SEOly Blog

Google has cracked down on link selling; this means that websites that do so, will have a lower PageRank and rankings within the Google search engine. Buying paid links is improper seo in the eyes of Google as these links can manipulate search engine rankings. For instance, Stanford Daily originally had a PageRank of 9; however, after Google’s recent update against paid link sellers, their PageRank dropped down 2 to a PageRank of 7 as of early October 2007. Currently, the Stanford Daily has a PageRank of 5; this drop in PageRank can be attributed to link selling. Over the period of 3-4 months, Stanford Daily has taken a large drop when it comes down to PageRank and rankings with Google.

At the time, Google has not automated the process of checking for paid links within a website, so this means that each site which is suspected of selling paid links, must be reviewed by a human.  Also, this also means that a small (most likely none at all) amount of websites will be added to the list of paid link sellers, since this process is not automated. Additionally, Google will review a website upon request, so honest webmasters have nothing to worry about. It looks like Google really is trying to ensure that their search engine is truly optimized by penalizing websites with paid links.

Posted in Google, Links, Search Engines, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Tags: PageRank, paid links

The question is: What do you color your ads within your webpage, so that you don’t drive your visitors crazy, but still earn enough revenue? Generally speaking the more ads you have the more money you will earn; however, there is a tipping point at which visitors will simply start leaving your site, if it becomes infested with ad units. A method of subtly adding ad units to a webpage is to have these ads blend into the content of the site. This means that you might color your Adsense unit to match the colors of the sidebar on your website. Additionally, you may consider placing the ad unit within a large section of text, so that the text simply flows around this ad. Color coordinating the ads properties (background, text, border, etc.) is very important, so that your ads do blend into the site. The other thing to remember is you don’t want your ads to blend in too well, if visitors are constantly clicking on ads accidentally because they are trying to navigate to another page on your website, this will cause your visitors to become irritated. Even though this might temporarily cause you to earn more money; in the long run, it is possible that this may be harmful to your traffic. Be attentive in how you color ad units, so that they are just right. You might have to toy around with this for a while, but getting user feedback or simply looking at your site from a visitors’ perspective can help you to achieve this.

Posted in Advertising
Tags: ads, adsense, color, google

Google’s Pagerank system, also abbreviated as PR, is complex algorithm that ranks websites and webpages on a 0 to 10 logarithmic scale according to the number of incoming links to that particular page.  A link from one webpage to another is in essence a vote for the linked site, however the importance of the webpage with the link scale this vote. This means that a page of greater importance, has a vote that counts more than a page of less importance. Using this and other factors, such as page content, a page’s importance is determined. A page could have 10,000 links pointing to it, yet still have a low Pagerank because the linking webpages have a low importance. Also, a page may only have 10 links directed to it, yet have a relatively high Pagerank because the linking webpages have a high level of importance. Factors influencing a websites Pagerank also include the visibility of a link, placement of the link within the webpage, outbound links from the webpage, and how up to date the linking page is. A useful site to find a website’s Pagerank, as well as, predict its future Pagerank can be found at iwebtool.com. Google combines both Pagerank and a pages content to ensure that searches provide relevant results.

Posted in Google, Links, Search Engines

Recently, I have seen numerous website hosts offering packages that include credit to advertising sites, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. For instance, Godaddy offers $20 to Google Adwords and $25 to Microsoft Adcenter if you purchase their Economy Plan.

Note that the 12 month Economy Plan only costs $43.08 ($3.59 per month), and you will receive $45 in credit for these advertising sites as part of the plan.

Sounds too good to be true right? Well there are certain conditions for each of these credits. For Google Adwords, you must apply for an account within 15 days, be a new Google Adword customer, only use the credits on the domain hosted, and pay a $5 activation fee. For Microsoft Adcenter, you must apply for an account within 90 days, be a new Microsoft Adcenter customer, limited to one per customer, only valid for USA residents, and pay a $5 activation fee. Even with these certain conditions, it is still quite a reasonable deal granted you are able to use the credit.

Posted in Google, Hosting, Search Engines
Tags: host, hosting, hosts

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely complex area of web development for websites. At SEOmoz.org there are free tool available to anyone who registers, which can help with SEO. Registration only takes 30 seconds, and the tools that the website provides are quite nice. Some of the tools are unfortunately limited to premier members, although ~50% of the tools there are free to use. Term Target and Term Extractor can be used to find what keyword or keywords that your website has optimized content for search engines. Additionally, you can use the Rank Checker to see how your website, or even a specific webpage’s keyword or keywords ranking in search engines. These stats are saved in an archive and can be compared later as your website continues to develop. Page Strength, similar to Google’s Pagerank, gives a general idea of where your website stands with regards to overall popularity across the world wide web. There are a few other convenient tools that can be used to help you with SEO with regards to your website.

Posted in CPM, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Tags: search engine optimization, seo