I was asked to look at a website today that had suddenly dropped in Google’s search results.  Now when I say dropped, I mean DROPPED… from page 1 to page 950!  

My first though was they’ve been penalised by Google with the dreaded 950 penalty, that’s the penalty used for sites who’re penalised for obtaining paid links for SEO purposes (950 refers to the last page of the Google results pages).

My first SEO instinct was to check the backlinks of the said website and to see where it had obtained these links and to also check the anchor text used for these links.  My suspicions were confirmed.  It seems that the site had agreed with an owner of a blog network to purchase links using highly competitive keywords as anchor text,   Google found out and penalised the site using the 950 penalty.

My advise to the site owner… remove the links and wait a week or two till Google realises that the links have been removed, most likely, the 950 penalty will then be removed by Google.

I’ll let you know what happens, stay tuned…

To begin lets define what’s an inbound link.  An inbound link is a link that points to your website from someone else’s website, its as simple as that!  Another important definition before we get started is Link Popularity: Link Popularity is the measure of how popular your site is from an inbound link perspective; ie how many sites are linking to yours.

Now that we got the definitions out of the way,  lets discuss the the characteristics of the perfect inbound link…

Here are the main things to pay attention to when you analyse the quality of the links pointing to your site: 

Targeted Key words in Anchor Text

The perfect inbound link has to have targeted keywords in the anchor text of the link (the text used to link to your site).  Some sites use “click here” to link to your site, thats no good unless your site is about “click here”!

A Relevant Link is Better

If your site is about holiday homes and you get a link from a site about dog kennels then thats no good either unless -maybe- of you’re selling holidays for dogs!

A Relevant Landing Page for the Link is also better

If the link is from a holiday homes site and you have a multi-themed site then make sure that the link goes to the section of your site about holiday homes. 

An Authoritative link is More Valuable

Ideally the links pointing to your site should be from authority sites; ie sites that have been around for a while and that Google et al consider as authority.  One way to get an indication of whether or not a site is authoritative is to look at its Pagerank.

A link Higher on the Page is More Valuable

Links closer to the top of the page are better than links closer to the bottom of the page, simple as that!

One-way Links are Better than Reciprocal Links

One way links are better than reciprocal.  The reason this is the case is because in the past, webmasters tried to manipulate Google’s algorithm by exchanging links and so Google now devalues reciprocal links to some extent.

Contextual Links are Favoured

If the link to your site is placed within the copy of the page then Google gives it more importance than a link in an advertising zone of the page.  Its logical, if the link is mentioned within the copy then its probably more relevant to the content of the page than a link mentioned as an advert placed in the margins.

The Link NoFollow Attribute  

Some site use the “nofollow” tag to tell Google and other engines not to give that link any importance.  Many blogs use this method to discourage spamming.  In recent month The Wikipedia also placed nofollow attribute to all outbound links from its site.  Make sure the links you acquire do not have a “nofollow” attribute attached to them.

Avoid Link Farms

Google and other search engines do not like pages stuffed with links, this is a result of the proliferation of what is termed as “link farms” that are designed for the purpose of exchanging links.  If your link is found on a page with many links (15-20+) then that link will most likely be devalues.  Ideally, aim to have your links on pages with < 2 links and at worst case scenario < 15 links.

And that is it!  These are the characteristics of the perfect inbound link!

Question?…

If you’re thinking of redesigning your website or changing your site’s architecture for any reason, its worthwhile to keep in mind the following SEO best practices:

1. Use the mod_rewrite (Apache) or ISAPI Rewrite (IIS) to map old URLs to new files

2. Analyse your major traffic entry pages and ensure that these pages are not deleted or changed unless it is absolutely essential to do so.

3. Do not permanently delete all pages until they have passed their popularity to the new pages on your site, this can be accomplished using the above mentioned  301 redirects

4. Contact link partners and ask them to change your link destination to new pages on your site.

If you follow the above 4 step you’ll ensure that you do not lose any traffic and popularity associated with you pre-designed site.

Good luck!

Image alt tags, have you heard of them?  If you haven’t let me tell you.

Image alt tags are basically the alternative text you see when you hover over an image.  Image alt tags describe what the image is about.

here is an example of the HTML code of an image alt tag:

Image alt tags & SEO

So why are image alt tags important for SEO?  Well, in a nutshell, its because search engine spiders can’t read text in images and can’t tell what an image is about. 

Because search engine spiders can read text, they’re able to associate the alt tag of the image with the image and therefore know what that image is about.

To get the full SEO benefit from your image alt tag, make sure to include your target keyword in the image alt tag.  However keep your image alt text concise and do not under any circumstance stuff it with keywords! Engines do not like that and can potentially penalise you for spam if you practice such technique.

Happy coding!

Matt Cutts just posted a link to a presentation he made about SEO tips for Blogger.  Here is a quick summary:

SEO Tips for Blogs - General

• Don’t put blog at root page of domain 

• People link to main page and main blog page, so you get some extra links that way.

• Name your directory “blog“, not “wordpress”

• Might want to change your software someday

• Also makes upgrading easier

SEO tips: keywords

• Use categories that are also good keywords

• Keywords in url paths: domain.com/my-words

• Dashes are best

• Next best is underscores

• No spaces is worst

• Think about the keywords that users will type. Include them naturally in your posts

• ALT tags are handy (3-4 relevant words)

• Don’t forget image search, videos, etc.

SEO tips: Usability

• Make sure your site is crawlable

• Make your post creation dates easy to find

• Check your blog on a cell phone/iPhone

• He recommends full-text RSS feeds to get loyal users. Partial feeds get more page views, but not as much love.
  Your blog should do standard pings

SEO tips: moving to a new webhost

How to switch from one IP address to another

(Optional) Reduce your DNS time-to-live
Back up your site. Bring it up on new IP
Watch Googlebot & user traffic until they fetch the site from the new IP address
Take down the old site

SEO tips: moving to a new domain

• Standard advice: Use a 301 (permanent) redirect

• Even better: pick one subdirectory and move it first

• If the traffic stays roughly the same on the desired domain, go ahead and switch
  Otherwise, take some time to figure out why

• Standardize your backlinks (www vs. non-www)

• Write to everyone; ask them to update their links

Then he goes on to give tips on how to get your site popular.  To read his post and download the full presentation go here.