Wordpress | Web-building

Did your rankings drop around the end of April?

 

The recent Google Penguin update is focused on web sites that are over-optimized and have been getting better rankings than they really deserve as a result. Some of what Google is looking for relates to unnatural link structure. But a lot of what they are penalizing sites for is copy that’s been over-optimized. If you saw a significant drop in your Google rankings around the end of April of this year, that may be a signal that your website has come to the attention of the Penguin algorithm change. Asking yourself three important questions can reveal whether or not you stepped over the line and need to make some changes to your copy.

 

Three Over-Optimization Questions:

1. How does your website sound when you read it out loud?

If it sounds awkward or if it feels like you are tripping over one or another of your keyword phrases too often, then you may have crossed the line. Look for places in your copy where the keyword phrase isn’t needed, and drop it.

 

2.  Did you try to achieve a certain keyword density?
Keyword density is a persistent myth, with many believers struggling to achieve a certain percentage of the words on the page being keyword phrases. This is a major item that Google’s latest update is focusing on. If you’ve been trying to achieve a certain density of keywords, you may have stepped over the line. Remove or paraphrase some of your keyword phrases in copy and read it out loud to yourself again.

 

3. Does your copy suffer from logorrhea?
If you wrote a lot more words that needed just so that you could work more keyword phrases into your copy, chances are that’s hurting you. When we pad our copy in order to work in keyword phrases, we typically don’t actually add more valuable information to the page. We restate things and we paraphrase thoughts, sentences, and even whole paragraphs — and all that allows us to work our keyword phrases onto the page more times. That’s a mistake. If you have more words than you need to make your point it hurts you two ways. First it may trigger the over-optimization flag at Google, and second it may be driving visitors away from your page. If there’s too much text on your page visitors find it intimidating and either don’t read all of it or leave the page without reading any of it. The trick is to write as much as necessary about the topic and no more. Blaise Pascal once wrote “I would have written a shorter letter but didn’t have time.” On your website, take the time.

 

Via Tocquigny

Robin Good: Neil Patel at SEOMoz says it right:

 

"...nearly half of what determines the rank of your site is based upon the types of links driving to your site."

 

And it is true, that even now, knowing the tactics and skills required to build incoming quality links to a web site, can still be tangibly beneficial to the visibility of that site inside the SERPs.

 

In this 10-point guide to link-building, Neil Patel provides a good basic roundup of popular approaches to link building while providing inspiration and examples on how to do it.

 

Here an excerpt of the ten key points he discusses:

 

Rule 1: Write content that attracts Editorial In-content Links
 

Rule 2: Fix other people’s broken links

 

Rule 3: Create a desirable image library

 

Rule 4: Offer to write a column or do a guest post

 

Rule 5: Go to where your target audience hangs out

 

Rule 6: Fill gaps in content

 

Rule 7: Contact big media at the right time

 

Rule 8: Approach government or education sites

 

Rule 9. Buy links without penalty

Rule 10: Know the difference between a good and a bad site"

 

For each one of the Rules, Neil provides a good explanation of what he means, and some real cases or examples of how you can do this too. He also provides links to some useful resources, tools and examples.

 

Useful. 7/10

 

Full guide: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-10-golden-rules-to-attracting-authority-links ;

Via Robin Good