Archive for the 'Search Engine Optimization' Category
January 5th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
If you’re a webmaster that is curious to know which of your site’s page have been indexed by Google, simply use the site operator and perform a search query such as:
site:www.joemajewski.com
The results you see upon executing that Google search will be a list of pages that Google has indexed on your site. Although that may not be a complete list of all the pages that Google “knows” about, it is a list of all pages that Google finds relevant enough to list in their results.
Many people believe that the more pages that Google has indexed, the better, but that is not the case at all. It is much more beneficial to you to have 50 pages indexed that are all rich with content than to have 100 pages indexed with low quality content. This is why it is important to update your robots.txt file to ensure that certain pages get ignored by Google’s search engine.
For example, I prevent Google from indexing pages located within the Traffic Stats tab that’s located in the tab list at the top of my blog. The reason being is that Google will find dozens, or maybe even hundreds of pages within that section of the site that are filled with daily statistics, weekly statistics, etcetera, and in general, you only want page’s with relevant content to be listed on Google.
That’s my tip of the day, but don’t expect to find these on a daily basis. 
December 25th, 2009 by Joe Majewski
The primary focus of this domain is my blog, the one that you’re reading at the moment, discussing Computer Science and the like. While I do have quite a few domain names under my belt, I have been trying to maintain this particular one as a means to write about the things that I have learned and the things that I have created.
One of my creations, the World of Warcraft Information Database, linked at the top of every page, is completely unrelated to this site in terms of the content that the Google spiders will crawl. What I’d like to know is whether or not this will hurt my ranking according to Google.
Imagine a website with the main topic being “mathematics” having a folder containing a lot of content regarding something completely unrelated; like “bees”. That is sort of the situation that I am in. The root directory of this site is the blog that you’re reading, but there is a sub-directory (the World of Warcraft Information Database) which contains completely irrelevant information, which I store on this domain because I do consider it to be part of my portfolio.
Does this hurt my Google ranking at all, the fact that I have a website with two unrelated topics? I sure hope not. If anyone has some insight on this baffling situation I would really appreciate some feedback, so please do comment.
My interpretation is that Google will not compare this blog to the aforementioned database nor will it penalize me in any way. Rather, Google will view this blog as it’s own entity, as it will the World of Warcraft Information Database. If some overlap occurs in terms of keywords and content, I would only assume that they will cumulatively affect my keywords. In fact, they will without-a-doubt impact my keywords. The fact that the blog and the database have nothing in common causes Google to add keywords to my site with very low relevancy, and that is why a website such as Wikipedia, which houses keywords on just about every particular word or phrase imaginable can attain such success.
Had I placed the World of Warcraft Information Database on a separate domain name altogether I do not think that anything would change in terms of keyword relevancy.
So that’s my two cents; I would highly appreciate any insight from any webmaster or Google “expert”, so please comment below! Thanks very much, friends!
December 9th, 2009 by Joe Majewski
WordPress is my favorite content management system; it’s easy to use, it has a large community of developers, it’s free, and it’s highly customizable. If you have no previous knowledge of how the Internet operates, you can still open up your own WordPress blog. While getting started with WP is rather easy, there are a few tricks (that may not seem so obvious) that I have learned that can really boost the relevance of your content with regards to search engines like Google.
When Google crawls a page on the Internet, it takes many things into consideration. A pages content, meta tags, page title, and URL can all affect the way your page is ranked. If you write about things that people will search Google to read about, you should ensure that all four of those criterion are met.
First of all, when writing your page’s content, be sure to include the keywords that you think people will search for into your post. I have also written an article about keywords that I recommend you read if you are unsure of exactly what they are. Keywords are more complex than you think, and understanding how Google interprets your page’s content will benefit you. Google Webmaster Tools provides an easy way to keep track of which words your website is ranked highly for (as well as many other useful tools).
Meta tags are also very important. When you execute a search on Google, the small excerpt that is displayed under the link to your page is the description meta tag. By default, WordPress does not populate the description meta tag dynamically. There is a plugin called “Add Meta Tags” that I use, and every time I write a new article I also fill out a short description of the page for people to see when they find my article on Google.
While we are discussing plugins, I would also highly recommend the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP). This plugin will include a list of related articles at the bottom of each of your posts. When people are directed to a post of yours from Google, there is a good chance that that person will never again return to your website; it is important that you attempt to cater to these people and at least make an attempt at providing them with more things to read. This simple plugin does just the thing. As your blog grows with content, you will notice that the related posts plugin becomes more accurate, offering extremely relevant content below your entries.
The title of your page (the text that appears at the top of your browser) is also relevant, and Google will use it as the anchor text for the link to your web page. Most WordPress themes will automatically place the title of your post into the title tag of your page, so this should not be a problem to most bloggers. Keep in mind, however, that if the title of your blog post is not descriptive enough, you may not receive the desired traffic on Google.
Lastly, the URL to your page will also help Google determine your keywords. If you take a look at the URL of the blog posts on this site, you will notice that it is simply www.JoeMajewski.com/the-title-of-my-post. WordPress does not do this by default, and instead will place the month and year in the URL as an attempt to reduce the chance of duplicate content. If you go to your settings tab in the admin panel, you will see a Permalink Settings page where you can easily change the format of the links on your site. Google likes to see URLs that contain your keywords, and this simple change can make it happen, while simultaneously making them more user-friendly.
Once you have covered all your grounds, get back to filling up your blog with rich content, as we all know that the best way to gain traffic is to write articles. Happy blogging!
November 21st, 2009 by Joe Majewski
When someone executes a Google search, every word in their query acts as a keyword. When Google decides on the results of that search, keywords act as an important modifier for your website’s ranking; in fact, they are possibly the single-greatest factor in determining where you will rank among others.
PageRank is also an important factor, but realize that PageRank is more general. If your website is about flowers, there is no reason why it should place on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the search query boats. I consider PageRank to be a multiplier-factor; having a high PageRank will boost the relevance of your website for searches containing your keywords, but you must have the keywords to even qualify.
Let’s go a bit deeper. So what if you do want your website to start competing for the keyword boats, even though your website is about flowers? Simple. Every time the word “boats” is found on your website, Google will take note of that, and increase the relevance of that keyword for your website. Thus, it is extremely easy to gain keywords, but it takes time.
So now that you have written about boats multiple times on your website, you now have some relevance with that keyword. The next time someone searches Google for “flowers and boats”, your website will come out on top. Great job! But how often will it be that someone searches Google for such a random phrase like that? Probably not very often, which brings me to my next point; it is generally a good idea to keep your website on topic.
Take this website for instance. The majority of content here relates to Computer Science. Zoom in a little bit, and the majority of my Computer Science content is about web design. When I make a blog post, I make sure that it relates to Computer Science in some way. Yes, that gives me a lot of things to write about, but I wouldn’t dare writing about flowers; I can’t have it all. When deciding what type of content you want on your website, try to choose a broad topic. For instance, if you want to make a website about flowers, but also want to have the possibility to write about boats, you can think of your website as being under the outdoors category. Now you have given yourself boundaries, and that makes it much easier to decide on what you can and cannot write about.
This is the number one reason why most blogs fail. People tend to write about whatever comes to mind. If I decided to write about random topics, I would have WAY more keywords than I do now, but all of my keywords would have low relevance. Start out small, and slowly expand. If I was to write an article about candy, Google would never dream of putting me on the top of the results for a keyword that I only used once.
If you are a webmaster that hasn’t yet signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, do so now. They provide you with information about your top 200 keywords, and the top search queries for your website, along with many other useful tools. Check this out:
While I do get to see my top 200 keywords, right now the relevancy on most of them is rather low. This website of mine is still rather new, and doesn’t yet have a whole lot of content. Leave a comment and share yours for comparison; I’d really like to see what the keywords page looks like for a larger website.
I check Google Webmaster Tools on a daily basis, watching as my keywords get shaped up. Being a webmaster is a full time job if you plan on competing for the top SERPs, but it’s also a lot of fun.
November 3rd, 2009 by Joe Majewski
I’ve decided to gather up a short list of tools that are useful in giving you an idea of how popular your website actually is. You may already be familiar with one or more of these, but if you are a newbie webmaster, these may be just the tools you need.
Google PageRank
PageRank is Google’s patented term that is used to describe how important that they believe a page to be on the Internet. This value is not assigned to the website as a whole, but rather to the individual pages contained within it. Click here to read a previous article that I wrote regarding this holy number.
- The Google Toolbar shows the PageRank of any page you are currently viewing.
As a webmaster, PageRank should be more important to you than anything else on this list, but it’s not the most accurate depiction of success. Realize that PR is only a number from zero through ten, and it’s only updated every few months, so there are much better tools to use for short-term indications of growth. Moving on…
Alexa Traffic Ranking
Alexa is a web-based company that tracks information from people all over the world that have their toolbar installed. Alexa tracks a variety of statistics for [almost] all websites, and it ultimately assigns each website it’s own traffic ranking. For example, Google is currently ranked #1, while as of this writing, this site is ranked #4,257,978. In my own defense, I just acquired this domain about a week ago, and the Alexa ranking is based on the past three months worth of data, so I have nowhere to go but up for the next few months.
As stated before, Alexa can only gather data from people who have their toolbar installed. Thus, the lower your traffic ranking, the less accurate it is.
Analytical Software
Piwik and Google Analytics are my two favorite stat-tracking software applications that simply provide you with a snippet of code to include in all pages that you would like tracked. From there, you log into their web interface and can instantly view visitor information from dozens of different angles. This offers you perfectly accurate and up to date information which can be viewed at any time.
If you are a webmaster relying on things like awstats and Webalizer alone to reveal your visitor information, I strongly advise that you look into a more advanced solution. I have installed Piwik on my web server, and I made my traffic information publicly viewable, so if you are interested in a demo of just how much information it gathers, check out Piwik.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is an absolute must. The majority of your organic traffic will most likely be coming from Google, and with this tool you will be able to gain information that cannot be found anywhere else. Google will provide you with a list of your site’s keywords, a detailed list of search queries that generated clicks to your website, and a list of relevant incoming links. You can use this information to your advantage, essentially “sculpting” your website to be friendly with Google.
As a webmaster looking to direct more visitors to your website, it would be to your greatest advantage to make your site compatible with Google’s spider, Googlebot, and that is one of the main reasons that Google created this wonderful application.