Weekly SEO news: 26 June 2012

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

In an online discussion, Google's John Mueller said that having a great website is not enough to get high rankings on Google. What do you need to get high Google rankings and what do you have to do?

In the news: Google's John Mueller says that you shouldn't sell your product for links, he says that you can use the nofollow tag for crawl prioritization and paid links, and more.

Table of contents:

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Google: it takes time to rank a great website on Google

In an online discussion, Google's John Mueller said that having a great website is not enough to get high rankings on Google. What do you need to get high Google rankings and what do you have to do?

Google: a great site is not enough

High rankings take time

If you have a new website, it will take some time until Google fully trusts your site. Even if your website has great content, Google must be sure that your website can be trusted.

This is what John Mueller wrote in the discussion forum:

"From what I can tell, your site is still fairly new - with most of the content just a few months old, is that correct? In cases like that, it can take a bit of time for search engines to catch up with your content, and to learn to treat it appropriately.

It's one thing to have a fantastic website, but search engines generally need a bit more to be able to confirm that, and to rank your site - your content - appropriately."

If your website is several months old, it is still new to Google and Google needs other factors that confirm that your website is great. For example, the number and the quality of the links that point to your website will help your website to get higher rankings.

Automatically created backlinks don't help your website

Many webmasters think that they can get higher rankings on Google by artificially increasing the number of website backlinks through bulk link submitters.

While these tactics did work for some time, Google's Penguin update made sure that this type of link can get your website into trouble. John Mueller strongly recommends to avoid these links:

"If you're engaging in techniques like comment spam, forum profile link-dropping, dropping links in unrelated articles, or just placing it on random websites, then those would be things I'd strongly recommend stopping and cleaning up if you can."

You won't get high rankings on Google if you use spamming tools to promote your website. If you want to get high rankings that last, optimize the content of your web pages to show that your website is relevant to your keywords.

Then make sure that high quality websites link to your site. If you do these things in that order, your website will get high rankings on Google in the shortest possible time. In addition, your rankings will last because they are spam-free.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

John MuellerGoogle's John Mueller: do not sell your product for links

"I'd strongly recommend not making PageRank-passing links to your site a requirement for any kind of interaction on your website.

Links placed like that are generally not natural links, not the kind of links that our algorithms want to find. Past that, not all businesses or people have real websites, it seems like it would be a bit unfair to block them from being able to use your site to its fullest (and in turn, if they end up loving it, recommending it to their friends & business partners). By all means, make it easy for users to recommend and to link to your site, but don't use that as a requirement."



Apple changes the App Store ranking algorithm

"Apple is making potentially significant changes to the search algorithm in the App Store, at least according to some app developers. If you’re a developer or publisher counting on a well-chosen name to help with visibility, things could get tougher from here on out."



Bing search quality insights

"Microsoft is presenting 41 scientific articles this week in CVPR that have already been reviewed by search experts covering a large number of topics such as ranking and image search."



John MuellerGoogle's John Mueller: Nofollow can be used for crawl prioritization

"Using the rel=nofollow microformat prevents PageRank from passing. It's useful for potentially untrusted links (eg in UGC), it's useful for advertising, and to some extent, for crawl prioritization.

There are some good examples listed in this thread - such as event sponsors, etc.. They aren't taken into account when we review sites with regard to paid links or other link schemes, nor are they used for things like authorship. [...]

If you're seeing issues with your site with regards to paid links, link schemes, or similarly, then apart from just removing those links, you could add the rel=nofollow instead, especially if you feel that these links have been useful in driving users to your site."



Chinese search newbie Jike takes on Baidu and Google

"Chinese government-owned search engine Jike took another step towards competing with the big boys, Baidu and Google, a year after its launch by announcing advertising on the site. [...]

The site looks almost identical to market leader Baidu, even down to the blue and red colour scheme, and will have to do something pretty special to make a serious imprint on the market."



Search engine newslets
  • Google tests a new interface with horizontal navigation.
  • Google redesigns all AdWords accounts.
  • Twitter to roll out ad products to 50 countries.
  • Google paying $0 in statutory damages as Oracle plans appeal.
  • Google files for a patent on peer-to-peer location finding.
  • Bing updates image search.
  • Nike becomes first UK company to have Twitter campaign banned.
  • Yahoo improves image and video search.

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3. Recommended resources

Check the backlink profile of your website & spy on your competitors:

SEOprofiler is a full-featured SEO solution that can analyze the backlink profile of your website and much more.

You can also use it to spy on the Google rankings and Google AdWords campaigns of your competitors, it helps you to get new backlinks, it helps you to optimize your web pages, it checks your rankings on search engines and much more.

seoprofiler

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4. Previous articles

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