As has been mentioned dozens of times, the realm of blogging was constructed to be fair and equitable. Let me explain.

See, on the path to blogging success, that journey requires most bloggers to be humble, generous, and unselfish. They demonstrate this through, as part of their backlinking strategy, by leaving blog comments on other  blogs typically within the niche they also chose. What a fate!

But, this leaves the daunting question: “How can I build backlinks when so many blogs are set to ‘NoFollow’.

Most blogging platforms, in an effort to satisfy search engine protocol, are defaulted to ‘NoFollow’ which prevents outgoing links on theie blog to not be received by search engines.

So, technically, the 10 minutes you invested to leave a thoughtful comment on that ‘NoFollow” blog, in the eyes of a company like Google, is SPAM! Well…isn’t it?

Let’s Not Be To Quick To Object, Shall We?

Is your blog set to ‘DoFollow?” If not, you can’t really complain, can you?

‘DoFollow’ vs. ‘NoFollow’ is still a very hot topic of discussion in the blogging world. Why? Because pages of your blog with too many outbound links have an impact on Google PageRank. Because of this, many bloggers will not use blogrolls or will even implement the “rel=nofollow” condition onto links from advertisers.

Note: If you are considering advertising on another blog, you definitely want to ask if that blogger intends to “block” your link. Often, this may not be discussed and the blogger will impose the ‘NoFollow’ attribute without you knowing. Now, that is truly taking ‘NoFollow’ to an almost malicious, obsessive level, isn’t it?

DoFollow — How Can I Tell?

The ability for another blogger to leave a comment with a link to their homepage, last article, or keywords, that WILL be picked up by search engines, is highly desirable for SEO purposes. Many bloggers specifically track these type of sites down solely for that purpose.

Visitors to a blog will quickly be able to detect that link-friendly features like  CommentLuv and/or KeywordLuv have been enabled. In addition, many bloggers will either write publicized articles showing their support for ‘DoFollow‘ or have graphics on their site that look like the following:

Please note that Source Blogger is a CommentLuv-enabled blog — which means that you will have the option to leave your choice of one of your last 10 articles to be displayed on this post. That link will be a ‘DoFollow’ link.

OK, I’m On The Hunt For DoFollow Blogs — Thanks, Source Blogger!

Not so fast, dude. I recommend that instead of targeting ‘DoFollow’ blogs, you spend more time responding to great content that is in the niche/category of blogging you are affiliated with.

Many bloggers will recommend that you try to find a balance of commenting on both ‘Dofollow’ and ‘Nofollow’ sites, as this will make the links you are gaining to your site look more natural, particularly based on Google’s perception. Forgive for being skeptical about this, but until I see the Matt Cutts (Google’s Lead Engineer) video on this, this looks doubtful.

If today, I leave 6 comments on various blogs, I would be hard pressed to remember which ones were ‘DoFollow’. It’s just not that important. Leaving blog comments often reap rewards in other ways beyond the backlink. Trust me on this.

Finally, when the opportunity to exact a ‘DoFollow’ link becomes more important than the content, something is really wrong with the concept. Don’t you think?

OK, Now What Do I Do?

If you have a Blogger template blog and wish to make your site ‘DoFollow’ for the sake of wanting to increase your reader interaction, read: How To Make Your Blogger Blog DoFollow.

The Great Blogging Debate: Blogger or WordPress?

Introduction to the Big Blogging Debate

This is becoming an age-old question in the world of blogging and SEO.

Many will argue that Blogger is a better platform among the free blogs, being that it’s owned by Google. Others will argue that WordPress offers more to the average blogger. In reality, each blogging platform has its own features and benefits which make it a viable choice for the average, amateur blogger.

However, when it comes to blogging for your business and becoming an authority blogger, only one platform makes the cut. I’ll explain why and which platform will work best for specific functions.

Blogger Highlights and Features

• user-friendly interface
• drag and drop module functionality
• easily allows HTML and JavaScript
• easily add custom header images
• Open ID sign-in functionality
• automatic inclusion in Google Blog Search

WordPress Highlights and Features

• great for SEO
• addtional exposure from WordPress directory
• popular tags show up separately in organic search results
• allows importing of content from other platforms
• easily add custom header images
• progressive and detailed traffic stats

Blogger vs. WordPress: The Showdown

In order to compare WordPress and Blogger, it’s important to know their features and how they affect your experience. We’ll start with Blogger. Blogger is a quite user-friendly and doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML, CSS or experience with web hosting. It allows bloggers of all experience levels to get up and running in just a few minutes. Blogger also allows added functionality, including the ability to incorporate widgets, videos, polls etc. in the sidebar of your blog. What’s more, Blogger’s interface allows you to easily drag and drop different sections into place any time you want to change the look and feel of your blog.

In terms of policies, Blogger pretty much allows you to blog about anything and everything, making it a good platform for affiliate marketers. However, in terms of SEO, Blogger is not your best bet for showing up in search engines, despite now being owned by Google. When it comes to Google as a search engine, you’re more likely to see relevant tags and searches from WordPress than from Blogger.

Although results can vary, with a WordPress blog, one can easily expect to reach a Google PageRank of 3 with 150+ hits a day within 4 short months… or less! The same Blogger blog? I’d estimate about a PR2 with 35-40 hits per day in that same timeframe.

The first thing to understand about WordPress is that there are 2 different versions.

The first version would be the free, shared-hosting version at wordpress.com. This is usually the easiest option to get up and running in just a few minutes.

The second version is self-hosted and available as a download from wordpress.org. For this version you’d need to purchase your own hosting. WordPress’ free, shared-hosting version is much better in terms of SEO than Blogger.

Not only do blogs show up in WordPress’ high-traffic directory, popular tags are often listed in organic search results of Google and Yahoo! linking to the most recent/popular blogs using that tag. WordPress blog posts also tend to show up separately in organic search results more readily than Blogger or any other blogging platform. WordPress’ interface is a little more advanced than Blogger, though still with some drag and drop functionality.

Unlike Blogger, WordPress limits what kinds of widgets you can add to your blog’s sidebar. Certain forms of HTML and JavaScript are not allowed, limiting your ability to embed flash slideshows etc. Furthermore, WordPress specifically states in their Terms that blogs about certain topics such as home business and affiliate marketing are not allowed. So even though the free version of WordPress is better for SEO, it’s not the best option for bloggers who are involved in home business or affiliate marketing.

So Which is Best?

That really depends on what the main goal or function of your blog is. If your reasons for blogging have anything to do with business or monetization through programs such as Google AdSense, I’d suggest purchasing your own hosting and installing the wordpress.org platform.

If your blog is purely recreational in nature, but you’d like added functionality such as incorporating flickr photos, YouTube videos or other widgets, I suggest going with Blogger. While the free version of WordPress is great for SEO, there are limits to what you’re allowed to blog about and even more limits as to what functionality you can add.

Which platform do you use? If you use a Blogger platform, do you think you would benefit from the extra SEO advantages? Did migrating to WordPress increase your cost basis to purchase the theme and host it? Did you see a sudden increase in organic search-based traffic to your site? Would Source Blogger benefit from being on WordPress?

It probably never dawned on you that Facebook, Digg, Networked Blogs and Blog Catalog would be in collusion to steal your Adsense earnings, did it?

Thanks to the recent upgrade to Digg, the Iframe toolbar was (finally) retired!

Unfortunately, the Iframe toolbar is still a reality for readers who access your blog through Facebook, Networked Blogs, and Blog Catalaog.

Does this mean they are laughing all the way to the bank? No… although, they are diverting your revenue and preventing you from cashing in.

Still in disbelief?

Let me explain… I’ve done a little research on this.

Are Facebook, Blog Catalog, and Networked Blogs Stealing Your AdSense Earnings?

The dreaded framed page.

If you are a frequent (or infrequent) user of Facebook, Digg, and Blog Catalog, do you remember clicking on a link that successfully brought you to the desired page, but it was framed?

I can tell by that blank look on your face, you either don’t remember or it’s not sunk in yet.

Digg.com

Let me show you. Here is an example of Digg’s Framed Page: See that toolbar?

This is at the top of your page when viewing an article. It’s almost like a built-in toolbar with many user interfaces.

Take a closer look:

This is how your blog URL appeared to the legions of  Digg readers:

Does that look like your blog’s URL? Of course not! Would anyone even remember your blog after viewing it? So, remember that flood of traffic you used to receive with Digg? Guess what…

This shouldn’t look all that foreign to you. You probably just never realized the repercussions of this and whet it meant for your blog.

Blog Catalog

That’s the framed section of the page for Blog Catalog.

And the URL?

Yikes! Does that look like http://sourceblogger.com to you?

You say you get a significant amount of traffic from Facebook ,Blog Catalog, and Networked Blogs? But are these REAL 100% pageviews and hits? Well… now that things are being made more clear to you, How does this make you feel now? How did this impact your traffic and your earnings? Think about it, my friend.

Facebook

In addition to the framed page on Facebook, you get screwed penalized in many other ways!

The fans who signed up for your blog’s Facebook Fan Page can go to the Notes tab and read your complete blog article without having to visit your site.

If it was a summary that enticed the reader to click a “Read More” that brought them to your site, that would be OK. But, the whole article?

It’s no secret that Source Blogger is on record as being publicly opposed to access to blog content that exists away from my blog pages – including many article marketing sites.

Is there anything worse than having to compete with your own off-page content that is nesting in other larger, more visible, and well-SERP’d locations that is like a magnet for Google? That jazzy little article you wrote is buried on page 6 of the search results, while the same article placed on Facebook is showing up on the first page. The Google keyword search user goes straight to that page, via the ‘Notes” tab… and leaves!

There’s no way to subscribe, leave a comment, or even get a CPM zone view (or potential CPC or CPA click) from the visit! Right?… Damn!

Networked Blogs

OK, you’re going to be slick here. You deleted the ‘Notes” tab in Facebook and intend to replace it with the ‘Blog” tab. Brilliant! The Blog tab shows a snippet of your article (from NetworkedBlogs) and the reader must click on the title of the article to read more.

Wait! Not so smart. Here is how a recent article on Source Blogger appeared to NetworkedBlog readers:

That sure doesn’t look the permalink that I assigned! http://sourceblogger.com/dealing-with-emotional-reality-of-shutting-down-blog

The Effects of A Reader Viewing Your Site Within An I-Frame

1.  Steals traffic – Blog Catalog,  Networked Blogs, and  Facebook  double their traffic by showing your content in its frame and redirecting the shortened urls back to their site instead of to your site.

2. Steals links – By creating shortened urls whose sole purpose is to redirect the viewer back to the parent site.

3. Steals content – Your content is essentially being “hosted” through the framing structure

4. Steals potential revenue – By either blocking your content/ads or by stealing ad impressions/clicks

The Solution

Since your website then is inside of a “window” type frame, your site is not getting the actual traffic from that click, Digg and/or Facebook are.

Let’s prevent your blog from displaying the frame!

There is a way to stop this from happening to you, and it is so very simple. This script is actually quite simple, you just paste a few lines of javascript code into the HEAD section of all the pages in your site EXCEPT the index page:

The code is as follows:


<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location);

</script>

This will prevent your website from being framed in the future, and will prevent any loss of traffic and or revenue from ad providers such as AdSense or AdBrite.

Some of you may be in shock over this. I know, I know… no one has ever explained this to you. Take a moment. Catch your breath. Now type your response in the comment section below. I want to hear what you think!

I have been using Digg, Facebook, NetworkedBlogs, and BlogCatalog for years now! Say it isn’t so!

“…If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one is there to hear it…did it make a sound?…”

In the blogosphere, that answer is a resounding NO! Whether a reader’s response is favorable…or not, we want to be read. An article is only as great as from the attention it receives. The right article or the right series of articles can be the difference between respect, notoriety, and influence in a chosen category/niche/industry…or complete anonymity.

You will never reach your goals without the exposure that search engine visibility can provide. Organic traffic is probably the only “free lunch” we have as bloggers. So why not make the most of it?

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

No discussion of search engine optimization is complete without addressing the importance of keywords.

The reality is, as bloggers, we can never truly write solely for people. How Google evaluates your content compared to the casual blog reader, are two different styles. Now, many bloggers will claim this is how they write, but do not put too much weight into the statement – it is a great marketing ploy tool! With new blogs continuing to saturate the market and intensive SEO campaigns created to either bump you from page 1 of Google Search or keep you from appearing there, we have to write with GoogleBot in mind. There’s no way to avoid it.

There are specific keywords and keyword phrases that I try to target. But, how much control do we really have when your site is ranking for keywords that do not exist on your site?

How Can A Site Rank for Keywords That Do Not Exist On Its Pages?

Yesterday, i cam across this recent video by Matt Cutts of Google that addressed this question.

For those that perhaps do not know, Matt Cutts is the very visible face of Google Search Quality. In the past, he has been involved in factors such as ‘NoFollow,” Spam Links, and Paid Links.

I’m OK with anchor text that appears on other sites that increases my visibility to Google . I was pleased to hear that Google’s algorithms were intended to be more intuitive. Just as long as when I am using terms like “link love” and “spam,” they are aware I am not referring to meat! LOL

How do you feel about your site ranking for keywords that do not exist on your pages? Were you aware of this concept? If you discovered anchor text from another blog that was driving traffic to you either directly or through Google, yet not keyword optimized, would you ask the site owner to change the anchor text?

Before we get right into “How To Submit Your Blog URL To Bing,” let’s take a brief look at some recent developments between Yahoo and Bing that should matter to you.

In mid-2009 it was reported that Yahoo would be merging with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. This was big news in the SEO arena.

Yahoo search users may soon start seeing results served by Bing (Bing). According to Yahoo’s Vice President Search Product Operations Kartik Ramakrishnan, the company has “started testing organic (also referred to as algorithmic) and paid search listings from Microsoft for up to 25 percent of Yahoo! Search traffic in the U.S.”

That means that users that are part of the test will see results from Bing inside Yahoo’s familiar interface. In spite of the impending changes, Yahoo has continued to add features and make design changes, and the company indicates that it will continue to do so post-integration.

With testing now underway, it would seem then that Yahoo and Microsoft’s plans for integration following their massive search and advertising partnership – signed back in July 2009 – are on track. When regulators approved the deal back in February, Microsoft and Yahoo indicated that they planned to have search and advertising integration completed by the end of 2010.

Now, Ramakrishnan writes that, “we anticipate that our U.S. and Canada organic search listings in both desktop and mobile experiences will be fully powered by the Microsoft platform beginning in the August/September timeframe, and paid search in October.”

In the latest Comscore report of search engine use in the United States, Yahoo and Bing increased their domestic market share to nearly 1/3 of the entire U.S. market.

With this type of consolidation, it may be more important than ever to get your site registered with Bing and to become familiar with Bing’s Webmaster Tools.

How To Add / Submit Your Blog URL To Bing

Authenticate your website

Before you can use the Webmaster Center tools, you must demonstrate that you own the website by placing a Webmaster Center-provided authentication code at the root of your website. Webmaster Center uses authentication to ensure that only the rightful owners are provided with information about their websites.

A website is authenticated when, once you successfully log in to Webmaster Center, you click its link on the Site List webpage. If the authentication is successful, you are given access to the Webmaster Center tools for exploring the website.

Authentication Methods

There are two methods of authentication while submitting your site to Bing, both of which rely on Webmaster Center accessing the authentication code you’ve added to a registered website. The authentication code, which must be available to Webmaster Center at the root folder of your website’s registered host name space, can be added in two ways:

* Upload an XML file to the root folder

Bing provides you with a custom XML file containing your authentication code that you can save to the root folder of your website. The name of the file is LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml.

The format of the authentication code content within the XML file should look similar to this example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<users>
<user>0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF</user>
</users>


* Add a tag to the default webpage

You can add a tag containing the authentication code to the section of your default webpage. You should be able to modify the tag to conform to the HTML standard you use.

The format of the authentication code entry within the section should look similar to this example:

< meta content="0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF"  />

That’s all there really is to it!

Update: Bing recently upgraded their Webmaster tools to include more crawling, index, and traffic data

If you want your site to appear prominently in search engines you will need to monitor your site in Bing (and Google’s) Webmaster Tools.

What To Look For In WebMaster Data

1) Reports of any problems  that were discovered in crawling your site.

2) Keyword analysis allows you to gauge which of your keywords are more prominent in search engine results.

3) Inbound links of who is linking to your site and how.

4) Verification of successful sitemap submittal. It’s crucial that search engines regularly examine all of the pages from your site.

Please note: That any major changes to your server or blog may create an error message in Bing or Google Webmaster Tools. Your sitemap may require a manual rebuild and resubmission to Google and Bing.

Article:  The One Annoyingly Stupid Reason Google Ignores Your Blog Links

Every once in a while an article comes along that changes the way you blog. For many of you, it may just be this article.

If you own a website, you’re going to want to know this important tip about creating links specifically designed for Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.

One of your main goals as a blogger is to be received prominently in Google. If you are in denial about this or put more prominence in social media marketing, then you can exit from the article right here. Although, after a few days of denial followed by eventual acceptance of this reality, please come back and pick up where you left off.

There are bloggers who incredibly SERP’d well for common terms like “Make Money Online” that made an entire blogging career out of one, high-volume keyword.

Google is a miraculous, dynamic puzzle that once conquered can take your site to national notoriety. Twitter? Facebook? Sure, they’re all pieces of the marketing/promotion equation, but require enormous interactivity on your part to be successful… and may not always be the “viral solution” you’d expect.

Your Content and Links

As a blogger (or affiliate marketer), you carry a solemn duty to present content in a fashion to directly satisfy your customer’s need for a product, service, information – or the best scenario: to solve their problem.

It’s basic supply and demand

Your links are the gateway to customers, subscribers, and search engines blazing a path to your site.

Those that effectively draw traffic to their links make higher commissions and have more subscribers – just based on the sheer volume.

And it all comes back to your links. Let me explain.

Have you ever seen a link that looks like this? “Check out my herbal diet program here. “

Looks like a normal “lead-in” requesting action on the reader’s part, right? Well, not so fast… Do you see how the link is the word “here”? Well, that’s a BIG WASTE of a “link love” for you!

The mission of a search engine is to link information together in a meaningful way. Search engines familiarize themselves with your site content by targeting the links you have placed for their benefit. So, what does a search engine learn if the link is the word “here”?! Nothing!!

You are now trying to determine if you have placed poor links on your blog,  aren’t you?  You may have used links on other non-descriptive words like “home page” or “my site” or “this photo”.

Anchor Text

The words that appear in your link are called the “anchor text” and Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and all the lesser search engines look at the anchor text in all the links that point to a page in order to get the page’s meaning. So, if you’re linking to a page on your website, make your link from the keywords that someone would use to find pages like yours.

Confused? Let’s use our diet website again. For example, if you had a diet website, a better way to make that link would be like this: “Check out my herbal diet program.”When Google sees this link, it knows it’s going to find an “herbal diet program” on the other side.

This simple technique will help you rank higher on all of your websites. Go back and take a look at how you structure links – from your article marketing pages in Squidoo, HubPages, and Ezine Articles, to your Facebook Page, and ESPECIALLY the way you comment on other blogs.

What is the Google Sandbox?

The Google Sandbox is an alleged filter placed on new websites. The result is a site does not receive good rankings for its most important keywords and keyword phrases. Even with good content, abundant incoming links and strong Google PageRank, a site is still adversely affected by the Sandbox effect. The Sandbox acts as a de facto probation for sites, possibly to discourage spam sites from rising quickly, getting banned, and repeating the process.

How would you describe the Google Sandbox in one sentence?

The Google Sandbox is very similar to a new website being placed on probation, and kept lower than expected in searches, prior to being given full value for its incoming links and content.

Why did Google institute a Sandbox?

It is thought that the reason Google created the Sandbox new site filter, was to stop spam related sites from adding numerous purchased links, and ranking highly for their keywords from the date of launch. Since Google apparently considers a high number of links pointing to a site from the beginning to be rather suspicious, the links are not considered to be natural. Another possibility is spam sites would use various tactics to rise to the top of the search results, and gain heavy sales prior to being banned for being in violation of Google’s Terms of Service; and then repeating the process continually. As a result, new sites are put into a form of probation, usually referred to as the Google Sandbox.

Does everyone agree there is a Google Sandbox?

Not everyone agrees that the Google Sandbox exists as a separate filter from other alleged Google filters. Note that not everyone involved with search engine optimization even agrees that Google uses a system of filters at all. Skeptics believe that the phenomenon merely echoes already existing Google algorithm calculations, and the Sandbox effect is an illusion. Note that Google has all but admitted recently that the Sandbox filter is real.

When did the Google Sandbox first appear?

Website owners and search engine optimization professionals began to notice the Google Sandbox effect, real or imagined, starting in March, 2004. Websites launched after that date were noticed to not be ranking well for their first few months live on the internet. The rankings were seen as poor despite good Google PageRanks, strong incoming link totals, and overall good optimization practices being employed.

What types of sites are placed in the Sandbox?

While all types of sites can be placed in the Sandbox, the problem appears much more frequently for new websites seeking rankings for highly competitive keyword phrases. All sites are likely given a term in the Sandbox, but those websites seeking rankings in highly competitive searches, are probably in for a much longer duration.

My site has never been in the Sandbox. Why not?

You can avoid having your site in the Sandbox for several reasons. If your site was launched before the March 2004 Sandbox filter, your site probably avoided the problem. Sites targeting non-competitive keywords and phrases are often left out of the Sandbox as there is little point in applying the filter. Keep in mind, however, that even less competitive search terms can be Sandboxed, but their much shorter stay can often go entirely unnoticed. If you had ownership of a domain prior to the installation of the Sandbox filter, your site would also likely be spared its probationary period.

How long is a site in the Sandbox?

Stays in the Sandbox can vary from one to six months, with three to four months being the normal time frame. Less competitive searches will be given the much shorter stay, while hyper-competitive keywords will often spend six months in the Box. The most frequent length of stay is about three months for most search terms.

Are there variable lengths of stay in the Sandbox?

The stay in the Sandbox is highly variable. The more competitive the keyword, the longer the site spends in the Sandbox. The filter will be gradually decreased over time, and will lose most of its dampening effect in about three months. Of course, for the most competitive search phrases, the Sandbox filter might remain in full force for six months.

How do I know if I am in the Sandbox?

Evidence of Sandbox activity usually is spotted by having good Google PageRank and incoming links, and strong search results in some secondary search phrases, but the site nowhere to be found for the most important searches. In such cases, it is likely the site has been placed in the Sandbox.

How do I know it’s the Sandbox and not a Google penalty?

If a site were suffering from a Google penalty, the site would not appear in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for even the less important searches. The site would also show no PageRank or even a grey bar on the Google Toolbar.

I still rank well for some less important keywords. Why?

One of the most important characteristics, and indeed one of the marks of being in the Sandbox, is the continuation of strong placements for less important keywords. The alleged Sandbox filter is apparently designed to concern itself with the more competitive keywords as they are more likely to have spam sites, purchased and other links Google deems unnatural, and probably more manipulation attempts being made. That is far less likely in unimportant and non-competitive keywords, so they are generally left alone and out of the Sandbox filter.

If I join Google AdWords or Google Adsense, will that prevent being placed in the Sandbox?

Joining programs like Google Adwords and Google Adsense will have no effect on your site’s duration in the Sandbox. Those paid programs could provide much needed traffic while your site remains in the depths of the Sandbox, however. Participation in the various Google advertising programs will not keep your site out of Sandbox, or shorten your stay, despite what some myths would have you believe.

Are there any other Google filters that act similarly to the Sandbox?

The alleged dampening filter on new incoming links is often mistaken for the Sandbox. It’s thought by many search engine optimization experts that new incoming links are not given immediate full credit. The purpose of that gradual passing along of Google PageRank and link popularity, is to discourage purchasing of links, and various linking schemes designed only to increase a site’s standing in the Google search rankings.

If my website is stuck in the Sandbox, how do I get out?

The only real escape from the Sandbox is time. Depending on the competitiveness of your most important keywords, that time can vary from one to six months, with three to four months being the normal duration. In the meantime, continue to improve your site, and be prepared to make a rapid rise once the Sandbox probation ends.

What should I do while my site is still buried in the Sandbox?

While your site is in the Sandbox, it’s an ideal time to continue to add fresh keyword rich content and new incoming links to your site. Adding incoming links will ensure that they also avoid any possible new link dampening filter that might be in effect. They would be well aged, and ready to pass along their full value of PageRank and link popularity, as the site rises from the depths of the Sandbox.

Should I continue to add content to my site, while in the Sandbox?

Your website’s stay in the Sandbox is an ideal time to add more theme relevant content. Concentrate on adding more keyword rich pages, and don’t forget both on page and off page factors. On the page, make sure your title tags match the most important keywords for that page. Add a site map and be sure that all of your pages link properly to one another with appropriate link anchor text containing the keywords for that page. Off page link anchor text should be set up to include keywords for the receiving page as well. Don’t waste any of your available site improvement time while in the Sandbox. When the filter is lifted, your improved site will rise rapidly to its proper place at the top of the search rankings.

Should I keep getting new links to my website?

The Sandbox is an ideal time to start adding incoming links to your site. Because of the alleged new links dampening filter, adding links while in the Sandbox solves two filters at once. If the newly added links are indeed dampened by a filter, then their full value should take effect just as your site emerges from the Sandbox. Be sure to add strong keyword rich anchor text to your incoming links, and vary it to include several keyword combinations.

Are there ways of getting out of the Sandbox any faster?

Only time can get your site out of the Sandbox. The duration in the sandbox tends to vary with the perceived competitiveness of the keyword phrase. That said, there are ways to hasten your rise to the top of the SERPs upon release of the Sandbox filter. By adding some powerful incoming links, with strong link anchor text, and by adding keyword rich relevant content, your site will rise quickly from the Sandbox. Note that the rise will take effect upon the removal of your site’s Sandbox probationary period.

When my site started out of the Sandbox, its search rankings were still low. Is that normal?

Your rankings could remain weak for more than one reason. As a Sandbox survivor, your site was not in the rankings at all for your most important keywords. There is still a long climb ahead of you, and much work to do to achieve strong search placements. While your site is freed from the Sandbox, it probably is also lacking in strong incoming links, good link anchor text, and requires more keyword rich theme relevant content. Fortunately, all of these problems can be resolved, and your site can continue its rise to the top of the SERPs.

How long is the climb to the proper search ranking after leaving the Sandbox?

The length of time required to achieve your site’s proper ranking is difficult to quantify as so many variables are taken into consideration. If you have been adding well anchor text covered incoming links from theme relevant websites, your rise will be much faster than someone who has not continued to add inbound links. It will also assist your site’s rise to search prominence by constantly adding keyword rich content. Of course, the more competitive the keywords you are contesting, the longer and harder the climb.

How can I avoid being placed in the Sandbox in the first place?

The Sandbox can be avoided to a degree by purchasing and sending live a website, prior to its being fully ready for prime time. While the site will endure low rankings, it will start the clock ticking on its Sandbox duration time. Be sure to add as many incoming links as possible to get past the alleged new links filter. Keep adding content to your site. Anything that can be done to speed up your site’s appearance on the internet, including the purchase of an already existing domain, should be considered. If you have the time working in your site’s favor, it can be applied against your possible stay in the Sandbox. With proper time management, a site can avoid the Sandbox entirely.

Article: Google Duplicate Content Penalty

The “Duplicate Content Penalty.” It sounds like some complex legal term, doesn’t it? Its consequences may be just as serious to you as a blogger. This penalty is applied by Google and possibly other search engines when content found on your blog/website is reproduced from another site/blog.

Regardless of whether you own the other site, you will still be penalized.

If you are importing articles from one site to another, it is best not to republish these articles until you have deleted the article from the original source site and its results are no longer being displayed in Google Search

Google is not your friend. They have a business to run and a low tolerance for webmaster impropriety. Your goal is to fall well below Google’s radar. Maintain your blog’s creative expression and independence, but do it in a way that does not conflict with Google Search (or Google AdSense).

Since the inception of the World Wide Web, it has been targeted by every slick internet marketer, social media marketer, schemer, scammer, splogger, and spammer. It’s a tense, ongoing challenge by search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, and Ask) to provide the most relevant, informative results from their keyword searches.

In the past, receiving high search rank (or SERP Rank) was as easy as duplicating keywords or duplicating content. Search engines have become more dynamic preventing this from occurring, say, outside of a few odd exceptions.

Affiliate Sites

As with many of the affiliate sites online, once you register, set up your profile, and review what type of advertising strategies you intend to incorporate, the next step is their resources section. Here, page after page of content is ready to be downloaded (typically WordPress-friendly templates) as template pages that can reconstructed under your new (affiliate-motivated) URL. If there were 2-3 of you, it would be competitive. But imagine hundreds of affiliates doing the same thing! Now when you perform a keyword search with terms directly related to the topic of these template pages, you could see hundreds of other sites with content completely identical in nature.

Your site’s effectiveness is undermined when duplicate content is omitted from Google Search results.

Creative Blogging / Creative Writing

No blogger can avoid the fact that much of what we do is pure writing. Content must be consistent (in clarity and quality), engaging, informative, and entertaining.

The undertaking of a new blog is an enormous task, simply out of the sheer task of generating content over a period of years and months.

As a result of this, there is a temptation to copy someone else’s body of work.

In closing, duplicate content will do very little to enhance your online credibility and identity. Should you avoid all duplicate content completely? It sounds like a safe practice, but is that goal realistic?

Recommended Reading:

What are Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?

Google AdSense Program Policies

Article: How Does Google Punish the Content Thief?

Of the topics relevant to you as a blogger, none may require more of your  attention than content theft and unoriginal content.

In your defense, Google also takes a dim view of “unoriginal content”.

Google and Original Content

One of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.

However, some webmasters attempt to improve their page’s ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other auto-generated pages that don’t add any value to users.

• Thin affiliate sites: These sites collect pay-per-click (PPC) revenue by sending visitors to the sites of affiliate programs, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user. These sites usually have no original content and may be cookie-cutter sites or templates with no unique content.

• Doorway pages: Pages created just for search engines

• Auto-generated content: Content generated programmatically. Often this will consist of random paragraphs of text that make no sense to the reader but that may contain search keywords.

• Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It’s worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

Affiliate Marketing

Google has been known to be harsh on affiliate marketers for failing to add value to its searches. The impact to you as an affiliate marketer is a serious loss of income potential on your part.

There is no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and produce valuable content that gives a user a reason to visit your site. For example, you could create product reviews, ratings, and product comparisons.

Let me show you the result of Google preventing search results from being displayed:

In the example above, Google has “omitted” 53 results from being displayed to a Google search user that has typed in a particular set of keywords.

Of those 53 instances, how many conversions do you think those site owners receive? My guess is zero. What do you think?

Although Google does offer to display the results for the Google Search user, this will appear at the bottom of the very last page. If a keyword search returned hundreds of pages of results, the likelihood that the Google search user will even see this is next to impossible.

Do not allow Google to omit or prevent users from finding your articles in search.

Sometimes, even Google gets it wrong.

Perhaps this portion of this post will be encouraging to the content thief. That is not our goal. But, there has been a trend online from those who manage their prime keywords that some of the scraped material is ranking higher in searches than the original content.

Because of that occasional miscalculation on Google’s part, the content thieves keep hope alive – especially with terms that are more frequently searched.

Want an example? Click the image below to expand:

Great content comes out of a talent of reaching, engaging, informing, and entertaining readers. This type of creativity is in extremely short supply in the blogosphere. It is often much easier to copy and paste content that presently exists than to start from scratch.

What are you thoughts on scraped and unoriginal content? How often do you think sites are scraped for content? What about sites that offer a brief summary of an article before providing the link to the original article? What happens if that site shows more prominent in search listings? How do you think Google is doing at handing this problem? And could this happen to you?

A Google bot is a search bot which is used by Google to gather and collect information about your website in order to build a searchable user index for the Google Search Engine. There are two types of Googlebot, “deepbot” and “freshbot” each undertakes a different task when visiting your site.

The “freshbot” crawls through websites looking for new and fresh content. If the “freshbot” discovers new content it will be reported and submitted for inclusion in the “deepbots” crawl list. The “freshbot” visits a website more frequently than the “deepbot”, this allows Google to maximise its resources as the “freshbot” is only looking for changes. The rate at which a “freshbot” returns to the site is dependent on how frequently your sites content changes and how important Google perceives the content of your site. If you’re adding a new page every day and your sites content is perceived as being rich in information and important to Google’s search users, then the frequency at which the “freshbot” will visit your site will increase.

The “deepbot” crawls through your website, trying to follow every link on every page, downloading as many pages as it can and submitting them to the Google Indexers. The “deepbot” spends much longer periods of time on your site and is often responsible for an increase in your sites bandwidth. It also follows new and fresh content links which have been found and submitted by the “freshbot”. The “deepbot” is responsible for correctly submitting the pages of your site to Google for indexing.

In order to make sure your website is fully indexed in Google it is essential to make sure that every page of your site is linked from the main content and navigation. Goggle discovers pages by harvesting the links on every page and crawling each one individually.

After Google has successfully crawled your website it then proceeds to use the information to index its findings within the Google search engine index. This is where your pages will be displayed an made searchable to Google search users by keyword and search term. Google takes into account over 200 criteria, including page rank, in order to identify the context of your site and its content and to index each page in the correct location.

Article: My Site Description (Snippet) is Displaying Incorrectly in Google Search

Just when you think you have it all figured out, the complexity of Google’s algorithms strikes again!

Something has had me puzzled.

Why does Goggle sometimes show the description (snippet) from my site’s meta description tag on some results and my article’s keywords on others?

The snippet is the short summary that appears after the clickable link title: (See Below For Example)

From a search of  “Lenovo X301,” results wil populate with a title and description. That description is often called a site snippet.

< meta content=’ My Site Description ‘ name=’description’ />

I used to believe that the purpose of the Meta description tag was twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that were contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in the search engine results pages (SERPs), right?

However, today it appears that, similar to the Meta keywords tag, the information you place in this tag is *not* given any weight in the ranking algorithms of Google, and only a tiny amount of weight in Yahoo’s.

In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, it won’t affect the position of your page in the SERPs for the words that are important to you. In fact, you could easily leave it out altogether.

So, what should I do about meta description and keyword phrases?

Well, if you’re already happy with the “snippets” of text that the search engines post from your page in any given search query, then there’s no reason to have a Meta description tag on your pages. Period. Its important to note that the snippet the engines use will vary, depending on what the searcher typed into the engine.

Note: Google most commonly determines page descriptions from an assortment of the text on the page; usually the first 25 words or less.

Duplicate Meta Descriptions On Blogger

From your Google Webmaster’s account, you will notice that your site will have a large amount of duplicate meta descriptions. Unlike WordPress, you do not have the ability to edit the meta tag description for each of your article. Plus, WordPress utilizes keywords – on Blogger, it’s labels.

But, when thinking about SEO, is Google punishing your Blogger site?

For those articles that appear with duplicate meta descriptions in Google SERP:

• Are my keywords ranking poorly?

• Worse yet, was my article penalized?

• Should I try to place the articles most relevant keywords in the first couple of short paragraphs of my blog article?

• Did I lose traffic conversions because the snippet failed to display more of the posts relevant content?

• Or is it simply because being a site owner, searches for my own pages appear different for me because my searches are URL-based as opposed to keyword?

How does Google structure the results on it’s own results page?

One of the most common and recurring responses in Google’s Webmaster Help Forum is, “Google will show whatever it likes as the snippet – whatever is most relevant to the search.” I can appreciate that. But, that does not assist us in our understanding, gentleman.

Let’s move along.

For each page in its search engine result pages, Google tries to show the most informative title and description. To achieve this goal, Google uses three sources of information:

• title and description copied from the Google Directory (based on DMOZ)
• title and description found in the HTML headers of the page
• title and snippet extracted from the text of the page

More people will click on a link with an appealing title and description. In an article titled “Improve snippets with a meta description makeover“, Google insists that they write quality non-redundant descriptions.

Optimize the title and the description

When Google decides to use the text of your META “Description”, it will not be able to show all the description if it is too long. It is useful to optimize the visible part of the META “Description”. This is true for the title too. If it is too long, Google will truncate it and only a part of it will appear in the SERP’s.

Hundreds of result pages were analyzed to understand how Google truncates the title and the description in its result pages.

How will my page appear in the SERP’s ?

Check what Google could show from your title and description with our tool: if the result is not attractive or not clear enough, edit the title and the description in the HTML header of your page and test it again. An easy and effective optimization that can increase the CTR of your important pages !

Technical Limitations

Google algorithms are complex and often changing and cannot guarantee that their tool will be perfectly accurate in all cases.

This tool is designed to optimize pages in English. It does not support foreign character sets.

What are your thoughts on this? Is my thinking wrong? How does Blogger compensate for this then?