Graphic Design and Website Design

Better targeted ads are great, but I think the price is too high. Let’s remember the bottom line, we are allowing Google to gather our personal information so they can serve better ads. The bottom line is revenue, the all mighty buck, mooola; not world peace -your personal info is not being used for some altruistic endeavor, but for serving ads.

On June 17, 2008 The New York Times reported,

…Nick Fox, a director of product management who looks after ads on Google’s search site, said the company was now testing the use of more search queries in its ad targeting. He did not describe how it was doing that. But Internet experts said that it was most likely using its cookies.

Let’s all step back for a moment and keep in mind exactly why we are allowing Google ( and other online companies) access to our personal information. Personally, I will sacrifice my user experience for a little privacy!

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So what is Page Rank? This is a scale Google uses to measure the relative importance of your site. Google’s scale is a 1-10, with 10 being the best; but a rank of 3-5 is considered good. Page Rank will not get you traffic, but it is a tool to help evaluate a site’s potential to be ranked for your keywords phrases. Generally, page rank is established by:

1. Backlink campaign or Reciprocal link campaign .
2. Internal link structure.
3. Site structure.

So if a website is getting a decent page rank than the search engine optimization and search engine marketing campaign are working in unison. As a result website traffic will benefit from a continued effort. However, if a backlink campaign has been in place for 12 months and there is no PR it might be a signal that something is wrong. This might translate into lower website traffic.

Importantly, a site can be doing everything correctly (backlink, internal structure and site structure) and still not have a good PR. In this case, finding out why the PR is low might uncover valuable information that could lead to an improvement in some other area of the website. In the end this has the potential to improve the website’s traffic.

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Title tags are one of the most important elements effecting what keywords your page will get ranked for. When you are optimizing for a title tag keep these points in mind:

1. Each title tag should be original and unique.
2. Use keywords and keyword phrases that people will be searching for.
3. Don’t use a lot of extemporaneous words like and or the.
4. If your title tag is for a product, put the product name in the tag.

For people looking into content management systems (CMS), make sure the developer, or existing CMS, gives you the ability to change the title tag. If the CMS does not let you change the title tag and search engine optimization (SEO) is important to you, find a CMS that does give you the option.

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There are a number of ways to promote your website online. From writing articles to having a website add a link back to your site. Outside of paid links and link farms, the more links back to your site the better. But, MAKE SURE TO VERY YOUR ANCHORED TEXT!

If you don’t vary your text links in the long run you could be doing more harm than good. When submitting multiple links over time make sure to vary your anchored text links. This will not only improve your ranking across multiple keywords, but it will also keep your site from looking “spammy” to Google. Or what I call “blitzing” a keyword.

Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Spam Division) said about anchored text,

“…a sudden surge of external backlinks (often with the same anchor text) has the signature of unnatural linking … “

The does not mean you can not reuse a keyword phrase. Personally, I enforce certain keyword phrase, but I make sure they are not forced and relevant to the topic. If you keep them natural I don’t think you would have any problem. So if you have hundreds of links just don’t [Read more →]

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