SEO Commentary by FreshPromo

A Solution for Google and the Paid Link Fight

2007-11-20T16:11:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest debates raging in the search marketing world right now is Google's stance on paid links. Google went a step further than just talking about it, and dropped PageRank values for many sites known to sell links specifically for the purpose of passing PageRank and thus, rankings, on to the buyer's site. My solution to the paid link epidemic goes one step further; but first, here's a brief synopsis of what has actually transpired.

Google feels it is a violation of organic search engine optimization practices to pay for incoming links... but only certain kinds of links. Some webmasters do a great deal of business by simply selling outbound links off their high PageRank web pages. But there's a difference between that and say, paying for a business listing to the Yahoo! Directory. There is more value and legitimacy in a Yahoo! listing than buying a text link on a pharmaceutical site pointing to your gambling site with keyword stuffed anchor text. Yahoo! also does not accept all submissions, so there is an element of quality to their directory. There are differences in paid links.

Sounds like Google's just stepping up their algorithmic intelligence once again and defining new black hat techniques, right? Perhaps, but not without controversy. News in September spread that the once very popular Aviva Directory, among others, had suffered drastic drops in Google rankings, which ultimately would lessen the quality of the outbound links they list. Aviva was one of the more SEO-friendly directories around, which led to its popularity for webmasters. PageRank was passed on several levels deep, and the $50 fee was very reasonable for a permanent PR3 or PR4 one-way link.

Many argue that Aviva has done nothing wrong. Their business provides a service to webmasters that is transparent as well as valuable for a fair cost. But the point I have isn't to say who is right and who is wrong. It is instead to say that Google is walking a fine line with this one. There was speculation that their stance has something to do with a Federal Trade Commission staff opinion saying that, "companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships." This would extend to web sites presenting commercial listings of other businesses for a fee without sufficiently noting that in each case. According to Google, there are several linking options that web sites should use in these cases, or else they risk suffering the consequences like Aviva did. They include using a meta robots tag to disallow the Google crawler, using JavaScript links, and the "nofollow" attribute among others.

Whether the FTC opinion and Google's unhappiness with paid links are just a coincidence, I found it worth mentioning.

Keep in mind that Google also runs the most popular Pay Per Click advertising platform on the Internet. If webmasters are paying for links on the Internet, it is certain that Google would like to do everything it can to encourage the use of their AdWords and AdSense services over text link buying from private companies. This includes offering a paid link reporting page which is the first of its kind in the search engine world.

The drop in PageRank of many high profile sites was indeed a wake up call. However, my solution is extremely simple, goes one step farther, and one I'm sure Google has already considered:

Stop making PageRank values public altogether.

Why? Well, for starters PageRank never really gave any accurate reading as to the value of a web page. One could get a single incoming link from an irrelevant PR7 page that would transfer a very respectable PR value to their site. Another web site could have hundreds of relevant PR1 links pointing to it and have a lower PageRank value than the first page. If I'm trying to determine the "worth" of a page, the second example could easily be more helpful to a user than the first. The value of a link doesn't begin and end with the page's PR value. There are other factors. Without knowledge of PageRank, link exchanges, article reprints, and other old school and still popular methods of link building could continue fairly unaffected. New-age methods such as social media promotion, press releases, and link baiting would also not be affected. Hiding PageRank would not turn the world of webmasters and SEO upside down.

But what's more important is that PageRank plays such a massive factor in why people buy and sell links. The higher the PR, the more expensive a link is generally. Take away that value system and all of a sudden paid link participants need to re-evaluate their strategies. Sure, existing links would likely not change. Even though PR is hidden, you can bet most existing pages will hold their value for the time being. But all future link purchasing would have to be based upon a brand new system.

PageRank is a window to Google's algorithm. It's only natural that some people will try to manipulate rankings by using that data. But what purpose does PageRank serve anymore? To the casual web surfer (the vast majority of Internet users) the little green bar in their browser's toolbar (if they even bothered to install the Google Toolbar) probably evokes the same reaction that a Windows "stack dump" error would: A scratch of the head. A shrug of the shoulders. A bewildered, "huh?"

As an SEO myself, I find it pretty annoying that my competition pays for incoming links to rank their clients well. It doesn't put me out of business, as I'm a creative and resourceful online marketer. But the sheer ease of buying links for clients definitely leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. So I, for one, welcome Google's crackdown on paid links and will be an active user of their paid link reporting form. Hopefully they get rid of PageRank altogether. Its day has certainly passed.

Is Google Too Intuitive?

2007-10-17T22:43:00.000-04:00

I don't usually blog about everyday search occurrences of mine, but there was one I had the other day that really had me scratching my head. I've had a feeling for some time that there was a possibility a search engine would get too intuitive - to the point of it missing the intent of a searcher, or even assuming there was a typo when there wasn't.

I was doing some research into industrial photography, specifically looking for Bernd and Hilla Becher's works. They were a German couple who used large format cameras to capture industrial scenes. I couldn't quite recall how to spell the husband's name and ended up searching for "Brend industrial photography."

Google decided, in all its infinite algorithmic wisdom, to return me 10 result pages relating to someone called Brenda. I was shocked, not just to see not one single relevant page to what I was looking for, but more because it didn't ask me if I misspelled it. It seems Google loves to offer its users the famous "Did you mean...." line at the top of your results if it feels you've made a typo. I didn't get that this time. So what did I do? I tried Yahoo! with the original mis-typed query. Sure enough, I had relevant results returned to me and found an informative site at the 3rd result.

Google must have been spying on me, because I tried the same search again a few days later, and found much better results. So I don't know if this speaks more of Google's over-intuitive result pages, or of their lightning fast algorithmic improvements.

Gaining an Edge With Web Analytics

2007-06-15T13:20:00.001-04:00

Web analytics software is the eyes and ears to your web site visitors. Understanding the behavior of potential customers from the time they find your site, when they're surfing it, to when they leave, is essential for a number of reasons. Web development issues, cross platform compatibility, landing page success, and search engine visibility are just some of the areas analytics can shed much-needed light on.

In the mid 1990's, it created a splash when big businesses announced they were simply launching a web site. Today, many companies' web sites can function as the sole method of generating income. With the advent of blogs, discussion forums, podcasts, online stock info and more, people keep referring to web content daily, hourly, and even by the minute.

In my industry of search engine optimization, there are specific habits I need to know in order to make my web site function more efficiently. Useful information for me is:

- what search engines are referring visitors the most
- what keywords did my visitors search for
- what page are they visiting first (entry pages)
- what page are they visiting last (exit pages)
- what link is followed the most from my home page
- what's the ratio of total visitors to visitors who contact me

Advanced statistics and analytics software can tell me if say, visitors from Google are more likely to contact me than visitors from Yahoo's search engine. If this is the case, then I know by optimizing my site more for Google, I'm increasing the changes of contacts made.

Visitor information is especially useful when doing PPC campaigns. If you pay for every click on your ad, you're paying for every visit. You need to know how your site's structure works for your visitors. Are they getting confused on the entry page and leaving? If you created the PPC ad for the sole purpose of selling product A, are visitors from that ad more likely to visit sections of your site for product B for some reason?

Being able to react to your visitors' needs can have a profound effect on profit made from your web site.

Those who operate a web site blindly, that is to say those who don't know their visitors' habits, are at a disadvantage.

For more information, visit the Web Analytics Association.
To get to know your visitors better, sign up free for Google Analytics.

Buying Links for SEO

2007-05-28T18:09:00.000-04:00

There is a debate raging over paid links as part of an SEO plan. Should it be done? Does it fall within White Hat SEO techniques? What do the search engines say about this? Is there a risk involved with buying incoming links? There are so many questions brought up with this issue, but let's cover a few of the big ones:

First off, search engines don't like the fact that webmasters can indirectly buy rankings, since obtaining good quality, relevant links theoretically helps your rankings rise. It also lowers the quality of links on the web when webmasters start linking for SEO instead of for visitors and quality. Matt Cutts has a good blog on this topic here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

So right off the bat we know that link buying is a Black Hat SEO method because Google has said it does not condone it. Paid directory listings are different because human eyes validate these links upon submission as being relevant and useful to their core audience. Business directory listings will always have a place in the heart of search engines, but buying thousands of site-wide links strictly for SEO do not.

The risk part is definitely true. As with any Black Hat SEO method, there may be benefits in the short term, but as your methods age they will likely get picked up by new search engine algorithm updates. For example, take hidden text. Many webmasters years ago would make text the same color as the background of a page in order to stuff the page's content with repetitions of popular keywords, hoping to get a high ranking. Occassionally I will come across a site that's still using this method, but over time, the search engines weed these bad folks out.

But fear not. For those who want to throw some money at a web site and have it ranked well (and quickly), take the PPC route. Pay-per-click advertising reaches just as many people if not more (with Google content ads) than organic search engine listings. Hire a capable PPC campaign manager and you will probably see a good return on your monthly budget. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the most popular services for PPC advertising.

And if you still want to buy links, do what Google says and use the 'nofollow' tag. Set up a link for direct click-throughs from potential customers, not to increase your link popularity.

The Stigma of Click Fraud

2007-05-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

The stigma of Click Fraud has done its grave damage to the concept of Internet Marketing. The truth is that advertisers are willing that the Internet visitors click on their ads for any purpose such as curiosity, doubt, and/or research. These clicks, even though may not turn to a purchase, have powerful eBranding effects and other advantages.

However, the scare of click fraud in the mind of the Internet visitor and not knowing what click fraud really is has had deep damaging effects. In stigmatic ways, now visitors believe if they click and don't buy, they have committed fraud or they should feel guilty because Google might get a law suit. This is the most damaging to the Internet Marketing and eMarketing strategies on the Internet as any past short-sightedness thinking. Remember the early times when people were afraid of Electric Poles in their neighborhood? What happened? Who really benefited? Not the electric companies, but the people.

I strongly agree with Google that Click Fraud, in terms of the huge magnitude it is projected now, does not exist. Google and Yahoo have developed powerful detection methods or filters that either do not count the extra clicks as click fraud or they totally discount the clicks. Those who are trying to make a big deal out of this issue are either just plain short sighted or perhaps jealous to Google and Yahoo success. If you ask me, these are the people who have committed click fraud in the past and now are angry that Google and Yahoo have terminated their accounts.

Continue at this address: http://www.iconocast.com/fight_click_fraud.htm

Google Caught in Hypocrisy

2007-04-24T21:17:00.000-04:00

"A week after Google's Matt Cutts set the SEO world ablaze by asking webmasters to report cases of link-buying, his area of the Googleplex is decidedly silent – and so is the media relations department regarding a double-dipping Google executive's association with a questionable made-for-AdSense company."

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/04/24/googler-games-google-cutts-goes-silent

Article Submissions: The SEO Fallacy

2007-04-09T15:40:00.000-04:00

Everyone loves to submit articles for SEO purposes. It's such a great, and easy, way of getting incoming links for your web site, provided you can write something intelligently about your product or field. And even if you can't write worth a lick, many article reprint sites will do you the gracious benefit of accepting your submission.

But as one would assume, this clutters up the web quite a bit. Duplicate content, 'scraped' content, not to mention content written for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity instead of human eyes, amounts to a problem for search engines trying to present their users with useful content. So what are search engines doing about this? Easy: they're discrediting the value of your articles.

Your articles are now being relegated to Google's dreaded "Supplemental Index." If you're not familiar with that term, it's basically a database within Google's larger database where it keeps all the web pages and files it collects on the Internet. The Supplemental Index is where old, irrelevant pages go to die. Rather than banish them completely from their index, Google keeps them on hand in case a user's search query doesn't bring up enough in the regular index.

Search engines also like fresh content. A lot. Why do you think blogs, forums, RSS, and social bookmarking are so popular these days? The active participation between users and web sites, whether it's RSS feeds, blog comments, or 'diggs', just having something happen with your content weeks, months and years after creating it is one way of letting the search engines know that it's a good resource.

Articles submitted through reprint sites with suspect names like ArticleMegaBlaster sit buried deep in web sites on pages with low PageRank values. Their content never changes and search engine spiders rarely crawl them. So you have a link on that page to your web site. Big deal. It's the same thing as getting linked to from a link exchange page that's 3 categories deep and isn't indexed by Google. It's worthless. And what's worse is that this does more harm than you might expect. Search engines have a memory; a very long memory. Just as it's difficult to get re-listed by a search engine once your site has been banned, it is difficult to tell a search engine than your content is in fact very valuable once it's been copied on hundreds of poor quality web sites.

Think of article submissions the same as a news story by the Associated Press. The day it's published it's a popular read, as many places like CNN and MSN pick it up. After that for a couple weeks people may search and want to reference some information contained in that news story. But as time goes on, the news gets stale and is buried deep in the archives of web sites that reprint AP news. Any searches for that topic a year from now will result in newer stories about it, not the old article. Chances are it isn't relevant anymore, unless the story covers a major event and presents unique information about it. The same goes for your article. It will only stay relevant if others continue to link to it or feature it on their site.

If you really have something of value to write about, consider submitting it as a press release. If you have a popular blog, just print it up there and wait for people to find it. If it's worth their time, they'll use it (hopefully along with a link to your site) and do the distribution for you. If you don't have a blog of your own but think your article is interesting, ask some popular bloggers in your field to feature it on their blogs. Another option is to find out if web resources or publications in your industry accept submissions. Some web sites look for guest authors to write on a weekly or monthly basis. While most won't pay you anything, they will feature your writing and give you free exposure.

If the purpose of submitting your articles is ultimately for SEO purposes, then you must realize that SEO is an ongoing task. Continue to write about your products or services and look for ways of getting temporary exposure from each article.

Anchor Text Phrases Now Tracked by Google

2007-03-17T13:20:00.000-04:00

If you login to your Google Webmaster Tools, then click on Statistics > Page Analysis, you'll see a list of external link anchor text. Gone are the days of trying to keep track of what keywords you've used in your link campaigns.

But I was also wondering why they couldn't list the web sites associated with the anchor text phrases. Google obviously has that data, so why not show it? I'm not trying to be negative because this is definitely a useful part of Google's Webmaster Tools and is just another reason of why they are the benchmark for online search.

Although as we all know, not all links are created equal. I could assume that my site is better optimized for the top listed phrase since more sites link to me using that anchor text than any others. But what about the quality of those pages? I have no way of knowing if my site is really optimized better for the top phrase Google lists or the 10th phrase down. The top phrase could be contained in 50 poor quality link exchanges from years ago, while the 10th phrase showed up only once in an MSN news story and another time at WebProNews.com. Hypothetical, but it's clear the order these phrases are listed in should act as only a guide for you, and nothing exact.

Ok, I'm done nitpicking.

8 Link Popularity Methods Ranked for SEO

2007-03-07T20:19:00.000-05:00

If you haven't read my new article, there is a link to it here:

8 Link Popularity Methods Ranked for SEO in 2007.

How About an Alternative to NoFollow? Just a thought...

2007-02-15T16:03:00.000-05:00

It seems more people are trumpetting the upsides of the nofollow attribute rather than those who slam it as a nuissance. And to mirror some blogs from fellow members of the search engine marketing field, I'm on the side of the latter. Not because I'm an SEO who doesn't want to see a method of linking rendered useless, but because I think legitimate web users are being punished by black hat SEO methods.

Moreover, will increased use of the "rel=nofollow" tag really result in less spam? Seeing as how spam, by its nature, comes from people who don't pay attention to the actual website they're spamming (or at the very worst comes from automated scripts), I highly doubt the spammers will be cautious enough not to waste their time on websites that use NoFollow.

And as some have already pointed out, wouldn't it be easier for sites to improve their spam filters? Many blog owners have comments set to post automatically. By spending just a couple minutes a day, they could filter spam without having to use the nofollow tag. But instead, they've decided to penalize legitimate readers of their column. Comments aren't always about coy plugs for your own website; they can provide useful follow-up information for other readers and also add to the amount, and relevancy, of the site's or blog's content, which is something that will benefit the site in the long run.

But enough about blog commenting. The NoFollow attribute can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Webmasters who use it with reckless abandon could find themselves weakening the popularity of their directories, forums, or bulletin boards. It seems there is a widespread fallacy that linking out to too many websites will make your PageRank bleed and your rankings fall, and the nofollow hullaballoo will no doubt give more fuel to that fire. Linking is essentially the basis of the Internet - an interlinked network of websites. Yahoo has millions of outbound links, yet they seem to keep a PageRank of 9 without much problem. Hmm..

All that being said, the reality is that spam on the Internet today is at an all-time high. Something must be done to stop it, right? Then why not bring more of a community-oriented approach to the Internet today and set up a spam watchdog group? This group could coordinate efforts with search engines and other watchers of spam, build banned IP lists, gather fake email addresses and penalize web sites that frequently get reported by concerned search engine users, webmasters and blog owners. Blogging services, Wikipedia, popular discussion forums, social bookmarking sites and more, could all connect with a central database of this information to help them combat spam on their pages. I may be getting over my head with this idea, but in theory I believe this idea could really serve as a very useful policing service for years to come. Funding could come from the web sites that are most affected by spam (ie. the major search engines), and possibly advertisers.

But if the real sign of the introduction of the NoFollow attribute is a step towards an overall decrease in the weight links carry for search engine rankings, then I suppose this discussion is all for naught.

Google's New Backlink Tool

2007-02-06T17:33:00.000-05:00

Finally, webmasters now get a chance to view backlinks for their sites using an accurate tool. Gone are the days of wondering if the link: command at Google was displaying old links, new links, poor quality links, or which pages on your site those links were actually pointing to.

Now with Google's Webmaster Tools section (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) you can view your site's backlinks along with index, sitemap, and diagnostics data. Of course, you have to be the registered owner of the site, or at least someone with access to the site's web server, such as a webmaster or search marketing consultant.

I find Google's new backlinks tool particularly helpful when promoting my own web site, as I see a breakdown of what pages are receiving links, and can decide myself how worthwhile those links seem to be. I can control and spread out my linking efforts across my site in a more natural method.

DMOZ's Worth? Let The Search Engines Decide

2007-01-26T11:27:00.000-05:00

There has been much talk about the current state of DMOZ.org (The Open Directory Project) and whether or not webmasters should bother submitting sites to it. DMOZ was launched nearly 9 years ago by a couple of engineers from Sun Microsystems who eventually sold it to Netscape as its popularity began to grow. Even though it was a free submission, it carried so much weight as an incoming link for websites that webmasters included it in their "must-have" list along with paid listings at Yahoo!, Business.com and bCentral. DMOZ data was even used to populate the Google Directory.

Fast forward to October 2006: The site suffered a major system failure and was down for several weeks. It was not unusual for the website to experience intermittent downtime and slow periods on a regular basis, but this was a major issue as much of the internal data had been lost. DMOZ is back up now, but with the instability and excruciating wait times with submissions, many people are asking if it's still worth it to submit to.

Well, let's let the search engines decide. As soon as the search engines devalue an incoming link from your DMOZ listing, then your question is answered. But consider this: would Google, who is the trailblazer for stomping out sp@m in search rankings, want to devalue such listings that have been around for say, six years, and are quality, legitimate websites? Anyone who knows the Google algorithm knows that the age of a domain plays a huge part in high rankings. This same principal is also assigned to the age of incoming links a site receives. I personally don't think Google is going to penalize old, high quality sites by throwing away the value of their DMOZ listing.

The Truth About Link Exchanges

2006-12-05T12:58:00.000-05:00

The effectiveness of link exchanges has been discussed ad nauseum by the SEO community over the past couple years. It started with a major Google update where we saw many websites dropped in the list of backlinks shown for most sites. From there, we noticed it was reflected in the rankings. Doing hundreds of link exchanges with casino, pharmaceutical, and loan consolidation sites, no longer produced top rankings on Google. In my opinion, Yahoo! has followed suit to some degree, but MSN Search is still living in 2003.

Search engine comparisons aside, are link exchanges worth doing anymore? The truth is that it totally depends on your competition.

Almost two years ago I got into a debate with a fellow SEO who claimed that link exchanges should be scrapped forever as a method of obtaining links, regardless of the site or market. Today, I have been doing link exchanges as a large part of a link campaign for a real estate client, and have seen significant rises in ranking due to that. However, if I were to start doing link exchanges for my SEO firm's website, I could probably exchange until the cows came home and see no jump in rankings. Why? Because competition for the keywords I would be targeting (SEO, Search Engine Optimization, etc.) is at a different level than the aforementioned local real estate market. The SEO community submit articles, buy links, pay for directory submissions, and more. A bunch of link exchanges won't get a site to crack the top 100 in this market.

If the strategy of the top sites in a field is mainly participation in forum discussion with linked signatures and swapping links with unrelated sites, then simply doing a higher quantity of such basic tasks would put your site at the top of the rankings. Of course, submitting articles and paying for quality directory listings would be an even quicker, sure-fire way to the top, but that's besides the point. It all depends on what your top competitors are doing.

A Beef With Search Results..

2006-11-23T00:41:00.000-05:00

As I was searching tonight for oil pastel techniques on Google, I became frustrated with the results. The site in the first position was terrific. It explained several different ways of using oil pastels and provided illustrations to go along with it. Curious as to what other sites had to offer, I hit 'back' in my browser to have a look at the other Google results. I then clicked on three sites in a row that were nothing but a page of outgoing links to other sites on oil pastels.

Now, here is where I see a problem with Google's results. If I had searched for say, "oil pastel resources", then I could understand why I was getting a list of further links. But I already got the list of links to sites when I did the Google search! I consider myself the "average web surfer" to a degree - I don't want to spend forever clicking through links to get to what I want.

The bottom line is that Google could have provided the end result in the SERPs instead of adding an extra step to my search. This is how AdSense gets abused. When someone can set up a site, optimize it using ethical means (use relevant text, get quality incoming links, etc.) and have it displayed on the first page of Google results simply for the reason of making advertising money.

Alright..

/End rant.

Google Maps Telephone Service

2006-11-20T18:24:00.000-05:00

When you search for businesses using Google Maps, you're given the option to "Call" the business next to the phone number listing. When you click on it, Google asks you to supply your phone number. It then calls you and connects you directly to the business. Google pays for the calls, even any long distance fees, unless you are using a cell phone which charges you for airtime usage.

Open Directory Project Listings in the Search Results

2006-06-13T17:10:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that some Google datacenters are showing DMOZ titles or descriptions for your site's listing in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). The interesting thing about this is that it seems to change depending on what keyphrase you search for.

As an example, let's look at an informational giclee printing site, greatgiclee.com. We'll first do a search on Google for 'giclee' (no quotes):

http://64.233.167.99/search?hl=en&q=giclee&btnG=Google+Search

At the moment, the site is listed #7 and its title and description are:

Giclee
Technical and marketing advice on giclee printmaking for painters and photographers.

That is DMOZ information.

The second search is for 'giclee printing' (no quotes):

http://64.233.167.99/search?q=giclee+printing&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N

The #4 result shows greatgiclee.com's listing as:

Giclee
The aim is to educate the artist and enthusiast on fine art inkjet giclée printing/reproduction. I will detail how to get into giclee printing, ...

While the title is still from DMOZ, the description is a snippet of text from the home page. In my opinion, if Google feels that the DMOZ info is more relevant to a user's search phrase, it will display it instead of any on-site content.

That being said, wouldn't it be a good idea for webmasters to have some control over that, save for trying to get their DMOZ listing updated? Luckily, the folks at MSN have provided just that. You can now add the following meta tag to your pages and have your MSN Search listing not use DMOZ data:

Alternatively, this one can be used for all search engines, however no other engines have confirmed they support this yet:

PayPal has problems

2006-06-09T14:16:00.000-04:00

After reading a post by Alan Meckler of Jupitermedia (you can visit his blog at http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler/) I remembered how horrible my last customer service experience with the people at PayPal was and thought I would share. Although this isn't directly related to Search Engine Optimization, PayPal is used by many SEO and web development firms as a method of accepting payment.

As Alan pointed out, you never get the same representative twice. It was blantantly obvious that the people at PayPal didn't even read my question, but instead cut and pasted a generic response into their reply to me. I went back and forth about six times and it was like trying to grab a 5 year old's attention while he is holding a red balloon in one hand, cotton candy in the other, all while walking through Disneyland. I decided I'd wasted enough time and picked up the phone and called them.

Not only do they not provide a toll free number to reach them at, but it takes far too long to speak to an actual human. When I finally got a real, live human being, he was very helpful and fixed the issue in 10 minutes for me. I told him about my email frustration and I also submitted a formal complaint to PayPal about it. A month and a half later and I still haven't received a response. (I'm not holding my breath)

My advice is to nix email and get PayPal on the phone. You'll be pulling your hair out for weeks otherwise.

Google Algorithm Update in the Works?

2006-06-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

So it looks like Google may be rolling out a new set of search results after half of their datacenters have been showing significantly changed results over the past several weeks. It's all just speculation at the moment as to how this will affect most web sites, or what the main differences are in the rankings and new algo specifics. My opinion is that this update will be related quite a bit to the recent indexing issues and the Big Daddy update.

Still no update to PageRank yet, or backlinks. The last PR update was on April 4th.

Speaking of PageRank, I still think too many people overemphasize the importance of it. It does not affect Google rankings directly but as part of the overall algorithm. I wrote this article a few years ago regarding Google PageRank, but it still has some relevance even today.

Speaking of indexing issues, as an example, a web site had over 600 pages listed in Google two months ago and then lost them all except for the home page. There were only white hat SEO techniques used and even Google friendly measures such as signing up for Sitemaps and Froogle were employed. The result is that a very visitor-oriented page, a Bratt Decor furniture category, was removed.

There are thousands of other people affected by the same issue. My advice to anyone in a similar predicament is to:

- continue to get good quality, relevant incoming links to the site.

- pay for directory listings at places such as Yahoo!, bCentral, Business.com as it adds an element of legitimacy to the website. Google even suggests on their Webmaster Help Center that you should pay Yahoo! for a directory listing. A very telling statement considering Yahoo! is a direct competitor of theirs.

- thoroughly analyze the code of the web site to make sure it is as clean as possible. Quicker load times, CSS instead of HTML formatting, and no broken links can go a long way in making your site appealing to Google's robots.

- and a no brainer, don't post to link farms, use doorway pages or cloaking methods. This is the quickest way to get banned by search engines.

If your site is designed and optimized by the book, there is no reason you shouldn't see any indexing or ranking issues resolved within time.

Google Update

2006-06-02T09:02:00.000-04:00

This won't come as a surprise to those who follow the wheelings and dealings at Google closely, however, those who don't may have a little trepidation at the news.

Google is having some problems indexing web sites. A lot of web sites. A client of mine has been caught in this and there is seemingly nothing I can do except wait it out. There is a ton of speculation out there as to the reason behind it, but the one that keeps popping up is many of the web pages indexed during the Big Daddy update of last year have been deleted temporarily. If your web site was new to the world around November/December of 2005, you may be feeling the effects of this.

At first I was shocked, as I consider myself to follow search engine guidelines exactly as they should. Trying to go through every possible reason for why this was happening, I thought, "Ok, let's start at the beginning." And by beginning, that meant going to Google like a rookie and viewing their Webmaster Guidelines.

As I read through them, I noticed how some of Google's suggestions were not being used by many web sites I came across. I thought this would be a good idea for an article, and thus, Google Webmaster Guidelines You May Be Overlooking, was born.

It was only a matter of days after I wrote it that SEO-News.com picked it up and featured it on their home page as well as included it in their newsletter.

Anyway, moving back to the issue at Google... Another problem is that the Supplemental Index keeps flip-flopping with its data. Some days pages show up, other days its gone. This is not a big deal for most, as the Supplemental Index rarely returns results relevant to the popular search terms (excessive alliteration not intended).

And yet another bug is the site: operator. It hasn't been working since around May 19th for certain domains that contain punctuation (such as hyphens) and if you leave a / after your domain.

It has been said by a member on WebmasterWorld.com that Google had been holding onto old data for 3 years and may now be only keeping it for 9 - 12. The old content was surely useless for the most part, so I suspect it was too much of a drain on their resources.

And to top it all off, there seems to be a significant shift in rankings from datacenter to datacenter. A lot of activity like this makes you think Google is going to roll out an update on the live rankings soon. In fact, in mid May the live rankings did shift for a very short time, and many site owners that had great positions for months found their site nowhere to be found. That was corrected after about 24 hours to reflect the old data.

I'm keeping my eye on you, Google...

Welcome to my Search Engine Optimization Blog

2006-05-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

My name's John Metzler and I have been in the search engine optimization business since 2001. I set up this blog to share free knowledge of SEO and Internet marketing through FreshPromo.ca as well as to promote search engine optimization services through SEOTampa.com. I've been in the business of promoting web sites on the search engines since 2001 and have helped countless businesses all over the world reach their online goals. I've given trade show presentations, been interviewed by a major technology magazine and frequently have articles featured in leading web development newsletters such as SiteProNews and WebProNews.

After co-founding a web development/SEO firm in 2001 I was involved in many aspects of the business which included training new staff members, managing link campaigns and onsite search engine marketing, customer service roles and more. FreshPromo was established in 2005 as my own venture after four happy, challenging and successful years at my previous company. My goal with FreshPromo was to gain recognition in the industry as a leader and provider of free tools, resources, and articles. I continue to improve the web site as a useful resource for visitors looking for free information on search engine optimization. The commercial goals are being realized now in the Spring of 2006 with SEOTampa.com.

There are discussion forums: forums.freshpromo.ca
An article database: knowledge.freshpromo.ca/seo-articles
And a free SEO tools section currently being developed: knowledge.freshpromo.ca/seo-tools

I welcome comments and questions and will try to update this as frequently as possible.