Monthly Archives: February 2008

Search Google for your website.

Posted on by
Reply

Instead of entering your URL into your browser, search Google for your site. Google is more apt to improve the ranking of a site that users seek and visit than one that gets no traffic from Google.

When I first made this site publicly available, Google Guide wasn’t in the first 100 sites on searches for [ Google guide ]. Thanks to the sites that linked to Google Guide and users who clicked on Google Guide in their search results, Google Guide is in the top ten results for many queries that relate to the content of the site. Being listed so highly on Google has improved the traffic flow to Google Guide.

Note: For the top ranked site, Google sometimes includes useful links from within that site.

clip image002 Search Google for your website.

Avoid devious tactics to improve your ranking.

If Google suspects that you are trying to deceive it web crawler and thus its users by including hidden text, misleading or repeated words, pages that don’t match your sites description, deceptive redirects, duplicate site or pages, or other disingenuous tactics, then Google may delist your site from its index.

And finally…

In addition to considering the number of links to your page and the ranking of the linking page, to compute a page’s PageRank, Google considers hundreds of factors including

  • how fast a site is gaining links
  • how long the links persist
  • when your site acquired the links
  • the click through rate (CTR) of Google’s search results, cached pages, favorites on the Google Toolbar
  • the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness of your site in retaining individual users)

These factors and many others are described in the article “Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret’s Out” on Buzzle.com.

Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance. Google Guide’s placement in Google’s search results sometimes changes when Google modifies or enhances their indexing algorithms.

I don’t try to keep up with the latest search engine optimization tricks. Instead I strive to make searching Google easier by educating users about Google services, capabilities, and features. When I am successful, sites link to Google Guide pages and increase their ranks and importance to Google.

Improving Your PageRank

Posted on by
Reply

Below are suggestions for publicizing your site — and improving its PageRank — based on our experience getting the word out about Google Guide.

Include useful high-quality information on your site.

Create content that users want and will share with others.

Submit your site to various web directories and reference sites.

A web directory “specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links,” according to HighSearchRanking.com.

Post your site’s URL (web address) to popular web directories including Open Directory Project (ODP), Yahoo!, and LookSmart. Also post your URL to online reference, e.g., Wikipedia, industry-specific expert sites, blogs, etc.

Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate.

Add your site’s URL, e.g., www.googleguide.com, to every piece of communication you initiate. The TechSoup (The Technology Place for Nonprofits) article, Publicizing Your Web Site: Getting the message out there, recommends that “your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address,” e.g.,

  • Business cards
  • Letterhead
  • Newsletters
  • Brochures
  • Press Releases
  • Fax cover sheets
  • Email signatures

Write a newsletter and send it out.

Inform people what’s new or noteworthy on your site. The newsletter will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit to find interesting content.

Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).

RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication. JISC describes RSS as “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”

In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

Ask other high-quality websites to link to your website.

Getting other “good” websites to link to yours usually helps your website’s PageRank and ranking on Google.

Note: If your site links to delisted websites, your website might also be removed from Google’s index.

Provide motivation for highly ranked websites to link to yours.

Getting highly ranked sites to link to yours will improve your ranking more than getting many poorly ranked sites to link to yours.

Note: If Google suspects that you’ve traded links with other sites for the sole purpose of improving your ranking, it might penalize or blacklist your site.

Check out a site before you link back.

When you receive a request for a link, check the site before you link back. Is it a site worthy of your link, i.e., vote of confidence? Would a link be of value to your page’s visitors?

Tell the press about your site.

Telling the press may not get your website publicity. After making Google Guide live, I emailed local, national, and international press and got a poor response to our publicity.

Next I emailed journalists who specialize in search engines, but again few wrote articles about Google Guide.

Then I emailed reviewers of books on using Google. A handful responded. Some wrote that Google Guide was for novices; others wrote that Google Guide was tailored for advanced users. Wanting to make Google Guide appeal to novices and experts alike, I indicated sections that would appeal to particular users, e.g.,

  • If you have little or no experience with Google, read on. Otherwise, skip to the next section, titled “Go to the First Result.”
  • We recommend that you skip ahead to Part II: Understanding Search Results unless you’re an experienced Google user or you want to know how to use Google’s advanced operators.

After several months of emailing potential users and posting to websites, libraries, schools, and users began linking to Google Guide.

I tried again to get national press coverage by contacting John Markoff from the New York Times. After a few attempts, I was quoted in an article about Search Engine Wars and afterwards Google Guide got over 50,000 unique visitors/day for the following week and traffic has been good ever since.

On the basis of a suggestion from Matt Vance, I created the Google Guide Cheat Sheet and announced it on Slashdot, which generated great publicity, along with a few flames; within 24 hours, the Cheat Sheet went from being ranked so poorly I couldn’t even find it to being ranked #2 (after Google’s cheat sheet).

What is PageRank?

Posted on by
Reply

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

Make Money by Domain Parking

Posted on by
Reply

GoDaddy has set up a new service whereby webmasters can earn a profit based on clicks to their parked domains.

The program is targeted at owners of small amounts of domains in their portfolio. GoDaddy serves ads that are based on the domain name, and the analysis of what people click on and search for in the site.

This new service, CashParking, not only helps webmasters make a few extra dollars, but provides another means by which websites and companies can get search related traffic through links on unique domain names that are not as yet built out.

What Is a Domain Sale?

Posted on by
Reply

A domain sale is the process of promoting a domain name for someone else to purchase it. A person may own a domain name and decide that they do not need it for a variety of reasons. Instead of letting the domain name expire, he may choose to sell the domain name to someone who would have a greater use for it. Many people create and register domain names for the express purpose of selling them for a profit.

Before you consider a domain sale, you must already have determined the minimum value of the domain name. Domain valuation is very subjective. The best way to declare the value of your domain name is simply to figure out the least amount of money you are willing to accept for it. There are free and paid domain valuation services that will compare your domain name to names similar to it. They will then come up with an approximate value for you. However, most experts feel that domain valuation companies are a waste of time. The value of you domain name depends on various factors: length of name, usefulness to target audience, use of prefixes and suffixes, and any other modifications to the domain name. Typically, the more you have to modify a domain name, the less it is worth. Also, longer domain names are worth much less than simple ones. For example, www.treat-yourself-spa.com is worth much less than www.spa.com. Domain valuation depends on the complexity of the domain name.

Once you have determined a value for the domain, you must decide whether to sell it independently or enlist the services of a domain broker. If you do a domain sale yourself, you have two options: link a simple web page to the domain name or create an active website and link it to the domain name. A simple web page only entails stating the domain name for sale and your contact information. An active website requires much more effort, but will be more likely to sell. Potential buyers like to see that the domain name has already generated traffic before they complete a domain sale.

If you do not want to have to deal with the hassle of a domain sale, you can always opt to have a domain broker do it for you. For a small fee, a domain broker will be your domain sale liaison and complete a sale for you. All you must do is sit back and let him complete the technical transfer, sales contracts, and other components of the domain sale. Many domain brokers will park a website for you. Website parking means that the broker actually creates a website for you and parks it on their host server for others to view. There will be links to companies that the domain broker works with. You will earn a few cents each time a link is clicked. Therefore, you will make money while trying to sell the domain name.

Do not get frustrated if your domain name does not sell very quickly. The demand is much lower than supply. Just make sure you are adequately promoting your domain name sale and you will eventually close a satisfying deal.