Long-Term SEO by: Hristo Hristov

Search engines are constantly tweaking their ranking algorithms and when that happens some pages lose their top ranking positions. One such event was the infamous Florida Update. Many pages were practically kicked-out of the top 1000 pages for competitive keywords.
With recent updates, webmasters have been thinking that Google does not use PageRank because low PR pages can get very good rankings. Before that everyone was saying that PageRank was THE factor for top positions. Now, everyone is saying that keyword rich anchor text links from many different sites is the key for the top ranks.
All these recent events seem to indicate that search engine algorithms are totally unpredictable, right? Wrong!
All search engines are going in...

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Language as Marketing Power by: Robert K. McCourty

Let's look at it from the visitors point of view: They go online to plan their vacation. They look for a destination, accommodations, and things to do while visiting the location of their choice. They will usually attempt to find this information in their own native tongue first, before moving on to the English versions. Do you or someone you know speak a language other than English, then why not get them to translate a page of relevant information for your web site? There are several good reasons why this simple procedure can reap benefits. A site, for example, with a page translated into French or German or Dutch will attract the most important part of the equation, the search engines themselves. Now your site can be listed in those previously mentioned mirrored directories, which can double or even triple your online presence. This in itself is enough reason to put up a few translated pages.

Secondly, the searcher will also have better access to your site in their native language. This helps build trust during the decision making process, which literally translates into potential sales leads. A potential customer is much more likely to purchase goods or service from someone who can 'speak their language' rather than from someone who has not made the effort. It's a psychological comfort factor.

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Link Popularity, the make or break element for Search Engine Rankings

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurences within "on-page" elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using "on-page" elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. "off-page" elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through the use of link farms, pages the contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so the search engines made use of the old saying "quality not quantity" and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

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Local Search; Still A Long Way to Go by: Richard Zwicky

So why all the fuss on local search? Because the market is now filled with billions of web pages, representing over 10,000,000 individual businesses scattered around the world. The Internet can supply business and consumer needs for anything except perhaps hot coffee! The number of users online has also reached critical mass. Users no longer turn to their local Yellow Pages, they click over to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. But they expect the same quality of results. They expect to find coffee shops, restaurants, shoe repairs, and the like. They want to find businesses that are close to their present positions.

Fulfilling this desire for local search is a logical development for search engines. I own a Treo; When I'm driving around and need to find something which I know is offered locally, I pull out my Treo, log on, and search for the item. Sometimes, if it's a restaurant, I look for a particular dish I am craving, but like many people, I also plan ahead. For example, next week I'm traveling to New Jersey. I'm going to want to find some good Italian food. I could wait until I'm there and look around but it's my first time to that particular area, so I thought I would give the latest local search tools a whirl; Take them for a real world test drive. I tried all sorts of searches, but none of the engines could handle the queries properly. I tried for an hour. Good thing I wasn't using my Treo ? I couldn't afford the bill!

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Linking Structure

Your web pages anchor text and structure is one of the MOST important aspects of SEO, for two big reasons. The first is for the web site visitor. If your site is tough to navigate and/or confusing, you will lose visitors. The second reason is that many of the search engines not only give the linking (anchor) text a lot of weight, but good navigation helps their indexing robots or "spiders". If the robots get stuck or have no where to go, they will stop indexing.
So let's begin with static text links.

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Link Popularity by: Jill Whalen

It's important to note that Google PageRank is not the same thing as link popularity. PR is actually a subset of link popularity. Whereas PR focuses strictly on the quantity and popularity of links, link popularity adds a "quality factor" into the equation. Unfortunately, many people mistakenly use the terms "link popularity" and "PageRank " interchangeably, which has served to confuse the issue further.

All major search engines place some emphasis on link popularity in their ranking algorithms. There appear to be 2 main types of links that work best to increase your link popularity: links from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases your site focuses on, and links from relevant categories in major directories and industry-specific portals. "Free-for-all" (FFA) sites do not constitute quality links, so don't waste your $24.95 submitting your site to 500 of them. Links from sites that focus on topics that have nothing to do with your site probably won't help you win any link popularity contests, either (although they may temporarily boost your PR).

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