Is Google Page Rank Still Relevant?

It's 2013 and a lot has changed in the world of search engine optimization. After all of these years, is Page Rank still relevant? I remember when Google and Matt Cutts would update everyone with Page Rank updates and news every three months. Now they update it whenever they feel like it. So is it still relevant when it comes to search engine optimization, or relevant at all?

For a while webmasters would track their Page Rank religiously and use it as a factor in selling their websites thinking it gave their websites more value, which until a couple of years ago it did. Google would update Google Page Rank every three months and people would talk about it, create blog posts about it, etc. It was important and you bet it was relevant. But is it still relevant?

As time went on Google Page Rank was less talked about and it holds less importance than it did, say, five years ago or even two years ago. Maybe people finally realized that Page Rank was only one of hundreds of factors that determined your search engine rank.

Some people confuse Google Page Rank as being a metric, but it is actually an algorithm. Page Rank cannot be measures with confidence so it can't serve as a metric. Understanding this and how it works can be useful to webmasters.

Due to the heavy increase in the use of social media, Google had to find a way to factor social media into its algorithm. Although it is not clear how Google factored this in it's clear that they have and social media does influence a website's rank. Whether social media affects a website's Page Rank is still uncertain.

Page Rank helps deliver more relevant results in the search engine. But is Page Rank still relevant? If Page Rank is still relevant then what should webmasters do about that? Will be continue to build and develop our websites around link building to increase our Page Rank? Or will we ignore Page Rank like Google has for the past couple of years?

I personally think that we still need to focus on creating unique content that will entice our visitors to link back to it, therefore creating natural backlinks and increasing our rank in the search engines while increasing our Page Rank. But that may just be the search engine optimizer in me. Page Rank can be manipulated like Alexa can and right now Page Rank holds the same amount of importance as Alexa does (to me).

What do you guys think? Do you think that Google Page Rank is still relevant?

Hurting Your SEO With Social Media

If you're an avid reader of this blog, SEO Blog, you have probably read the article I wrote on how social media can help your search engine optimization efforts. But I'm here to tell you the down side of social media when it comes to search engine optimization as well.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. are all parts of social media. A lot of big(and small) companies(and websites) use social media to keep their visitors up to date on what is going on with their company. Everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon and attempting to promote their websites on them. What some, if not most or all, of these webmasters do not realize is that their promoting on social media websites may be harming their website's search engine optimization efforts.

Social media can be fun to use but it was not made for the promotion of websites, it was made for keeping in touch with family and friends. Promoting over social media outlets can be difficult due to this. But because of the simplicity of and the easy to use platform of social media it can sometimes appear that everyone with a Facebook or social media profile is a professional marketer.

It becomes a reputation managemenet problem when social media lead to unfavorable search results. A search engine optimization specialist may even need to be called in to save you from the damage negative comments on social media websites have caused your brand and website to receive, especially in the search engine results. These negative comments that are so easy for you to receive if you have a social media profile for your website is one of the main things that hurts your search engine optimization efforts. It makes it difficult for people to see your website and brand as authorative, serious and even clean.

There are plus sides to marketing through social media websites though. Social media may help search engine optimization through citations and link construction. Each reference to your website without a link, in addition to each link, all goes through a search engine's algorithm and computation resulting in a higher position in search results. Although a link will help you more, a simple reference to your website also helps because of the relevancy, trust and authority. Social media backlinks do count toward your website's search engine optimization efforts and helps generate a bigger buzz about your website.

Make sure your social media efforts are targeted and relevant. This is very important to your search engine optimization efforts. Make sure not to "Like" or "Comment" on unrelated pages or topics while using your website page or profile. Being linked to irrelevant things may hurt your search engine optimization efforts.

Just like typical search engine optimization, a plan is necessary when it comes to social media search engine optimization. You must research keywords, competition, etc. Concentrate on relevancy and social media will assist in your search engine optimization efforts. Don't and it will hurt your search engine optimization efforts.

Top AdSense Alternatives

AdSense is an advertising placement service owned and operated by Google that allows you to run ads on your website and earn revenue from your traffic. They are the leading PPC(paid per click) network on the web but they are extremely strict and are quick to ban a website for breaching their terms of service. The slightest thing could get you banned. Luckily, the Google AdSense network is not the only Pay Per Click program in town. That's where the AdSense alternatives come in.

There are many alternatives to Google AdSense and I am going to go over the most popular ones.

AdBrite was a great alternative to AdSense. AdBrite use to be the number one alternative, at least in my eyes, but as of February 1st, 2013, AdBrite shut its doors due to a business deal that fell through. This would have been one of the only ones that I suggested but I guess I'm going to have to be unbiased here and suggest some other companies that will also do the trick.

Another program that I would suggest would be Bidvertiser. Although they are a little smaller and their ads aren't as flexible as AdSense ads, the rates are pretty good. Plus, you can cash out through PayPal! This is a hard thing to find with Pay-Per-Click programs such as AdSense.

Chitika is also a great alternative to AdSense. If a visitor used a search engine to find your website, Chitika will deliver them ads based on the search terms they used. That is a big plus of the network. But there is a downside. This network is more for websites with a lot of traffic. I recommend using them only if you get a lot of traffic and if you sell stuff from your website. It's kind of like being an Amazon affiliate so Chitika is best used with a specific type of audience.

Clicksor would be another way to go. Clicksor has been around for a while. Their ads are pretty nicely displayed and they look a lot like AdSense ads so it's pretty high quality. They offer quick approval of ads and have a great support team behind them if you run into any trouble or have some questions regarding their program. Their rates are also decent.

InfoLinks seems like another great AdSense alternative. Although I haven't tried this program myself, I have ran into a lot of people that have and they all seem to love it.

Now if you have an adult related website then you can try AdultSense. It's an excellent "xxx" Pay Per Click program that is the adult rival of Google AdSense. AdultSense's rates are great and the ads, although all extremely adult oriented, are of high quality.

There are many alternatives to Google AdSense but the above Pay Per Click programs are the best ones in my eyes, and a lot of other webmasters. But if you feel different and would like me to add any other Pay Per Click programs to my little list here, please feel free to use the Contact Page above and email me them.

How Social Media Helps SEO

Most people do not realize the impact that social media has on search engine optimization. We often see websites with links to social media profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter, only to find that the links lead to inactive profiles and pages. But there are also a lot of websites out there who have learned to utilize social media properly. I will explain to you how to do it properly.

The first step is to create or acquire unique content that is fresh. Webmasters need to create new and fresh content all the time. This content can be anything from website updates, website news, press releases, relevant trends and video presentations to similar blogs, relevant industry news, website promotions and more. Just keep the content coming as content is what gives Google and other search engines more to index, even through social networking.

The second step is to post this content, or excerpts of it, on your social media profiles. When you do this do not forget to provide links to the original content, these links should lead to your website. Providing these links and content will help begin the process of organically building backlinks to your website through your presence on social media websites by encouraging and enticing your visitors to link back to your content, the original article on your website, from their own websites. Remember that the more links back to your website, the greater your search engine rank will be. Your status updates and posts should be the same across all of your social media profiles, but the way that you present them may be different. Although posting on Facebook may differ from the way you post on Twitter, both posts should contain the same information and lead back to the same content.

The third step to succeeding with social media is to set up a queue of content to post. Write or acquire a bunch of articles to post but do not actually post them all at once. Keep them as a back up and have them ready to go when you have nothing else to post or you just need something to post in a hurry.

When people read what you have posted on your social media profiles they will begin to "Like" your posts, "Share" your posts, "Comment" on your posts, "email" your posts, etc. Soon you will see that the sharing your visitors have done has lead to your website gaining "fans" and "followers" who are not only keeping up to date with your website and are talking about your website, but who are also linking back to your website and are continuing to share content from your website.

The result of all of this? More people will visit your website from natural search results and the amount of your organic traffic increases through the roof. This makes your website way more legitimate than what it use to be, or what it would have been without the help of social media.

It does not matter what kind of website you run or the niche your website falls under, getting followers and shares is no problem for any website when the content is fresh and the webmaster running it knows what they are doing and is being consistent.

As webmasters we always try to spread the word about our websites but the viral nature of social media is unprecedented in anything we have used before to spread the word. Using social media will drive people who are interested in your website's topic back to your website and will have a dramatic impact on your overall search engine optimization efforts without spending a lot of money, or any money at all. All it will take is a little but of time and effort.

SEO In 2013

Optimizing your websites for the search engines in 2013 will take a little bit more effort than it did before, even back in 2012. Google's Penguin update directly affected websites and webmasters that used black hat methods to get a better rank, or a rank at all, in the search engines. If you are a good webmaster and you take your websites seriously, this new update should not affect you. Still, I'm going to show you more ways to avoid being taken out of the search engines and ways to give you a better rank. These tactics will make Google see your website as an authoritative website.

Search engine optimization is continuing to evolve in all sorts of ways. Last year, 2012, was one of the most significant years in search engine optimization history. The way that search engine optimization is conducted was altered by a multitude of search engine algorithm updates.

The way search engine optimization is in 2013 is similar to search engine optimization in 2012, but we can already see important changes. Basic search engine optimization tactics no longer apply. Practicing basic search engine optimization tactics such as optimizing content are not only out of date, but they may also hurt your search engine rank.

Still, finding success in search engine optimization comes down to the one thing it always did; content. Your content, not unlike before, must be of high quality and must be relevant. Optimize for your visitors first then for the search engines if you ever want to find success in search engine optimization. Content needs to be your focus as far as search engine optimization goes in 2013.

In 2012 Google released its Google Penguin update. This knocked out thousands upon thousands of low quality websites from search engine results. Your website will not be affected if you provide quality content on your websites. Your website needs to add value, not just content that you created for search engine optimization purposes.

Besides content, you need to continue to build backlinks to your website. Unlike before though, you need to stay away from things like link exchanges. You can continue to do them but I only recommend doing them for traffic purposes. This means that you need to avoid doing link exchanges with websites that offer dofollow links. Even though Google and search engines look at both the amount of links a website has and the quality of links the website has, never forget that it is always going to be "quality over quantity". Gaining ten high quality backlinks to your website will be more valuable to you than gaining one hundred low quality backlinks to your website. The more high quality links you have, the better your visibility in the search engines will be.

All in all, search engine optimization hasn't changed much in 2013 but you do need to focus your attention on the little things you didn't before. Don't concentrate only on search engine optimization though. Make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices as well, make sure your website is crawlable by the search engine robots, and make sure your website is technically sound.

How To Optimize Your Site For Google Penguin

Google updates their algorithm often and sometimes it may be hard to keep up with it. Their latest update is called Google Penguin. People are saying that with this recent Google update, search will now become more interactive. Just like all of their other updates pertaining to their search engine, Google Penguin's purpose it to weed out all of the spam-like pages from results in Google.com. Google Penguin will help make it so you actually get what you're searching for. It seems like Google is trying to send a message and wants everyone to learn the basics of search engine optimization. This is one of the best parts of Google Penguin. It will help you learn more about search engine optimization, not only the basics, and that will end up helping you and your websites and your future success.

A lot of time is spent learning search engine optimization because search engine optimization is always changing. But one thing will always remain the same; Content is king. Google takes preference to the websites that produce unique content and they will try to rank you higher than the websites that are playing the system( and their robots). Google encourages you to write content that is one hundred percent unique and is grammatically correct. The easier your content is to understand, the more your visitors will interact, the better your rankings will be in the search engines.

When it comes to ranking your website higher, organization also plays a key role. Putting Alt Tags to use so Google can find you will help you that much more.

Still focus on building backlinks to your website but ignore the old link building strategies link link exchanges and link wheels. Concentrate on building good backlinks to your site. This may take more time and effort but it will only help you in the long run. This will protect you against the Penguin!

Many webmasters saw Google Penguin as a bad thing and even referred to it as the internet's "Great Depression". These were most likely the webmasters who took part in greyhat or blackhat activities in order to boost their rank in the search engines. But if you practice white hat search engine optimization you and your site will not be affected(at least not in a bad way). Remember, Google Penguin is there to remove spam websites from search results in order to help legitimate websites have a bigger presence in Google's search engine.

Staying away from blackhat techniques is no longer enough. What you need to remember in order to optimize your website for Google Penguin is that you need to make sure that your website conforms to the highest standards possible when it comes to the Google search engine.

Let me do a quick breakdown of what you need to do.

-Remove any and all broken or spammy links.
-Write original content.
-Be grammatically correct.
-Avoid blackhat activity, even just the illusion of blackhat activity(discussion).

Good luck with optimizing your website!