One thing that I read a lot of people asking about is how to increase the rate at which Google will crawl your website. The higher that your Google crawl rate, the more important Google thinks your website is. That said, all you have to do to increase the crawl rate is to increase the importance of your website, right? Well, yes, but here are a few more actions that you can take to try and get your site crawled more often.

1. Most importantly, update your content regularly and ping Google when you do. Try to update your website at least 3 times per week, if not more. Make sure Google knows there is new content each time, so it can tell that your site provides fresh content on a regular basis.
2. Make sure all of your webpages and links are working. Finding broken links on a website is a big turnoff for Googlebot, so it is well worth your time to make sure everything is working on a regular basis.
3. Keep your sitemap updated appropriately. The faster Googlebot can get through your site, the more pages it will get to, so make sure all of your important pages are on the sitemap and that unnecessary links are left off.
4. Do your best to get backlinks from regularly crawled websites. Social bookmarking sites are good for this purpose. Generally, Pagerank can serve as an indicator of how often Google searches the website.
5. Make sure each page of your website has unique title and meta tags.

These are just a few suggestions that might help. If you continue to add good content to your website on a regular basis, your crawl rate will increase over time. Making sure that you do the five items listed above, should help get you there a little more quickly though.

When trying to build backlinks to your website, there are several things you want to consider about the pages that are linking to you. Many people make the mistake of just focusing on PageRank, but there are several other factors that make a backlink better or worse for your page.

• Anchor text of link- This is very important with Google and can make a huge difference in your rankings for certain keywords or phrases. All the anchor text refers to is the actual text that is used in the link to your site. Being able to control the anchor text is what makes services like Linkvana so valuable.
• Frequency of change of anchor text- Google does not like to see your link’s anchor text change often. This isn’t a big problem for most people, but just try not to change your information in web directories and the like too often.
• Age of link- Generally speaking, the older the link to your site, the better. If you are able to get a permanent link on the homepage for a website, it will be much more valueable than a link that Google pick’s up and is gone two weeks later. Common sense right?
• Number of outgoing links on the referring page- The lower the number of outgoing links there are  on the referring page, the more important Google considers your link to be. This is often a downfall of directory links and “links pages” on websites. If you are just one of 30 links on a page, Google won’t consider that anything special.
• On-the-page factors of the referring page- Google looks at the keyword density, title, and other on the page factors of the site that is referring to yours.
• Theme of referring page- You want the website theme of the referring page to be related or similar to your general theme. Having  links on completely unrelated sites won’t do much good.
• Expert sites- Google considers some websites to be “Expert” sites for certain topics. It isn’t known exactly which sites these are or what the criteria is, but getting a link from an expert site is a huge boost!
• Finally, PageRank- The higher the PageRank of the referring site, the better it will make the link. PageRank considers several of the factors listed above already.

So, there you have it. My experience has been that any link from a related and non-spam site will be beneficial to your page, but getting links based on the above factors will really maximize the power of the link. SEOmoz has some really cool tools on their website that can help you to estimate how strong a link from a given website would be and can even provide a list of the best sites to try and get links from.

Google announced today that it will hold its third webmaster chat session this Wednesday, the 22nd, at 12 noon, Eastern Time. If you are available then, I highly recommend registering to join the session. It will be very informational and you’ll get access to some of the biggest names at Google like Matt Cutts.

Last week, we focused on SEO tips and techniques that you could implement into the html code of your website. Today, is is also extremely important to understand the off-the-page factors that contribute to your standings in Google. This week we are going to focus on some of the key off-the-page factors to consider.

• PageRank- Trying to increase PageRank is all the rage these days. The truth is, PageRank is important to your website’s ranking in Google, but is more of an indication of ranking than an actual item you can improve.
• Backlinks- Backlinks are links from other websites that point to yours. Google is by far the pickiest search engine when it comes to backlinks and will display only a small number of your total backlinks at any time. It is believed that Google focuses on showing the higher PageRank links, but in actuality, the backlinks shown seem to be almost randomly selected. The bottom-line is, the more backlinks (excluding spam sites), the better.
• Backlinks from high ranking pages- This is one of the most important off-the-page factors to focus on because it is somewhat possible to control. Google loves to find webpages with high PageRank linking to your site.
• Acceleration of link popularity- This is a hotly argued issue. It is commonly beleived that too many backlinks within a short period of time will be seen by Google as artifical and can result in your site being penalized or sandboxed. Look for a post later this week explaining the Google “sandbox”.

These are some of the off the page SEO factors to consider. Tommorrow, we will go into the key attributes that Google considers when deciding how much weight to give to any particular backlink.

One popular way to boost your off-the-page factors and your Google ranking has been to get your site listed in web directories. There have been rumors that Google is beginning to discount these links (see our previous post), but for now, this still seems to be a somewhat beneficial strategy.

DMOZ

Google’s own web directory is feed straight from the DMOZ Directory (also known as the Open Directory Project). If you aren’t familiar with the DMOZ, it is probably considered to be the most respected directory. It is completely free to submit your site and is run completely by volunteer editors. The bad news is that it is just about impossible to get listed in the DMOZ. Many webmasters have been unbelievably frustrated by their failure to get  very high quality sites listed in the DMOZ. Because it receives so many submissions, it can take months (or longer) to even get an editor to look at your site.

I personally do not like the DMOZ (it has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve never had a site listed there….I promise). I have experienced the frustration of trying to get listed several times. The volunteer editor system allows for too much power and subjectivity of one person in the process. The only way to get in now, is to know the editor.

You should find the best category and submit your site to DMOZ, but just don’t get upset when you don’t get in. I wouldn’t even bother, but it is free and maybe you’ll get lucky!

Yahoo Directory

The other very important directory is the Yahoo! Directory. Like DMOZ, this is a human-edited directory, but it is not free (for most). There are some categories that you can submit your site to for free if it is not a commercial website. For all other sites, the cost is $299 a year ($600 for adult sites) to get reviewed. This doesn’t even guarantee inclusion!

Some webmasters are adamant that the fee is worth it, while others are just as sure that it isn’t. For many webmasters, the fee is too high for it to even matter. If you have a good website that should be accepted, it might be worth getting listed for a year or two. After that, you should have enough credibility to live without it.

Other Directories

There are many other directories, both free and paid, to get your site listed in. Here are a few items to consider when deciding on which directories to submit to.

• Age of directory- The older, the better
• Directory site structure- Make sure the directory has a search engine friendly  structure.
• Size of directory- This seems to be changing. It used to be that a directory with many pages was thought to be better and have more authority. Today, it is so easy to copy links from other directories in a matter of hours, that fewer pages seems to be gaining preference with Google.
• Theme- If the directory has a similar theme to your website, that is a plus.
• PageRank- The higher the PR of the directory the better. Keep in mind  that the page your site will be listed on is usually not the main page of the directory. If your category page has a high pagerank, that is very beneficial.

One of the least understood aspects of Google’s ranking criteria is how it uses user and website behavior to determine quality. Patents have shown that Google considers behavioral data in its rankings, but it isn’t completely clear how. Here are a few of the metrics that it is believed Google uses.

• Page traffic- How many visitors go to a page  and what is the traffic trend?
• Click-thru-rate on the SERPs- How often does a user click on the page link when displayed in Google’s search engine results?
• Time user spends on a page- The longer a user spends on a webpage, the more relevant it is considered to be.
• Bookmarks- It is considered good if a user bookmarks a page.
• Domain registration time- Some believe that Google prefers that the domain be registered for longer time periods. The thought is that a 5-year registration indicates that the webmaster is serious.

There is currently a lot of valuable web information that is hidden from Google and other search engines because it requires registration or a subscription to access. In an effort to deal with this issue and index even more of the web’s data, Google offers an option to web publishers called “First Click Free.” According to Google, First Click Free has two main goals:

1. To include highly relevant content in Google’s search index. This provides a better experience for Google users who may not have known that content existed.
2. To provide a promotion and discovery opportunity for publishers with restricted content.

Google has designed First Click Free to protect webmaster’s content while allowing it to be included in Google’s search index. The catch to the system is that you must allow users who find your page through a Google search to see the full text of the document that the user found without requiring them to register or subscribe to see the content. You can, however, block users with a login, payment, or registration request when he or she tries to click away to other content on your site.

Google is basically offering a way for webmasters with protected content to promote with samples of information. A couple of other requirements that Google has created is that the page displayed to search users must be identical to the content that is shown to Googlebot. You can’t do any sort of bait and switch. Also, if the user clicks to a multi-page article from Google, the user must be able to view the entire article and cannot be limited to the first page.

Google provides more information on their website about implementing the First Click Free option on your website. The general process is to ensure that your website is configured to serve the full text of each document when the request is identified as coming from Googlebot via the user-agent and IP-address. Your site will also have to check the “Referer” HTTP request-header field to identify when users are coming from a Google domain, so that the user can be shown the entire document.

While First Click Free will be more difficult to implement and police for paid membership sites, websites that require free registration could see huge benefits to having all of their content available to Google users. Free promotion is almost always a good thing!

Part 2 of the on-the-page SEO factors relates to improvements you can make that are not related to specific keywords. These suggestions will hopefully increase your website’s rankings in Google on a more general level.

1. Check Your Links!- Be sure to use a link checker tool to validate all of your links. Google is not a fan of broken links.
2. Site Structure-Try to structure your site so that any key webpage can be reached within 2 clicks. If this isn’t possible, definitely try to keep all pages within 4 clicks.
3. Monitor Outgoing Links-Do your best to monitor any outgoing links from your site to make sure that you aren’t linked to any linkfarms or other negative sites. Check all links occasionally because good links can go bad.
4. Avoid Link Churn- Google prefers to see link stability in your site’s outgoing links.
5. Use Hyphens For Spaces in URLs-If you need to indicate a space in your page’s URL, use a hyphen instead of an underscore or other character.
6. Keep Pages Fresh- Google likes fresh pages (pages that are updated regularly) and also considers the ratio of new to old pages. This is why blogs are so well liked.

Generally speaking, try to keep your website updated as often as possible and make sure to keep your content fresh and unique. Stay tuned to learn of some of the negative SEO on-the-page items to avoid.

This is the first of several posts about the factors that Google uses to rank pages in the SERPs. These tips and factors are based primarily on research and posts on some of the top webmaster forums. This first post deals with the factors relating to keywords that are considered to be positive on-the-page SEO techniques.

1. Keyword in URL or domain name- It is thought that having a keyword actually in your domain name or webpage url will boost your Google rankings for that word.
2. Keyword in the Title tag- It is very helpful to include your targeted keyword within the title tag for the page.
3. Keyword in H1, H2, and H3 tags- Be sure to use the appropriate header tag on your page and make sure that your keyword appears at least within the H1 tag.
4. Keyword in Bold or Italics-Try to bold or italicize your keyword at some point on your page. It give an indication that the word or phrase is important and relevant to the page.
5. Keyword in outgoing link anchor text-Many webmasters believe that you can benefit by using your keywords in the anchor text for links leading to other relevant web pages.
6. Image Alt Text- Try to use your keywords in the Alt attribute for images. Be careful not to overdo it though or you could get flagged as spam.

These keyword related items are believed to help increase a page’s standing with Google. Try to incorporate as many of these as possible, while keeping things natural looking. Our next post in this series will go into other positive things you can do to boost your on-the-page SEO.

When starting an article marketing campaign, it is very helpful to understand how Google’s linking algorithm views these article links. Generally speaking, Google gives credit for your article links in a standard “Bell Curve”. This means that when you blast an article to hundreds of sites, Google gives you link credit for a few of the links at first, then rising to a peak at around 8-10 weeks out. After that, Google tapers the links off to avoid giving too much credit to stale content. So, how can you use this knowledge to maximize your marketing?

It’s pretty simple, really. The key is to publish your articles gradually over time. Don’t publish 5 at one, then wait a month to publish more. You will get much more effect by publishing 1 or 2 articles each week. This way, when one article starts to lose its value in Google, you will have several more gaining steam in order to pick up the slack. This method will allow you to maximize the link benefit from your article marketing campaign.