Anyone besides me getting fed up with Google's constant changes? I just tried to add an image with a link on a post on my Google+ account and you can't do both without doing some research first (you have to add the link to the post and then add the image via the photo button or else the option to add links disappears). Also if you start over and click on the link button and add the link then it brings up the page and an image from that page but if the image isn't appropriate you can't change it. For instance say I want to link to a site I just designed. The image of the site isn't on their website so I want to download that from my own website. The only way to do that is to take the step described above which doesn't look as good as the way they used to have it set up. And this is supposed to be "progress"?

A Summary of Google's Panda and How to Recuperate From it.

The following is my paraphrase of Rand Fishkin's Video on Panda:

Google set up Panda on a new patent called Machine Learning and combined that with Google's quality rater's comments (which sites were the most popular, and why) and thus Panda was born.

Google is now looking for sites that not only have great content, are trustworthy and credible (founders of their own business, etc) but the content must also be unique in some way (great graphics, fantastic photos, unique or funny quotes, etc).

Google is now looking for sites that people deem so important that they just can't wait to Tweet about it and link to it on social networks.

This eliminates sites with design or navigation flaws, lousy graphics, too outdated, thin content pages, no originality, poor quality photos, and no or very little social interaction. High bounce rates, low click through and narrow traffic focus, are also a factor.

Those that have recuperated from Panda have spruced up their design, added more quality content to their pages, removed pages that provided no useful purpose and found a way to increase social interaction.

Rand Fishkin's video on Panda:

Google

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 6-12-12
All Rights Reserved

Tim Carter of Ask the Builder fame hit by Google's Panda & Penguin

If your website lost most of it's traffic this last year since Google's Panda algorithm was launched or since April 24,2012 when Google's Penguin algorithm took effect, then you may want to listen to the following audio. The following link will take you to an interview of the owner of Tim Carter of "Ask The Builder.com" who has had a radio program for years offering tips on building projects. His website was severely hit by Google's Panda algorithm last year and then Google's Penguin, which effectively removed 75% of his traffic and is destroying his business (along with millions of other small businesses).

This was in spite of the fact that the "Ask The Builder" site was promoted by Google as the best way to design a website several years ago and Tim Carter also defended Google to Congress when they were being attacked for dishonest practices. As you can guess, his opinion of Google has drastically changed and he is encouraging people to take action against Google now as he believes Google has an anterior agenda other than just removing spam because spam is still floating to the top of the SERPs.

This audio file is almost an hour long but full of interesting info.

http://tag.theaveragegenius.net/wp-content/uploads/James-Hussey-Interviewing-AsktheBuilder-Tim-Carter-on-Google-and-Web-Traffic.mp3

Google

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 5-31-12
All Rights Reserved

How to Check for Competitor's Backlinks.

One of the best ways to get quality backlinks is to check the backlinks of competitors who are ranking above your site. Find a backlink tool that shows the PR (Page Rank) and no-followed links. I like to use Backlink Pro which has a free option.

Look for sites with high PR on the linked page (not just the domain or home page) that aren't no-followed. Those listed near the top are usually better quality. Check out the website to see if it would be a good match for your website focus, and if so, try and submit your site there. For more info see: How to find Good Backlinks.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 3-24-12
All Rights Reserved

Which is Best for Web Page Layout - Tables or Divs?

The things to consider are:

Which is easier to code?
Which displays better in a browser?
Which takes less time to load the page?

With a web page designed in tables the browser has to go clear to the bottom of the page, reading the code, to figure out the layout and then go back to the top and display the content which causes a longer download time. With a div the browser starts from the top and lays out the page, div by div, which is quicker.

Also tables are often nested which sometimes confuses browsers, especially if there are broken table tags.

Most CMS programs are outdated and utilize tables for page layouts and format every table cell with the same font-family, font, size, etc., etc. which causes code bloat.

If you design a web site with tables and then decide to change the layout then you have to change the code on every page, whereas with a div you just change the settings in the CSS file. You can float divs anywhere on the page.

Tables require more coding just for the basic layout (table/tr/td and then close the td/tr/table) where you only need a div tag for divs (with a class or ID) if you format it with CSS.

Tables were designed for displaying tabular data. Div's should be used for web page layouts.

If you need to display a lot of tabluar data on a page see how to format several tables on a page using CSS.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 3-6-12
All Rights Reserved

How to Fix a High Bounce Rate cause by foreign Visitors Translating a page

If you have a lot of foreign visitors to your website they are likely to be using a translation tool, which will cause a high percentage of bounces in Google Analytics, because they are "leaving" your page within 30 seconds, and this can affect your keyword ranking.

In order to easily fix it so Google doesn't count this as a bounce, first you need to set up a Google analytics account, if you don't have one, then go to Google translate:

Fill in the form to get the code to put on your website but also click on Advanced and also the option to track those who use the translation tool. You will have to enter your Google Analytics ID.

Then you just copy that bit of code into all your web pages where you'd like the translation button to appear.

This should eliminate all bounces for those who are translating your pages.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 12-1-11
All Rights Reserved

How to Fix a High Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

If you have a very high bounce rate on all pages in Google Analytics then there might be something wrong with your design. If you design with a Mac check your color scheme in Windows and especially the background color, as colors appear darker in Windows and that could be an instant turnoff.

If that doesn't help then set your website up for mobile viewing as that could be a problem if people can't view your page on an iPhone, iPad, etc., without having to scroll to the right, as that will cause them to leave instantly also.


Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 11-12-11
All Rights Reserved

Why Gradient Backgrounds Won't Work Under Transparent Images

When an image has a transparent background you need to set the matte color the same as the background because the software adds white spots around the edge by default and you need to change those to the same color as the background. With a gradient background that is impossible due to a change in color from one side to the other. Therefore a logo with transparent background needs to be on a plain colored background.


Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 11-11-11
All Rights Reserved

New Page Rank Update - Page Rank Checker

Google just had another Page Rank (PR) update on November 8, 2011. However, Google has removed the ability of most PR checker tools unless you get the new url to it's new directory location. If you want to check your PR via an add-on for Firefox here is one that has been updated: SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar

Also, some of the websites that allow you to check your PR haven't updated their sites with the new URl so they are not able to process PR. Here is one that has updated and they also have a narrower presentation of the results than the other PR checkers, which was annoying when trying to print the results:

http://www.wmtips.com/tools/pagerank-checker/

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 11-9-11
All Rights Reserved

Three Reasons to not use Microsoft Hosting

1. The biggest reason to not use Microsoft hosting is because they have specific software designed for microsoft computers, i.e., Windows, so they are not availble for a designer who uses the Mac (without a computer upgrade that accepts both platforms). When a lot of graphic designers prefer the Mac this means you are limited in your choice of web designers if you need your website redesigned later

2. Another reason to not use Microsoft hosting is because htaccess is not available to fix cannonical issues (duplicate content) as well as redirecting files and other features which help make your website more secure. This makes it impossible to adequately apply SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques.

3. If you have a shopping cart set up on your Microsoft host then you also can't move to another host so you can use htaccess unless you can import your shopping cart software to your new cart (which isn't likely from a Microsoft software).

I won't work on Microsoft sites for all the above reasons.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 8-17-11
All Rights Reserved

Outbound Broken Links can Hurt your Search Engine Ranking

Too many outbound broken links on your website can cause directories to ignore your submissions. It can also affect your ranking in search engines if there are too many broken links because it will tell them the site is not well maintained. It will also annoy your visitors if they keep getting the "404 page not found" error, from too many broken links.

There are several reasons for broken links:

1. You formatted the link code wrong or misspelled the URL.
2. The page you linked to was deleted.
3. The owner of the site moved the page you linked to and didn't set up a redirect (news sites often move articles to an archive after a few weeks).
4. If you have capitals in your file names and moved from a Windows to an Apache server anyone who used to link to Your internal pages will find broken links and your internal links to your pages won't work either.

Only link to high quality websites that likely won't be moving the page.

A good broken links checker (and it's free) is Xenu's Llink Sleuth but only works on a PC.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 7-30-11
All Rights Reserved

What to do if someone steals your web page title:

Unless the words in your title are trademarked there is little you can do about "scrapers" stealing your web page titles unless you want to go after them via the court system. However if they scrape the content off your webpage you may have better luck if you can prove you had the data online first by keeping dated copies of new pages when they go online "save as web archive" in your browser.

Also just stealing your titles will only help them to rank higher if their rank is already higher, i.e., they have more high quality, relevant links to those pages than you do to yours, in which case you just need to get more links to the affected pages. Also try posting messages in forums and blogs and link to the affected pages.

Getting links is your best bet and much cheaper than a lawyer. Afterall your main goal is to outrank the other website. You might check to see where they got their links from or what they are using for anchor text. For more information see Stop Content Theft.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 7-26-11
All Rights Reserved

CMS vs SEO

Content Management System (CMS) sites are designed so that those that don't know how to write HTML code can set up or manage their own website. However there are several problems with CMS sites that prevent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which also prevents getting good ranking in search engines.

Following are several reasons why I do not recommend CMS programs:

1. CMS programs that do not allow you to set up your own layout often provide templates which results in too many websites with the same basic layout.

2. They produce dynamic urls which are hard to read by search engines.

3. They offer file names with numbers and either the program doesn't offer another option or the user often doesn't know enough to change them to keyword rich file names.

4. Most CMS programs set up menus in Javascript and or images, neither of which search engines can read so they may never see your inner pages.

5. Some CMS programs don't provide the use of alt tags in images which help keyword ranking.

6. They need to provide the option for unique title tags, description meta tags and the ability to add sub titles (h1 and h2 tags). Some CMS programs use the same words for the title and first header on the page where you may want them to be different.

7. Most CMS programs put out massive code bloat (multiple lines of code around a few words) instead of efficiently utilizing CSS files (which control layout colors, sizes, etc).

8. Most CMS programs utilize multiple CSS and Javascript files which increases download time (a new ranking factor in Google).

The biggest problem is that even if the web designer has set up the site so it's search engine friendly the user also needs to understand Search Engine Optmizatiion (SEO) or it will destroy ranking.

For more information also see Keyword Ranking Problems with CMS (Content Management Systems)

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 5-5-11
All Rights Reserved

One-Way Page Rank Link Scam - a poem

One-way links and PR 6 too,
only $19 a year, just for you.

Chose your keywords, choose your size,
choose your color, but is it wise?

One hundred links on a one-page site
all different niches, but should you bite?

Google gives link hustlers a big fat shoe
and it hates those that buy them too.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 4-29-11
All Rights Reserved

How to Get Good Ranking for a New Website.

It often takes several months to a year before new websites start ranking well because age is one of the strongest ranking factors. Also it may take a year before Google applies any Page Rank (PR) to your site and both keyword ranking and Google's Page Rank are each benefited by backlinks (links coming into your website) so that also needs to be a high priority. However, it's often hard to trade links with other sites until your website gains PR and to make it even more difficult to get one-way links some directories won't accept PR0 sites either.

The best thing you can do for a new website is to keep adding more pages because every page you add to your site counts as a link back to your home page which will eventually boost your Page Rank. Try to focus on information type pages in your niche as they will have a better chance of ranking vs product type pages. Add a video and other social media features to attract traffic and eventually your rank will start rising. See my website on how to Get Good Backlinks

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 4-29-11
All Rights Reserved

Why Link Checking Tools are not Always Accurate.

If you have a redirect set up on your website so visitors are always reverted to the www version of your domain then you need to always use www in front of your domain to get an accurate count when checking your links.

A redirect tells the search engines to list your site with the www version in their listings. However, if you don't include the www when checking your links it will pick the links up from the non-www version of your domain and those could be different numbers because people don't always include the www when linking to a site.

Also, search engines are constantly updating their listings and link checker tools, which use search engine listings, may be relying on old data and may not have accurate listings, and they may not be using the same search engine you used.

Search engines are also frequently tweaking their algorithms so if the results don't appear right, check back later.

Also Google doesn't give all links it finds and Yahoo may not list them all either. Therefore link tools and search engines are not accurate.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 4-12-11
All Rights Reserved

Exposed: A New Method of Hiding Link Trades

Putting rel="nofollow" on a link tells the search engine to not follow the link or links on the page and also to not pass along PR or PageRank.

Usually you go to a link page or references page to check to see if the links are nofollowed. However, if the link or references page has a no-follow tag on that page's link from the home page then even if the outgoing links aren't nofollowed on the references page they won't pass any link juice because the whole page has been nofollowed.

In order to see which pages are no-followed on a website use Firefox's extension called "NoDoFollow" which will highlight links that are nofollowed, then check their home page for nofollowed links.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 3-9-11
All Rights Reserved

Choosing the Best Domain Name

If your chosen domain name is already in use as a .com, don't opt to buy the .net version as people may remember your domain name but forget it was .net and the other site may get your business.

It would be better to use a hyphen in your domain name to separate a couple words and then you may be able to buy the .com version. Then you can buy the .net and .org also to prevent anyone else from using those domains. Keep the later two parked unless you have a totally different use for them (you can't put the same content on them or they will won't rank well due to copying your main site).

If you want people to find you by your name, or business name, then use that, otherwise you should consider using keywords in your domain as the keywords in a domain name are a strong ranking factor.

Be sure and keep your domain renewed because if you forget someone else can buy it and then you loose your website. Also be sure to update your contact information at your domain registrar or you won't receive renewal notices.

Also see these articles: Domain Registration Scams and Did your Web Designer Steal Your Domain Name?

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 3-4-11
All Rights Reserved

A new Trend in Link Trade Requests

I'm noticing a lot of people that request link trades lately are actually requesting you to get involved in triangular linking (i'll link to your site from this site if you link to my other site over there).

Triangular linking was designed to hide the fact that you are "supposedly" trading links from Google, but they can recognize patterns and may penalize (filter your site out of existence) if they think you're involved in this practice as it is using a dishonest means to manipulate Google's search engine results.

Often link trade requests will give you an option of several websites to link to, however they don't tell you which of those sites will link to your site and you can be assured it won't be the same site you link to, i.e., you've just gotten involved in Triangular linking.

Don't accept any link trades unless they specify which site they will use to link to your site and then point your link to that site.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 3-3-11
All Rights Reserved

Saving semi-Transparent images in Fireworks PNG 8

I was having a problem getting a partially semi-transparent image for a logo saved correctly in Fireworks as the semi-transparent part of the image reverted to solid colors when saved as a .gif file. However, it worked correctly if saved as alpha transparency in a PNG file. However PNG 32 takes up a lot more memory (252kb) vs the .gif file (28KB). Then I ran across an article explaining how PNG 8 does a great job of saving semi-transparent images in all current browsers (except IE 6 unless you use a hack) and PNG 8 doesn't take up as much memory either (24kb).

When the article was written, in 2007, only Fireworks had this feature so I'm not sure if other graphics software have it now but I'm sure glad I found it. Here is the article on saving semi-transparent images as PNG 8. Once I get the website up I'll add the logo to this post.

Lori Eldridge
Copyright © 12-23-10
All Rights Reserved