Google Keyword Rankings | May 31

Here is my first report that I have received from Google Webmaster. These are available when you submit your URL to Google to be placed in the search results, and they are really easy to understand adn use.In order to take a close look at these rankings, just click on them and you'll get a bigger picture. What you'll notice is that the site is apparently making some progress with the search results. There are even some top ten rankings. It is important to realize that some of these keywords are not exactly popular, most only receive about one or two searches per day, if that.

The other thing you'll want to notice is that nearly all of these keywords were not the ones we optimized our site for. Google just determines them to be related in some way to the content we have on the site. These are all lesser-competitive keywords, so that is why our site has ranked in the top ten for these keywords.

Even though this appears to be little progress made since it does not exactly give your site more visitors, it is an important indicator that your site is going in the right direction, so don't give up and quit your job just yet! With some narrowing down on specific competitive keywords, this can really turn into something!

G2

Site Update | Secure24Seven

Since the whole reason I have been going through the scrolls of SEO is to make the secure24seven site become ranked for significant keywords in Google, I will now give an update on my progress thus far...Anyway, the site is still basically unrecognized by Google, I have done all the optimization like I have outlined on the site, with keywords (one per page), headings, robots.txt etc...Since the content appears to be fairly optimized I will make my way toward generating links to the site...

The site has been crawled by Google, but it has not been recognized as being important enough to be in any rankings. There is one important thing to note with all this though...in order to get ranked well (in the top 10) for a good keyword sites can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to be ranked well, depending on how competitive a keyword may be. So, for all of you who are battling to have their site get recognized by Google, DON'T DESPAIR, THERE IS HOPE...it just might take a few years....

G2

Negative SEO Factors

I thought that for this week I would put together a little checklist that basically summarizes WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO in the SEO world...Again, DON'T DO THESE THINGS! Let me know if you come up with anything else so I can post it later, I would really appreciate any help to the list!


1. No real body text on the page - the entire text presented in images
2. Affiliates site - network of sites containing little variety
3. – Over Optimizing Penalty (OOP) - Examples - keyword stuffing, stuffed meta tags, over-labeling H1
4. Link bad neighborhoods - namely, link farms
5. Vile language, ethnic slurs
6. Poison Words? (Possibilities - namely, death, drugs, gambling, etc.…)
7. Excess Cross-Linking
8. Stealing images, text block another domain * Google responds strongly
9. Keyword dilution (Too many keywords)
10. The content changes too often
11. The freshness of a text change (Too much change=penalty)
12. Too many dynamic pages
13. Excess JavaScript
14. Flash Page
15. Using Frames
16. Single Pixel links
17. Invisible Text (text same color as background)
18. HTML code violations
19. Gateway, doorway pages
20. Using phrases that Google has determined to be associated with spam

Video (Headings)

I found a video online that really stresses the importance of headings in your site...I hope it helps out somebody out there:

h1, h2, h3, ........

So during my SEO studies I found out that people everywhere have put how great an h1, h2, etc... tag is for your site...I honestly did not have any idea what that was starting out. So for all of you who are just beginning to understand this elusive concept called SEO, and need some kind of a translator, I am going to talk to you about these tags.

What these tags do is create headings for your site. It is a great way to organize your site's content, and the more organization your site has, the happier search engine bots will be! In order to effectively use tags, you must include your keyword(s) from your page, especially if you can fit it in as a first word(s) in the heading. H1 headings are given the most importance by bots, so make sure that is where your keyword is. H2 and the rest can include some sub-keywords, but they are not as important, although they are important if your site has a lot of sub-headings. I hope this little tidbit helps out with headings..

G2

Submit to Google

The site's content is basically all ready, however, optimization is not totally done yet... I have just done the basic optimization as described so there is quite a bit left to do. I submitted the site to Google so that it starts to index it.

Note: You should submit your URL as soon as you can, even if the site still has a lot of construction left. The reasoning behind this is so that you can start building up 'site age' which is an important factor for Google rankings. There is a saying in the Google world that conveys how it does things: 'OLD IS GOLD.' Of course this just refers to your domain age, not necessarily your content, which should not be old...

Anyway, the site is still unranked and basically unknown by Google, but with the basic optimization and submitting the site through Google Webmaster should help give it a jump start...

Just so you know, Google also has a special thing where it will give your new site a jump start, only temporarily though. I noticed this with my site since it suddenly was ranking number 6 for a keyword but then just as quickly it disappeared from the search results...

Video (Robots.txt file)

Just to back up what I said about the robots.txt file, here is some helpful info about how to do it on Google to get the best results...ENJOY!

---ROBOTS(Content)---------

If you ever ask an SEO pro, The first thing they will ask you, almost 99% guaranteed, is do you have a robots.txt file? You might ask, what in the blue blazes is a robots.txt file....does it cost money...do I have to hire someone to make it?

The answer in one word: NO! It is probably the easiest thing you will ever do when you are optimizing your site for content, and it is one of the most important things you can do in order to get noticed by search engines. Basically, it is a way of saying to search bots, come look at my pages, but don't look at these pages here...

Just as a side note here...what is a bot you may be asking? In a short answer sort of way, a bot is a program that a search engine sends out to your site to check the site's content and links. It checks the places you link to, your site's organization and content...EVERYTHING! It is a way for search engines to not spend millions hiring people to do the horribly boring job of checking everyone's site out. In the end, you want to do whatever you can to PLEASE THE BOT!!

So how do you do it? Here is the best way I think. Just open up notepad or some other text editor that saves in the .txt format. Then open it up and type the following text:

User-Agent: *

Disallow:

This text will open up your site to all bots that might index your site, this includes all of the different search engines out there. However, you may not want to have your whole site indexed. You may do this in the case of outgoing link pages, search results, or even forum discussions. To stop the bot from indexing a certain area of your site, put the following line and substitute your-page.html with the page you want to keep hidden from bots.

Disallow: /your-page.html

If for some reason, you want to stop all bots from indexing any part of your site, there is also a tag for that. You might do this if you are in construction or changing the site extensively. Note though, it is a very good thing to have your site indexed as much as possible by bots, so try not to block them if you don't have to...

# go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

One more thing you may want to do is block the bot from indexing a specific folder (such as private data or data that has nothing to do with your site). In this case, you may use the following tag in addition to the other script you have placed:

Disallow: /your-folder/

It is also important to note that if you change the User-agent script you will select for a certain search engine's bot, such as googlebot. In most cases though, you will just want to leave the asterisk there so that all bots are welcome.

So, in the end, if you have followed these instructions, your robots.txt file may look like the following SEO example:

User-agent: *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-content/b
Disallow: /wp-content/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/4
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/c
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/d
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/f
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/h
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/in
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/s
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: */trackback/

(taken from http://www.askapache.com/seo/wordpress-robotstxt-seo.html)

After all your hard work, DON'T FORGET TO SAVE IT!! Save it as robots.txt and upload it to your site's server! There you have it, a fully-functional, SEO-friendly robots.txt file!

G2