So has Google found your site yet?
Over the last 12 months Google has undergone many
changes to the way it looks at and lists your site.
This week sees another upgrade in Google.
As any search engine or member of the public will
tell you, Google or any other search engine MUST
provide the most relevant listings for a search query.
One of the major changes that Google is implementing
is that it will not display more than one AdWords listings
for the same company Domain Name. At present they also
try to have only one listing (with a secondary) per website
domain displayed in the top search results.
This affects mainly affiliated member sites.
This also affects companies that provide a member program.
Say if you were using Google AdWords and there are
5 members from your company paying to use AdWords
only one listing will be displayed and this will be the
highest bid for that keyword.
In another words the average Joe Marketer will have
to pay a high price to have his AdWord listing displayed.
For Google and for the Google search user this provides
a more defined search. There will not be 5 AdWords placed
for the same company or merchant as has been the case in
the past.
With 3 or 4 AdWords for the same company displayed,
allowed a person who paid a bid of 50 cents to be displayed
at the bottom of the list while someone who could afford to
pay five dollars for the same keyword to have his link at the
top of the page. You stood a chance when your AdWord
was displayed, now you have to have the highest bid at
that particular time.
BUT, this is not an insurmountable problem. This is where
owning your own Domain name and web site is a must.
At present many search engines only allow one plus a secondary
listing for any one domain to be displayed in their top page or
two of their search results.
NOTE:
There is no easy way around not owning your own domain.
Getting your affiliated member site listed in a search engine
is becoming almost impossible, especially when you consider
that there are tens and even hundreds of thousands of other
members belonging to the same company, promoting their
member site too.
This can and will affect many companies as they rely on
their members to promote the companies site though
pay per click – AdWords and standard search engine listing.
With odds of one hundred thousand to one you have better
odds of winning the lotteries.
Once marketers understand the concept of creating their
own website, one of the next hurdles they face is the content
for their site. What so often happens is that they do not consider
themselves as copy writers, so they copy the content from their
member site. I have seen this many times where marketers
websites are almost exact copies of their companies site.
The definition of a search engine is to provide the most relevant
search results for a specific search.
Google are only trying to live up to this definition. So as they
are only allowing one AdWord display listing for any one company
or domain, Google are also only allowing one page with the exact
same content to be displayed.
If your web page is a duplicate of your companies page, then
your page is very likely to receive a duplicate content penalty
with Google.
In other words if your site has been indexed by Google and
they find your page to be an exact copy of another page, it is
highly likely your page will receive the penalty and not the
company site.
Remember that the Google Bot’s are checking and indexing
around eight billion pages each month. It takes a very powerful
computer system to keep track of all those pages and the content
on those pages to return relevant searches. It doesn’t take to
much brain power to realize that as Google indexes a page it
can also compare your page with the thousands that fit into
your product, service or information category.
It is generally thought that for a 1st offense your page will be
removed from their index for 30 days then for the 2nd offense
for 60 days then for a 3rd offense your page will be removed
for 90 days. After the 3rd offence you can forget about Google.
But it gets worse, if your page contains duplicate content
and Google spots it, for the time your page is cooling off
for 30 days it affects the rest of your site as you will no doubt
have many links in the site map etc, to the banned page so this
can and does affect your whole sites ranking.
The news is not all bad as anyone who has the ability to consider
marketing any product and is prepared to attempt creating a web
site, also has the ability to reword and rewrite the content from
their company site.
Most other pay per click search engines or ones that accept paid
inclusion like Overture already use similar policies that Google
is now implementing.
There are exceptions to the duplicate rule like RSS News feeds,
Directories, ezine article Directories and sites like eBay and
Yahoo stores where these individual stores use the Yahoo
or eBay domain name.
Using good common sense, you should never have any problems
with Google or other search engines as you are promoting your
website as your own unique sales display.
Don’t get me wrong Google is my first choice in Search Engines.
Google offers many f`ree tools for web masters.
You can find some of tools listed here.
http://www.google.com/help/features.html
If you to Google.com search, you can check the links to your Website.
(incoming links). Where I have [http://www.internet-income-index] in the
search box, you would type in your website domain.
“+[http://www.internet-income-index.+com]
Now if I can get 151 links back to my site without submitting
it to search engines, think what you can do…
Most Internet Marketers average between 20 and 50 links
using the Google links tool.
My point is if you add one link to your website in a single
Internet directory, Google and other search engines will
find you and your site just by following the link you placed
in that one directory.
If you check issue 103 of this ezine dated May 26 – 2004
Google only had 2 links to my ezine site listed.
I have placed a link on my other personally owned sites and
have added EzineArticles I have written in a couple of Ezine
Article Directories. You will find EzineArticles.com will be
listed above my site in a search for my ezine site as they are
a very high profile site.
The higher the profile or page rank Google gives any site that
you have your site link in, the higher Google is likely to rate your
site providing you have played by Googles rules.
Did you know that many search engines consider you have 2 sites
one with http;//www. in front of your domain and one with just the
http;//yourdomain.com plus if you have a sub-domain name like
[http://www.search.yourdomain.com] they treat this generally asa different domain or website. The word search is the sub-domain
in this instance.
But it is far easier to promote just the one domain as opposed
to promoting 3 variations of the one domain name. I know
that from past experience after I listed it in the Dmoz.org Directory without “www.”
“+[http://www.voipconference.+info]
with 21 incoming links
compared to 320 incoming links (without the www.)
“+voipconference.+info
TIP,
Domain Name Branding your website using a one off name
like Google or eBay is still best when it comes to search engine
marketing and for domain name recognition if you are prepared
to invest the time and money, but if your budget is limited then
using a domain name that describes your business or includes
keywords relating to your product or service is equally good.
May Google be kind to your site.
