Seems like a Google PR update is going on, but this one is mainly targeting sites that are obviously selling keyword rich links, there are some major sites seeing a big drop in their PR, I’ve noticed it this morning when visiting Tyler’s blog and saw that it dropped to PR3 from PR5, this is happening to lots of other websites such as:

• http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 -> PR4
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 -> PR4

And many more, looks like Google is serious about stopping websites from selling links and they are definitly generating the kind of buzz after this update that would stop allot of websites from selling links, at least the big ones that are easily noticed for selling links, problogger.net and Johnchow.com also saw a PR decrease.

There is a thread on DigitalPoint discussing this new PR update,  allot of websites are seeing the effect while others haven’t been effected yet, the PR update is still going on so stay on look out.

In an earlier post I mentioned that Danny Sullivan confirmed that selling links may harm your PR, which apparently he was right about, so we shouldn’t be too surprised about this.

[tags]PR update, pagerank update, Google PR update[/tags]

Well its confirmed now, Danny Sullivan confirmed the news, some high PR websites have seen a PR drop  after selling links on their pages, however this has’t effected the rankings of the website, but in the case of text-link-ads their website was de-indexed!

High PR sites such as The Stanford Daily  which has a PR9 and dropped to a PR8 have been clearly selling links, Google says those checks are made manually to make sure the website is selling links, this is good news, since most probably they will be checking high PR sites, but if you want to play it safe with Google, you better not sell links, I guess i’ll be removing the text-link-ads box on my blog this month, I am glad that I haven’t relied on selling links and that I am currently concentrating on CPM ads.

Talking of CPM ads reminds me to finish the post that I’ve had in my drafts for almost  a week now about the different monetization methods you can use for your sites, hopefully I’ll be posting it on the next couple of days.

[tags]text links, CPM ads, high PR sites[/tags]

I noticed changes in my toolbar today while I was checking up on my sites, PR update has finally started, I see changes in 6 of Google’s DC’s so were still in the beginning, lets hope for the best, from the looks of it, my main sites got a PR increase however some of the old sites didn’t, which is expected!

I’ll post a full list of the changes once the PR update settles down.

Google loves blogs, especially WordPress, and while i love WordPress, there are certain things that are needed to optimize your WordPress blog (which i need to start applying as well) well I am really not looking to rank my website for any certain keyword as you can see from my title, thats probably why your probably going to see some of things that I advise you to do not being done here, but dont get confused, i still do them on my other blogs that I do want to rank well on!

The biggest issue with WordPress blogs is the duplicate content that Wordpess’s structure has, duplicate content as you know might lead to a penalty from Google, so, here are some tips that you can apply to your WordPress blog, or for any other blog for that matter than has the same issues.

1- Block out the archives from robots.txt, blogs as you know have archives, and while those archives are useful for your readers, they could be damaging to your rankings since each single post you make has an exact copy of it in those archives, doing this is very simple and can be achieved using 2 lines of code:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /archives/

This is of course, if your archives folder is one level deeper than your root directory.

2- Use a WordPress theme that only displays the 1st paragraph (or couple of lines) on your blogs index, and followed by a more link to the full story, in the case of my blog, the whole post is available on the index page, and a complete copy of the post is included in its own url, which is exactly what duplicate content filters is made for!

3- Select the most appropriate category for your post, so you should always have each post in only one category, much like this post which is included in the SEO category only, having it in multiple categories creates different urls for the exact same post.

And since were in the topic of WordPress blogs, my good friend Charl started a new blog featuring only the highest quality free WordPress themes, I found some interesting themes over there, this theme being one of them.

If your interested in learning more tricks about robots.txt and how you can use it to block certain areas of your website that you know has duplicate content, or if your looking for more information about it in general, check out Webmasterworld’s robots.txt forum.

MyBlogLog

I added Mybloglog block a couple of days ago, what do you think? I think I am a bit late since most blogs I visit have added it a long time ago, my reader community is currently at 1! wohoo! get over there and add yourself!

Some of you have probably heard or read about the huge storm Matt’s recent posts specifically this one regarding paid links and the spam form he asked people to report websites selling links on.

This post has generated a huge controversy about whether will Google start looking at paid links as “spam”, the fact that Google’s engineers are thinking of penalizing sites selling links and the fact of asking webmasters to report paid links is a whole different story, and in my opinion, is a very bad idea for a number of reasons:

1. How can you really know if that link was bought? or was it placed because the owner likes the site? or has he placed it as a favor for a friend? how can you really know?
2. What kind of guarantees does Google have tat people reporting paid links are doing it our of the kindness of their heart? Cant anyone buy some links for his competitor’s and then report them? are they going to email sites selling links and tell them stop that? can they really interfere with the way a website does business in?
3. The market of selling links grew so quick only because of that little green bar which is usually the biggest reason people pay for links. Isn’t that Google’s invention?
4. Will networks like text-link-ads, PayPerPost and every other text link broker shut down because of this?
5. Google has clearly asked webmasters to build websites for the users not for the search engines, however, with these new rules, we need to tell the search engines which links are paid (using nofollow or javascript) and which links it should follow, what next? should we read the content of the website to the spider? if the algorithm can distinguish between paid links and links out of love, why should we do it for you? were basically shooting our selves in the foot! Which brings us back to point two, most people will be submitting links to bring their competitor’s down.

Below I highlight some of the replies from very well known individuals in the online marketing and SEO industries.

- Andy Beal from Marketing pilgrim wonders “What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?”

- Raj Dash from Search Engine Journal questions whether Google is aiming towards being a monopoly, he says “Google seems to be going after a monopoly on advertising, telling webmasters what they can or cannot have on their sites. Does anyone else now think it’s a conflict of interest that search engine as powerful as Google is monopolizing advertising?”

- Over at threadwatch “I can’t believe it is anything more than a publicity stunt and mind control exercise.”

- SEOClass has the following title for the post discussing this topic “Google Wants to Tell You How to Run Your Website”

Other posts to check out:

- Webpronews, 7 Reasons Google’s Paid Link Snitch Plan Sucks.

- Searchengineland, Paid Links Under Scrutiny By Google Again

- SEOblackhat, A Hearty Welcome to All the New Search Engine Spammers!

Marketing Pilgrim has announced their SEM Scholarship for 2007. This years prizes are awesome!

• A full conference pass to the Search Engine Strategies conference held in San Jose, this August.
• The winner’s article will be published in the industry print magazine, Search Marketing Standard.
• Enrollment in a “Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway” course at SearchEngineCollege.com
• One month of industry coaching and training from search marketing expert Andy Beal.
• One year of AdWatcher.com service (ad tracking and click fraud monitoring) and one year of AdScientist.com service (bid management).
• One year subscription to WebmasterWorld.com.
• One year premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
• A free web analytics account from CrazyEgg.com.
• A one year Bizwatch account from BizResearch.com.
• A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
• A copy of Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book.”
• A copy of Jennifer Laycock’s book, “Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing.”
• A copy of Andrew Goodman’s book, “Winning Results with Google AdWords.”
• A copy of Kim Krause Berg’s books “Please Ring Bell for Service” and “How to Quench Your Web Site Visitors’ Thirst.”
• A cash prize ($100) courtesy of Cre8asiteforums.com.
• Link-ninja sword (wooden), throwing stars (rubber), clock, t-shirt and $100 cash courtesy of WeBuildPages.com.
• More prizes to be announced.

The contest is simply an article writing contest, contestants submit their articles (400 to 1000 words) that may cover any topic in the SEO, PPC or SMO (Social Media Optimization) fields, the readers will decide the top 5 articles and then a panel of experts will decide which is the best article that deserves those prizes as well as the recognition. All articles must be sent on April 6, you can read the full details here.
I think I am going to give this a try, not sure what subject I’ll be writing about, do you have any suggestions? I am going to think about it this weekend and hopefully come up with an interesting idea to write about, writing the article itself is usually easy, its the unique idea that matters the most, as well as the useful info. that will benefit most of the readers that will make a difference when it comes to voting.

Alright, its time for another SEO post with some tips on how to get some traffic out of Google!

Inner Links!

Inner links are the links inside your pages, lots of us know how important it is to get links from other websites pointing to your website, but lots fail to remember or simply don’t know the importance of your inner linking structure, here are some tips you should know when building your website:

1. Link to your pages with one format only, meaning that you should link to your home page with http://www.domain.com only and never use different version of the link like http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com/index.html and so on. Same goes for all of your inner pages.
2. If you have an existing website, and you’ve already linked to other pages with different link formats, check what version of the link has the highest PR, if you http://domain.com has a higher PR, use that version in your links, and setup a 301 redirect from any other versions your using to the version with the highest PR, that way any PR value will be transfered to the highest PR page with the next PR update.
3. Use the keywords your targeting for each page as the link whenever you link to it from another page, allot of websites link to inner pages with click here, or more information, thats just a waste of value that you could be transferring to those inner pages.

Robots.txt

Some argue that robots.txt is no longer important, some search engines no longer use, but others still do, and it wont harm to add a robots.txt file and block spiders from indexing unwanted file, you can also block any archive folders from being indexed and risk the penalty of duplicate content, although according to this video on Webpronews Google no longer has a penalty on duplicate content, but others may still do.

A recent post on linkbuildingblog.com covered the topic of robots.txt in more detail, you can read it here.

Google PR update seems to be finally over, allot of people following those updates including me thought that it was over around a week ago, then I read an opinion on DP saying that the PR update will probably be over by the end of Jan. and it seems he was correct, my blog for example jumped back to a PR5, which I am very happy about.

This was indeed one of the strangest PR updates I’ve seen, usually  the new PR starts appearing in some of Google’s DC’s and takes time to propagate over all DC’s, however, with this update, website’s that were planned to get a new PR, whether it was an increase or decrease in the PR, dropped to a PR0, and stayed like that for a while, so lots of us thought that was it, which wasnt the case afterall.

So anyways, here is the result of this update on some of my major websites:

• sohaibthiab.com 4 –> 5
• thewebdir.org 2 –> 4
• funnyvideohub.com 0 –>3
• uploadq.com 0 –> 3
• smsit.org 3 –> 4
• proxyheat.com 0 –> 3
• freewebproxy.info 3 –> 4
• anonyproxi.com 0 –> 3
• wallpaperfreedom.com 0 –> 1

Another strange thing I noticed on some of the domains that their PR didnt increase, that some of the inner pages have a higher PR than the main page, I wont be surprised if we see more changes in the upcoming few days.

Your probably wondering what did Yahoo blow up, this was the title of an interesting article on wirednews that Rand linked to in his last post, I am going to post the same interesting findings from the article that Rand posted since it is the most interesting part of the article:

Semel has been Yahoo’s CEO for nearly six years, yet he has never acquired an intuitive sense of the company’s plumbing. He understands how to do deals and partnerships, he gets how to market Yahoo’s brand, and he knows how to tap Yahoo’s giant user base to sell brand advertising to corporations. But the challenges of integrating two giant computer systems or redesigning a database or redoing a user interface? Many who have met with him at Yahoo say he still doesn’t know the right questions to ask about technology. “Terry could never pound the table and say, ‘This is where we need to go, guys,’” one former Yahoo executive says. “On those subjects, he always had to have someone next to him explaining why it was important.” One could have made a convincing argument two years ago that such deep technical knowledge didn’t matter much. But now we have empirical evidence: At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price.

Rand from SEOMoz continues to mention interesting points in his post about why he thinks Google became a bigger brand than Yahoo:

• User interface
  Google’s clean UI was revolutionary and attractive; it’s still one of the elements consumers cite most about their use of the engine.
• Purity of function
  Google’s concentration on search (at least in the early years) made them first and foremost a search engine in people’s mind. Yahoo! was a directory, a portal, an email service, etc. and, oh yeah, also an engine.
• Appeal to Geeks
  Google appealed to tech geeks – the people who set the home pages on computers around corporate offices and at home for Grandma. When thousands of influencers in a field become obsessed with a product, it achieves mass popularity (just look at Apple).
• Viral spread
  Google’s marketing was nearly invisible at a time when invisible, viral marketing was being embraced by consumers, particularly those in the web world.
• Early quality advantage
  Perhaps no single factor is of greater import – Google’s early lead in quality was so large that switching to Google was an obvious choice. In my opinion, this was Yahoo!’s biggest failure – letting Google return more relevant results. The funny part – I honestly can’t say whether senior management was responsible for or could have controlled this factor. It could be that Google simply had a few people with better ideas and all the hiring and R&D in the world couldn’t have saved Yahoo!.
• Media obsession
  Being a media darling made Google incredibly well placed to get early interest from even the stodgiest of users. And, with no need to market or advertise (since press releases on the average consistency of Googlers snot got more coverage than a major media play from Yahoo!), Google could spend that money in R&D to continue their edge.

I can only say that I agree with Rand’s thoughts, Google did allot of correct steps towards creating the giant they are now, while Yahoo! did lots of big mistakes in my opinion.

Anyhow, all of you probably know that there was a Google PR update going last week, this update was particularly interesting to watch compared to other updates, 1st of all, it took longer than any of the previous updates took to happen, and the results were strange and it seems that i am not the only one that has the same thoughts, I did somewhat of a small experiment myself, i linked to a new site of mine from PR6 and PR7 pages only a month or so before the PR update, and the results came back just like I expected, no PR increase for that site at all, it seems that Google is now effectively denies a website any PR value unless the links your getting stay on those pages longer than a month (not sure of the time exactly)

I’ve been mainly working for the past 2 weeks on project F, its almost done now, needs a bit more work and it should be ready to launch, hopefully ill be able to share some good news about it in the coming week, the main developer I am using for the project was experiencing internet problems and this lead to a bit more delay, this sort of thing is expected when dealing with freelancers, I guess everyone using freelancers is used to this.

I know I haven’t been sharing lots of personal project news that I usually used to share and I apologize for that, I’ll do my best to write a post to sum up everything that has been going on for the past month as far as my websites are concerned.

btw shoemoney made a nice post about the wordpress plugins he usually uses, I’ve had the Akismet plugin added in my plugins folder but never installed it, its not installed and hopefully it will solve the blog spam issue I’ve been bombarded with for the past months.

Looks like Google Adwords decided to do something about PPC Arbitrage as well as promoting CPA offers on landing pages with no or little content, webmasters who setup pages with their affiliate links or with contextial ads without any content will most likely be paying more per click, shoemoney covered this topic well on his blog post here.

In short, you need to start masking your affiliate links, use your own redirect system, and put more content on your contextual ads pages.