Google webmaster guidelines was put together to educate webmasters and anyone building and designing websites or blogs about how to create these websites that meet Google’s standards.
From my observation, in the last few years, it has become more and more difficult to rank blogs or websites high up on the search engines for a given keyword phrase using purely SEO (search engine optimization) techniques.
From what is known, Google has been hiring some of the best SEO experts and programmers at its HQ to program and constantly update its engine’s algorithms which is responsible for ranking websites and blogs. What is the reason for this humungus effort? Simple! “When you type a search term in the Google search box, Google wants to give you ‘near to exact results’ based on the keyword you typed!”
This, I think is one of the greatest efforts being embarked by the world’s largest search engine. Smaller search engines like Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Bing.com etc eventually will or should I say, have begun to follow in the same direction. “When the BIG boys play, everyone gets excites!”
As far as the user experience is concern, Google will definitely outperform and outrank any other search engine out there because it simply wants to achieve one goal, which is “to give the highest satisfaction in terms of search results, to the online community.”
Below, I have listed all the webmaster guidelines Google has set recently (split into 3 subsections). I would strongly suggest for you to follow these guidelines when creating your websites or blogs if you’re concern of positioning it high up on the search engines.
1) Design and content guidelines
2) Technical guidelines
3) Quality guidelines
Google suggests, IF you’re unable or don’t wish to follow all it’s guidelines, the least you should implement is its Quality guidelines.
When you have created your website or blog:
- Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
- Submit a Sitemap using the Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase it’s coverage of your webpages. But if you’ve setup WordPress.org on your domain, you can use the sitemap.xml plugin to create a sitemap of your blog automatically. It’s much easier.
- And lastly, inform other webmasters you’re planning to link to from your blog and tell them when your blog will be launched on the Net.
Design & Content Guidelines
- Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
- Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
- Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
- Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.
- Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
- Check for broken links and correct HTML.
- If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
- Review Google’s Image guidelines for best practices on publishing images.
Technical Guidelines
- Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
- Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
- Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
- Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you’re using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Webmaster Tools.
- If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.
- Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.
- Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers.
- Monitor your site’s performance and optimize load times. Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve.Google strongly recommends that all webmasters regularly monitor site performance using Page Speed, YSlow, WebPagetest, or other tools. For more information, tools, and resources, see Let’s Make The Web Faster. In addition, the Site Performance tool in Webmaster Tools shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.
Quality Guidelines
These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it.
Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, please report that site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.
Quality guidelines – basic principles
- Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
- Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Quality guidelines – specific guidelines
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links. To see how this works, click here.
- Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects. To see how this works, click here.
- Don’t send automated queries to Google. To see how this works, click here.
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords. To see how this works, click here.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. Click here.
- Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
So by reading, understanding and implementing these guidelines, you are able to meet with Google’s standards and obviously if Google is happy, you should have no problem ranking your website high on Google.
Happy following these guidelines!
Amar@Aaron
CEO, Niche Marketing Resources
Posted in General Topics Hybrid Niche Marketing Niche Marketing by .
Feb 10
12
Online Consumer Spending in 2009
I was trying to locate some real facts and figures to show that despite the US economy slump in 2008/2009, online consumer spending wasn’t really affected.
A strong holiday season kept online retail from finishing 2009 in negative territory, and offers hope for a better year for e-retailers in 2010, web measurement firm comScore Inc. said in a report released a few days ago.
E-retail sales trailed the prior year for most of 2009, but year-over-year gains of a few percentage points in November and December allowed e-retail to finish the year at $129.8 billion in sales, essentially unchanged from $130.1 billion in 2008. The holiday season comeback “does suggest that the tides of consumer sentiment are beginning to turn and that 2010 may be a healthier year for retail e-commerce,” noted comScore’s report, “The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review.”
Despite the fall-off from growth rates that were consistently in double digits before slipping to 6% in 2008, the web remains a relative bright spot for retailers, comScore says. “New buyers continue to enter the channel, and as average spending per buyer rebounds off its 2009 lows, the e-commerce channel should return to healthy growth rates,” the report says.
While e-retail held steady in 2009, online travel sales declined 5% to $79.8 billion. That resulted in total consumer e-commerce spending falling 2% to $209.6 billion in 2009, the first decline ever, comScore says.
The report notes that only a handful of online retail categories registered higher sales in 2009. Leading the way was books and magazines, which grew by 12%, followed by computer software (excluding PC games) 7%; sports and fitness 6%; jewelry and watches 4%; video games, consoles and accessories 3%; consumer electronics 3%; and computers, peripherals and PDAs 1%.
More consumers searched online in 2009, and they searched more often. The number of unique individuals who searched increased 6% and searches per individual searcher increased 10%, resulting in a 16% gain in total search queries. Microsoft improved to a 10.7% search market share from 8.3% on the strength of the launch last year of its new Bing search engine. But Google remained dominant, accounting for 65.7% of searches in December 2009, comScore says.
Other trends noted in the report were more consumers participating in online social networks, viewing online video and purchasing high-end mobile phones that can access the web.
Download Comscore’s latest whitepaper on this topic. (.pdf)
Posted in General Topics Niche Marketing by .
Did you know that in order to gain high rankings in Search Engines like Google, your blog or website MUST be optimized.
Since, I’m using WordPress, which in my opinion is one of the best CMS Blogging tool on the planet right now! I’d like to share with you a technique on how you can confirm if the WP theme you just downloaded from say…www.ABCthemes.com is SEO optimized.
First off, with any of your themes, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you install a plugin called AIOSEOP (All-In-One-SEO Pack.)
Here are the steps:-
From your WP dashboard, on the left pane, select PLUGINS and click “Add New”. You will see a plugins search box like this:-
Next, in the box, type “all-in-one seo” and click Search Plugins.
You will then be taken to the results page where you will Install the first result shown which says All-In-One SEO Pack.
But please bear in mind, by simply installing AIOSEOP plugin, it is not enough to make your WP theme SEO optimized. This is because usually the tags are all messed up, unless the WP theme designer was an SEO expert and knew exactly what he was doing as per required by Google’s ranking standards.
REMEMBER! AIOSEOP cannot fix messed up h1 tags in your theme and for the Search Engines, these tags are vital.
Follow the steps I’ve highlighted below to check if your WP theme is SEO Optimized.
(This technique only works with the Mozilla Firefox browser. So, if you’re still back-dated and using Internet Explorer or worst still Netscape Navigator, please close your browser and launch the Firefox browser.)
(Don’t have Firefox? Download it for FREE here!)
STEP 1: Install the Web Developer Plugin for Firefox. (this only works in Firefox).
Download Web Developer Plugin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
STEP 2: Visit the blog site after you have downloaded a theme and activated it.
STEP 3: Click on CSS > Disable Styles > All Styles on the Web Developer Toolbar or simply press Ctrl-Shift-S.
What this does is strip out all the javasript and css styling in your website. Something like what a google bot (robot) will do when it crawls your site.
Now, to know if that theme is SEO optimized, the Title or your main keyword should be at the very top of the webpage after you disabled styling. And as much as possible your main content should go before the sidebar and the footer.
H1 Tags
From what I know, there should only be one h1 tag occuring in any given page. Otherwise, your blog cannot be optimized. At one time, I had a theme that had 8 h1 tags in the home page.
The Blog Title and the recent posts were all tagged with h1. I tried searching my post through google and the first result that came up was from my homepage and did not direct me to where the actual post was, this was pretty weird and messed up till I found out about the h1 tags.
STEP 4: On your keyboard, press Ctrl + U and then Ctrl + F and find how many h1 tags there are in the page you are viewing.
In the index page or homepage, the h1 tag should be your main keyword, while on the post page the post title should be wrapped in h1 tag.
Also please don’t forget about the meta description, and meta keywords tag on your header. These play a major factor in SEO too.
Want to grab the complete SEO steps to optimize any WP theme? I highly recommend if you visited my good friend Nathan’s blog. He has done a marvellous job of posting upto 10 different SEO steps to optimize any WP theme out there.
Here is his blog url:
http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/wordpress-seo-the-ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-theme-search-engine-optimization/
Till next time…
How To Gain The No. 1 Spot In Google, Yahoo & MSN?
Ranking your blogs or websites high in the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) not only takes skills but patience too.
So, what are the factors to attain high search engine ranking positioning?
There are several factors, according to a few SEO Experts. It is NOT due to one single factor. Constant work is involved i.e updating the blog/site, content refreshing, increasing links (outbound and inbound) etc.
But recently, it has come to our attention that Google places a lot of emphasis on CONTENT.
That’s the whole reason why I’ve dedicated an entire sub-section of my Hybrid Niche Marketing Training Course just on ‘CONTENT’ alone.
A Slight Correction:
For some apparent reason, Google displayed different results in our previous blog ranking screenshot. Thanks to those who called in and pointed us to this glitch. We have however written to Google demanding an explanation but have yet to receive any response.
Here is the previous screenshot taken somewhere in Dec 2009. Notice the wrong results shown by Google’s search engine, 606,000 whereas the true results should have been around +- 87,000 only!
Here is the latest screenshot taken on 25/3/2010 showing the correct results, where we overthrew 86,900 sites taking up the No.1 spot in Google!
Verify If Your Site/Blog Is Having High Search Engine Ranking Positioning.
STEP 1: In the address bar of your browser, type www.Google.com (if you’re in the US) and www.Google.com/ncr if you’re outside the US.
STEP 2: Once you see the Google search box, simply type Hybrid Niche Marketing.
In a few seconds, Google will display the results just like the above screenshot.
How long did it take for us to get our blog ranked at the top spot? In less than 3-working days! Jokes aside!
I’ve used the same techniques (taught to my students in my bootcamp and 1-on-1 HNM Training Program) . I also apply the same strategies on all of my 54 Niche blog sites ! Remember! It doesn’t matter how beautiful and lucious your website/ blog looks like…
” IF YOU’RE NOT RANKED HIGH IN THE SE’s, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET TRAFFIC! AND; IF THERE IS NO TRAFFIC, THERE IS NO MONEY $$$ ”
If you’re an individual or a small business seeking to gain exposure for your products/services on the Net, then you should learn how to gain high search engine ranking so that you can get FREE traffic to your blogs/sites.
STOP wasting your money paying high fees to programmers and web SEO experts to rank your blogs for you when YOU could easily learn this simple and overly technical strategy of gaining high search engine ranking positioning?
Join my FREE 1-Hour briefing in Kuala Lumpur and I promise you will learn more in 1-hour from my FREE session than you would, hiring someone and paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to optimize your blogs / websites for you.
Adios!!!
Amar@Aaron
CEO, Master Trainer & Founder of
The Hybrid Niche Marketing System
support@hybridnichemarketing.com
P.S . Check out this YouTube video where this American Hispanic proofs that blogs gain high rankings in the search engines compared to hand crafted websites. (Very informative!)
I always get this question from visitors of my blog and participants of my training program, “How to know for sure if a particular topic or Niche market is profitable? Why most results from keyword database tools are different? and “ Why the discrepancies?”
So, to answer the first question, we need to understand the difference between ‘Market Research’ and ‘Keyword Research’. There is a significant difference. Market research is conducted first, only then keyword research but many marketers do the exact opposite. (I’ll talk about ways to conduct Market research in a different post!)
In fact, before I even start any Niche project, or register a domain name, I’ll first check if that particular target Niche market has any potential for profits. Afterall, I am a marketer foremost!
You see, there are many-many Niche markets out there but NOT all Niche markets are profitable. So, the way to do it correctly is, pre-determine profitability from the start, using these set criteria:-
- Whether if there is strong demand?
- If sales are strong?
- Is there commerce being moved?
- How stable is the market ?
- Is it a seasonal trend or are sales generally up throughout the year?
- Is there a lot of competition? (competition is good!)
Don’t get misled thinking that the lesser the competition, the better. It’s actually the other way around. The more the competition, the better because if a Niche market has less or no competition at all, it could mean that the ‘buying power’ is weak and there are fewer actual purchasers.
TIP: Some of the market-places I’m currently in right now are highly competitive but 90% of my blog-sites are earning me a decent income.
Let ‘s dive in deeper with another example:-
Say, you’re interested to work in the ‘Cameras’ niche and after doing a preliminary check you discovered the keyword phrase “digital cameras” has been searched for 5,680 times in the last 24 hrs.
But, if you conducted your search using various other keyword tools, you’ll notice the results from each are different.
In fact, when I conducted a check with 4 different keyword tools, all 4 showed me different results for the same keyword phrase “digital cameras”. So, which tool is telling the truth? All are!
Each keyword database is accurately showing how many times a keyword phrase appears in that given dataset. But it has no clue as to the number of searches in the whole world especially when 98% of the data is held by the Big Five search engines. (See Comscore’s latest 2010 report)
So, meaning, if one tool says there are 5,680 searches a day, that doesn’t mean that during the whole day, the entire World Wide Web only had 5,680 searches.
What this means is, the keyword phrase was searched for 5,680 times from a chunk of data owned by that particular keyword tool company or search engine.
This result is NOT a collective result, meaning, they’re not from every single search engine or keyword tool company on the Internet! There is NO tool which does this.
The current keyword databases available to the public maybe account for ONLY 2% of the Internets keyword data collected in total. That’s why, many services show you 2 sets of results;
1. Regular count no.
2. Predicted daily count
The predicted daily count is only telling you a prediction! It tells you, how many searches may have occured across all search engines for a given keyword phrase. Maybe! It’s only a probability. An assumption!
That’s why when it comes to search count reliability, I prefer to rely on results shown by Google’s keyword tool since Google accounts for 65.7% of total searches done on the Internet. (see Comscore.com report above)
What’s This Site About?
Hi! My name is Amar Aaron and I'm the founder of Hybrid Niche Marketing. Thank you for being here. I've created this site to provide you with more in-depth knowledge on Hybrid Niche Marketing and how this simple yet unique Internet business model is helping me and a few others churn great incomes from home. P/S Don't forget to subscribe to my Exclusive List via RSS or via the form below. In this way, whenever I publish new content, you will be one of the first ones in the world to receive it.