Site: operator reporting lesser number of pages.

I am sure if you run a website and actively monitor it you will be aware that sometimes site: operator reports lesser number of results. Site: operator is used to find the number of pages indexed for a particular website for example: site:www.searchenginegenie.com will reveal all the pages that Google indexed for the website searchenginegenie.com .
Few of our clients and some of our external users have reported that site: operator sometimes report lesser number of pages than it usually used to show for their website. Some of the people who come to us with this question are also concerned that this could be another penalty. Ok, from our experience there is no reason to worry if site: operator reports lesser number of pages. This has always been the case Google has 1000s of clusters of computers spread throughout the world in different data centers they have, and not all the datacenters are update some of them have old data some have standard data and some have very fresh data. So when you make a query you tend to hit different datacenters and this will result in you hitting different results so if you see that your indexed pages are showing different don’t worry about that it should just be that you are seeing a different set of results.
But you should be worried in one case if you see consistent drop of your indexed pages over a period of time then there is something you definitely need to worry. See if there is something wrong with your site and in case your site disappears after consistent drop in indexed pages 90% it’s a penalty check for potential penalty in Google webmaster tools. If you find your site is penalized submit for reinclusion. Other than that there is nothing to worry about site: operator.

Google and Brand Authority

A webmaster world member has started a discussion whether Google is giving brand authority to certain results. When you say Brand Authority it means if you are the top brand for that particular search you will be ranking for that term.

For example:

Keyword: Laptop
#1 – Apple
#2 – Dell

Keyword: High Speed Internet
#1 – ATT
#2 – Comcast

Keyword: Quit Smoking
#1 – SmokeFree.gov
#2 – CDC.gov

I have seen this in many cases there are some keywords where a top brand for that keyword ranks even if their website is all flash or just a splash page. Google’s Eric Schmidt has already said there needs to be some sort of Authority / Social Buzz for a top brand to rank. Its not just about onpage factors or offpage factors for top brands if a particular brand is top on a particular search I am sure they will be ranking atleast for Google. I wonder how Google does this they always say their results don’t have manual intervention but it seems to make a top brand rank without proper web popularity should come from some extra ordinary human based algorithm. Most top brands have good offline popularity but not web popularity but still they rank well for their phrases.

Google says its not just about factors influencing the site alone but the social media factor also boosts top brands. Especially this year many users begin to notice brand authority. Probably google has figured out a way to make the top brands rank for their corresponding keywords. The real question are Google users happy to see their top brands on top of Google results for major keywords if yes I don’t think Google need to worry how they get them out there. Users come first and I feel most users are happy to see top brands on top of results for brand related keywords.

Is SEO dead?

When I was going through webmaster world I came across an interesting featured post where the author says SEO is dead and it has been completely replaced by PPC, Social Media Marketing and Link building. Well running an SEO company for more than 5 years I am well aware that SEO has slowed down a bit. But the truth SEO is never dead or no where near to be in death bed. I am sure it will go on for at least 10 more years to come.

Yes I agree that traditional SEO is not there anymore. Now people are more SEO savvy and they are more educated than before. But better education and understanding is actually good for ethical SEO companies like us. We don’t have to explain the whole process of SEO to them. Most client come to us by word of mouth referral and they are still coming because we did a good job for our current and past clients. Traditional SEO is dead for sure people don’t seek us to write meta, title tags or rewrite URLs etc we are doing work completely different from what we used to do before. We are more concentrating of setting up one way links which is the most difficult part of SEO. Its not easy to get free one way links these days so we need to invent new innovative ideas to get one way back links. Though this is a difficult part we are able to find some really quality ways. Especially we were able to get a lot of success for our clients by widget optimization, social media optimization etc. I want to remind the author of the thread that SMO, link building has always been part of SEO. In fact SEO is the mother of all new innovative tactics that come online now. SEO will never die at least for another 10 years but it will keep evolving like the way we see the world. Its not the same world that we saw 10 years back and it’s the same case with SEO 10 years down the road you will see stuff which you never had seen before.

Does meta descriptions still helping in Google?

Meta descriptions were never ignored by any search engines. It’s the meta keywords tag that got booted for over spamming. Meta description tag is still very important for major search engines especially Google. Google had long stated that they don’t use meta description for ranking purpose but are using it only for snippet purposes. But this snippet is what your users see so its important to make sure it has the right combination of keywords as well as marketing strength. Most people prefer to use their phone numbers directly on title or meta description tag this is an effective way but you might loose the chance of adding some important phrases if you are adding too much marketing words so make sure you also include good keywords you are targeting. Google will try to relate the keywords on your page with meta description tag to valuate the effectiveness and accuracy before it shows up in search engines. So better have good keywords on the description tag.

Google does take lot of effort and show in your webmaster tools whether you have duplicate descriptions if Google is taking so much care I am sure it considers meta description tag important. For one client who came to us recently his site never had any meta descriptions written Google was able to figure out something from his page but it looked really bad. Google took the menu of his site as the description and it looked spammy so better write good descriptions so Google will use it.

Remember Google’s algorithm and search is very complicated and they need to return results from billions of pages within a fraction of a second. So when they get a query first they try to find relevancy from meta description and then they go to the actual page. Better the meta description faster the results will be. Also Meta description helps in increasing click through rates if they are written well. To conclude write what is best for your users search engines will endorse that for sure.

Link Development Tactics

• Choose quality over quantity:- Link quality carries more weight than quantity. Spend time getting the highest quality links pointing to your site.
• Begin with Web directories:- Yahoo Directory and DMOZ are two reliable places for high-quality links.
• Harness online publicity:- How-to tips, helpful articles, even press releases often attract links from other websites. The search engine optimization world calls this “link bait .”
• Use blogs and forums wiselyL:- Blogs and forums can call attention to useful information on your site.
• Use search engines to research link development:- Look at competitors’ sites to determine their link development strategy. It can help you with your own. What newspapers and media outlets do they use for online publicity? What Web directories link to their sites? No link popularity checker (“link: domain.com” in Google, “linkdomain: domain.com” in Yahoo) can substitute for doing the research yourself.

Is it necessary to look at competitors while implementing SEO?

All the growing businesses all over the world discover that search engine optimization help them gain a competitive edge. But the marketing experts say that it is also equally important to know what the competitors are doing to achieve the goal.

It is possible for any one to develop the SEO strategy without knowing about the competition taking place around you. But it is always better to have the information of the competitors in order to perform better from their rivals. Before implementing any strategy it is better to do some researches on the search engine optimization, so that they can learn more about themselves as well as the competitor?

This research will give you an idea about the competitors like who are they, where are they, what are they doing, what is right or wrong about their campaign, is their campaign effective. These ideas if taken in to consideration will help you to develop better search engine optimization. Which will help you perform better than your competitor and will lead you to success.

So it is always better to look at competitor and their strategy to for implementing better SEO.

Inbound or Outbound links are important for new site

New webmaster spends too much time in getting inbound link and forgets completely about the value of outbound link. For all new sites outbound link are more important compare to inbound link.

Getting an outbound link provide you more exposure to the wider web and is a proof for the existence of your site. Search engine crawl links to go from one page to another, all you need is one inbound link to your site to get the whole thing crawled whereas outbound links tell much more than inbound links. They tell your visitors that you are willing to provide valuable information.

Most of the webmaster care where there traffic comes from, if you link out then you will appear in referrer logs. Outbound links helps to get traffic from webmaster that are curious enough to know about you that why linked them. They will even get back to you if they like what you are doing it.

With this great differences it is clear that though inbound links helps to get the page rank but out bound links are more important drive traffic to your site and to make trade which is the main aim of online marketing strategy.

How a blog can help your business?

First of all, blog is nothing but an online journal for every one to see or use it. A blog is now equal to website. A major aspect of blog is its content. Content is really what the blog is designed for. It is always important to keep writing in your blog in order to get post visible and drives in more traffic to your site. A blog can be used in different ways to grow your business.

Some of them are listed below:-
1. A company can use blog to post about their product. They can give detail description of each and every single product in their own blog. The blog can be used as a best platform to describe about your product.
2. You can list out various tips and tricks to achieve your goal and for others to use the same as tool.
3. You can use the blog to talk about the kind services you provide to your customers.
4. You can even use the same blog to talk about your industry or company. This will act as voice on behalf of your company for the market so that people come to know what is going on in and around the company.
5. You can give a personal approach in your blog like talking about each person reading your blog.

Using these simple strategies you can grow your business well. There are no important rules to launch a blog.

Ten important myths for search engine optimization

1) All the Meta tags are equally important.
2) There should be a timely submission of new post in order to drive traffic to your site.
3) SEO involves less expenditure when compare to the PPC as SEO clicks are free. It is always more cost effective than sponsored or banner advertising. You just need to pay page set up and monitoring charges.
4) SEO is better than PPC for long term. Because in PPC you are visible in search page for short period of time but if you get good ranking in organic SEO. You will definitely drive good traffic to your web site.
5) Always try to hire SEO firm than in house SEO as it involve lots of other expenditure. Hiring a SEO firm provides you with different specialists writing, submitting, redesigning, and posting your site by just paying certain amount.
6) You should optimize all the pages of your website with keywords.
7) Content plays a major role for ranking the site high. You need to implement off site and on the site SEO to get better search engine optimization.
8) Always try to target competitive keywords in order to improve your site ranking.
9) Lots of SEO firm guarantee ranking and optimization but in reality no firm can guarantee ranking in any search engines.
10) Most of SEO firm also demand commitment but you should not rely or agree on any long term commitment. Just tie up yourself only with monthly commitments unless or otherwise you are satisfied with firm and its progress.

Social media marketing better than search engine marketing

Social media marketing is very interesting and fun. Your product gets lot of attention in it. Now-a-days the use of social media marketing is increasing. But the question is “Is social media marketing better than search engine marketing.”

No, social media marketing is not better than search engine marketing. And here are some reasons for the above answer.

Search engine marketing helps you to grab attention from unlimited targeted audience but social media marketing restrict the attention to the limited audience because if you join one social media website then you will be able to reach people only on that social media site. Social media marketing go far but search engine marketing goes further.

With the help of search engine marketing the success will make you feel that you have achieved something more your success with social media marketing make you feel that you have something but still there many thing to do and achieve.

In fact the use of social media marketing is not wrong decision but it should be used for better reason like it should be used to achieve the search engine marketing strategies in order to get targeted audience. It should not be your primary preference.