Google’s recent change to its search algorithm has dramatically shaken up the businesses of websites that moved up or down its search rankings. Sites whose rankings rose to the top found that their traffic and revenue soared — but the adjustment had an equally devastating effect on those that were dropped.

The Online Publishers Association, a group of content producers comprising many of the Internet’s largest properties (including CNN.com), estimates that the algorithm change shifted $1 billion in annual revenue.

512Email Print Some of the losers felt the hit immediately. Mahalo.com laid off 10% of its workforce last week thanks to what CEO Jason Calacanis called “a significant dip in our traffic and revenue.”

The stakes are high in the Google-placement game. The top spot on a search page typically attracts 20% to 30% of the page’s clicks, according to Adam Bunn, SEO director of Greenlight. After that comes an enormous tail-off: Positions 2 to 3 generate 5% to 10% of the clicks, and links below the fold receive less than 1% of users’ attention. Fall off to the second page and your search-engine-driven clicks will be negligible.

With control of two-thirds of the U.S. search market, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) steers a tremendous amount of traffic to websites. Many of them rely exclusively on advertising dollars to make money.

That means that positioning in Google’s search results can be a life-or-death issue for a business.

Google’s change appears to have most harmed so-called “content farms” like Mahalo, which critics say amass content for the sole purpose of luring in search-engine traffic. Sites like Mahalo.com, Wisegeek.com, Ezinearticles.com and Yahoo’s (YHOO, Fortune 500) Associated Content were among the biggest losers in the algorithm tweak. Google-generated traffic to each dropped more than 75%, according to software firm Sistrix.

Interestingly, Demand Media (DMD) — one of the most oft-criticized content farms –appears to have gotten off relatively scot-free. Its most prominent site, eHow.com, even grew its traffic after the algorithm change, though some others like AnswerBag.com and Trails.com dropped off.

The biggest beneficiaries seem to be originators of what Google calls “high-quality” content, which the company defines as “information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Traffic to sites that belong to the Online Publishers Association grew between 5% and 50% the day after Google’s tweak, according to Pam Horan, president of the OPA.

“This change was connected with who is driving the best experiences for the end user,” Horan said. “This is good for the consumer, good for the Internet, and good for publishers of higher-quality content.”

Impact on ‘mom and pop’ sites
Not everyone feels that Google got the change right.

Max Spankie, who operates customer review website My3cents.com, said his site lost a significant portion of its traffic and revenues overnight following Google’s algorithm change.

That came as quite a surprise to Spankie, since My3cents.com was recently recognized as the top consumer complaint site by the non-profit Consumer Federation of America. Unlike some of the sites that now top My3cents.com in Google’s rankings, all complaints on Spankie’s site are moderated. Hundreds of companies use the site to interact with customers.

“I thought they flipped the switch wrong,” Spankie said. “We work hard to be a quality site, and I definitely think the sites that are now winning in our niche aren’t about quality.”

Morris Rosenthal, a publisher of laptop repair how-to books and owner of the site FonerBooks.com, said that he too found Google’s new results curious.

For instance, a search for his book Laptop Repair Workbook now puts the book’s Amazon page as its first result (no problem there) — and a site that allows you to illegally download his book as its second result (big problem).

He also noticed that a search for “laptop inverter test” — a diagnostic test he wrote an instructional article on — now features two sites that link to his article ahead of his own site. His site used to be the top result.

Righting a wrong
For those who feel that Google made a mistake by lowering their sites in its rankings, the company says there’s an option: Webmasters can post in its discussion forum about the topic. Though no manual changes can be made, Google will often tweak its algorithm in response to legitimate challenges.

“Like many of the changes we make, we tested this update extensively and have found that the algorithm is extremely accurate at detecting site quality,” a Google spokesman said. “That said, search is a constant evolution and we will continue to listen to feedback from publishers and the community as we further refine our algorithms.”

Google said it is “very pleased” with the changes.

But that’s cold comfort to those who have seen their traffic and revenue tumble with little explanation why.

“It’s a system of guilty until proven innocent, and I’ve read about a lot of mom-n-pop sites reworking their sites and examining their souls, trying to figure out if they offended Google in some way,” said Rosenthal, who said traffic to his site tumbled 30%. “With Google it’s just, ‘Talk to the hand.’ They have no genuine two-way communication.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Online Publishers Association expected $1 billion in advertising revenue to shift to its members following Google’s algorithm change. The group says its actual estimate is that $1 billion will be redistributed across the online publishing industry.

How to make Google, and your visitors, love your site

If you are at all serious about succeeding online we highly recommend reading this guide. Based on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, these ten fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization really do work. And, they are easily within reach of most website owners with little or no technical skill.

Listen to what Google says about the importance of implementing their guidelines:

“Our Webmaster Guidelines outline some best practices that can help you avoid common pitfalls and improve your site’s ranking. We strongly encourage you to pay close attention to these guidelines.”

Following these 10 steps will not only improve your ranking in Google, they also work well for Yahoo!, Bing and most other search engines. They will also make your site more “friendly” to your visitors, and in the end, much more successful.

It’s easier than you think. Let’s get started!

1. XML Sitemap Submission

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Easy

Submitting an XML Sitemap is the best way of being sure search engines will discover your entire website. XML Sitemaps have replaced the older technique of “submitting to search engines” by filling out a form on each search engine’s submission page. Instead, an XML Sitemap containing detailed information about each page of your site is submitted directly to each of the top search engines.

Properly creating and submitting an XML Sitemap is the best, fastest and only guaranteed method of informing Google and the other top search engies about every page of your site. It’s the “foundation” of good SEO. Google invented the XML Sitemap process and says this about them: “Whether your site is old or new, large or small, we highly recommend submitting an XML Sitemap.”

Your SEO Tools account includes an automatic XML Sitemap creation and submission tool. It also gives you information on when Google and the other search engines read your sitemap, when they visit your site, and how many of your site’s pages Google lists in their search results. (The more the better)

Updating your Sitemap and resubmitting it on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis will increase its effectiveness even more. It’s also important to be sure your allocated Sitemap size is large enough to include all of your pages.

2. Building Links

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty:Ranges from Easy to Difficult

One of the most important elements (of the more than 200) that Google considers when ranking your site is the number and quality of links pointing to it. The general idea is that the more sites indicating that your content is valuable by linking to it, the better. As long as these links come from sites deemed to be of quality or authority (high search rank), the better your own search rank will be.

Never buy links. Period. You can be penalized for buying links, participating in paid “link building” programs, or having links from sites that Google has blocked, such sites involved in link selling or any sort of criminal activity, or sites containing viruses.

A common legitimate link building activity is directory submission. Submission can range from just your name and homepage URL to an extensive business profile. Always make sure any content you post to directories is unique, readable and human friendly. Never submit strings of comma-separated keywords that will be seen as spam content.

It is always best to list your site only in the most important, authoritative and reputable directories. Avoid the “list your site in thousands of directories” offers. Most are a waste of time. Not all directories are equal, and many to the hundreds or even thousands of directories that some online services offer to post your site to are completely useless, or could even be on Google’s black list.

There are many other ways to quickly develop high quality links that work, including professionally syndicated press releases, syndicated verified business listing services, submitting articles to or commenting on blogs and forums, starting your own blog, getting local government (.gov), educational (.edu), or business association links by working with those organizations, submitting product reviews and answers on sites like Yahoo! Answers, writing submissions in related forums and user groups, and last but not least, participating in Social Networking activates such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, the best way to get quality links to your site is to write good content. If it’s original, informative and interesting people will want to link to. If you haven’t got the skill or time necessary to write great content there are professional, SEO savvy content writers available to fit just about any budget. We have developed our Pro Content service as a good low-cost alternative to writing your own. Content can be an investment that really pays off.

3. Eliminating Broken Links and Error pages

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Broken links that produce “Page Not Found” error messages are harmful to your site. They reduce search engine crawling efficiency and accuracy, meaning that some of your content may not be listed (or indexed) in search engine databases. They also “dilute” your site’s overall page rank. Plus, they are also one of the easiest ways to lose potential customers. Broken links and error messages create a highly negative and unprofessional impression to visitors, frequently causing them to leave and not return.

We strongly recommend regularly checking your entire site for error pages. Your SEO Tools account includes a broken links report and tool that helps find both the error page URL and all the links to it within your site. Use the tool to remove all internal links to error pages, and then use the solutions below for any possible external links to them.

Create a Custom 404 Error Page A good 404 error page advises visitors that they’ve hit an invalid URL, and then provides other links to direct help them to their intended destination.

Use 301 Redirects If you move or rename pages, use 301 redirects to automatically transfer them from the old page location to its new permanent home. This redirect is anonymous to your site visitor.

If you can’t implement custom 404 pages or 301 redirects, contact your web developer for assistance.

4. Make Your Site Easy to Navigate

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Add a HTML navigation site sap and site search box to you site to improve “user experience.” This not only helps convert visitors into customers, and helps keep them coming back, it results in higher search rankings. Google rewards sites with good navigation because they want their users to have a good experience when they click on a search result. It’s in Google’s best interest to promote sites with good navigation to their users, and it’s in your own best interest to be one of those sites.

Your SEO Tools account includes a free SEO Badge that lets you easily add an HTML site map, Google Site Search box, a Local Search listing and Google Map listing.

5. Choose the Right Keywords or Key-Phrases to Target

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Easy

Choose two or three highly targeted keywords or key phrases for each page of your site, including your Home Page. (In the next step you will learn how to produce the content of your site based on them)

Choose very carefully because keywords you think might be perfect may not be what people actually search for. For example, never use general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation.” Very large, well-known sites usually rank the highest for general words such as these, and are extremely difficult, if not, impossible, to dislodge in search listings. You will enjoy much better results by targeting less competitive, more specific and narrowly targeted keywords or phrases.

Google’s two free keyword tools below are a great way to discover keywords that may be worth targeting in your content. Simply enter the URL of one of your pages, or a competitor’s page. Google will analyze the contents of that page and give you a list of potential keywords along with traffic and competitive information.

Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool

Google’s Adwords Keyword Research Tool

6. Learn a Little Simple Basic HTML

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Low

HTML is a language used by web browsers to dynamically format web pages. Many important SEO techniques require only very simple edits to your site’s HTML code. Knowing what to change and how to adjust your HTML code has a huge effect on your SEO and search listings. Don’t worry; learning the basics of simple HTML is not difficult. (However, if you are using a web designer or outside web developer to implement these simple changes to your site, keep in mind that they are just that: simple. They should not take too long to complete once you know how to tell them exactly what to do.) W3School’s free tutorials are all you need: (http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp)

7. Create Fresh and Unique Content Using Your Keywords

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Low to Moderate

Publishing keyword-rich original content is absolutely crucial to ranking highly. All you need to do is transform your list of carefully selected keywords into pages of unique web content. Write pages of at least 200 words of unique text, incorporating one, two, or at the most three of your chosen keywords into the copy of each page. Your home page may have less content, but should target your most important two or three keywords.

What does unique text mean? It means that you produce original content. It means you haven’t simply copied verbatim from other websites or blogs. If you don’t have enough of your own ideas about content look at what other have written, then re-write it making it better. You can make it shorter and more concise, or longer and more detailed. Just don’t copy it.

Search engines must find and “read” keyword rich copy on your pages so they can properly classify or “index” your site. The frequency (or density) of keyword usage is also important. For best results repeat each keyword or phrase, or variations of the phrase, 2 to 4 times within your copy (depending on its length). Be sure to put it at least once in a headline using the <H1> or <H2> HTML code. More is not better. A higher keyword density than this can often cause search engines to penalizing your site. Never use “invisible text” or text on your Web pages that is the same color as the background. It will also result in search engine penalties.

Placing keywords on your website:

Your website content should be written first for real people, and second for search engine crawlers. For your website to be successful you need to keep both in mind. Keywords are important for both audiences. They help real people skim your page, and help the search engines figure out what your page is about.

Writing marketing copy for your website doesn’t need to be difficult and it surely doesn’t need to be lengthy. In fact, keep three simple things in mind, along with your keywords, and it’ll practically write itself: Benefits, Benefits, Benefits!

Don’t just tell the customer you have a great widget at a great price. Tell them what that widget will do to make their lives better, easier, safer, more important. If it saves them time, improves results, etc. – tell them that, and briefly tell them how. Show then the Benefits, not the “features.”

Always tell the truth. You can say anything ,but if its intentionally misleading, your profits and your business are going to be short-lived. Make your website copy sizzle, and make it sell, but always make it honest.

Make it personal: all about You and Your. It might not seem like much, but if you can drop ?your? into your copy, it?s sure to draw the customer in, whether they realize it or not.

Before you put up new content on your site, read it and then read it again out loud. If you can, have someone else look it over. There?s nothing worse publishing great copy that?s tarnished by typos.

Nine good places to use your keywords:

1. In your page title. This is what appears at the top of the browser window when someone visits your website. (See step 8 below)

2. In your page description. Visitors don’t see this, but the search engines do. This is the two lines of text that appear below the main title in search engine results. (See step 9 below)

3. In your page URL. Use keywords, not strings of alphanumeric characters, in the URLs of each page of your site. Search engines will index them much better and display them higher in search results. Creating page URLs with keywords helps those pages rank higher. Simply insert the linked-to page’s targeted keyword phrase into the hyperlink whenever possible. Here is a good example from Allrecipes.com: Allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fettuccini-with-Salsa-Cruda-and-Feta/Detail.aspx

4. In the headings and subheadings. Make it easy for your readers to very quickly see what your page is about by using lots of headings and subheadings.

5. In the first sentence and your first paragraph. Make sure your important keywords appear first — the earlier, the better.

6. In the last paragraph. Also use your keywords at the end of your content.

7. Elsewhere in the page copy. When keywords fall naturally throughout your article, consider bolding them. But don’t go overboard with it or it will become a distraction. However, if it makes the article easier to skim, bold your keywords.

8. In your text links. Instead of linking to words like “click here,” use your keywords in your link anchor text.

9. In the ALT tags on images. The search engines can’t understand images. With every image, include a bit of text called the ALT tag and use your keywords in that text. (See step 10 below)

8. Title Tag Optimization

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

This is what the title tag on Dell.com looks like: <META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Dell – Official Website – Learn about Dell’s laptops, desktops, monitors, printers plus computer electronics & accessories. “>

HTML title tags are critical because search engines use them when deciding what a web page is about. Using descriptive words and phrases in your Title tags helps both people and search engines better understand the focus of the page. Include your most important keywords in this tag. Space is limited (use a maximum of 69 total characters) so don’t include your company name unless you really think it needs to be there (as in our example from Dell). Do not use the Title tag to display irrelevant information such as “Home Page.” Think of it more as a “Title Keyword Tag” and include words that users would likely search for to find the product or service or other information on that page.

Lengths of Page Title (taken from your Title Tag) Displayed in Search Engines (including spaces):
Google displays up to 69 characters, Yahoo displays up to 72 characters, Bing displays up to 69 characters

The Title tag is the most important tag to optimize on your webpage because:

• Search engines place a lot of importance on the words used in the title tag when determining your page ranking and keyword indexing.
• They are used as the title for your search engine results listings, giving a critical “first impression” to search engine users.
• They are used as the bookmark heading when someone bookmarks a page in your site.

Good Title Tags Made Simple

Here’s a simple method for writing title tags that will boost your rankings:

• Start the title with the top keyword or phrase for which you are trying to get high rankings. Be sure that the keyword is well used on your webpage so the Title Tag is clearly relevant to the page as a whole.
• Insert a hyphen or double-colon to separate the initial keyword from what comes next to help make the title more readable.
• Then describe the webpage in five words or less while using all or part of your target keyword or phrase again.

9. Description Tag Optimization

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

The Meta Description Tag is the next most important tag, since search engines frequently use it as the description for your page’s listing. The content in your description tags often appears as the “snippets” of text underneath the blue Title tag headline in search results pages. A well written description tag increases the chance that your search listing will be clicked on.

Here is an example: a keyword search for “big mac” produces the following result as the third organic listings:

By visiting the McDonalds.com home page and viewing the page source, you can see that the snippet above simply reuses the first 149 characters of the page’s meta description:

<meta name=”description” content=”McDonald’s in the USA: Food and nutrition info, franchise opportunities, job and career info, restaurant locations, promotional information, history, innovation and more.” />

Here is what you should do to optimize your description tags:

• Create a unique meta description tag for each page that uses its keywords.
• Create “meaty” description tags that accurately describe the page and product to search users and respect the character limits noted below.
• Include words that users would most likely search for to find the product, service or information on that page.

Meta Description Lengths Displayed in Search Engines (including spaces) Google displays up to 156 characters Yahoo displays up to 161 characters Bing displays up to 185 characters

Good Description Tags Made Simple Begin the description tag with the same keyword phrase you used in the title tag, followed by a dash or double colon. Then use it to start a sentence describing your webpage in 10 to 15 words.

Here are a few guidelines to follow when writing description tags:

• The entire tag should be no longer than 22 words (156 characters).
• It should briefly describe the webpage and entice users to click on your listing.
• The keyword should be used no more than two times in total.

Here’s a simple layout for writing description tags that will boost your rankings:

[Your Keyword or Key Phrase] – [A Brief Description of Page]

If you only have a little time to optimize your site for better search engine rankings, at least write good Title and Description tags. They are a fundamental requirement for improved search ranking.

Note: The Keyword meta tag is not given ANY consideration at all by Google or the other major search engines and should not be used.

10. Take Advantage of Other Simple HTML Opportunities

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Don’t overlook other HTML code elements to extract a little more love from the search engines. You can boost your rankings and nudge visitors along your “buy path” by providing more information in your HTML code. Here are some of the ways you can easily boost your search engine rankings:

Use text headings (using heading tags <H1><H2><H3>) Text placed within a heading tag is used to briefly describe the topic of the section of a page it introduces. The use of text “heading” tags is important to the user as visual clues, but they are also used to indicate the importance of the words or phrases to the search engines. It allows search engines to make better sense of the words and phrases on the page in a way that changes in font size doesn’t. Some sites don’t use them because they don’t like the way they look, but heading tags can easily be made to look any way you like by including them in your style sheets.

Use Inter-site “anchor text” links Creating keyword-rich internal text links within your site will also help. Use this tactic in moderation as too many links between your pages can actually harm you. Testing has shown good results by creating links between the first 10 pages that you will find listed in.

Google’s results when you search for site:www.mydomain.com (simple add “site:” to your home page URL, all as one word, and search for that “combined” word in Google)

Use Image Alt Tags Alt tags (Alternative Text Tags) were developed so that if an image is unavailable, you can still see an alternative text description of it.

However, alt tags are also an additional type of content, in which you can display information to visitors and search engines by using the alt and title attributes, like this: <img src=”smilingbaby.gif” alt=”Smiling Baby” title=”Smiling Baby”/>. Note that search engines will index the both the alt and title content, but usually prefer the title content if available.

11. Your Bonus Tip: Develop (or Exercise) Patience

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Moderate

Don’t expect quick results. Using these simple techniques will indeed deliver more traffic from Google and other search engines, but it takes a little time. There’s no getting around that fact. Once you start following the steps above, your site’s ranking will slowly but surely rise. While you should start seeing results within weeks, big improvements usually requires a little more time and effort. However, these efforts ALWAYS pay off

Take the time to keep implementing the Google Guidelines. Google rewards sites meeting their guidelines with higher placement in search results, and more search traffic.

Let’s face it: these days, when someone says they’re going to search something online, they might as well go ahead say they’re going to “Google it.” The stats clearly show that Google has no real competitors in computer based searching, and when it comes to mobile search, the two words are truly synonymous at an astonishing  97% going to Google. As a result, when the search engine giant targets you as an undesirable search result, its’ a big deal. Just ask JC Penney.

A little under a month ago, Google did just that; their target in this case being ‘content farms.’ The term has become the widely accepted one to describe, as Wikipedia puts it:

…a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader page views.

Also on Google’s you-know-what list were what Danny Sullivan coined ‘Scraper’ sites in his excellent article on the subject. These are sites that shamelessly ‘scrape’ high search-traffic content from elsewhere and duplicate it on their own pages.

Helpful, no?
As you might guess, the implementation of the update was met with much elation by sites unaffected and the everyday search engine user. Google proudly announced the update affected nearly 12% of their search queries; a number even more telling when you take into account the fact that the update, to begin with, only impacted the U.S.  They also pointed out that 84% of the most blocked domains identified by their Personal Blocklist extension for the Google Chrome browser were independently addressed by the algorithm update.

So all’s well that ends well, right? We, the searchers get higher quality results. Websites with better content deservedly go up in the rankings, and only content-farms and ‘scraper sites’ go down. Giant companies with content farms in their holdings made a bazillion dollars of ad-revenue, but will now need to find another venture.

If you believe that, there are also a few bridges I would like to offer you for immediate and inexpensive purchase.

The most obvious outcry has come from the content providers who claim to have been unjustly targeted by the update. And while a few of those arguing their case might as well well change their URL to ‘contentfarm#3.com’, a large number seem to be victims of an imperfect algorithm.

Click for full size image
A Wired magazine article highlights the case of Cult of Mac, an Apple oriented blog that no one in their right mind would consider a content farm or other type of low quality or ‘spammy’ content provider. Yet the blog was determined to have fallen 96% in SEO firm Sistrix‘ before and after comparison. It’s worth noting that Sistrix’ proprietary ‘Visibility Index’ uses a farily complex valuing system as opposed to just counting keywords or clicks.

After Google was peppered by questions for the Wired story, Cult of Mac’s status has since been reinstated – but others haven’t been so lucky. The article is followed by a mass of comments that come mostly from webmasters of and contributors to sites claiming the following describe their site:

•All original content
•Content is recognized as high quality
•Other sites have plagiarized their content
So what’s a webmaster to do? Drop Google a line and hope – the search giant has started a thread in their support forum, but made it clear that the data received will go to their engineers to study and incorporate as they see fit in future updates. Translation: maybe your site will be reinstated to full ‘Google Juice’, and maybe not.

Knowing that there’s strength in numbers, impromptu support groups for those affected have even popped up in forums around the net. While this may sound somewhat laughable at first blush, remember that many of the affected individuals are running sites that may be a large source of income.

To think, however, that this is evidence of Google being evil, would be silly. No algorithm is perfect. Google has said so in so many words. Interestingly though, their release announcing the algorithm update made no mention of content farms – rather, simply an attempt to weed out lower quality content. A wise choice, since a huge can of worms would have been opened if Google was explicitly claiming to be categorizing sites as content farms. An entry on Google’s blog a month prior, however, minces no words about the type of sites that were in their sights.

But some are claiming that Google purposely targeted certain other sites with ulterior motives. Some have suggested that certain domains were targeted because they are competitors to Google’s services such as Google Maps and Google Shopping.

Others draw attention to the cases of Demand Media and Associated Content. The widespread view is that both of these umbrella companies are mostly made up of sites that provide what would be considered ‘content-farm’ type material. Yet Demand Media saw far less of its content affected with one of its holdings, the well known ehow.com, actually seeing improvement in its Google standing after the update.  Associated Content, conversely, saw two-thirds of its content fall in Google search rankings. Why the tongue wagging and finger pointing? Last year, Associated Content was purchased by Yahoo.

So which is it? Is Google, in a never ending quest to provide users with the best service possible, simply tuning their engine closer to perfection? Or are they, with their near monopoly status, flexing their muscles and weeding out those they find undesirable, with the occasional competitor getting the old heave-ho? While it’s impossible to say for sure at this point, a safe guess seems to be almost entirely column ‘A’, with just a wee bit of column ‘B’.

You may notice that Google is functioning a little differently today. The search engine recently made a major change to their search algorithms in order to strike back at so-called “content farms”. These sites, which feature large amounts of mass-produced content angled to rank high on Google, have been accused of reducing the overall quality of search results. Demand Media, owners of eHow, are perhaps the best-known content farm.

Google expects these changes to affect roughly 12% of search results. 84% of the top dozen blocked domains on Google Chrome were included in the sweep. Since this is a blanket change, there is some fear that it could cause issues for legitimate sites. Sorting the good sites from the bad ones is complicated by the fact that many content farms also have legitimate arms. For example, Demand Media also owns Cracked.com, which is very definitely not a ‘farmed’ site.

Demand responded to these changes earlier today. Their EVP of Media and Operations noted that some of their properties rose and some fell due to the move. He did state that “at this time” Demand has not seen a material impact on their business from the change.

While every piece of analysis you’ll find on this change will mention the phrase “content farms”, Google has avoided using that term. Matt Cutts, of Google’s spam fighting team, told Search Engine Land that “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking

Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

Suppose you were offered 263 links coming into your website from 263 other websites all in one fell swoop.

Everybody knows that the more inbound links you have, the higher you will rise in the search engine rankings. Suppose further that these were real links from real websites that actually sold real products and services – no cheap FFAs throwing come-ons on a street corner on the bad side of town.

Suppose further that this offer included the reciprocal linking code for all 263 sites that just had to be cut and pasted into your website. Piece of cake.

Does it get any sexier than this? Are you drooling yet? Does the sweet perfume of “ka-ching!” float around your head? Is this love at first site?

Well, no, it’s actually a fatal attraction, one you had best resist. One that could infect your website with deadly communicable diseases.

I resisted this very offer not long ago, and you should resist anything similar. Here’s why:

The link pages on these sites are essentially link farms. The more links on a page, the less value they have in a search engine’s eyes, especially when you start approaching or even passing 100 links. And don’t expect any direct traffic from this kind of link, either.

There is a technical term for identical pages within a site or on multiple sites. It is called “duplicate content”, and it is strictly verboten by the search engines. Here is what Google says about them: “Don’t create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”

Do some quick math. You have 289 outgoing links, 263 of them are labeled “bad neighborhood websites” by the search engines … so bad that they might even have been banned. What do you think will happen to your rankings?
Sadly, many webmasters fall for such tantalizing come-ons without thinking carefully about what the repercussions might be.
There is a lot of truly bad advice floating around the Internet on how to trick the search engines or find a short-cut to high rankings. This is one example of how following poor advice and hopping into bed with the wrong partner could kill your business.

Here is a good rule of thumb. Two’s company. Three’s a crowd. Four or more will get you arrested. OK, so I just made that up, and it’s not very elegant. But it will keep you from falling for that inevitable offer with the come-hither eyes and the deadly communicable disease

1. Buy links. Google hates it, as do many other search engines. Link buying is a quick way to get penalized.
2. Stuff keywords into meta tags. Jamming dozens of keywords into your title, meta description, or meta keywords doesn’t really help much anymore, and it can get you busted.
3. Cloak. Cloaking is when you use JavaScript or some other technology to serve a different, highly optimized page to search spiders than you serve to regular visitors. Back in the day it used to be hugely successful. Now it is a death penalty.

Maggie knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking – not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com.

She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Maggie find your website.

Google will show Maggie 534,000 resources on “bread baking”. Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to “easy bread baking” or “home bread baking”).

How do you get into the top 10 results so Maggie can find your website? You might have heard a lot about “search engine optimization” and “ranking analysis” and “algorithms”. It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 – 2 – 3 principle.

A search engine will show Maggie only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.

The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most “important”. This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.

The search engine will show Maggie the most “relevant” high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://TheHappyGuy.com relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Maggie’s search? By the number of times “bread baking” shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words “bread baking” included.
Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Maggies out there find your website and your book.
The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but “bread baking” might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be “easy bread baking” or “home bread baking”. The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.

The second is to prepare a link strategy. The “link exchange” pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Maggie discovers your book:

The total number of incoming and outgoing links

The importance of the sites you link to and from

The relevancy of the sites you link to and from

Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked

What you include in the incoming and outgoing links

Where on the page the links are placed

How many links are on those pages

How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links

The ratio of links to content on the pages involved

You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.
The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.

I can’t promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you.

I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.

Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those “gazillions” to find it.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don’t read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.

Have several pages of articles related to your website’s topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term “safe toys for babies”, while another might use the term “baby safety”.

What’s the URL of your website? Your name won’t help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.

What’s the title of your page? I don’t know how many times I see titles such as “Article” or “Contact us”. Don’t expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don’t expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page “Free article on safe toys for babies” or “Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today”. By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.

What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say “Contact the baby toy expert?” Or “about the baby toy expert”. Or links about baby toys?” Need I say more?
If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. “Life insurance” is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.
In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about

From the obvious to the “Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before”, here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the <b> </b> tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Social bookmarking. Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website, creating important links that the search engines value. There are plenty of free social bookmarking widgets available.

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar.

There you have it: 10 of the Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don’t Get Banned By the Search Engines. There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.