Is Google Giving Your Site RESPECT?

 

Is Google giving you the RESPECT you deserve?
Tell us what you think.

 

 

 

View All Videos The Impact of Social Media on the Presidential Race Political candidates are starting to use social media to the fullest extent in an effort to gain more votes. According to Hugh Hewitt, the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, the ability to utilize this new media will have an even greater impact on the upcoming election as it did during the 2008 election.       To design pages also for Tablets/PDA/Mobiles or wait? By: NetProwler The information here averaged over a period of 3 months on a few general topic sites, shows that we have to pay more attention to Google Chrome than we have ever done in the past. Some of our pages don't render well in GC as they do in IE/FF which we will address in due course. (CSS lines, borders and other elements desire different treatment in Chrome). Looks like we are back in the 1990 -era of cross browser compatibility issues. Our main worry is the growing trend of hand held devices (Tablets/ Mobiles/PDA) and how do we design pages for them ? The screen size varies so much - from large screen LCD TVs running Android, Ipad's 10 inch screen and the minuscule mobiles sporting 3.5 inch screens. There is no one size which fits all. My tablets show images all right - only the text needs to be enlarged. What is the general ball park figure in designing pages for the diminutive screen sizes ? Sadly we still carry over some remnants of tabled pages. Any insights? Or the whole exercise can be shelved for now? » Post Your Reply...

Tuesday, November 15, 2011   If not, maybe it's your fault. A lot of people feel that Google is treating them unfairly when it comes to search rankings. If you are one of these people, let me be perfectly blunt. There's a good chance this is your fault. You have to play by Google's rules if you want to have a good chance of being found in Google (and while there are certainly other ways to generate web traffic, Google is obviously a pretty big one). That said, Google will also be the first to tell you that "no algorithm is perfect". Sometimes they don't get it right. But are you doing everything in your own power to darn Google's RESPECT? Is Google giving you the RESPECT you deserve? Comment here. Is your site showing up in search results for its targeted keywords? If not, maybe you're not effectively using these keywords. Google is on to keyword stuffing, and content that is purely written for search. Do not over-saturate your content with keywords you wish to rank for. That said, you can use them as they make sense without compromising the flow of your content. Think titles, image labels (alt tags/title tags/captions), etc. It doesn't hurt to keep this stuff in mind as you produce content. Just don't do it in a way that compromises the quality of your page. Sitelinks Is Google showing site links for your site when it appears in search results? Right now, sitelinks are automated, but Google says it may incorproate webmaster input in the future. Frankly, I'd be very surprised if they didn't. Still, there are best practices you can follow. " For example, for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition," Google says. If Google is showing sitelinks for your site, but you don't like the ones they've chosen to display, you can demote URLs to let Google know which ones you don't think are appropriate. To do this, go to Webmaster Tools, click the site, and go to "sitelinks" under "site configuration". In the "For this search result" box, complete the URL you don't want to appear as a sitelink. In the "demote this sitelink URL" box, complete the URL of the one you don't want to appear. Note that it might take Google a while to reflect this in search results. The Algorithm Updates It's not just about what Google has done in terms of algorithm updates. It's about what you should be doing. But perhaps you have been hit by recent algorithm tweaks. If Panda, for example, hit your site, then drastic changes may be needed. Google considers your site to be of low quality. Perhaps a site redesign is in order. Google has a whole list of questions you should be asking yourself about your site in terms of quality. Included on that list is "Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content." Google said last week that it is testing algorithms that look more at this factor above the fold. Be prepared for that. Google also just listed ten of its most recent algorithm changes. Google Is Listening. If you think you've done everything you need to do to make your site Panda-friendly, and Google is still not giving you the RESPECT you think you deserve, then let them know. The company insists that it is listening. Go to this thread and make your voice heard. Last week, they even said they have an Excel sheet of about 500 sites from this thread (at least, I assume this is the thread they were referring to). There is a person responsible for false positives, they said. You may have a legitimate beef, and Google, at least to some extent, recognizes this. Are You Expecting Google To Be Perfect? Google isn't perfect. They know this. In fact, they make this point themselves all the time It's why they constantly tweak their algorithm. They're not launching all of these updates just to mess with webmasters. Google makes over 500 changes to its algorithm over a year's time. They're trying to improve the quality of their search results. It's not in Google's best interest to return results to users that aren't helpful. They don't want to send people to Bing, which is marketing its search engine much more heavily than Google. Whether you think the quality of Google's results have gotten better or not, this is their goal. Google considers Panda a "positive change across all of its known measurements," by the way. I'm sure some of you disagree. What Are Your Competitors Doing Right? Still, you might see lesser competitors ranking above you in search results, and that can be very frustrating. For some reason, Google is giving them more RESPECT. Do you think it's going to do you any good to just sit back and complain though? It's your responsibility to analyze your competition. Look at the page that is ranking above yours. Are there some things about that content or page that they are doing better than you? Richer content? A cleaner design? Google has over 200 signals. Keep this in mind. Look for anything positive about that page, and then look at yours and compare and contrast. What are your thoughts? Comment Now... Subscribe to our Newsfeed   About the Author: Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum

 

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