Search engine optimization

Once-sacred Google PageRank doesn’t matter anymore

8/9/2011 By Joan 5 Comments

This guest post was written by Lior Levin, an entrepreneur who works for Producteev, which makes a task management tool. He also advises a small neon signs online store in Oregon.

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By Lior Levin

Once upon a time, there was a search engine called AltaVista. It was mighty and considered to be untouchable.

Then along came Google and knocked it out of the search engine game in a matter of about 12 months or less.

How?

Google developed an algorithm that was based on looking at how many people linked to your site and what those links said. So lots of links from lots of websites increased your website’s ranking in Google. The term used to describe the popularity or your website was known as PageRank.

You can measure your Google PageRank by installing the Google toolbar for your web browser or through any number of PageRank measuring and analysis websites. But to be blunt, measuring the PageRank of your own website or that of your competitors is absolutely pointless.

Why so?

Once people realized that they could “game” or manipulate the Google search algorithm by building masses of links from high PageRank websites, things had to change.

You Can’t Fool Google

Those PageRank updates we used to love seeing every month or two became less and less frequent. And right now they’re pretty much pointless because the data shown in the PageRank update is not even close to being current, or even useful, at any real level.

Here’s how you can tell if this is true or not.

Pick a popular search term in your industry or niche and search Google for it. Now go through the top 10 results for that keyword and make a note of the PageRank for each website. What you’d expect is that the sites with high Google PageRank are listed at the top of the results, and then everything else is listed beneath it. But that’s not what you see, is it?

What you’re seeing are sites with little or no (like zero) page rank, achieving higher search engine rankings than sites with lots and lots of PageRank. How can this be?

It’s because PageRank itself stopped mattering a long time ago. Google is just updating PageRank on the toolbar now out of courtesy, I’d imagine. I would guess that within the next two to three years, they’ll stop updating PageRank permanently.

So if page rank doesn’t matter, then what does?

TrustRank Matters

Trust Rank has mattered more than PageRank has now for some time. As the term implies, TrustRank is about how trustworthy your site is in the eyes of big G. And right now, the more TrustRank your site has, the better.

But how do you measure TrustRank? Is there a TrustRank toolbar?

Nope, and there never will be. Google learned the hard way that you cannot expose the inner workings of your search engine to the general public because some people will do their best to manipulate it and ruin the experience for everyone else.

Here’s a list of things can that can influence your TrustRank and, therefore, your search engine rankings:

The domain is registered for 5 or more years.
The site is hosted on a dedicated server.
The site loads quickly.
All content is original.
The visitor duration on each page is more than 90 seconds.
The site is linked to from multiple international IP ranges.
The site is an authority in its niche.

Are you seeing a pattern here? These are all qualities of a website or blog being run as a business—not just to scoop up some quick cash with spammy content and bogus inbound linking strategies.

You build TrustRank by starting a site or blog in one niche and becoming the authority in that niche or industry by providing content or resources that cannot be found anywhere else on the Internet. Google then rewards your efforts by putting you at the top of their search results for everyone to see.

PageRank was like Communism—a wonderful idea that could benefit everyone. But just like Communism, it was abused and had failed before it really had a chance to make a difference in the world.

What do you think about PageRank vs. TrustRank? What are you doing on your website to earn Google’s trust?

Filed Under: Google, Search engine optimization Tagged With: alta vista, gppgle, linking strategies, pagerank, SEO, trustrank

Install Google’s +1 button at your website and blog

6/14/2011 By Joan 7 Comments

When Google, the King of Search, gives Publicity Hounds an easy way to let our websites and blogs stand out, we need to embrace it with all four paws.

The newest tool is the +1 button, shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

You’ll start seeing it popping up on websites and blogs.

Here’s how it works.

When you install the code that makes the button visible on your own site, people who like your content can click on it and tell Google and others that they’re recommending it. It’s Google’s equivalent of Facebook’s Like button.

But here’s the really powerful part. When you recommend somebody else’s content, your photo shows up when that person’s website is listed in Google’s search results. But your photo will show up only if you already have a Google Profile. Here’s an example:

Do these four things today:

If you don’t have a Google Profile, create one.
Read more about the Google +1 button. Here are Google’s FAQs. You can find a video and a helpful tutorial from Francisco Rosales at the SocialMouths blog.
Install the button at your website and blog. Or save yourself the headache and have your webmaster do it for you.
Start recommending content you see elsewhere by clicking on the +1 button.

It’s too early to tell how successful the button will be, and whether it will go to the Google graveyard like the failed Buzz experiment, but you’d be crazy not to at least try it.

Do you think this button will catch on?

Filed Under: Facebook, Photos & Graphics, Publicity on the Internet, Publicity Resources, Search engine optimization, Social media marketing Tagged With: +1 button, facebook like button, google, search results

Your LinkedIn headline should say ‘Call me.’ Does yours?

1/25/2011 By Joan 2 Comments

Does your LinkedIn headine set you apart from everyone else in your field? It should say to journalists and others who find you: “You need to contact his person, pronto!“

Until recently, my headline was so lame that I’m not even going to bore you with it here. It made me sound like every other publicity expert. So I came up with one that I think really sets me apart, and includes a call to action.

This isn’t an original idea. If I remember correctly, I saw someone else who is not a direct competitor use the “Call me at…” phrase, and decided to adopt it for my own headline. (It may have been Nathan Kievman, who created the excellent Linked Strategies group on LinkedIn.)

A week after I changed it, the phone rang. It was Matt Schumacher, a financial services consultant from Milwaukee. The first words out of his mouth were, “How can you help me?”

I explained how, and now he subscribes to my free ezine, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week.” He knows all about my free content that’s available, like the free publicity ebooks I give away at the end of each year, my free publicity articles at my website, and the archives where he can read all the back issues of my newsletter. I also told him about my telephone consulting, and where he can find the products I’ve created that can help him market his practice, like special reports and videos, CDs and electronic transcripts.

Your headline, by the way, is the two lines of type that appear to the right of your photo when someone searches for you on LinkedIn. When you edit your profile, the headline appears to the left of your photo. It should always include keywords that the search engines can find.

You’re allowed 120 characters. So use them! No wimply one-liners.

I’m not suggesting that you must use the words “Call me…” and then include your phone number. But why wouldn’t you people to call you???

I’m simply saying that the headline must set you apart from everyone else in your industry.

Do you have a LinkedIn headline you’re proud? Show us by linking to your LinkedIn profile. And explain what it’s done for you.

Filed Under: Business Promotion, LinkedIn, Search engine optimization, Social media marketing Tagged With: headline, LinkedIn, SEO, social media profile

6 powerful ways for Twitterers to use Twellow

1/1/2011 By Joan 17 Comments

Looking for people in a certain niche on Twitter, but confused about how to find them?

Twellow to the rescue. It’s like the Twitter Yellow Pages, with hundreds of categories and some really obscure niches. I spent several hours there recently looking for people who one of my corporate consulting clients can follow.

Twellow grabs publicly available messages from Twitter. It analyzes the tweets and places the writer into several categories. That helps you narrow your search into specific niches where you can find who you are looking for. We’re talking really narrow niches. Like Tourette Syndrome, fence repair, numismatics, sake and rockabilly.

While you’re there, check to see if you’re registered. If not, get onto Twellow pronto! But you must have a Twitter account first.

If you’re already on Twellow, you can be listed in 10 categories, delete categories that have been assigned to you, or add categories where you aren’t listed. Read the Twellow FAQs.

Here are six powerful ways to use Twellow:

1. Be listed in 10 categories.

When you create an account, you can choose to be listed in a maximum 10 categories, which can help even more people find you. Choosing 10 from the hundreds of topic categories available isn’t as difficult as you might think. Here are all my categories:

2. Create an Extended Bio

It accompanies your Twellow profile and allows an additional 2,000 characters so you can better explain what you have to offer. You can see a Sample Extended Bio or read mine.

Because I have an extended bio, here’s what visitors will see when they do a search for my name or Twitter handle (“Publicity Hound”). The notes in the yellow boxes are mine.

3. Include links within your Extended Bio.

Valuable links to your website, blog, or social media profile pages from this popular site will mean more Google juice. Take a look at the seven links I included in by bio, chock full of keyword phrases:

4. Use TwellowHood.

This giant map of the world lets you place your cursor on a continent, and then zoom in to locate who’s on Twitter in a certain city.

I zoomed in on Wisconsin, and a window opened with a list of cities where people on Twitter live. I searched for Port Washington, Wis., my town, and learned there are more than 60 fellow Twitters who live near me. They work as a virtual assistant, search engine optimization expert, digital photo expert, photographer, graphic designer and even a woman who I might hire to redesign the inside of my home, using things I already have in it.

You can use Twellowhood for business leads and to find joint venture partners.

Looking for the best deals in a city you’ll be visiting soon? Use TwellowHood to find people on Twitter in those cities, follow them, and then ask what hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions they recommend.

You can also use TwitterLocal to find local Twitterers, though I prefer TwellowHood.

5. Read Twellow’s Advanced Search Tips.

By using certain characters like an ampersand, quotation marks or a minus sign in your search, you can narrow it or broaden it to include people you might not otherwise find in a simple search.

For example, if you want to find all people on Twellow that identify themselves as having something to do with dogs OR cats in New York, try this:

(dog | cat) (“new york” | nyc)

Greg Lambert of 3 Geeks & a Law Blog offers some advanced search tips here.

6. Use a Twellow sticker

Don’t wait for people to find you on Twellow. Let them know you’re there by placing these stickers at your website or blog. Choose from four standard colors, or customize your own.

How do you use Twellow? What’s happened as a result? Any tips for Twellow newbies?

Filed Under: Search engine optimization, Twitter Tagged With: 3 geeks & a blog, advanced search tips, greg lambert, twellow, twitter yellow pages

How to un-Google yourself & push bad news off Page 1

12/21/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

This month’s guest blog post is from Mark Macias, a crisis communications consultant. He runs a TV production and PR company that has consulted with restaurants, retailers, lounges and Congressional candidates. He also wrote the communications book, Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media. You can read excerpts at BeatthePressBook.com.

By Mark Macias
Guest Blogger

Everyone likes to secretly Google himself, but what happens when Google turns up results you don’t like? How do you get your name removed from the search engines when the material is damaging?

Alan Gottlob, an established New Jersey financial consultant, woke up one morning to discover his reputable name was falsely accused of ethical violations. Making it worse, the writer never called Gottlob for a response. Gottlob first learned of the article three months after it was published, when a client read it on the Internet and asked him about it.

These strong allegations can destroy nearly any person’s business, but in an industry built on trust – like the financial industry – the article nearly destroyed Gottlob’s private practice.

Gottlob reached out to me to manage his crisis communications after he didn’t get anywhere with the web publisher, Investment News. We applied several new strategies and within weeks, Investment News and its parent company, Crain Communications Inc., were in discussions to correct the article.

If you find yourself in this situation, there are several steps you can take to get the material removed from the Internet. Contrary to the popular saying, “the Internet is written in ink,” it is possible to modify the record if you apply some proven crisis communications strategies.

Here are some of the strategies you can take if you find yourself in a similar crisis situation as Gottlob.

1) Go after the power brokers or the people who finance the publication, which includes the publisher, city editors, Executive Producers, and most important: the legal counsel for the publication. Do a quick Google search to find out who owns the website or publication. Most people, like Gottlob, contact the writer when a negative article is published, but that’s like complaining to the sales clerk when the cashier gives you the wrong change. You need to complain to the people who control the money.

Your letter to these power brokers needs to state why this article is inaccurate and most important, how the article has financially harmed your business. If you can’t show any financial duress from the article, you won’t succeed in the court of law or with the publisher.

2)    Understand the difference between libelous, slander and opinion. If a blogger writes that you smell, you can’t take legal action to bring down the story. However, if the blogger writes a factually inaccurate article that accuses you of wrongdoing and harms your business. And you don’t always need an attorney for this. Sometimes a strongly worded letter that outlines the bullet points from above is enough to get the publisher’s attention.

3)    Don’t wait. Go after the website’s owners immediately. The longer the website is up, the more time search engines have to index the web page. Unfortunately, it took Gottlob several weeks to get ahold of the reporter and her superiors, which is sometimes the secret strategy many journalists take to diffuse the threat from any lawsuits.

4) Google will stop indexing the website if you can prove the website displays private personal information like Social Security numbers. However, you need to make a case to them if it involves other matters. You can find this page on Google here.

5) Push the article off the first Google page with new content. There is another strategy you can take to bury the article off of the first page from Google. You can accomplish this by writing your own blog or material and making sure it is indexed with the proper search engine optimization.

6) Once the page is removed, you need to write a letter to all the search engines to make sure the page is no longer indexed.

This form of crisis communications will only grow in the future as more bloggers and news organizations post articles on the Internet. If the article is false and inaccurate, don’t be afraid to fight back. Just make sure you’re not picking a fight over someone’s opinion because, luckily, the First Amendment still protects us from that.

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Editor’s Note: Also see Manage your online reputation BEFORE bad news hits.

Filed Under: Crisis Communications, Publicity on the Internet, Search engine optimization Tagged With: alan gottlob, beat the press, crain communications, google search, mark macias