Google SEO Report Card

Google ran search engine optimization audit on its own websites/products and compiled a report – Google’s SEO Report Card. From the SEO Report Card, Google’s search engine optimization audit can be categorized in three major SEO subjects:
>>Search Result Presentation: Title tag formats and lengths, description meta tag use, Google sitelink triggering and effectiveness, and main page result clearness on Google
>>URLs and Redirects: Directory forms, subdomain forms, 301s, canonicalization
>>On-page Optimizations: Heading tag use, H1 tag use, logo image link destination, logo image alt text, and descriptive internal anchor text
The 100 Google’s websites/products that have gone through the rating process in the SEO Report Card, include:
Advertising and publishing systems: Google Adwords and Google Adsense
Users’ search trend tools: Google Insights for Search, Google Trends
Blogging / feed management tools: Blogger and Feedburner
Personal profile: Profiles
Site search features: Google Site Search and Google Custom Search Engines
Product Tools: Google Store and Google Products
Other tools / services: Picasa Web Albums, Google Finance, Map Maker, Fast Flip, Knol and more

Google Instant - a fundamental shift in search

Google is already one of the fastest search engines on the planet — but apparently that isn’t fast enough.
Marissa Mayer, Google’s top search executive, announced a “fundamental shift” in how search operates with the launch of Google Instant at a press event in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Google Instant still looks like the search engine’s home page people are accustomed to, but the results begin streaming in real time as a user starts typing out a search. When a user types in “SFM,” a search result for SFMOMA — the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the event is being held — appears before the full search query is even typed.
A Google engineer later showed search results for local weather appearing after typing just the letter “W”.
Clicking on the search button or hitting “Enter” makes Google Search behave the way it always has — it brings up search results for your specific request.
Mayer said Google has spent a lot of time optimizing search on Google’s servers, bringing response time down to about 300 milliseconds, and on the network, though the latter depends on individual Internet connections.
But that’s just one second typically. Humans take 9 seconds to enter a search query and 15 seconds to select a result — that’s 24 out of the 25 seconds spent o the average search. So, Google has been focusing on how to optimize the “physical” aspects of search — the typing and the thinking that a user does when searching. She said she expects users to save anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds per search.
“We want to make search fast, fun and interactive,” Mayer said.
Google Instant will be rolling out starting today for Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 8. The service will roll out internationally throughout the week.
Google Instant will roll out on mobile devices later this year.

Google Ranking Factor Checklist

There are "over 200 SEO factors" that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). Few of them are listed below :-

1. Alleged POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (38)
(Keeping in mind the converse, of course, that when violated, some of these factors
immediately jump into the NEGATIVE On-Page Ranking Factors domain.)

The term "Keyword" below refers to the "Keyword Phrase", which can be one word or more.
ON-Page SEO Factors Brief Note
---------------------------
For keyword selection, try Google Ad Words - Google Trends

1 Keyword in URL
First word is best, second is second best, etc.

2 Keyword in Domain name
Same as in page-name-with-hyphens

** Keywords - Header **

3 Keyword in Title tag
Keyword in Title tag - close to beginning
Title tag is of 10 - 60 characters, no special characters.

4 Keyword in Description meta tag
Shows theme - less than 200 chars.
Google no longer "relies" upon this tag, but will often use it.

5 Keyword in Keyword metatag
Shows theme - less than 10 words.
Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance.
No single word should appear more than twice.
If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.

-
Keywords - Body

-
6 Keyword density in body text
5-20% - (all keywords/ total words)
Some report topic sensitivity - the keyword spamming threshold % varies with the topic.

7 Individual keyword density
1-6% - (each keyword/ total words)

8 Keyword in H1, H2 and H3
Use Hx font style tags appropriately

9 Keyword font size
"Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis" . . . By Matt Cutts

10 Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords)
Directly adjacent is best

11 Keyword phrase order
Does word order in the page match word order in the query?
Try to anticipate query, and match word order.

12 Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag)
Can be important at top of page, in bold, in large font

Keywords - Other

13 Keyword in alt text
Should describe graphic - Do NOT fill with spam
(Was part of Google Florida OOP - tripped a threshold - may still be in effect to some degree as a red flag, when summed with all other on-page optimization - total page optimization score - TPOS).

14 Keyword in links to site pages(anchor text)
Links out anchor text use keyword?

NAVIGATION - INTERNAL LINKS

15 To internal pages- keywords?
Link should contain keywords.
The filename "linked to" should contain the keywords.
Use hyphenated filenames, but not long ones - two or three hyphens only.

16 All Internal links valid?
Validate all links to all pages on site.
Use a free link checker. I like this one. http: //www . dead-links . com/

17 Efficient - tree-like structure
TRY FOR two clicks to any page - no page deeper than 4 clicks

18 Intra-site linking
Appropriate links between lower-level pages

19 To external pages- keywords?
Google patent - Link only to good sites. Do not link to link farms. CAREFUL - Links can and do go bad, resulting in site demotion. Unfortunately, you must devote the time necessary to police your outgoing links - they are your responsibility.

20 Outgoing link Anchor Text
Google patent - Should be on topic, descriptive

21 Link stability over time
Google patent - Avoid "Link Churn"

22 All External links valid?
Validate all links periodically.

23 Less than 100 links out total
Google says limit to 100,
but readily accepts 2-3 times that number. Linking to Authority
Some say this gives a boost -
Others say that is absurd. However, it certainly is the opposite of linking to trash, which WILL hurt you.

OTHER ON-Page Factors

24 Domain Name Extension
Top Level Domain - TLD
.gov sites seem to be the highest status
.edu sites seem to be given a high status
.org sites seem to be given a high status
.com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.
Perhaps one would do well with the new .info domain class. - Nope. Spammers jumped all over it - no safe haven there. Not so much, now - .info sites can rank highly.

25 File Size
Try not to exceed 100K page size (however, some subject matter, such as this page, requires larger file sizes).
Smaller files are preferred <40K (lots of them).

26 Hyphens in URL
Preferred method for indicating a space, where there can be no actual space
One or two= excellent for separating keywords (i.e., pet-smart, pets-mart)
Four or more= BAD, starts to look spammy
Ten = Spammer for sure, demotion probable?

27 Freshness of Pages
Google patent - Changes over time
Newer the better - if news, retail or auction!
Google likes fresh pages. So do I.

28 Freshness - Amount of Content Change
New pages - Ratio of old pages to new pages

29 Freshness of Links
Google patent - May be good or bad
Excellent for high-trust sites
May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites

30 Frequency of Updates
Frequent updates = frequent spidering = newer cache

31 Page Theming
Page exhibit theme? General consistency?

32 Keyword stemming
Stem, stems, stemmed, stemmer,
stemming, stemmist, stemification

33 Applied Semantics
Synonyms, CIRCA white paper

34 LSI
Latent Semantic Indexing - Speculation, no proof

35 URL length
Keep it minimized - use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE - less than 100 is good, less is even better

OTHER ON-SITE Factors

36 Site Size - Google likes big sites
Larger sites are presumed to be better funded, better organized, better constructed, and therefore better sites. Google likes LARGE sites, for various reasons, not all positive. This has resulted in the advent of machine-generated 10,000-page spam sites - size for the sake of size. Google has caught on and dumped millions of pages, or made them supplemental.

37 Site Age
Google patent - Old is best. Old is Golden.

38 Age of page vs. age of site
Age of page vs. age of other pages on site
Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition.

Face Move With Cursor

Latent Semantic Indexing for SEO

Latent Semantic Indexing aka LSI is a form of indexing that the search engines use.It is a technique of analyzing, listing or categorizing certain keywords or phrases in the contents of various websites in such a way that they have contextually and conceptually the same or related intent and meaning despite the different words used in them.

The explanation above may sound a little long winded, in short it means using different variations of your keywords. So for SEO you would use search engine optimisation – Search engines – Onsite – offsite – ranking factors and so on.

As you can see the keywords above are all related to SEO. In the past if you wanted to rank for the keyword SEO then you would use that very keyword a number of times on your website. The search engines have now evolved and this no longer works.

So using synonyms of your keywords is the way ahead and the way in which the major search engines such as Google advise us to layout our text.

In the same way a LSI structure of contents is required then so is a LSI structure of anchor text. SO instead of creating a number of backlinks pointing to your website with the keyword SEO for example, you would rather use variations of your keywords as in the example above.

Optimising your text and webpages in this LSI form and also using the LSI structure for your anchor text will ensure that you do not get pulled up from spam and it will also help you to rank for many more keywords.

To drive certain keywords up in the rankings then I would advise to build more backlinks with that keyword as the anchor text however, do not forget to vary your anchor text along the way. I would also suggest using your domain url as a backlink alone as if your website was to get pulled up for human review then it will not be striking that all of your backlinks are anchor text backlinks which can be a sign of spam.

Frequently Asked Questions

 What keywords or phrases should i choose for my website ranking?

Pick up the best-performing keywords, just do not think about high volume keywords, think about the keyword which are going to give you more business e.g. if your selling Luxury Holidays to different destination of the worlds choose Luxury Holidays Destination Name whcih have low volume of traffic with high conversion rate. And if you try to target keywords like “holiday to destination name (Mauritius)”, you will have high volume but low conversion rate and hard to achieve high ranking as well

 Do i have to check my ranking in search engines and how this can benefit me?

Always check your rankings in Search Engines because thats is the only place where you can see which SEO effort are working and then you can modified accordingly. If you know one of your website page is on second position in a Search Engine then you know your almost there you just have to see where you can improve this page to jump to number page number one in that particular search engine

 Do i have to find out which website are ranking my websites?

yes,find out the website which are linking to you and why they are linking to you and which pages they are linking ( link: www.domain.com; link: domain.com) second one will give you more precise results

 Can i Automate my linking process?

Well there are two thoughts on it, but every body is agree more link (quality) you have better they are for your website.

How SEO Link Love Value Differs?

As we all know links from sites are votes to search engines eyes but many do think all link love has same value. I saw few discussions on this and thought of having a note to make a clear thought on link love value discussions.

Link love differs from page block place to place. A link placement in content is different from links in blogroll, footer links area or link listings - say directories.

Content link love has the benefit of having related text around and it looks natural to search engines eyes. There are many article sites and blog authors who write content referring quality content pages that contain examples or O.P section. These reffered links has much value than the links submitted to directories or having links in the blogroll. So write fresh content and start getting natural links from authors and bloggers and move your page popularity much ahead.

Top 18 Online Marketing Questions To Ask Yourself

(1) Do you know what type of links your SEO client sites require?

(2) Is your site Search Engine friendly? Did you do a test?

(3) You have Google Analytics and you find hard to understand?

(4) Google Webmaster tools are interesting. Do you find that easy enough?

(5) How many quality links you require to bring your site to top position?

(6) Are you seeing the actual Google page rank of your site in your tool bar?

(7) Do you have unique tags for all your pages?

(8) Is Alt attribute important for site promotion or it is only for browsers?

(9) What happens to your rank if you don't link domain to your logo?

(10) Do link juice get split if you have xyz.com and xyz.com/index.html?

(11) Do Google still like links from paid directories?

(12) Have your site SEO audit score reach 10/10?

(13) Are you sure about your site current keywords?

(14) Are your keywords getting enough related traffic?

(15) Do you get business from your site-optimized keywords?

(16) You get traffic but not business. Why?

(17) Will re-optimizing the existing keywords drops your current ranking?

(18) Do you site redesign drop your existing keyword position and rank?

* You can find answers by doing a Google search

Top 10 PPC Search Engines

Our list of what we consider to be the Top 10 Pay Per Click Search Engines based on volume and quality.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords provides just about everything you could want in pay per click search advertising. It's quick and easy to set up an account and you can have your ads up and running in about 5 minutes from sign-up.
Yahoo Search marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing maintains a highly professional, well maintained site. It pioneered the pay-per-click search engine model in 1997,after seeing a need for a more focused search engine. After operating as GoTo.com the name was changed to Overture and in 2005 it was rebranded as Yahoo!Search Marketing.
MIVA
MIVA is a network of partner sites powering over 2 billion queries per month. When you open an account with MIVA your ad can appear across the MIVA network, which includes sites such as CNet.com, InfoSpace and WorldNews.MIVA's proprietary bid-for-position technology allows you to set the amount you wish to pay for each keyword.
7Search
7Search focuses on serving website owners of "low profit margin" categories of business that can not afford to pay over ten cents per visitor.7Search currently provides advertiser results for over 1.5 billion searches a month.
ABCSearch
ABCSearch has been around since 2001. According to ABCSearch it is the world's largest privately held meta search engine handling over 3 billion searches a month across its network of specialized engines and smaller search engines offering online advertisers an affordable way to diversify their PPC traffic efforts.
Microsoft adCenter
Microsoft adCenter is the new player in the big league when it comes to pay per click search marketing, but it's already making an impact.It offers a great range of features including the ability to target your ads to Live Search users who match your optimum target-market criteria.
Findology
Findology Interactive Media, Inc. was founded in May 2000 and is currently serving over 3 billion searches per month.Findology is currently offering PayPerClickSearchEngine.com visitors a $50 bonus in free clicks when they sign up using this link:
Marchex
Marchex's stated mission is to provide consumers with the most comprehensive and compelling local experiences on the Internet; to provide local businesses with the best products for acquiring customers; and through a shared commitment to each other and to its customers, to deliver consistent product innovation and shareholder value creation.
Searchfeed
Searchfeed.com provides online advertisers with a cost-effective, easily tracked method of generating sales leads.

An Efficient Structure for WordPress Permalinks

WordPress offers you plenty of options for choosing a permalink structure for your blog. For instance, you can chose to have dates, post IDs, categories or even the name of the author in the pemalinks (short for permanent link).
The URL structure that you see on this blog uses the following custom format:
/%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/

So if I am writing an article on WordPress Tips under the Blogging category, the URL of that post will look something like this:
http://abc.org/Blogging/WordPress-Tips/1234/
Here are some reasons why I chose such a permalink format:
#1. The URL structure is SEO-friendly and also looks clean in snippets that are displayed in search engine results pages.

#2. The structure doesn’t contain dates. I generally try to write “timeless” blog posts that should stay relevant for a longer period of time and hence skipped the date completely from the URL – the date is anyway displayed in blog articles and sometimes even in search snippets as in the above screenshot.

#3. Google News includes quite a few multi-author blogs in their index and one of their technical requirements says that all article URLs must contain a unique number. If in future, this blog grows and gets included into Google News, I won’t have to alter the permalink structure because there’s a unique number already in the URL – it’s called Post ID.

#4. Words in the URL are separated by hyphens and not underscores as suggested by Matt Cutts in one of the WordPress camps.
The Problem with this URL Structure
Now before you use a similar permalinks structure for your own blog, let me share a problem – this structure can make you site a little slow. That’s because WordPress will have to run some extra queries each time to figure out whether the URL matches a WordPress page or an individual post.
For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties).
They have raised a ticket for the above issue but it won’t be fixed until WordPress 3.0 so you are better off not using the structure that I am using.
What’s the Best Permalink Structure
If you are looking for performance, the best permalink structure would just have the /%post_id% in the URL. That’s however not very SEO-friendly so you may consider going for a structure like the one below (there’s no trailing slash)./%post_id%/%postname%
I know you can change the permalink structure anytime (Tools -> Permalinks) and WordPress will do a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new ones but that might push your site out of Google’s index for some time so there’s a bit of risk involved.