Somewhere out in cyberspace an unknown or known associate, competitor or just plain slanderously natured individual has written a particularly damning or negative article/blog about yourself or your business and posted it on the internet.
So what happens next? The nature of the beast is that the major search engines will index and crawl all of the content on the internet regardless of whether it is good content, relevant or controversial. The next thing you know when Googling your name up comes the offending article or blog on the first page of search engine results.
Annoying is an 'understatement'. This type of negative publicity has the potential to damage your business reputation and your ability to attract new clients. The bígger problem is that unless the negative article or entry is removed from the site it is posted on it will remain index-able and searchable by the major search engines for as long as the content exists and this could equate to a number of years.
First up, don't panic there are a number of positive SEO remedies that you can employ to counteract the slanderous attempts of these individuals and their effect on the search engines. Unfortunately with the Internet there is limited recourse by a targeted individual or business to defend their reputation especially when articles are written by so called 'consumer advocates' or vigilantes doing the public a 'service' yet able to post anything on their websites regardless of the dire effects it may have on the targeted individual involved and their business.
SEO Remedies to tackle negative internet publicity...
Step 1 - If the article or blog is genuinely slanderous and has no truth or merit, then approach the website owner posting the entry and ask for it to be removed. Legal representation and legal advice may be necessary to protect your business. A well written letter from your lawyer or a threat of legal action may be enough impetus to persuade the website owner to remove the post. However, be aware that if unsuccessful, it may encourage the author of such articles to focus more attention on you so it may be more prudent to try steps 2 to 5 first.
Step 2 - Examine the keywords within the offending article to see what is being picked up by the search engines. This will normally be your name and/or business name. This is easy to find by clicking on the 'cached' entry next to the search engine listing. The keywords indexed by the search engine will be highlighted on the cached page and show you exactly what the search engine is indexing and crawling from the article or blog. These keywords (name or business name or both) will be the focus of your SEO Band-Aid treatment. To push the negative listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo you will need to create as many new listings as possible on the Internet to be picked up by the major search engines.
Step 3 - Start with 'free classified ad' listings and post your new ads under the category of business services. Include your name and business name in the body of the free classified ad plus a relevant keyword title specific to your industry or business service provision. Free classified ad listings will show up on search engine results within the first week of posting them on the internet. Complete as many free classified ads as possible and post them for the longest duration possible.
Step 4 - Write some free articles on your area of business or industry expertise remembering to include an eye catching title and your name and business name in the content of the article and author bio. Post these articles on your website and on free article submission sites; the more the better. Make sure you allow your free articles to be syndicated for content to other sites. This improves the opportunities for your article being listed on several internet sites which has a domino effect, boosting your search engine rankings and the positive listings picked up by the major search engines. If this still does not remedy the problem, then proceed to Step 5.
Step 5 - Create as many free directory listings on the internet as possible under your applicable service or product category. Use the same title and keyword text as your free classified ads remembering to mention your business name and name if possible. You can manually find free directories by performing searches on Google and Yahoo or alternatively use a directory submitting tool such as 'Submiteaze' which is reasonably priced.
The results from employing these SEO strategies may be instantaneous unless the offending article or post has been prevalent in the search engine listings for a number of years (2 or more). You can then expect the recovery process to take up to 6 months of concentrated SEO effort to bump this listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo.
If all else fails...
Employ Step 1 and, if that fails, then lets hope in the very near future that just like 'sp@m', slanderous material posted on the internet becomes a reportable offence to the major search engines, government bodies and consumer watch dogs. And, that the consequences for engaging in such underhanded practices results in a site being dropped from the search engines and classified as a 'bad neighborhood site', plus a monetary fine of such magnitude as to deter the practice. If a site can't be indexed or is banned by the search engines, then it effectively becomes 'voiceless' and the power to publicly affect an individual's livelihood or a business's profits, growth and sales is then vastly diminished. Noting, that a banned site would still have the opportuníty to remove any offensive or slanderous material and then reapply to be indexed by the search engines.
It may be argued that the search engines are not responsible for this problem. Well as the most influential body on the internet with the most power to help, who else are we to turn to? The print and television media are unable to publicly slander an individual or business without facing retribution via legal action and a public outcry, so why should the Internet be free of the same accountability?
About The Author
Rosemary Donald is an SEO Consultant with Rank1 Website Marketing and author of the SEO ebook 'Insider Secrets of Rank1 Websites' available for $29.95AU. Rosemary is a regular contributor to online article sites on the topics of SEO, website marketing, ecommerce, search engine marketing and small business development. Rosemary Donald is also a successful online trader of top ranking site SabuJewellery.com.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Adsense 10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google
Most webmasters go totally “gaga” for top 10 rankings in Google. And for good reason, Google is the most dominant search engine on the net and will deliver the largest amount of traffíc.
More importantly, those same webmasters will also inform you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often means your site will prove profitable. Mainly because obtaining targeted traffíc is usually your first obstacle in creating a viable online business.
In other words, if you get top ten listings in Google for good searchable keywords, it is almost impossible not to earn money. Read more here.. .Adsense : 10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google
More importantly, those same webmasters will also inform you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often means your site will prove profitable. Mainly because obtaining targeted traffíc is usually your first obstacle in creating a viable online business.
In other words, if you get top ten listings in Google for good searchable keywords, it is almost impossible not to earn money. Read more here.. .Adsense : 10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Dos and Donts Guide to Great Web Design
When followed, the guide will prove to be quite a valuable web design resource. From the inexperienced to the experienced, this guide has something for everyone. Continue reading >>Dos and Donts Guide to Great Web Design
The Process of Great Web Design
Just to make sure we are all on the same page, lets begin with the basic definition for "web design". According to Wikipedia, web design is:
"a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface".
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Key Wording Your Web Site With Natural Language
Key Wording Your Web Site With Natural Language
By Rusty Ford (c) 2007
Ever since the beginning of search engines there has been the discussion of key wording. Obviously your web page has to be about something and you want the search engine to reflect that in its results. In the early days of search engines you could put words or phrases anywhere on a page and show up in the results. People who just wanted traffíc would get a líst of the most popular used keywords and just put them on a page. The page could have been about toilets but show up in search results about Hollywood celebrities. In those days finding what you wanted was a daunting task. So the search engines started looking at natural language. Each year they have become more sophisticated about how they look at natural language.
The first thing they did was to stop looking at keyword meta tags. Too often people were putting keywords in that did not match their page. Next they started punishing people for putting strings of key words together, such as "baseball baseball baseball". Next they paid attention to whether or not they were used in a sentence. Then they started evaluating the content of the page to see what it was about. By this time they were getting really accurate in their search results. But as long as there are search engines people will try to fool them. For the last couple of years search engine optimization people have promoted keyword stuffing. This is where you put the keyword in the text as often as you can fit it in.
A new generation of natural language algorithms has been developed by the major search engines to combat this. Now for the first time we are hearing the use of the term natural language. Now search engines look at the way that a term is used. They compare the use of the term in the context of how it is used. This example is a little extreme, but we have all seen pages written like this.
"I bought baseball cards for my friend the baseball card lover. He was so happy to get the baseball cards and he looked at baseball cards. Then he showed these baseball cards to all his friends that had baseball cards."
This is an example of how the term baseball card was used outside of natural language. In natural language you would not refer to your friend as the baseball card lover. In later uses you would have used the term "them" to describe the baseball cards. The sentence would look like "He was so happy to get them that he took the time to look at each one".
It is still important to get your keywords or keyword phrases on the page regularly. Care needs to be given on how they are used. It is important to have them in complete sentences and not in an abnormal place in the context of a paragraph. Here are some guidelines you might consider. No one knows the exact algorithms that the search engines use and they all have different ones. But, you can presume that they are based on the natural use of language so the following recommendations are based on basic grammar and the normal use of language. Here are some examples of natural use of key words.
1. It is natural to have your keywords in your title and description meta tags. These tell what your page is about and your page should be about the same thing as your keywords are.
2. It is natural to have your keywords in your heading tags. Heading tags should be used as chapter headings to different sections of a page.
3. It is natural to have your keywords in the first sentence.
4. It can be natural to have your keywords appear once in most paragraphs.
5. It can be natural to have your keywords appear more than once in a paragraph but not every paragraph. You need to make sure that it fits well and does not sound like it was just stuck in there.
Here are some examples of non-natural uses of keywords.
1. It is not natural to have your key words more than once in your title or description.
2. It is not natural to have your key words show up more than once in a sentence. There are times that this could be natural, but it would probably be better to make it into two sentences.
3. It is not natural for the same sentence to appear in several different paragraphs.
4. In a short paragraph, it is not natural for your keywords to show up more than twice. In a paragraph over 6 sentences long this may not hold true. (I publish health related web pages and read hundreds of health articles a month. There are times that I will see a term used 3 times in a long paragraph and almost nevër in a short one.
5. It is not natural to have keywords used back to back in a sentence. It is not typical to have one sentence end in a word and the next sentence to begin with it.
6. It is not natural to have every sentence begin with the same word or phrase.
Following these guidelines may help you with search engine positioning and it will definitely make your page more enjoyable for your visitors.
About The Author
Article by Rusty Ford, Editor Arthritis-Symptom.com
By Rusty Ford (c) 2007
Ever since the beginning of search engines there has been the discussion of key wording. Obviously your web page has to be about something and you want the search engine to reflect that in its results. In the early days of search engines you could put words or phrases anywhere on a page and show up in the results. People who just wanted traffíc would get a líst of the most popular used keywords and just put them on a page. The page could have been about toilets but show up in search results about Hollywood celebrities. In those days finding what you wanted was a daunting task. So the search engines started looking at natural language. Each year they have become more sophisticated about how they look at natural language.
The first thing they did was to stop looking at keyword meta tags. Too often people were putting keywords in that did not match their page. Next they started punishing people for putting strings of key words together, such as "baseball baseball baseball". Next they paid attention to whether or not they were used in a sentence. Then they started evaluating the content of the page to see what it was about. By this time they were getting really accurate in their search results. But as long as there are search engines people will try to fool them. For the last couple of years search engine optimization people have promoted keyword stuffing. This is where you put the keyword in the text as often as you can fit it in.
A new generation of natural language algorithms has been developed by the major search engines to combat this. Now for the first time we are hearing the use of the term natural language. Now search engines look at the way that a term is used. They compare the use of the term in the context of how it is used. This example is a little extreme, but we have all seen pages written like this.
"I bought baseball cards for my friend the baseball card lover. He was so happy to get the baseball cards and he looked at baseball cards. Then he showed these baseball cards to all his friends that had baseball cards."
This is an example of how the term baseball card was used outside of natural language. In natural language you would not refer to your friend as the baseball card lover. In later uses you would have used the term "them" to describe the baseball cards. The sentence would look like "He was so happy to get them that he took the time to look at each one".
It is still important to get your keywords or keyword phrases on the page regularly. Care needs to be given on how they are used. It is important to have them in complete sentences and not in an abnormal place in the context of a paragraph. Here are some guidelines you might consider. No one knows the exact algorithms that the search engines use and they all have different ones. But, you can presume that they are based on the natural use of language so the following recommendations are based on basic grammar and the normal use of language. Here are some examples of natural use of key words.
1. It is natural to have your keywords in your title and description meta tags. These tell what your page is about and your page should be about the same thing as your keywords are.
2. It is natural to have your keywords in your heading tags. Heading tags should be used as chapter headings to different sections of a page.
3. It is natural to have your keywords in the first sentence.
4. It can be natural to have your keywords appear once in most paragraphs.
5. It can be natural to have your keywords appear more than once in a paragraph but not every paragraph. You need to make sure that it fits well and does not sound like it was just stuck in there.
Here are some examples of non-natural uses of keywords.
1. It is not natural to have your key words more than once in your title or description.
2. It is not natural to have your key words show up more than once in a sentence. There are times that this could be natural, but it would probably be better to make it into two sentences.
3. It is not natural for the same sentence to appear in several different paragraphs.
4. In a short paragraph, it is not natural for your keywords to show up more than twice. In a paragraph over 6 sentences long this may not hold true. (I publish health related web pages and read hundreds of health articles a month. There are times that I will see a term used 3 times in a long paragraph and almost nevër in a short one.
5. It is not natural to have keywords used back to back in a sentence. It is not typical to have one sentence end in a word and the next sentence to begin with it.
6. It is not natural to have every sentence begin with the same word or phrase.
Following these guidelines may help you with search engine positioning and it will definitely make your page more enjoyable for your visitors.
About The Author
Article by Rusty Ford, Editor Arthritis-Symptom.com
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