Register your domain name for as long as possible...Google sees sites that are registered for more than a year as "less likely to be a spam site" since most legit businesses plan to be open for longer than a year..So register as long as possible. Dont submit your site to the search engines once you gain links they will automatically get indexed. Dont fall for those adblasters, linking schemes or anything else that seems funny Set your site up in themes Say your main topic is "cat health" then you should have sub-categories that are theme related or synonymous terms such as cat health care, cat health insurance, cat health information, feline health, feline disease, feline illnesses and so on... Next make sure you have your theme and synonymous terms in your <h1> tags, titles, description and on page content...Make sure you don't use the same keywords more than 1-3% of the time on your pages...You can use synonymous terms so if your header tag is cat health then your relevant keywords on your page can be feline health, cat insurance, cat health care because their all similar to your main topic. Relevance factor.... Submit your site to Yahoo directory, DMoz, STPT, Best of the web and theme based directories...Safest bet is the directories I listed...These directories pass authority which is way more powerful than page rank... Your sites internal linking should be similar to WIKIPedia...Use your internal linking to the fullest and make sure you mix up your anchor text in your links...Use synonymous terms and theme related terms in your anchor text... Have fresh, unique content updated on your site regularly..Go to getafreelancer.com and get a "Good writer" and find some long tail keywords related to your industry and publish the articles on your site....In the articles link to your related categories, products etc....If you buy 100 articles put 50 on your site and put 50 of them in Ezinearticles.com and in your author resource box spread the links around to your categories and home page...Don't overdue your anchor text...Mix it up some..Don't submit the same articles to every directory...Stick with Ezinearticles.com Use social bookmarking sites....Go sign up at onlywire.com and then start bookmarking your products, articles on your site and Ezinearticles, categories and so on..Don't spam them though and make sure your providing something of use. Update your site regularly...Freshness of your site is known to be a factor in the algo...So try to update as much as possible. If you are using images make sure the files have the names of the image in the file..This will help with image optimization...Also have related content in your tags of your images and surrounding text.... Try to generate home page one way links "in text" from other sites this will help tremendously since they are one way home page links.. Link out to good resources without them linking back...So link to great resources that your audience will enjoy...Google loves great resources so put them on your site..Google, Yahoo, MSN, WIKI use no follow tags Use nofollow tags on your contact us, privacy policy and any other links where you do not wish to pass page rank.. Set up "Useful pages" not spammy pages in Squidoo, Kaboodle, Thisnext, Hubpages, USfreeads, Myspace, Facebook and link them together and link them to your site...Write articles and link them to the pages then on pages that your articles aren't linking to link them to your article...So if article one is linking to Squidoo then Kaboodle should link to Article one and so on to keep the links one way... Ezinearticles has a section on each article in every category that is called "Most published" and "Most viewed" articles...Get yours to be either one and every article that is written in your category will link to your article....Then your article is gaining all of that link juice which will pass them through the links in your resource box...giving you more juice to your site...(but thats another story) just do it DO NOT get wrapped up in page rank worry about your serp's not your page rank. Write press releases...Press releases will drive brand awareness and links to your site. Now I'm really not going to get into site structure because that's mainly for conversion but you have to have the basics of your theme in your structure..and run a LYNX crawler and make sure its doing it thing..Make sure every page has a link going to it. Whenever gaining links try to get them in text...If you trade links which typically doesn't help that much or not at all try to keep them to your theme and try to be creative... Get involved in forums and blogs related to your niche...Forums and blogs will most likely give you a signature line or a link which you can gain links from.. Do not buy links...well if you do... don't buy sitewide links...Looks to much like spam plus they will have the same anchor text in every link...NOt good! Use a unique template...Your sites Content to your code ratio should be atleast 80% unique.. Generate something useful that people would like to link to...Maybe great info, nice tool etc...This will help your link building campaigns. Read Google patents and watch how Google adwords changes...This will typically show the route in which the natural index is moving towards.. Take your time it doesn't happen over night...and it sure in the hell isn't easy the first time...But once you get going it gets easier This is some of the basics of SEO and I probably left some out but hey it will get you started.
I dont agree with this at all. Do you have any sort of data to back this claim up? Is this not a contradiction? You say google loves great resources, they are going to ignore the links if you use nofollow.
Read this link: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-little-piece-of-the-google-algorithm-revealed I trust the folks over at SEOMoz to know what they're talking about, and Domain Age is one of the factors. It's been fairly well known in the SEO field that domain age is a sign of trust and stability, and the Google algo rewards websites that have been around a long time. I wish people would stop making this claim - it's not even close to true. Google doesn't ignore NOFOLLOW links, it simply doesn't pass PR from links marked as NOFOLLOW.
Thanks bro I was about to post it myself....Ditto!!!!!!! And as far as showing proof about anything in the algo nobody knows for certain but we can definitely think like Google....Just think about it...
I agree everything, except the no-follow tags. I don't bother with them. I've been starting to ignor PageRank, and I feel a lot better because of it. Content is really important. Don't just write about what you're selling, whether it's a product or yourself, write about what make you different. Showing you're an authority, whether by articles or press release, is more important than ever. Google likes authority sites; customers like authority sites too. Are they going to buy a service or product from a no name, or an authority, i.e. (someone who is familar and knows what they're doing)? --Don
I don't give a crap about PR either but if you don't have to squeeze juice to pages that don't need it keep it on your good pages...
A pretty good list overall, James. I couldn't agree more to the importance of internal linking structure. Descriptive anchor text is really the way to go
Domain age is less relevant than it used to be. Google has now cottoned on to the fact that many brand new sites are full of great, informative content. New sites enjoy a short 'honeymoon' period where they seem to be ranked artificially high. Perhaps this is Google's way of putting the slant towards new, fresh content. However, these sites almost always seem to experience a slight drop in rankings after this honeymoon period wears off.
I agree somewhat but domain age I still feel is a huge factor in the algo..Age shows trust in most cases..Also your right most new sites will see a honeymoon period in Google and MSN and then they get disappointed when they drop...
excellent post, very relevent and often overlooked points. also, be weary of over-doing it, that is over seo-ing your site. if you are familiar with SEO it very easy to fall into that trap. don't get carried away filling every alt, title and anchor tag with your keywords when they are unnecessary. think natural... i would also like to ask if there's been any light shed on just how google recognizes paid links vs. unpaid links. with TLA, which i run on a few on my sites that have yet to be hit with any sort of penalty (knock on wood), i guess the googlebot could search for the TLA xml file, but beyond that how can it differentiate? that said, i would suggest any links you do place make sure they add to your site. if your sites about cats a link to "cheap flights to bali" could raise a red flag.
'Age of a domain' and 'domain being registered for 10 years hence' are not the same thing. About sitewide links being zapped: shouldn't we see blogrolls being tossed in the can if this be true?
I agree with heinlein99. The O/P is stating inaccurate facts based on an article that he mis-read Registration history Domain age Strength of links pointing to the domain Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks Historical use & links pattern to domain None of those say anything about length of registration at all. History and age are items gauged on PAST information. I don't believe at all that how long you register your domain for has any bearing whatsoever with PR, SERPS or anything else.
Yes domain registration and domain age are obviously very different... And blog rolls are obviously very different as well. Blogs will have different algorithm filters.