What Is Google Author Rank?
There is some buzz floating around out there about Google Author Rank. However, people seem to be getting ahead of themselves in an effort to be first. There is no Google Author Rank. Or at least, there might not be, or there might be, but like most things related to Google’s search rankings algorithm, there is no official or documented word from Google that there is any impact on search rankings based on Google’s Author Rank. (Don’t confuse this with HubPages Author Rank, which is completely different, and which might count as prior art, if anyone is interested.) So, what [...]
My Blog Guest First Impressions
I mentioned on here not long ago that I was experimenting with the My Blog Guest online resource that provides a community of guest blog post writers and publishers. I haven’t had as much time as I would like to really delve into this resource, and that may actually be at the heart of any review. The MyBlogGuest.com website is essentially a forum of guest post writers and publishers. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the balance in this equation is typically tilted far to the side of people wanting to publish guest posts. It is no different here. My Blog Guest [...]
My Blog Guest Experiment
Being a writer is a glorious thing for those who love to write. The only thing better than being a writer, is working for yourself as a writer. Being a professional freelance writer, you might think, is the same thing as working for yourself, but being self-employed is not the same thing as working for yourself. I have no boss who stands near my desk scolding me if I show up a few minutes, or even a lot of minutes, late. There is no office manager, no HR department and the dress code requires nothing more than flannel pants and [...]
Finally Tagged by Panda
For those of you who are professional writers that don’t run your own websites online, you may not have heard of the Google Panda update. Essentially, Panda is an algorithm run by Google against its search index that it uses in the wake of stinging criticism about its search result being cluttered with low quality content, especially that associated with content farms like Demand Studios and Seed.com. There have been several versions released in the months since the original version embarrassingly missed eHow.com, the biggest content mill of all. With each version, website owners, online writers, and others have complained [...]
How Do Content Mills Work?
After much Internet angst regarding Google’s most recent search engine algorithm update called Panda (or in some places, the Farmer update) there seems to be some discussion around what exactly is a content mill and how content mills work. What Do Content Mills Do? Content mills, like many forms of new media, are not specifically defined. For example, no executive, owner, or publisher thinks that their website or organization is a content mill, no matter how many people disagree. Furthermore, some content mills are much more spammy than others. And, there are arguments to be made that some content mills [...]
Google Keyword Variants on Webmaster Tools
Deciphering how Google ranks websites and determines its Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) is the focus of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Numerous SEO professionals and SEO consultants offer ongoing advice to website publishers about how to get webpages to rank higher in Google search rankings, with the goal being to attain the coveted #1 ranking on Google for a specific keyword. To that end, there are numerous SEO advice blogs, and plenty of Google search engine analysis tracking websites published around the Internet. To help them out, or to correct misconceptions in the SEO community, Google relies on various [...]
Get More Search Engine Traffic By Changing Your Writing … for the Worse!
To get more search engine traffic there are a lot of things you can do. You can read all about search engine optimization until you go blind. You could even hire an SEO consultant if you have money to burn. You could comment on a thousand blogs a day with a link back to your website. You could research keywords with Google’s keyword tool, the AdSense keyword tool, and the AdWords keyword tool. And, don’t forget about the Google keyword research tool. What the–? Has Arctic Llama lost his mind? Aren’t all of those tools listed up there the same [...]
Matt Cutts Exposes SEO Professionals as Hacks
With one tiny post, Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts has shown that SEO professionals don’t know anything. Oh, and by the way, search rankings don’t work like you (or those pros) think they do anymore.
Should You Use WWW In Your Domain Name Or Not?
Do some reading on domain names and what good ones are, as well as a little bit on search engine optimization and eventually you will come across the very sound advice to only use www.domain.com or domain.com, but not both. The idea is two-fold. First, you don’t want to lose out on your search engine rankings by having people (and yourself) point to both www.arcticllama.com AND arcticllama.com, because the search engines consider these to be different pages. Second, you don’t want to confuse visitors who might wonder what the “real” address is, even though it doesn’t really matter. What you [...]
Groupthink in Search Engine Development Rankings and Results
If this weren’t an online blog that depended in no small measure on the traffic generated by readers looking for information via search engines, that title would have been more catchy, more appealing, and more fun. In other words, more likely to grab the reader’s interest and more likely to be enjoyed by the reader. Something like, “Are Search Engines Putting the Web To Sleep?” or “Could This Title BE Anymore Boring”. But, alas, the world of search engines has become mired in the groupthink caused by Google’s rapid and unprecedented rise to the top of the mature Internet. As [...]