|
|
|
Are You A Bill Clinton Webmaster?
One of the most frequent questions I get asked about my ebook, Don't Get Banned BY The Search Engines, is whether I amended it to include post-Florida Google. "Florida" is the code name that search engine optimizer wizards gave to a November,...
Diary of an apprentice Webmaster
The first three months
Over the years I have built a number of websites, more out of curiosity to see if I could do it, rather than for any real serious commercial need. I have also had a couple of sites professionally constructed for various...
Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster
About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run. Got a few replies. Lesson...
RSS publishing for webmasters
Since the recent rise in interest in RSS there has been a slew of RSS sites and RSS software. RSS has been proclaimed as the next big thing. There has been many wild claims about the benefits of publishing an RSS feed such as it will generate...
The Webmaster's Assistant
There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitors spends accessing the website. However, despite the...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
To Link or Not to Link? -- Webmasters and their silly ideas about reciprocal linking
Every webmaster and SEO manager in the world invented
Google....................oh wait, no they didn't! But they sure
would have you think they did!
I wonder why it is that every SEO person on the face of Planet
Earth seems to have completely differing ideas of how Google
works. It all comes down to the pages on Google's website that
are titled things like, "How Google Works," and inept
webmasters' failure to actually read and understand these pages.
But I know, you're thinking that SEO is all about figuring out
the tricks and patterns that Google doesn't want to tell you
outright. Well until you wheel Stephen Hawking over to the
computer in your basement where you run your site and have him
try to figure out Google's algorithm, you probably will never
know it (especially since it's ever-changing).
But getting to the point: Reciprocal linking is one of the most
popular and (probably) effective ways to increase your PageRank.
And although I have questions whether or not your PageRank
actually means anything, that's another article for another day.
The idea is that the more sites on the web that point to your
site, the more important your site must be. And many (including
myself) think that a site with a high PageRank is considered
"important," so your site is considered important, to some
degree, when that site links to yours. Some also would say (I'm
still on the fence with this one) that having external links on
your site in some way "hurts" your PageRank or search engine
placement results. I'm not sure about this one, but I make sure
to keep only a few external links on any given page. You can bet
that Google doesn't give a crap about your one link page that
has eight-hundred and fifty thousand links to every poker and
penis-drug website in cyberspace.
But what really confuses and amazes me is how the simplest,
widely known facts can be so misunderstood by so
many
webmasters. A webmaster who can take the time to learn html
inside and out, and perhaps programming and database management
as well, but he can't seem to grasp some very basic knowledge
about search engines. The most frequent unnecessary issue that I
encounter when managing my reciprocal linking campaign is
webmasters who deny my request to exchange links for the reason
that my page or site isn't indexed by Google yet, so they are
not interested. Let me explain something: If you type in your
URL into Google search, and your site is displayed in the
results.......Google has indexed your site!!! I hope as you read
that you think to yourself "Well duh." But sadly that is a
concept which is completely unfathomable by a LOT of site
managers. And trying to explain it to them is like pulling
teeth. I have sent them URL's to the search results page where
Google lists my site, they don't understand. I send them a .jpg
screenshot of Google's results page where my site is listed, and
they argue that it still doesn't mean I'm indexed. I think it
may come down to the fact that many SEO managers and webmasters
either do not know what it means to be indexed, or they don't
know the difference between being indexed and having a PageRank.
Indeed, if you have a PageRank of any sort, you almost certainly
are going to be indexed. But if you are indexed, you may not
have any sort of PageRank.
Once this is learned by webmasters far and wide, my job will
become a lot easier. If you are one of these inept webmasters,
please go to Google and read their "For Webmasters" sections.
About the author:
H. Balsagnia is a writer and contributor for several sites,
including the music site www.roamingbovine.com.
He writes mostly about his several and widely unique personal
interests including computers & the web, music, food, money,
security, and more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
