This has just occurred with Google through the month of June with the UK webmasters complaining the most. This is just a temporary (although worrying thing) as Google appears to recalculate every page within its index before you start to see results readjusting, it is then the job of a good SEO Company to establish what the changes are to readjust existing sites or change strategy for new ones.

The word on the street with a few hints from Matt Cutts blog, is that the nofollow tag is not treat the same anymore. It once was just ignored by Google and therefore page rank was sculpted to the important pages of the site. Matt Cutts now admits that an initial change was done some time ago, where not all page rank went to where you wanted it by point, he is not hinting that page rank can no longer be sculpted, if you use the tag, you just stop PR being transferred to the recipient website, but you will not gain any benefit from it. So the advice was, just let Google decide what a good site is and whether, the page rank should be exchanged or not.

That takes us on to some more words on the street, that Google is treating non relevant links with even less value than before. We have always known that relevant links hold more value, but the word is non relevant links have even less juice now. This may explain some high page rank sites dropping in rankings, as the link juice may be coming form un relevant sites. This may also explain, my improved rankings after it has all finished, because 95% of all my links are relevant and I will be taking all this into consideration with all the future search engine marketing planned with clients..

Of course nothing here can be verified, but I am treating this information as good to go.

Many when defining keywords for their website find themselves trying to add their keywords to every title tag on the site in the hope that Google or another search engine will give it more clout. The reality is that it can water down your final results. If the title tag does not accurately define what the subject matter of the page is and if every page does not have unique content then it is unlikely to work. This then can affect many designers and customers with a web design.

So many web designer create includes header files, which show the same header throughout the whole site. This is a good idea for menus and logos within, but when it comes to title tags there needs to be some code within the includes header to ensure a unique title tag is created that could for example match the H1 tags or the url of that page. The worst thing you can do, is have the same title tag running through the whole site. How do you expect a search engine to know what page to show for that search term?

So the summary is simple. Take time to accurately add unique title tags to every page within your website that matches the content of that page. Do not push in too many keywords and do not repeat a keyword more than twice. Simple rules, but can go a long way.

It mainly relates around duplicate content of which Google does not particularly like and often can’t deal with very well. In better words it is possible you have more than one version of the same content on your website without you knowing how or why.

Here is an example. Have you ever typed in your URL without the www and found it still shows your homepage? Well the problem is, Google sees this as a different URL to the page with the WWW included. It may be the same physical copy on your local drive, but to Google this is 2 versions of the same thing.

The way around this is to create a simple .htaccess file in your route directory that redirects the non www version to the version with www. (you can do this the opposite way should you choose). Another version of your homepage could be shown as a index.html, php or asp file. Again this may be the same physical page as the URL without the files extension, but to Google this is another copy of duplicate content.

So by going through your site and identifying any pages that can be seen as duplicate content to Google should all be redirected to one master version? The other good news is that all the page rank is also diverted to the master version, as it is possible to have different page rank vales on every different URL version of that page.

The .htaccess file can only be used on Linux servers and not those that are Windows based, (that use asp or similar) to redirect pages in these, you need to go into the server to do so. I prefer Linux for this very reason, it give me more flexibility to deal with issue that Google do not handle very well from a SEO point of view, of course from a programmers point of view it could be a different story.

My explanation to my clients is based around what I call the natural timeline for gaining positions on Google based on the unique factors of each site. We pretty much know that the age of a site has a factor in rankings , so any new site will take longer than one just registered. We also know the competition is different for each search term, so yes it is possible to rank high for certain search terms very quickly, but it is unlikely to be a search term that is competitive.

This is where experience in SEO becomes fundamental to the success of the site. Too many times I have seen so called professionals send too many links too quickly to a new site, only for it to disappear into what is commonly know as the Google Sandbox. Of course the Google Sandbox is highly contended and many suggest it is nothing more than a filter that is automatically applied if Google finds anything that suggests someone is trying to influence the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

As the URL ages (more accurate than saying site) a trust factor is applied and basically the more Google trusts the site, the more you can get away with in terms of link building. The safest way is to add a few links a day, small and often. I hate footer links that go through the whole of the site. This just tells Google you have paid or have exchanged links for this to occur.

Even genuine marketing banners should have the no follow tag applied so no page rank is passed over; otherwise you run the risk of the site being highlight as a site that has bought links.

So each site has its own timeline based on age, the current trust rank (this is a term seo professionals use not an official Google term) and finally how much competition that search term has in that sector.
If you are doing it yourself, then take you time, if you are a SEO Company or professional, always stick by your guns when discussing timelines with your clients and do not be scared to lose business if their requirements do not match reality.

Google has struggled to deal with different versions of a page, normally choosing one page as a master and then discarding or not degrading the other versions. The problems arise when Google chooses the wrong version of the page to shown as the master, because it found that version first.

The way Google wants to deal with this issue is to introduce the canonical tag, which you input within the head area to tell Google which page is the main one you want to be included within its search engine index. For many this may seem unimportant, but in hard to get search terms, canonical issues can mean the difference between ranking and not, it is also surprising how few SEO companies are fully aware of the problems it could cause.

The employee we all like to here from, namely Matt cuts talks about the canonical tag within an interview an example being

So we will also add videos from Youtube or other sources as well as our material.
We will show who the video is from and in this case it is clearly market on the video. When choosing a seo company or a marketing firm to do your work, sometimes these videos can give some credibilty and I suppose it is time we learned to do some ourselves.

Here is the video three secrets behind pay per click

But in hindsight there are benefits of talking about pay per click techniques or at least the benefits of using this type of internet marketing, especially in the short time.

Some Benefits

As you know it takes take time with and seo project, something that many unprofessional seo companies fail to recognise. It makes sense then, for immediate results to use Pay per Click marketing. In return for payment, you can have your adverts shown on all three big search engines, that can deliver immediate results. The informed seo company will probably recommend that whilst you wait for natural results arrive, you implement a pay per click programme and will monitor and tweak keywords and costing to ensure a best ROI possible.

It is also possible that you may have special offers or temporary promotions to your business, again because of the time taken for natural seo a quality seo company may suggest that a PPC campaign is the way to go.

Some Downfalls

One of the biggest downfalls of using PPC in recent years is the ever increasing costs of using the service. All search engine PPC options calculate their prices based on the competition for those keywords, although with Google adwords you do get rewarded is you obtain higher click through rates. The results being that it cam often be just too expensive, so you need to talk to your seo company to ensure you will get a return on investment. I can personally comment on one campaign that started out at 20p a click and moved to £5 a click over the period of 5 year. It is also quiet scary with Google when you need to put a maximum payment figure, that has a direct impact on where you advert appears, even if you never pay the maximum figure.

So for some businesses PPC can be a solution but not all. It all comes down to how much am I paying and how much do I get in return?

It is true that by following some simple rules, you ca get limited success for easy location related search terms, but as you start working on a marketing strategy that gets you to the top of Google, for a term that will reap the rewards and return on investment, the playing field changes, the strategy changes and those simple rules somehow no longer deliver results.

This where one SEO company can deliver considerable different results to another. Thinking that by doing more of the same thing will get more prominent websites to the top of Google is no longer the case, you need to add other elements that ensures that the search engine in question, knows you are adding processes to help the consumer who visits the website, rather than trying to manipulate the SERPS.

Adding a few back-links a day to a website will get results for easy terms, but to think that by adding thousands of links to a site will get better results is just not true, as various filters are then applied to your site, perhaps preventing it ranking at all.

There is a mastery involved in getting high traffic relevant search terms and only the SEO companies or individuals who spend the time, understanding what the search engine companies are trying to achieve will get the desired results.

So search marketing mastery is not about learning the basics. It is about exploring beyond this to another level, sometimes speculating sometimes hitting the nail on the head. Most of this will be personal opinion and will differ to others, but that is OK, lets have different opinions and get to the bottom of what makes a professional SEO company get results and the £50 a month guys don’t’.