Search engines (Google especially) are constantly tuning their algorithms in order to deliver better and "cleaner" search results for the users.
Any Search Engine algorithm is their trade secret and they are not planning on sharing it with SEO companies. They generally suggest “to create a good website and let the search spiders find it”. All their guidelines and suggestions point to improving your site content and usability for an average website user. They penalize sites for using any kind of deceptive tricks. That makes perfect sense – sort of like a natural selection – the stronger and most deserving ones will survive and make it to the top. Ideally.
However, it is our job to promote our own business and help our clients who chose to employ us to “bump their site up”. We can’t help but wonder what can be done to achieve that. What is Google (or other SE) algorithm is looking at now? At the end, they are looking for well-optimized, reputable, stable and clean-coded sites to push to the top.
A lot of information available to SEOs has been around for years, e.g. building strong back-links, adding fresh content, etc. But most of it is just common sense. On a flip side, if you were a Search Engine company, what kind of criteria would you use for results placement?
SEO is about making your site the best it can be for your users. Make it informative and easy to use for a human and your search ranking will improve – this should be the long term goal for every SEO professional.
While algorithms constantly change, the guidelines stay the same year after year. Following the Guidelines works. It helps your site withstand changes
to Google's algorithms without disappearing because of tricks to attain a high ranking - and they're just basic good design principles.
Here’s some of the SEO tips we pay close attention to when we optimize websites:
* Put target keywords in the page title – most important.
* Put keywords "high" on the page and in the first paragraphs, if possible.
* Watch out for tables, which can "push" text further down the page, making keywords less relevant because they appear lower on the page. Consider using table-less designs. Tables are still OK to use of course, but they are mostly meant for tabular data.
* Use HTML text whenever possible instead of the images displaying text. If possible, replace all your image buttons with CSS formatted links.
* Expand your text references if possible – for example: don't use just "collecting" when it's a page about stamp collecting. Use both words, if possible.
* Avoid image-map-only links from the home page to inside pages. Replace them with traditional HTML links.
* Make sure all java scripts are external (using<script> tag). Otherwise the validators can pick them up as errors.
* Use header tags (H1,H2,etc.) and try to incorporate your main keywords into headers if possible. Only one H1 tag per page should be used. Multiple H1 tags in the same html document may be viewed as spam.
* Add text to Alt attribute for all of your images, but don't stuff it keywords. It may be viewed as spam. Adding visible captions to your images can also go a long way when keywords are incorporated into the text.
* HTML errors can affect your ability to be indexed, and ultimately, ranked. Validate and clean all html pages. Clean HTML is absolutely imperative for search engine indexing. Browsers are extremely forgiving when it comes to displaying pages with "unclean" HTML (unclosed tags, quotation marks, etc.) Search engine spiders are so forgiving. Even something as simple as a missing quote on an attribute (<a href="example.html>) can cause a spider to not index text or a link.
* Always use DOCTYPE Declaration. DOCTYPES are essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers. It is also very important for the search spiders to understand and follow the coding contained on your pages. Add one DOCTYPE to every page of a site.
* Keep navigation good and clean. Make sure there’s always a link back to your home page.
* Avoid using Flash. Search engines cannot read it. If it must be used, try to keep it down to an isolated page element rather than the whole page. If you must use it for splash home pages, add some links and navigation below the fold.
* Add a site map. An old-fashioned HTML site map. It’s search spiders favorite. For larger sites, having segmented site maps is the best way to go.
* Avoid using Frames. The problem with frames – you cannot bookmark a single page or navigate to it.
* Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
* Keep the number of images on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 15). Use CSS instead of large number of spacer images to achieve the layout you want.
* Test a site using a text only browser, which will let you see what most search engine spiders see.
Have questions about SEO? Feel free to contact us at www.greatpointdesigns.com and request a quote.
Site Disappearing from Google
We created a new website for one of our clients. The package included based search engine optimization for 2 main keyword phrases the client was interested in. The site went live. A few weeks later we checked Google for targeted keywords. Wow! Not only we found it on the first page, but it was at the top of it. The first one! We were as happy as we could be… only to find a week later that the site was nowhere to be found… well, nowhere in the first 100 SERPs (search engine result pages).
We have done some research and found out that this search engine phenomenon is called “everflux.” Apparently, it’s been driving SEOs and webmasters crazy since 2002.
It’s Google's constant desire and efforts to keep their search as relevant as possible, especially these days, as Bing is challenging Google SERPs relevance.
In reality, there are two Googles: Google Senior and Google Junior. Senior calculates PR Rank and indexes pages on a monthly basis. Junior is looking for the new stuff only. When Junior comes across a page which content hasn’t been updated in a while, it just moves on. At the end of the indexing process Senior and Junior compare the results. In order to make sure some of the newer stuff is seen, the content Junior knows about is pushed to the top of the results. This is the reason why new site might show up towards the top soon after it’s up. While Senor continues his long update cycle, Junior adds new sites between the updates and guesses the PR. When Senior finally gets to it and does the PR calculation the new site will be given a real PR, which usually is less than the temporary PR.
Here’s what Google has to say about “everflux”:
“If your site is new, or hasn't shown up in Google for long, it may because our "fresh crawl" (which runs each day) was finding your site instead of our main crawl (which runs about once a month). Our "fresh crawl" is a newer feature, and we're still experimenting with which pages to crawl, how deeply to crawl, etc. We even reserve the right to (gasp!) not do a fresh crawl on some days because we're doing tests or reviewing new code. Someone wrote in recently and said "my site got in Google three weeks ago, and you've dropped me four times!" Nope, it's just that we don't always crawl the same pages in our fresh crawl, and we don't always crawl to the same depth. As we do a full crawl of the web, we find most of the sites from our fresh crawl and put them in our regular index. My advice on our fresh crawl is to view it as a nice "bonus" on top of Google's deep index. Users can always search our full index, but sometimes we can serve up even fresher pages as an extra nicety.”
If your site pages (or certain keywords) suddenly disappear from Google SERP, check if your PR Ranked changed as well. This typically happens when you add new page(s) to your site.
As you check your analytics reports, you can begin to see traffic jumps up for certain search terms on certain days - everflux in action. For example, if you create a page or a blog entry about a new album which is coming out, Junior crawls your site and makes note of it.
Because of its relevance in time (sort results by PR rank and date), your new page climbs to the top of the SERPs for a few days. Eventually, though, the story slips off your homepage and is replaced by another story about another album which is soon noted by Junior. Meanwhile, the long-standing sites regarding that particular album regain their top positions in the SERPs.
While it’s frustrating, there’s no real reason to panic if your pages (or some of your pages) are not in the SERPs. The ranking will come back around providing you use good SEO practices. In a mean time, continue to optimize your site for the search engines by perfecting your code, content, and by building quality back links to your website.
Have questions about SEO? Feel free to contact us at www.greatpointdesigns.com and request a quote.
We have done some research and found out that this search engine phenomenon is called “everflux.” Apparently, it’s been driving SEOs and webmasters crazy since 2002.
It’s Google's constant desire and efforts to keep their search as relevant as possible, especially these days, as Bing is challenging Google SERPs relevance.
In reality, there are two Googles: Google Senior and Google Junior. Senior calculates PR Rank and indexes pages on a monthly basis. Junior is looking for the new stuff only. When Junior comes across a page which content hasn’t been updated in a while, it just moves on. At the end of the indexing process Senior and Junior compare the results. In order to make sure some of the newer stuff is seen, the content Junior knows about is pushed to the top of the results. This is the reason why new site might show up towards the top soon after it’s up. While Senor continues his long update cycle, Junior adds new sites between the updates and guesses the PR. When Senior finally gets to it and does the PR calculation the new site will be given a real PR, which usually is less than the temporary PR.
Here’s what Google has to say about “everflux”:
“If your site is new, or hasn't shown up in Google for long, it may because our "fresh crawl" (which runs each day) was finding your site instead of our main crawl (which runs about once a month). Our "fresh crawl" is a newer feature, and we're still experimenting with which pages to crawl, how deeply to crawl, etc. We even reserve the right to (gasp!) not do a fresh crawl on some days because we're doing tests or reviewing new code. Someone wrote in recently and said "my site got in Google three weeks ago, and you've dropped me four times!" Nope, it's just that we don't always crawl the same pages in our fresh crawl, and we don't always crawl to the same depth. As we do a full crawl of the web, we find most of the sites from our fresh crawl and put them in our regular index. My advice on our fresh crawl is to view it as a nice "bonus" on top of Google's deep index. Users can always search our full index, but sometimes we can serve up even fresher pages as an extra nicety.”
If your site pages (or certain keywords) suddenly disappear from Google SERP, check if your PR Ranked changed as well. This typically happens when you add new page(s) to your site.
As you check your analytics reports, you can begin to see traffic jumps up for certain search terms on certain days - everflux in action. For example, if you create a page or a blog entry about a new album which is coming out, Junior crawls your site and makes note of it.
Because of its relevance in time (sort results by PR rank and date), your new page climbs to the top of the SERPs for a few days. Eventually, though, the story slips off your homepage and is replaced by another story about another album which is soon noted by Junior. Meanwhile, the long-standing sites regarding that particular album regain their top positions in the SERPs.
While it’s frustrating, there’s no real reason to panic if your pages (or some of your pages) are not in the SERPs. The ranking will come back around providing you use good SEO practices. In a mean time, continue to optimize your site for the search engines by perfecting your code, content, and by building quality back links to your website.
Have questions about SEO? Feel free to contact us at www.greatpointdesigns.com and request a quote.
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