GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 12 - April 2010

In fact, depending on how you choose to read into it, Google’s Matt Cutts himself has said that Google does look at some of the elements that Google Analytics and WebmasterCentralToolsprovide inorder to rank a sitemore accurately. Things like clickthroughratesand timeonsite.Google has also stated recently that load timewill becomeamore important ranking factor. SoIguess thenext reasonablequestion is, if they admit tousing the information for positive rankingconsiderations,what’s to say they aren’t using it for negative rank- ing considerations? We all have our theories but I person- ally believe that 99.9 percent of anything Google would use this information for is automated and unless you are doing things you shouldn’t be doing, you will not throwupany red flags toprompt fur- ther investigationbyahumaneditor. With that addressed, let’s take a look at their tools andwhatweuse them for. HealthChecks Robots.txt – these tell ALL the bots where to go andwhere not to go if you have admin or member files you don’t want indexed. XML Sitemaps – these (and I make in- dividual ones for data files, pic files, pdf files, doc files, etc.) tell the bots the files you do want indexed and where they are. Internal Links – these let you know if you are cross-linked, which may con- fuse thebots or split influencebetween two similarpages. External Links – these tell you who is linked to you. Helpful in optimizing anchor text and bad links pointing to nonexistent pages. Crawl Errors – these advise you of any crawl errors Google finds, such as broken links or orphaned links. Note: I have seen in some cases aWeb site that has reformatted URLs or has been rebuilt and neglected or missed using 301 redirects, andusing this tool have found hundreds of links pointing nowhere (404 error pages). Once this issuewasaddressed, thesitegained the value of these links and subsequently better rankings. ► ► ► ► ► Top Queries – these show the top queries to your site, which allows you to improve specific landing pages for quick wins or target terms that have good existing rankings so that you can build new silos or pages to further en- hancepositions and traffic. Associate Domains – An extremely easyquickwin if youhaveWMC set-up (this takes five minutes). Go to WMC and choosewhich domain youwant as your primary (www or http). The ben- efit of this is that currentlyGoogle sees eachas individualpages.Links thatyou have pointed at your URL may have both, andyouare losing the full benefit of your back links. You can accomplish this with a 301 but if you don’t know coding this is just as effective. Geotargeting – I’m going to cover this in greater detail in number 6 because it’sactuallyahuge change in the last 12 months for anyone outside the States and can be a fantastic advantage to a site with a global market, but for now I’ll justexplainwhat itdoes.Geographi- cal targeting (selection) inWMCallows you to target a specific region. So if you want to targetEngland, justWestYork- shire, or just Leeds itself, geographical targeting allows you to do just that. Be careful not to over-filter your target market region as this setting may or may not affect your rankings. Test it out before integrating it permanently. ► ► ► 6 Geographical Targeting & Subdomains – (Advanced Geotargeting) – This isn’t for the faint of heart, the lazy orWeb site owners who aren’t ready to do the extra work toget theirpieceof thepie. Using Geotargeting for Language andRegionalTargeting The various ways that people search and the results the searchenginesaredeliver- ing are evolving rapidly. Smarter queries andmore complex algorithmsmean that you need to use various techniques to be sure you are showing up in the results. Local search, advanced search, regional search and language-based searches are someof the filtersanend-userorasearch enginecanuse indeterminingwho shows up, when they show up and where they showup. Geotargeting is one tool Google has re- finedandone thatyoucanmanipulate toa point inorder to increasesaturation inany market. Beyond the obvious on-page con- siderations, different searcheswill deliver (inmost cases) adifferent set of results. The results can differ greatly de- pendingonseveral considerations: The IPof theend-user The server locationof theWeb site Any geographically targeted settings in WebmasterCentral 1. 2. 3. Geotargeting isn’tforthe faintofheart,thelazyor Websiteownerswhoaren’t readytodotheextrawork togettheirpieceofthepie. 40 12 Top Secret SEO Tips