We now have official confirmation that the Google position 6 penalty is now being reversed.

Sebastian commented to let me know that Matt Cutts of Google has confirmed at Sphinn that whatever was causing quality sites to be moved down to the 6th position in the Google search results, is now being reversed. Matt said:

When Barry asked me about “position 6″ in late December, I said that I didn’t know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We’re in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.

In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.

I just love it when the SEO community’s communication helps Google notice these things and make changes based on our feedback. I should really go back and document each and every time Google has made changes based on SEO community feedback.

In any event, if you were impacted by this penalty - you don’t have to do anything, as I thought. Just wait it out and Google should take care of the issue on their side.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

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Posted by randfish

Back in mid-December, SEOmoz made a number of changes to our use of the rel="nofollow" tag on the internal link structure of this site. We nofollowed dozens of links on many of our template pages to help control the flow of link juice through to our more important pages - the content in the Blog, YOUmoz, Marketplace, and Articles.

SEOmoz’s Blog with Nofollow Links Highlighted

As you can see, we used quite a few nofollows to help draw juice away from unnecessary pages. The results?

_

A resounding success! While you can see that search referrals were particularly slow at the end of December and into January (as was overall site traffic), once the holidays passed, the search traffic came rolling in. The bump is approximately 20%, quite a substantial rise from the addition of a tag on some less important links.

While others have certainly reported seeing success with the use of nofollow to control the flow of link juice, I figured this quick example might help serve as a catalyst for anyone who’s skeptical about the potential value.

BTW - I do certainly realize that many other factors could have affected increased search referral numbers, and thus this test isn’t entirely scientific. However, our search traffic going all the way back to May of 2007 was increasing at an infintessimal rate (Weeks 20, 21, and 22 of 2007 [May-June] had an average of 12,000 search referrals) and this is the only structural change we’ve made since that time. Thus, don’t take this data as gospel truth, but rather as another nudge that nofollow sculpting can have high potential rewards.

p.s. We have done used this same thing on projects for clients with mixed results - several have seen increases of 20-25% in 2-4 weeks, but one of our clients stayed virtually level after implementation.

p.p.s. For more on how sculpting PageRank with nofollow works and why it can be effective, see Si’s excellent post on the subject .

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Google launched Universal Search back in mid-May of last year. Since then, SEOs and Webmasters have become interested in how to leverage that to their benefit. But some are just upset and want the universal search blend to go away.

This lead me to think, hey - as a searcher, what if I wanted the old school, plain vanilla organic Google results to show up when I search and keep those pesky vertical search results out of my way when I am searching. The Ask 3D interface does a fairly good job of separating out the organic results from any mixed results together - which does the job. But no where in the Google Search preferences does it give a searcher the ability to say, “Don’t give me universal results.”

We can specify we don’t want personalized results by logging out or using a special URL trick, which I use all the time. But can’t we get something similar to turn off Universal Results? Maybe an &unvs=0 or something like that, would do.

Giving the searcher more power over their search results is a win-win for Google.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

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After writing several posts on SEO and the Presidential candidates, I started thinking, what would I do if I ran for President of the United States, in terms of online presence and search marketing. No politics here, just Internet Marketing. Here’s what I came up with:

1) PPC Ads - (a) I would run PPC ads for the names of all my opponents, and point the link to a page that contrasts me with them on many issues and experience, looking as credible and unbiased as possible, maybe even have it hosted on another site. Each page would be just 2 candidates, not all of them plumped together. (b) I would run PPC ads on all the keywords of major issues, after doing keyword research on what people are typing about them. The page would then point to a news article or write-up about my position on that issue and perhaps contrast with a major opponent. (c) I would run PC ads on keywords like “politics quiz”, “candidate quiz”, “help choose candidate”, “candidate match”, etc. and then send them to either an actual quiz (that I made and control) or a comparison chart that highlights my positions of strength. (d) I would make small ad videos and run them through Google’s video Adwords program. (e) I would run radio ads through Google’s radio ad program.

2) Social Media - (a) I would create a “team” of supporters and upon sign up ask if they would like to be involved in (1) participating in online discussions with their comments, “diggs”, and submissions or (2) participating as a blogger in generating buzz on important issues and news. I would then send out emails to both parts of the team when an important political article/post is up in support of me, and to the comment team when an important article/post is up that is critical of me.

3) Blog and SEO - (a) My site would have a blog where myself, family, and close staff would post on our blog, allowing for discussions to take place in the comments. (b) I would actively pursue SEO for important keywords and make sure I can “own” the top 10 listings for my own name.

4) User Generated Content - (a) I would encourage supporters to create their own “campaign videos” which I would then feature on my site the best ones, and maybe even air some that are really great. (b) I would have a section for users to submit news stories that don’t get much coverage, like small straw polls or local newspaper coverage of me from campaign stops.

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There’s been a great deal of articles on how Twitter can be used for marketing purposes and I think most of them can be condensed to the simple aim of tracking and directing attention. Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you

49 Vote(s)

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A CNet article talks about an initiative to spread information about disasters and recovery. The project is called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD) and is being funded partially by a $5 million grant by Google’s charitable organization (Google.org). The goal is to use services such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate rescue responses and to hopefully save many lives in the process.

At its launch Thursday, the InSTEDD Web site will also feature blogs and a directory of aid workers, where professionals can register and regularly update their locations. That way, people can easily locate others in the event of a disaster.

The concept seems appealing, and since Twitter has been known as a tool that helps find missing children in addition to announcing disasters such as earthquakes, it’s a great initiative.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

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Some webmasters don’t understand the value of SEO. How many times have you gone to a website and seen a notification saying “This website address has changed. Please update your bookmarks.” Why not implement a 301 redirect instead?

The issue is that you should implement a 301 redirect. Otherwise, if both sites rank (as in this case), your redirected site might outrank the site with all the content. In this particular user’s case, an .edu site is outranking a .com. Chances are, the .com was also below the fold and the .edu wasn’t. You certainly don’t want to do it that way.

When you create a new site, 301 redirect the old site. Don’t assume that users care to change their bookmarks. It’s not good for search engines, and a lot of users don’t rely on the “please change your bookmarks” request because they trust that the redirected page will be there all the time. Just eliminate the guesswork and go with the 301.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

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It’s been a while since I’ve let my natural pythonesque tendencies filter out, so I thought that the time was nigh to put a knotted handkerchief on my head and hit myself in the face with a vase of flowers while talking about how watching Monty Pyth

23 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Very interesting indeed. From the Journal (my linking mechanism is down at the moment, I am traveling): Microsoft said it plans to buy Norwegian data-search company Fast Search & Transfer for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner, or about $1.2 billion. The offer is a 42% premium to the target company’s…
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And the winner of the 2007 Rubber Chicken award goes to …

33 Vote(s)

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I created a new site on Friday, and by Saturday exactly 24 hours later it was in Google’s Index. I posted about this just over a month ago in my post, 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours. I had a lot of comments about whether or not Adwords was necessary, so I thought I’d try it again without running Adwords this time. Here’s how it all played out:

1) I created 5 pages of content (Home, FAQ, About Us, etc.).

2) I put them in a simple template with site-wide links. I also linked to it from one of my other sites (it’s very relevant so it makes sense).

3) I added tagged the site on only 2 social bookmarking sites.

4) Commented in 1 forum, put the URL in one directory (niche specific), and submitted it to Digg.

5) Installed Google Analytics

6) Created a sitemap, pinged Google, and put the sitemap in my Robots.txt. Logged into Google Webmaster Central and submitted my sitemap there.

When I checked exactly 24 hours later I was sitting in the index and had already begun to get a few visitors from Google.

I had previously done Google adwords out of both necessity (get quick traffic) but also because of the trust factor I believe it gives to Google, and the fact that Google integrates a quality factor into their quality score (so they come to your site and look at it). Obviously this is just one test compared to several others I’ve done with Adwords, but it seems its very possible without running some ads.

Anyone else seeing 24 hour indexing for new sites?

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David Szetela writes in SEW: "We really do love your software. And we appreciate the fact that you introduce valuable new features so frequently. But please: slow down a little and spend a bit MORE TIME ON BUG TESTING."

35 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Improve SEO Book - the ebook format and sending updates via email have a lot of friction associated with them. Perhaps so much so that I should have realized it and changed my business model years ago. A partial list of that friction includes

• shipping questions (for an ebook)
• a text that takes a while to read
• a format that presumes you want to read the whole thing
• a text too large for most people to want to re-read the whole thing when it is updated
• requests for special addendums when updates are done, which would make the whole book structure quite pointless
• a text so large that it is hard to update
• refund requests within 3 minutes of purchases by people who bought it with intent to steal it
• people trying to sell it on eBay or on their websites
• a lowered perception of value due to using a format that is often associated with scams

There are many ways I can add value to SEO Book and enhance value transfer to customers if I turn the purchase process into establishing a relationship. There needs to be more backend support for learning. With internet marketing getting more complex I need to make learning easier, more granular, and more interactive.

Treat SEO Book more like a business - I sorta stumbled into SEO, and honestly have not treated this site like a business like I should have. Over the years some of my mentors have given me many great tips that I was too lazy or scared to listen to at the time. After seeing one of my favorite SEO sites go offline it makes me want to treat this site more like a business so I can still focus attention on it for years to come, even while some of my other projects have grown to be more profitable.

Make my other sites more like SEO Book - I have some other sites that do pretty well without adding much value to the web. At some level I feel there is a moral obligation to start adding value to markets as you extract profits. Plus, if relevancy algorithms moved away from links and domain trust many of those domains (as they sit today) would be screwed. I want to create more product and service oriented websites and be less reliant on advertising and affiliate based income streams.

Try to get at least 2 weeks away from the web - this will be mid year sometime with my wife, in a one month European honeymoon.

Read more away from the web - I always learn a lot from reading books, and I doubt I would miss much if I cut how much time I spent reading recycled online content.

Start working out more again - after losing a bunch of weight I gained it back due to stress from doing way too much stuff. I have eased up my work load and am chipping away at it.

Spend more time with my wife - given that we both work on the web we spend lots of time near each other, but far too much time working and not enough time playing.

Set a better examplewhat competitors do I want to put a lot more effort into creating things worth copying.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.