Google Dancin'

I’d like to introduce you to Jill Whalen, her website HighRankings.com, and the HighRankings.com Forum.

Jill’s been in this business about 10 years. She’s been my mentor, virtually, for the past several years through her regular newsletters.

I have learned a lot from Jill in that time, and I’ve had my own internet marketing philosophy validated. We both teach (preach?) that it’s the content on your site that’s important, and to forget the quick fix tricks as they will bite you in the end. (pun intended.)

Interestingly enough, the day after my post about Google’s sandbox, Jill’s newsletter arrived. Her featured article was about Google’s patent application and it’s implications for web site owners. In it she sets the record straight. There is more to the Google sandbox than just an aging delay.

“The aging delay …is actually a subset of the sandbox. In other words, the aging delay is just *one* reason why a URL might get placed in the sandbox.”

If you just opened a new web site, it will go into the sandbox. Period. The length of time it remains is affected by what you do once you go live. (Adding new content, getting quality links, etc.) Some site owners have reported showing up in the search results as soon as six months. Others have stayed in the sandbox for a year, or more. Jill says the average is currently around 9 months.

If you have had your site up for years, however, you can still find yourself in the sandbox if you use “black hat SEO” techniques to artificially influence your site’s position in the search results. Google takes such search engine spam very seriously. Simply put, don’t spam the search engines!

“I cannot stress enough that the ideas in this patent have been put forth as spam fighting measures. Unfortunately, as soon as the search engines start giving things like links any kind of prominence in their ranking algorithm, they get abused by those whose only goal is to “game” the engines.” ~ Jill Whalen

Be sure and read Jill’s full article, “Google’s Patent Implications“. And while you’re there, bookmark the forum address and sign up for her newsletter. Both will be invaluable resources for you.

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By now, you’ve probably heard about Google’s “sandbox.”

Google isn’t talkin’, but word on the forums is Google puts all new sites in the sandbox. Being in the sandbox means Google’s search results won’t include your site in any of the coveted top positions, regardless of how relevant. Except, perhaps, for some really obscure terms.

What is commonly called the sandbox is Google’s aging delay. While Google isn’t giving out the details, their recent patent application gives us a glimpse into their mindset. Their algorithm takes a variety of age related factors into consideration for both your site and sites linking to you.

The reasoning behind an aging delay makes total sense for the big picture. It’s there to fight the dirty tactics of spam sites. It can be very frustrating, however, to the owners of the sites affected as they wait months to show up in Google’s results.

There’s nothing you can do to prevent it, but you can use this time to your advantage.

Work on creating new content for your site. Write interesting articles within your niche and submit them to sites that accept and distribute articles. Join relevant forums and news groups, and become an active member of these communities. Continue to follow your link building strategy of asking for links from other related sites and directories.

Your efforts will pay off in the end, and you’ll develop good site/traffic building habits. And though it may take Google months to rank your site appropriately, you’ll soon show up in Yahoo and the other search engines.

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As a search engine, Google wants to serve up the most relevant results for every search query. As an advertiser, Google wants to display their ads in as many relevant areas as possible.

First, they came out with AdWords, a pay-per-click program that displayed relevant ads in a column to the right of their own search results. Then they came out with AdSense, which allowed content rich web sites to display AdWords advertising.

It is AdSense that has put Google in the catch 22.

Anyone can apply to the AdSense program. Google screens applicants based on the web site submitted with the application.

Once approved, however, the AdSense account holder can then place the ads on any site without having to have each site approved. This has led to a flood of new sites developed for the sole purpose of displaying these ads. (Which, by the way, is in direct violation of the Adsense Terms of Service for the program.)

These sites have no value to the searcher, but have highly optimized pages for popular search terms. Which leaves Google faced with the daunting task of filtering these pages out of their search results.

The hundreds of thousands of sites that exist for the sole purpose of displaying Google’s AdSense advertising are cluttering up the internet. They make more work for all the search engines to develop ways to filter them out of the results, including Google. And legitimate sites are hurt by lower search rank, or worse, being penalized by the latest algorithm to combat this abuse.

Google could put a stop to these sites. First, and foremost, Google could enforce the existing Terms of Service, and terminate AdSense accounts which violate these terms. They could take it a step further and require the account holder to pre-qualify every website before allowing the AdSense code to be used on that site.

If Google succeeds in ridding the internet of these AdSense violators and their sites, results from all the search engines will improve. As an added benefit to Google, click fraud should become all but non-existent, too.

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Have you gotten suckered into the concept of creating numerous web sites that all link back to your main site? The only winner there is the company you register your domains with.

Here’s Why.

If you don’t have good content on each of these other sites, you won’t pull in enough traffic to justify the cost of hosting the site. And if you do have good content, it will serve you better on your main site.

Look at it like this: First, you create a satellite site, keeping the focus tight on one aspect of your business. Then you start getting traffic to the satellite site, and have a high 5% conversion rate (5% of your visitors click on a link to the main site). Not too bad.

Now lets say your main site converts 3% of your visitors to clients. With these conversion rates, your satellite site would need to pull in 2000 visitors for your main site to acquire 3 new clients.

However, if you put those same pages on your main site instead, you’d get 100% of those visitors to your main site. With a conversion rate of 3%, 2000 visitors would mean 60 clients. Or, more realistically, you would acquire 3 new clients much faster.

On the other hand, if you still want to register a boat load of domain names, I have a reseller account that pays me a paltry sum for every domain you register. If you insist on throwing away your money, you’re welcome to throw some of it in my direction.
Anita’s Domain Registrations

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It wasn’t all that long ago parking multiple domains wouldn’t get you a penalty with Google. It was possible you’d find the wrong domain was getting all the attention, but the search engines would simply see “duplicate content” in the additional domains and essentially ignore them.

Then along came the “Get Rich Quick” crowd. They abused everything from the Meta keywords tag to Javascript redirects to the noframes html tag. As the abuse of a technique became epidemic, the search engines would rewrite the algorithms. Eventually the technique would be ignored, or worse, penalized.

One of the techniques now in use is to set up a temporary redirect: The search engines still spider the content of the page and make it available in the search results.

You’ve seen it. You click on a result that looks promising and find yourself on a page that is nothing at all what you were expecting. You can’t find the exact phrase returned by the search engine, even when you look at the source code for the page you landed on.

You don’t want Google, or any other search engine, to lump your site in with these bad guys.!

To park a domain without incurring a penalty, a permanent 301 redirect must be set up. There is very specific code that must be used, which is beyond the scope of this blog.

However, here are some links that may supply you with the information you need if you have to do the work yourself. For a Linux/Apache server, add the code in the .htaccess file:

• Jill Whalen Newsletter Article
• High Rankings Forum, posted by: “wholland”

There are a few more hoops to jump through if your site is hosted on a Windows IIS server. Here’s a few answers to get you started:

• High Rankings Forum, posted by: “mcanerin”
• Google Answers

If you don’t feel comfortable with coding, see if your ISP will do the work. Their network guy does this sort of thing for a living, and is less likely to make a mistake.

Of course, the easiest thing to do is avoid multiple domain names altogether.

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Are you one of those folks who licensed the .com, .org and .net versions of your domain name? Do you realize if it isn’t set it up correctly, redirecting traffic from these domains could get you in trouble with Google and the other search engines?

Like so many things in this industry, search engine spammers have found many ways to exploit redirects. The search engines, understandably, have adjusted their algorithms to compensate for the abuse.

Unfortunately, a lot of good people get burned in the process.

There is a right way and a wrong way to set up a redirect for multiple domains to the same web site. If you have one or more domains parked on top of your primary domain, you can easily test to see if they are set up correctly.

While online, simply type the URL of the secondary domain name into the address bar of your browser and hit enter. Your web site will show up in your browser. Now check the address bar.

You should see your primary domain listed, not the secondary domain you typed in.

For example, if you type in “bergieszoo.net” and hit enter, you will be taken to my photography site. You will also see the address change from “bergieszoo.net” to “http://www.callofthewildphoto.com”.

When you test your domains, if you don’t see the URL change to the primary domain name, you could have a problem that will hurt your credibility with the search engines.

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I’m a big Kevin Costner fan. One of the many reasons, and perhaps the most compelling one at that, is he always takes the time needed to tell the story. I’ve never walked away from the theater feeling short-changed, or full of unanswered questions because important scenes were chopped out to shorten the movie.

Your web pages should be like that. Whether you’re telling a story, or selling a product, your words are what count. No amount of fancy, expensive web design will make up for a lack of substance on the page.

While working for an ISP that also provided web design services, I saw one web site after another fall short of its potential. I also saw sites that performed better than anyone ever thought possible. And every time, good or bad, the site’s performance could be traced back to the level of commitment the site’s owner had to providing great content.

Make a commitment to create well written, unique and highly focused information for your site. You don’t have to do it all at once. In fact, it’s better if you update one page at a time.

Create an environment full of interesting and valuable information within your industry. Showcase your expertise.

It will take time, but your hard work will be rewarded with incoming one-way links from related sites wanting to provide added value to their visitors.

As an added bonus, your position in search engine results will improve, too.

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Another way to determine if you have good content is to look at the page without the design elements.

I’ve exposed just the textual content of this sample page, including the alternate (alt) text for images. By removing the reference to the external CSS files used to control the layout and the URL’s of the images, I’ve stripped the design elements from the page.

Reading a page this way, the message should flow, and it should make sense.

Even more importantly, the message should add value to your visitor’s experience.

Good content doesn’t necessarily need to be “good English”, good adcopy can and does break the rules (“Got Milk?”) But your spelling should be correct, and the style should fit your target audience. The focus should be on only one concept.

The content should be able to stand on its own, without the design. It should not be hard to read, or stuffed with keywords that interrupt the flow.

Stripping a page of design elements is not as easy as creating it first and then adding the design, especially if you’re still using nested tables to control the layout. However, if you’re creating new pages, it’s easy to use a “design free” environment to develop the content first.

Your message will standout without the distraction of the images and layout. Parts that are unclear or weak will be more visible to you, making it easier to refine and strengthen your message.

You’ll also see how the alt text is adding to, or subtracting from, your message.

For example, at the bottom of the sample page, you will see this statement: “We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover Card.” That statement is actually the combined alt text of the four images of the credit cards listed.

The example page was created from this stock photography page. You’ll find the four credit card images in the sidebar to the left of the page.

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Let’s take a break from linking strategies, and talk about content.

What is content? Content is just about anything and everything you can put on your web site: graphics, photos, headlines, “call to action” statements, articles, product descriptions, testimonials, outgoing links, (and blog entries,) to name a few.

So what is “good” content? Good content provides value to your visitors and keeps them coming back, and often times gets your site recommended to their friends.

What qualifies as good content varies according to the focus of your site. Instructions to build a deck might be appropriate for a building contractor who remodels homes, or a garden site selling trees and shrubs, but wouldn’t be a good fit for a site on breeding horses for profit.

In fact, it might be easier to determine what good content is by looking at what it is not:

• Pages with hundreds of unorganized outgoing links.
• Pages created with a software program boasting high densities of key words (and low readability).
• Pages that simulate search results for a given keyword or phrase.
• Multiple pages of nearly identical content to increase the size of your website.

You should be seeing a pattern here.

Pages that are created solely to impress search engines aren’t likely to qualify as good content. (They’re not likely to impress the search engines, either.)

How do you know if the page you want to put up is good content? Ask yourself if you would like to land there following a search, and be brutally honest.

If the answer is “No,” the page doesn’t belong on your web site.

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When you provide good information, you give people a reason to visit your site, and you give other sites a reason to link to yours.

When you provide a good resource, you give your visitors a reason to bookmark your page and come back from time to time. And the more often a person visits your web site, the more likely they will become a client, customer or subscriber.

Create an invaluable resource area of outgoing links by keeping it focused directly and indirectly on your industry.

For example, if you build or remodel homes, linking to local plumbers, electricians, roofers and landscapers provides a valuable resource to folks in your local area. If you sell fly fishing gear online, you can link to resorts, guides and organizations worldwide where fly fishing is featured.

Qualify sites you link to with the same high standards discussed in previous “Linking Strategies” entries. Build your resource pages for your visitors, but keep in mind both your visitors and the search engines will judge you based on the quality of the sites you link to.

Your visitors see each outgoing link as a recommendation from you. What they find on the other end will reflect on you. They may not think better of you if the site you’ve linked to is professional, well thought out, and full of good information. But they will definitely think less of you if isn’t.

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