Friday, January 28, 2011

Google to fight search engine spam

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A few days ago, Google announced that they are going to fight search engine spam stronger than before:
"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.
We'll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites."
What exactly is Google going to do? Could Google consider your website spam?
1. Google might downrank content farms
Websites with low quality content that has been created to get clicks for AdSense ads might have a hard time in the coming months:
"As pure webspam has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. [...]
We hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content."
If your websites mainly exist to display Google AdSense then your site might lose its rankings on Google. Google makes it clear that running AdSense ads won't help the sites to remain in the index:
"One misconception that we've seen in the last few weeks is the idea that Google doesn't take as strong action on spammy content in our index if those sites are serving Google ads. To be crystal clear:
  • Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;
  • Displaying Google ads does not help a site's rankings in Google; and
  • Buying Google ads does not increase a site's rankings in Google's search results."
2. Google might enable you to tag other websites as spam
In an online discussion a user asks about the possibility for personal domain blacklists for Google accounts? Users might be given the option to remove sites from their own search results.
Google's Matt Cutts indicates that this might be an option for the near future:
"We've definitely discussed this. Our policy in search quality is not to pre-announce things before they launch. If we offer an experiment along those lines, I'll be among the first to show up here and let people know about it."
3. It will be more difficult to get high rankings with clone sites
Many spammers clone the content of websites to get high rankings for the long tail keywords that are listed on these pages. For example, some people scraped the contents of Google Groups and actually got higher rankings than the original Google Groups pages in Google's search results.
Matt Cuts also comments on that issue:
"I've been tracking how often this happens over the last month. It's gotten much, much better, and one additional algorithmic change coming soon should help even more. I'm not saying that a clone will never be listed above SO, but it definitely happens less often compared to a several weeks ago."
What can you do to make sure that your website won't be downranked?
If you have a regular website with regular content then there's nothing that you have to worry about. As long as your website has good content and good backlinks, Google will give it high rankings in the search results.
You should not try to game Google's algorithm with scraped content and you should not take any optimization shortcuts. Optimizing your website for users and search engines takes some time. If you want to get lasting results, you should use ethical search engine optimization methods.

More Affordable SEO tips soon

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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Reciprocal links: don't be fooled by false information

Reciprocal links were the first social element on the World Wide Web. They existed a long time before the term "social media" even existed. The concept of a reciprocal link is simple:
  • I link to your site ("Like").
  • You link to my site ("Like back").
Reciprocal links could greatly improve the position of a website in Google's search results because links are a good indicator that other people like your site.


Is there really a problem with reciprocal links?
There are many statements about the decreasing efficacy of reciprocal links but none of these statements is backed by facts. Reciprocal links are alive and they work well.
Just analyze the backlink profile of your high ranking competitors You can use an inbound link optimizer to get the best results. A fair amount of the links are reciprocal. Where do these links come from?
  • link exchange/resources pages
  • blogroll links
  • mutual contextual linking (for example between bloggers)
  • directory links from directories that require a backlink
Reciprocal links work best for websites with "unsexy" content. For some sites, it is very difficult to get links without something in return. These sites benefit most from reciprocal links.

More soon on this topic.
Local SEO Marketing & PPC Management


Other good websites resources:
Precast Concrete Walls & Precast Concrete Fences
Fresno Travel Agent & Honeymoon Packages