IdeaPro.com

Over the last 2 or 3 years, there has been some discussion of the length of a URL, as it relates to pagerank or Google PR value. Some of us SEO experts support the longer URLs, while some tend to go for the shorter URLs. At IdeaPro, we believe that in general, longer URLs tend to increase Google pagerank. Here’s why…

How you end up with long urls

A long URL usually comes about because most automatic Content Management System software platforms such as Wordpress or Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla and so on have a setting or plug-in that magically produces really long URLs for each post. Sometimes you have to switch them into a search-engine-friendly mode. Of course, some web-masters actually create the document “name” in HTML manually — wow, image that!

CMS “search engine friendly” settings do this by simply taking the TITLE tag of the post of page and using it to produce a long URL that includes the main words from the title as a url-line or document name, buried down in the permalink for the page or post.

NOTE: A good plug-in for Wordpress that lets you control these factors easily is All-in-One-SEO. We suggest installing it for all Wordpress users.

For this post you’re reading now, the full search engine friendly, SEO’d URL might look something like this:

http://www.ideapro.com/seo-tips-do-long-urls-hurt-or-help-increase-google-pagerank/

This is usually considered okay by most of us “seo experts” or “web marketing guru’s”. The reason? Because it does seem to work well most of the time.

How We Got a #1 Position for “Generate Backlinks” in Google

For example, do a search in Google for one of our previous posts or articles “How to Generate Backlinks to Increase Your Google Pagerank,” which we wrote on December 6, 2006 about 1-1/2 years ago. If you search for “generate backlinks” in Google today July-2-2008, you will see that post in the #1 position, and #2 for “generating backlinks”.

Not too shabby, considering there are 3,870,000 other web-sites who are competing for this term in the Google search results. And, most of these lower-ranked sites were actually written by other SEO companies and web marketing companies. Beating them isn’t easy! The page has continued to pull-in good traffic for 18 months. This traffic is free — we didn’t buy a single click-thru visitor!

HINT — Want us to help you increase your web traffic with better free Google search results? Drop us a quick email using our Contact Us form. We work fast and our prices are reasonable.

The permalink URL for the page looks like this:

http://www.ideapro.com/how-to-generate-backlinks-to-increase-your-google-pagerank

If you scroll down the Google search results page that comes up on this search, you will notice that almost every single top-ranked site listed uses at least one of these 2 search term keywords in their URL. Some of the URLs are quite long. See a screenshot of today’s search results below…

How IdeaPro.com outranks 3,870,000 other sites

Ideapro.com is #1 rated in a
Google search for GENERATE BACKLINKS
in organic free search results as of July 2, 2008

Only 2 of the top-20 SERPs don’t include at least one of the terms. The higher ranked sites use both terms. Sites not using the terms in the URL rank lower. Sites using the term in the TITLE, description or on page content, and URL rank highest. Sites with the term(s) actually in the top-level domain or “term1term2.com” might rank even higher.

This may not be conclusive, but it IS a STRONG hint: Make sure your top keywords appear in the “name” of the page, so that they will appear in the URL. Copying the TITLE tag down into the URL appears to be the best policy.

Notice a few interesting things:

1. The length of the actual resulting URL does not appear to matter, if it includes the searched for terms.
2. The order of the terms does matter. They should appear in the order they are most likely to be searched for by the users targeted.
3. The complete phrase ranks higher than only part of the phrase. Using just one keyword of the 2 terms ranks lower.
4. Using hyphens or dashes to separate the words or using no-hyphens does not matter. Either works. You can simply run all your words together in the permalink, or use dashes — as far as Google is concerned. However, humans and other search engines may like the hyphens. That’s why I say use them.
5. Spell everything correctly. Spelling matters. Bad spelling gets lower rankings or no ranking at all.
6. Notice that none of the highly ranked URLs have really-really super long lists of keywords. You can believe that there are thousands of sites that have such extra-long URLs, but none of them show up. So, keep your URL to a “reasonable length” — something like 10-12 words tops — 6-8 is probably better

So, use long URLs. They don’t hurt, and they do give you a chance to match more searches. You can use a couple of different basic keyword phrases in one title or page name.

For example, this page title of the post you’re reading includes several popular keyword phrases:

• seo tips
• long urls
• increase pagerank

This post might also end up highly ranked for various combinations of these key phrases, like “seo pagerank tips”, “long url seo”, “pagerank seo tips”, “pagerank seo help”, etc.

Want Professional SEO Help?

If you want help in search engine optimizing your web-site, we’re available for a reasonable fee $50 and up, payable through Paypal. Usually only takes us a day or two to get the job done. Use our Contact Us form.

Or you can always do-it-yourself for free! Either way, happy SEO marketing!

We say this is “guaranteed”. Okay, maybe we should have said “probable” or “likely”. After all, the only things in life that are guaranteed are death and taxes, right? But, this is, according to Google marketing experts or engineers like Matt Cutts and others, the right way to promote your new site and give it the best chance to get a good page ranking. (Matt didn’t specifically endorse my recommendations below, but these are the KINDS OF THINGS he has said in the past, less a detail here and there.)

So, you’ve just established a brand new shiny web-site. Chances are that after a month or two, it got a nice Pagerank from Google. Boy were you pleased, right?

Then something terrible happened… the page-rank it used to have suddenly disappeared or dropped down a notch or two. What happened?

Assuming that you’ve not done anything wrong or nasty, there is a good chance that what you’re seeing is all very natural.

Here’s what happened, and more important — what you can do to fix it!

Google often gives a new site a “first look rating” that’s pretty high… sometimes a PR-4 or 5, which seems outstanding. This is based on a couple things…

1. What the site’s first page has on it, the “contents” or “about-ness” of the page
2. What the overalll structure of the domain underneath the front page is like

These two factors only consider what the contents and structure of the ON PAGE elements are like. If everything is pretty good, your new site will get a “first look” rating that reflects Google’s estimate of what the site MIGHT deserve, based on some mathematical algorithm that we’re not party too, naturally, compared to other sites which were similarly-well (or not well, as the case may be) and those sites’ keyword relevancy outlines.

Ahem.

What that means is, a first look rating is basically worthless, or nearly so.

As you’ve read above, the REAL and more-or-less permanent (nothing is permanent these days) Page-rank will be based on a very complicated list of factors, probably only 40% of which have anything at all to do with what is actually ON YOUR PAGE. In fact, this figure may even be lower, considering the big changes in Google’s ranking system last October and again in December, March, etc.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR “ON SITE” CHANGES

Your site probably looks okay, from what I could see in the code on the pages… looking at the source itself. I do have a couple of recommendations that apply to most new sites:

1) Remove any links to off-site page in your footers, site-wide. Move them to a credits page or about us page. Do not show them on every page. You don’t need those silly W3C buttons, page counters and other credits and links that amateurs often put at the bottom of their pages. Even “credibility logos” are probably a bad idea. Move them to the About Us page — anywhere but at the bottom of every page on your site. They create duplicated content and make it look like you’re selling links — which is a no-no.

2) Religiously apply a rel=”external nofollow” label inside EVERY external link that points off your site. Do this on every page. This tells Google that you are not selling links, which they are very sensitive about these days. Your links will end up looking like this…

<a href=”http://www.somesite.com/” rel=”external nofollow”>Some Site or Keyword Here</a>

You can also put a target=”_blank” label inside the tags, which tells the user’s browser to open the linked site’s page in a new window. Optional.

IncredibleHelp, a moderator at WebProWorld.com suggests that I’ve gone too far with this instruction. After investigating around the web, I think his remark that I’ve gone too far is most likely correct. So, we might want to apply the NOFOLLOW tags merely to external sites that we don’t trust. — Thanks, Incredible!

QUICK STEPS TO ENSURE YOU GET RE-RANKED

You need to build quality back-links pointing to your new site. These can be accomplished quickly and will cost you absolutely nothing. Depending on how well and how quickly you can write some new articles, this should only take you a couple of hours, from start to finish.

What you’re going to do is create 3 high quality back-links from 3 new free blogs, plus you’re going to write 2 free press releases or articles on highly ranked free press release or article sites.

CREATING THE FREE BLOGS

These are the 3 most popular free blogging systems:

1. Blogger.com — Pagerank: 10? (Google owns it!)
2. WordPress.com — Pagerank: 9
3. LiveJournal.com — Pagerank: 8

On each one of those, you will create a new account/blog.

1) Name the blog something related to your site, one of your main keyword phrases.

2) On each of these blogs, write one nice long article or “post” about your main topic related to your NEW or TARGET site. Do NOT write about the target site itself, nor any product you may be selling. Write these posts about the details of (your new site main keywords or topic), details about how to do things, the history of the craft, where to find good (your topic here), how to use (your topic), etc. Write about some related to your new target site, but avoid repeating stuff that’s already on that site. Do NOT duplicate something from any other site on the web, especially your own site. Make it completely, 100% original content. Organize the structure of the post nicely with a headline, sub-headings and topical paragraphs that reflect the keyword phrases (3 or 4 of them) that are similar to those of your main site. Make these posts at least 500 words. Longer is better. Remember NOT to duplicated phrases, sentences, headlines or anything between any of these new blogs and your main target site.

3) Near the top of your new article-post on each of these blogs, insert a link around the number-1 most important keyword phrase that your main site is about. Make this link point directly at the front page of your site, and do NOT “nofollow” this link. Be sure this link is in the first paragraph at the top of the page or post. Put it INSIDE the paragraph, not above or below it. Make sure that this link is surrounded by related “good content”. Do not put any other links on this post that point to any other site. Only one link, and it points to your target main site. Near the top of the post. In a well constructed paragraph. Check this post/article over carefully to ensure that it is spelled properly and uses excellent grammar. That’s important to Google.

4) Save that post and “publish” it so that it is available to the world.

If you’ve done this well on the 3 free blog sites above, these 3 posts will earn you some nice rating value from Google. You don’t need to “publicize” these blogs. They do that automatically, all by themselves. Blog technology magically notifies the world about each post you make in seconds.

There is only one more thing to do…

WRITE TWO PRESS RELEASES ABOUT YOUR MAIN SITE

Now you can write about your main site itself. Here’s the way we’re going to make these press releases “news worthy”. We’re going to debunk an idea or thought that people may have about your industry.

What does “debunking” mean?

To debunk is to take something that is commonly thought about a topic, and to prove conclusively that this thinking is NOT TRUE.

By doing this, you will guarantee that your press releases get accepted by the free press release sites, and that they will ultimately be READ by readers over the months and years to come!

Another thing, debunking is a negative. Readers and editors alike will find it irresistible. They get sick and tired of all the “positive” junk that is all over the web — fake press releases that are filled with repetitive claims about how wonderful something is. Debunking works!

In your press release you are going to quote yourself as the owner of your targeted main site as an “expert” in the field. You will say whatever needs to be said to disprove the common misconception that you are debunking. At the top and bottom of your press release, you will refer people to your main site, where they can find more information.

You will write these two press releases in a way that the most important stuff is near the top, and less important stuff is nearer the bottom. Mention your target site 2 or 3 times without links. Put a link somewhere near the top (if they allow it). Otherwise, they will give you one single link at the bottom as the “contact” person for the press release.

Here is a pretty-good list of well-ranked “free press release” sites. Most will try to sell you a wider distribution for $30 or more. Don’t do it. Just use their free distribution. You will have to sign up and give them your email address and site name, etc. Do it. Then submit the press releases you’ve written.

Here is high-to-low-Pagerank sorted list of some great “free press release” web-sites to try… it’s fairly current (as of this writing), but some sites may have gone “pay only” instead of “free”, by the time you read this article. Check them out. I recommend as “first bets” these — PRWeb.com (PR-7), NewswireToday.com (PR-6), PR.com (PR-6), PRLeap.com (PR-6), PRLog.com (PR-6) and finally PressBox.co.uk (PR-6). There is no limit to how many you can submit to, but those are great places to start. We recommend writing an all-new press release for each site, since it’s not nice to create duplicated content on the Internet, right? Here is the full list:

Pageranks were accurate on June 30, 2008:

1. PRWeb.com - PR 7
2. NewswireToday.com - PR 6
3. PR.com - PR 6
4. PRLeap.com - PR 6
5. PRlog.com - PR 6
6. PressBox.co.uk - PR 6
7. 1888PressRelease.com - PR 5
8. ClickPress.com - PR 5
9. eCommWire.com - PR 5
10. Free-News-Release.com - PR 5
11. Free-Press-Release.com - PR 5
12. Free-Press-Release-Center.info - PR 5
13. IndiaPRWire.com - PR 5
14. PRFree.com - PR 5
15. PRzoom.com - PR 5
16. PressAbout.com - PR 5
17. PressReleasePoint.com - PR 5
18. TheOpenPress.com - PR 5
19. AddPR.com - PR 4
20. FreePressReleases.co.uk - PR 4
21. i-Newswire.com - PR 4
22. MediaSyndicate.com - PR 4
23. PR9.net - PR 4
24. PR-Inside.com - PR 4
25. PRCompass.com - PR 4
26. PRurgent.com - PR 4
27. PressMethod.com - PR 4
28. Yudkin.com - PR 4
29. 24-7 Press Release - PR 3
30. BizEurope.com - PR 3
31. FreePressIndex.com - PR 3
32. MyFreePR.com - PR 3
33. PressRelease.com - PR 1
34. Express-Press-Release.com - PR n/a
35. FreePressRelease.co.cc - PR n/a
36. PageRelease.com - PR n/a
37. PressFlow.co.uk - PR n/a
38. TechPRSpider.com - PR n/a

Just pick 2 or 3 of these outfits that appeal to you. Visit their own front or home pages to see which of them is the highest page-ranked by Google at the moment. Of course this changes from time to time. So be sure to check. Give your best written press release to the highest ranked site.

Wait a few days. They usually publish your press release 2-3 days after it is submitted.

A few hours spent now the way I’ve outlined here will pay off big dividends in the months and years to come.

And, you have violated no “Google Rules”. Everything is white hat. Just do the steps, and wait. It does take time. How long? Well, maybe only a few weeks, but usually several months.

Good luck and happy promoting!

A first-edition, somewhat less detailed version of this post was created as one of my comments on WebProWorld.com. That site is a great web marketing resource for newbies and experts alike.

USA Today June 22, 2008 — The current issue features an interview of Matt Cutts, the famous Google engineer who runs their anti-spam web page monitoring crew. This is the #1 guy in the world to go to when it comes to “what NOT to do” in marketing, designing or optimizing your web pages. Of course, after you subtract the “whatnots” you have a nice list of the “what todos” in designing the legal, Google approved way.

The interview was done in person at Google by Jefferson Graham, a well known USA Today tech-writer.

Here are the 6 most-important LEGAL web-site optimization tips that Jefferson Graham pulled out of Matt Cutts:

(1) Include the most popular phrases that people would probably type-in to the Google search bar somewhere on your page. Yes, people often forget this. Sad, but true.

Matt tells of attending a user conference recently where a web-site owner asked “How can I get people who search for ‘San Diego chiropractor’ to find my site?” And, incredibly, when Matt asked him if he had that phrase on his front page, he said that he didn’t.

Oooooooooh-boy. Well so we want to “spotlight the most probable search terms on our page” he says. Include them in the page in headlines, top paragraphs, etc. Make the page is “mainly about” exactly that phrase.

(2) Be sure to mention the main things people will search for to find you in your TITLE page header tag. “Think about what people are going to want to type to find your site,” said Cutts.

I.E. If your customers are most often looking for a San Diego Chiropractor, be sure that you start your title tag with exactly that phrase. This is the title that people will see when and if your page is listed in the search result page after they search:

<title> San Diego Chiropractor - The Relief HQ</title>

Note that the actual NAME of the business comes AFTER the keywords. This is important. No matter how proud you are of your name, it will always come after the words people are likely to be searching for.

You can do some research on related phrases to find out what is the most popular search term using online SEO tools (click to see my category called “SEO Tools”). Another good way to find out what others think is to ask your customers. “What would you type into Google to find people like me, or businesses like mine?” You may be surprised to hear what real people tell you. Don’t suggest anything to them. Just ask the question this way… “If you didn’t already know about me, exactly what would you type into Google to find a business like mine?” Then shut up. Listen. Write down exactly what they say.

Writing vs. Saying

A better way would be to have them write it down. So, hand your customer a pen and paper, then ask them the question. That way they may surprise you with different spellings and word choices. People often say one thing, but type another. You want to know what they would type, not say aloud. These will suggest new ways to subdivide your page.

Now back to Matt’s suggestions:

(3) Be sure you write a short but accurate DESCRIPTION tag in your page header that also includes the most likely search term that people might use to find use. For the example above, start with the same keyword phrase. Then make the phrase work in a short sentence that uses a couple of other related possible phrases. You can get those other related phrases from the customer list you developed above, or from using online SEO Tools (see my pages on those linked above).

An example DESCRIPTION TAG in your home page header might look like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”San Diego Chiropractor certified in acupuncture, nutritional counseling, pain management and sports injuries. Affordable fees, established in 1973.”/>

You should limit your character count to be below 160, since that is all that Google or most other search engines will display. Smaller descriptions tend to make the main or first few words more important, which may help move you up in the search result listings for that phrase.

The Google Search Results Display

This is the way your listing will show up on the Google search result pages, after someone does a search for something like “San Diego chiropractor”:

San Diego Chiropractor - The Relief HQ
San Diego Chiropractor certified in acupuncture, nutritional counseling, pain management and sports injuries. Affordable fees, established in 1973.
www.yourdomain.com/ - 46k - Cached - Similar Pages

So, what about the “keywords” tag?

Don’t worry that MUCH about the keywords tag,” says Matt. “But there are a lot of other tags that you can use…” he adds, but he only mentions the description tag.

Pretty important point. What other tags? Well, fix the description and you’ve done most of the work, after you’ve established a great title tag that was based on the #1 most likely to be typed search term.

Notice that he doesn’t say NOT to use the keyword tag. So,I’d say use it — but don’t spend “much time” on it. Add a few keyword phrases that come up 2nd, 3rd or 4th on the list you developed, then stop. Do NOT use this to add irrelevant terms, and do NOT add too many of the terms that you think might be a tiny bit useful.

If you over-do this list, Google may actually subtract importance to your main keywords. But that idea is for another SEO article. I think that Matt is hinting here… he’s saying not to spend much time on it, meaning that it should not bee too long, and should not delve down too deeply into the less important keywords on our page. Shorter is better. Keep it simple.

(4) Get other sites to link back to you. You probably think that this is the hardest thing to do, right?

Not according to Matt Cutts! He points out one easy, simple way to get backlinks that help you promote your main “San Diego chiropractor” site — start a blog and post often.

Where to start a FREE blog

He suggests starting a free blog at a free blogging site like Blogger.com (which is owned by Google, interestingly). Of course there are many other similar free blogging sites, like Wordpress.com or LiveJournal.com.

The Most Popular Free Blog Sites:

• http://www.blogger.com/
• http://www.wordpress.com/
• http://www.livejournal.com/

These sites give you a real working blog that you can post to quickly and often. Matt suggests building good content on these sites that is UNIQUE and fun to read that relates to the subject of your main site and link back to that site. He points out that you should write new articles on this free blog often, so that others will come and you’ll build a community. Then as both sites grow in popularity, the importance of your primary site will grow.

(5) Register for free tools. Matt says there are 2 main tools every webmaster needs: A sitemap and Google’s analytics tools. You can get them both free. These tools help Google find your content faster.

Getting a Google Sitemap

Cutts points out that whereas it may take several months for Google to discover and crawl your pages without a Google sitemap, it can happen in only a few days if you merely produce a properly formatted sitemap of all your pages. That way they know which page to look for and where it is located on your site. You can produce a free, correctly formatted sitemap file here:

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Registering with Google Webmaster Tools

You will submit your sitemap file to Google by using their free Google Webmaster Tools, which you can find here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

On that page are links to their FAQs pages, the Tools login where you can register for their tools, and links to submit your new contents to Google.

Once you register as a webmaster, you will submit your new sitemap and begin to monitor how Google crawls your pages, which terms people use to find your site, and so on.

(6) Don’t overdo it adds Matt. Cutts warns people to avoid so-called “keyword stuffing” techniques. These tricks try to use the same keyword phrases over and over again throughout the page. The phrases are jammed into ALT tags inside images, into hidden text areas that are colored like the background or made very small, and similar tricks. This can get your site actually banned — removed from the Google index. It may not even show up at all, once it has been banned. So “use the keywords two or three times” and let the copy flow naturally”. “Weave the two or three phrases you want to be known for naturally into the page,” he suggests.

That’s a word to the wise from the guy who leads the team that removes offending web-sites from the Google index. We should pay attention to him when he cautions us about something… he knows what he’s talking about. Google pays him — and you can be sure he’s paid well — to make sure that we don’t stuff our pages with keywords.

That’s the list! Six easy (sort of) ways to promote our sites. Directly from one of the world’s experts.

And, the nice thing is, this is all free to anyone who will take the time to do the work.

Good luck to you!

—–

This review, was entirely written by us with our own editorial comments, and quotations taken from the original USA story. Our review first appeared on Qassia.com. You may want to read the original story in USA Today, or watch the video of the Matt Cutts - Jefferson Graham Interview, or visit Matt Cutt’s Personal Blog

If you’ve been studying dozens of ‘Search Engine Optimization’ techniques and applying them to your web pages, chances are that you are over-doing it.

Like a lot of things on the web, what is true today was not true a few months or years ago. Have you been building web-sites for 2, 3 or more years? If you learned how to optimize your pages for highest rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ASK and so on, chances are you learned your craft a bit too well. The web-marketing world has evolved into a new beast in just the last 2-3 years. The SEO rules have changed.

Read through some of our older posts or pages about how to optimize websites or pages. As recent as 2006, we were telling you to build short 150-350 word, punchy, keyword stuffed pages, using each and every SEO trick conceivable (as long as it was ‘legal’ or ‘white hat’ of course). Today, you want to learn different rules. The number one rule is — don’t over-optimize!

Signs That You’ve Over-Optimized

Here are some of the signs that you’ve over-worked and over-edited your site, pages and html code:

1. Your TITLE TAG perfectly matches your H1 TAG, word for word
2. You have carefully repeated the keyword phrases from the TITLE and H1 TAGS in your H2 subheadings, with exactly the same spelling and word endings
3. You have repeated the exact keyword phrases at least 5, 6, or more times throughout your content
4. You have repeated your TITLE and H1 wording inside the ALT and TITLE TAGS of images — a dead giveaway!
5. Your links to inside-site pages are stuffed with repetitions of your keyword phrases
6. You have also stuffed keywords into off-site links
7. You have virtually no off-site links, even to related content sites
8. Your pages have long lists of similar keywords, all built around a common root that is found in your TITLE/H1 tags
9. You have repeated your main keyword phrases in the actual page name in front of the .htm or .html or .php extension ending, separated by hyphens or dashes, underscores, or perhaps all run together without spaces or dashed of any kind
10. You have created top level domains using your main keywords
11. You have created sub-domains such as ‘keywordphrase.domain.com’
12. You have placed your pages inside directories or folders which are themselves named with keywords, such as — http://keyword2.keyword1.com/keyword3/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.html’
13. Your pages’ content are usually relatively short, say from 200 to 500 words
14. Every single keyword and phrase in your TITLE and/or H1 tags is featured as the leading or first-word of an H2 sub-heading
15. You have several links on other pages that use the same keywords from your TITLE tag to point into each page

Years ago, these tricks seemed the right way to ensure that your page appeared at the top of search engine search result pages for targeted keyword phrases. But things have changed. And boy-oh-boy have they changed!

How Automatic Search Engine Optimization Changed the Web

What happened is that Google began to notice that millions and millions of pages began to show up around the web with high ‘relevancy scores’ for millions of keywords. The proliferation of SEO businesses and ‘web marketing experts’ began to average-up the relevancy contest. Millions of us began to understand how to write pages and design web-sites that were extremely keyword dense and potentially high-ranked for target phrases. The web itself was evolving into an optimized medium. Search engines’ job of finding out which page was the most relevant for any particular search was getting harder and harder.

To make matters worse, at first dozens, then hundreds, and nowadays thousands of automatic page-optimizing software programs appeared. There were plugins and scripts that worked so well that even an amateur could build truly focused, highly dense keyword stuffed pages.

Even though these simple techniques were innocent enough and ‘white hat’, when they began to spread throughout the web, they ended up producing a world where there were very few stand-outs.

Picture a world where everyone wears a crown of jewels and gold. Which one is the King?

Producing Sites and Pages That Win Today’s New Relevancy SEO Rules

Think of the web the way Google and the other web crawler robots see it. With so many crowns, who is the king for any particular search term? Which site wins the ranking and gets listed in the top-10 search results, or maybe even in the top-5?

What SEO Techniques Work Now?

Here are our best guesses about what seems to be working now, in early 2008:

1. Never repeat exactly the same keywords, in the same order, in your TITLE and H1 tags
2. Use similar words, and words that have different endings of the root keywords in your H2 and H3 sub-headings
3. Make your pages considerably larger. Small pages used to look better to the search engine crawlers, since the old robots could crawl them faster. Also they used to appear more dense for each of the main keywords. These factors have changed. The web as a whole is bigger. You need more content to compete with other pages for each of your keywords. Pages with thousands of words work better in today’s over-optimized, keyword-dense relevancy game. And, the search engines are themselves faster and more efficient. They can handle your bigger, richer, longer pages. Content-content-content. The SE robots are hungry for it!
4. Be sure to point several of your on-site links into each of your pages. Don’t use the same keywords in each link. Make them different, so they appear natural and organic. Put these links inside paragraphs of appropriate content. Avoid long lists of links.
5. Build more keyword-appropriate links to inside pages of your site from other sites that are themselves related by subject matter to your site. Be sure these links are not repeated from site to site. Make each one different, and place them inside of a related-content paragraph if possible.
6. Never build pages that obey ALL of the SEO rules we’ve listed at the top of this article. If your pages look too perfect, they will be considered as artificial, SEO traps. If they do show up in the SERPs (search engine ranking positions), they will be listed near the bottom. This is especially true for short pages, and pages with low on-site internal links and few or no off-site inbound links pointing into them.
7. The ideal page will look like this: A long page with at least 1,000 or more words, several relevant inbound off-site links using different keywords for each link, several internal links also using different keywords located inside relevant content paragraphs, no ‘keyword stuffing’ tricks like keyword filled ALT or TITLE tags inside IMAGE tags, and no more than a couple of the main keywords used in the URL of the page (including page name, folder or directory, sub-domain, and the top level domain). Highly ranked winning pages in today’s web marketing world will be well-written, properly spelled, grammatically correct pages with 100% unique, fresh content.
8. Today’s successful pages with be manually written, not auto-generated garbage.

Follow those rules and you’ll be near the top for your new pages. However, as you may have noticed, that means that you’ll be doing a lot of writing, and rewriting.

Momma never said it would be easy!

You may have heard of the infamous and much-dreaded 950 PENALTY. Some call it a BOTTOM OF SEARCH RESULTS PENALTY.

What is the Goggle 950 Punishment?

This is a penalty, usually only applied to successful websites, that suddenly and without warning pushes all of a site’s pages down below the 950th position for any search result.

Think of that! One day after months or even years of promotional work on your site, all of the Google traffic suddenly goes to the bottom of the 1,000 results that Google will display for any search. Wow.

When you used to come up #1, #5, #20 or anywhere near the top for any particular search, now each and every search anyone in the world does will show up at the last page of the results. Gosh!

What causes this Bottom-of-Results-Pages Google Penalty?

Well, of course Google itself doesn’t say… precisely. But they do give you some very good hints. You are told never to duplicate content — don’t copy other peoples’ pages, their sentences, their exact phraseology, or even lists of links from other sites. Don’t copy period!

Okay, say you don’t copy. However, do you have hundreds of links to affiliate programs on your site? For example, does the site consist largely of page after page of Amazon books and their titles and descriptions? Or, do you sell thousands of eBay products? If you do, you will find that Google will eventually punish you for all this duplicated content. Maybe not today, or not tomorrow, but they will catch up to you.

If the titles and descriptions of products you’re selling are used by other people all over the ‘net, you can be sure that you ARE in fact duplicating other peoples’ content. That’s a no-no, and Google will not report pages with duplicated content near the top of search results.

If this happens to you, how do you get out of the Penalty Box?

Simply remove the offending links, stolen (or borrowed), the copied titles and descriptions, etc. Rewrite them if possible. Remove the duplicated stuff and in a few weeks you’ll see Google auto-magically relist your pages.

Assuming that this happened innocently, and that you never intended to actually copy other sites’ content, you may be surprised when the penalty is applied to you. You may think that it is unfair. However, think of it this way: What is a search engine worth that simply shows lists of thousands of the same pages when someone does a search? If you search for a books sold by Amazon, do you want to see a list of 10,000 pages where you can buy it?

Of course not. So, Google sends those duplicated pages into oblivion.

If you want to sell books from Amazon, you’ll have to find a way to provide unique titles, headings, descriptions, reviews, etc. for each and every book you sell. If you don’t, you’ll end up in the 950 penalty or bottom-of-search-results listings.

Web marketers beware!

Increasing your web site popularity, raising your page hit count, augmenting your unique visitor traffic, and elevating your Google Pagerank is a big job. The job of designing and creating effective web pages that rank highly in search engine result pages is not conceptually difficult.

If you own a simple site with only one or two products or services to promote, you may want to do it yourself (see “How to Design Web Pages to Promote your Own Website, and SEO or Search Engine Optimization Rules”, on the next page).

However if you already own or you are going to build a web site with hundreds or even thousands of products and services to describe and sell online, you have a truly overwhelming job. This kind of page optimization must be done automatically. That’s what we specialize in at IdeaPro.com.

Our automatic search engine opitimization rates are reasonable, starting as low as $500.00 for smaller web stores. We also offer hourly consultations beginning at $125.00 per hour. A small investment now can provide amazing benefits for months and years to come. Contact us by E-mail.

Top Google Pagerank & Highest Search
Engine Results & Page Rank Positions
Highest pagerank position in google and other search engine results pages come from good writing about your web site’s subject, your services and products, from the customer’s or reader’s viewpoint. SEO requires keyword research, excellent planning and simple, clear execution of the web page concept.

12 Years of Experience
IdeaPro.com, established in 1996, is an online eCommerce Marketing company that offers Search Engine Optimization technology, and specializes in producing web stores that automatically promote their full catalog of products or services to online search engines.

We Do the Tough Programming Work
Then You Do the Simple Daily Maintenance
You do not need to know anything more than basic HTML to maintain your online store, once we have re-built it around our new optimization system. We provide easy to use online forms to add new products, delete products, or change prices, etc. New changes are instantly and automatically added into your store and are promoted across the web by our system.

We Follow the Rules
There are no hidden or forbidden ‘tricks’ or spam-like approaches used in our software. We are 100% following the accepted web promotion and search engine optimization techniques, as established by the search engines themselves. The reason it works is that it follows the rules. And, it does so effortlessly and automatically… for every product you offer.

TOP TEN PAGE RANKS - FREE

While nobody can guarantee top ten pagerank at Google or Yahoo, following the search engine’s own rules will help you get the best possible search engine results for popular keyword searches. Top 10 search engine listing are the goal everyone seeks. But, the reason they don’t get to the top of results pages is that they don’t follow the rules… it’s that simple!

How IdeaPro.com SEO Technology Works
Our online stores are uniquely designed to optimize each page presented so that they are easily searchable by robot search engine crawlers. As a result of this automatic optimization technology, your store can be easily found by potential customers who are searching at Google.com, Yahoo.com or any of hundreds of other search engines. Click either of those links to see how our client Americal.com shows up for one of their main product lines, which is “inkjet dvd-r”. (We’ve shown a screenshot image of an actual search done on February 15, 2006 for Google and Yahoo to the right - click on the small images to see the search results obtained in a new window.) Our clients do not pay Yahoo nor Google to have those listings show up “#1 on top” or “nearly on top” in the search engines. As our client, our automatic SEO software does the job every day for them.

Contact Us
Contact us by E-mail.