Rolling with the punches

How do we optimize our sites now?

[stuntdubl]

For those of us that had a drop in SERPS this month, where do you think you will go from here?

I am debating right now as to if I should start reformatting my sites (and if so, how?), or should I leave it alone for a month, and see if the algo stablizes out a little bit in my favor.

If you were to suggest changes that could be made, what would they be?

[Beachboy]

I'd suggest doing what Vitaplease seems to have diagnosed in another thread. Assure that inbound links contain the keywords for which the target page is optimized, and that those keywords also appear in the headline tags and suitable locations in body text, title tags, etc. He believes Google tweaked the algo to assure there is high correlation between anchor text and kw content on target page to minimize the "go to hell = microsoft.com" Googlebombing phenomenon.

[Mohamed_E]

> He believes Google tweaked the algo to assure there is high correlation between anchor text and kw content on target page to minimize the "go to hell = microsoft.com" Googlebombing phenomenon.

I doubt it. On one keyphrase I am still at #2, and #1 does not have one of the two keywords on page at all (he has a gramatical variant of it, but Google does not recognize variants). The phrase I search on is the form that most people use in their link to his site.

[stuntdubl]

I am not quite convinced of this yet either. I have seen to many sites that are ranking high with either no H1 tags, or no keywords in the title. I think that people are still speculating on all the variable that we DO KNOW.

I am starting to thing that the same variables are tweaked to different percentages each month just to keep us on our toes. We seem to know most all of the areas that CAN be criteria for a page, and we understand what makes google a good engine.

I think the best bet at this point is treat google like vegas, and find the best odds and play them.

[vitaplease]

> He believes Google tweaked the algo to assure there is high correlation between anchor text and kw content on target page to minimize the "go to hell = microsoft.com" Googlebombing phenomenon.

Here he? is...;)

Anchortext links towards your site are still very important, as they are motivated votes.

1. The "go to hell" thing must have been a manual intervention (too strong an influence to take out automatically)

2. For myself I noticed that with this update, "keyphrase" in allinanchor (check with Google advanced search) results are less similar to normal searches for "keyphrase" for medium competitive search queries (where on page effects alone must count less)

That made me conclude that:

A. Internal anchortexts count less

and/or

B. Not all anchortexts are weighted as they used to be.
--For example a PR7 link with the right anchortext is less powerfull than it used to be.

and/or

C. Anchortexts alone are not sufficient enough.
Google wants more correlation between anchortext and something.

What could that something be?

1. Title's, Headings, surrounding text and recieved anchortexts from the page linking towards you.
2. Title's, Headings and bodytext on the page receiving the link and more..

The above is just one, internal, selfish and introspective observation :)

However these measures would serve Google against Googlebombing and Pagerank buying as well, and make the votes more topical. Thats why I mentioned them.

[cminblues]

If you were to suggest changes that could be made, what would they be?

<removed>Ooops.. enough time elapsed for this tip ;)</removed>

cminblues

[JonnyWales]

Sorry to ask what is probably obvious to everybody else ... but what is "anchor text" - I looked in the glossary but couldn't find a reference.

[Duke_of_Url]

JonnyW

Anchor text is the text thats clickable on a link to your site, or another page for example.

So in:

<a href="page.htm">Click here</a>

the anchor text would be 'Click here' - and what the previous posters are recommending is that the Click Here text that ppl put on their site, when linking to you, should relate to the theme/titles etc of your site.

hth

DoU

[dcheney]

Perhaps its too obvious, but an easy tried and true method is to slowly but surely continue to enhance and expand the content of the web site.

[Bernie]

Hello vitaplease,

vitaplease wrote:
1. The "go to hell" thing must have been a manual intervention (too strong an influence to take out automatically)

As far as I can see, there is a rule in the algo

Example: competitive keyword german market.

Pos 1: 240 Inbound-links, pr5, anchor-text of the links in 90% of the cases matching exactly the keyword-string. structure of the pointing-pages: 99% guestbooks (hence no theme-based linking), no dmoz-entry.

The Keyword is 14 times in the source-code. 1 time in the title, twice within h1 and the rest in the normal text and metas.

Pos 5: 471 Inbound-Links, same structure of the pointing pages, same anchor-text-accuracy, pr5, hence: more inbound-power.
BUT: the page is a frameset and has the keyword only one time in the title.

I have other very similar examples with different keywords. My very humble conclusion is that your something at the moment might be the source-code whereas the theme-based linking hasn't been introduced yet, but may be in the future.
Cheers
Bernie

[GoogleGuy]

"Perhaps its too obvious, but an easy tried and true method is to slowly but surely continue to enhance and expand the content of the web site."

Hear hear! Glad I didn't have to say it. Or as Brett puts it, "One page of quality content per day." That's the best way to attract users and thus rankings.

To me, this index is a good indicator that a few people are getting a little too obsessed with rankings and PageRank. Of course rankings matter, but most people worry about 2 or 3 phrases instead of going for the larger picture. Just my personal take though..

[stuntdubl]

I agree that some people may be a bit obsessive about PR and SERPS.....but this is essentially the 'profit' or 'revenue' of a web-based business (or at least where the majority of revenue comes from)......I don't know what Google's stance is on their responsiblity to commercial sites is, but the fact is that they are probably responsible for the facilitation of BILLIONS of dollars in transactions.

Yes, we can be obsessive about SERPS, in the same way that a stock-broker is obsessive about checking his ticker, and staying up-to-date on any pertinent information.

I agree that good content is king, but sometimes it just isn't enough to pay for the crown.

I do try to create SEVERAL pages of good content per day (on different sites), but heavily trafficed keyphrases are still hard to come by, and normally do require some knowledge of the 'game' so to speak.

Google does it's job, and does it well, but I truly hope they will be able to stand up to the long-run pressures come with the amount of power that they now have. Please don't shut out the little guys!

[Staffa]

Hear, hear dcheney and GoogleGuy

Trying to tweak sites has reached a level bordering on paranoia.
For over a year I have pages listed #1 for keywords/phrases that matter to my site, update after update.
No matter what the latest algo guesses/hypes I'm not inclined to make any changes and any new additions to my site are made based on the set-up of earlier pages.

Oh well, I guess somebody has to be excentric ;)

[TWhalen]

I pay no attention to my PageRank at all. I even started a thread about it weeks ago asking what the 'big deal' was about PR anyway.

I always just add good, keyword rich text to my websites, and make sure I have well crafted titles and descriptions. Thats it. (Maybe get some reciprocal links here and there...)

Along comes this "New, Evil, Google Update" and everyone who was obsessed with their PageRank is now crying that they lost all their rankings...

Me? Didn't lose any rankings at all. I'm in almost exactly the same spot I was before the update. (on ALL 10 websites I maintain, so its NO 'lucky' fluke...)

Maybe people should just pay less attention to their PageRank, and more attention to the thing that matters most: their text content!

(Oh, and just FYI, every one the sites I maintain just went up to PR7, if you care about that sort of thing. Go figure!)

[Bernie]

Hello Googleguy,

just in case you may have scanned my thread, I see rankings that seem to be based on guestbook entries. I don't think it is a natural form of link-popularity since links are understood as a recommendation,... well if the webmaster can recommend himself...*fg*
Is this issue interesting for Google and are you going to do something about it?

thanks in advance for the information.
Cheers
Bernie