Additional info about today's post

After I made my post about keyword-stuffed domains today, I happened to stumble upon a post by Googler Matt Cutts in his blog. Apart from recommending people use hyphens (dashes) instead of underscores in their file names, Matt also had something interesting to say about hyphens in domains:

"To answer a common question, Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url. Of course I can only speak for Google, not other search engines. And bear in mind that if your domain looks like www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-while-consolidating-your-debt-
so-you-can-play-texas-holdem-while-watching-porn.com, that may still attract attention for other reasons."

So looks like the automatic penalty for multiple dashes in a domain or page URL is just another SEO myth. But keyword-stuffed domains may attract unwanted attention from Google, so beware.

Q and A: Is there benefit in having multiple domains containing search keywords?

Dear Kalena...

I'm a web designer and I have many clients who register domain names that match their business name. This is great, but in many cases these domain names don't include their primary keyword. Is there benefit in having multiple domain names pointing to the same site and using the keyword included domain name for search engine registration? Is there any risk of duplicate content as you discussed in your September 05 newsetter?

Thank you - I find your newsletters very helpful and hope to complete one of you courses soon.

Cheers,
Nicole


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Nicole

Keyword-stuffed domains? No, nada, absolutely not. Sure, it used to be all the rage to register multiple domains containing as many keywords as possible all separated by hyphens. But this only ever gave sites a teeny tiny boost in the relevancy stakes, if any at all. And those days are long gone. Keyword-stuffed domains are now considered retro spam.

Nearly all current search engine algorithms filter out keywords within domain names and word has it that over-use of hyphens within a domain name can actually earn your site a penalty. Besides that, the experts agree that keyword-stuffed domains just look silly.

But thanks for providing our:

Retro Spam Tactic of the Week!

First ever marriage proposal via search engine

Came across this on the weekend. Barry Schwartz, otherwise known as RustyBrick and editor of the Search Engine Roundtable blog, proposed to his girlfriend Yisha last month via the AskJeeves search engine. Awwww how sweet! Congrats guys.

Q and A: Are we in the Google Sandbox?

Dear Kalena...

Having spent some time in an effort to get our site a good listing on Google I have now given up and started using Adwords. I am hoping that this is a short term thing and that in the long term I can improve our listings to the extent where I don't have to pay to be in the running with Google.

For some time I have suspected that there is something fundamentally wrong with the construction of the site. In the past we have spent many hundreds of pounds to a company that promised to get us a top 5 listing on Google (yes, I now know this cannot be promised by anyone!).

Today for the first time I learnt (from your site) about the Sandbox. Are we in the Sandbox?? Kalena I am a lost soul and need some help from a higher power! (That's you!)

Could you give me any guidance please? BTW I am aware we need to do some work on the site as the time users spend on the index page is very short, but I am juggling lots of missions!

Thanks Kalena, the site is fab and I learn day by day.

Best regards
Adrian

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Adrian

Regardless of whether your site is in the Sandbox, there is one big glaring problem that I can see on your site immediately. You use a META refresh to redirect all visitors from http://www.macoles.com/ to http://www.macoles.com/html/. What is the point of that?

META refreshes can be viewed as suspicious by search engines, because some spammers use them to pull the old "bait and switch" tactic. That is, advertise a certain type of content in the search engine listings but then redirect visitors to an entirely different site e.g. porn, gambling etc. I've also heard that META refreshes can cause problems for search bots trying to index your site. Some bots coming across refresh code will simply leave the site without indexing it.

According to this site, you should never use a META refresh on a page that you want indexed by search engines. It also states that Googlebot has trouble with pages that use a refresh time-out of "0" like yours does.

However having checked your site, I can see that:

1) Googlebot last cached it on November 16.
2) You have a Google Toolbar PageRank of 4/10 and 5 backward links.
3) Google has indexed 69 pages from your site.

So although Google may not currently have trouble with your META refresh, other engines might so I would trash it as soon as possible.

Regarding whether your site is in the Google Sandbox, I don't think it is. Why? Because a few searches for logical keyword phrases such as "self catering holidays Jersey" pulls up your site within the top 10. Sure your site doesn't rank highly for more competitive terms like "holiday cottages Jersey", but your poor link popularity probably has more to do with that. If your site was sandboxed, I wouldn't expect it to rank well for any of your target phrases.

So Adrian, if you want to boost your search engine rankings, get rid of that horrible META refresh, get to work increasing the links pointing to your site from related high quality sites and keep adding fresh content.

Q and A: Why doesn't my site show a Google PageRank?

Dear Kalena...

I have added my website to Google (www.lyriclabs.com). Now the search result come but the page ranking not come in my google toolbar.

what can I do? Please help me..

Maran

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Maran

Your Google Toolbar PageRank shows at zero in my browser (all white). The toolbar PageRank is only an estimate of your actual Google PageRank. Even so, the fact that the estimate is at zero is cause for concern, unless your site was only recently launched. It's common for new sites to show a non-existent or very low PageRank until their backward links increase.

If your site is not new to the Internet, it is almost certainly a lack of link popularity and/or low relevance causing your poor PageRank. Google is not showing any backward links to your site so you should focus on building up high quality links. Try seeking out niche directories and similarly themed portals about translation or language services and submit your site to them requesting a link back.

Also consider your site from Google's perspective. Have you made it as relevant as possible for your target search queries? Does the site follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines? Have you implemented any tactics that Google frowns upon? Have you included lots of relevant, unique and useful content relating to your products and services? Make your site more usable and relevant for your visitors and your Google PageRank will normally improve.

The fact that I can't find your site using your target keyword phrase suggests it may be Sandboxed. You may just need to be patient and ride it out. Best of luck!

November Search Light newsletter out now

The latest Search Light Newsletter went out last night.

What do you mean you didn't get it? Whaaaa?? You're not a subscriber? Tsk Tsk! Better subscribe via the email box on this page, quick!

This month's issue features an article from Jill Whalen about the importance of having a water-tight services contract.

Search Engine Advice - LIVE

Some of you have been asking me for advice about your websites that you don't want published in this blog. So in response to this demand, I've set up Private Search Engine Consulting via Live Help.

If you'd like some professional advice about the search engine compatibility of your site, or perhaps just a second opinion about a search engine issue that's been bugging you, simply click on the Live Help link to the left to request a chat with me. Pricing for this exclusive service is listed here.

Please note you can continue to submit you specific questions free of charge via the usual link, provided you are happy for them to be published. You can also request that your domain and/or name remain anonymous. So what are you waiting for? Ask me something!

Q and A: Why is Google ignoring my site?

Dear Kalena...

I am writing to you because I have tried to ignore the fact that Google has been ignoring my site for over a year now, but I have had enough.

I have tried to optimise my website as best I could. Ok I do not do this on a full-time basis but I do try my best; adding relevant content, trying to building links with relevant websites which are subject related, etc etc.

My website ranks well for keywords like "plus size fashion", "plus size bridal wear" and "plus size casual" on search engines like Yahoo, MSN Search and AllTheWeb but Google would not have anything to do with me. I can see that Google had indexed by website, it has indexed around 250 pages, so I shouldn't be blacklisted. My site also has a PR 4... modest I know but not low enough to throw away.

I am clueless as to what I might be doing wrong! Can you shed some light please?

Kudos for the great blog - I look forward to your posts!

Best regards,

Sarah

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sarah

I'm assuming that your site is the same as your email domain? If so, you've got some serious coding problems. I can't even get the site to load in either FireFox or Internet Explorer. I get an error in FF I've never seen before:

"Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page. This may be caused by cookies that are blocked".

I don't get an error with IE, but it just times out without loading the page. Based on the error message, I'm assuming that your site code uses a number of redirects or META refreshes. Although Google has indexed 379 pages from your site, I can't seem to get any to load and I've clicked on about six.

I have no doubt that your code problems are causing major issues for Googlebot when it comes to index your site. Not to mention the fact that many of your potential visitors probably can't view your site!

Sarah, I would get your code sorted out quick smart and rid yourself of any unneccessary redirects. I used the HTML validator from W3 and a 302 error showed up, indicating serious redirect issues. Better get it sorted!

Google Base

It's been a long day and there's only 3 minutes left of it. I should be in bed but thought I'd make a quick post. I've only got two more words to say: Google Base.

Q and A: Why has my site vanished from Google?

Dear Kalena...

Me Too. I have had my site for nearly ten years and have been listed very well with Google since they began. A few weeks ago I vanished. Below is a copy of an email to Google. Please do not mention my web URL. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jamie

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Jamie

You are kidding right? You REALLY don't know why your site has disappeared? Looks like Google has actually banned your site from their index and I don't blame them. Why do I think it's banned? The site isn't cached by Googlebot, shows a Toolbar PageRank of zero, it has no backward links and no pages indexed.

Why don't I blame them? Because the site uses many of the retro spam tactics that were popular back in the 90s:

• Keyword-stuffed Title Tags
• Keyword-stuffed META Description Tags
• Keyword-stuffed META Keyword Tags
• Keyword-stuffed Alt Image attributes
  
• Multiple doorway pages (consider your index1.htm, p1975.htm and p2197.htm as three of many examples)
  
• Duplicate content on many pages
  
• A cross-linked internal directory of over 1,000 pages (while not necessarily spammy, could be seen as an attempt to artificially inflate your link popularity).
  

The list goes on. Oh and the bulletin board you said you deleted in your email to Google is still alive and well and ranking in Yahoo (see /anyboard9/forum/index.html). This forum alone could have earned you the Google penalty. I could be wrong, but to me it reeks of fake posts in a misguided attempt to boost your traffic and rankings.

Looks like you've got some serious rebuilding to do Jamie. Start here.

And thanks for playing:

Name That Retro Spam!

Q and A: How much site editing can be done before it gets sandboxed?

Dear Kalena...

I was wondering if there is any notion out there as to how much can be done to a site before causing Google to throw it in the sandbox.

In other words what kind of changes can I make to the mark up of the site before it goes into Google Search Result Limbo?

Adam

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Adam

There is no definitive answer to this. If you are making extensive changes to your linking structure or obtaining lots of incoming links in a short space of time, indications are that the site may get sandboxed.

But any excessive editing of your code, particularly optimization of pages for specific keywords may trigger filters within Google's latest algorithm.

Adam, you just can't let search engines define the changes you make to your site and when you want to make those changes. Your audience should be the prime motivation for any changes you want to make. If you spent all your time obsessing over whether code tweaks will impact your positions on this or that engine, you'd be a nervous wreck! Try to follow the search engine's own webmaster guidelines, keep your audience happy, update your site on YOUR schedule and relax!

Thanks for all the questions

Just wanted to say thanks to those readers out there who responded to my appeal for more questions. I've got about a week's worth to get on with now, but I'd love some more! You know where the link is.

Google Analytics - Serious Challenger to ClickTracks?

Found out about Google Analytics yesterday and nearly passed out. Yep, they have finally put their purchase of Urchin site metrics to good use and created a powerful, accurate, visual JavaScript-based site analytics package for free. Yes, you read correctly, F-R-E-E!

I am still clinging to my current respect for and fascination with ClickTracks, but I have installed Google Analytics on one of my sites just to see how well it competes. If I think it is a serious challenger to ClickTracks, I'll be mighty impressed and will make sure you guys are the first to know. Meanwhile, others are suggesting the new tool could provide so much data to Google as to make it a serious invasion of privacy.

Q and A: Isn't this duplicate content?

Dear Kalena...

Following your column of November 7, where you quote Google's guidelines, "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content"...

Was wondering your thoughts on how Google allows these as their number 1 and number 2 rankings as search results for "aruba pictures":

http://www.arubatravelinfo.com/pictures.html
http://www.arubatravelinfo.com/photos.html

Lisa

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Lisa

I wouldn't call those pages duplicates. Far from it. They have a similar theme, but the layout is different, the text is different and the images are different.

That said, I have seen a lot of pages in Google SERPs that should be considered duplicates. Some of these are still ranking well. It just depends how long it takes for Google's sp@m filters to find them and filter out the duplicate. It might not seem fair, but with their content database as large as it is, Google is managing pretty well, considering.

If ever you see Google results you think go against their own webmaster guidelines, you can always submit a Spam Report.

Q and A: Where are all the questions this week?

Dear Kalena...

I was just wondering why I haven't received many questions this week.

Kalena

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Kalena

I've no idea. Perhaps everyone's on vacation. I've cleared the backlog of questions from this month and now I need some more. C'mon people, throw your curly questions at me! Link's on the left.

Q and A: Has my site been penalized?

Dear Kalena...

In the past 3 days, my website has gone from the top 3 ranking positions all the way to #35 or below. Have I been penalized? Partially penalized?

Specifically, the website used to rank #3 for the term "hip hop samples" for the past six months. Plus, it ranked in the top 4 for several other terms like "fruity loops samples" and "free hip hop samples" etc.

FYI... most of the other competitor sites' rankings for the same terms "hip hop samples" & "fruity loops samples" have remained unchanged while www.modernbeats.com has plummeted.

Kind Regards,
Liam

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Liam

Your site has a Google Toolbar PageRank of 5, plus 68 backward links and Google has indexed nearly 200 pages of your site, so a manual penalty seems unlikely. Have you made a lot of changes to your site lately? Specifically, have you added visible or anchor text for your target phrases? My guess is your site has been sandboxed for competitive terms . See this post for more info.

In terms of your site's search engine compatibility, I can see some glaring issues there:

1) Your home page contains no visible body text apart from visitor testimonials at the bottom. How do you expect search engines to consider your site to be relevant for search queries for your target keywords if you don't actually use those keywords in your body text?

2) Your Title Tag appears to be a little long and not optimized for peak ranking performance or usability. It should ideally be a logical and grammatically correct sentence of 9 or 10 words, incorporating important keywords. Remember that people will see this title in the Favorites list if they bookmark your site.

3) Your META Description Tag is not formatted correctly and appears to be simply a bunch of keywords strung together. Again, this tag should be a grammatically correct sentence or two, incorporating your important keywords in a logical way. People may well see this description of your site in the search engine results pages so it should be enticing enough for them to click on.

4) You are using a technique with your Alt Img attributes that is almost certainly tripping search engine sp@m filters. What you have on your site is one of the worst cases of keyword-stuffed Alt tags that I've ever seen! Your Alt tags should be used to logically describe the images that exist on your site. They were developed primarily to allow accessibility to visually impaired visitors, not as some secret way to trick search engines.

And on that note, you've earned our:

Retro Spam Tactic of the Week!

Is your site working hard for you?

Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out right? Might as well go hard or go home.

Well as I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes casually walking on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out. The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare minimum.

Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?

Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles like e-commerce software, blogs, shopping carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, checking for usability or analyzing trends.

These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't converting traffic into customers. What a waste!

Is your site working hard for you? If not, it might be time to book a site fitness assesment. Stay tuned for more info...

Q and A: Why is Google only showing our site for one search term?

Dear Kalena...

Thank you for this post. That's fairly reassuring.

However, for the search term 'serviced apartments wokingham' it's our sister site, www.deepblue-apartments.co.uk and NOT the www.deepblue-apartments.com that appears.

The latter site (our main and most important site) now only shows up (3rd position) for one search term, 'serviced apartments uk' after doing very well for all our important search terms. How come?

Is that a typical symptom of an algorithm update?

I hope it settles soon as we depend on Google for our main source of business. Any idea how long before our listings might resuscitate? This has been bad for around two weeks.

Best wishes,
David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

From where I sit, your main site does indeed come up for the search query 'serviced apartments wokingham', in first place, in fact. The first listing I see is this one for your company together with links to two of your sites, a map and a blurb about your company courtesy of Google Local.

Your "sister site" as you call it comes in at position 5 for the same query. And speaking of sister sites, it seems that you have a range of sites containing substantially similar content. I've noticed at least 3 while researching your question. Google specifically advises against doing this in their Webmaster Guidelines:

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

I'm not sure what the logic is behind promoting multiple sites, but if your rankings have suddenly dropped in Google, it could be that Googlebot has detected duplicate content and is filtering it out or ignoring it altogether. You might want to reconsider your strategy there.

Proposal Kit Discount Coupon

Earlier this week, I mentioned Proposal Kit template software as a must-have business tool for anyone looking for a draft services contract, particularly providers of IT based services (e.g. web designers, SEO consultants, IT consultants etc).

I have been referring graduates of Search Engine College and start-ups in the search engine optimization field to Proposal Kit for years, not only because the templates make any business look professional, but because it includes a very detailed SEO Services Contract amongst the templates.

Well those nice guys at Proposal Kit saw our post and decided to provide a 10% discount to all readers of this blog! So if you're in the market for a set of templates that automate the chore of putting together a complex business proposal, visit Proposal Kit and make sure you enter coupon code WEBRANK in the refer/upgrade field to receive 10% discount on your purchase.

Dumb Link Requests Revisited

It's Friday so I'm going to indulge in a rant today. I've complained about receiving dumb link requests before, but I've received so many lately that I think it's a topic worth revisiting.

If you're a webmaster, please note that it is pointless, yes POINTLESS, to swap links with a web site that has zero in common with your own site. Think that it will magically boost your search engine rankings? You're wrong. It's retro spam - any search engine benefits from reciprocal linking dried up a long time ago. Think that it will make your site more popular? Wrong again. You're more likely to isolate or confuse your visitors if you start linking willy-nilly to sites that have nothing to do with your topic, product or services.

The ONLY good reason to link out to another site is if you feel it adds value to your site or offers something useful to your own site visitors. Same goes for asking other sites to link to you - do so ONLY if you think your site offers useful and unique information for visitors to the site you're requesting the link from.

Clearly, the author of the link request I received today didn't follow this rule. The email started out quite promisingly but soon revealed itself as cookie-cutter cr@p:

Hello -

For the second time in a week I found myself visiting your website, so I figured hey "why not drop a request while I'm here this time around" :-)

I actually found your site by accident actually while searching on Google last week and ended up cliking on the link. I checked out a few of the pages and so far so good. I hope you keep updating the content, cause I'll probably be checking back again.........By the way, I'm also currently doing a link exchange for [URL removed] (a quality well kept PR5 site) and thought to ask if you would be interested in having us as an honest link exchange partner.

We try to be extremely selective when it comes to link exchanges, so I only write this because your site seems worthwhile and useful to any visitors, so it would be cool to help you get some good valid & mutual traffic.

If interested, all you have to do is put up a link to [URL removed] (and let me know where you put it) and I'll immidiately (sic) get you a high traffic permanent link pointing to your site that will surely help to increase your traffic.

Our link info:

Title: Wheels & Tires shipped to your door.
URL: [removed]
Description: Shipping wheels & Tires all over the world. Wheel & Tire packages available

Thanks
[Company name removed]

UGH! Do my readers come here to learn where they can buy tires for their cars? Nope. Imagine if I started linking this blog to every Tom, Dick and Harry's web site just because they ask me to? I'd soon lose my audience and the search engines would start to wonder about the relevance of my site. Same goes for your own sites - your audience is too important. Avoid dumb link requests like the one above.

At least it provided our Retro Spam Tactic of the Week!

Q and A: Would AdWords be profitable for me?

Dear Kalena...

I am opening a web site that would work on a very low profit margin per sale and I'm not sure that Adwords is the right choice of marketing for me because to my understanding, Adwords contribute the most to larger organizations with larger profit margins, so.. am I wrong with my understanding of the situation? Can Adwords be a profitable revenue source for me?

Karina32

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Karina

Without knowing your industry or target market, it is a little difficult to make a snap judgement here. However in my experience, AdWords can be beneficial to ANY site on ANY budget, as long as you conduct good thorough keyword research into your market, set up your campaign strategically (individual ads and AdGroups for each keyword theme) and maintain a high ROI by making sensible bids on keywords closely targeted to your products and services.

Because whatever you sell has a low profit margin, ensure your keyword bids allow you enough room to make a profit per sale. You can do this by using Google's internal conversion tracking code on your order pages and keeping a close eye on the cost per customer acquisition figure in the conversion column.

Best of luck!

Domain Registry of America Alive and Well

Heads up people. Those pesky people at the Domain Registry of America are at it again. I've discussed them before, but if you aren't familiar with them, I encourage you to read this post.

I received two letters from them today, urging me to transfer domains from my current registrar to their bogus service. This time the name on the envelope said Registration Services Incorporated and had a U.S. Postage Paid address from New York on it. But the reply paid envelope displayed Domain Registry of America and that same Queen Street, Melbourne address that was on their last letters I binned.

If you receive one of their letters or emails, read it VERY carefully - Domain Registry of America are trying to convince you into transferring your domain to them by using threatening language and misleading information. If you use magnifying glass to read all the fine print on the back of their letters (I'm not kidding, it is that small), the alarm bells will ring. Here's an extract:

"You agree that you may not transfer your domain name registration to another domain name registrar during the first sixty (60) days from the effective date of your initial domain name registration with DRoA. You agree to provide written, signed authorization to DRoA for the transfer of the domain name to another registrar and agree to pay any and all fees that may be charged by DRoA to effect the transfer. Your request to transfer to another registrar may be denied in situations described in the Dispute Policy..."

"You agree, during the period of this Agreement, that we may (1) revised the terms and conditions of this Agreement; and (2) change the services provided under this Agreement. Any such revision or change will be binding and effective immediately on posting of the revised Agreement or change to the service(s) on DRoA's web site, or on notification to you by e-mail or Canadian mail. You agree to review DRoA's web site, including the Agreement, periodically to be aware of any such revisions."

This reads to me that f you mistakenly fall for their letter and sign up for their service, you are stuck with it for 60 days, must pay any transfer costs back to your own registrar and could end up paying for services you didn't agree to.

If you are US-based and receive one of their letters and it is unwanted, please file a complaint with the FTC and call or email Domain Registry of America directly and request to be taken off their mailing lists.

Q and A: Why has my site ranking dropped on Google?

Dear Kalena...

My site www.treotiger.com was on the page of Google with keyword "treo accessories". After Google update this month, Now my ranking dropped to 9 or 10 page of Google. I don't know why all this happened to my site?

Please help.

Thanks,
Sarvjeet

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sarvjeet

Hold your horses there before pressing the panic button. I see 83 of your pages currently indexed in Google. The big G may still be updating or you may be Sandboxed for target keywords. I'd give it another week before jumping to conclusions. Meanwhile, read this post and this post for possible causes and consequences.