Google Plus One +1 Button is in Full Effect
By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the Google Plus One Button. It’s been around for awhile, and there’s actually a few sites adding it to their list of other social media buttons.
But today is the very first time I’ve seen the Google +1 showing up next to the websites in the search results. Which must mean it’s finally in full effect and maybe we internet marketers should be taking it a little bit more seriously.
Google Plus One Video
Many people, including myself, first heard about the +1 button from Google awhile ago and really didn’t think it would catch on. Isn’t it just another Facebook Like button? Yeah, that’s really going to catch on, so we thought.
Why Should You Care About the Google Plus +1 Button?
I think Google really has something here. Think about it, Google is the King of the search engines and will be for a very long time. They are doing what Facebook is trying to do, currently. FB wants to turn into the next biggest search engine, but having social media affect the way we do our searches.
Example: Let’s say you’re searching for diners on Facebook, then the results will appear with your friends recommendations about the diners they like.
The Google Plus one button is a way for you to recommend a site and let others know it’s worth checking out. Your contacts and others will be able to see the Google +1 results and recommendations when they go to a web page, a website, and even when they do a Google search. But you will need to be logged into your Google profile to +1 a site that you see in the search results.
It’s really a great way to help filter the quality sites from the crappy sites. But scary for those of us marketers who are creating the crappy sites. Hmmmm… Even I might have a few of those laying around.
I don’t think good search rankings will be good enough anymore, you’ll need a site that’s actually beneficial that people want to recommend.
Anytime someone uses the Google Plus one button on your site, others will be able to see the results, which will also help your site to standout from the one’s that aren’t getting recommended. And rumors have it, that the more +1′s a site gets, may also have an SEO effect on it and help bump it’s rankings in the Google search results.
Google Plus One Button Code
It’s really easy to install on any website or blog, and the best location for it is of course near your other social media buttons. Though, I’ve seen many people add it to the bottom and even the top of their web pages too.
Just go here to get the Google Plus one code and complete directions on how to install it.
The Google Plus one is still fairly new and I think will really affect the way people do online searches with Google. The earlier you get in on this, the better. I’ll be installing this new button on all of my sites right away.
What do you think about the Google Plus one button?
Lose Search Rankings by Adding Content on Already Published Posts
Lately I’ve been noticing my rankings in the search engines dropping quite a bit. It’s not for all my blog posts, it’s just happening to the posts that I add content to after I already published them. I sometimes want to improve my posts by adding or removing things once I’ve published them, especially on my money pages. Never before have my blogs ever been penalized by Google by doing this, but ever since the latest (Major) Google Algorithm update, I’ve taken some big hits.
One of the first ways I learned to make some pretty easy money online was to be the first one to jump on board on any new affiliate offers. So a new product, service etc… is released, then just be one of the first to blog about it or even create a mini site about it. If you do this, then you”ll have a really good chance of being the first site that appears whenever someone types in the search engines for that particular new product or service.
Here’s what’s going on now. Any of my posts that I add content to or change up after the post is already published are disappearing in the Google serp’s altogether. So, any of my money posts that I made any changes to have all disappeared in the search engines. Yes, the pages were indexed and no, my blogs weren’t being sand-boxed. Also, I didn’t change the URL’s or the title tags, just some of the content.
This only happened to my posts that I was changing after they were already published, and I only noticed this ever since the latest Google Algorithm update.
-Moral of the story. If you write money posts on brand new affiliate offers, then you might want to reconsider making any changes to them once you’ve published them until after a few weeks have passed. And you’ve made some money and your rankings have fallen anyways, just to be on the safe side. Or maybe, this was just all coincidence and only happening to me. All I know I lost a lot of income because I changed up just about every money page on a couple of my blogs right before the last Google algorithm update, and I lost all traffic to those pages from the search engines. Ouch! You live and you learn.
Google PageRank Update January 2011, Official – Yippee!
What a great way to wake up this morning to a long awaited official Google Page Rank Update for 2011. Talk about a sigh of relief, we’ve been waiting a long time for this one. The last official PR update was in April of 2010. I believe we’ve had several small updates quarterly since then. At least that’s what I read in the Google support forums.
With so many rumors going around about Google getting rid of Page rank altogether, I was starting to believe it myself and was getting a little stressed. Since I want to start relying more on organic free traffic, mostly from Google, rather than paid traffic methods. But as soon as they just recently updated the Google toolbar, I sensed something was about to happen.
Some of my newer sites jumped in Pagerank pretty nicely and this blog, www.mathewday.com has gone up to a PR3. Still aiming for the PR5 or higher, but I’ll take it. At least it’s increasing not decreasing. You definitely don’t want to see it going down.
Many people say, you shouldn’t worry about pagerank and it really means nothing. But I believe differently. The higher your page rank means Google trusts your site and it’s seen as a higher level of importance. If your PR is going down, then that means you’re probably not doing something right and or losing backlinks. I don’t get obsessed with PR (ok, maybe sometimes) but I try to just stay focused on my seo efforts.
How about you? Did you see any changes to your sites Google pagerank? Share your thoughts on the latest PR update.
Location & Placement Affects the Power of a Backlink
Backlinks may play the most important role in SEO, other than killer content. If you want to be found whenever someone looks up something in the search engines, then you need to get backlinks to your sites and blogs. However, I’ve found that the placement and location of the back-links can make a HUGE difference. I’m talking about whether you’re link is located in the footer, sidebar, comments, or in the content.
If you didn’t know already, then you probably can guess that a link that’s in the content is more powerful and will give you much more link juice than any other type of backlink. Why is that?
Let’s talk about one particular search engine, Google, the Big Daddy of all the search engines. If you look deeper into the Google Algorithm, then you will learn that Google likes links that are in place to help the reader. So relevant contextual links that serve as a reference and source to the content, makes Google happy. Also, it’s believed that content surrounding a link helps the search engine spiders know what the link it’s following is about, which makes it a more relevant backlink.
That’s not all, many pro seo’s say search engine spiders crawl and break up the page in different sections of importance. For instance, the header and content are the most important parts of the page, with the sidebar and footer being at the bottom of importance. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, what part of the site plays the biggest part on what keywords you show up for in the serp’s? The title tags and your keywords in the content, right?
Of course not everything is so black and white when it comes to SEO and the search engine algorithms. But from what I’ve researched and experimented on my own, the importance of backlinks depending where they are located on a site really does seem to make a huge difference.
Here’s my experience with link placement
Back in the day I tried a few things out and plus I was ignorant, so I did whatever the heck the experts told me to do. I was told to do a lot of blog commenting and link exchanges with relevant blogs to get more back links to my site. I had acquired numerous backlinks from many of the top blogs for my niche in the top commentators section, usually located on their sidebar or footer. I also left a lot of blog comments on dofollow blogs. Not only that, I managed to get placed on several blog rolls with decent Pagerank with a one way link back to my site. I really didn’t notice any changes after several months. I didn’t gain any pagerank either. After awhile longer many of these links were taken down. I figured I would lose pagerank or positions in the serp’s from losing these backlinks, guess what happened? Squat, I lost no placement or pagerank and nothing really happened. Some of these links I had were on PR 5 or better sites and of course all the links I acquired were all dofollow.
Then, I started to do more article marketing, getting backlinks from guest posts and only worked on getting contextual links. Sometimes I could almost see my sites or pages moving in the serp’s the very next day for the anchor text I was using. It sometimes only takes a few good backlinks in the middle of the content from a trusted site to give you page rank and move you in the search engine results pages. Try it out for yourself.
What’s the best way of getting contextual links or backlinks in the content?
Article marketing is a good way, but the best way is writing valuable content on your site so others will link to you. But if you’re not the best writer or want to speed things up, then you can do guest posting. Which basically is the same thing as someone linking to you in their content. However, not all of us have the time or skills to write guest posts, so the other alternative is to hire someone to do that for you.
I want to add, getting back links on blog rolls, from blog commenting and link exchanges may help your site out. And of course, each site will give different amounts of link juice than others. Back when I was purposely trying to get these type of back links they really didn’t do much for my sites. Do some experimenting on your own and see what gives you the best results. But I guarantee you’ll eventually see that links in the content are the most powerful backlinks of all.
Too Early for Another Google Page Rank Update
No, the title is not some weak link bait strategy. I had woken up early this morning, O.K. this afternoon, and was checking a few stats and so forth. I had noticed I was getting search engine traffic from Google to some of my older posts that aren’t even indexed. I was thinking to myself, that’s strange since I haven’t been doing any backlinking to any of them lately.
So I start checking out some of these posts on my blog and I notice several of my posts that weren’t even indexed are now at least a PR 1. Then I start checking other newer posts and they are almost all indexed?? I really thought that Google just rolled another page rank update since yesterday. But it’s a month early. My blog’s homepage and my other sites didn’t change in PR. I also checked some of the authoritative sites that usually announce when we have a Google PR update but none of them were mentioning it.
If we didn’t just have another Google PageRank update, then it’s the first time I’ve ever had a webpage increase in PR without a update. I didn’t even know that could happen. I definitely ain’t complaining, I just was having one of those confused moments. If we didn’t just have a Google PR update then I must be doing something right, it’s about time. :)
Did anyone else notice any changes to their page rank?
Google Webmasters Tools – Sitemap Indexed URL Count Error?
I was doing one of my regular routines just a little while ago, which is to checkout my main blogs and websites with Google Webmasters tools, and I had noticed something that made me say “what the @#?!”
All of my sitemaps were showing I had O indexed url’s. I was in a panic and about to go into a deep depression (only kidding). This is one of the top 3 fears of webmasters, bloggers, internet marketers alike, is to have your site de-indexed by Google.
If you have a site deindexed by Google, all of your hard work you spent into your site is pretty much useless. You will lose all pagerank and slowly be taken out of all Google’s search engine results. It is really really hard to get back in good with the big G too. Usually this can happen if you don’t abide by Google’s policies or algorithms.
So I started checking my sites indexed pages and everything was the same. All of them still had their Page rank and all of my pages that were indexed, still were. I started doing some Googling and reading. I really didn’t find much about deindexed sitemaps until finally I had seen other people were noticing the same thing and questioning this on the Google support forum.
I was totally relieved to see others were experiencing the same thing. I couldn’t think of any reasons for Google to de-index my sites. If you are like me, I can’t let something go until I learn myself on how and why something works or happens.
Anyways, it all ended up being a Google sitemap indexed URL count error…..
I had found this post below on their webmaster forum blog http://webmaster-forum-announcements.blogspot.com/2010/04/known-issue-sitemaps-indexed-url-count.html
You can all breathe a sigh of relief if this happened to you. It’s probably just an error which was showing 0 indexed url’s for your site and Google is on top of it and in fact already resolved it. I actually already checked my Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and everything is back to normal before I even got to publish this post. Talk about panic attack in the middle of my day, but it’s good to know Big G was on top of it and already resolved it. I’m so glad it was a little error on Google’s part and not on my part.
