9 Ways to Keep Google Happy > NetSparsh - Viral Content you Love & Share

Home
>
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
>
9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:

- Search engine spam, and

- Ensuring that "fresh" documents score higher than "stale" ones

Here is a summary of some of the general principles outlined in the document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.

1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.

2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an "unnatural" linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.

3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to the link delay theory -- that links do not start "counting" until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don't expect immediate gratification from Google.

4. If a new website gets a flood of new inbound links, this will be an indicator of possible spam activity. Links should be introduced gradually and according to a consistent pattern.

5. Google acknowledges that there may be link "spikes", and so an influx of new links will be interpreted as legitimate if some of the links are from "authoritative" sites. Go after links from authoritative sites.

6. If a stale webpage continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh. Keep adding links pointing to important pages.

7. Links from fresh pages will in some cases be more valuable than links from "stale" or old pages that have not been recently updated. Get links from pages that are active. If you have high value links from important sites, develop a strategy for keeping those links fresh.

8. Google places more value on a site where link growth remains constant and slow. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep getting those links.

9. Pages with many inbound links will require proportionately more new links in order to remain fresh. The assumption is that the more links a page has, the more it should be getting in the future. Otherwise it starts slipping into the "stale" category. Focus more attention on your most important pages.

Regardless of whether of not Google implements all of these criteria, the general direction is clear. More importantly, these points make good SEO sense, and provide a very good place to start when planning a link strategy.

Rick Hendershot publishes the Linknet Network, a group of websites and blogs that offer web owners advertising and link promotion opportunities.

In The News:

This RSS feed URL is deprecated, please update. New URLs can be found in the footers at https://news.google.com/news

Forbes
Four Reasons Why 'Position Zero' Shouldn't Be Your Main SEO Goal
Forbes
It's likely that your SEO goal used to be to reach the top ranking in the SERPs for as many pieces of content as possible. When Google introduced position zero, ...
5 Critical SEO Considerations When Optimizing News WebsitesSearch Engine Journal
6 Ways to Analyze Your Site's SEO - Business 2 CommunityBusiness 2 Community

all 5 news articles »

Search Engine Journal
The Ultimate Guide to Seznam SEO
Search Engine Journal
The latest data puts it at around a 16 percent market share, with Google dominating the market at 79 percent. Seznam Search Homepage, September 2018. Seznam includes some SEO guidance through this Napoveda entry. Like other search engines, ...

Local SEO Can Empower Small Businesses To Outrank Bigger Players Convincingly
HostReview.com (press release) (blog)
In the early stages, SEO was much more generic because searches too were generic. As the search pattern evolved with time, it started becoming more specific and geo-centric as searchers started using search engines to gather information about sources ...

Search Engine Land
Is SEO table stakes? (Hint: No!)
Search Engine Land
Back in late 2006, the topic of the day was “Is SEO rocket science?” It wasn't, of course, unless you were referring to boosting your organic traffic to a rocket-like trajectory or trying to impress someone by spouting off the mathematical equation for ...
3 Ways PPC and SEO Teams Can CollaborateVertical Measures (blog)
3 SEO Strategies That Don't Require an Expert to ManageBusiness 2 Community

all 19 news articles »

socPub (blog)
The aspects to consider before availing the services of an SEO agency
socPub (blog)
The presence of a website on the internet is not enough for driving a suitable amount of traffic on the site and for this purpose it might be appropriate to choose an SEO company. The following factors should be considered before selecting a company ...

Forbes
Local Reviews Can Help Your Business Rank Higher In Local SEO
Forbes
Many facets go into a marketing strategy, and that's what makes it so interesting. Marketers need to think about who their clients are and what their online search and shopping habits are. They also have to keep a keen eye on the competition, create ...

and more »

Forbes
Try These Three SEO Strategies For Best Results
Forbes
What are the top techniques for SEO? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Claire Perez, Director of Strategic Account Management at ...
How to recover from a negative SEO attack – Part 5Search Engine Land
SEO Is Back! But Was It Ever Really Gone?Search Engine Journal
SEO: Retaining Performance on Site MigrationsPractical Ecommerce
Search Engine Roundtable
all 11 news articles »

PR Daily
4 SEO trends communicators should track
PR Daily
Ranking first on a Google search engine results page (SERP) is considered an honorable achievement—but it's not the only goal that matters. If you don't rank first, there's a lot you can do to improve your organic search results. Here are four search ...

and more »

Forbes
How Brands Can Optimize SEO With Google's Evolving Algorithm
Forbes
In the world of SEO, technological innovations are constantly driving ideas forward. There are a number of things that are evolving in SEO -- first of which is voice search. Since the inception of Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's voice ...
A Guide to Local SEOSearch Engine Journal

all 2 news articles »

Forbes
How Google Thinks: SEO Done The Right Way
Forbes
People are always on the lookout for the search engine optimization (SEO) trick that will propel them to the top of a Google Search results page. Obviously, this does not exist, but if there were one SEO factor that summed it up, then it would be to ...

and more »

Google News

9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)