The Rank Magic Blog

Decrease in Google Ad Clicks

February 26, 2008 ::: A report by Internet market researcher ComScore, reported by InfoWorld, detailing a 7% decline in the number of times U.S. consumers clicked on ads next to Google search results in January sent analysts scurrying to explain the decline. Rival web tracker Hitwise disagrees and shows that traffic from Google to retail sites continues to increase.

If overall traffic is increasing, and pay per click (PPC) ad traffic is declining, does that mean that people are increasingly avoiding the PPC ads and that therefore organic SEO is growing in importance? Hmmm .....

Google PageRank Simplified

February 21, 2008 ::: Google states: "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the Web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value."

Google further explains not only is the sheer volume of links or endorsements your page receives important, but the evaluation of the page linking in to you. Your site's worth as referrer depends on the authority of the sites you links out to, and vice versa.

Google uses this relevancy ranking in conjunction with query relevancy to determine the results you see -- not only term relevant results but also sites others (as determined through link analysis) feel are important.

But the PageRank we can all see in the Google Toolbar is only a gross approximation, and usually well out of date as well. It's probably best not to give it more importance than it deserves. An article in Search Engine Watch will help you keep it in perspective.

SEO Worst Case Scenario: An All-Flash Web Site

February 15, 2008 ::: The Toughest SEO Challenge: A 100% Flash site, with all content and navigation contained within a single Flash movie embedded in a single HTML page. (If your website was built with multiple HTML pages with some embedded Flash components, your situation is significantly less difficult.)

Why is this such  problem? A pure Flash site is a major disadvantage for SEO. For one, search engines will see the entire website as a single page. That means that you don't have the opportunity to optimize different pages for different target keywords. And you also will not gain the inherent SEO advantage that having multiple pages brings to a website: every unique web page has, by default, some degree of search engine status. The single most powerful place for your keywords to appear is in the page title tag. With a single-page web site, you have only a page single title tag to work with -- and only 60-80 characters. It's not easy to fit more than about three keywords into that.

Secondly, outside websites cannot link to interior pages within your site - they are forced to link to your home  page. Some marketers think this is great: your visitors will always be led to your home page and everyone will be subjected to the same "experience" on your site. But you won't be able to take advantage of "deep links" that can  bring more visitors to your site and improve your search engine rankings. Deep linking is when other websites link to pages within your site other than your home page. For websites with an online shopping component, deep linking is much better than home page linking because users don't have to navigate (and risk getting lost!) on their way to making a purchase.

Third, and a really significant problem, is that search engines have no clue what your flash "movie" is about. There's no real text for them to use to identify keywords for indexing your site. All the know is that there's a movie there.

A Web site called Your SEO Plan provides SEO strategies to deal with these issues, most of which involve significant webmaster effort. It's far better (and easier) (and cheaper!) to avoid the whole problem from the start.

The Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

February 12, 2008 ::: Everyone seems to be making a big deal out of the proposed buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft. Even NJBiz asked me to comment on it.

While I suppose it is a big deal in terms of the level of competition, and it may well make Microsoft somewhat more competitive against Google, it's not going to affect greatly how we do SEO o how people will find your web site in the search engines. Google will either retain the Yahoo brand and the Yahoo search engines, or kill it off and incorporate their technology within the MSN/Live search engine. The relative proportion of searchers who go to Google, Yahoo, and MSN may change a bit, but I don't anticipate anything drastic.

Bottom line: don't worry - this is unlikely to hurt your search engine visibility.

Two Changes to Google's Link Counting

February 8, 2008 ::: Google knows that people have an interest in manipulating Google's search results in their own favor. Every time Google makes a change to their algorithm, someone tries to figure out a new way to manipulate the system.

It's a typical predator-prey relationship. Google understands, as we do, that top ten rankings in Google's search results can make millionaires overnight.

When we  first discovered that a large number of incoming links could propel our web site to the top of the rankings, lots of companies with lots of money began to carpet bomb the web with their links.

Last April, Matt Cutts ("The Google Guy") announced Google's intention to reduce the influence of "paid links". Three months later, Google was implementing new algorithms to limit the effect of paid links.

That was Step 1. Step 2 was implemented rather quietly a short time later, and it may be more important than Step 1.

In a terrific article in Site Reference, the effect on articles is explored. Writing articles and submitting them online to be used by other webmasters needing good content, has been an effective way to get incoming links from related web sites. Author Bill Platt posits this:

Suppose you submit an article to 100 article directories - web sites that collect such articles for other webmasters to find them. If three months down the road that article only exists on the same 100 article directories and no one has picked it up and added it to their own niche websites, Google is likely to consider the article spam, and will give it no link popularity value.

However, if an article is in 100 article directories and 25+ niche websites that have picked it up and reprinted it, then that shows that the article has been voted worthy by 25 niche webmasters. The result? Google may give the article full credit for some or all 125 links it provides back to the author's website.

Google Algorithm Change Detected

February 4, 2008 ::: Apparently a change in the Google algorithm detected last month affects how pages are ranked. Web Pro News is reporting that time-sensitive articles are given a bump if they're more recent. See full reporting including a video here.

It remains to be seen whether this change will affect how important it is to keep existing web pages updated and changed. Many people insist that keeping pages current is important, but our experience has been to the contrary; some client sites that haven't been touched in years still enjoy #1 rankings for competitive keywords.

But that may be changing.