Q and A: Has my SSL caused my site's Google ranking to drop?

Dear Kalena...

Just last week, when I search for my product brand in Google, my site appears on the 4th rank. My host offers a Meta Tags Analyzer in which I have used to maximize the use of tags and my site has been rated excellent in relevancy, etc...

Last weekend, I bought a Private SSL to secure my site. Now suddenly, when I search for my product brand in Google, it appears on the 4th or 5th page. Due to the sudden jump, I did the Meta Tags Analyzer again and found out that there are no meta Tags keywords detected by the analyser although they are in the index.html. The title and description is still detected but not the keywords.

When I go to my site and right click on the page, all three meta tags looks complete and perfectly fine as it was few weeks ago. I've checked all meta tags files in both English and German under includes/languages, everything is intact. I don't understand what has happened? I ask for help from my host to check this issue and they said it has nothing to do with the SSL installation. Are they wrong?

Chep

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Chep

Let me take your issues one at a time:

1) I've never found a META Tag Analyzer that wasn't shite. I wouldn't bother using one.

2) I see all your META Tags just fine at this end. I agree with your hosts - the problem is nothing to do with your SSL. See 1).

3) Google and most other engines ignore the content of the META Keywords tag so you don't even need to include one in your HTML. Your site's ranking has zero to do with this tag.

4) Your site's ranking in Google will shift almost constantly because of the way they shuffle data between data-centers. It's quite common to see your site swing between two or more different positions month-to-month.

5) Your site's ranking for your brand is almost certainly due to the unique name of the brand and it's inclusion in your Title Tag and META Description Tag. If you remove the "Welcome to" in your title, you would likely rank higher.

6) I'm surprised your site is ranking for anything. Apart from the Title and META Description tags, there is absolutely no information on your home page with which search engines can compare search queries because it consists entirely of graphics. You really should include at least 250 words of text on the page and integrate logical keywords into it.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: How do I make value shipping and real-time shipping work together on a dynamic site?

Dear Kalena...

I have been searching the web for technical data for my dynamic website. I need to know if there is a way to make value shipping and real-time shipping work together on a dynamic site? I have some product with zero weights and some with numbered weights to go through shipping, and they will not work together. Do you have any information or links to that info?

Gabriel

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Gabriel

Yours is not a search engine related question and dynamic programming is not my bag, so you have me stumped! But I'm confident that a reader will chip in with an answer for you. If you have an answer for Gabriel, please post a comment.

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Flight Centre Seeking Search Engine Marketing Specialist

I have just got off the phone with FlightCentre and they are urgently seeking candidates for an SEO / SEM position they have available in Brisbane, Australia.

I would encourage any Australian-based Search Engine College graduates or students to apply. Flight Centre are interested in hearing from anyone with SEO skills, regardless of your skill level, so view the position description and if you think you have what it takes, follow the instructions to apply or email them for more information.

You must be willing to relocate to Brisbane Australia for this position.

Good Luck!

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: Does Google Sitemaps eliminate the need to optimize a site built with frames?

Dear Kalena...

I have two sites; One www.alpine-property.com is top of Google rankings for all my chosen keywords, it has no frames, daily updated content and lots of inbound links, so not surprising.

My other site www.alptitude.com is the dunce. Frames, static content and just a few inbound links. I have keyword friendly text in the no frames tag and a simple site map. I also have a few pages of no frames content, these are the pages indexed by Google. I obviously know how to fix this, but the time required to rewrite the site in a no frames way is very large, it has a lot of transactional code on a linked secure server which I use to run the business.

In the meantime I am interested in the effect of using the Google Sitemap tool. Will this eliminate the frames problem? The Google FAQs about this ask me to submit both the frameset url and the url of each target page. This sort of suggests that they will be able to index all the content.

Steve

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Steve

Thanks for the caffeine. The answer to your question is yes and no. Sure, Google might be able to index your frames pages outside of the frames-context and eventually match up your content and work out what your site's about. But why make it so difficult? And why take the risk when you can spend a little time bringing your site into the 21st century and ditching the frames?

It's not only search engines that the frames might offend. Searchers tend not to like frames-based sites either and unless you start taking your site seriously, you can't expect visitors to. It's not that difficult to replace your frames pages with more modern code.

If you want to continue pretending it's 1997, at least check Danny Sullivan's Search Engines and Frames Tutorial to make sure your frames pages are optimized as much as possible. Follow the instructions on Google's Webmaster Tools for frames-based sites, create an XML sitemap and track the indexing of all your pages to see if the framed ones get indexed. My bet is they don't.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: Is it better to use more text on a single page from an SEO perspective?

Dear Kalena...

Having just bribed you with a coffee, I have a question which might be interesting to other readers. Say a web site has 500 words of text. Would the site have a higher Google PageRank if all the text was on one page (using scroll bars) as opposed to spreading over 5 pages?

For example the home page of the Oz site (http://www.lowercall.com.au/index.html) is currently spread over 4 web pages. The latter pages do not have any PageRank whereas the first page does. Is there any reason why we should not put all the text on one page and use a scroll bar?

Kind regards
Mike

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Mike

Thanks for the coffee top-up, I really need it this week! Let me make some comments on your situation:

1) I seriously hope your entire site contains more than 500 words of text. For pages to do well in the search engines, they usually require around 250-300 words of text each, as a minimum. In my experience, a web site with less than five text-heavy pages does not perform well in search engines.

2) I'm assuming you are looking at the green bar PageRank in the Google Toolbar? Let's just get one thing straight here. That little green bar is NOT a true indication of your site's Google PageRank. That figure is known only to Google. It's not even a close approximation these days, because it is only updated when the Toolbar software is updated and by then your site's true PageRank score has changed dramatically anyway. So it's always out of date. You shouldn't be looking at that green bar at all.

3) Generally, a page with more text on it will perform better than a short page with very little text. This is because a page with more text provides more information to search engines about your site. It also generally contains more keywords and keyword phrases so it can be compared to search queries and found to be a more relevant match to a wider range of search queries. But the PageRank of a page is not dependent on the amount of text on that page, it is dependent on a wide number of on-page and off-page factors, only some of which are within your control.

4) In my opinion, you should concentrate on fleshing out the pages of your site dramatically. The site is not performing well in search engines because there is so little content available to visitors and bots. The site is also not very search engine compatible in terms of navigation and tag optimization. You should implement text links to make it easier for search robots to find and index all your pages and you should have an SEO expert review your Title Tags, META Tags and visible copy.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

New Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Announced

Andy Beal has officially launched Marketing Pilgrim's Search Engine Marketing Scholarship for 2007.

We were delighted that Andy asked Search Engine College to be involved again this year and we've donated a Certified Search Engine Marketing Pathway course valued at $1,195, to the prize pool.

This year the scholarship consists of a fantastic $10,000 prize package, including the following items:

• A full conference pass to the Search Engine Strategies conference held in San Jose, this August.
• The winner’s article will be published in the industry print magazine, Search Marketing Standard.
• Enrollment in a Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway course at SearchEngineCollege.com.
• One month of industry coaching and training from search marketing expert Andy Beal.
• One year of AdWatcher.com service (ad tracking and click fraud monitoring) and one year of AdScientist.com service (bid management).
• One year subscription to WebmasterWorld.com.
• One year premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
• A free web analytics account from CrazyEgg.com.
• A one year Bizwatch account from BizResearch.com.
• A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
• A copy of Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book.”
• A copy of Jennifer Laycock’s book, “Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing.”
• A copy of Andrew Goodman’s book, “Winning Results with Google AdWords.”
• A copy of Kim Krause Berg’s books “Please Ring Bell for Service” and “How to Quench Your Web Site Visitors’ Thirst.”
• A cash prize ($100) courtesy of Cre8asiteforums.com.
• Link-ninja sword (wooden), throwing stars (rubber), clock, t-shirt and $100 cash courtesy of WeBuildPages.com.
• More prizes to be announced.

Scholarship contestants simply need to submit an article on any subject related to search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC) or social media optimization (SMO) before April 6 2007. Click here for more entry details. The five finalists will have their article reviewed by a panel of judges and the winner will be announced on May 21.

Andy has asked me to be a judge this year and I'm really looking forward to reading all the entries. Good luck to all contestants!

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Grumpy Bitch

Forgive me if I've been a grumpy bitch on the blog this week, but I simply don't know how single parents cope. I've just spent a week on my own watching my 3 year old son (my husband is still in New Zealand) and despite the fact he was in day care most of the time, I'm completely shattered.

I've had 6am starts all week, there's Play Doh in my hair and if I have to watch another episode of Fifi and the Flower Tots, I'm going to go postal.

Ever been so tired that you get clumsy and start falling over things? That's me. I've broken two cups and put my son's shoes on backwards. I answered the phone today and forgot what my name was. I just can't cope on 6 hours sleep a night running a full-time business and watching a pre-schooler, but I'm guessing single parents have to do this type of thing all the time.

Thank heavens the little darling's in bed and Jerry will be back tomorrow. Time for a glass or six of crap chardonnay.

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: Why can't I see my favicon? (Part Two)

Dear Kalena...

That is not what it was supposed to be -a link farm. It is 6 years of hard link-exchange work. All I know was - that link exchange helps to get attention from the search engines and that was why I started this. I could have done nicer things with my time than sitting night over night to exchange links. After 2 years other websites started asking me to exchange.

For almost a year I would say I haven't answer those requests anymore because I don't know where to put them. But when you say it became a NO NO ...what should I do with my link partners. I also think it is a NO NO to get into a link exchange and throw them out just for the change of a search engine rule. Wasn't it you who said you don't care much about the ever-changing ranking rules of Google ??!!

So what am I supposed to do ....delete all the link pages?! I guess Google did see the point too - my website is a very honest and labour intense result of years of work with tons of interesting content, not only to tourists but also to local people from our community and area. I introduced the power of internet presents to our community and networked like a crazy person. As volunteer by the way!

Maybe that is what Google can detect too, aren't they supposed to see the overall quality instead of some mistakes I might have made? And YES my website is for humans and actually only for humans - that is why I used all those keywords to take it to the people I want to see all our websites.

All comments are highly appreciated.

Thanks
Shirley

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Shirley

If you are proud of the time and effort you've put into collecting the links, then make it a legitimate part of your site! Don't hide it behind meaningless anchor text at the bottom of your pages as though you are ashamed of it.

If the links are all viable and high quality, best thing to do is to create a multiple page travel directory and call it such. There's nothing wrong with a directory of related links in your site, as long as you make it an obvious part of your site structure and navigation. Link to it from your regular navigation menu rather than trying to hide the links at the bottom of the page and use logical anchor text rather than "Link one, link two etc". The way you have it set up just reeks of dodgy link farm, even if that wasn't your intention.

Get rid of that tiny keyword stuffed text at the top and bottom of your page - that isn't helping you at all. If the keywords are important, then integrate them logically into your body text.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: Why can't I see my favicon?

Dear Kalena...

I have my own domain and I created a favicon. I did all I was supposed to do but still can't see the ico. In Mozilla we can see it on our office computer, but on the two other computers we can't see it on Explorer. I hope after 1.5 days of brain-wrecking trying..... you have the ground breaking answer for me. http://www.mohawkmotel.ca/favicon.ico

Thanks from Canada

Shirley

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Shirley

Don't panic - I see it just fine in both Firefox and IE from here. What version of IE are you testing it on? I'm using IE 7. Have you bookmarked the site and refreshed the page? Try doing that on the computers where you can't see it and also try dumping your browser cache, your temporary Internet files and your visited page history and then relaunch your browser. I'm betting this will solve the problem.

Meanwhile, you have a more pressing problem with the site. What on earth are you thinking keyword-stuffing the top and bottom of your home page with tiny text? You can't tell me that text is there for humans to read. Aren't you aware that such retro spam can earn you ranking suppression penalties on the search engines? And then you add insult to injury by stuffing (nearly) hidden links leading to some type of link farm all along the bottom of the page.

Are you not aware that these techniques go against Google's published Webmaster Guidelines? It doesn't look as though Google has caught it yet, but be ready for your rankings to plummet if they do. Tsk Tsk!

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Back from Middle Earth

You might have noticed I'm back from New Zealand - I snuck in a short FAQ late last night but was too tired to do any more posts. Thanks to Sarah for keeping you all entertained in my absence.

The trip was fantastic! It turned out to be more business than pleasure but it's always fun visiting clients in New Zealand, especially when they are located in the adventure capital of the world - Queenstown. The locals even arranged for some snow on The Remarkables during our stay, very pretty (see pic).

My husband Jerry and I were also looking at property around Banks Peninsula as we sorely miss the views we had from our humble A-Frame at Church Bay when we lived there. We've got our eye on a particular section at gorgeous Governor's Bay where we hope to build our dream house in a few years. Wish us luck in our quest!

I suppose I should stop dreaming now and tackle this mountain of work on my desk. I'll also try to make inroads into my massive backlog of Blog FAQs. If you're waiting for your question to be answered, keep watching as I WILL get to it. I best go put a pot of coffee on *sigh*.

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Q and A: How do I ensure a page is NOT indexed by search engines?

Dear Kalena...

I want to publish a private page on the web, that only I and a few other people will use. How can I ensure that this page is NOT picked up by search engines?

It will be a wiki style page, so there may be lots of content which could be indexed by the Search Engines. This is what I want to avoid.

Many thanks for your help,

Fintan

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Fintan

There are a few ways to achieve this:

1) Use a Robots META tag in the page HTML and include "no index" in the tag.

2) Disallow the page in your robots.txt file.

3) Create the page in a sub-folder and password protect the folder so only persons with a login can view it. If your host uses CPanel, you can set this up yourself using WebProtect.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Google To Make Search Data Anonymous

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has reported that Google intends to “anonymize” the search data it collects after a period of 18 – 24 months. This move is intended to protect the privacy of its users. Until now Google has kept user search data indefinitely, making it possible for anyone who has access to the logs to track queries back to users.

Danny Sullivan in his article Google Anonymizes Search Records To Protect Privacy explains that when we visit any web site, the web server records certain information about our visit. Below is a simplified version of what Google records if we enter the search terms 'laptop broadband':

67.42.6.24 – 13/Mar/2007 00:44:15 – http://www.google.com/search?g=laptop+broadband – DQG4AADOkAAAAB_kWnOFCUZ15

There are four main segments:

IP Address – An IP Address is like an internet telephone number, and can be used in a similar way to trace a call back to the person who made it. The address can also tell what sort of connection was used and what location the request was made from.

Date & Time – Date and time request was made.

Query Terms – This is termed referrer information and describes the search terms entered.

Cookie – This is a unique code that is assigned to a particular computer by Google. This allows Google to record requests from each computer even if the location of that computer changes.

Google’s plan is to change the IP address and cookies, thus making it extremely difficult to trace a query back to a particular computer or user. Google is still working out the finer points, so stay tuned for more information!





Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds Feedburner Technorati Bloglines

Product Review: Submit Suite - Article Submitter

Here at Search Engine College we generate and receive a high volume of quality articles each month. So you can imagine we were interested to take up Cristina Mailat's request to review Fastlink2's latest product Submit Suite – Article Submitter.

Below is a list of features the product offers:

• Can submit an article to 647 article directories in a matter of hours.
• Author information/profile page, records all submission requirements for every article directory in the database.
• A directory can be selected or deselected from the list manually.
• Google page rank of each directory listed.
• Interface neat and easy to use.

Main benefits:

• Submission of article to multiple directories saves a large amount of time.
• Automatic article format to individual directory submission requirements – another huge time saver.
• Record keeping minimized as Article Submitter records which article has been posted, where and when.
• Research time minimized as database updated with new directories regularly.

Possible limitations:

• No multiple author/profile tool – limited to submitting articles by one author only. (Although Fastlink2 indicated later editions of this product will have multiple author capacity).
• Can not scheduele submissions for future posting.
• Can not submit multiple articles at same time.
• Can only submit to the directories contained in the database (Although it is possible to suggest a new article directory be included).
• Still some record keeping required by author as the software doesn’t store actual article content.

The Article Submitter is reasonably priced at USD $47.00 and would quickly pay for itself in regards to its time-saving capacity. Benefits are greatest for those who need it only for submitting their own articles. If you need to submit articles by several authors, then keep an eye out for future versions.




Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds Feedburner Technorati Bloglines

Google confirms 301s are better than 302s to move a domain

Yes, I am meant to be on holidays and no, I'm not meant to be posting here, but I felt this news was too important to wait another two weeks.

At the Search Summit Conference this week, I had the opportunity to ask Adam Lasnik from Google a question that I get asked a lot: Is it better to use 301 Permanently Moved or 302 Temporarily Moved redirects if you need to move a site to a new domain?

Adam replied that provided you are using the same page file names, you should absolutely use 301s rather than 302s on your old pages if you want Googlebot to re-index your site quickly. He also recommended keeping the old site live until the new site was cached and transferring the site over in different stages, depending on the number of pages it has. Google Support Engineer Maile Ohye added that you should also make sure you verify the new domain and upload your XML sitemap for it via Google Webmaster Tools to aid faster indexing.

I asked if using 301s to the new domain would be more likely to trigger the aging delay to kick in for the new site, but Adam reassured me that using 301s in combination with Google Sitemaps should make the domain relocation process fast and painless. He used an example of a 500,000 page e-commerce site he watched moving domains recently via 301s in three stages and claimed that Googlebot had entirely indexed the new site in just over five weeks.

Add to: Digg | Del.icio.us | Ma.gnolia | RawSugar | Reddit

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds | Feedburner | Technorati | Bloglines

Hi there everyone!

My name is Sarah. I am Kalena's Virtual Assistant/would-be blog replacer. I live in rural New South Wales, Australia, with my husband, two young daughters, one blue cattle dog, eight chooks, three guinea fowl and two well loved guinea pigs.

I am a relative new-comer to Search Engine Marketing but am becoming increasingly aware of what an amazing opportunity for global collectivity the internet can be! Establishing an online business has become a viable way for many of us to enjoy an interesting and flexible working life. The freedom to structure work commitments around family activities instead of vice-versa, is priceless. Plus there is the feeling of being part of something global – something new and exciting.

So for my first posting I will point you in the direction of the many wonderful articles I have been reading lately in the Search Engine College Article Library. Check it out, you’ll find a lot of useful tips on starting and maintaining an online business, latest industry news for Search Engine Marketing and much more.

Subscribe via: Yahoo Feeds Feedburner Technorati Bloglines