The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google’s search results.

For example, if many people use the text “buy blue widgets” to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase “buy blue widgets” in Google’s search results.

The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

< a href="http://www.example.com">this is the link text

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:

1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel=”nofollow” attribute don’t pass the link text to Google. Example:

< a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.example.com">great keyword

You can use IBP to find out if the websites that link to you use the nofollow attribute: start IBP, click the “Links” button and click “Check links”.

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won’t be able to index the link correctly. Example:

< a href="http://www.example.com ">great keyword

In this example, there’s a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.

Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google’s Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won’t consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:

< a href="http://www.example.com/page.htm">great keyword

The web server redirects “http://www.example.com/page.htm” to “http://www.example.com” with a 301 redirect. In that case, it’s likely that Google won’t use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:

< a href="http://www.example.com">This is an example. The link text < a href="http://www.example.com">great keyword will be ignored by Google.

The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is “This”. The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.

If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:

< a href="http://www.example.com/page1.htm">This is an example. The link text < a href="http://www.example.com/page2.htm">great keyword will be ignored by Google.

Links are the most important factor when it comes to getting top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software

The SEO business is becoming more and more competitive by the day. There is no shortage of small business owners wanting to achieve top search engine rankings and there is no shortage of individuals and companies offering SEO services.  As a result of the growing demand for SEO services and the low barrier to entry to set yourself up as an SEOer, there are problems emerging.

If I can draw a quick comparison.  Cast your mind back when the Government announced the water tank rebates during 2008 and 2009.  An instant demand was created in the market place for not only suppliers and manufacturers of water tanks but also the supplementary services such as installation, cleaning and servicing.  There where existing players in all these market sectors and I would suggest that they were chiseling away at earning a decent and honest living servicing what “was” a fairly niche market.

Enter the rebate scheme and the proliferation of water tank businesses skyrocketed.  It would appear that every man and his dog wanted to get in on the action and make a quick buck.  Who knew how long the drought would last and how long we would be on ever tightening water restrictions?

Competition was fierce,  prices where slashed, and so began the battle for business.  There is generally one aspect of a product or service that you can guarantee is going to suffer when the market is driven by high demand and cheap supply…. and that is quality.  In an effort to reap some sort of margin (insert Profit), short cuts have to be made.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that every operator in the water tank business was “shonky”, cut corners or delivered less than standard work.  The point is simply that low barriers to entry into a market inevitably fosters (on average) a less than optimal result.  Marry that with a lack of accreditation and you’ve got a free for all.  Imagine the quality of medicine if you didn’t have to train to be a doctor.  We’ve even see the demand problem effect this market!!!

If you want recent proof of these types of market forces in action, you’ve only got to look no further than the government’s recent home insulation scheme.  Another perfect case of an instant demand needed to be met by instant supply.  The result, less than spectacular.  Enough from me – your turn.

So how does this apply to SEO?

There is a growing demand from for small business wanting to snare the coveted number #1 search engine result and there is an ever growing number of SEOers prepared to do what ever it takes to fulfill their client’s wishes.   As a result of this often frenzied scramble to the top of the search engines, unscrupulous or “Black Hat” SEO techniques are applied.  Now black hat SEO techniques are best described as those activities that are designed to trick or fool the search engines.  There are very clear guidelines set out by the major search engines as to how best to optimise your site for top results.   They even go as far as to outline what “not to do” so as to avoid any type of penalty.  Check out the Google Webmaster Tools, you can’t get much clearer than that.  For those of you that want to dig a little bit deeper, you only have to read Google’s official blog and you’ll find many articles about SEO best practice.

Simply put – SEO is an ongoing process, it is not an event.  To get lasting results it takes time.  And here in lies the problem.  The instant gratification sought by the business owner and the pressure on the SEOer to deliver on something they have over promised in a bid to win the work.  Sound familiar?

It would appear that “black hatters” need to stoop to applying trickery and deceit to deliver results.  For business owners who are looking for a solution and place their faith in the smooth and fast talking SEOer, their business is treading a very fine line between instant gratification and disaster.

Here is a blatant example of keyword stuffing. Click on the image to enlarge

Now this example appears at the very bottom of the web page.  It is clearly a list of keywords that they are either wanting to rank highly for or are bidding on through pay-per-click platforms such as Adwords.  I simply ask myself why???  This site is ranking well for a range of keywords and it would appear that they are ranking well not as a result of stuffing keywords on the page but rather good on-page SEO and a healthy network of incoming links.  There is simply no need to run the gauntlet.

I have no idea who is responsible for the above indiscretion and frankly I don’t care.  Keyword stuffing like this is usually a clear sign of a DIY approach to SEO or a “Black Hat” SEOer at work.  It is often a lack of knowledge mixed with a combination of inexperience usually fueled by a misguided article or two written by people who really don’t know what they are talking about.

The right approach to keyword SEO is first stick to the rules as laid out by the search engines and in doing so you will be doing your readers a favour by delivering quality content and making the copy on the page easier to read as it won’t be stuffed unnecessarily with keywords.  Good content leads to more inbound links, which ultimately leads to greater authority and higher rankings.

Lets take a wider view and look at the effects of “Black Hat” SEO.  We have grown to expect that the search engines are going to deliver us the best matched results for our search queries.   If the search engines are being fooled into displaying less than optimal results then we are all being cheated.  Black hat SEO effects us all.  There is no winner.

Here is the Google SPAM report link.  They take this sort of thing very seriously.  If you are aware of any sites that are “breaking the rules”, this is how you can take action.  Use it wisely and for the good of the internet.  Don’t be tempted to use it in a vindictive way.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en

Sites that are found to be in breach of the rules can find themselves heading towards the back of the que or even worse de-indexed (removed from Google’s Index all together).

If you are a business owner looking for a SEO company to take on your optimisation, do your due diligence.  SEO is not voodoo, magic or a secret only known to a few, it is a logical process and any reputable SEO company will be more than happy to show you their results and tell you how they went about doing it.  If they are not comfortable telling you want they did, then chances are they use black hat techniques and you should continue your search.

Visit our Search Engine Optimisaton page to view the range of services we offer.

If you have an example of poor SEO form or have an example or cross to bare, leave a comment.

The final word, If you are going to play the game, stick to the rules, or…. be prepared to pay the penalty.

Good luck

Leave a comment

Google’s Matt Cutts recently made a new announcement about paid links. Buying links is a very hot and controversial topic among webmasters. Should you buy links to increase the position of your website on Google? Do paid links help your rankings? Are there any risks?

Can you increase your website rankings by buying links?

Yes, you can. Links that point to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google’s search results.

If you buy backlinks, you can quickly get high rankings for your website on Google. However, that’s only one side of the medal.

If buying links works, why shouldn’t you use it for your website?

Buying links is against Google’s terms of service: “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.”

Google’s anti-spam engineer Matt Cutts recently announced that Google has been working on new algorithms and tools to detect paid links.

Google has a report form for paid links. If one of your competitors finds a paid link that points to your website, he might report it to Google.

Google actively searches for paid links and it’s likely that they will detect all paid links sooner or later. While you can get away with them for some time (that’s why paid links work for some time), your website will be penalized as soon as Google finds out that you tried to game the system.

Buying links leads to quick results and strong penalties

If you use spammy SEO methods such as buying links, you will quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you’ll get a much better performance in the long run

Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings on Google. It will backfire on you.

There are better ways to get inbound links

As mentioned above, the links to your website are the most important factor that influences the position of your website in Google’s search results.

For that reason, it is very important to get as many good backlinks as possible to your website. The quality of the backlinks is more important than the quantity.

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing we are often asked by our small business clients “What is the one thing we can do to get a good ranking in Google?” It is like many people see that their site is lacking the one special ingredient that, when corrected or incorporated, will pump up their ranking. The number of snake oil internet sales pitches floating around seems to encourage this perception. You know “Rank number 1 in Google in 24 hours” type of push.

We feel a bit like the Christmas Grinch when we have to say “There is no magic bullet.”

As we have discussed a number of times on our posts, on-page SEO and off-page SEO is what gets your site ranking in Google. These are not overnight results. On-page optimisation by and large is within the control of a small business (with the right advice and understanding) whereas off-page optimisation is a far longer slog but certainly builds a fortress around your ranking when done properly.

We often talk about alignment and consistency being the keys to on-page optimisation. What we mean by this is:

Alignment refers to the keyword research you need to do in your business segment to determine what keywords have the appropriate search query volumes in the right geographic locations. Alignment also takes in other matters like the online commercial intention (are the keywords “buy” focussed), appropriateness to your business (as we said in the last post, an aquarium shop optimised for “business suits” is not a winner) and are the keywords really what they say (for example does “online editing” refer to text editing searches, video editing searches, audio editing searches, etc).

Consistency then refers to how you use the chosen keywords on your site. It is things like making sure keywords appear in the URL, in the page title, in the page description, in the copy on the page at the right density, etc. But it goes further. Many sites have way too many product offered on the one page – it confuses the life out of search engines because they just see a webpage with a whole pile of different products. Where possible, make each product (or group of similar product) its own webpage and optimise the keywords for this page differently to other pages.

This may all seems fairly unexciting and ordinary, but we can tell you that virtually every website or blog we are asked to review or improve makes these same fundamental mistakes. Once you get these in place, then go hunting for suitable back links to your site for off-page optimisation. Have a read of our post on how Small Business Internet Marketing got to a Google number 2 ranking through on-page optimisation alone.

Think of the process like building a brick wall. Once you have the foundation, you build the bottom course brick by brick, you then build a second course brick by brick – eventually you have a six foot high solid fence, all made out of individual bricks. The foundation is having a domain and hosting package, each well researched keyword is a brick, each URL with the keyword in it is another brick, and so on and so on. Get it right and eventually Google cannot ignore your site.

So, always remember that the ranking of every small business website or blog lives or dies by getting the alignment and consistency right first.

Your business buddies
Marshall and Gary

Hi, Marshall and Gary here

Lots of people on who read Small Business Internet Marketing liked the Goggle Profile information in one of our recent posts. Well here is another nifty tool that Google have recently released. It is called Wonder Wheel and can really speed up finding great keywords for online marketing.

Beware – it is highly addictive and you will find yourself chasing keywords all over the internet.

When you do a normal Google search and see the results, you get a page that has this at the top (this is based on small business internet marketing searched in google.com.au).

If you click on Show Options shown by the red arrow on a Google search page on your computer, you will get a range of options down the left hand side of the page like this.

Click on Wonder Wheel and you will see the search results will rearrange themselves like this.

You can see where the “wheel” came from. You will notice on the right the search results are still there. But look at the wheel. You can click on any the words at the end of the spokes and it will create another wheel based around this word. The existing Small Business Internet Marketing wheel is still there but just moves down. But to the right hand side, the results for the new search appear.

This is not all, have a look and play with all the other options down the left hand side of the page. You can view videos only, or forums, find entries from a certain time (e.g. within the past 24 hours), or use timeline to see results over time.

Pretty funky eh! The pertinent question is “it looks like fun, but what can it do for me?” Well, we see the Wonder Wheel as a useful tool to use in conjunction with the Google Keywords Tool – you can have a look at an earlier post http://www.smallbusinessinternetmarketing.com.au/understanding-keywords/google-keyword-tool-video/ where we showed how to use it. The keyword tool is great but provides a huge range of synonyms. We see that the Wonder Wheel provides a far more focussed selection of related searches – there are only 6 or so spokes to the wheel. And these suggestions are Google generated, so it is what Google thinks is relevant (and not what we think is relevant).

Lastly, working on keywords always requires looking at the Google SERP (search engine results page) for the keyword. When you use the keyword tool, you are forever toggling between it and a Google search page. The Wonder Wheel provides suggested relevant searches PLUS shows the actual SERP when you click on one of them.

At Small Business Internet Marketing, we like saving time and think that the Google Wonder Wheel does this well for your online marketing endeavours. Plus, it is great fun to play with!

Your business buddies
Marshall and Gary

Hi Marshall and Gary here,

We like to post on many and varied online marketing topics here at Small Business Internet Marketing. We are also fairly inquisitive – so when the experts say “ipso facto, this is the truth”, we wonder “is it really so?”

We have posted a lot of late about the Google algorithm and backlinks, or so called off-page SEO. We also recently posted a list of 7 critical on-page SEO factors for small business. There is no doubting the importance of PageRank and backlinks and most SEO experts hammer on and on about it, but sometimes the simple things are often the best.

The Small Business Internet Marketing blog has been running since the start of this year. We have been diligent, if not a bit anal, about on-page SEO. This is due to the fact that quality backlinks and a good PageRank take time and effort. It is not that we are not trying, it is just that it takes lots of time. If its one thing we know its that small business owners do not have a lot of spare time to chase elusive links. It is a bit like the chicken and the egg – good sites do not want to share links with a newbie or low ranking site with no presence, but a good presence requires backlinks. See the problem?

Like most new sites, we sat and waited for Google to index us. And then we waited to see where we would rank. After being indexed we came in at around the 80 mark for our main keyword – not bad we thought. After a month or two, and lots and lots of on-page work, we found ourselves on the front page of Google. We then for some reason suffered a Google slap and were banished back to the 80′s for a while. We applied everything we knew to get the ranking back up – but it refused to budge.

Then out of the blue (and ironically on Marshall’s birthday), we landed at number 2. We have remained at 2 or 3 since – based on a Google.com.au search for our main keywords or phrase small business internet marketing.

We use a great piece of software called Market Samurai which allows you to check the strength of the top 10 competition for your chosen keyword. This is a screenshot of the top 10 for small business internet marketing:

Small Business Internet Marketing top 10 search results

You can see the small business internet marketing blog sitting at number 3. But look how strong the sites around us are in terms of off-page SEO. Without going through all the headings, a quick summary is:

DA – domain age – see how there are all 3 years or older, very strong
PR – PageRank – 3 and up, again very strong when we are at nil at the moment
BLP/BLD – number of backlinks – boy do we have some work to do here
Title/URL/Desc/Head – do these use the targeted keyword

So we’ve managed to attain and then hold onto a high ranking based almost exclusively from on-page SEO. It makes you wonder.

The moral to the story – control the controllables! On-page SEO, particularly judicious use of keywords is totally within your control – so use it as effectively as you can. It does pay dividends. But do not ignore off-page SEO, it will help raise and consolidate your position but it takes time.

Yours business buddies
Marshall and Gary

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We have posted previously on Google and its algorithm at Small Business Internet Marketing. Google makes the following statement about its search engine:

Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank^TM algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we’re able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

So we need to spend some time to understand what the PageRank algorithm is. Fortunately, as Google notes, it is patented and we know what is in the patented algorithm. As an interesting aside, the “Page” refers to Google co-founder Larry Page and not a web page.

Google provides a very good description of PageRank, as you would expect as it is one of their key sales points:

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value.

For the mathematically minded, the original algorithm is:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

PR = PageRank
(A) = for a webpage called A
d = a damping factor (usually set at 0.85)
t1-tn = the PageRank for every webpage that links to page A
C = the number of outbound links each page t1, t2, t3 …..tn that links to page A

For the mathematically challenged amongst us (which includes us), this can be boiled down to:

A page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 x (the percentage entitlement of every page that links to page A);  where the percentage entitlement is determined by the number of outbound links on every page.

So every page starts with a PageRank of at least 0.15 (woohoo) but then collects votes from sites that refer internet users to it. Unfortunately PageRank goes from 0 to 10, so 0.15 is a pretty slow start.

The damping factor at 0.85 is to account for the fact that eventually a searcher will stop clicking on links. PageRank is actually a user behaviour model and measures the chance a “random surfer” who only clicks forward will get to a webpage.

Hopefully, once you have had a chance to process this, it will be clear that getting links from webpages with a higher PageRank than your site assists in increasing the PageRank of your site. And as Google states above “pages that …. receive a higher PageRank … are more likely to appear at the top of the search results”.

A couple of interesting points to note here:

• Google does make changes to its algorithm over time;
• The patented algorithm does not explain everything (e.g. is the scaling of PageRank from 0 to 10 a straight-line or logarithmic scale);
• The more outbound links a site has, the “less” PageRank it has to give to your site;
• Links from high PageRank sites, all things being equal, will benefit your site more than lower ranked sites

So you can see why people rave on about offpage SEO. We know Google uses PageRank, we know the algorithm that drives it, and it is about links from other sites.

But, and it is a big but, Google makes it quite clear that a raft of other variables go into determining the ranking on a search engine result page. So, yes inbound links are very important, but not to the total detriment of other SEO. So to get your small business website ranking well for internet marketing, you have to use a range of techniques that we discuss in our past and future posts.

For those of you so minded, you can read a technical paper presented by the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the early days at http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html.

Your business buddies
Marshall and Gary

Hi, Marshall and Gary here,

At Small Business Internet Marketing, when working with clients in developing their internet marketing strategies, we are required to explore both “On-page and “Off-page” search engine optimisation factors. The search engines look at these two areas when calculating how to rank your site’s individual web pages.

On-page search engine optimisation factors can best be described as the content contained on your pages that is relevant to a particular search query. The great thing about on-page SEO is that you have total control over it…. you can simply edit your page content to improve it.

Off-page SEO is not as easy to manipulate. Your web page rankings are not only determined by the page content but also by its popularity. Your page popularity is calculated by the number of other sites linking to your pages, the linking text used and also the importance and rank of those linking pages. Links from pages with a high page rank or authority sites such as .edu and .gov sites can weigh in heavily.

Today we are going to take a closer look at “On-page” search engine optimisation factors; you are unlikely to get back links and score well with off-page factors if your on-page content is not up to the mark in the first place. We’ve included our top 7 on-page SEO factors for small business.

#1 – Your page title tags must contain the keywords or phrases that you are trying to rank for. The title of your page doesn’t appear on the page as such, but rather at the very top left of the browser window and also in the highlighted blue link text in the search engine results. To create a title for your page you need to insert your title between the following tags <title>Your Page Title</title>. When applying this rule to small business, you should always try and make your page titles product or service specific.

#2 – Use “h” tags for the keywords or phrases that you are trying to rank for. Think of a “h” tag as a content or section heading or even a headline within your body copy. To create a “h” tag for text on your page you need to insert your headline between the following tags <h1>Your Headline</h1>. The numbers in the “h” tag simple refer to the size of the text used. Search engines read “h” tags first to understand what your page is all about. Your page will be viewed as more relevant if the search engines can see your keywords and phrases in your “h” tags. Small business owners should use these “h” tags for highlighting their different product or service categories and then individual products.

#3 – Include your keywords or phrase in the meta description tag – When displaying results, the search engines tend to highlight the searched keywords or phrases to identify relevance to that particular search. The meta description tag on each of web page ends up being the 2nd and 3rd line of your search engine listing. Any relevant keywords in this tag will also get highlighted. The meta tag description, should be a more descriptive sentence which uses the main keyword or phrase and offers more detail to encourage a click through. When creating meta descriptions for small business applications you should try and focus on a unique feature of a product or service and it’s resulting benefit. The meta tag description is expressed like this in your web page: <meta name=”description” content=”Keyword rich description here”>

#4 – Your first and last paragraph should include your keyword or phrase. Search engines tend to pay more attention to the first and last quarter of each page than the rest of the body copy. This is not to say that you don’t include your keyword within the middle half, but rather pay close attention to the opening and closing paragraph and ensure your keywords are included. Remember to always write your content with the reader in mind first and the search engines second. As a general rule, when writing copy for your small business, you should look at the opening paragraph as an introduction and broad overview of the product, followed by the features of the product, followed by the benefits received and the differentiation of your offering followed by a summary.

#5 – Aim for a keyword density of between 3-5%. Keyword density simply refers to the number of times your keyword or phrase appears for every hundred words. The last thing you want to do is “keyword stuff” or be seen as spammy. You need to ensure your keyword or phrase appears regularly enough to ensure the search engines see your page as relevant to a particular search query but not high enough to get penalised and your ranking lowered. Use this free tool to check your keyword density. http://www.keyworddensity.com/

#6 – Internal page links should contain your keyword or phrase. Search engines use the words in your link text or “anchor text” to analyse the relevancy of the page you’re linking to. A common mistake made by small business is to link back to your home page by using “Home” as the link text. This is a wasted SEO opportunity; you should be using “Your Keyword/Phrase Home” instead. For example, if you’re a run beauty therapist small business, you could use “Beauty Therapist Home”. A word of advice; unless you want to rank well for it, don’t even think of linking to an internal page using “click here” – use the page title or relevant keywords.

#7: Content is King – keep it original. A search engines main priority is to return relevant search results and deliver a satisfying user experience so they won’t want to return results for multiple sites containing the same content. Duplicate content penalties for sites that seem to be displaying content identical or very similar other site content is becoming more common. Try to avoid blatant duplication of other site content. If you have to use other site content, try and rewrite or “repurpose” it as we like to call it.

Next on Small Business Internet Marketing we’ll take a closer look at the “Off-page SEO factors. So you don’t miss out on this mini series, keep up to date with our RSS feed.

Make sure you check out our feature video that we tracked down for you.  I hope you enjoy it.

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary

Hi, Marshall and Gary here.

Much has been written about the algorithm that Google use – much of it unintelligible to the everyday internet user. A comment from “softplus” on a post in the excellent SEO site SEOmoz.org is:

How about reciprocal factors? For example: if the competition is high (threshold or range): use the age-factors; otherwise ignore age. With a sigmoid-type function it’s easy to do (given range or threshold) and it is the perfect model for the famed sandbox.

Here at Small Business Internet Marketing we do not pretend to fully understand this but we are inquisitive and ask “Why does the algorithm matter?”

Well let’s go right back to square one- to the Google corporate website.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

One of the Google founders, Larry Page, said:

The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.

So if someone is talking about a search engines complex algorithm issues, take a deep breath and just remember what it is all about – returning the most relevant results for a search query. And remember the opposite of relevant is irrelevant – so Google will try to ignore (or punish) anything it believes is irrelevant (or deliberately misleading).

As Google is trying to determine how relevant a result for a query, it makes sense to try to help it as much as possible to find your result as relevant as possible to the search query. For all the fancy words, this is what most positive SEO is aimed towards – particularly SEO done on the page.

If you distill down all the millions of words written about the Google algorithm, the positive on-page SEO can be fairly simply summed up with the concepts of alignment and consistency.

Alignment refers to making sure all the parts of your site line up with your targeted market – your keyword research should be supported by your URL, your title, your description, your on-page text, bolding keywords for emphasis, using anchor text in links - all so they can be read by a webcrawler:

Consistency means staying true to the market research. Don’t start to stray to topics, texts, videos, images etc that are not consistent with what you are wanting the site to be. A light-hearted post on your cat’s latest adventure may make amusing reason but will not assist in your site Google ranking if you are selling widgets.

When you come to what is known as off-page SEO (so called because it is not on your site), the king of the castle is the number, authority and relevance of links from other sites to your site. Google use a concept called PageRank which we will discuss in our next post on SEO.

Your business buddies
Marshall and Gary

Hi, Marshall and Gary here.

We have said at Small Business Internet Marketing quite often that 88% of searches in Australia are done on the Google search engine (it runs at about 72% in USA) – so in effect SEO means getting visible in Google.

So it stands to reason that what everyone who dabbles in the black art of SEO wants to know, is how Google determines who ranks where. Every small business would love to know so they could dress appropriately to ensure that Google whistles at them in the crowded bar of websites and blogs.

Now, Google does not release this information freely or openly. If you think about it, it really is one of the key bits of intellectual property that they own. If they told the world how they searched and ranked, everyone would be trying to do the same and Google would lose its predominant search engine position.

They have released some bits and pieces over the years. In March 2005, Google was granted a patent broadly around the way it does its searching and returns results. This has been updated occasionally. Obviously they never give enough information for someone else to do it. Various estimates exist as to how many factors are looked at in Google’s algorithm – certainly more than 100, if not over 200.

However there are a bunch of gurus out there who follow it very closely (type “Google algorithm” into a Google search and see what you get) but if you work your way around all the buzzwords, two simple things stick out:

1. Selection, consistency and judicious use of keywords and phrases really helps: and

2. The links from other sites to your site really matter – provided that the sites linking to yours are reputable, somewhat authorative, indexed by Google and your site is not full of paid or dodgy links – really can turbocharge your rankings.

So it is of vital importance that blogs and websites are made as attractive as possible to Google using these two areas as your main focus.

Next post on SEO – more about Google search algorithms.

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Marshall and Gary