The keywords metatag was a critical element for early search engines but hasn’t been used in search engine ranking since 2002. There is no such thing as setting a meta keyword tag for a WordPress.com blog. However, from time to time new bloggers post to the WordPress.com support forums asking for instructions for setting a meta keyword tag for their blog. Continue reading
To help web developers maintain a common style, on April 25th Google published its own HTML and CSS Style Guide containing best practices to encourage better coding etiquette. Google’s HTML/CSS Style Guide promotes good style advice that is also good performance advice, making it a good standard to use. Continue reading
SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your site from search engines. Generally, the higher your website ranks in the search engines, the more traffic you receive.
The process of applying Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices to your site relies on understanding both sides of the system so you know how search engines work, how to use them effectively, and what your target audience searches for. Continue reading
The most common reason for moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org is the desire to make money from advertizing and/or affiliate sales. In reality if your WordPress.com blog does not currently attract 1,000 – 1,500 unique visitors every day, and your traffic stats do not demonstrate a growth trend, then it’s unlikely that you will much more than covering web hosting costs. Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org means you will have added responsibilities so don’t hurry into self hosting thinking you will be handsomely paid for the effort.
WordPress.com bloggers frequently ask: “What’s involved in moving to WordPress.org and self hosting?” That’s a good question.
If you are moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org you will have to purchase a domain name (if you do not already have one), hire a web host , install and configure the WordPress.org software, export your blog content out of your WordPress.com site, and then import it into the WordPress.org software install.
Your domain name should be short, memorable, and easy to spell. Wherever possible your domain name and blog title should be the same. For SEO include keywords in the URL and tagline that reflect your “brand”. Your domain name is your own, it’s portable, and you can have an email address and blog on the same domain. Having your own domain means provides increased opportunities to: build your own unique brand, online presence, and reputation; and to assist your followers (readers, clients and customers) to recall and locate your site very easily.
Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org means you will have additional responsibilities and if something goes wrong, you have to figure it out and fix it. Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org means you will be responsible for all installations, all WordPress.org software upgrades, all backups and all troubleshooting. Current backups are critically important. They must be done frequently and the database must likewise be backed up frequently. If you have recent backup and something goes wrong, you can reasonably easily restore your site and not lose much data.
Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org means your new site will be starting all over again when it comes to earning authority and Page Rank. The Google Page Rank and Technorati authority and rank for your content belong to the root blog ie. the original WordPress.com URL for the blog.
Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org means purchasing domain mapping or an offsite redirect, so readers will seamlessly transferred between the URLs. Because when you purchase a domain name and move your content from WordPress.com to WordPress.org a new URL all the old links will be broken and visitors will experience a 404 (page not found) if you don’t.
If you are moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org then WordPress.com offers a guided transfer service where they set up your new site and move everything over for you. If you prefer a do it yourself move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org you can use this comprehensive Setting up a self-hosted WordPress.org install guide and Moving Your Blog from WordPress.Com to WordPress.Org: Resources and Tips
Matt Cutts via Buzz:
Let’s do another pass at the question “How does Google treat sites where all external links are no-follow?”
The short answer is that we don’t treat those sites any differently in our rankings, but it’s still not a good idea to do that, in my opinion. Here’s why. When Google sees a nofollow link we drop that link from the link graph we use in our web crawl: we don’t use that link to discover new web pages, and we don’t use the anchor text from that link in our scoring. … We changed the math several years ago so that if a link is nofollowed, that PageRank doesn’t go out on the other links instead [no sculpting]. — Read more
Related post found in this blog:
Links: No-Follow and Do-Follow
Matt Cutts tells SEOs ‘no more’ sculpting via nofollow
Say NO to Black Hat SEO
What is a content farm and what does it do? ” … create a ton of niche, mostly uninspired content targeted to search engines, then make it viral through social software and make lots of money through ads. In December 2009 Richard MacManus published Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried. That article and his earlier ones struck a chord with me as I had been witnessing low-quality content in search results.
Well , the good news is that Google has announced an algorithm change that commences in the U.S. only to start and then will roll it out out from there. I’m encouraged by this turn of events and think my readers will be too.
matts cutts tweet
Google says this change isn’t a result of feedback gained from last week’s launch of the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, but also says the algorithmic change addresses 84% the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension. They have been working on this for some time now.
This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. – Finding more high-quality sites in search
Below are some early responses:
Danny Sullivan:
While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January. – Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update
Michael Arrington:
What are those sites? Google isn’t saying. But the changes are designed to weed out low-value content, they say, such as content copied from other websites or non-useful content. That means sites like Demand Media, Associated Content and Mahalo are likely on the list. In a couple of months traffic data to those sites will likely confirm that they were impacted. – Google Targets Content Farms With Major Search Algorithm Tweaks
Understanding backlinks is an important part of blogging. Links add valuable content to your site and the best linking building strategy is to get a lot of unpaid relevant non-reciprocal links (or one-way links) to your site from high ranking and popular sites. When your site receives a lot of quality non-reciprocal links, the search engines consider your website and the web pages that receive these inbound quality links as containing highly valuable web content.
In Natural Linking Strategy for Bloggers I made my readers aware that Google is favoring blogs with natural linking patterns and penalizing over-optimized blogs. The most important factor contributing to your Google ranking, is reader-friendliness, and naturally acquired organic links are the best kind of links because they indicate that real people are showing an interest in your content.
Google is warning and penalizing websites for excessive link exchanging, link selling, cloaking and other link schemes. Examples of link schemes can include:
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links on [domain]!
We’ve detected that some or all of your pages are using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which are available here.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. For more information about our linking guidelines, visit this page.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en to submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
Matt Cutts, a member of the Search Quality Group at Google has confirmed that Google is now penalizing sites who are selling links in a comment he posted on Webmasterworld. Click through to read Mark Maunder’s advice regarding exchanging links Issue #54 of The Weekly Feed.
