Googlewashing - Is It Really That Bad

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E-Commerce Made EZ
http://www.go2sbm.com/ecommerce

Since I became involved with e-commerce 8 years ago, the “marketing experts” have been teaching that one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site and present yourself as an expert in your field is to write articles and submit them for republishing.

And with the recent mantra that “Content is King” being repeated everywhere, many website owners are scrambling to find helpful and informative articles to include on their site or blog.

While there’s no doubt that having your articles published on dozens or even hundreds of sites will create name recognition for yourself and strengthen the public’s view of you as an expert in your industry, there is a black cloud that has arisen in the area of your published articles increasing your standings in search engine results.



That cloud is called “Googlewashing”…

To clean up their search results Google has really started cracking down on duplicate content. This means that if you have your original article published on your website, but it is also included in the content of dozens of other sites, you could conceivably be decreasing the chances of your website showing up in the top rankings of search results for your article’s keywords.

For example, let’s say that you’ve written an article titled, “How to Groom Your Purple Poodle”. You submit the article to article directories and ezine publishers giving permission for your article to be republished. 50 other webmasters and blog publishers with content that targets Purple Poodle owners like the article and decide to put it on their site.

This is great right? You’re creating name recognition for yourself and your company and establishing yourself as an expert among people that own Purple Poodles.

But hold on Hoss, that upside could have a downside when it comes to pleasing the “search engine gods”.

What if among those 50 webmasters that published your article is Mr. “my site has been number one in the search engines for Purple Poodles for the last year”.

Your site shows up as number 22.

Now, when someone goes to Google and types in, “How to Groom a Purple Poodle” - whose website do you think is going to show up first in the search results with your article?

Most likely, it won’t be yours… even though YOU are the expert who wrote the article.

But is that as bad as it sounds?

Of course we all want our site to rank high in the engines for our chosen keywords, and most webmasters do everything possible to have that happen, but in reality the majority of those reading this may never experience a top ten ranking.

But don’t despair for all is not lost, at least when it comes to website traffic.

In my humble opinion, traffic is gold - as long as it is targeted traffic - regardless if it comes from folks finding my site through a search engine, or by clicking a link to my website that I have included in the byline or resource box within my articles that are being published on other sites.

It is those thieves that use your articles WITHOUT acknowledging who the true author is that you have to look out for… but that’s another article.

© All Rights Reserved. (iamsbm)

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Sharon Bray-McPherson is the owner of E-Commerce Made EZ, where you’ll find everything you need to start your own Wholesale Business. With new and expanded services, including the Wholesale RSS Directory. Add Yours Free! http://www.go2sbm.com/ecommerce

>> Article Source: http://www.Marketing-Seek.com

Please Note: The author of this article has authorized its distribution with the requirement that it be published in its entirety, without changes, including the author’s resource box. Please respect the authors’ wishes by getting their permission to reprint their articles if they so request.

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Google Optimization in the SEO Process

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Google optimization is one of the most critical factors for search engine optmisation campaign. Google is above all the search engines. Google is based on the key factors as the Google page rank, the renowned Google sand box and inbound links.

Google optimization depends on the three key factors, Google page rank, Google sand box and the inbound links. In the process of optimizing a website you should always see the inbound links pointing to your website domain and pages. Google makes all the difference with the quality of one way inbound links. So you should concentrate on getting quality inbound links for your website. This can be done by article writing, buying links and link exchanges. With the quality inbound links your page rank will increase by itself.

The effect of Google sandbox is on the new domain names and holds them in a filter. Generally all domain names are not held in the filter. Normally by using competitive keywords, adding relevant content and linking external sites to yours can get you out of the Google sand box. One needs to keep patience in such a situation and keep on working according to Google guidelines.

There are certain guidelines for Google optimization.

• Always defining a clear navigation structure for the website. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Create a sitemap to your users with links that point to all parts of your site. Create a useful, information-rich site with pages that clearly and accurately describe the content about your services.
• Add the words in the content users would type to find the pages.
• Always try to use alt text instead of images to display important keywords, contents or links.
• Make sure that your title and alt tags are relevant, descriptive and accurate.
• Keep the links on your pages to less than 100. Get other relevant sites link to yours. Manually submit your site to directories and search engines.
• Submit your site to Google. http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
• Submit an xml site map file at Google webmaster tools. Google uses sitemap file to learn about the structure and coverage of your site.
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as open directory project and yahoo directory as well as to other industry specific expert sites.
• Upload the robot.txt file on your web browser. This file tells crawlers which directories can or can not be crawled.
• Use robot.txt to prevent crawling of search result pages or other auto generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.
• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Avoid “doorway” pages with little or no original content.



Some of the don’ts for Google optimization are.

• Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Don’t link to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking and PR may be affected adversely by those links.
• Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or Page Rank.
• Don’t use hidden text or hidden links on your site.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Never send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. This may get your site black listed in Google.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses or Trojans.
• Do not use unethical tricks to improve search engine rankings
• Don not see any broken links and see site html is correct.
• Try not to use “?” character in dynamic pages.
• Do not use JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash as search engine spiders. This may search engine spiders create trouble crawling your web site.

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO. He has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing. He is working for NDDW. For web site promotion, Search Engine Optimization and Google Optimization visit www.nddw.com

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