In any major algorithm change, there are always winners and losers, because those sites that dropped would be replaced by others. Most people would think the Panda update was a mistake on Google’s part judging from the hue and cry from disgruntled site owners, but it’s worth bearing in mind those that gained would mostly be keeping quiet!

The Panda update did manage to clear up many splogs, autoblogs, and other low quality pages from the results, based on what I’ve been seeing and hearing. But a lot of legitimate sites also got penalized, and that is what you don’t want to end up as.

As usual, Google never talks much; so there’s much speculation and not much else. I now notice many SERP changes even for single keywords – In a single day. Unlike previous updates, changes seem to be hitting some long tail keywords too. The good news for me is I haven’t really been affected by this latest round of updates, but what I can observe still seems to come back to basic things.

Duplicate content – Google is obviously still not at the stage where it can differentiate between original and duplicate content all the time. A lot of autobloggers got hit by the Panda update, but there are still many that got away and even claim to be doing better. However, it doesn’t mean it is alright to copy others; copying has always been a MAJOR problem on the Web, and EVERY Google update seeks to address it. Don’t get caught with someone’s copyrighted material, like so many others have had!

All my sites have only original stuff from the start, and although I did not get the “recognition” from Google a few years ago, the latest update indicates that Google has finally started to recognize (and rank) my sites and pages. So all you guys who produce your own content, don’t lose heart, it does pay to be original, even if it has to take time.

Quality of content and on-page SEO – Logically, the goal of every search engine is to be able to evaluate what is quality content and what is not. I don’t think Google is up to that stage yet, but what Google cannot accomplish, humans can. A human can easily spot a low quality page littered with inaccurate or misleading info, or spelling gaffes.

This is most easily spotted in pages with spun content, keyword stuffed, or if someone who is poor in the language and doesn’t really know what he or she is talking about. These things can still easily get past search engines, but not humans. I can’t count the number of times I come across low quality sites or pages that were ranking well (only because of their backlinks), while searching for something in Google.

How many people have used automated software to get thousands of spammy links and ranked their pages high, only to get demoted some time later? Does it occur to those people that once they get their site high up in the search results, its profile rises, and therefore, it is bound to attract a lot more attention? So, if it’s a glaringly poor quality page/site overall, it can easily be spotted by a Google “quality checker”?

Still doubt this? I am willing to take a bet if you manage to rank a site high for a huge, competitive phrase or keyword (using tons of backlinks), then it better be good, otherwise it’s not going to hold its SERP position for long, and will sooner or later drop away. Nobody really knows how Google is now defining “low quality” but I strongly suspect they are incorporating human judgment into their results, at least for high traffic, competitive keywords.

Spammy links – This is a contentious issue, because many webmasters will argue that Google doesn’t take spammy links into consideration; otherwise anyone could create spammy links to their competitors, and then take them down. I feel for the most part, Google does not care about spammy links, but IF the quality of the content and the on-page SEO factors do not correlate with the number of links the site or page has, it further acts as a signal for demotion; a red flag if you will. New sites also are not supposed to get a lot of links. That is why many new sites that get spammy “link blasts” usually get penalized in some way or the other.

Think about it, why should a low quality site get so many links, unless they were all unnatural links? Many people do not seem to care how their site or page appears to people, and only focus on backlinks just so they can get good rankings. This is WRONG and they will get penalized sooner or later, if they haven’t already.

Loading pages with ads – This may, or may not be a factor, but personally, I don’t believe in using up the maximum ad slots, just because I can. Your visitors do not visit you for your ads, but for your content. If you know your visitors dislike ploughing through a sea of ads (which also slows down your page loading time), don’t force them to!

I feel the most important take-away message from all these changes Google is doing is just this: Create good content for humans, not the search engines. As long as you keep doing that, you should be quite safe from all the turbulence out there.

On the whole, the Panda update was needed, and there is every reason to expect more and more of such updates from Google in the future, even as Google admits they need to refine their changes so as not to hit the legitimate guys. Remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare? Hey, it’s OK to be the tortoise!

However, as more and more website owners become increasingly skilled and adept at the most popular and effective seo techniques, the techniques themselves also become less effective. If you want to reach the top of search engine listings for your industry, it’s essential you stay one step ahead and that may mean taking unusual and unexpected approaches to seo. Let’s take a look at four such practices that you can incorporate into your seo campaign:

1) Consider adding common misspellings or alternate spellings of keywords to your website. Many times your potential customers who are entering their search terms into a search engine will be in a hurry or be unclear on the spelling of industry-specific terminology so a lot of the time they will be searching for misspelt terms. Targeting your keywords in this unusual way can be a strategic way of overtaking the rankings of your competitors. However, remember to use this technique sparingly and don’t use misspellings in the main content of your website. Blog posts are the ideal place to exercise this technique and are extremely search engine friendly.

2) Start using the images on your website as an element of your seo strategy. Google Images picks up on target keywords placed in image file names and directory names and captions or image links, so keywords in the text attributes of image files can be an advantageous hidden seo technique. (Note: I have used this to good effect all the time).

3) Use Google Video to boost seo using the same method as described above. Always include a text box in, or below, your video that clearly displays a link to your website or product and a brief description of the video content that includes key word phrases. Your company logo should also be displayed on-screen throughout the video presentation.

4) Blogs are at the top of the list of favourite seo techniques, but have you ever thought about blogging about the new products released by some of your industry competitors? Blogs about the most recent news automatically appear higher up in search engine listings, so when people search for the new product or service it will, in fact, be your website that comes at the top of the list. As long as you can provide equivalent products and services, this can be a great way of robbing your competitors of some of their web traffic and attracting new customers to you.

About Author
John K Taylor has been working as a freelance writer for Infinite IT Solutions, a Melbourne based web design and search engine Optimisation Company.

1. Put your targeted keywords in the title of the page you are optimizing: Search engines expect the titles of the pages to be summaries for the content of those respective pages. While search engines show up your pages in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), they give the highest priority to your page titles. So craft your page titles to be near perfect overviews of the content on that page and put some relevant keywords in it as well.

2. Use your keywords towards the top of the page: While you are writing content for a page, make sure that the page has a proper heading. Include your keywords in that heading and place them within HTML heading tags like <h1> tags. This indicates to search engines that this is an overview of what is coming next. Make these titles keyword rich.

3. Repeat your keywords within the content of the page: Try to incorporate your targeted keywords within the main content of the page. Repeating the keywords about 5-6 times within the content is OK, but don’t overdo it or else you know what it’s called – Keyword Spamming.

4. Meta description tags: Meta descriptions should be provided in a “marketing style” which attracts visitors, with all your main keywords. Ideally, meta descriptions should be between 25 to 40 words. Try to include all your targeted keywords in the meta descriptions of every page, and they should be unique for each page.

5. Make your pages of at least 300 words of total text content: Your text content is everything which the search engines parse to get an idea of that page. So it is better to provide an adequate amount of text within your page so that search engines can understand what your page is all about.

6. Interlink your inner related pages: When you come across something which you have talked about in other pages of your site, link to that page. This is called interlinking or cross-linking which is important for search engine optimization. This also increases keyword relevance for your whole site and also helps with spider crawling, like spreading “Google Juice” for other pages of the site.

7. Always follow Google Webmaster guidelines: Please go through the Google Webmaster guidelines as they are generally good advice. Although they are only guidelines, not rules, it’s important not to leave any stone unturned by adhering to them.

8. Maintain proper standards of W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium has standards and guidelines for web designing and development which should be followed while designing a webpage. Maintain proper markup structure and heading tag sequence. These ensure that your pages are easily parseable and indexed by search engine robots.

9. File names or url structures: The search engines seem to parse hyphenated urls very well. So when you are making a page on dog training for example, make the file name or url as “dog-training.” Keep proper directory structure as they appear in your menu or sitemap. Avoid capital letters in urls.

10. Text equivalents for non-text elements: Search engines are not yet capable of understanding non-text elements like images, videos etc. Provide a text describing those images or videos in their alt or text attributes. Search Engines also have problems with dynamic content like Flash, JavaScript or pure database driven websites. So avoid these if you want the spiders to crawl.

These are all good on-site SEO practices which can be easily implemented on any website and also indicate good coding practices. While search engine technology is constantly evolving, on-site SEO is still very much a relevant factor in how they view any website. Now go get a boost on your search engine rankings with these guidelines.

Simply put, duplicate content is similar content, and syndicated content is similar content that has been permitted to be reproduced, most often, via an RSS feed, and may include certain rules to be followed. Make sure you know the difference. The originator of the content needs to give explicit permission to have his content reproduced. By default, you should regard everything as copyright. It is only permissible to reproduce them under a few circumstances, like if the material was:

• Public domain material
• Government material
• GNU licensed
• Creative Commons licensed (attribution to the original author required)
• Explicitly syndicated content (permission given by the originator)
• In a few cases, applicable under Fair Use

According to Google, duplicate content is both external and internal. Meaning, if Google detects the same content in other pages on your site, then that is also duplicate content. As is the same content found on other sites. Last month, Google tried to clear the air again about duplicate content with this post. But it still left many people still skeptical about whether Google is doing anything effective or not in battling copycats. Duplicate content only clogs up the Web with useless junk, and is regarded as spam. But, neither is it black and white. In the case of news reports and music lyrics, you can’t regard them as duplicate content, can you? It would be silly to apply the same rules on all kinds of content.

For WordPress blogs, duplicate content has always been an issue. That’s because, WordPress by default lists the same content in the archives and category pages. But the problem is easily fixed by telling the Google bot not to index those pages. If you haven’t got the plugin yet, go get the Duplicate Content Cure plugin, which should solve the problem (thanks to Badi Jones).

The biggest problem though, is the blatant copying of your pages by some parties to repost on their websites. They do this either manually, or by employing scraper bots. You can get a list of bots to exclude in your robots.txt file, but you can’t do much if the copy cat manually copies your content. This is an external problem with no prevention, with maybe only half baked cures. It is really up to the search engines to constantly improve themselves to battle duplicate content.

I’ve had my stuff copied by others, and it’s not flattering at all, especially when the copycats never leave any attribution behind, let alone ask you for permission. Illegal copying of content is very common, and constantly on the rise all over the Web. SEOmoz has an article on duplicate content, worth a read.

Copycats only devalue the Web by their actions, because the originators of the content may not be so inclined anymore, to put up their hard work only to have them copied. And the problem is worsened by the fact that many copycats employ the latest SEO techniques to try to get their content ranked well in the search engines, often to the detriment of the original sites (which are often small or medium sites with good content, but poor SEO).

When quality content disappears and the Web becomes one giant mass of low quality content, with identical twins floating around …..let’s hope it doesn’t end up that way. This is still one of the major challenges of the Web. The statement from Google that it is “quite good at identifying the originators of content” is far from reassuring, as there are indeed many honest webmasters who can attest to the constant problems they face from slick copycats – right up to this moment.

Finally, if all else fails – change your content.

One of the situations when indexing fails to occur is when the domain has been blacklisted by Google. This may be due to the current or previous owner, failing to adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines.

The symptoms: No matter how much and how long you promote your site, and build links to it, and work on the site, the domain never gets indexed by Google.

You can check Archive.org to determine the previous history, although this is far from accurate, because many domains do not have their past history archived on record.

The solution: Open a Google Webmaster Tools account, and submit a Reconsideration Request through a link there. This is the only way to get back into Google’s good books. There is no guarantee of success though. Be prepared for a long wait of weeks or even months. It helps if you are not the one responsible for the domain being banned.

Why do I say indexing is so fast these days? Check out Matt Cutts’ post on Minty Fresh Indexing. Google is able to literally index a page or domain in minutes, thanks to its cutting edge technology.

So in short order, here are a number of ways to get indexed quickly by Google:

• Post in any popular, open registration forum with the page or URL in there. Since the Google bot is always crawling the forum, the chances are good it will find your link through your post.
• Submit your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. Submitting a sitemap is telling Google that your site is “crawler friendly,” and mapped out.
• Submit your site or page to Digg and social bookmark sites like Del.icio.us, or Furl.net. These social networks have large influence with Google.
• Set up a blog on your domain, even if you don’t like blogging. Blogs allow convenient pinging of the search engines. By posting a few posts and pinging Google, you invite the Google bot to check out your site, which will hasten indexing, often within a few days or less. The blog can be removed later, once your site or page has been indexed.

The bottom line is, indexing is a no brainer if you get an authority site or page to link to you – as in a site that Google respects. But, make sure your domain is not blacklisted or considered shady by Google in the first place. Based on my observations, there are certain types of domains (usually in certain “dubious” niches), that have a tougher time getting indexed, even though they may not be blacklisted at all.

Everyday, the Web is being added manifold by hundreds of thousands of new pages, or websites. How does a search engine keep up with the huge increases everyday? One of the most important things they look at, with regards to a website, is age.

If you look up on many search terms in Google, one of the things you notice is the age of the top listed sites. There may be hundreds or thousands of new sites vying for attention these days, but according to many SEO experts, age is one of those things that cannot be faked, and Google especially, has factored this into their algorithm.

Would you be willing to trust an old site more than a new site? If you know the answer, than you would know why Google likes old sites more than new sites. Old sites, especially those that are often updated, are perceived with greater respect then new sites.

According to SEOer Aaron Wall, 5 reasons why old is gold in Google’s eyes is due to:

1. Domain age
2. Link quality
3. Link age
4. Usage data
5. Delayed monetization

Now, my understanding of domain history is almost similar. But,I think Google takes into account the previous usage data as well, on the particular domain. I don’t think domains without valid sites all this while, would be as valued by Google as domains that had fully working websites on them dating back many years.

Google actually became a domain registrar two years ago, with the main purpose of gaining access to a lot of domain data. So they do know when a domain was registered, when did it change ownership, how long was it being used as a website…and so forth.

Usage data would be the demographics of a site, how visitors behaved on a site, how many visits in a given time, and so forth. These are the metrics that I believe influence the reason why Google is often wary of old domains redeveloped as new sites on new content.

Likewise, link quality and age would be directly linked to any relevant links from relevant, quality sites over the years. For example, a link from Dmoz is still very valuable because of this. But, Dmoz does not simply take in new sites; your site needs to be old, to stand a chance of being listed! That age factor again.

Delaying monetization basically means running your site on a non profit basis, until the right time comes This is perhaps the hard part for many webmasters; indeed there are hosting bills to pay, scripts to purchase, directory submissions to pay, advertising costs, and basically the biggest cost of all – time.

At the end of the day, it is no wonder that the age of a site has become such an important factor in “trust rank.” Trust rank is a term I suspect we’ll be seeing a whole lot more in future.