SEO CheckList

I’ve seen too many debates drop up over the potency of TLDs to affect your ranking in the SERPs. When SEOmoz.org conducted research on the factors affecting Google PageRank, one of the most controversial factors was the Top Level Domain or TLD. The question of whether TLDs affect rankings in the SERPs have asked and tackled numerous times. Every time, an amalgamation of answers would be given. Here’s what I had been able to gather so far:

1. No, TLDs Don’t Matter

Majority of people consider the connection of TLDs to rankings utter nonsense. For many people, it’s nothing but SEO myth. They said that as long as a web site is properly optimized, there’s no reason why a .com would not rank higher than a supposedly trusted .gov or .edu web site. I do agree, of course. Try it out yourself, search Google for a keyword.

2. Sometimes, It Matters

There are those who believe that yes, sometimes it matters. After all, you don’t exactly see .info or .jobs TLDs at the top of the SERPs in their niche. I hate to make broad sweeping generalizations, but I haven’t seen such instances too.

3. It Matters When You’re Getting Backlinks From Them

Would you rather get a backlink from a .edu or a .info web site? If, for example, one has a .edu (though you can’t get one unless it’s for school), then people are most likely to request links from his web site. And other web sites will most likely like to that web site since they consider .edu authoritative. And of course, we all know backlinks are great for SEO.

4. Country Specific TLDs are Only Good For Their Own Country’s SERPs

When you get ccTLD domains or domains specific to your country, you’re basically telling Google that you’re gearing your web site towards your country’s SERPs. Therefore, your web site might not rank as well for Google.com or other country’s Google pages. Of course, this is not the universal truth. If your web site is undeniably popular, ccTLDs won’t matter at all.

When Google De-ranked web sites not so long ago, the uproar was unimaginable. Thousands of blogs mentioned PageRank and the number of Google haters (which was large in the first place) doubled in number. However, there were those who didn’t care and didn’t even bat an eyelash with what happened. In truth, I didn’t understand the commotion at first either. So you got de-ranked (so did I), so what? I caught a conversation in a blog once when someone said that PageRank is being less considered as a gauge of a web site’s popularity nowadays because of what happened. However, it is still considered a gauge of authority sites.

So why were the de-ranked bloggers angered anyways?

1. Because They were falsely Accused

Google admitted that the de-ranking was a warning against those who sold text links. And in truth, many of those de-ranked (me included) have not sold text links at all. Copyblogger, Brian Clark, was of the same sentiment. Other bloggers have hinted that his blog getting de-ranked was due to his selling of text links. After a phone call from b5media to Google, Copyblogger was given a PR7, one rank higher than the blog’s original PageRank. Another thing Brian Clark is worrying about is…

2.  The Change in Rankings Might Affect How Others See Them as Authorities

When people look at the Google toolbar and sees your web site is a PR8, tendency is, they’ll consider you an authority than a web site without PageRank. This is especially true of commercial or non-personal blogs. And lastly…

3. Because People Think PageRank is Directly Connected with the SERPs

Hmmm…doing an experiment, I searched a highly-competitive key phrase. It’s true, the first few pages are filled with web sites with PageRank. However, higher PageRank doesn’t necessarily mean higher ranking. As I saw with my experiment, there were PageRank 6-8 web sites on the third and fourth pages of the results, and there were PageRank 2-3 at the first page. In short, although PageRank plays a role in your ranking in the SERPs, it is not the only factor.

Keywords are an essential part of Search engine optimization. In web master forums and places where a call for writers is rampant, you’ll see web masters asking for search engine optimized articles all the time. Keywords, as time went by, became key phrases to better capture the nature of the human audience who type in not only keywords but also phrases as search engine queries. Keywords are essential for your web site to rank in the SERPs. When spiders crawl your site, you need to show them what your web site is about. Unlike humans, these bots don’t have the higher intellect to comprehend what you blog about if you don’t mention it a few times in your content.

For every keyword or key phrase you want to target, you need content that is optimized for search engines revolving around it. Basically, you need an article with a set number of words infused with a defined keyword density. How does one keyword density anyway? Simple. For one article, list all the keywords you want to target. Now, count every keyword or key phrase targeted and then divide it by the number of words. So, for example, the targeted keyword was mentioned 10 times in a 500-word article:

10 / 500 = 0.02

Move the decimal two places to the right and that is your percentage. So for this example, the keyword density is 2%. Perform this computation for every single keyword you are targeting.

Google has a preference for a 1 - 2% keyword density. Anything over than that could make the Googlebot think you’re spamming, increases the risk of Google de-ranking your web site and consequently, throwing you to the supplemental index. Yahoo, on the other hand, has a preference for a 7 - 10% keyword density. The Yahoo bot, however, can recognize subtle differences in the keyword so you can create alternatives of the main keyword and use that.

Duplicate content is a major issue in the World Wide Web. And it’s not about publishing your works in various places anymore. Unscrupulous people trying to cash in on other’s hard work using the Internet have been popping up everywhere and blogs such as this are being re-blogged multiple times a single day. The thought itself is abominable, but that’s just how it is. What is the real deal with duplicate content anyhow?

The first issue with duplicate content is the Google supplemental index. It’s a proven thing that duplicate content ends up in the Google supplementals. The question is which one — the original or the copy? I’ve proven it before, that the one indexed first would be in the main Google index and the copy would be in the supplementals. However, that isn’t always the case. There was one instance when someone asked me for advice because her articles were stolen. The web site who stole her articles was a PR3, she was a PR0. She was the one who got flushed down the supplementals despite having published the articles first. What does this mean? Google looks at PageRank when ranking web sites in the SERPs. Though the truth of her claim is yet to be proven — anyone up for an experiment?

With regards to articles in article repositories, the authors won’t mind you taking their articles for your web sites as long as their links remain intact. I tried doing an experiment using these articles once in blogspot. Well guess what, Blogger suspended all my blogs. There are also those who don’t include the links and paste the article body only on their web sites. So far, I haven’t seen a web site which uses articles from repositories ranking high in the SERPs. So in the end, duplicating content is not a favorable course to take.

Regarding stolen content, you can refer to these two articles on Plagiarism On The Web Part 1 and Part 2.

We all know how important building backlinks is. Nobody would find your web site(s) unless you promote and build back links. It’s not only for the PageRank anymore because as I have observed, a lot more people are becoming disillusioned with the Google PageRank. And besides, with all the change in algorithms and penalizations, it’s hard to use PR as a gauge of site popularity nowadays. STILL, building backlinks has always had its merits, even without PR’s existence. Now, are all back links measured equally? Do you think a backlink from a web site found in the 100th page of the SERPS would amount the same as a backlink from a web site on the first page?

My answer to that would be NO. Inbound links coming from web sites at the top of the search engine ranking pages sure are weighed a LOT more than backlinks from web sites in the lower tier of the SERPs. When I say “weighed more,” I meant in terms of your own rankings. Of course, building massive backlinks from lower ranked web site has its own merits, but a single back link from the web site at the top of your niche could do wonders. Just one link from someone who’s at the top of the SERPs in your niche could propel your web site from being at the bottom to being at the first page of the SERPs.

So in a nutshell, a web site’s popularity is VERY important when building backlinks. That doesn’t meant you should ignore everyone at the bottom of the niche, but it’s always great to build links with authority web sites for the betterment of your ranking in the SERPs. Remember, building backlinks isn’t just for PageRank, it’s also to build popularity and hence, traffic.

A post in the Text Link Ads blog particularly warned against buying text links in sites where all the paid links are mish-mashed because you might end up being surrounded by porn, online gambling and other similar web site links. Now, there are many who either don’t care about the quality of the web sites or just plain don’t know why they shouldn’t be paying for links in spammy sites.

Imagine your links are children in a classroom and Google is the teacher. Let’s say the class goes on a field trip. On the way home, to ensure no kid gets left behind, the teacher asks the children to line up. She then proceeds to doing a head count. Now, do you think that when the head count is satisfied, the teacher simply nods its head and everyone takes off? Not in the very least. What if some other kid got mixed in the bunch? What if you actually inadvertently brought home someone else and left one of the students behind? No, the teacher examines the students to confirm that they’re the children in the class.

Google does that too, albeit in a much grander scale. In an effort to inflate your back link count, you jump on a $20 offer for 1800 back links or something similar. You think you can fool Google. Maybe in the short run, you can. However, give Google enough time to examine your backlinks and they’ll end up being worth zilch. Google’s algorithm is designed not only to count text links but also to determine what kind of web site links back to you. If that web site has thousands of links to unbecoming web sites, that’s a minus point for you, not a plus. Lesson is, links from spammy sites are a big no-no. Work hard on getting legit, clean links instead.

Last time, I talked about the need, or lack thereof, to optimize your web site for each particular search engine. As was said, it might not be possible for one to fully optimize for one search engine and hope to do well in the other. You should optimize for all of them collectively and as long as you do the job properly, chances are you’ll rank decently for all the search engines as long as your keywords are not that competitive if your web site is new. Now, you won’t be able to form your own search engine combined SEO technique unless you know the subtleties of optimizing for each major search engine. Since up ’til now I’ve been talking of Google, this time, let’s put the spotlight on Yahoo.

Here are the suggested optimization techniques for Yahoo:

1. Keyword Density

As is common knowledge, Google prefers a 1-3% keyword density — anything over than that might get thrown into the supplemental for keyword stuffing. Yahoo, however, reportedly prefers 7-8% keyword density. Karen Scharf says the Yahoo algorithm is designed to recognize conjugations and plural words so it might actually be easy to create content with 7-8% keyword density yet not get flagged by Google.

2. Meta Tags

I’ve discounted meta tags whenever I write about Search Engine Optimization and I’ve discounted meta tags in my own web sites. However, Yahoo apparently still cares for meta tags. Select around three keywords and around 2 sentences for the description.

3. Title Tags and Header Tags

Yahoo would prefer seeing only around 5-6 words in your title tag. With regards to header tags, usual specifications apply, including using one H1 tag only per page.

4. Alt Tags and Filenames

Provide alt tags for your graphics so those who use text-only browsers could still enjoy your site. You should also use keywords for your filenames as added optimization method.

Due to the recent Google de-ranking of web sites, many people are suddenly aware that only should they not judge a web site’s popularity on its PageRank but they should also look to other means of traffic as well — just in case. Hence, I’ve been hearing (or rather, reading) some people talk about optimizing their web sites for each different search engine. Let’s see…the different search engines are, well, different. They have different algorithms, they value different aspects of your web sites, they weigh your optimization efforts differently. In essence what I want to say is, your web site might rank first in Google but be in Yahoo third page and MSN’s fourth — it’s inevitable.

On June 13, 2006, Aaron Wall of SEO Book published a long and detailed article on the differences (and similarities) of Yahoo and Google. I think it’s a reference meant for generations to come unless either of the search engines change their algorithms drastically. Now, what does this article tell us? Basically that each search engine has its own “personality,” if I may call it as such, and that you’d be hard-pressed to find a way to optimize your web site for all known search engines.

Does this mean I advocate for creating separate web sites for each search engine? Of course not. In my eyes, that’s a waste of your time and efforts. As was said, although search engines differ, they also have similarities. Think of it this way, choose which search engine you want to rank first in and optimize most for that search engine. However, don’t neglect optimization for other SEs too. I believe that after you rank well for one search engine, the rest would follow through — you just have to work for it.

There have been many speculations and theories on whether web site validation actually helps search engine optimization. Frankly, I never believed it one bit. I have a web site which ranks third for its niche and it’s not validated. Well, who knows, maybe if I do take lengths to validate it, I’d rank first. However, I find it funny that Google isn’t validated and so are many big-wig web sites. Don’t believe me? Check them out. Go to W3C Markup Validation Service, input any URL into the text box and check if the web site is W3C compliant. Back to topic, does web site validation really work for SEO?

Validation — What’s That?

Let’s start with the basics. What is validation? In a nutshell, validation is running a check on a web page to ensure that the markup language used (HTML or XHTML) was perfectly written. This means that a validated page fully complies with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

What Is The Use of Being Validated?

Despite my earlier statement, being validated has its uses. For one, it ensures your web pages show up correctly, or as you intended them to look like. Validating helps you determine codes which have been left open or anything similar. Also, validating helps ensure your web site shows properly in any type of Web browser. Consequently, because it ensures the mark-up language is perfect, it helps curb the instances when spiders stop indexing pages because a certain code blocked them for doing so.

So, Does Web Site Validation Really Work for SEO?

As I said, I don’t think so. It has no direct effect in your web site’s search engine optimization. However, your web site being perfectly indexable and it showing up properly for all types of browsers meant you’re reaching a wide audience, and hence, the possibility of getting backlinks is high.

Blogging has boomed over the recent years and honestly, I’m not surprised. Blogs are everything from entertainment to sources of information to venues where people can socialize in cyberspace. In short, blogs are currently a gamut of things and who knows what else in the future. One of the most popular and widely-used blog platforms of today is WordPress. WordPress.com offers free WordPress blogs. This is most useful for newbies who are only interested in keeping blogs for personal use. For those who want to use their blogs for commercial purposes, here are a few tips to optimize WordPress blogs:

1. The Usual On-page SEO Procedures

By this, I mean, all the on-page SEO tips for regular and ordinary static web sites should be followed. This includes optimizing the title tag (your post title automatically becomes your title tag), using header tags, implementing keyword density (1-3%), etc. You should also change your Permalink structure to http://nameofblog.com/titleofposthere. Eliminate unnecessary elements in your permalinks. It is also advisable to use tags because they serve as keywords.

2. Build Backlinks and Use Social Networks to Your Advantage

Needless to be said, you need to build backlinks to be able to attract traffic as well as increase your PageRank. As for social networking web sites like myspace, friendster and facebook, you can use them to promote your blog in relevant discussion groups. In your own blog, deep link to your other articles. You’d want your reader to stay as long as possible so get them to click on those other blog posts.

3. Use Sitemaps

A Sitemap plug-in for WordPress is available. It is used to automatically generate a sitemap for WordPress blogs. You can install it as you do all your other plug-ins. Sign-up for Google Sitemaps and Yahoo Site Explorer for optimal results.

4. Update Regularly

What’s the use of Google sitemaps if you don’t update regularly? Search engines love fresh content. The sitemap helps the spiders index your content a lot faster than they normally would. Take advantage of this and post optimized entries regularly.