Have Your Google Website Rankings Dropped Recently?

- ROSEVILLE, MI, October 27, 2005 - Google engineer Matt Cutts more or less declines that this is a big update in his blog:

"These days rather than having a large monolithic update, Google tends to have smaller (and more frequent) individual launches. [...]

My point is that more than ever, we are constantly working to improve our algorithms and scoring. Some changes are hardly noticed at all. Some changes (e.g. user interface improvements) are more visible. Some changes have nothing to do with spam [...] Some changes do try to decrease spam or increase core quality. [...]

And again, these PageRanks and backlinks have already been incorporated into scoring a while back (Google updates PageRank continually and continuously), but some people just love to look at PageRanks.)"

What has changed with this update?

Only Google"s engineers know exactly what has been changed with this update. However, it seems that some factors seem to be important in this update:
• Hidden text spam seems to be more penalized. While most search engines consider white text on white background spamming, it seems that Google now also recognizes text that is hidden in invisible CSS layers.
• Links from automated link exchanges and text link advertising systems seem to count less.

As with every algorithm update, Google tries to remove the spam from its database with this update.

What should you do now?

First of all, don"t panic. If your web site rankings have dropped, wait another week to make sure that the index update is over. If your web site is still not listed, take a look at what you might have done wrong.

If you use CSS to hide text on your web pages, consider removing that hidden text from your pages. Google doesn"t seem to like that at all. If you use other techniques that might be considered spam, remove them from your pages.

If you have a links page, do not use a link exchange system with a central server but host your link pages on your own web site. Being part of a centralized system makes your web site vulnerable if the centralized system is considered spam.

After having removed the spam elements from your pages, do the following:
1. Optimize

Have AQABA optimize your web pages for the new Google algorithm. Our SEO specialists use the current ranking algorithm to find out which web page elements Google wants to see on a web page for your keyword and your web site through research.
2. Diversify

We"ve said it before in this newsletter: don"t put all eggs in one basket. Although it is very likely that you"ll get high rankings on Google if you follow the tips above, you shouldn"t focus on Google alone.

Yahoo and MSN can also bring you qualified traffic. These search engines might not be as popular as Google but they are large enough to bring you so many customers that you could even do without Google. The key to a successful online business is to get qualified traffic from all big search engines.

If you have web pages that are optimized for Google and Yahoo and MSN and Ask Jeeves then you won"t get hurt so much when one of these search engines drops your rankings.

If your web site rankings on Google have dropped, don"t panic and follow the tips above. Chances are good that you"ll get your high rankings back.


KEYWORDS

Figure out what words your customers are looking for at search engines, and use those words at your site. By frequently using keywords that are important to your customers, you tell the search engines what you do. These keywords are used in your copy and in the code behind the page. Generally speaking, the more you use the keywords, the more relevant you are to searches in that field.

Keywords in Your Copy

The use of keywords in your copy is easy to understand. But it"s not easy to do. You can"t just pepper your site with a meaningless array of words. The trick is using the most important keywords a lot without compromising the readability of your copy. It"s a balance between writing for the search engines and writing for your reader.

TIP: If you find this too time consuming, an AQABA website copywriter can take care of it for you. And if you know your keywords already, it should cost you no more than normal web copy on average.

Keywords in Your HTML Code

The use of keywords in your HTML code is harder to understand, but it"s easier to do. There are four main places these keywords are used:

Keywords
Description
Alt
Title

TIP: When you hear people talking about meta tags, this is what they"re talking about. To see how meta tags are used in practice, go to Google and pretend you"re a customer. Search for something your customers would search for. e.g. If you"re in car audio, search for "car audio". Click on the first couple of results to bring up their website. Right-click on the home page, and select "View Source". You"ll see a whole lot of code. You can ignore most of it. What you"re looking for are the following...

meta name="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keyword 1,keyword 2,keyword 3"

meta name="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Meaningful description of page using the main keywords"

The title of the page using the main keywords

LINKS TO YOUR SITE

Now that you know how to tell the search engines what you do, let"s talk about how to convince them you"re important.

Links to your site (or "inbound links") are the most important factor in ranking. The more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking (related sites generate better rankings).

TIP: Think of the Internet as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates, and all the links to those websites are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher it"s ranking.

There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software). Others are legitimate, but offer limited results (like asking customers and suppliers to list you on their sites, and adding your site to various business directories). You can experiment with these methods, but we always found the best way to generate inbound links is to write helpful articles and let publishers of newsletters and e-zines use them for free - on the provison that they link back to your site.

People who publish e-Zines and newsletters are always hungry for quality content. And there are websites out there dedicated to giving them just that. If you submit a well written, relevant, helpful article to one of those sites, you can have thousands of newsletter publishers ready to snap it up. Or you can have AQABA manage you linking campaign for you.

TIP: This method is beneficial in other ways too. Readers of your article will see that you know what you"re talking about, and because you"re published, they"ll see you as an authority.

It"s impossible to say how much time you"ll need to spend generating links. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, you"ll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Summary

So to cut a long story short, it comes down to this. If you have a lot of the right keyword phrases, used in real sentences, distributed realistically throughout your site, and a lot of links from other relevant sites, you stand a good chance of being ranked highly.

That"s what you"re paying your providers for. And that"s what SEO is all about.

Contact AQABA to find out if your site has the potential to increase its traffic today!
Visit us at http://www.aqaba-sem.com/freequote.htm and fill out the web form and a representative will be in contact with you.

14.12.2005 - 20:25 Source: 24-7pressrelease.com | Read: 173 X