Google Ranking Factors 2014

When creating a website, the Google ranking is always on the priority. Everybody desire  a Good ranking on Google search engine. This is why people are always trying  to make that happen. There have been various guidelines that people have been adopting to increase their chances of top rankings. However, these methods are not set in stone and are subject to vary. Here is a look at some of the factors that have influenced Google rankings in the year.

#1 – Title Tags with relevant keywords in start as opposed to being at the end. keywords in your title tag is as equally important as having them the content on your website.

#2 – Ensure that there are keywords in meta descriptions. A meta description tag is a short description of the contents on the web page and is also the snippet that shows up on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

#3 – Equally important are keywords in your header  tag or H1 tag. The first header tag is usually the second title tag of your web page. This usually allows the website visitor to navigate through the web page’s content easier.

** Before I move on, it’s important that I note that you don’t stuff your title tags, meta descriptions and H1 tags with keywords. Although, they are important, search engines like Google will penalize websites that stuff their pages with keywords. It’s important to be relevant and think from your website visitor’s perspective and how they will navigate around your site.

#4 – How long does it take to load your website or the pages of each of your site? Your page load speed an important ranking factor. Ensure that your website is optimized for different devices (be mobile friendly!) and aren’t crammed with very big images, big videos or very text-heavy.

#5 – Fresh content. Today, an average online users processes over 285 pieces of content daily. To be constantly relevant to your users, be sure to have relevant, good quality and fresh content on your website. Today’s websites are more than just static websites but a piece of the sales process that keeps consumers engaged through blogs and other means.

#6 – Optimize your images with proper alt and description tags. These will help Google determine the relevancy of the images on your site. Also, this is a ranking factor for users who are doing an images or site search for something related to your brand.

#7 – Delete or fix broken links on your website using tools like Google Webmastertools.

#8 – A responsive website designed for multiple screens, devices and browsers.This is a must-have for websites today. Users are constantly switching and using multiple devices when searching for your brand and it is important to keep your website experience consistent – much like your brand.

#9 – Having an intuitive website architecture is an important factor for Google. But a must-have is a sitemap. A sitemap allows Google to crawl your website and its pages and index them for website visitors.

#10 – Google has made it clear that having proper contact information appear on your website is an important ranking factor. Having contact information allows for consumers to be able to find about more about products and services and essentially close the sales process.

How Gmail account got hacked

If your Gmail account got hacked, hold responsible your friends.

You are 36 times more probable to get scammed if your contacts' accounts have been hacked, according to a study out this week by Google.  

It's unusual. happening an average day, only nine in 1 million accounts gets stolen. But when it happens, the action is quick. These are focused criminals at job, looking from first to last your email to steal your bank account information.  The criminals are resolute in five countries. Most of them live in China, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Nigeria and South Africa. But they molest people worldwide, duping them into handing over Gmail usernames and passwords. Google has effective scans to block them and emergency options to get your account back. But criminals still administer to pull rancid the attacks.

Here's some more of what Google found in its three-year study.

In the mind of a hacker

Effective scams work 45% of the time. This quantity sounds colossal, but well-crafted scams can be believable. They send official-looking emails requesting your login testimonial. And sometimes they redirect you to a page that looks like a Google login, but it's not.

protection tip: Don't ever email your username or password -- anywhere. And for all time check the Internet address in the URL above to make certain you're at the definite Gmail site.

They frequently steal your account in less than a day. Once they have your login identification, the average immoral hijacks your account within seven hours. For an ill-fated 20%, the bad guys do it in just 30 minutes. Then they transform your password to lock you out.

protection tip: Sign up for account alerts on your phone or a backup email. And move fast.

It takes only 3 minutes to search your email for important stuff. They're looking for any email that shows your bank account information and images of your real life signature. They also explore for login testimonial for other accounts at Amazon or PayPal. They use the email search facet, looking for phrases like "wire reassigns," "bank" and "account statement."

Safety tip: act upon this search yourself. Go ahead and erase any email with this sensitive data. Don't leave this stuff lying around.

Expect your friends to get preyed on too. Criminals will send emails in your name asking friends for money. Typically, they use a sob story, claiming you got stuck somewhere and need help.

Fraudsters are smart at trust this under the radar too: 15% of them create repeated email rules that forward your friends' responses to an additional email address. So even if you get your account back, you won't know your friends were targeted, because you'll never get their responses.

Worst of all? Sometimes fraudsters delete all your emails and contacts to check you from warning friends afterward. Google has an account upturn option to bring them all back -- but that's only if you actually recover your account.

Safety tip: Just make it not viable to break into your email in the first place. Sign up for two-step authentication, a second password you get by text message. It's an extra 30 seconds on every new computer, but it's worth it in the long run. For further guidance see Google Update

How to SEO your website to rank top in Google

Every web designer should know the basics of top 10 ranking 

Google's Hummingbird Algorithm

As you know, Google announced their Hummingbird algorithm about a month after it launched, claiming no one noticed and no one should notice. But we do think we did notice but no one can confirm that outside of Google and they won't.

That being said, clearly the search results are different since the launch of Hummingbird and SEOs will likely need to adapt.

Some forward thinking SEOs and webmasters are already thinking up what the end game for Google is with Hummingbird and how to adapt their sites to fit that box.

A WebmasterWorld thread has some really interesting conversation around what some believe the key difference is before and after Hummingbird.

Unique Content versus Useful Content

While unique content is more of a Google Panda related thing, useful content although Panda, is maybe more Hummingbird.

Google understands searchers queries differently with Hummingbird than they did before. So how can the search results not change. How can you as a webmaster change your content to make it more useful, while it still being unique, to encourage Google to show your site over your competitors.

Don't optimize for keywords, optimize for a satisfied customer from stage one of the buying cycle to the end. Is it that easy? What if you don't offer all the stages? Well, I assume that is not exactly the point.

Robert believes this will eventually lead to search results that are "less a collection of content farms and more a collection of pages created with the user genuinely in mind." I am not 100% confident.

Keep in mind, this is just one theory of many and for the most part, the search results did not change that much compared to let's say Penguin 2.1.

Google Penguin 2.1

Late Friday afternoon, Google's Matt Cutts announced  on Twitter that they  unleashed Penguin 2.1.

In short, Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam,  said it impacted  about 1%  of search queries.

Looking at the hundreds of  comments on our nippy post from Friday and looking at the threads out there in the webmaster and SEO communities, it seems like many webmasters were impacted by this update.

We have threads at WebmasterWorld, Black Hat Forums, tons at Google Webmaster Help,  Threadwatch and many others. Keep in mind, this was announced late Friday afternoon and the threads are just going to get worse when more people check their analytics after the weekend is over, sometime this morning.

I've seen screen shots of Google Analytics showing websites completely destroyed by this update. I've also seen screen shots of Google Analytics showing websites that recovered in a major way from previous Penguin updates. This had huge swings both ways for webmasters and SEOs. Some recovered and are back in business, while others are about to lose their businesses. Also, some it had no impact on at all. Like you all know, when one web site drops another one takes it place.

Google top 10 SEO Ranking

People don’t really understand that there are many different factors that fall into place when determining where a website ranks in the Google search engine results (Google top 10 Results). Some things to keep in mind when you are wondering why your site doesn’t rank well. It is not always just the obvious reasons that are holding it back.

Over the past years by reading Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, Google SEO Starter Guide, many other industry blogs and by actually doing professional SEO and internet marketing since the late 1990’s, I have gathered data and come to a boiled down short list of the most important Google search engine ranking factors.

Here is the list of my top 10 of important Google SEO ranking factors to consider:

1. Age of Domain: Age of URL is very important. If you just bought your domain a few weeks or even months ago you have a long road ahead of you. The reality is the age of your website helps build trust. If your website has been online for several years, chances are you have an established business.

2. Domain Hosting: Where is your site hosted? Find out through your hosting company what continent or country your site is hosted in. This can often times play a large role in search rankings. Always use a reputable hosting company. If your company is US based then use a hosting company in the United States. Also, I always recommend a dedicated IP when you can. There are virtual dedicated and cloud hosting solutions that are more affordable. Never use the cheapest hosting. The reality is, if you cannot afford hosting you should re-consider the business…I know this is harsh but very true.

3. Your Neighbors: If you have a virtual server, which sites like Godaddy usually are have been known to house hundreds of websites on one server. Make sure that your neighbors on your server are not classified as spam.

4. URL Structure: Make sure your URL structures are very clean. There should not be any random strings of characters at the end of your URL’s. This is part of the onsite search engine optimization process as well.

5. Content: Content is very important. To start make sure you have text on all your important pages, then make sure it is good text consisting of your targeted keywords spread throughout naturally. Simply put, ALWAYS write your content for humans, your website visitors first and NEVER write content for the solo purpose to achieve Google search engine rankings. Chances are the content will not be user focused or provide value to your visitors.

6. Internal Link Structure: Make sure your inner pages are linked correctly. Visitors should have easy made pathways connecting to your other pages from every page of your website. Make sure the code of your website is verified and keep flash and JavaScript to a minimum, if you can. Essentially make sure the site is clean, easy to use and interlinked to help the user experience.

7. Trust: Do you at least have a mailing address listed on your website? You should if you don’t. Google likes to see trust factors on websites so anything you can add that could help build trust for your audience will benefit your rankings. I always recommend having a phone number on each page of your website. Make it easy for people to do business with you, it all starts with establishing trust and that starts with contact information on your website.

8. Keywords: Make sure your website is optimized using your keywords. This means any alt tags for images, meta page information and existing content at the very least of things. Remember to naturally optimize your website based on the content of each page of your website.

9. Bounce Rate: Although bounce rate might not seem important if Google sees that nobody hangs out on your website for more than a few seconds before they leave this could be a ranking problem over time. Make changes to get visitors engaged with your website. Simple things, like video, newsletter sign up, call to actions, etc will help improve your bounce rate over time. Make sure you have proper tracking on your website, such as Google analytics.

10. Outbound links: Make sure the websites that you link to are 100% relevant to your business and industry. If you sell animals toys but you are linking to a site that sells shoes that is not very relevant and over time could really impact your rankings. Bottom line is if it makes sense to link to another site, then do so, but remember you could be sending your visitors away from your site.

11. Inbound Links: I know this was a list of my top 10, but I felt I had to mention inbound links. The key here (speaking as a white hat SEO person), don’t buy or exchange links. Market and promote your business online to build visitors to your website over time. If you do, then the relevant links will follow!

**Note: As the Google (and yes there are 2 other major search engines!) algorithm changes there are always new ranking factors that come into play, such as the page load time and many others. I am sure when I re-do this list a year from now, there may be another one or two additional factors.

There are many extensive factors that Google  uses when determining website rankings. Very important to get these factors correct otherwise you could find yourself just spinning your wheels. The bottom line is it is all about relevancy and earning your visitors (and yes Google’s) search engine trust over time.

Great Google's Disavow Tool

Today we’re introducing a tool that enables you to disavow links to your site. If you’ve been notified of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue. If you haven’t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about.

First, a quick refresher. Links are one of the most well-known signals we use to order search results. By looking at the links between pages, we can get a sense of which pages are reputable and important, and thus more likely to be relevant to our users. This is the basis of Page Rank, which is one of more than 200 signals we rely on to determine rankings. Since Page Rank is so well-known, it’s also a target for spammers, and we fight linkspam constantly with algorithms and by taking manual action.

If you’ve ever been caught up in linkspam, you may have seen a message in Webmaster Tools about “unnatural links” pointing to your site. We send you this message when we see evidence of paid links, link exchanges, or other link schemes that violate our quality guidelines. If you get this message, we recommend that you remove from the web as many spammy or low-quality links to your site as possible. This is the best approach because it addresses the problem at the root. By removing the bad links directly, you’re helping to prevent Google (and other search engines) from taking action again in the future. You’re also helping to protect your site’s image, since people will no longer find spammy links pointing to your site on the web and jump to conclusions about your website or business.

If you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links, and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a good time to visit our new Disavow links page. When you arrive, you’ll first select your site.