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Search Engine Updates vs. SEO
Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those who rank well want to see their sitesget even better. Those who didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed anticipatea major comeback. Those who just started new sites bet on their sites will make into the first page ofsearch engine result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course, not everyone will be happy aboutthe results of search engine updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game - someone losesand someone gains. Then, the webmasters start preparing for next update. The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with the highest quality. Butthe business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons forevery major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion ratesince the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of the search traffic for webmastersis that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day. Search engine companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update(allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable changein Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highlyrelevant to their pages. You may think the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's only part of thestory. The results of the update is that the websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases)will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations. If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides tolure the major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spendingin online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see the traffic from Googlejustifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database. Is this the real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same. Will this negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is the real difference between the #1 spotand the site that ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality of a page at all. When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad". Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates The Internet and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity for small business and site owners.They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use tocope with the search engine updates, however. 1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefitfrom the update. 2. Generate traffic from all major search engines. 3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases. 4. Build sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimizationtechniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmastersare interested. Speculation on Coming Updates The next Google update is around the corner. I won't expect any noticeable change. If Google decides to let big apples trysearch traffic free. They will need a couple of months to realize the values of the search traffic. There will be major re-distribution of search traffic in 3 or 6 months. If the same group of major corporations always get hugeamount of free traffic from Google. They won't bother to open their wallets. The major traffic distribution may be from one group of majorcorporations to another. The search traffic will unlikely sift back to small sites. Copyright Bruce Zhang 2005 Bruce Zhang operates a website http://www.4th-media.com that automatically aggregates and categorizesSEO news, new articles, and forum threads from over 50 sources daily ( http://www.4th-media.com/newsbot/ ) to help webmasters and SEO professionals to keep up with the latest development in search engine marketing. The website also offers original thoughts on SEO.
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As such, it's worth dropping in to the Google Labs every now and then to see what's going on there. Screwed: Is this an inevitability in the SEO World? By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.While this is a good sign, it's the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. 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A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn't, under any circumstances, reveal it's secrets. No one outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn't know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they'll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:"No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.htmlAn ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your rankings."Your site needs to be continually resubmitted to get on and stay on the search engines"When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We're talking about the days when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:"Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will appear."- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2"Meta tags are not important anymore"Sure they aren't. If you don't want a decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site's code, your ranking on MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags don't use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of course, to prove I'm not the one blowing hot air, here is what MSN themselves say about it:"Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages......the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results." - Click here to see the page this is found on."Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged"This one is truly unreal. I can't believe it's even been used as an excuse for why an SEO company hasn't achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well, or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site's rankings takes a massive amount of time and energy. We're talking months, maybe even years of hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?Once again, these are some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.Don't Put Up With It.The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don't be afraid to call them on it.Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I'd be overjoyed to see that day come. Complete Web-Site Optimization For Search Engines (Part 2) Source code optimization.
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