First of all, I am absolutely 100% certain I am dealing with a penalty. A search for my domain (in the style of ‘keyword-info.tld’), with the tld omitted will put me somewhere at page 6. Other tlds with the same domain (not owned and/or operated by me) do show up on page 1 as they should, but their tlds don’t match the country I’m targeting. So a penalty it is. Here’s a list of things I tried:

• Fixed trailing slash duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fixed ‘index.php’ duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fixed ‘www’ subdomain canonical duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Removed all defective and/or thematically irrelevant links.
• Added a privacy policy.
• Added a creativecommons licensing statement.
• Checked robots.txt -> nothing wrong.
• Checked safebrowsing tool -> nothing wrong.
• Checked meta tags -> nothing wrong.
• Added noindex,follow to news index and category pages.
• Added rel=”nofollow” to a button of a thematically relevant high-quality top 50 listing – I NEVER purchased or sold a SINGLE link.
• Added ‘nofollow’ to my free thematic business listing, just in case G might be thinking I’m selling these positions.
• Built a couple of nice high-quality links through guest posting.
• Added new quality content on a regular basis.
• Added a tag cloud to improve crawlability.
• Added a great deal of relevant Wikipedia-like internal linking (as per Ronburk’s classic post).
• Added noindex,follow on the individual tag-pages to prevent duplicate content.
• Added the new canonical tag (yes, I am desperate).
• Removed interlinking (it was only minor anyways).

So, did I miss anything? I have to say that several external sites display one or more of my content pages. However, these pages all contain backlinks to my site, signaling to Google that my site is the original content provider. Note that we are talking about maybe 3 of 4 sites that each display a single page of my content. Should I ask these webmasters to take down my content or replace it with an excerpt? I’m not really sure whether this is the culprit, since I have another site which has been penalized in the same way at the same time. This site however does not have any copies of its content floating around and is thematically completely unrelated to the first site.

As you can see, I’m running out of options. As it stands now, my site is insanely clean. On-site duplicate content is virtually non-existant and all other technical issues are ironed out (gzip compression is on etc.).

Any ideas?

A Webmaster World Thread shows one webmaster who has gone through the exhaustive list of changes to his, what he calls, ‘White Hat Site,’ to make it even more clean, if that is possible. Check out this exhaustive list of changes below he made to ‘fix’ his site:

• Fix trailing slash duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fix ‘index.php’ duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Fix ‘www’ subdomain canonical duplicate content issue through a 301.
• Remove all defective and/or thematically irrelevant links.
• Added a privacy policy.
• Added a creativecommons licensing statement.
• Checked robots.txt -> nothing wrong.
• Checked safebrowsing tool -> nothing wrong.
• Checked meta tags -> nothing wrong.
• Added noindex,follow to news index and category pages.
• Added rel=”nofollow” to a button of a thematically relevant high-quality top50 listing.
• I NEVER purchased or sold a SINGLE link.
• I added ‘nofollow’ to my free thematic business listing, just in case G might be thinking I’m selling these positions.
• Built a couple of nice high-quality links through guest posting.
• Added new quality content on a regular basis.
• Added a tagcloud to improve crawlability.
• Added a great deal of relevant wikipedia-like internal linking (as per Ronburk’s classic post).
• Added noindex,follow on the individual tag-pages to prevent duplicate content.
• Added the new canonical tag (yep, I am desperate).
• Removed interlinking (it was only minor anyways).
• Added valid XML Sitemap.

Web site owners don’t need to spend a long time on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to see some results, although long-term efforts will certainly produce a much greater effect. Here’s how to SEO your site in less than 60 minutes:

1.) If one or more of your pages have the same title, change the titles to reflect the content of the individual pages. This is better for SEO because the search engines prefer pages with different names, and people are less likely to click on a search result if it has a generic title. Avoid using titles over 60 characters long.

2.) Add brief, descriptive “ALT text” tags to your site’s images. Internet users with text-only browsers (or browsers with images disabled) will see this text in place of graphics. It benefits SEO because search engines can use this text to interpret the subject of an image, giving them a better concept of the page’s content.

3.) Test each of the links on your site to make sure they still work. If any produce “The page cannot be displayed” errors, either replace, update, or remove them. This is good for SEO because some search engines will downgrade your site’s search ranking if it has too many outdated or incorrect links.

4.) If any of your pages contain information on more than one distinct subject, divide them into separate pages. For example, a page that lists and describes every product a company offers should instead be split into multiple product categories (unless all of the items are very similar).

These SEO tasks can be accomplished in less than 60 minutes for many web sites, although a large site will take longer. However, they do not address other important SEO issues like keyword density, META tags, link building, accessibility, and site maps.

Sometimes you may want to refer your web site or blog’s readers to a specific part of a YouTube video, but the video has several minutes of irrelevant material before the desired part. Fortunately, there’s now an easy solution to this problem. Here’s how to link to a specific part of a YouTube video:

1.) Locate the page you want to link to and copy its regular URL from your web browser.

2.) Play the video, finding the specific minute and second of the part you intend to link to.

3.) Append #t= to the end of the URL. Then add the number of minutes, an “m”, the number of seconds, and an “s”:

#t=3m28s

Here’s an example of a link URL to a specific part (two minutes, 41 seconds) of a Google webmaster tutorial on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6QRv_bCzEI#t=2m41s

It will start at two minutes, 41 seconds into the selected video and play to the end.

4.) Post the link as you normally would any other link.

Oddly enough, this linking technique works under Internet Explorer 7.0, but only links to the beginning of videos in Opera 9.24. Since this may also be a problem with other browsers, consider giving your readers a note about the time to skip to if it doesn’t happen automatically.

Some possible reasons for linking to specific parts of YouTube videos are to show someone making a specific statement, to skip over boring material at the beginning of a video, or to reference a specific step in a long how-to demonstration.

Basically, using this technique will save your web site or blog readers time and make your links more effective. It is simple and quick to apply to any YouTube video, doesn’t require any special coding, and may be accomplished using standard HTML linking methods.

Canonical home page issues are usually overlooked by most webmasters. These issues pertain to the different ways of accessing a website’s home page, and their effect upon link building efforts.

For a demonstration of canonical home page issues, notice how you can successfully access DMOZ.org at each of the following URLs:

• http://www.dmoz.org
• http://www.dmoz.org/index.html
• http://dmoz.org

Why is this important? Because other webmasters (along with people using message boards, social bookmarking services, etc.) may use any one of these URL styles when creating links to your website.

Search engines count these links separately, spreading the linking benefit (a.k.a. PageRank) among the different home page URLs. This means that the number of links to your home page are minimized, thus worsening your position in search results and decreasing the search engine traffic to your site. Many home pages have these issues, but not all of them do.

To test if your site has canonical home page issues, try accessing it with different URLs (as listed above) and see if they work. If they work, but the URL in the address bar changes to the same, single URL each time, the issues have already been resolved. If only one URL works, there isn’t anything to worry about either.

If multiple URLs are functional and don’t redirect to a single URL, this should be changed. It is not very difficult to remedy these issues. You can do it manually, but using the cPanel interface (which most websites have) is easiest. Here are some quick step-by-step directions on how to fully resolve canonical home page issues:

1.) Log into cPanel.

2.) Click on the “Redirects” icon, under “Domains”.

3.) Select “Permanent (301)” from the drop-down menu.

4.) Choose the appropriate domain name from the 2nd menu.

5.) Leave the first field (after the slash) empty.

6.) In the field after “Redirects to >”, type your site’s full domain name, including the “WWW”. Example:

• http://www.eudora.com

7.) Select the “Do Not Redirect www” radio button, and click “Add”.

8.) You can stop here, but the next step will redirect requests to /index.htm to a single URL as well.

9.) Click “Go Back”, and use the same information (steps 3, 4, and 6), but enter “index.htm” (or index.html, depending upon your site) in the 1st field. Select “Redirect with or without www.” and click “Add”.

This will redirect all visitors (and search engine “spiders”) to the same home page URL, with the result that your PageRank (linking credit) will be concentrated in a single URL. It is generally best not to use a META Refresh tag for redirection, particularly in this situation.

Resolving canonical home page issues is a worthwhile effort, as it can easily improve your site’s ranking in search results – especially if it has been linked to with a variety of functional URLs.

We noticed a change in the Google Algorithm for several of our clients at the end of January.  Many of our clients improved in the rankings, but a few also dropped significantly.   In hindsight, we are now are hearing that the Google Algorithm is the introduction of ‘brand’ measurements that is attempting to introduce another TRUST factor in addition to link popularity.  The general thinking is that the Internet has become a ‘cesspool’ of low quality content and links and it is more important than ever to ’signal’ to Google that your website is a trusted site for the most popular of keywords.

One of the best articles outlining this recent algorithm is from Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com : http://www.seobook.com/google-branding

Aaron uses Rank Pulse to show how large brands moved into the Top 10 rankings on Google; for example 9 out of the Top 10 rankings for ‘auto insurance’ are big auto insurance providers.

Other interesting reads on this topic:

• http://blog.mannixmarketing.com/2009/02/google-algorithms-brands/
• http://www.seomoves.com/blog/tag/google-algorithm-update/

If your web site has old URLs that are not supported by your current site anymore, adding a 301 redirect to these pages will prevent it from losing traffic, and possibly even more important benefit its ranking in search results as it will continue to pass page rank from these links to the new pages. Here are some potential situations involving old URLs which you might want to use a 301 redirect for:

• An old page has been removed and combined with another page, or placed in a new location. – 301 Redirect
• Your product search feature was moved to a different directory or its URLs changed. – 301 Redirect
• A page has been converted to a different file format type. – 301 Redirect

301 redirects are also important because bookmarks and links to these old URLs may still exist in people’s web browsers and most importantly on other web sites (keeping your link juice!). If you fail to use the 301 redirect people who have links on there site or have you bookmarked will receive “The page cannot be displayed” error.

To install a 301 redirect, you can either use the “Redirect” page under the cpanel or edit the text-based “.htaccess” file. You might have to create this file if it doesn’t already exist under the relevant directory or subdomain; if you use cPanel, it will handle this for you. Here are some examples of valid 301 redirection commands which could be listed in a .htaccess file:

1. Redirect 301 /contact.htm http://www.example.org/contact-us.shtml
2. Redirect 301 /weather.php http://weather.example.net/index.php
3. Redirect 301 /stats.txt http://www.example.com/data/statistics.html

As you can see from these examples, the commands simply specify the redirection type and indicate both URLs involved. The filename of the old page comes first, and isn’t a full URL (because the .htaccess file is located in the directory or subdomain it was in), while the new URL is complete. You can, optionally, indicate a subdirectory as part of the original filename (example: /about/index.htm). Be sure to test all redirects after setting them up.

In addition to redirecting old URLs which are no longer supported, 301 redirects may be used to provide short web addresses that people can more easily write down or remember. For example, to promote a page with a long URL in a newspaper, magazine, radio advertisement, or bulk mailing, a short redirection URL could be created to forward users to an existing page. If only one of these URLs is used for each promotional method, it will have the added benefit of separately tracking how many “hits” are received.

Basically, the 301 redirect offers a versatile and convenient way to send users to a specific location when they attempt to access old, non-supported URLs. It prevents web sites from losing the traffic and search engine benefits of existing but outdated inbound links. It may be used to create brief, easy-to-remember redirection URLs as well.

Robots.txt is a text-based file used by many web sites for the purpose of giving specific instructions to search engine “robots” or “spiders”. The file typically tells them what pages or directories they shouldn’t index. It is usually located in the root (main) directory.

The robots.txt file may be created in a basic text editor like Notepad or Edit. Be sure to save it in pure, text-only format. cPanel’s “File Manager” or FTP Client software may be used to upload it. Each line is a separate instruction. Some sample instructions to include in robots.txt are as follows:

Disallow: /email/
Disallow: /contact.php
Disallow: /

The first example blocks the entire “email” directory (folder) from being accessed by search engine spiders, while the 2nd disallows them from indexing the “Contact” page. The 3rd example requests that they not index any files on the site. The initial slash refers to the directory the robots.txt file is in. Do not use full URLs.

Most robots.txt files begin with a line reading “User-agent: *”. The purpose of this is to tell ALL search engine spiders that it applies to them. If the asterisk were replaced with the name of one engine’s robot, instructions would only apply to it and others would ignore them. A 404 error is logged if a robot tries to access the file and it doesn’t exist.

If there is a specific type of document which search engine spiders should be prohibited from indexing (such as PDF, DOC, or RTF), consider putting all of these files in the same folder and adding a “Disallow” statement that specifies this directory.

The overall purpose of using a robots.txt file is usually to control which pages visitors enter the web site through, reduce access to certain pages by “spammers”, and/or limit the amount of bandwith (data transfer) being consumed by search engine spiders as they read from the site.

The robots META tag can be used for much of the same purpose as the robots.txt file, but it is not applicable to non-HTML pages like text files, PDFs, images, and so on. If a web site operator wants all files to be indexed by search engines, there is no real purpose in having a robots.txt file.

Here is an example of a robots.txt file that we have created:

User-agent: Slurp
crawl-delay: 20

User-agent: URL_Spider_Pro
Disallow: /

User-agent: CherryPicker
Disallow: /

User-agent: EmailCollector
Disallow: /

User-agent: EmailSiphon
Disallow: /

User-agent: WebBandit
Disallow: /

The first “delay” in the robots .txt file is for Yahoo Slurp.  They were hitting our site pretty hard and was really slowing down the clients server.  While we do not recommend slowing down a robot that is coming to your site there is always exceptions to the rule.

META tags are incorporated into the HTML code of many webpages. The most common META tags are TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and KEYWORDS. They affect not only how a site appears in search listings, but how high or low a position it receives in results. Read on to learn how to write META tags properly and effectively…

TITLE TAG

Perhaps the most important META tag, the TITLE tag determines the clickable title of a search result, as well as the text which appears on the title bar of a web browser. Here are some tips on how to properly write this tag:

• Use fewer than sixty five characters; otherwise, part of the title will be cut off by browsers and search engines.
• Every page on the website needs to have a unique title.
• Your primary keyword target should be at the beginning of the TITLE tag.
• Place your company name at the end of the TITLE tag.

DESCRIPTION TAG

The 2nd most important META tag, DESCRIPTION determines what text appears below the title in search results (with some exceptions). People who visit a webpage will not see this tag, unless they look at the source code. Tips on how to use it properly:

• Keep the description approximately 125-175 characters.
• Don’t put specific data searchers are looking for in the description tag; they might only read it and not visit the site.
• Use the description to market to the user and increase the click through to the website.
• The description is not a ranking factor, but be sure to use your target keyword(s) and keyword phrases so that they will be bold in the search results.

META KEYWORD TAG

A less important META tag is KEYWORDS as many search engines do not use them as a ranking factor.  The META KEYWORD TAG contains one or more search keywords that relate to the web page in question.  Here are a few tips:

• Avoid using more than fifteen keywords, and don’t write any word more than once.
• Use words which aren’t in the TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags but that are in the copy of the page.
• Avoid words that aren’t relevant to the page’s subject.  In fact, using keywords not relevant or included in your page can lead to ranking penalties.
• To properly separate multiple keywords, use commas.

OTHER META TAGS

Some lesser-known META tags are not used by most search engines and browsers, making them minimally useful. However, one other fairly important META tag is ROBOTS. It gives specific instructions to search engine “robots” or “spiders”; automated computer programs which visit and index websites, recording information that will appear in search results.

You may not need to know HTML to write META tags properly. Programs like Frontpage and Dreamweaver allow users to set the META tags for a webpage design automatically. For example, the function for setting META tags in Frontpage is located in “Page properties”, under the “Custom” tab. The TITLE is set under the “General” tab.

Optimizing videos as part of your SEO goals is becoming more and more important as mainstream search engines include videos. While the best way to optimize a video is to consider your audience and how they can be engaged with a video, there are other aspects of optimizing videos for SEO.

Of course, your video should be relative and information. General or vague videos don’t answers any questions and thus rarely drive traffic that converts. More often than not, these types of videos will only confuse an end user. But, beyond that your video’s title should be catchy, just like the headline of an article. You want to use this as a way to draw in viewers.

Also, make sure that your videos relate to your site so that after the video is done you can link it to a relevant page on your website. You also need to include important key phrases in your video. This includes tagging your videos with these terms and considering these terms when naming your video file.

Beyond that, keep your video short. Many people don’t have a long attention span, especially when they are using the Internet. A good rule of thumb is to make your video less than 5 minutes long. You may also consider breaking this 5 minute time limit up into even smaller segments to increase anticipation in your audience.

Don’t forget to include your logo and website on any videos you produce to increase brand awareness. And make sure any video you create is on your own site, including the site map so that search engine spiders and human searchers can both find them easily.

Finally, allowing users to rate your videos is a great step. This can help you figure out which videos are more enjoyable and more successful, which can create sort of a template that you can use to create more successful videos in the future. This also goes hand-in-hand with syndication. Putting these more poplar videos on sites such as YouTube and Google Video can help increase awareness of your video.