, the long tail keywords generated only 8% of the sales. Another company received 83% of its sales through long tail keywords.

It depends on the product. People search differently for different types of products. For one product group people might use more long tail keywords while they use fewer for another product group.

The importance of long tail keywords does not depend on the paid search budget.

Long tail keywords are most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.

For some Google AdWords advertisers, long tail keywords are critically important. One company in the test generated more than 71% of its revenue from long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are important to all AdWords advertisers. Even the company that received only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them.

How can you find long tail keywords?

Use IBP's keyword tool to find and create long tail keywords for paid search marketing. IBP offers a sophisticated keyword tool that gets keyword suggestions from Google, KeywordIndex and other keyword resources

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Bing about web spam - Is your website considered spam?

The official Bing blog recently had a post about web spam. According to Bing's definition, web spam is "unwanted web content that uses overtly manipulative techniques in an effort to fraudulently attain undeservingly high ranking in search engines."

Why is web spam a problem?

Search engines want to return relevant websites on their result pages. If a web spam page is listed in the search results, it will lead the search engine user to a web page that is not related to the query.

How does Bing classify web spam?

Bing classifies spam based on two types of signals: page-level and link-level:

Page-level spam is comprised of shady search engine optimization techniques that are used on-page. On-page spamming techniques include hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages and cloaking.

Link-level spam uses fraudulent linking strategies to improve the rankings of a website in the search engines. For example, this can be done by joining automated link exchange networks or by setting up many domains with automatically generated pages for the sole purpose of linking to each other.

For a page to be labeled as web spam by Bing, at least one of these techniques must be in use.

Does Bing penalize web pages with web spam?

The Bing engineers actively work to detect web spam. When thy find a website that uses spammy optimization techniques, they will penalize that website:

"We penalize those sites with actions commensurate with the egregiousness of their offenses, ranging from rank neutralization (intentionally lowering their organic page rank) to permanent expulsion from the index."

What does this mean for your website?

Although this blog post was written by Bing engineers, it is very likely that Google uses similar (if not more strict) methods to find web spam. If you don't want to risk the position of your website in the search results, you should only use ethical search engine optimization methods.

If you use spammy SEO methods, you might get high rankings on search engines quickly. Unfortunately, search engines usually detect all spamming methods sooner or later and they will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

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Official Google statement: how Google ranks tweets

Last month, Google started to display real-time results in addition to the regular top 10 pages on their search result pages. The real-time results are meant to offer web searchers access to brand new news items as fast as possible.

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How to get your breadcrumbs on Google's result pages

Webmasters continue to see breadcrumbs on Google's result pages. What are breadcrumbs, for which websites does Google display them and how can you get Google to display breadcrumbs for your own website?

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Google AdWords: how to lower your costs while selling more

If you advertise your website on Google AdWords, chances are that you found out that you can spent a lot of money on AdWords without getting a lot in return.

The reason why many people spend much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads is that they use the wrong settings in their campaigns.

Long tail keywords convert better and there are a lot of them

Several studies found out that long tail keywords have a much higher conversion rate than single word keywords. Long tail keywords are very specific keywords that consists of 4 or more words.

According to a recent Hitwise study, more than 18% of searches contain five or more keywords. In addition, Google says that "20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones

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Double talk: do search engines understand your web pages?

You have a beautiful website with great products, great guarantees, many comprehensive pages and great customer service. Unfortunately, Google and other search engines won't give your website high rankings.

There are several reasons why search engines do not list websites although they look great and offer quality content:

1. Your web pages are meaningless to search engine spiders

Search engines use simple software programs to visit your web pages. In general, search engine spiders won't see anything that is displayed in images, Flash elements, JavaScript (except for a few exceptions) and other multimedia formats.

If the main content of your website is displayed in images or Flash then your website can be totally meaningless to search engines. If your website navigation is pure JavaScript then chances are that search engines won't find the pages of your website.

Your website will look like a single page site although it consists of many different pages.

Solution: Check your website with IBP's search engine spider simulator to find out how search engine spiders see your website.

2. The HTML code of your web page contains major errors

Most web pages have minor errors in their HTML code. While most search engine spiders can handle minor HTML code errors, some errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages.

For example, a tag at the top of your web pages could tell search engine spiders that they have reached the end of the page although the main content of the page has not been indexed yet.

Solution: Verify the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP demo version (IBP main window > Tools > HTML Validator).

3. The HTML code of your web pages doesn't contain the right elements

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords then these keywords must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.

There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings. All of them should be in place if you want to get high rankings.

Solution: Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you in detail how to edit your web pages so that they will get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines for the keywords of your choice.

4. Your web server sends the wrong status codes

Some web servers send wrong status codes to search engine spiders and visitors. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the "200 OK" code.

Some servers send a "302 moved" or even a "404 not found" response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.

If your web server sends the wrong response code, search engine spiders will think that the web page doesn't exist and they won't index the page.

Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator mentioned above to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not "200 OK", the spider simulator will return a warning message.

5. Your robots.txt file rejects all search engine spiders

If your robots.txt file does not allow search engine spiders to visit your web pages then your website won't be included in the search results. Some robots.txt file contain errors and search engine spiders are blocked by mistake.

Solution: Check the contents of your robots.txt file. In general, it is not necessary to use a robots.txt file if you don't want to block certain areas of your website.

Search engine spiders must be able to understand your web pages if you want to get high rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines. The tips above help you to make sure that search engine spiders see what you want them to see.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Spam attack: Google search results manipulated?

"Alwil Software, maker of Avast anti-virus products, says it has uncovered a network that serves hundreds of fake links through hijacked Web sites to cheat Google search algorithms.

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Top 5 elements that you need for high rankings on Google

Getting listed on Google's first result page is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately, many webmasters still do the wrong things to improve their rankings.

It's not possible to get top 10 rankings on Google by focusing on a single strategy. Getting listed on Google requires you to work on all elements of your website. Here are the top 5 factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results:

Ranking factor 1: website accessibility

It doesn't make sense to optimize your web pages if search engines cannot access your web pages:

Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors then many search engines won't list your website.

The HTML code of your web pages should be error-free and your web server should return the correct response code. The contents of your web pages should be readable to search engine spiders. Details can be found here.

Before you start to optimize your web pages, check if search engines can read your web page content. You can do this with IBP's spider simulator. Double-check your robots.txt.

Ranking factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant websites in the search results. Your website shouldn't be a collection of random web pages. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be related.

Your web pages should show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. All pages of your website should be linked. If possible, web surfers should reach any page of your website with a maximum of three clicks.

The links and the directory structure of your website should make it easy to search engines to categorize the contents of your website.

Ranking factor 3: keywords

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you won't succeed with your campaign.

Optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. The more pages of your website you optimize, the better.

Start with very targeted keyphrases that consists of many words, for example "find inexpensive hotels in brussels".

When you have top rankings for these targeted keyphrases, proceed with more general keywords such as "hotels in brussels".

When you have top rankings for these keyphrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as "hotels".

In general, targeted keywords have a much higher conversion rate than general keywords, i.e. you will get more sales per visitor with "find inexpensive hotels in brussels" than with "hotels".

Also think about the type of visitor that you attract with a keyword. Are these people interested in information or do they want to buy?

Use IBP's comprehensive keyword tools to find the keywords that will work best with your site. You can find further information on how to find the correct keyword type in the IBP manual (PDF).

Ranking factor 4: content

Your website won't get high rankings on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other websites.

Separate your website from the rest by creating unique and trustworthy content. Write your own articles about the topic of your website, publish them on your own website and make your website a useful resource.

Ranking factor 5: links from other websites

It is not possible to get high rankings on Google without having links from other websites.

The more links point to your website, the more likely it is that your website gets good positions in Google's search results. The links to your website should be from trusted websites.

If a web page that links to you is related to your own website then the effect of that link on the search engine rankings of your website is higher than the effect of an unrelated link.

It also helps if social bookmark websites link to your website. If many people bookmark your website on social bookmark sites, then this is a sign that your website might deserve high rankings.

A small error in one element can destroy your effects in all other ranking elements. For that reason, it is important to use the right strategy when optimizing your website.

Detailed step-by-step instructions and checklists can be found in our free search engine optimization eBook.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Eye tracking study: users largely blind to real-time results in search

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Sacramento SEO Services News

Official Google statements about ranking factors

Last week Google's Matt Cutts gave an interview in which he revealed some things that will help webmasters to better optimize their websites. Here are the most important things that Matt Cutts said in the interview:

1. The more relevant links you have, the more pages of your site will be indexed

Matt Cutts said that the number of pages that Google indexes from your website is roughly proportional to the PageRank of your website. That means that more pages of your website will be indexed if your website has many inbound links.

Google does not have an indexation cap, i.e. they will index all pages of your website if you have enough inbound links. Remember that the PageRank that Google uses in its ranking algorithm is not the PageRank that is displayed in Google's toolbar.

2. Slow servers can cause problems

If Google can only crawl two pages at any given time due to a slow server, Google can set some sort of upper bound on how many pages they will fetch from that host server. This can be a problem for websites that are hosted on shared or slow servers.

3. Duplicate content can cause problems

"Imagine we crawl three pages from a site, and then we discover that the two other pages were duplicates of the third page. We'll drop two out of the three pages and keep only one, and that’s why it looks like it has less good content."

As mentioned above, Google will index your web pages based on the PageRank of your pages. If you have duplicate content, some pages of your website will be discarded and you'll waste ranking opportunities.
A new Google penalty? What can you do against it?

Webmasters in online forums reported an unusual Google behavior. New web pages of some sites are indexed with a longer delay. Is it a new Google penalty? Or is it just a bug that affects only certain websites?

What is the exact problem?

The websites that reported the problem were used to immediate inclusion of their pages in Google's search results.

If your website has a certain number of inbound links and if it has been indexed by Google, Google usually indexes new pages very quickly. That does not mean that the new pages get high rankings for any keyword but that the new pages can be found in Google's results if you search for the exact web page title or other unique elements that appear on the new web page.

These websites that were used to immediate inclusion now observed a 7 day delay for new website content:

"My blog has been afloat for almost 1.5 years, was always indexed by Google fast and smooth, and was ranked pretty high by main keywords in its niche. However, it's been several weeks that Google seems to have stopped indexing my new posts. [...]

It seems as if [Google is] applying an algorithm like 'posting day + 7 days' or something when indexing my new posts."

Is this really a new Google penalty? What can you do against it?

Many of the web pages that have the 7 day indexing problem are Wordpress blogs. There are several theories why these blogs aren't indexed as quickly as before:

1. The affected websites all seem to use the same SEO plugin for Wordpress that screws up the code and prevents Google from indexing the website pages correctly.

If you use an SEO plugin, consider if you really need it. These plugins don't do real SEO. They hide certain pages on your website from search engine spiders and they allow you to edit the header information of your web pages. This can also be done through the regular Wordpress interface.

2. Although the new blog post wasn't listed for 7 days on Google, the index page of the blog was listed in Google's search results.

As the index page of a blog often shows the latest blog posts, it is likely that Google uses the 7 day delay for the blog page because the post can only be found on the blog index page during that time.

3. Some of the affected blogs publish press releases on their websites. As the same press release can also be found on many other websites, Google might return the first publisher of the press release in the search results and discard all other pages with the same content.

4. Other affected websites seem to be AdSense scraper websites. These websites have very little unique content and they have been built to attract visitors that then click on the AdSense ads on the website.

5. Some of the affected websites installed user agent sniffers on their server. These programs return different pages to different user agents (human web surfers, Googlebot and other bots).

Using such a script on your server can easily prevent Google's indexing robot from indexing your website and it can be misinterpreted as a spamming (cloaking) attempt. This is very similar to the SEO plugin problem above.

It looks as if the 7 day delay might be related to two different website types: websites that use server scripts that return different pages to different user agents and websites that contain little or no unique content.

The 7 day delay for blogs that display the content both on the blog index page and the blog posting page is not a penalty but a Google feature that prevents duplicate results.

Google robotIf your website is a Made-For-AdSense scraper website then it's probably time to think about a new business model. Google might give these websites lower rankings in the future.

If you use bot blocking scripts or other server scripts that change the content that is delivered to visitors of your website then you should make sure that you're not accidentally blocking Google. It's better not to use these scripts at all.

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Official Google statements about ranking factors

Matt Cutts also indicated that if you link from one page to a duplicate page, you can mess up your PageRank. Google also tries to pass the PageRank and other link signals from the duplicate pages to the original page.

If you use the rel=canonical tag on your web pages then the pages needn't be exact duplicates but they should be conceptual duplicates of the same product, or things that are closely related.

"It's totally fine for a page to link to itself with rel=canonical, and it's also totally fine, at least with Google, to have rel=canonical on every page on your site."

However, Google does not always obey the canonical tag:

"The crawling and indexing team wants to reserve the ultimate right to determine if the site owner is accidentally shooting themselves in the foot and not listen to the rel=canonical tag."

4. Affiliate pages don't get high rankings

If a website is an affiliate website that is very similar to other pages (only with a different logo, etc.) then this page won't get high rankings.

If Google detects an affiliate link than this link won't pass any PageRank power.

5. Redirects work but they don't pass the whole PageRank

If you change your domain name and redirect old pages with a 301 redirect from your old page to your new page then the link power will be passed to your new domain name but the overall power of the links will decrease. 301 redirects do not pass the full PageRank.

6. Low quality pages can cause problems

"If there are a large number of pages that we consider low value, then we might not crawl quite as many pages from that site, but that is independent of rel=canonical."

If you have a lot of web pages with thin content then Google might stop crawling your website. Matt Cutts also suggested that it might help to be wordy:

"You really want to have most of your pages have actual products with lots of text on them."

7. PageRank sculpting and website navigation

Google does not want you to sculpt your website for PageRank reasons. The best way to pass link power from one page to other pages is to have a good website navigation.

"Site architecture, how you make links and structure appear on a page in a way to get the most people to the products that you want them to see, is really a better way to approach it then trying to do individual sculpting of PageRank on links."

"You can distribute that PageRank very carefully between related products, and use related links straight to your product pages rather than into your navigation. I think there are ways to do that without necessarily going towards trying to sculpt PageRank."

8. You still shouldn't use JavaScript links for your website navigation

"For a while, we were scanning within JavaScript, and we were looking for links. Google has gotten smarter about JavaScript and can execute some JavaScript.

I wouldn't say that we execute all JavaScript, so there are some conditions in which we don’t execute JavaScript.

We do have the ability to execute a large fraction of JavaScript when we need or want to. One thing to bear in mind if you are advertising via JavaScript is that you can use NoFollow on JavaScript links."

9. Google does not like paid links

Matt Cutts said they Google doesn't want advertisements to affect search engine rankings.

They might put out a call for people to report more about link spam in the coming months. Matt Cutts said that Google "does a lot of stuff" to try to detect ads and make sure that they don't unduly affect search engines.

If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should use search engine optimization methods that lead to lasting results. Don't try to cheat Google.

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Sacramento SEO: how to improve your existing backlinks

Pimp your links: how to improve your existing backlinks

Getting links to your website is one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google and other big search engines.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult tasks. Do you make the most of your existing links? It's often much easier to improve your existing backlinks then getting new links to your website.

Pimp your links

1. Correct links that point to your old domain names

If you changed your domain name in the past, chances are that some people still link to your old domain name.

Of course, the links to your old domain name should redirect to your new domain with a 301 redirect to make sure that the links aren't lost. Unfortunately, links through 301 redirects do not pass the full link power to your website.

For that reason, contact the webmasters who link to your old domain name and ask them to link to your new domain. This will increase the effect of the links on your website rankings.

2. Correct links to broken pages on your website

Check your website statistics and redirect all links that go to a non-existing (404) page on your website to an existing page on your site so that the visitors aren't lost.

As above, it's even better to contact the webmasters who links to the non-existing pages and ask them to change the links.

3. Try to improve the link texts

When you're contacting other webmasters to tell them that they link to your old domain name or to a broken link on your website, you can also suggest new link texts for your links.

If the links to your website include the words for which you want to get high rankings in the link text, your chances of getting ranked for these keywords increase.

4. Suggest other relevant websites

This might sound like a strange advice but it can help your rankings: when you contact a webmaster and ask for a link, you might also suggest other websites that are related to yours.

If the website that links to your website links to other websites that are related to your website topic, it's more likely that search engines will find your website relevant to that topic. Details about this co-citation effect can be found here.

5. Check the links on your own website

If you want to see certain pages of your website in Google's search results, these pages should also be linked from your own website pages. If a web page is hidden in the navigation of your website then it's less likely that this page will get a good position in Google's results.

Your website should have a clear and logical navigation that emphasizes the pages that you want to see in Google's search results.

High rankings on Google are the result of good inbound links and optimized web page content. Our popular website promotion tool IBP helps you to get both.

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Sacramento Search Engine Marketing

Why buying links is not a good idea

Google's Matt Cutts recently made a new announcement about paid links. Buying links is a very hot and controversial topic among webmasters. Should you buy links to increase the position of your website on Google? Do paid links help your rankings? Are there any risks?

Can you increase your website rankings by buying links?

Yes, you can. Links that point to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results.

If you buy backlinks, you can quickly get high rankings for your website on Google. However, that's only one side of the medal.

If buying links works, why shouldn't you use it for your website?

Buying links is against Google's terms of service: "Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

Google's anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts recently announced that Google has been working on new algorithms and tools to detect paid links.

Google has a report form for paid links. If one of your competitors finds a paid link that points to your website, he might report it to Google.

Google actively searches for paid links and it's likely that they will detect all paid links sooner or later. While you can get away with them for some time (that's why paid links work for some time), your website will be penalized as soon as Google finds out that you tried to game the system.

Buying links leads to quick results and strong penalties

If you use spammy SEO methods such as buying links, you will quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

Spammy SEO methods

If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you'll get a much better performance in the long run:

Ethical SEO methods

Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings on Google. It will backfire on you.

There are better ways to get inbound links

As mentioned above, the links to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results.

For that reason, it is very important to get as many good backlinks as possible to your website. The quality of the backlinks is more important than the quantity.

You can get links from related websites, links from blogs, links from social bookmark websites, links from Internet directories and more.

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Its official: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor

Last Friday, Google announced that they started to use site speed as one of the 200 signals that influence the position of a website in the search results:

"As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests."

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Search Engine Marketing Sacramento

The effect of latent semantic indexing (LSI) on your website rankings

Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a technique that is used by all major search engines nowadays. Does your website take this into account? How does it influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

What is latent semantic indexing?

LSI means that a search engine tries to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. For example, Paris and Hilton are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, Tiger and Woods are associated with golf.

To find out which other keywords Google finds related to a keyword, search for a keyword and add a tilde in front of it. Google will mark the related keywords in bold on the result page. It seems that Google finds the word "Nokia" related to "phone".

How can Google match keywords with certain concepts?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word Paris and the word Hilton then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of data that allows them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

If you want to be listed for certain keywords, you must show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. There are several things that you can do to increase the relevancy of your website for a topic:

1. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords

If you're targeting the search term "used cars" you should also create pages that are relevant to the keywords "auto", "suv", etc.

The more pages of your website are relevant to a certain topic, the more likely it is that your web pages will be listed for keywords that are related to that topic. Make sure that your keywords appear in the right elements on your web pages.

2. Get links from semantically relevant pages

If you're selling cars then the "Cars" web page that links to your site should not be about the movie. Links from topically related pages will be semantically beneficial to your site.

A link to your website that comes from a page that contains links to other web pages that deal with the same topic has a greater effect on the rankings of your website then a link from a page that links to totally different pages and your site.

For that reason, it is important that you try to get links from related websites. It is also very important that you submit your website to the right category in Internet directories. If your website is listed in the wrong category, this can have a negative effect on your rankings.

3. Use a meaningful site architecture

Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.

Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

4. Find out why other pages rank higher than yours

If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. If you want to prepare your website for advanced search engine algorithms then you have to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.

In addition, it's important that the links to your website come from topically related pages so that search engines put your website in the right context. Our website promotion tool IBP can help you with both.

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Sacramento Search Engine Marketing

Four steps to great keywords (without keyword tools)

Most people use a keyword suggestion tool when they try to find new keywords for their campaigns. While keyword suggestion tools are good, they should not be the first step in your keyword research activities.

Before you use a keyword suggestion tool, ask yourself the following questions:

1. keyword research What problems can your product or your service solve?
2. Which questions do potential customers ask?
3. Can you offer unusual solutions?
4. Which products and services do you offer?

As you can see, the products and services that you offer are the least important. A person with a headache might not now that the Shiatsu that you offer will help them. They even might now know what Shiatsu is and if they know it, they might not be able to spell it properly. The same applies to all other services and industries.

For that reason, it is important that you focus on the first three points before using your products or services in the keywords.

1. What problems can your product or service solve?

In this example, the problem that your product or service can solve is a headache. Create a list of words that describe the problem:

headache, racking headache, migraine, vicious headache, splitting headache, megrim, constant headache, etc.

2. Which questions do potential customers ask?

People type different things in Google's search box when they try to find a solution to their problem. Here are some real queries that have been done on Google (use IBP's keyword suggestion tool to find keywords that are searched by real web surfers):

* why does my head hurt
* why does my head hurt when I cough
* how to get rid of migraines without medication
* how to get rid of migraines when pregnant
* why can't i concentrate on anything
* why am i so tired
* etc.

The problem that your product solves creates certain circumstances (fatigue, temper, concentration problems). Address these circumstances in your keyword phrases.

The problem can also be connected to another factor (for example migraine and pregnancy). Create keyword phrases that are related to these factors.

3. Can you offer unusual solutions?

Most people will take a pill when they have a headache. In this example, you offer a solution that many people don't know about (Shiatsu). The following phrases would work for you:

* get rid of migraines without medication
* get rid of headache without pills

The unusual solutions that you offer can also be used in your AdWords ad copy and on your web pages. For example, you might create web pages around the following topics:

* How to get rid of headaches without using Aspirin
* An unusual way of healing migraine without medication
* etc.

4. Which products or services do you offer?

Of course, you should also use the names of the products and services that you offer in your ads and SEO campaigns. In this example, this would be:

shiatsu, shiatsu massage, etc.

When you try to find new keywords, tell a short story that describes the problem and the solution: "A person has a racking headache. The person cannot concentrate because of that headache and the person is tired. Instead of taking a pill, there can be other solutions. That solution is my Shiatsu service."

By doing this, you'll find many keywords around which you can create new web pages and PPC ads. Of course, you can also combine this method with keyword suggestion tools.

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SEO Services Sacramento

Eight things you can do to show search engines your most important pages

How can you get search engines to display the web pages with the best conversion rate in the search results and what can you do to to make sure that unwanted pages are not listed? Depending on how your website's navigational links are structured, some pages can get higher rankings than others. Here are eight things that you can do to guide search engines to the most important pages of your website: 1. Make the web pages easy to find Make sure that the most important pages on your site can be reached with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks you need to get to a web page, the more important is that web page. 2. Link from your own pages to your own pages The easiest way to get related links to a web page is to link from your own website. Link to the pages for which you want to have high rankings from all pages of your website that are related to that page. 3. Use the right keywords in your navigational links If you want to see a certain page of your website on Google's first result page for the keyword "blue widgets" then the links that go from other pages of your website to that page should contain the keyword "blue widgets". This does not guarantee that the linked web page will be listed for that keyword but it increases the relevancy of the page for the keyword. 4. Use absolute links on your website Do not link to mypage.htm but to www.yoursite.com/mypage.htm. If other people scrape your web page contents, you'll get backlinks from these sites. 5. Use the nofollow attribute Add a nofollow attribute to all links that aren't important for your search engine rankings. For example, your privacy policy page or the web page with your terms and conditions probably needn't be listed in search engines. 6. Remove unnecessary links The fewer links you have on a page, the more important is a single link to another page on your site. Remove unnecessary links from your web pages. 7. Exclude irrelevant and duplicate pages from indexing Use your robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing. If search engines don't have to parse your unimportant pages the other pages of your website will get more attention. 8. Recover lost pages Check your website for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages on your site. You might want to use the link checker that you can access in IBP to check your links.

Optimizing the links on your own website improves the position of your web pages in search engines. In addition to optimizing the links, you should also optimize the content of your web pages to make sure that Google and other search engines list your website for the right keywords.

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Sacramento Local Search Engine Optimization SEO

Mayday: how Google May update will affect your long tail rankings

In an online forum, webmaster discussed their experience with Google latest ranking algorithm update that has been given the name Mayday. If your website gets fewer visitors from Google, the update could be the reason for that.

What exactly has happened?

Many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long (so called "long tail keywords").

Some webmasters have lost 90% of their traffic from Google because they cannot be found anymore for the long keyword phrases.

The ranking drop did not happen to spammers. Among the affected websites was a 13 year old site with a Google PageRank of 7 and 400,000 backlinks.

Why did it happen?

It seems that this is not a penalty but a change in Google's ranking algorithm. Google might now be able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. There's a new Google patent that deals with this topic.

Identifying phrases requires a lot of computing power and a lot of memory. A webmaster explained it in the discussion:

"For example, on the assumption that any five words could constitute a phrase, and that a large corpus would have at least 200,000 unique terms, there would be approximately 3.2.times.10.sup.26 possible phrases.

Clearly more than any existing system could store or otherwise programmatically manipulate."

It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages.

The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.

Do you have to change your web pages now?

If you experienced a decline in traffic to your website from Google you might have to change your web pages. For example, if you want to be found for "personal injury lawyer london" then these words should appear in that order on your website.

If you use other variations such as "london lawyer personal injury" then you'll probably get listings for that variation but not for other word combinations.

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