How Google Segments your Web Pages

 Google recently added to their patent list by being granted a patent that describes how Google might segment the content of a web page. We all know that different areas of a web page are more important than others. For example anything above the fold is more important than what is below the fold.
 
  Their patent lists 1.) Link Analysis, 2.) Text Analysis, 3.) Image Captioning, and 4.) Snippet Construction as important segments to a web page.
 
 As Google has stated many times before their index and algorithm are in constant flux and change.  They are constantly trying to create a better index. As SEO's it's our jobs to build web sites that are not only rich with content but also cosmetically pleasing!

New Google Algorithmic Change to Impact 11.8% of Index Results

Google is working hard to clean up it's search results. Yesterday Google announced a major algorithmic change to its search engine results.

Google's Matt Cutts said "Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time."

Google's new algorithym is targeting content farms and low quality web sites. Low quality sites are those that have low grade infomation along with those that have duplicate content. In turn this change will help high quality web sites increase their positions in the index.

Cutts also said "So, we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results."

For the SEO community this is a welcomed change. Many SEO's have pointed out top 10 results over the years that were content farm type sites. It was frustrating to work dilligently and fairly and watch someone not following the rules do better.

In the past couple of weeks Google also removed 2 major companies from it's index due to link buying or selling. JC Penny.com and Forbes.com took a major hit due to this practice.

It looks like Google is stepping up the enforcement of their rules.

Want to test the old index to see how things changed? The IP address 64.233.179.104 has the old Google index.

Google's Anti Spam Algorithm

 Google has released their new anti-spam algorithm. Their latest algorithm update deals with websites that deal with being content farms. Google is looking at two different types of content farms. They are looking at content farms that aggregate content for a variety of long tail keywords so they can get clicks to their AdSense ads. They are also looking at content farms that produce low quality content in bulk. By doing this these content farms can get high rankings for many keywords. Many times sites that copy content from other websites can rank higher than the original site in Google's previous algorithm.
 
Google's Matt Cutts confirmed the new algorithm by saying:
 
    "[I mentioned] that we're evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content. That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week."
 
Matt stated that less than 0.5% of search queries have significantly different results

    Matt Cutts also said that most surfers won't notice the change:

    "This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice.

    The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content."
   
While this algorithmic change is not without problems Google plans on tweaking it until they get it right.  

Google has stated that in order to stay away from being considered a content farm you should:

* You need to create high quality websites that you plan to keep for long time.
* Optimize your web pages so that both website visitors and Google get what they want.
* Build as many good backlinks as possible to show Google that your site is a trusted website.

To use a WWW or not to use a  WWW

It is commonly asked whether or not a www is needed when referencing a domain name in regards to search engine optimization (SEO). Then if it is or isn't which way is better with the www or without?

The search engines don't have a preference as to whether or not you use a www before your domain name or not. Nothing in their search engine algorithms ranks one higher than the other.

When you think about it though we have become accustomed to typing a www as a means of hitting a website. It is customary to say go to www. your sites name .com. So for that simple reason alone we think it's better to use the www.

Many sites have both enabled just in case someone doesn't type the www. If you do this you should make sure that when you advertise and mention your web site throughout the web that you are consistent with how you use it.

If you are not consistent with its usage you can create canonical and duplicate content issues which can hurt your rankings. Canonicalization is a transformation to get the canonical form.

So in other words you only want your site indexed one way with or without the www. It's your choice but be consistent in how you use it.

Google will Re-Visit Cloaking in 2011

Cloaking is the practice of presenting different content to users, by using different URL's, doorway pages and or showing different pages to search engine bots. This practice is against Google's web master guidelines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.

Google will be re-visiting this practice this year. Google mentions some examples of what cloaking is:

    * Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users.
    * Serving different content to search engines than to users.

Keep in mind that if your site is removed from the index you will need to submit your site for reconsideration. This process may take a while.

Things to Look for in your SEO Rankings and Metrics

 Understanding the things to look for and do to gain top search engine rankings is important. The items below give you a quick look on some important ranking metrics and criteria to look for.

Things to look for from a metrics point of view:

• Indexation – In order for your site to appear in the search engines it has to be ranked. Ensure that you don’t have any duplicate content items because that can affect your rankings.
  
• Keywords – Using and optimizing for the proper keywords and keyphrases takes time and patience. Research needs to be done and tracked over time so you gain highest ranking position possible.
  
• Backlinks – Build backlinks from credible sources. Having many other websites pointing to your website will help you move up in your rankings.
  
• R.O.I. – After it’s all said and done you want to measure your results by seeing how they affected your bottom line.

Things to look for from a ranking point of view:

• Title Appearance – Does your keyword appear early on in your title tag?
  
• Web Page Appearance – Does your keyword appear early on in your web page? You want it to appear above the fold.
  
• Page Check – See what pages are currently indexed by typing site:www.yourWebsiteName.com
  
• Code Maintenance – Don’t block the robots from indexing your pages and put all code in separate files and call on them.
  
• Internal Link Bait – Link respective keywords to appropriate pages within your site so you have a strong internal links.

Be Video SEO Friendly

Now that web video has gained popularity it's time to discuss video seo. Google the premier search engine does like video. In Google's webmaster tools they show you how to create a video sitemap to help Google index your video properly.

Video is an effective way of establishing your brand online. Put videos up on multiple web sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and your own personal website. Test the results across all sites and compare the results. If your video uses Flash use a noscript tag to share content outside of Flash with Google.

Below are some additional items to consider when using video:

• As is always the case content is king so create useful video content.
• Have you video be compelling, 19.4% of viewers leave after 10 seconds and 44.1% leave after 60 seconds.
• Make strong offers by offering them a discount or a coupon.
• Make your videos easy to share.
• If possible put videos on page that already to convert to increase conversions.
• Use social media to advertise you video.
• Create a strong call to action to make your user a channel subscriber.
• Track your results.