Web Design Blog
Using links within your site for search optimization
December 4th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerEveryone has heard over and over again how important it is for your site to have more links coming to it from other (related) sites. It is true, the search market is a popularity contest and the more links that you have coming in to your site the better you can do in search results. If you want to rank for “web design in Oklahoma” or “search engine optimization in Oklahoma” you have to have incoming anchor text with those phrases. Something as simple as “Oklahoma web designer” or “SEO in Oklahoma” are all good terms to have linking in to your site. However, that is only half of the battle. Search engine optimization is all about relevance. Read more »
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Google disables adwords for text links
December 3rd, 2007 by Dustin BrewerGoogle has disabled all of the Adwords ads that reference text link ads for selling PageRank on their search results. This I’m sure is related to their recent stance against selling text link ads to pass PageRank.
A simple search for “text links” or “text link ads” on Google will turn up results but it will not however show any Adwords ads on the page. I wasn’t able to find any search terms related to the subject come up with Adwords ads on the search results.
I’m curious what the advertisers ended getting for their troubles. If their campaigns were just ended or if they received some kind of compensation. Right now that is all the information I have about this, if I hear anything new I will update this post.
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Google playing with a Reddit-Like system for SERPs
November 30th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerIt looks like Google is playing with an experimental new search system that works a lot like Reddit (or Digg) in that you can vote up or down various search results depending on their relevance to you. It seems like this idea is only going to happen per a user so it isn’t going to be something that can be manipulated as much as it sounds that it could. Although if they do eventually implement something like this I could see part of their algorithm pulling rankings from a system like this to decide on what is worth reading and what is not. Read more »
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Add nofollow to prevent being banned for paid links
November 27th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerGoogle has officially announced that selling links is a linking scheme and outlines what is considered bad for your site and what is considered acceptable when it comes to advertising on your blog. They added “Selling of links” to their help files on link schemes. This means that if you are advertising link spots on your site in order to pass PR on to those that would pay Google will remove your ability to pass PageRank. They have done this recently with the big PageRank scare of ’07. Read more »
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Using sitemaps to ensure frequent crawls
October 30th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerSitemaps have been around for a very long time but it is only recently that the large search engines have begun to support sitemap submission to help towards the crawling of your site more frequently. It can also help to let search robots know where pages that may be hidden can be found. Typically, you want to make sure these pages are accessible throughout the site through organic linking; hopefully you haven’t failed your site in that aspect. Read more »
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Is Google’s PageRank now officially broken?
October 24th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerIt appears that overnight Google has changed how PageRank ranks sites, several very high profile web sites have been affected by this change and lost 2-3 rankings. The speculation is it is directly caused by web sites having paid links either to bad neighborhoods or just having them at all. It seems like Google is going head-strong into a shift towards ranking web sites poorly depending on where they link and if it is paid or not. I have compiled a list from various sources about the high-profile sites that have lost significant ranking.
This move is furthering the shift that a lot of people have been seeing away from not only PageRank, but possible away from Google for everything. Some sites have lost so much ranking they don’t even show up for their names, such as John Chow. Read more »
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Your robots.txt isn’t safe from the SERPs
October 15th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerIt appears as though your robots.txt file that tells search engines what to crawl and what not to crawl is being indexed by Google. This means all those pages/files that you don’t want crawled are available to the general public by just doing a Google search for the robots.txt file. Oddly enough they are even getting PageRanks. Read more »
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How titles should be used in web design for SEO
September 26th, 2007 by Dustin BrewerAs we have all heard, titles are a very important part of anything. Especially when it comes to designing web sites, the title says it all. The title element is how your site is understood by your visitor and also by search robots. In the past people would stuff their titles with as many keywords as they could think of to ensure that search engines would pick up the keywords and they would rank higher. That really isn’t the point and so search robots ever since have given less importance to titles. Read more »
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What is Robots.txt and why should I use it?
July 31st, 2007 by Dustin BrewerI am here to answer just that question. There has been a lot of mystery I have gathered from fellow web developers about the benefits of using a robots.txt. Most are under the false impression that the only purpose for this text file is to tell search robots not to index a certain section of their site. This isn’t the case at all! There are much more useful reasons to be using a Robots.txt that have to do very much with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that most people don’t realize. Read more »
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Generating traffic, Part 1: Organic Marketing
November 23rd, 2006 by Dustin BrewerThis is part one of generating traffic to your web site through various marketing methods, this topic is of course about organic marketing. Organic marketing is basically word of mouth and being able to generate interest in your service/ product/ web site through bringing it up on topic with people in person and in online communities. If done right you can generate more quality traffic then almost any other method. Read more »
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About Dustin Brewer
Dustin Brewer is a freelance web designer based out of Oklahoma City, OK passionate about web standards, and beautiful web design. Dustin Brewer has been in the web design industry for over 8 years through freelance and professional experience. If you are interested in hiring Dustin Brewer please visit the web design services page to find out more information. You can also checkout my web design portfolio.
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