Adventures in IT

Reciprocal links are touch and go for a few reasons. The reason that incoming links are good is that search engines think your site is worthwhile if humans are linking to it. In other words, if a webmaster reviews your content and links to it then your content must be good (thinks the search engine). So people actively started to try and build links, to make search engines think that their content is good. The only thing is that search engines hate it when you do things just to optimize your site for search engines. Optimize your site for users , while making it easy for search engines to see what it's about (this is where the bold , italics , page title and headings come in) Search engines see reciprocal links as a distortion. The webmaster is not linking to you because your content is good, they're only linking to you because they're getting something in return (a link to their site, or even money). If you have a page of links that link to sites that are linking to yo...

Dear Webmaster, First off, I want to demystify search engine optimization. I've read so many blogs and books by specialists and it seems that most SEO specialists are actually marketing themselves rather than dispensing the very core knowledge that is required. There is really only one page whose opinion I trust and that is the official Google Guidelines for Webmasters (find it here - http://www.google.com/support/ webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl= en&answer=35769 ). Make sure that you read this page and ask me any questions that will clarify your understanding of it. If anybody tells you to do something other than what is written on this page be very careful. Yes - there are "tricks" in SEO. But think about it - Google hires teams of incredibly clever people (read Matt Cutts academic profile if you don't believe me). What are the chances that Google is going to be tricked for very long? Very slim. And Google punishes sites that have tricked it in the past. So...

In its "Guidelines for Webmasters" document Google notes that " search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would ". A web spider is a program that searches through the internet for content ( see here for more definitions .) Lynx is a web browser that was used in the good old days of internet before we had fancy things like mouses, graphics, or sliced bread. Put very simply Lynx is a bareboned web browser that supports a minimal set of features. You can download a free copy from this website . There are other uses for Lynx other than SEO (such as pinging a webpage in a crontab), but for SEO it is mainly used for usability and visibility testing. If you don't feel like installing new software there are a number of online spider emulators that will try to show you how a spider views your website. One that I found is available here . Now that we have the means to see how Google spiders view our website we can have a look at what implications the...

Keep it simple I've read so many articles by SEO experts outlining how to get a high position on search engines. After ranking a website at number 1, and keeping it there for well over a year now I can offer some solid advice. The truth is that getting a good, sustainable ranking is a relatively simple affair. However, SEO experts want to make it sound as complicated as possible. How else will they be able to charge you their consultancy fee? Before you continue reading my blog read this link: Google Guidelines for Webmasters . If you adhere to those guidelines you will get ranked. Stating the bleeding obvious Question: How does Google make money? Answer: Primarily by selling advertising. Question: How does Google make money from advertising? Answer: By getting lots of people to look at it and click through to their clients Question: How does Google get lots of people to look at their adverts? Answer: By have a good service that they want to use (the search engine) Question: How...

Search engines reward websites that are well linked. Search engines operate under the assumption that if many other websites link to yours then that reflects a measure of trust and value in your site content. This means that building up these links to your website is an important task for any website owner. Finding relevant sites to approach for a backlink can be a difficult prospect. Reciprocal linking Many reciprocal link exchanges end up being an exercise in spam management as completely inappropriate sites approach you for a link. Reciprocal linking is actually a risky affair. Google specifically warns against creating pages for reciprocal linking in its Webmaster guidelines. It's pretty obvious why reciprocal linking is discourage - it is an articifical distortion of a person's desire to link to your content. They're not linking to you because you have valuable content, they're linking to you in exchange for a favour. One way links Clearly one way links are mu...