Google added a feature to Webmaster Tools yesterday that I hope will find its way in to Business Listings and other services. Now, if you are verified owner of a website, you can simply add additional users to the Webmaster Tools account (through the verify link). This means site owners can add individuals that do development, marketing or optimization, without having to upload additional files or edit pages. This greatly simplifies things, giving owners a simple way to remove this access.
It is often hard to tell what is a real penalty as there can be may causes for your content to drop in the search engine result pages (SERPs). There are things that should be obvious, like changes in SERPs that co-inside with changes you made to the site. However, often results don’t directly co-inside with changes and therefore it can be difficult to track back.
It can be challenging to discover if:
You’ve got a true penalty
You’ve been outranked according to the current algorithm
It’s a Google bug (from algorithm tweaks)
Simple Checks Include:
Is your robots.text page restricting access?
Has an errant noindex or no-follow tag found its way to a section of your site?
Have you checked Google’s webmaster tools for error messages?
Have you checked WebmasterWorld to see if recent changes to the algorithm are effecting others?
Props to “tedster” on the webmaterworld thead, this list is an excerpt from an older posting of his:
Additional checks:
Do your pages show with a site:example.com search?
If they did once and they do not now, this is most likely a ban – the most extreme kind of penalty. It’s becoming quite rare to be completely banned rather than penalized – usually those who are banned know what they’ve been doing. Technical problems with your site, or some times Google may be at fault.
Does your site still rank #1 for a search on your domain name example.com?
If so, but your other important search rankings ALL slipped badly, this is often a sign of a penalty. Study up on the posts in our Hot Topics area for ideas.
Does a search for relatively unique phrases taken from your title tags return your URL relatively high?
If so, but your principle search rankings have dropped out the bottom, you may have lost the power of a good number of your backlinks. This is not necessarily a true penalty, but if you have been a part of some backlink scheme, even unwittingly, you may have been penalized for it.
Also, check any outbound links on your pages to be sure that the site they point to is still what you intended. Other domains can change ownership (or just change their conduct) and become part of a “bad neighborhood”. If others also have access to your site, be sure that no hidden content has been added without your knowledge, especially hidden links.
Google has a number of good resources for webmasters, but that have just released an Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. So, if you ever wondered if all that stuff you have heard about optimizing your website for Google is hooey or not… this is a great place to find out.
Whether launching a new website or changing an existing one it is important to do a little upfront work. I have had a couple of clients come to me recently either wanting to toss out their old site and start over or who have sadly, already made wholesale changes to page names or content only to find that their website can no longer be found in search results.
Things to consider when launching a new Website or changing an existing one:
Never rename or delete a page (well almost). If you are contemplating a site change, be mindful of your page names and extensions. If you make changes with abandon, you will loose any ranking associated with those pages and your site. This can be specially tricky if you are moving to a content management system or changing platforms. 301 redirects are critical to this process,
see: Never delete or rename a page.
Before you make changes, you need to be sure you don’t derail existing traffic. It’s important to know what pages are receiving traffic on your site. You want to know what terms or phrases are attracting attention. You want to know what external sites are linking to and insure there is equivalent content going forward. Review analytics data and web logs before you make changes. If you don’t have tracking in place, don’t wait to add it. I recommend installing Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools at the very least to see where you stand. You can’t tell if you have made improvements or where you may have gone wrong, unless you have some history!
See: Getting Started with Web Analytics Tools
Matt Cutts addresses the German Webmaster community in this video, but he hits essential points that can benefit anyone who wants to improve their search engine rank (10 minutes).
When optimizing your site for traffic, you will need some means to see where you are, track your progress (or your lack there of), and help identify mistakes.
Here are the core elements I recommend:
Sign-up for a Google Analytics (GA) account, it’s free and it some if the best information you can get about visitor activity and how they got to your pages. If you do PPC marketing on AdWords and don’t have Google Analytics installed you can add it under the Analytics tab in AdWords. If you already have Google Analytics and your GA and AdWords accounts aren’t linked, be sure to select “link to existing” in your AdWords account so your Google CPC traffic will be properly tracked. If you made a mistake here and wound up with two GA accounts you can get Google to unwind the mistake, but it can take several carefully worded emails to get it fixed. Read more…
If you have read much on SEO, you know that page name, title, and content play a big roll in the optimizing you pages. However, there is a second phase of optimization that shouldn’t be neglected.
When you develop your content, you optimize you page for certain keywords or phrases. However, after launch it is important to follow up to see what phrases are driving people to your site. It’s important to verify that your key phases are working and certain your pages aren’t being recognized for the wrong phrases.
You can monitor and identify phrases that convert in your analytics package or by working your SEM campaigns. But how do you identify phrases that are showing in search results, but that are not getting click-throughs? Google’s Webmaster tool is a good resource, specifically have a look at >Statistics > Top search queries. What you get is a month by month report of words that being displayed in Google’s search results. The list on the left is all results, and the list on the right are the phrases that were clicked on.
You can follow this month-by-month to see what is moving up or down in Google’s Search Results page. Any of target phrases that only show up in the list on the left side should be tested and associated page descriptions evaluated to understand why these good phrases are going un-clicked.
It is important to know how Google views your site, because if Google has the wrong impression, you will get traffic with high bounce rates. High bounce rates equate to low search engine relevance. You need to know that relevant terms are being found so you can locate any ‘offending phrases’ and eliminate them from your pages.
You can start with Google’s Webmaster tools. If you haven’t signed up for this, you should. It’s free and can be very helpful. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to sign up. The tool requires that you verify ownership either by placing a meta tag (that they provide) in your home page or creating a blank web page with a specific page name. Once you are verified, look at >Statistics>Top search queries to confirm what search phrases your site is being displayed for and which of those phrases are generating clicks. Also check >Statistics>What Googlebot Sees. What you should see is a list of “linked text” found in external links to your site. Google weighs linked text and surrounding phrases heavily when evaluating relevant phrases for your site. (Note that you may get the error “Data is not available at this time,” in which case you will see two lists: one titled “In your site’s content” the other “in external links to your site.” I believe this occurs when you don’t have enough incoming links to generate a report, but the information is still instructive.)
I believe you can also get some good ideas by using its keyword tool for website content. Just for grins, go to Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, select >Website Content and type in your URL. Then, based on what Google finds when it hits your pages is a list of “keyword groups.” If your site is optimized well, these phrases should all be relevant terms. If any of the “keyword groups” are not relevant, you have some work to do. Navigation, page names, and site structure all play a part.
– It’s also a good idea to try the keyword tool on a competitor’s website.
Added 11/2008:
Google has released a new keyword tool named the Search-Based Keyword Tool. This tool tells you what keywords you are currently missing out on based on search data directly from your website’s content. Viewing this in reverse, that is looking at recommended phrases that shouldn’t be there, is another good what to know what phrases Google is associating with your site.
