Yesterday I wrote a post about why your Alexa ranking is completely useless.

To confirm that, I’m going to show you a simple way to manipulate your Alexa ranking and drastically improve it without building a single link, creating or distributing any content whatsoever.

This trick will work to varying degrees (depending on how many computers you have access to).

How?

It’s actually very simple.

1) Install the Alexa Toolbar on as many computers as you can.

2) Set their homepage to your website URL.

3) Sit back and watch your Alexa rankings improve.

If you would like to get ahead of the competition, request a free no obligation SEO site review today. We will prepare your personal report and get back to you within 48 hours.

Tags: alexa, alexa toolbar, search engine optimisation, seo, seo thunder, tips & tricks

There has been a great deal of speculation (and fear) about what the new Google SERPS (search engine results pages) layout means for SEO & online marketing in general.

In case you missed it, or are unaware: Google Instant is the new feature of the google search engine you’ve been seeing over the past week or so:

Now as you type a query the results refresh automatically as you type.

The new layout also provides users with much more specific query suggestions.

Two things jumped out at me within 30 seconds of playing with the new layout.

1) The longtail (highly specific) keyphrases are going to become more and more relevant as users become more savvy with search and become more comfortable with typing longer phrases to find the content they require.

2) Google Instant will make SEO not just highly important for your website, it effectively makes it essential.

That’s a bold claim, so I’ll explain my logic:

If a user can continue to type and the search results refresh quickly and automatically, then the ‘barrier’ that previously existed where they’d ‘make do’ with the results they were given for a relatively broad keyphrase, has gone. They can simply carry on typing / editing until they find a result they like.

Therefore I’d go as far as to say it really isn’t good enough to ‘just’ be on page one anymore – it’s now almost essential to be in the top 5 results.

It is worth taking into consideration another important factor of the new Google Instant layout: Personalisation.

Personalised Results

Personalised search results are nothing new. They have been around for a few years and longer for logged-in Google accounts holders. Basically Google take into consideration various factors such as geographic location, search history (and probably lots of other secret metrics) in an attempt to provide users with the most relevant search results.

Therefore if you search ‘car hire’ and you’re in London, you’re highly likely to see different results to someone typing the same thing when they’re in Newcastle.

Google Instant rolls this into their new Instant update so search modifiers such as location will become increasingly important.

So, what does Google Instant mean for SEO?

• As far as we’re concerned it now makes SEO an essential part of any business marketing strategy.
• It is also highly likely to shift focus away from search (slightly) and on to promotion methods such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. (which you should be doing already).
• Longtail (specific) keyphrases will become more important so highly relevant, useful pages & page copy will become more & more important (coupled of course with inbound links).

Would you like to know more about your website’s ranking potential? Request a free SEO site review from SEO Thunder. Contact us today!

Tags: google instant, longtail, search marketing, seo, seo thunder

Here’s another quick question from one of our readers:

Q:

Will syndicating a link to your posts on an established Twitter account improve how quickly those pages get indexed, and are they also more likely to be kept in Google’s main index (not in the dreaded supplemental) and therefore rank a bit better?

A:

Twitter links are no-follow which means search engines don’t follow them – therefore they have no impact on your backlink count or how quickly you get indexed.

They can indirectly generate backlinks (people find a link in a tweet they like & independently blog about it – creating a dofollow backlink).

Twitter’s main strength is as a targeted traffic driver to your website.

Tags: faster indexing, search engine optimisation, seo, syndication, twitter

PLR articles are private label resell articles. That means that once you purchase the article / content you are free to resell it.

A common belief in SEO / Internet marketing circles is that if you purchase PLR articles you can then spin them (reword them) and make them unique enough to promote as your own without incurring any duplicate content penalties from Google.

The main problem I have with this is: How much of a difference do you have to make to an article / page / piece of content before it becomes unique in the eyes of the search engine?

Plus, if you are only rewriting it purely to get round the duplicate content filter, surely it isn’t going to be saying much new that isn’t already available … therefore you’re unlikely to get people linking to it … and therefore unlikely to gain much benefit from it.

My other problem is probably more personal. You see, when I write an article I want it to have value and be genuinely useful to myself (as a reference) as well as a website visitor. Therefore I often find it difficult purely to switch a few words around and change a pre-written article.

Very often I’ll end up scraping it and writing my own from scratch anyway …. so there’s no huge benefit for me to buy PLR articles.

That said, I’m sure people will continue to buy them & tweak them & they will continue to evade the dup. content filter … but shame on you! Bring some value to the web & your followers and they’ll be forever greatful

Adam Gardner is a freelance SEO / Social Media Expert. Follow him on twitter @agseo or subscribe to this blog via RSS.

Tags: plr articles, search engine optimisation, seo

Paid Links & Buying Links

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Buying links or paying for links (which pass PageRank) has been officially forbidden by Google & is against their TOS.

That means that any links you buy or sell with the intention of gaming the search engines can potentially damage your site or even get it removed from the search engine’s index.

Buying links isn’t necessarily prohibited, Google rightly state that it is “a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results.” and that “links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.”

There are a few ways to do this but the most effective is to use the rel=”nofollow” tag to tell the search spiders not to follow that particular link & not to pass any PageRank (reputation) along with it.

So, stop building sites just to gain PR & therefore to sell links & bring your online money making efforts into the 21st century!

Don’t believe me? Here is Google’s official stance.

Tags: buying links, link building, paid links, search engine optimisation, seo

Does Google use META tags to categorise its web pages?

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They no longer use the keywords meta tag to rank sites in the results pages.

They do use the TITLE tag, meta title tag (two seperate entities) & the meta description along with other tags such as the robots meta tag.

While the meta description doesn’t have a huge (if any) impact on ranking position, the keywords used to search will be bold in the description. Therefore a well written description tag will increase CTRs to your pages.

It is worth noting that the search engines can choose whether or not to use the description tag but in most cases they will.

Tags: google meta tags, search engine optimisation, seo

What is Link Building?

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Link building is the process of building links that point towards your site. Usually with keywords / keyphrases in the anchor text (the clickable part).

This helps to get your site ranked in the search engines.

The links must be standard (or do follow links) as if they contain the rel=”nofollow” tag the search engines won’t (you guessed it) follow the links and you won’t receive any search engine placement benefit.

Links must also be from related pages / domains and it is entirely true that anyone can get link to their site, but only an experienced SEO can get the links that matter.

Adam Gardner is a freelance SEO / Social Media Expert. Follow him on twitter @agseo or subscribe to this blog via RSS.

Tags: ibls, link building, search engine optimisation, seo

Why are Meta Tags useful?

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They are a place to input data related to your webpage.

The meta title tag (not the <*title> tag) is used by some sites such as facebook for the snippet of information they use when you share a link.

The <*title> tag is the most important tag on the page, and it should be unique and always contain your keywords / phrases.

The meta description tag is sometimes used by Google (and other search engines) as the snippet of info below your listing. Although it has little / no significance on actual ranking, the keywords are made bold from the description…. therefore a well written description can increase CTRs.

The meta keyword tag used to be important but is now largely redundant. Don’t worry if you still use it, but don’t spend too much time if you aren’t currently using it.

Tags: meta tags, search engine optimisation, seo, useful

Hosting Multiple Sites on 1 IP Address – Affects

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I came across a post recently asking this question. One poster even suggested that:

“Having the same sites on the same IP address will come and haunt you later. Having websites hosted on same IP address means once any of the 100s of websites get’s blacklisted or banned, your website will be affected too.”

The immediate response from the pro’s were unanimous and I completely agree – That answer is absolute rubbish.

Here’s the real answer:

95% of the sites on the net are hosted on shared servers (I’m guessing, I have no specific figures).

If google imposed any penalties for using shared hosting it’d spell the end of their business.

If each site points to a new folder and is accessible via its own domain name then you’ll not have any issues whatsoever and Google will see it as it’s own entity.

Tags: hosting, search engine optimisation, seo, website hosting

Video Sitemaps

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Video content is one of the most informative and fastest growing material on the web. Google’s video site (video.google.com) is the largest video search site on the net, therefore it makes total sense to ensure your video content is correctly optimised and indexed.

If you are looking for some basic video search engine optimisation tips <-- check that post

When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google with all the necessary fields, the included video URLs will be searchable on Google Video. When a user finds your video through Google, they will be linked to your website for the full playback.

Search results will contain a thumbnail image (provided by you or autogenerated by Google) of your video content, as well as information (such as title) contained in your Video Sitemap. Your video may also appear in other Google search products.

Google themselves make no promise about “when or if your videos will be added to our index, as we make planned improvements to our our product, we expect both coverage and indexing speed to improve.”

Google Video Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to give Google descriptive information—such as a video’s title, description, duration, etc.—that makes it easier for users to find a particular piece of content. ​Google may use text available on your video’s page rather than the text you supply in the Video Sitemap, if this differs.

Stay tuned for the next part of the Video Sitemaps series – Creating Video Sitemaps

Tags: search engine optimisation, seo, video sitemaps