You do not pay to get into search engines, and you don’t necessarily need to even submit your site to them, but you do need to know their ‘rules’ – especially rules lay down by Google.

Note; these rules for inclusion can and do change. These rules are official advice from Google to Webmasters, and Google is really cracking down on ‘low-quality’ techniques that influence their rankings in 2016. Continue reading →

At one time A Google-Friendly website meant a website built so Googlebot could scrape it correctly and rank it accordingly.

When I think ‘Google friendly’ these days – I think a website Google will rank top, if popular and accessible enough, and won’t drop like a f*&^ing stone for no apparent reason one day, even though I followed the Google SEO starter guide to the letter….. just because Google has found something it doesn’t like – or has classified my site as undesirable one day. Continue reading →

Google has announced they intend to target doorway pages in the next big update. The definition of what a doorway page is sure to evolve over the coming years – and this will start again, soon.

The last time Google announced they were going after doorway pages and doorway sites was back in 2015. Continue reading →

Quote:

If A Page Exists Only To Make Money, The Page Is Spam GOOGLE

In BOTH leaked quality rater guidelines we’ve seen for Google quality raters this statement is pretty standout – and should be a heads up to any webmaster out there who thinks they are going to make a fast buck from Google organic listings these days. Continue reading →

What Makes A Page Spam?

What makes a page spam?: Continue reading →

Beware Pseudoscience 

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice posing as science, but which does not constitute or adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology…

Beware folk trying to bamboozle you with science. This isn’t a science when Google controls the ‘laws’ and changes them at will. Continue reading →

A primary goal of any ‘rank modification’ is not to flag your site as ‘suspicious’ to Google’s algorithms or their web spam team.

I would recommend you forget about tricks like links in H1 tags etc. or linking to the same page 3 times with different anchor text on one page. Continue reading →

Google has a VERY basic organic search engine optimisation starter guide pdf for webmasters, which they use internally:

Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content. Google

It is still worth a read, even if it is VERY basic, best practice search engine optimisation for your site. Continue reading →

Here are some final thoughts: Continue reading →

‘Site Speed’, we are told by Google in the above video, is a ranking factor. But as with any factor Google confirms is a ranking signal, it’s usually a small, ‘nuanced’ one.

A fast site is a good user experience (UX), and a satisfying UX leads to higher conversions.

How fast your website loads is a critical – but often completely ignored – element in any online business – and that includes search marketing and search engine optimisation. Continue reading →