SEO Basic FAQ

Following are the major algorithm updates for Google :

1999 : Hilltop
Nov, 2003 : Florida
2004 : Austin
2005 : Jagger
2006 : Big Daddy

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1. November, 2003. Searching on Google was just not the same anymore. Many pages that had for long been topping the results had disappeared, and it seemed like relevancy which had, in effect, become Google's middle name, was nowhere to be found. This update known as "Florida". One possibility was that they had put an SEO filter in place, to identify sites that had done more than the acceptable level of SEO work. The theory did not entirely fit in, because there were sites with no SEO work that had been taken off the list, and many sites that had done considerable amount of SEO work stayed on the list. Google's preference for informative pages over commercial pages was also cited as a possible reason. One sound possibility is that Google employs a system where in a few websites with lots of high quality links on them are taken as reference points. The assumption is that, these pages, and those that they link to can be considered worthy of being on top of the results pages.

2. 2004, Austin was released amidst lots of expectation, particularly because many people were hoping that it would rectify the damages that Florida had caused. This new Algorithm was a fusion of the Page Rank algorithm, and another called "Hilltop" which was created as far back as 1999. with this new update. Recently optimized sites, seem to be doing well on the results page. While optimized sites have seen no change, with this update, the method used to calculate Page Rank seems to have changed. For instance, Google seems to be giving more importance to the thematic relevance of inbound links when calculating the Page Rank of a site.
Google has always given importance to the relevance of content, and Google's Hilltop Algorithm is adept at identifying sites that lead the way in terms of quality and value of links, and superior content. Superiority of the content is in terms of its readability i.e. the content must have natural flow and there must not be any unnecessary overuse of keywords. The new algorithm also takes into account the contextual relevance of title tags, and the naturalness.

3. Jagger was announced in 2005. Inbound links were given more importance, because it was becoming obvious that websites were just not being judicious in choosing relevant reciprocal links. Even as inbound links are given more importance, the emphasis on having relevant outbound links remains.

4. 2006, And the process of finding ways to evaluate website content better which Jagger began culminated in the next Google update called Big Daddy in 2006. This last update has been different from the others mentioned so far. Unlike the previous updates, Big Daddy was a change at an infrastructural level in terms of the way crawling and indexing of websites is done. And it is very important to not that the Big Daddy update does more than just change the algorithm of Google. This update, the links going in and out of the website would be used to figure out how many of the pages in the website would be included in the index.
Big Daddy also attempted to tackle the problem of redirects. The instruction for webmasters is to use the 301 redirect which tells Google the page or a site has been permanently moved. Leaving the content available on two different locations is as unacceptable as dropping one page and replacing it with the other. The use of 301 or 302 redirects shows that a certain level of consistency, and of course commitment.
The introduction of the supplemental index is yet another addition which has attracted much attention. This additional index is meant for sites that Google considers not worthy of its main index. Google take care of the problem of canonicalization which occurred because search engines saw a single site with two different domain names as two different sites.

1. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
A. My experience is mainly with my own sites in the fields of mobile phones and approving loans in the UK. So far, my site is on first 3 pages for generic search terms involving mobile phones, mobile phone deals, contract mobile phones in a couple of search engines. That work is ongoing at this time.

2.Can you write HTML code by hand?
A. Yes I can. I do use some Editplus and MS Frontpage editors and then modify the code by hand as needed.

3. Could you briefly explain the PageRank algorithm?
A. In simple terms, Google uses the total number of inbound(incoming) links to a page to determine how important the page is. This "pagerank" has little to do with actual search results but can make a difference on user behavior.

4. Have you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced together from others?
A. No, I do make use of many tools already available on the internet as well as SEO programs that I have purchased.

5. What do you think of PageRank?
A. In relation to SEO projects, it is relatively unimportant but can give an indication of how much work needs to be done in gaining inbound links. Basically, it is used when a webmaster approaches sites for link exchange.

6. What do you think of using XML sitemaps?
A. I use them. They are an additional tool to help the search engines when they crawl a site. They are not the necessary part of the site, its up to you whether to use or not.

7. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
A. Keyword analysis tools like wordtracker, webmaster tools, index checking, backlink checking, wordprocessor to check spelling and grammar, HTML validation and others.

8. Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from search engines using robots.txt vs meta robots tag?
A. Usually I would use the robots.txt to keep a search engine from indexing an entire directory on a site. This would often be directories dealing with admin functions or directories that only contain script or image libraries.

9. What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
A. Text on page! Search engines utilize text and only text in providing search results. That text is found in many place including the URL and title of your pages as well as the visible text(content) you place on your pages.

10. Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
A. My experience in "copywriting" is limited to my site's blog about mobile phones and so far is placing well in search results.

11. Have you ever had something you've written reach the front-page of Digg? Sphinn? Or be Stumbled?
A. Not yet! I am not particularly worried about it but I do try to write in such a way that others would be inticed to submit my articles.

12. Explain to me what META tags matter in today's world.
A. The most important META tag for SEO is your page description. Search engines do make use of this tag but it does not outweigh the title or content. The META keywords tag is not much of a factor in the major search engines.

13. Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
A. 1. Interview the client to get a good grasp of the site's goals.
2. Perform a keyword analysis to find best performing keywords that should be used for that site and for individual pages of the site.
3. Analyze site content, titles, META tags, and "alt" attributes to determine usage of relavant keywords and phrases.
4. Examine site navigation, link structure.
5. Determine the existence of robots.txt and sitemap.
6. Make recommendations for changes needed for the site and each individual page.

14. If the company whose site you've been workind for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
A. I would update the old site with permanent redirects to to new page for every page. Then I would attempt to remove old content from the major search engines to avoid duplicate content issues.

15. Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important "on page" elements
A. #1 issue is content being relevant to expected search terms.
# 2 would then be page titles
# 3 is navigation structure.
# 4 would be "alt" attributes for images and other media presented on pages.

16. What do you think about link buying?
A. I discourage the practice for the most part. But in some cases, to beat our competitor, we have to buy some links from some relevant and good sites (like in footer or blogroll). One exception would be purchasing listings in highly reputable directories such as Yahoo directory.

17. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
A. LSI indexing ries to overcome the limitations of "literal" search term matching . For example, if someone is searching for "mobile phone deals" a literal search would only match the words used without taking into account words such as "phones", "phone". LSI can give more relevant results because it does take word usage and context into account determining what a page is "about" rather than a strict reliance on literal wording.

18. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
A. In regards to search results, it is a method that search engines such as google use to determine "relevance of a page based on phrases" acutally used in a document. Related phrases will add to the relevance of a page where unrelated phrases will reduce the relevance of a page. This is one technique that Google is using to weed out "spam" sites.

19. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
A. Seo is search engine optimization and is the process you use in getting your pages to place well on organic search results. SEM is search engine marketing and involves purchasing advertising space on search result pages. Sponsored listings are SEM.

20. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks?
A. I check the competitors backlinks to find hightly relevant sites and request a link from them. If reciprocal linking (or 3-way linking) is required, I may be able to place a link back to them in a relevant portion of a page on the site but if not, I will state so and may not gain that link. Another method I use is to submit press releases, articles, directories, blogs to relevant media.

21. What role does social media play in an SEO strategy?
A. Social media such as social networking sites and news sites can provide for viral marketing. Viral marketing has proven to be powerful if the content of a site is appealing. E-mail marketing is also used as viral marketing.

22. What things wouldn't you to do increase rankings because the risk of penalty is too high?
A. I would avoid any site with the appearance of a link farm. I would also avoid any "spam" practice such as sites that re-direct visitors to your site.

23. Why might you want to use nofollow on an internal link?
A. Many sites have links (shoping carts and member login or logout links) that does nothig to contribute to site content. The search engine does not need to index those pages. Also putting nofollow will not contribute your page's link juice, rather search engines will still be able to crawl your links.

24. Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
A. Yes I am and the tool I use most frequently is Google's webmaster tools. I also use the available statcounter tools for my own sites. Knowing what search terms your visitors are actually using to find your site as well as where those visitors are coming from will help refine SEO efforts. The amount of time each visitor spends on your site will help in determining if content changes are needed.

25. From an analytics perspective, what is different between a user from organic search results and type-in user?
A A user coming into your site from an organic search usually has never visited your site before or is performing a general search for a specific product or topic. These visitors are trying to find the site that most suits thier needs. A "type-in" user is specifally interested in your website. They may have found your URL in print advertising or from a friend. Often, these users are familiar with what you are offering and are coming back to your site as a repeat visitor. A type-in user can be a returning visitor too.

26. What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do you use?
A. Competitive analysis means taking a close look at websites that rank highly in search results and comparing those sites to the one you are optimizing. They have employed methods that are working and are a valuable source for ideas.

27. If you've done 6 months of SEO for a site and yet there haven't been any improvements, how would you go about diagnosing the problem?
A. I might approach the problem as if it were an entirely new project. Again taking a look at the keywords and phrases that I am attempting to optimize for and again taking a close inspection of top ranking competition. If the site is indexed and does show up in the irst 10 pages of a search but on in the top three, I would look into modification of major areas such as page titles, on page text, and page descriptions. If the site is not yet indexed or has been dropped from an index, there are major problems and the site may require a total re-work and re-submission.

28. How many target keywords should a site have?
A. I advise not more than three or four well related keyword phrases per page. This allows for more effective optimization.

29. Why does Google rank Wikipedia for so many topics?
A. Wikipedia is an established authority! As such, it is referenced by huge numbers of other documents with relevant text associated with links back to Wikipedia.

1.)Why don't all my links show up when I use the link: command?

A. At this moment Google is only showing a sampling of the total links to you. As far as numbers, it is only important to remember it is a sampling and to just continue your link building strategy. To see a much more accurate figure please login to your google webmasters account and use the link tool there.
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2.)How come I get a different amount of links when I use www.example.com and example.com?

A. In the search engines eyes, these are two different domains and therefore have different amounts of sites linking to them. So you should 301 redirect one version to the other. If your site is hosted on a linux server you may do the following:

Open your .htaccess file(in the root directory of your site), if you don't see one create a .htaccess file and add the following:

Code:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Of course you will need to change domain.com in both instances to your domain name.
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What's a Link Farm?

A. A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site. This is done in order to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal
link from sites seeking listings.
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4.) What is "Anchor Text"?

A:Anchor text is the text that you use within a html link.
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5.) What is an "IBL"?

A: An "IBL" is an 'In Bound Link'. When a site links to yours, that link is called an IBL. The same thing as a BL (Backlink).

Backlinks play a major role in ranking a site in the search engines specifically Google and MSN.
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6.) What is Reciprocal linking or link exchange?

Link exchanging or reciprocal linking is where two sites exchange links. Usually this occurs when a webmaster sends an email to another webmaster requesting a link on their site.

Because of how easy it is to get a link this way Google has greatly dis-valued these types of links. They are still worth something but not as much as they have been in the past.
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7.) What is Linkbait?
Linkbait is when you create a tool, write a articles or many articles or otherwise do something that works as a link magnet.
Website owners start linking to your pages without even being asked.
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8.) What is cross linking?

A: When multiple sites link to each other for the purpose of increasing link popularity.
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9.) How long after I am listed in DMOZ should I start to gain the search engine benefit?
A: The days of DMOZ Search Engine Ranking are over. Submit and forget but don't expect any search engine value from the listing if you do get it?
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10.) Would I be penalized if a "Link Farm" or a "Bad Neighborhood" linked to my site?
A: No, you have no control over who links to you and this would be an easy way for a competitor to sink your site. What you SHOULD be careful of is if you are linking to them. This CAN hurt your site and should be avoided.
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11.). I am number 5 in Yahoo, but not in the top 1,000 in Google. Why?

A. Yahoo and Google use two different algos to come up with their SERPs - Yahoo favors on- page optimization such as H1 tags, keyword density, etc while Google favors off page like in bound links. If you have done more on page then Yahoo will rank higher and vice versa. As part of this if you are now addressing your off page then you need more backlinks with anchor text and time for these links to age.
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12.) What is cloaking?

A: Determining which search engine spider is visiting a web page and then giving each spider a page optimized for it's particular algorithm. This method of search engine optimization can result in a website being removed from the major search
engines.
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13.) What is a doorway page?

A: A method of search engine optimization considered to be SPAM. These are pages created for nothing but the purpose of ranking first for a particular keyword phrase. These pages usually lack any significant content and do not reflect
the tone of the rest of the website.
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14.) Do XHTML pages rank better than HTML-pages?

A: No. They have the same value. Google however puts more weight to well structured content, and thus XHMTL is in most cases more suitable option.
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15.) Does using CSS affect my rankings?

A: Not directly. Googlebot does not (at the moment) read CSS-files. Using CSS makes pages lighter, and page structure more organized. Thus using CSS could lead to better rankings. When adding CSS styles to page, it is recommend to
put them to external file.
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16.) Cannonical URL ?

To redirect from the non-www version to the www version
Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To redirect from the www version to the non-www version
Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To redirect from yoursite.com/index.html to yoursite.com/
Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]

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17.) Issues creating the sandbox could be:

* Age of backlinks - older backlinks now carry greater weight at Google

* SEO specific filters - Google is actively attempting to filter sites out of their index that are actively optimizing (link-building, etc) or appear to have un-natural attributes (optimized pages, links, anchor text, etc.)

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18.) When does Google update their SERPs (When is the "dance")?

A. There is no longer a Google "dance" per se as SERPs tend to be updated constantly.
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19.) What is the first thing you would check for if you saw your site slip down the listings at Google?

A: A drop in backlinks.
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20.) When I look up my site in Google, I am #23, but when my friend in California looks it up I am #31. Which one is right?

A: They both are! Actually, a more accurate explanation is that Google using multiple datacenters that deliver the results you see. The datacenter that is used depends on your geographical location.
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21.) I am changing my domain but want to keep my PR, how do I do it?

A 301 redirect is the most efficient and spider/visitor friendly strategy around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache.
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22.) When does Google update backlinks and PR?

A: There isn't a set schedule as many times an update is skipped or late. Backlinks on average are updated around once a month while PR has seemed to move to quarterly.
------------------ Rahul Vishela

If you do not want to show your cached page to the people all around watching your site and code,
Use this in your site's header :

meta name="robots" content="noarchive"

This tag won't hurt your site's ranking or caching , but will deny people to watch your sites cached content.

See how Apple can't even rank top of Google for the phrase 'buy iphone'? Those 3 links above them are pulled from Google Shopping results.

You can submit the website in these review sites to get listed in froogle.

US Google Base Review Sites

dealtime.com
pricegrabber.com
cashbaq.com
epinions.com
flamingoworld.com
mrrebates.com
readprint.com
resellerratings.com
shopzilla.com
rateitall.com
reviewstream.com
mouthshut.com
pricespider.com
dooyoo.co.uk
mtbr.com
viewpoints.com
merchant-reviews.com
couponclock.com

UK Google Base Review Sites

pricegrabber.co.uk
reviewcentre.com
shopzilla.co.uk
ciao.co.uk
dealtime.co.uk
truste-marketing.co.uk
webuser.co.uk
maxxsave.co.uk
dooyoo.co.uk
resellerratings.com