Q and A: How do we remove bad publicity about us from the top of the SERPs?

Dear Kalena...

I have the opposite situation that most people have. What are some specific things we can do to avoid popping up at the top of search lists? We had some wrong accusations/unfair press that has since resolved. However, the articles from two years ago continue to be right there, making it difficult to grow and move forward. I truly appreciate your advice and hope you can help me. THANKS!

Karen

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Karen

You don't say whether the negative articles reside on your own site or on sites belonging to 3rd parties, but I'm assuming it's the latter? It's easy to stop certain pages on your own site from being shown in search results. You simply use no-index robots tags on those pages, or block those pages in your robots.txt file.

Having negative press about your company removed from the sites of others is another matter entirely. Have you written to the site owners to request the information be removed? If the negative situation has been resolved, a polite request should do the trick. If that doesn't work and the content of the articles is slanderous or untrue, you could report them to Google.

However, if the content you are concerned about is factual, there's not much you can do except try to outrank the negative content with your own content. Write some pages or blog posts about the issue, addressing it and the way it was resolved, making sure that the pages include the search keywords and phrases triggering the content you are concerned about. Hopefully your content will push the other content down the SERPs and into oblivion.

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Q and A: Why have our most popular pages disappeared from Google?

Dear Kalena...

Thanks again for your help a couple of years ago. I need some more advice now and I don't even know where to start troubleshooting. About a week ago I noticed that the bulk of our most popular pages no longer seem to be on Google's radar. I'm talking about pages that used to show up in the top 10 results for typical searches in our industry. Currently, those pages don't show up AT ALL in Google's results, or Google offers a comparatively irrelevant page, like our home page or links page that might happen to have the keywords in question.

This problem is only with Google, not MSN or Yahoo. Probably began during the last 30 days. Other pages come up in Google SERPs just fine. Also, I checked our Google Webmaster Tools and everything looks OK - sitemap downloaded OK, all pages (including the problem ones) indexed. PR for the problem pages is unchanged (lackluster 2-3, but at least not lowered). The only thing I did different was to use a new sitemap a couple of weeks ago. Any ideas?

Rick

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Rick

I'm getting a lot of similar questions to yours at the moment and I'm convinced it is the result of a major tweak Google has made this month to their PageRank algorithm (not to be confused with the Google Toolbar PageRank green bar). Here's my reasoning:

• None of your pages show up in Google's Supplemental Index, indicating those pages haven't been removed from Google's main datacenter.
  
  
• Google is currently showing 179 pages from your site as being indexed, whereas Yahoo is actually showing over 300 pages indexed, indicating that Google may be suppressing the value of some of your pages.
  
  
• You didn't tell me the search query that returns the rankings you are talking about, but if you were previously ranking well for those terms and you've not changed the pages, then it's probably an external cause rather than something you did to cause the ranking drops.

Google makes small tweaks to their ranking algorithm on a regular basis. Some of these tweaks involve the addition of code filters to detect and suppress code it sees as artificially influencing your page's relevancy. It may be that the new algorithm includes a new filter that has picked up something on your pages Googlebot doesn't like, for example, excessive keyword repetition or duplicate content. Many of your pages have almost identical content to each other, which could have triggered a suppression filter.

Also, you have quite a large number of backward links showing in Yahoo (over 300) but only 8 showing in Google. It may be that Google has decided many of those backlinks are not relevant and has suppressed any influence they previously had on your rankings. The reciprocal link swapping concept you use on your site and the advice you give to potential link partners is quite flawed. It will likely only attract links from very low quality sites, diluting your own site's link popularity as a result. Many of the sites listed on your links page are completely irrelevant to your site. Read my link swapping rant for more info.

Finally, keep in mind that thousands of new pages get added to the Internet every day. Chances are that some of these might be targeting the same keywords and phrases that you are. If those pages are better optimized than yours, yours will naturally be pushed down in the results.

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Deal Dot Dummies?

I just popped my head in to Deal Dot Com to check out the latest product and couldn't believe my eyes. Check out the screen grab. Yes, you read correctly, the site is "Down for Maintenance Until Tomorrow".

Huh? I don't get it. What if Googlebot and other search bots come calling and find no content and no links? What about new site visitors? Have they even heard of the word USABILITY? Have you ever known a company to simply wipe all content from their site while they whip up a new one? Maybe it's just me, but that seems totally ridiculous. The last time I saw such stupidity was when a client of mine decided to switch off her (carefully optimized) site for a 2 week Christmas vacation. Ouch. Bye bye rankings!

If our sites fall over for even a few minutes due to unscheduled hosting outages, I am the proverbial monkey on the back of my hosting company for the entire time, pushing for them to get the sites live again. I just can't believe an online business find the need to close up shop for back-end maintenance. Deal Dot Dumb?

29 Oct 07 *UPDATE*

Ok now they've changed their white "site down" page to a more colorful "site down" page with a cute cartoon character. Oh and they've also added their email address. Yep, that will fix the problem.... NOT!


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Q and A: Has my domain glitch caused permanent de-ranking in Google?

Dear Kalena...

I let my domain www.visaplace.com expire, but I re-registered it within 24 hours. The site went black in the interim and it took about a 1/2 day to be repopulated online. However about a week to two weeks later I noticed that Google dropped my rankings for virtually all of my key words. I am totally invisible online now whereas I was well ranked before. I was told by my SEO person not to worry because once Google spiders my site again a few times I will get back up to my original positions.

My SEO person looked at my site and said nothing has changed and I was not blacklisted or anything. He said I should be back up within days to a few weeks. My question is: Is explanation credible? Is there another possible reason why I am de-ranked? I am really concerned.

Thanks so much
Michael

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Michael

Your SEO is right. What's probably happened is that Googlebot tried to index your site during the time the site was down and so dropped some/all of your previously cached pages. This can happen from time to time, especially with hosting outages etc. Obviously, if those pages were previously ranking well for certain search queries, but the pages have temporarily disappeared from Google's data store, those rankings will disappear too.

I see now that Google last cached your page on October 19 so all seems to be well again. I'm not sure how many pages were indexed before the domain problem, but Google shows 79 pages currently indexed.

To check if any site is listed in Google, you can use their Site Status Tool. If your SEO is worth his salt, he will have created a Google Webmaster Tools account for your site and uploaded an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps on your behalf. This will tell Google how many pages your site has and what the URLs are so Googlebot can index it accurately. If you think Google has dropped some pages, be sure to have your SEO update the XML file and ping Google from within Webmaster Tools when it's uploaded.

If you want to keep close tabs on how/when Google indexes your site, ask your SEO to provide login access to your Webmaster Tools account or set one up for yourself.

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Q and A: How do I move my site without losing rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I am having trouble with my "advanced access" website. The customer service has become horrible. They are very rude. I am thinking of moving my site (of course, I would have to redesign because I am using their template) but I own the domain name. I have high rankings on google so I am afraid to lose ranking. Is there a way to change my website design and webmaster without losing ranking?

Teri

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Teri

I'm not familiar with "Advanced Access", but I'm assuming this is some type of hosted Content Management System you use to edit your site with? Looking briefly at your site, I believe it is. And it looks as though most of the content is actually hosted on the AA site and not on your own domain. Don't be afraid to move your site if you are getting lousy service.

In terms of ranking, I think you'd actually be better off by moving your site content and domain to full hosting elsewhere. Your new host should be able to advise on making the DNS switch etc. You'll need to download all your existing site content and any images or files that are hosted on AA but referenced in your site. Of if they own the template you are using, simply keep a copy of all the text content and pay someone else to create a simple design for you based on the same content.

Provided you keep the same page content, keywords, page titles, META tags etc, you shouldn't lose any Google rankings. In fact, your rankings might even improve as you'll be referencing all your images and files etc on your own domain instead of somebody else's. If your page URLs change during the redesign, you'll need to make sure that the old pages are redirected to the new ones via 301 redirects so you don't lose traffic or existing rankings for those pages. There are plenty of posts on this blog to help you with that - simply click on 301 redirects under the Q and A labels. Best of luck!


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Q and A: Does Google prefer sub directories over sub domains?

Dear Kalena...

Topweddingsites.com main domain is doing fine in the serps but our state sub domains dropped from page one for all of our top keywords to page 5 and below. Trying to figure out - is it that Google has decided folders are a better way to do a portal like this over sub domains?

Donna

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Donna

As far as I know, Google doesn't have a preference when it comes to sites that use sub directories like http://www.yoursite.com/state/index.htm or sub domains like http://state.yoursite.com. Both versions are indexable. But something to keep in mind is that most search engines only index a certain number of sub levels deep on your site. So, for example, a page like http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/index.htm might get indexed, while http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/region/street/index.htm may not.

The closer your content is to the top level of your site, the more likely it will be found and indexed. It's also widely assumed that content closer to the top level is considered to be more important by Google and given more relevancy weight in Google's ranking algorithm. Many SEO experts insist that sub-domains are more effective than sub directories and rank better too.

As for your situation, I don't think it has anything to do with your use of sub domains. I think it has more to do with the fact that your State pages are all very similar to each other. For example http://ok.topweddingsites.com/ is almost identical to http://mi.topweddingsites.com/. Multiply that by 50 States and you've got yourself a serious duplicate content problem.

In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google specifically states:

"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

My guess is that your State sub domains have tripped a duplicate content filter and have been slapped with a ranking suppression or penalty. If you review Google's definition of duplicate content, you'll see some helpful suggestions for fixing the problem.

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Q and A: What is a search engine ranking algorithm?

Dear Kalena...

What is a search engine ranking algorithm?

Sahar

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sahar

It's late here, so I'm going to point you to three excellent sources to answer your question:

- Wikipedia's definition of algorithm
- Wikiepedia's definition of search engine
- Matt Cutt's article How Does Google Collect and Rank Results

Combined, these will give you the answer.


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Macho SEO Pissing Competitions

I really can't stand SEO competitions. You know the ones, where somebody picks a search query and SEOs compete to have their site rank the highest within a certain time frame. They're nothing but look at me! macho pissing competitions, in my opinion. Participants might as well just unzip their pants, compare sizes and get it over with.

I said as much to the instigator of the latest comp who sent me an email this week hyping up the latest competition and telling me I'd been "selected" as a potential participant due to my status as a "skilled SEO provider". The latest silly competition is promoting (laughably) the title of World's Best SEO for the winner.

Oh come ON! I can assure you that any SEO worth his or her salt will be waaaaay too busy with real clients to take part in such juvenile, time-wasting antics. And no, I'm not going to post the URL.

Ok, bitchfest over.


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Q and A: What's the difference between these two Google backward link searches?

Dear Kalena...

As always, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Much appreciated! Here is yet another question: I have been recently mystified by Google's link:www.yourwebsite.com search feature. If you do the search with a space between the colon and www you get different results. Example link:www.yourwebsite.com vs. link: www.yourwebsite.com

Can you explain the difference?

Thanks!
Marco

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

That's easy. The first search is the correct query to use for determining the number of backward links pointing to your site that Google considers significant (note this is not your *true* number of backlinks. To see a more accurate list, you need to view your site within Google's Webmaster Tools).

The second search is a malformed query. What you're actually searching for with that query is all documents that have references to the word "link" and "www.yourwebsite.com" on the same page. Look at the cache for one of the listings for the second version and you'll see both items highlighted.


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Q and A: How long will it take our new page to rank on Google?

Dear Kalena...

I've added a new page to our site, what is a realistic expectation of timeframe when this page will rank organically on Google? The old page ranked about 78 so we change the page URL and content hoping it will help it rank better. It has been indexed.

May

Kalena's Answer:

Dear May

What makes you think that changing the URL and content will make it rank better than before? Google has to consider the page to be highly relevant for certain keywords and phrases to rank it highly for related search queries. The URL of a page has very little to do with this.

The content of the page should certainly be optimized for any search queries you are trying to rank for, but it's how relevant other sites consider the page to be that will most impact the page's ranking on Google. Unless there are other sites linking to the page or other pages on your site linking to the page, it is unlikely to rank highly. The anchor text used within the links to the page is also important. If the anchor text contains keywords or phrases relating to the search query, that will boost the page's relevance for such search queries. Unless you cover all these factors, the page's search ranking is unlikely to change.

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Q and A: How long will it take search engines to update my new keywords?

Dear Kalena...

My question is to do with keywords and how often search engines update them. If I change my keyword or key phrase for a page how long would it take Google to update its index for the keyword or phrase so that it now shows up in a search for that new keyword?

Regards
Clive

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Clive

Search engines don't update on the basis of keywords. They re-index the code on your pages and how often they do this depends on their own update schedule. If you've verified your site with Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, you can view your stats to get an idea of how often your site pages are indexed.

Whether or not your site begins to rank for new target keywords depends on how well you've optimized your pages for those keywords and how relevant the search engines now determine it to be. If you've optimized well and your pages are indexed regularly, you should see the results within a week or two. But in terms of Google, you may need to wait for a major database shuffle before you see your revised pages showing up for new keyword searches.

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Q and A: Why doesn't Google show all our backward links?

Dear Kalena...

I came across your site as I was searching for "why doesn't google show my links?". Yahoo and MSN show over 200 links to our www.Rubber-Bracelets.com site, but Google shows 2! What's up with that? We have the keywords in our domain name and I can't find us in the first five pages for "rubber bracelets". What gives? Of course, people aren't searching for rubber bracelets like they once were, but it appears in Google Suggest that there are still a good number of searches. Can you help?

Thanks!
Tony

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Tony

First up, what makes you think that having keywords in your domain automatically makes your site more relevant for searches involving those keywords? What if I purchased a domain like www.safe-kids-toys.com and loaded it up with porn? Do you think Google's algorithm will automatically assume my content is about "safe kids toys" just because my domain suggests it is? Uh uh. It doesn't work like that. I answered a similar question about keyword domains just yesterday.

Secondly, Google never displays the true number of backlinks your site has, only a sampling of the ones they consider to be important. You can get a better indication of who is linking to you from Yahoo Site Explorer.

Lastly, if your site is under 9 months old or has recently undergone a major re-design, it could be suffering from Google's aging delay for new sites. If that's the case, it won't rank in Google for your target keywords until it is released from limbo. It's Google's little screening process to help them weed out the dodgy sites from the authentic ones.

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Q and A: Should we create domain names incorporating our major product keywords?

Dear Kalena...

We run an ecommerce site and my boss would like to take advantage of the strong demand for a couple of our products in particular. One of the ideas being tossed around is creating domain names that incorporate these keywords so that search engines find them more quickly (i.e., www.sitenameproduct1.com, www.sitenameproduct2.com)

What are your thoughts on this approach? Is this considered 'black hat' and could this get us in trouble with the major search engines?

Thanks
Kelly

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Kelly

Creating new domains for this purpose is a really, really bad idea. Although they are getting better at it, many search engines can't distinguish keywords within domain names unless they are separated by hyphens and there is really next to no ranking advantage for having keywords in a domain anyway.

It's not black hat, but it's a total myth and hasn't worked since about 2001. In fact, trying to get brand new domains ranked in Google takes up to a year now because of the aging delay so to launch new sites for this purpose is definitely not a good strategy.

You'd be much better off creating a few new pages on your existing site dedicated to the popular products and optimize them well for related keywords. For example, create some articles about the products or people's experience with the products and link to the product detail pages from within the articles using target keywords in the anchor text of the links.

Your existing site has great PageRank and link popularity and it is the best place to put content about your products. If you place a link from your home page to the new product articles/pages, that should help the search engines find the new content quickly and hopefully provide more rankings for keywords relating to those products. The other option is to boost the number of product related keywords in your pay per click campaigns and create dedicated landing pages for them so they convert better.

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Q and A: What can I do to improve ranking results on regional Google sites?

Dear Kalena...

I am doing some very basic SEO work for a South African website that targets the local market only. The majority of local searches are done on google.co.za, not google.com. What can I do to better my results on google.co.za for popular keywords?

Marco (a happy subscriber of the Search Light Newsletter)


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

Glad you like the newsletter. Re your question, the best thing you can do is ensure the site is published on a regional domain ending in .co.za. This is because Google gives ranking priority to regional sites where available on their local search engines. It would also help if the site was hosted in South Africa as sometimes Google will check the physical location (IP address) of a site to determine its relevance to a regional search query.

Apart from that, try to use regional keywords in the visible content of the pages to ensure Google recognizes the regional market you are targeting and will match it to related search queries. And of course make sure the site is submitted to and indexed by the most popular regional search engines servicing South Africa.

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Q and A: Do alt image attributes have an impact on search engine rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I have a question regarding SEO.

How much of an effect if any, do Alt Img Attributes have on search engine rankings? Some articles say Alt Img Attributes have little to no effect on search engine rankings, while other articles say that if used properly they can have a positive effect on search engine rankings.

Can you please shed some light on this debate? I'd really appreciate it,

thanks
Nick

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Nick

The use of Alt Img attributes is important from a usability perspective, more so than any other reason. To ensure vision-impaired visitors (or those browsing with images turned off) can understand what your images represent, they should have alt text associated with them. This is not vital for design-related images, such as borders or spacers, but more so for product images, graphical headings and such. Now, there was a time when the use of Alt attributes contributed to a site's search relevancy. But thanks to abuse by webmasters over the years, the significance of the Atl attribute contribution to the overall ranking algorithm has reduced dramatically and it is also one of the areas search engines look at carefully for evidence of spam.

So what does that mean for persons optimizing their sites? It means you should still use Alt attributes but approach them from a usability perspective and forget any assumed search engine value. For example, if you sell shoes and you have 3 images of different shoes on a page, you should use simple Alt text to describe each in a way that a vision-impaired person could understand: "alt=blue suede shoes", "alt=black leather loafers", "alt=white strappy sandles". The wrong way to approach the same situation would be: "alt=shoes, shoes shoes", "alt=cheap cheap shoes", "alt=best shoes in the world". The first example is descriptive and clear and could also contribute to a page's relevancy for related keyword searches. The latter is non-descriptive, keyword-stuffed and self-promotional. It would be much more likely to trip spam filters.

Hope this helps :-)


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Q and A: Does changing the name of a site impact search rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I am thinking of changing the name of my internet business site so as to direct more traffic because the current name, while nice, doesn't really spell out what we do. It is now Gilt-Edge Luxury Tours and Travel and I would like to change it to DC Luxury Tours. However, we have had this site for 10 years and it well indexed by the search engines. Does changing the name (but not the url which would stay the same) have any impact on the search engines? Or would I have to start all over from scratch if I changed the name?

Gilda

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Gilda

A site name change is not necessarily a problem. It would be different if you were changing your domain or changing your name from one with keywords in it to one without. Losing the word "travel" from your site name may slightly impact your site's rankings for searches involving the word "travel", but only if you no longer include that word prominently in your site. Your main site heading will no longer include "travel", but you can compensate by making sure that the rest of the site is optimized for travel-related keywords.

The other area that might be impacted is your link popularity. If other sites are currently linking to you using your old name, it might be contributing to your site's relevancy for "luxury tours and travel". But if ranking for "DC luxury tours" or "DC tours" is actually more important to you, then you should encourage sites already linking to you to change the anchor text of their link to your new site name and of course any new link partners should link to you using your new name. DC Luxury Tours is certainly easier to remember than your old name, so the change should be good from a marketing and usability perspective.

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Q and A: Why has our Google PageRank dropped to zero?

Dear Kalena...

Can you please help us? I just came across your site and you seem very knowledgeable.

Our problem is Google! Our site has been active for a few years now at www.theforeverrose.com We were once #1 for the search "the forever rose" (and ranked well for a few others as well). But we have been gradually slipping, now we are in position 90 for "the forever rose" and off the charts for others?

Our PageRank was once a three and gradually dropped to now 0. We cannot figure out why and things keep getting worse. We strictly follow all of Google's rules and ethics, we rank fine in Yahoo and MSN. I am tired of hearing the obvious; more links, more pages, better content, SEO.... etc, we have been doing that. I feel like we are just missing something really simple, something right in front of our eyes, something that is penalizing us!

Can you please help? Any of your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
Mike

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Mike

A quick check of your site with the Google Site Status tool shows that pages from your site are included in the index, but that Google may not know about all your site pages. The site was last indexed by Googlebot on 25 April and you have one backward link displayed by Google but 81 backlinks shown on Yahoo.

Your home page has a Google Toolbar PageRank of zero and some pages have greyed out PageRank and no cache, suggesting they haven't been indexed. Curiously, Google is showing 46 pages from your site in their index, while Yahoo is only showing 25 pages indexed. The fact that the site has already aged and used to have a much higher PageRank may suggest a penalty of some kind.

But there could be a few explanations for your poor PageRank and lack of rankings:

1) You are using a black page background but you then have a table on it with a white background and black text. Some search engines will see this as black text on a black background. It's possible that this may be tripping spam filters.

2) Your site is built using old technology and contains a lot of code bloat. Tables are clunky and difficult for search spiders to index and Googlebot may have tripped up on your code and not indexed all your pages.

3) Your home page contains keyword repetition for the words "rose" and "roses". I don't think the repetition is excessive, but it may have triggered some type of suppression filter in Google.

4) Your site has poor link popularity and the sites that link to you tend to have a very low quality score and no PageRank e.g. cufflinksdepot.com/dir-gifts.htm and escapesportif.com/resources/gifts.html. You don't have enough incoming links pointing to your site from what Google calls "trusted sites" - popular directories, portals and authoritative sites in your industry. Your internal links could also use some work from an anchor text angle.

5) Most of your site pages might be stuck in Google's supplemental index, colloquially (but unfairly) known as Google Hell. Google's Matt Cutts explains why some sites have the bulk of the pages moved to the supplemental results:

"If you used to have pages in our main web index and now they’re in the supplemental results, a good hypothesis is that we might not be counting links to your pages with the same weight as we have in the past. The approach I’d recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit)."

Here's what you should do to address the problems:

1) For better indexing, consider upgrading the site design away from tables to clean HTML and use CSS for formatting. Until you do that, change the background of all pages to white to avoid any potential hidden text penalties from your table layout.

2) Run your site through a text-editor such as Lynx to see what search engines see when they index your site. Verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and check the diagnostics for potential indexing problems.

3) Optimize your site from scratch. You should make sure your site is search engine compatible and optimized for a wider range of target search keywords and phrases rather than the obvious ones.

4) Create and upload an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps or use the new Sitemaps Protocol in your robots.txt file to tell search engines where to find your XML sitemap. I like to use the free XML Sitemaps Generator to create my sitemaps.

5) Commence a link building campaign pronto. This campaign should include submitting your site to all the major and minor directories and search engines where the site doesn't currently feature, as well as niche directories and portal sites in your specific industry. Where possible, anchor text incorporating your target keywords should be used within the links. My consulting company can take care of link building for you if you like.


Once changes to your site code have been made and you have achieved some good quality links, most of your problems should disappear. If the problems persist, file a re-inclusion request with Google, explaining what might have triggered penalties and what changes you've made to address the issues. Although technically your site hasn't been excluded from the Google index, this should prompt a review of your site by Google's anti-spam team and hopefully result in any suppression penalties being lifted.

Good luck and let us know how you get on!

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Q and A: How do I push offensive content about me off the front page of Google?

Dear Kalena...

On my personal Google page I have noticed some defamatory posts about me from an obscure chat room I was involved in 5 years ago. I'm being accused of posting there now as someone else. I have contacted the webmaster of the relevant site but he refuses to delete the offending posts. Any idea how to adjust my 1st page Google index to push these ugly things out of the way?

Thanks David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

That's not too difficult. If the information is offensive and/or defamatory, you can always threaten the Webmaster with legal action unless they remove it from their site.

If the Webmaster does not believe the information warrants removing and you have no legal options (e.g. the information is protected by freedom of speech or similar), you will just have to optimize some pages on your site for your own name and/or build some links from popular sites to your site using your name in the link text to ensure you rank higher than the offensive content. If you have an unusual surname, this should be easily achieved.

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Q and A: Why does my site rank in MSN and Yahoo but not Google?

Dear Kalena...

My web site www.narenmunna.com appears for some keywords in MSN and Yahoo in the first page itself, but not for the same in Google. What is the reason?

Webmaster Naren

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Naren

Simple. Your site has no link popularity and zero PageRank right now. Is it less than 9 months old? If so, then the site is probably still suffering from the Google Aging Delay. Even if it isn't, then you'd better work on your link popularity pronto.

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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.

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Q and A: Does CSS help improve search engine rank?

Dear Kalena...

Does CSS help improve search engine rank?

contactlab

Kalena's Answer:

Hi contactlab

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) alone probably won't make a blink of difference to the way your site ranks. However using CSS may reduce the amount of code you need to use on each page, avoiding code bloat. Bloated code can sometimes cause important content to be shoved to the bottom of the HTML, reducing the likelihood of it being indexed by engines and reducing its relevancy weight.

CSS can also improve the accuracy of your HTML because there is less code to make errors with and more likely that your site will validate to W3.org standards. Valid code is less likely to trip up search robots as they crawl through your site. So while using CSS won't necessarily boost your rankings on it's own, it could make your site more search engine compatible and that may in turn improve your rank.

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Q and A: Why does my site ranking fluctuate so much in Google and Yahoo?

Dear Kalena...

What do you think about recent changes going in Google and Yahoo search? Because I have seen that my site in Yahoo was on top but now I am not able to find it on any pages though I can see that my site is there in Yahoo by site. So what can you suggest about this?

Kind regards,
Huned

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Huned

Search engines are constantly in a state of flux. Think about how many new pages are added to the Internet on a daily basis. Now think about how many different computers around the world are required to hold all this information. Top that with the number of idiots trying to game the system or crack the search algorithms and you've got the problems that Google and Yahoo face.

It's only natural that your site will ebb and flow within the search results. The major engines need to shuffle their content between data-centers and tweak their relevancy algorithms on a regular basis. Instead of concentrating on what rank your site is on any particular day, try checking the search engine compatibility and the usability of your site for visitors. If it can be better, improve it! The more improvements that you make in these areas , the more likely you are to see your site rank higher in the search results.

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Q and A: How do I view all the rankings for my site under multiple keywords?

Dear Kalena...

I recently launched a website called Giantshopper.com and am interested in knowing where my website ranks on various search engines. However, I am unable to see where it ranks using specific keywords unless I view the results page-by-page. Do you recommend any sites which will help solve my issue?

Best Regards,
Sam

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Sam

There are endless software tools on the market these days that will assist you to view the search rankings for your site under different keywords. What they do is conduct multiple searches for keywords on the search engines and then collate the results for you in various reports.

Because bulk querying software as described can cause a drain on their servers, their use is frowned on by the search engines, noticeably Google. Therefore you should make sure you use software that has "polite-searching" built in and/or conducts the searches using an API key provided to users by Google. One of the better ones I've used is WebPosition. Others I've heard about but can't vouch for include WebCEO and IBP.

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Q and A: Why does our site show different Google ranks in different locations?

Dear Kalena...

My tech can not explain and I thought you may. When searching specific terms on my computer at work, we come up like on the 4th or 5th page. When I do the exact same search at home, same terms and same settings, we come up on the first or second page. Why is that?

David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

You don't say how far geographically your home is from your office, but it sounds like your different IP locations are triggering searches on two different Google data-centers. Google shows slightly different results, depending on the IP address of the searcher and the data-center the query is sent to.

It's not uncommon for the same search to trigger different results for searchers in different locations, particularly if they are undergoing a major data-center shuffle (historically known as the Google Dance).

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A: Why does my website ranking fluctuate so much in Google?

There are two parts to your question. For the second part - about Google only showing a fraction of your links - see this post.

Regarding why your website ranking fluctuates, this is absolutely normal. Google is constantly adding new websites to their database and making changes to their ranking algorithm, so it makes sense that these additions and changes will impact the ranking of sites already listed.

If it is the ranking of your site for the keyword "Liverpool" you're not happy with, that's a different story. Considering there are over 17 million other sites competing for the same keyword, being in the top 80-160 sites isn't too bad! But it seems to me that you're not thinking strategically. Why do you think you need to target persons only typing in the generic keyword "Liverpool"? Consider this advice:

a) Recent studies have proven that the majority of people now use 2 and 3 word phrases to search. (Single word searches are soooo yesterday!)

b) You can attract more highly qualified visitors to your site who are more likely to purchase from you or sign up to your service if you use less generic, more targeted search terms that match *precisely* what they are looking for.

For example, it took me a while to realize that your site was actually promoting your book of stories about Liverpool, England. Even if persons had found your site using the generic keyword "Liverpool", how many of them were looking for a book about a place in England? How many of them may have been looking for Liverpool, the suburb in Sydney, Australia? Or the name of a car dealership in Liverpool? Or for Robert Liverpool, a guy they went to school with?

You'd be better off targeting more specific phrases like "Liverpool stories" or "books about Liverpool England" etc. so that visitors don't click away when they find your site doesn't offer what they were *actually* looking for. Even if these phrases pull less traffic, you'll find your conversion rate will jump - remember, it's better to get 100 visitors a day when 10 convert than it is to get 1000 visitors a day when only 1 converts! Research your keywords more carefully and then integrate those phrases into your website copy. This article should help you.

c) Looking at your site, it's not designed with usability in mind and the search engines probably don't like it much either. With no clear navigation menu, it looks and feels a bit like one of those Free For All directories with all those text links on the home page. So many links on the one page are diluting the value of each. It also has waaaay too much body text. Tighten up the text so it is just 4 or 5 easy to read paragraphs, include your main keyword phrases, add a logical navigation menu with a site map and use anchor text in your links. Move all that excess text to new pages and try to keep each page to an individual theme e.g. The Beatles, Liverpool property etc.

Hope this helps!

Q: Why does my website ranking fluctuate so much in Google?

Dear Kalena...

My website fluctuates in Goggle ranking tremendously so that whenever I employ the search term 'Liverpool' my url can be found anywhere from 80 to 160 for 17,000,000 returns. I am at my wits end and furthermore don't understand why Google only lists a fraction of the friendly links pointing to my site. Can you help?

Best regards
John