Google Testing Website Previews in Search Results

Just a few weeks after successfully launching Google Instant, reports from all over the web world are pouring in that the tech giant is already testing their next possible product: A full page image preview of target websites with blue backgrounds hovering over search results if you scroll over them.

A page preview of the webpage pops up on the side of the search result page with certain section of highlighted text relevant to the search query and by clicking on this image you will be taken to the full website.

Here is an example of how the My Voucher Codes website appears in the preview.

The fact that the highlighted text is relevant to the search result shows that Google has the technology to bring out the exact piece of text on every single web page indexed for the search terms.

Its worth noting that the full details of a longer web pages will not be shown in the preview, the page will be cut off at a certain point. This gives even more weight to the rule that all the important information on your webpage should be above the fold.

This testing is not be confused with the thumbnail previews that Google introduced about a year ago as a search option (available in the left hand options bar).

Google is yet to confirm if this just a test or if Google plans to roll this out to all their users. When Mashable approached Google about it a spokesperson simply said: “At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments”. Clearly Google is giving nothing away!

Page Preview could dramatically affect click through rates as we will get to see the effect of web page designs has on converting searches into visitors.

As a daily Google searcher, I would love this feature to become a staple in the Google search results. The layout and design of a website plays quite a role in determining if I am going to purchase from the site or not.

URL: Very Important for any Website

Matt Cutts answers to some of the very
common queries on URLs

Q: What is a canonical url? Do you have to use such a weird word, anyway?

A: Sorry that it’s a strange word; that’s what we call it around Google. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, we try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.

Q: So how do I make sure that Google picks the url that I want?

A: One thing that helps is to pick the url that you want and use that url consistently across your entire site. For example, don’t make half of your links go to http://example.com/ and the other half go to http://www.example.com/ . Instead, pick the url you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

Q: Is there anything else I can do?

A: Yes. Suppose you want your default url to be http://www.example.com/ . You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).

Q: If I want to get rid of domain.com but keep www.domain.com, should I use the url removal tool to remove domain.com?

A: No, definitely don’t do this. If you remove one of the www vs. non-www hostnames, it can end up removing your whole domain for six months. Definitely don’t do this. If you did use the url removal tool to remove your entire domain when you actually only wanted to remove the www or non-www version of your domain, do a reinclusion request and mention that you removed your entire domain by accident using the url removal tool and that you’d like it reincluded.

Q: I noticed that you don’t do a 301 redirect on your site from the non-www to the www version, Matt. Why not? Are you stupid in the head?

A: Actually, it’s on purpose. I noticed that several months ago but decided not to change it on my end or ask anyone at Google to fix it. I may add a 301 eventually, but for now it’s a helpful test case.

Q: So when you say www vs. non-www, you’re talking about a type of canonicalization. Are there other ways that urls get canonicalized?

A: Yes, there can be a lot, but most people never notice (or need to notice) them. Search engines can do things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, trying to convert urls with upper case to lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software (many bulletin board software packages will work fine if you omit the session ID).

Q: Let’s talk about the inurl: operator. Why does everyone think that if inurl:mydomain.com shows results that aren’t from mydomain.com, it must be hijacked?

A: Many months ago, if you saw someresult.com/search2.php?url=mydomain.com, that would sometimes have content from mydomain. That could happen when the someresult.com url was a 302 redirect to mydomain.com and we decided to show a result from someresult.com. Since then, we’ve changed our heuristics to make showing the source url for 302 redirects much more rare. We are moving to a framework for handling redirects in which we will almost always show the destination url. Yahoo handles 302 redirects by usually showing the destination url, and we are in the middle of transitioning to a similar set of heuristics. Note that Yahoo reserves the right to have exceptions on redirect handling, and Google does too. Based on our analysis, we will show the source url for a 302 redirect less than half a percent of the time (basically, when we have strong reason to think the source url is correct).

Q: Okay, how about supplemental results. Do supplemental results cause a penalty in Google?

A: Nope.

Q: I have some pages in the supplemental results that are old now. What should I do?

A: I wouldn’t spend much effort on them. If the pages have moved, I would make sure that there’s a 301 redirect to the new location of pages. If the pages are truly gone, I’d make sure that you serve a 404 on those pages. After that, I wouldn’t put any more effort in. When Google eventually recrawls those pages, it will pick up the changes, but because it can take longer for us to crawl supplemental results, you might not see that update for a while.

How Google Handles Multi-Language Sites

While there probably aren’t too many website that have multiple languages, Google does have a different way of handling these types of sites.

Matt Cutts recently shared the answer to the following question in a video:

“How would Google consider (and rank) a site that uses meta data and URLs in a language (Italian) and has the h1 of the pages in another (English) considered more appealing for users?

ex:
title: Pallacanestro
h1: Basket
url: site.com/pallacanestro/”

Matt says that if a page on a site has mutiple languages, then Google will identify the main language on the page and return it to the search results which are most appropriate. However, if they have trouble determining the right language to use then this could affect the ranking of your site.

Matt suggests having only single languages on a page. If this means you need to have two versions of a page (in different languages) then this is fine as it means your website can rank for both languages in the separate SERPs.

If you would like further explanation, then check out Matt’s video below.

Internet Marketing techniques and Strategies

Writing a blog is sometimes like writing an article. Titles are to draw people’s attentions and content are the keys whether people will come back to visit your site. The most important thing is to provide excellent content. The following are 5 tips to make sure that people will read the blog posts and come back to visit your blog to read more.

1. Choose Suitable Tone for Your Blog:

The first time you start to open a blog, you must be aware who you want to read your blog which is also called target audience. Consider the questions on the side of your audiences and think about what kinds of articles they want to read and why. Will your post give them a great impression or make them laugh? Try your best what your readers are expecting for and then decide what tone is the most suitable one for your blog and continue writing in that way.

2. No Links List:

Someone is writing a blog to post a business and they will add links in the post. But in my opinion, at first, this is a good way to promote a business. Blogging is one thing that will be time-consuming and you should make sure you can achieve more in the long run. As a matter of fact, you shall never just list links to other sites where you want your readers to follow. It is a better thing if you can write your personal point of view about the links and why they should follow your link. If you just add a link with no context, you may have great possibility of losing readers not keeping them.

3. Keep Telling the Truth in Your Blog:

If you can write a blog in an honest voice, this is a great success and will certainly be popular. Writing a blog is like to make friends online to some extent; writers should be honest with the audience and write posts that to be the truth. In simple words, remember to be honest. It depends on the writers’ honesty whether they can keep the readers’ loyalty.

4. Write Your Own Blog:

This means never steal the content from another blog or a website. If your quote something from somewhere, remember to provide a link to the original source.

5. Short Paragraphs are Preferred:

Don’t write something too long that will bother readers a lot to read. 2 or 3 sentences in a paragraph are a good way to write. To tell you the truth, if someone happens to visit your blog for the first time, he/she will just skim a blog post before continue reading. So make sure your page isn’t hard to read and this is also good to keep readers coming back to your site.

Role of meta Tags in Website

Meta keywords acts as multi-storeyed building entrance’s name plates. When we enter in to the building we see list of names on the board. Name Board gives us an idea that who stays where and the navigation path to reach the flat.

Same way, your keyword meta tag also plays the same role as the NAME BOARD and content as FLAT.

A visitor comes in search of XYZ person and enters into the building and gets information at entrance for navigating to reach your flat.

Search Engine spider comes into your webpage and at the entrance that is your Meta Tag, finds the information and it spiders the relevant keywords which is matching with the content.

Imagine an instance, a visitor comes in search of XYZ person and enters into the building and he gets navigation to reach the flat but when he reaches to the flat, he sees NO flat existing as per the navigation details. How do you feel that time as a visitor?

I have seen many websites try messing up with keyword meta tag. They try to mention keyword1, keyword2 , keyword3, etc., which does not exist in their content. Shockingly I have seen many SEO companies also try to do the same.

We have to clearly understand that these human built search engine spiders also have some emotions and they only try to index those keywords pertaining to your content only.

Your CONTENT is your Flat and the KEYWORD is your Name Board. So don’t misguide the search engine spider. If your flat is existing then only mention it at the entrance name board, that is if you mention the KEYWORD then make sure it exists in the CONTENT too.

Otherwise search engine spiders has to return back home with unhappy face. Don’t dissatisfy them.

By this we have understood that we should not mess up with keyword meta tag and mention only those keywords which are existing in the content.

4 Site Content Tips Your Competitors Don’t Know About!

One of the simplest ways of making your website stand out from the crowd is through unique content that appeals to searchers.

Generally, people are not looking for your products or services to purchase immediately; they are looking for information about them. They want to learn something new and this is where you can get the jump on your competitors.

SEM expert Stoney deGeyter says that key to unique content is thorough Keyword Research. He outlined4 things to look out for during your research:

• Easy to Rank Phrases

When looking for good traffic, you can always start with phrases that have little or no competition. Find queries that match what you provide that others have not yet optimized for. This gives you a chance to build up some rankings and traffic for good (yet lower traffic) phrases. You can immediately start siphoning off traffic from your competitors and start building a loyal audience that will keep coming back.

• Niche Areas

Look for an area within your industry that your competitors are not covering or not covering very well. Find obscure topics that people are interested in, but, after conducting a few searches of your own, show that the available content on the web isn’t sufficient. This creates an opportunity for you to fill in the gaps and create authoritative information of your own.

• Highly Targeted Phrases

These are long-tail phrases that are very targeted for your audience, addressing specific areas of interest. Highly targeted phrases are generally pretty easy to get ranked but they also bring in an audience that has a very specific need. Write information that targets these searchers by providing new information, a new spin, a new take on, or a new way of looking at things.

• Info Queries

They are typically the queries with a question that answers questions, such as “how to…” or “what is…”. These queries provide a great opportunity to provide content beyond simple text. “How to” videos, diagrams, flash animations, and podcasts are all great ways to provide this type of content in a way that people find valuable. Telling someone how to do something is great, but showing them how to do it is even better.

So, if your website is looking all to like your competitors, then its time for a change! I hope Stoney’s advice will help you achieve this.

Google Sandbox-Still Important for Success

Google denies that they sandbox new websites. Yet, webmasters and SEO gurus alike have been frustrated to no end by the sandbox effect noted when a new website is launched. Google does acknowledge that there may be something in the algorithm that penalizes new websites and gives them lower rankings until they have proven their value. The reasons for such a filter are many and include keeping people from putting up multiple sites with links to one another when one website is what they need. Whatever the reasons behind ending up there, time spent in the Google Sandbox is still important to success.

Whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Google owners or not, they have written into the algorithm a set of filters that manage to establish the quality of a website using time-based indicators. These indicators include the age of the web site or domain, age of different backlinks and inbound links to the site, and other factors. One important feature to note is that not only new sites are found in the sandbox. Older sites that suddenly get a rush of inbound links are often sandboxed while the value of the links is established.

With these points in mind, many who have paid for SEO services and still ended up in Google Sandbox are wondering what they can do to get out. Sadly, the only true way to climb out is to be patient. Time is actually on the side of those who are in the sandbox. There are several reasons for this.

The first reason is that time spent in the sandbox allows the website owner to work on tweaking any problem that is found with the site so that it is 100 percent ready when page rank climbs to a point where new visitors are coming in large numbers. This is the best time to test and fix any programming errors noted.

The second reason is that it allows you to work on the content of your site and any related sites linked to it. On the internet, content is king and Google is no different on that score. New, keyword content appearing regularly with links that go back to a site that has been sandboxed catch attention and increase the odds of getting out sooner. Of course, these links must be relevant to the material on the website to be of any real value.

It gives webmasters time to establish relationships with others that are considered authorities in their fields. These authorities can include links to a site in their own pages. If these individuals are recognized as authorities in their fields, the value of their links increases dramatically.

Trust is an important part of any business relationship. There are some sites on the internet that are trusted more than others. Links from these sites are seen as more trustworthy by the search engine, and can help boost page rank quickly.

Ideally, you should try for a trifecta by seeking out relevant links from sites owned by recognized authorities in the field who have been deemed trustworthy by Google and users doing business with them. These links can combine in an exponential manner to boost a page ranking significantly regardless of the page's age.

Another trick to consider is not limiting yourself to Google when performing SEO operations. One can be in the Google Sandbox and still get good organic results on other search engines such as Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.

You can also optimize for more long tailed keyword phrases. The sandbox effect only seems to affect sites that use highly competitive keywords. Therefore, if you sell an item that can be described in the keywords, the longer keyword phrases may help increase page rank. Of course, you must choose keywords that users are likely to type into the search engine.

In a nutshell, to take advantage of these time-based indicators, you should:

• Get links that deliver the most trust, first.
• Start your website today and also begin your link-building task as well
• Target quality 4-in-1 links. This means going for links that are Relevant, Authoritative, from Trusted sources and from High page rank pages.

The Google Sandbox is real, despite denials from Google. These filters are part of the algorithm that assigns page ranks and they do penalize new sites that use competitive keywords. They also penalize established sites that enter into link farming agreements and try to manipulate the rankings artificially. The filters are age related for the age of the domain, the age of the links to the pages, and other factors.

The time spent in the Google Sandbox is important for the success of any web based business. To be more precise, what is done during this time is important. This is an opportunity to work out any bugs in your website could hurt business. It is also an opportunity to establish high quality relationships with other site owners who can provide links to your site that are relevant, authoritative, from trusted sources, and coming from pages that are ranked highly, allowing you to take advantage of their rank until your own comes into being.