Michael Doyle | Blog

SEO – Case Study: adobe.com

The first result for searching the term "click here" on Google is adobe.com. This seems strange when looking at the adobe web site. There is no mention of that term when looking through the adobe site (title, meta tags, description, etc.). So, on page optimizations is not having any affect, the fact that a huge amount of highly ranked trusted pages link to adobe for products (specifically adobe reader) is putting it at the top of the results.

Many of the sites linking to Adobe are using the terms "click" and "here" to send visitors to access Adobe content. A large majority of these sites have a high page rank.

So, the main point is that on page omptimization is important, but off page optimization is far more important.

SEO – Getting banned by Google

There are many ways to manipulate Google into seeing the relevance of your website. If doing so it is likely your site will get banned. Manipulation can be done on page and off page.

On Page

• Using hidden text
• Alt image spamming
• Unnecessary amount of meta tags
• Unnecessary amount of keywords in the page title

Off Page

• Using link farms
• Linking with Penalized websites

Linking with penalized websites can really be annoying. If you exchange links with a site with a PageRank of 6, great! But if that site starts trying to manipulate Google to increase it's PageRank (this is reffered to Black Hat SEO), Google will penalize it and remove it's PageRank. This will leave you exchanging links with bad sites, which Google will penalize you for also. It's a good idea to check up on the sites you are exchanging links with every so often.

SEO – Getting Listed on Google in under 24 Hours

People find it difficult to get their site indexed (discovered)  by Google quickly. Google has a facility to add your website to it's listings at http://www.google.com/addurl/. However, Google states that it may take between 4 to 6 weeks for your site to be placed into their index. 4 weeks is far too long to wait just for Google to recognise your site, and it makes it difficult and time consuming to get high in their search results quickly.

So, to get around this, search for a very broad keyword relating to your website. Go through all the results and pay attention to each site's PageRank, you should focus on sites with a PageRank of 5 or higher. Get in contact with these sites and ask them to place a link to your site on theirs. (I think this'll be easier said than done.) If you get one site with a PageRank of 5, you'll be indexed in 3 days. If the site has a PageRank of 6, you'll be indexed by Google within 24 hours.

Purchasing Text Links

You can purchase links from high PageRanked websites. Sites like textlinkbrokers and linkadage provide this service. You can purchase one PageRank 7 for about $150 for a month. Once the month is up, you don't have to renew as your site is now in Google's index. If you have any other older, high PageRanked sites, it's a good idea to place the link to your new site on your homepage. You can remove it after 2 or 3 days as it will be indexed by Google.

SEO – The First Steps

One of my main aims for my site, which I never paid attention to before,  is to get it to the top of the rankings in search engines. Search Engine Optimization is something that I have never paid much attention to, in the past few years, I just didn't have the time to dedicate to it. I'm looking more into it now. A good starting point it is:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page

I've noticed the term "michael doyle portfolio" is turning my site up in google within the first 5 results, which is good, but it's nowhere to be seen when just searching for the term "michael doyle". I have to pay good attention to other search engines, as google isn't the be all and end all in SEO, but it's a good place to start.

I have to look into how I can utilize my flickr, stumbleupon and last.fm accounts to see help my portfolio climb the rankings.