Then he tells the client that is how SEO works, whether Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any other engine. Search engines seem to more closely to the world of TV Star Trek than the real world. The engines have nonlinear boundaries, appear to operate in multiple dimensions, somehow contain all the information known to man and have unwritten rules that frequently change, without warning.
Here are some comments from MattCutts.com on some “known unknowns” about Google and ranking.
URL NAMING: Using dashes over underscores to delimit words in URLs is better. In example, MortgagePromote.com/mortgage-leads.html is better than MortgagePromote.com/mortgage_leads.html
SPAM STRATEGY: Overall Google’s strategy is to not spend time on correcting individual spam cases, but to concentrate on creating a better algorithm which takes into account spamming. Having said that, Google will take action on specific cases of spam.
SITE MAPS: A site map won’t necessarily get your site crawled. It is more important to have good quality links to your site to achieve a higher degree of full site indexing.
SELLING LINKS: In order to artificially create a sense of high quality links, many sites buy links to their own sites. If you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google. Earned-links are earned and given by choice. Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines. Google’s is against selling/buying links, and Matt indicates they are good at spotting them – both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.
EGO AND SPLASH PAGES: It’s not only Googlebot who doesn’t watch a 20 second video load before the home page comes into view. A lot of users don’t either. Splash pages can negatively impact your Google indexing.
FLASH VS. HTML: If you use Flash, you create a HTML version as well. HTML is easier to index and improves your chances of getting indexed.
META TITLES: Each pages should have its own unique and descriptive tag and headings for every page. In example, if your company is called Mortgage Promote, then Mortgage Promote should not be the meta title on every page. Titles should reflect the page substance. If you page is about San Diego Home Loans, then that should be the meta title.
SAY WHAT YOU MEAN: If your site is about “San Diego home loans” but the visible content of your site says “Get your mortgage loan with us,” you won’t be found for San Diego home loans” because those words aren’t visible to the visitor.
GOOGLE UPDATES: Google updates everything all at the same time, typically every three or six months. This is what causes massive changes in rankings.
CLICK FRAUD: Many people want to know how Google prevents click fraud, but Google isn’t telling. Google’s priority is to protect advertisers, so that means not disclosing any proprietary methods which would allow click fraud perpetrators to reverse-engineer our systems.
Now if that makes sense… you can do the right thing and get your site highly ranked in the search engines.
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MortgagePromote.com is a leading Internet marketing web site that provides hundreds of articles & information tips on web site promotion, search engine marketing and search engine optimization; to help loan officers & mortgage companies increase their online sales. Aries and Farris has been providing nationwide mortgage leads & Internet marketing services since 1998.
Originally published January 2007.