Suppose you sell ovens on your website. Many webmasters think that it would be a good idea to optimize the website for keywords such as “oven” or “furnace”. It’s not and we’ll tell you why relying on the seemingly obvious keywords will cost you a lot of time and money.

You might lose money with every keyword

A new pay per click study shows that it is not profitable to have the first position for one to two words keywords. The most profitable positions in the paid results for short keywords were the fifth and the sixth position. Keywords that consisted of three-words were profitable when the website was listed in the second or third position.

Why do people lose money when they bid for the first position?

One or two-word keywords are very general. That means that many companies think that their websites are relevant to these keywords. Many companies bid on the keyword and the keyword becomes very expensive.

expensive keywordsIn addition, general keywords don’t attract targeted visitors. People who enter “oven” in a search engine might be looking for an oven manual, they might search for dutch oven recipes, for industrial ovens and many other different things.

They might not be interested in buying a new oven, even if you offer them on your website for really good prices. That means that the keywords are expensive and the visitors that you get through these short keywords are not targeted. For that reason, it is very difficult to get a positive return on investment for these short keywords.

Keywords that consist of three or more keywords are much more targeted and they have less competition. For example, it is much better to have high rankings for keywords such as “buy an oven” or “smith oven model xp356″ if you sell ovens. People who whose multiple word keywords are in the compare or buying phase. They are more likely to purchase goods or services than those using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).

In addition, fewer people bid on multiple word keywords. For that reason, it makes sense to focus on these words.

How does this apply to organic search engine results?

While you don’t have to pay for every click if your website is listed in the organic search results, it takes some time and work to get listed in the top 10 results.

The competition for general one or two-word keywords is much higher than the competition for specific keywords that will deliver targeted visitors to your website. If you want to have a good return on investment, you should concentrate on multiple word keywords. These keywords deliver much better visitors and it is easier to get high rankings for them.

You will lose a lot of time and money if you optimize your web pages for the wrong keywords.

What is a link text?

anchor linkThe link text is the link that is used to link to another web page. It is the text between the anchor tags. That’s why some people call link texts anchor texts.

Why are link texts important?

Google and other major search engines heavily rely on link texts to specify the position of web pages in the search results. If many websites link to a web page with the link text “mp3″ then Google thinks that the web page must be relevant to the keyword “mp3″. For that reason, the web page will get a ranking boost for that search term.

The more often a keyword appears in links to your website, the better your rankings for that keyword will be.

How to write good links

There are a few easy tips that will make your links more useful for both web surfers and search engines:

- Write your texts as if there were no links. Search engines like links that are in the normal text of your web page.
- Do not describe the mechanism behind the link but the purpose of the link
- Use clear and descriptive text for your links. The link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context.
- Avoid unpleasant surprises. If the link goes to a web page that starts a movie or downloads a file then you should mention this in the link

Many website visitors do not read the text on a web page but scan the highlighted keywords. For that reason, your link texts should be easy to understand even if people haven’t read the surrounding text.

Use keywords in your link texts whenever possible. The more often a keyword appears in a link to a special web page, the better are the chances that this web page will get high rankings on Google for that keyword.

How do search engines calculate the weight?

Search engines consider how often each word or word sequence can be found in link texts pointing to a particular page and how often the token appears in the index.

Search engines might assign the greatest importance to words that appear the least frequently in the search index. The reason for that is that those words are often more specifically related to the searched topic.

In addition, a token that appears very often in link texts that point to a special web page could be given higher weight. Tokens that appear very frequently in the search index (”site” or “best”) might be discounted because they are not relevant to the special topic.

What does this mean to your website?

All major search engines use this method to rank web pages. If you want to get high rankings on search engines, you must make sure that your web site has good inbound links with the right link texts.

Optimized web pages are important to tell search engines that your website is relevant to your keywords. Good inbound links with the right link texts will enforce the relevancy of your pages for your keywords.

What you have to do to get high rankings on Yahoo and Google?

1. Optimize your web pages for your keywords. While it is possible to get high rankings for a keyword if you have enough inbound links that contain that keyword, it is much easier to get high rankings for a special keyword if your web page has been optimized for that keyword.

2. Try to get as many inbound links as possible. The links to your website should use your targeted keywords in the link text. Do not use the exactly same text over and over. Vary your link texts and use related but different expressions for the links to your site.

The Yahoo patent confirms the methods that modern search engines use to rank web pages. If you follow the tips and tricks above, your website will get the best possible rankings on Yahoo, Google and other major search engines.

Why are link texts important?

All major search engines pay close attention to the text that is used in links pointing to web pages. A web page might be considered more relevant to a search term if the search term not only appears on the web page but is also used in the text of the link that points to the page.

Web pages can even get high rankings for a search term if they don’t contain that search term. It’s enough that many websites link to the page with the search term in the link text. This has been demonstrated with several Google bombs.

How do search engines treat link texts?

While it is clear that link texts are very important for search engines, it’s not clear how much weight search engines assign to a link text when they index a page. Are some link texts more important than others?

The patent indicates that link texts are broken into parts, called tokens:

Once an anchortext phrase is identified, it is converted into a set of tokens. For example, page 306 contains the phrase “best Louis Armstrong site” pointing to page 200. The tokenization produces the following tokens:

* “Trumpet”Best Louis Armstrong site”
* “Louis Armstrong”
* “Louis”
* “Armstrong”
* “Best”
* “Best Louis”
* “Best Armstrong”
* “Best site”

The search engine algorithm calculates a weight for each of these tokens. If the weight exceeds a threshold, the linked web page may be indexed under that token.

Click here for part 2 of this patent analysis.

Google’s market share outside the US:

Google is the biggest player in the US market. They also have a big market share in other countries:

Country	Market Share
Google Germany	89.20%
Google UK	70,25%
Google Bulgaria	90.00%
Google France	89.79%
Google Netherlands	95.00%
Google Poland	90.00%
Google Israel	90.00%

Source: Lunapark

If you want to get customers from outside the US then you must make sure that your website is prepared for Google’s local versions. For example, Germans who enter Google.com in their web browsers are automatically redirected to Google.de.

Google returns different results in different countries

Google.com and Google.de return different results. For example, Google.de returns totally different results for the keyword “auto” than Google.com.

That means that websites must meet certain criteria to be listed in Google’s local versions.

What you can do to get listed in Google’s local versions

1. Get a country specific domain name

If you want to get high rankings in Google.co.uk then you should have a .co.uk domain name. This is by far the most important factor. A local domain name makes it much easier to get high rankings in country specific search engines.

2. Make your web page content relevant to your target market

If you’re trying to sell something in Germany, it is obvious that your web page content should be in German. If you’re website is aimed at people living in the UK, mention your full UK address in the footer so that search engines can associate that address with your website.

3. Check your server location

If the IP address of your server is based in France then Google can take this as an indicator that you’re targeting the French market.

Getting high rankings in Google’s local variations is easier if you follow the tips above. Note that your web pages still must be optimized for your keywords if you want to get high rankings.

In addition, Google only lists your web pages if you have good inbound links.

No more visitors from Google. What has happened?

Last week, many webmasters observed that all of their websites with an .info domain name disappeared from Google’s search results.

Some websites removed traffic drops from several hundreds of visitors per day to zero visitors per day. It seemed that all websites that used the .info top level domain had been removed from Google’s index.

A few days later, the websites with the .info domains reappeared in Google’s search results.

Why did this happen?

It looks as if Google updated its filters for special domain names and went a little too far. Earlier this year, the head of Google’s anti-spam team made the following statement:

“A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations.”

Domain names with a .info ending have been available for 99 Cent for some time. It’s likely that very many .info domain names have been purchased for spamming purposes.

Google might have intended to block .info domains that spam and a bug in the algorithm wiped all .info domains from Google’s results. Fortunately, Google’s engineers fixed the bug within days.

What does this mean for your website?

Filtering all .info domains just because many of them are used for spamming is a very drastic measure. Although Google doesn’t do this, it’s clear that there is some kind of filter for these domains.

If you want to succeed with your online business, it might be better to use a .com domain or the local top level domain of your country instead of a .info domain.

1. Link building is important

Links are like votes for a website. The more votes a website has, the better the rankings.

2. There are different link types

Search engines consider the relevance of the links. Links from unrelated websites don’t help as much as links from relevant websites. A link from a website that has many inbound links for itself counts more than a link from an unpopular website.

3. It’s important to keep on link building

It does not help to get more links than your competing web pages. At least one of your competitors will continue to build links and pass your website. For that reason, it’s important to know that link building is an ongoing activity.

4. Buying links can get you in trouble

Search engines don’t like paid links because they consider the links to your website as editorial votes. Google has officially stated that it considers paid links as an attempt to game the system. Google penalizes websites that buy links. Even if Google cannot automatically find all paid links to your website, your competitors might report your website.

5. Redirects can cause trouble

Redirects have been used by spammers in the past and some search engines still have difficulties with that. If you have to use redirections on your website, only use 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that is defined as a permanent redirect. That means that search engines will follow the links and pass the links from the old URL to the new URL.

6. Duplicate content can cause problems

Search engines want to return as many different results as possible in their results. That is why search engines only list one copy of a document in their search results. For that reason, you shouldn’t promote more than one domain for the same website and you should have unique content on your web pages. Near copies are also considered duplicate content, for example, when the same article is listed on more than one website.

7. Why your web pages must be optimized

Search engines use simple software programs to index web pages. These web pages analyze the text on a web page to determine what it is all about. If a keyword is mentioned in the right places and in the right frequency, search engines will consider the web page relevant to that keyword. If a keyword is mentioned too often, search engines might penalize a website because it looks like a spamming attempt.

8. Keywords are the key to your success

It’s important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimization. Single word keywords can be very popular but they seldom lead to sales. Industry specific keywords can be so special that no one searches for them. The perfect keyword is targeted, has a high search volume and leads to sales.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science but it requires some work and ongoing efforts. If you understand the basic SEO concepts, it’s easier to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

What has happened?

Some webmasters found websites that were listed on position 61 in Google’s search results that had Google Sitelinks below their listing.

Normally, Google only displays Google Sitelinks for the first search result. Many webmasters believe that the website that was listed on position 61 with the Sitelinks was the number 1 result for that keyword but had been penalized by Google.

What does Google say about the -60 penalty?

In a Google Groups discussion about showing Sitelinks for #61 results Google employee John Mu referred to a -60 penalty discussion. Google hasn’t officially confirmed that a -60 penalty exists. However, Google employee John Mu indicated in a discussion about the -60 penalty in the official Google groups that Google penalizes websites if they contain certain spam elements.

Which spam elements trigger the -60 penalty?

It looks that Google applies this penalty to websites that buy links. Many of the websites that seem to have been penalized had many inbound links from websites that linked to them from every single page of their website (so-called site-wide links). Sitewide links are an indicator of paid links, which Google sees as an unwanted way to artificially inflate search engine rankings.

The head of Google’s anti-spam team Matt Cutts has often said that websites that buy paid links will be penalized and it looks as if Google tries to do the job properly. If this penalty for paid links really exists then even websites that follow Google’s rules can get in trouble. Your competitors could harm your website simply by buying links or by creating mini-net websites with sitewide links to your website.

Instead of penalizing seemingly “bad” links, Google should simply ignore them. That way, people could not harm competitor websites.

My point of view is a little bit different though. There will always be room for SEO, it will not die completely! I agree with shoemoney that other factors are becoming more and more important, but I cannot agree on this line: “So in my opinion there just is no future in current SEO for Google anyway.” It is good that he mentions “in my opinion” because I think there will be always room for good proper SEO and it is all about relevant links. But who am I?

Anyway, if you think SEO will not helping anything anymore in the future, please stop optimize your pages so my pages will have a better change on ranking higher

What changes did webmasters notice in Google’s search results?

Not all webmasters noticed the same changes. Here’s an overview of what has been reported:

* Some established websites that did not spam dropped out of Google’s index early March.
* It seems to take much longer now until new websites get indexed by Google.
* Rather less relevant results have received higher rankings because some relevant pages either dropped out of the index or lost some of their inbound links.
* The Cache data doesn’t seem to be updated.
* The site: and inurl: queries on Google that normally fluctuate for large websites now report the same numbers every day.

Changes like these are usually a clear indicator of an upcoming ranking algorithm update.

Is this really a ranking algorithm update?

Google engineer Matt Cutts denied that there are any major changes in the search results and that there was a ranking algorithm update on the way.

However, he wanted to investigate if and why the results change so much.

The observations of the webmasters in the forum might be normal changes that happen all the time. But the webmasters who discovered the changes are very web-savvy and they should be able to distinguish an anomaly from usual fluctuations.

What does this mean to your Google rankings?

It has yet to turn out whether this really is a ranking algorithm or not. If your rankings haven’t changed yet, there’s no need to act. The whole thing might just be a temporary hiccup.