Job Board SEO Digest #2
Search Engine Optimization, PPC and marketing news & tips for job board owners
Top 10 factors influencing your search engine ranking.
SEOMoz reviewed and prioritized top positive and negative SEO influence factors.
Here are the highlights of the paper:
Top 10 positive factors
- Keyword Use in Title Tag
- Global Link Popularity of Site
- Anchor Text of Inbound Link
- Age of Site
- Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
- Keyword Use in Body Text
- Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
- Topical Relationship of Linking Page
Top 5 negative factors
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- Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
- Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
- External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
- Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
- Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)
Full version on seomoz.org.
Optimal length of the Title tag.
Title tag is one of the most important web page parameters influencing your SEO. What is the best number of chars for it?
Majority of optimizers’ opinion is: if you wish to get ranked by specific phrase, make sure you added it into title tag. In addition to that, search engines would highlight the tag in results, which improves your advert click-through ratio (CTR). Finally, title tag would show up in browser heading and as a favorites link name.
Google normally displays title text of no more than 65 chars. WebmasterWorld inquired on whether that would mean Google considering only first 65 chars of a title. And if it reduces the value of the remaining chars?
Reid googler opinion on Google Groups: Meta Description tag optimal length is 160 chars. Title tag depends on browser, around 70 chars. Exact optimal numbers do not exist. Place more important keywords in the beginning.
Discussion on: WebmasterWorld.
How long should it take to rank well on Google?
A poll result for «How Long Should It Take To Rank Well in Google?». 200 respondents shared following terms:
- A week 9%
- A Month 6%
- 2 Months 12%
- 3 – 6 Months 34%
- 6 – 9 Months 19%
- A Year 7%
- A Year Plus 9%
- Other: 4%
Discussion on WebmasterWorld.
How do I know if my website is penalized?
WebmasterWorld initiated a discussion on Google penalty identification. The easiest way to confirm if your website is penalized is to check its position for domain name search. If your website is NOT on first page of results it is evidently penalized.
One of the probable reasons is a virus on your website. Do virus check via Google Webmaster Tools.
Earlier SERoundTable discussions on penalizing: “Can’t shake a Google penalty? What to do next?” and “After a Google penalty, how long does it take to get rankings back?”
Discussion on WebmasterWorld.
Google said that there is no such penalty for duplicating contents on one web-site.
A post on Google blog on penalty for duplicating content. Google would do the following If a duplicating content is found on multiple URLs:
- group duplicating content URLs into a cluster
- identify the best URL for its search results
- assign all properties to a page with the best URL
Read more on Sphinn & WebmasterWorld.
How do SE distinguish pay links?
Marie Claire reviews multiple ways of paid links identification: Hunting for paid links; a technical review.
More on Sphinn.
Google Webmaster Tools shows external links to inexistent pages on your web-site.
New service introduced by Google to show the websites with incorrect links to your pages. More info: Google webmaster center.
WebmasterWorld discussion on benefits of the service. Webmasters are shocked by number of broken links.
SE indexing of your web-site while your server is overloaded.
503 HTTP status for temporary server unavailability is reconfirmed by John Mu on Google Groups. Search engine spiders would recognize the status as temporary overload, non-critical status.
Alternatively, if your website shows 200 (OK) HTTP status and returns blank pages, this would hurt your SE ranking.
Google Analytics stores your data for at least 25 months.
25 months for your historic data are quoted by googler on support forum. We suggest exporting old data to PDF if needeed.