5 Easy Tips to Kickstart a Google Business Page

Google plus local business page effects small business's marketing in a positive way. When you create Google+ business page, you increase the chances of getting highly targeted visitors from Google's organic search results. You should pay attention to this strategy as it brings your business to the top as far as Google searches are concerned. Increasing authority and influence of your business and adding directions to your brand are benefits that you will not want to miss. You don't need a web designer to create a professional Google Plus business page. It is DIY process that can take only a few minutes to complete. This article highlights five easy Tips to Kickstart a Google Business Page.

#1 Verify Your Google Business Listing

The next step after creating a Google+ business page is to verify your business information. Any update that you include on your Google+ business profile such as description, contact details, operating hours or photos appears on the Google Maps and other Google properties. Before you add your local business, make sure meets the given Google guidelines

#2 Make Your Google Business Page Visually Appealing

You should put in extra effort to make sure your Google Business page is visually appealing. You can achieve this by adding appropriate branding information such as informative videos and captivating cover images. If you are running a boutique business, you can add beautiful behind-the-scenes photos on the cover section. If you are running a bakery business, you can add captivating photos of daily specials to draw in customers. You can also include external links to your social media sites to help improve your Google Search ranking.

#3 Using Hashtags Frequently and Strategically

Just like Twitter, Google Plus also has an open posting environment that supports the usage of hashtags. You can check things that are trending in your local areas under "What's Hot." In any trending hashtag, you can start your conversation or comment of the active conversations. As an added advantage, these hashtags also appear in Google searches. Additionally, when visitors search for your business, Google retrieves the recent Google+ post that you made on your page.

#4 Take Advantage of Gifs

Optimising Google business page also require you to take advantage of Gifs. However stupid they may look, Gifs are considered Google plus gold. In addition to allowing Gifs to play automatically on your page, Google Plus also offers a tool that collects your photo's to create Gifs for them. Engaging and funny Gifs not only adds beauty but also adds interest to the posts being shared. Unlike other social media business platforms, Google Plus business page is the only medium that plays gifs automatically. So you will need to utilize this feature.

#5 Continue Sharing Images

Make sure you include a high-quality, interesting and relevant photo in your post. Posts with images perform well compared to text-only posts. If you have other social media pages, you will find that these same rules apply. You can use an image that encourages your audience to click. Post interesting images and infographics with helpful information and share them on your other social media sites. One of the brands that understand how to use images on their social media platforms including Google Plus is the National Geographic.

About the Author : Tully Rickets is a writer with interests in healthy living and marketing. When he's not blogging about healthy behaviors, he enjoys researching ideas for his marketing website from many blogs and websites.

Google Fiber: The Next Change in Marketing Technology

Techcrunch recently featured an article that mentions the test Google has been running on a limited scale with Google Fiber.  The first time I read about Google entry into the cable market, I got a knot in my stomach.  Personally it's a little too "big brother" for me, but the fact that they are able to transmit data almost 100 times faster than what we have now was pretty exciting to say the least.  Now the coverage has moved from speed and clarity to programming.

The most recent article from Techcrunch says, "When Google first announced the details of its Kansas City fiber rollout, one of the knocks against it was that its channel lineup was a little thin. While it had struck deals to bring video subscribers more than 116 channels, at the time of its announcement, it was missing some notable channels — stuff like ESPN, Disney, AMC, TBS, TNT, and HBO.

Today, Google announced it has also added content from Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting. The Turner deal will provide channels like Boomerang, Cartoon Network, CNN, CNN en Español, CNN International, HLN, hTV, infinito, TBS, TCM: Turner Classic Movies, TNT, and truTV. That brings Google almost on the same playing field with other distributors.  Currently Google is charging one hundred and twenty bucks a month for TV and 1Gbps broadband which is inline with other offerings."

This shift, in my opinion means a couple of things.  The first is that the fiber itself, and the fact that you'll be able to stream shows, movies, data, etc. extremely fast is no longer the marketing objective.  Rather, Google is going after a greater share of eyeballs offline.  Think about it.  If they have your attention for advertising online and offline, they not only generate billions more, but they own the consumer.

I don't know about you but this type of strategy makes me uncomfortable.  Knowing that data and other types of zeros and ones can be transmitted faster and in greater quantity is enough for impatient individuals like myself.  However, taking a greater share of my time - at work or play - is purely one sided.

If Google wants to own more of my time, they need to provide something of value.  Will they learn my viewing habits and skip commercials?  I think not.  Unfortunately its still all about the advertising.  What do you think?  Will marketing change based on this type of enhancement or are we just seeing more of the same?

Google Webmaster Tools

As someone who's been building and working on websites for more than a decade, I continue to focus on the basics.  In fact, what I consider the basics are still not being used by a large majority of webmaster or individuals who are running online businesses.

Google Webmaster Tools doesn't cost anything yet provides the most valuable information that anyone could ever want to their website or blog.  I recently accessed my account to find a number of messages from Google that indicated various aspects of my web pages that needed to be addressed.

Insider access
To be successful online, you need to analyze and track your website from a number of different perspectives.  Using tools like Google Webmaster Tools is essential for gaining the type of insight required for excelling online.  You see, having Google tell you how they are viewing your website is the most powerful data you can have.  But you have to act on it...

In fact, this weekend I spent a number of hours implementing changes on my site based on the recommendations included in Google Webmaster Tools.  So much so that my fingers hurt!  However, I know without  doubt that implementing changes to resolve so called "errors" will give me lots of points towards optimization the next time that Google crawls my site.

Although many website owners understand the value of implementing  or updating their site based on Google recommendations, it never ceases to amaze me how many don't make the necessary changes to improve their rankings.

Since the Penguin update and even the previous update (Panda), responding to Google's algorithmic changes only continue to grow in importance.  Using the tools provided by Google is a great starting place.

After you've made updates
I'm going to assume that after reading this post you're going to verify your site and review the analysis via Google Webmaster Tools.  Once you do so and make the necessary changes to your site - this could take a number of days, give Google the chance to crawl your site again and update your stats.  Fix any remaining errors and build from there.

Google Webmaster Tools isn't the only game in town.  Once you've made all of the necessary changes, I recommend that you focus on W3C errors and speeding up your website - two essential optimization factors.  Once you've fixed all of the on-page factors, it's time to start your link building campaign.

The concept of link building requires a completely separate post.  However, I will mention that link building must be done steadily over time and you should focus on quantity over quality.  Since the Penguin update it really is important to focus on your anchor text profile and link sources.  

If you haven't accessed Google Webmaster Tools, I encourage you to do so now.  For those who already have an account, check it frequently to see how Google is viewing your website. 

Site Load Speed and San Diego SEO

I'm sure you're thinking... "What does site load speed and my search engine rankings have in common?"  Well, the answer is actually related to Google Analytics and site monitoring.  As a successful webmaster with a ton of traffic, I've known for a long time that site load speed is a fundamental component of Google rankings.  In fact, it's been one of the most importants aspect of rankings for many years.

However, Google has not always been vocal about the weight or importance of site load speed as a factor within their algorithm.  I believe this is largely due to the importance of site load speed as a ranking factor.  Admitting just how important it is would be like showing their cards at the table.  

Now that the Google algorithm has been impacted by so many changes (Google caffeine, Instant, Panda, etc.), I believe they are ready to share what they know.  My friends at a well-known San Diego SEO firm have been tracking the importance of site load speed with a number of their clients over an extended period of time and have seen significant improvements in search results when sites render more quickly. 

They've used this experience to build sites like www.rankmywebsite.net to leverage their know-how and help small business owners succeed online. Using real data is truly the only way to see the impact of this ranking factor and these guys are industry experts who know what works because they’re testing around the clock.

So, how does this affect your site? Two words: Google Analytics.  Eight out of ten of the world’s leading sites run it and if it’s free. Google Analytics provides invaluable insight by measuring every metric imaginable and delivering the data in a format that’s easy to understand. Recently, Google added Site Load Speed to the analytics category available through your account.  The video in this post will teach you to access this information and make use of it for analyzing the speed of your site.  A good measuring stick for site speed is to see how your site measures up against the frontrunners in your niche, which this software does for free (and pretty accurately). The faster your site loads in comparison to competing sites, the greater weight Google will give your site.

Finally, an important caveat to always consider when trying to improve your website visibility is that Google will never publish their proprietary formula for delivering search results; if they did, they would reveal the secrets that make their search results so accurate and most of what you’d see would be spam or low quality content. The best determinant of what works is simply testing everything you do. Keeping good records and regularly analyzing your on-site and off-site search engine optimization efforts will pay dividends that far outweigh the extra time it takes to do so. 

Top Rankings on Google

Repetition truly is the mother of skill. For those of you who have been reading my blog on a regular basis, you know how focused I am on Google and the benefits of a proper link building campaign. In this post, you'll hear much of the same tips I've provided for succeeding on Google - but they only work if you apply them. If you want to improve Google rankings, begin here...

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

Not sure these tips will work for you? I've applied them to my own websites including MarketingScoop.com and The Marketing Blog over the last 3 years and currently rank #1 on Google for "Marketing Services Directory", "Marketing Blog Directory", "Free Marketing Articles", and #2 for "Marketing Expert" and "Marketing Blog".

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About the Author: Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form.

Google Remains on Top

As most of you know, I'm nothing less than obsessed about Google - the world's largest search engine. According to HitWise, a major brand in online search engine measurement Google remains stronger than ever - just look at their stock price. Well, I'm actually talking about their dominance in the search arena.

According to HitWise, Google accounted for 63.98 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending September 1, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.87, 7.98 and 3.41 percent respectively.

Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key Industries
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing August 2007 to August 2006, the Travel, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories received double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

In short, never underestimate the importance of Google!

How to Defend your Website from the Google Content Duplicate Proxy

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the negatives of having duplicate content on your site. Google has already said that they are now taking a closer look at duplicate content in order to weed out those sites that repeat content with the hopes of improving Google search engine results. In this article, you'll learn about the duplicate content debate and how to manage against it...

To understand this issue, you must first understand about Google's Duplicate Content filter. It's simply described thus: Google doesn't want you to search for "blue widget" and have the top 10 search terms returned copies of the same article on how great blue widgets are. They want to give you ONE copy of the Great Blue Widget article, and 9 other different results, just on the off chance that you've already read that article and the other results are actually what you wanted.

To handle this, every time Google spiders and indexes a page, it checks it to see if it's already got a page that is predominantly the same, a duplicate page if you will. Exactly how Google works this out, nobody knows exactly, but it is going to be a combination of some or all of: page text length, page title, headings, keyword densities, checking exactly copy sentence fragments etc. As a result of this duplicate content filter, a whole industry has grown up around trying to get round the filter. Just search for "spin article".

Getting back to the story here, Google indexes a page and lets say it fails it's duplicate content check, what does Google do? These days, it dumps that duplicate page in Google's Supplemental Index. What, you didn't know that Google has 2 indexes? Well they do: the main one, and a supplemental one. Two things are important here: Google will always return results from their Main index if they can; and they will only go to the Supplemental index if they don't get enough joy from their main index. What this means is that if your page is in the supplemental index, it's almost certain that you will never show up in the Search Engine Ranking Pages, unless there is next to no competition for the phrase that was searched for.

This all seems pretty reasonable to me, so what's the problem? Well there's another little step I haven't mentioned yet. What happens if someone copies your page, let's say your homepage of your business website, and when Google indexes that copy, it correctly determines that it's a duplicate. Now Google knows about 2 pages that it knows are duplicates, it has to decide which to dump in the supplemental index, and which to keep in the main one. That's pretty obvious right? But how does Google know which is the original and which is the copy? They don't. Sure they have some clever algorithms to work it out, but even if they are 99% accurate, that leaves a lot of problems for that 1% of times they can get it wrong!

And this is the heart of the exploit, if someone copies your website's homepage say, and manages to convince Google that *their* page is the original, your homepage will get tossed into the supplemental index, never to see the light of day in the Search Engine Ranking Pages again. In case I'm not being clear enough, that's bad! But wait, it gets worse:

It's fair to say that in the case of a person physically copying your page and hostíng it, you can often get them to take it down through the use of copyright lawyers, and cease and desist letters to ISP's and the like, with a quick "Reinclusion Request" to Google. But recently there's a new threat that's a whole lot harder to stop: the use of publicly accessible Proxy websites. (If you don't know what a Proxy is, it's basically a way of making the web run faster by caching content more local to your internet destination. In principle, they are generally a good thing.)

There are many such web proxies out there, and I won't list any here, however I will describe the process: they send out spiders (much like Google's) and they spider your page, take your content, then they host a copy of your website on their proxy site, nominally so that when their users request your page, they can serve up their local copy quickly rather than having to retrieve if off your server. The big issue is that Google can sometimes decide that the proxy copy of your web page is the original, and yours is not.

Worse again, there's some evidence that people are deliberately and maliciously using proxy servers to cache copies of web pages, then using normal (white and black hat) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to make those proxy pages rank in the search engine, increasing the likelihood that your legitimate page will be the one dumped by the search engines' duplicate content filters. Danger Will Robinson!

Even worse still, some of the proxy spiders actively spoof their origins so that you don't realize that it's a spider from a proxy, as they pretend to be a Googlebot for example, or from Yahoo. This is why the major search engines actively publish guidelines on how to identify and validate their own spiders.

Now for the big question, how can you defend against this? There are several possible solutions, depending on your web hostíng technology and technical competence:

Option 1 - If you are running Apache and PHP on your server, you can set the webhost up to check for search engine spiders that purport to be from the main search engines, and using php and the .htaccess file, you can block proxies from other sources. However this only works for proxies that are playing by the rules and identifying themselves correctly.

Option 2 - If you are using MS Windows and IIS on your server, or if you are on a shared hostíng solution that doesn't give you the ability to do anything clever, it's an awful lot harder and you should take the advice of a professional on how to defend yourself from this kind of attack.

Option 3 - This is currently the best solution available, and applies if you are running a PHP or ASP based website: you set ALL pages robot meta tags to no-index and no-follow, then you implement a PHP or ASP script on each page that checks for valid spiders from the major search engines, and if so, resets the robot meta tags to index and follow. The important distinction here is that it's easier to validate a real spider, and to discount a spider that's trying to spoof you, because the major search engines publish processes and procedures to do this, including IP lookups and the like.

So, stay aware, stay knowledgeable, and stay protected. And if you see that you've suddenly been dumped from the Search Engine Rankings Pages, now you might know why, how and what to do about it.

About the Author
Sophie White is an Internet Marketing and Website Promotion Consultant at Intrinsic Marketing an SEO and Pay-Per-Click firm dedicated to supplying Better Website ROI.

Making the Most of Google Commands

Quick post today. I just read an article on a popular SEO related news site and was reminded of the fact that many SEO related tools are free - they just take a little getting used to. For example, Google offers a wealth of SEO tools, many of which you can access via Google search.

A prime example of this is Google Search Engine Commands.

These commands can be used by anyone to help you identify information regarding a website that enhances your chances for top Google placement. Here are a few of the commands I've used to improve my understanding of my very own website and the website(s) of my competitors:

Link: Locates links that are pointing to the site.
Site: Displays all of the pages indexed by the Google of the site.
Cache: Shows the last indexed and cached version of a site.
Info: Displays general information about a site.
Related: Shows potential competitors to a given site or site content.

You can use these commands for yourself simply by typing:
Link: http://www.yoururl.com
Site: http://www.yoururl.com
...and so on. Give it a try and see what information Google presents about your own website!

You may also be interested to know that some of these commands will also work with Yahoo and MSN.

Universal Search - Changing the Way You Use the Internet

Have you heard of Universal Search? It could very possibly changes the way that you use the Internet. Scott Buresh - SEO Giant, shares his views with us on the topic...

Organic search engine optimization, until recently, had been a fairly straightforward endeavor. The goal was to optimize the content on a website so that it would show up in the organic results on one or more of the major search engines - results that were comprised of nothing but other websites. However, in the middle of May 2007, Google began rolling out its new "Universal Search," something it had been working on behind the scenes for several years. This new search option may have long-term repercussions for every search engine optimization company in the industry if it is something that is preferred by the public at large and if it becomes the standard going forward.

What is Universal Search?
Someone using Google's Universal Search will find that a query brings back results that encompass not only web pages, but also videos, blogs, images, news articles, and other media available online. While Google already had in place options for searching each of these areas individually, many searchers did not notice those options or did not know how to use them, a phenomenon that became known as "invisible tabs."

With Universal Search, there's no need to select a separate menu item - the search will return results that encompass many different types of media. For example, a search for "breakdancing" might bring up not only web pages about breakdancing, but also blog posts about it, videos showing technique, and news articles about it. It would not, however, give you the reason why you were wearing parachute pants and trapped in the eighties.

However, Universal Search hasn't been rolled out fully yet. Currently, certain terms will give Universal results, while other searches will remain the same as before. This is a classic Google move - roll something out gradually, see how it plays in the public eye, and then decide what to do from there. Basically, Universal Search as it exists right now is very likely to change, depending on user feedback.

And if the limited queries that now return Universal Search results do not garner positive responses, it's likely that Google will revert to its previous, webpage predominated results. They obviously don't want to lose market share, and they already learned a valuable lesson not long ago when they released a new algorithm that was poorly received and which was subsequently dialed back.

What are the Benefits of Universal Search?

Universal Search brings several benefits to searchers. A searcher no longer has to specify the media he or she is looking for - one keyphrase search will cover everything. And the results from a search will be more comprehensive in many instances, giving a well-rounded picture to the searcher that may include better information than would previously have been found in a search of just one type of media.

What are the Drawbacks of Universal Search?

The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use. A search for "Paris Hilton" (ever heard of her?) will bring up news, videos, and other information about the heiress. But it will also bring up a map of the city of Paris showing locations of Hilton hotels, something most searchers that typed that exact phrase probably did not have in mind. Plus, 28% of Internet users are still using slow dialup connections according to RVA Market Research. Many of these people are likely not interested in videos or other results that require much bandwidth, and such users may turn away from Universal Search entirely - there are, after all, other search engines. No, really - there are.

In addition, there is no way to turn off Universal Search; as it exists right now, it is part of the standard "Web" search, eliminating the ability to simply search web pages and introducing a new wrinkle in search engine optimization efforts. Now, a website is competing not only with other websites, but also with all the other media that will be included in the results that an average searcher achieves. And Universal Search makes it difficult for Google itself to determine the relevance between different types of media, since the factors that determine a web page's relevance are much different than those that would determine a video's relevance, for example.

What Can You Do Now to Make Sure Your Site Is Ready to be Found in a Universal Search?

Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works. If it does catch on, you'll need to analyze the industry you are in and figure out which types of media might be most important for you. For example, if you are a real estate firm, images of the buildings and homes you are selling might become a very important part of your site, and so you will want to focus on adding alt tags to each image so that not only does your site show up for certain keyphrases, but your images do as well. If you are a business services firm, you instead might want to focus on news items produced by your company - press releases and white papers - and make sure that those are available to search engine spiders and optimized for critical phrases.

If you are working with an outside search engine optimization company already, now is the time to ask what they plan to do in regard to Universal Search. Your search engine optimization company should at least have an awareness of the magnitude of this new way to search on Google and should be able to present you with some sort of plan of attack, even if they plan to wait to embark upon the plan until they know for sure that Universal Search is going to catch on. If you are looking into hiring an outside search engine optimization company to launch a new campaign, the same holds true - ask your contacts at the firm how they are planning to handle Universal Search. They should at least be familiar with the concept and have a general outline to present to you.

Conclusion

If you thought that it was just Google that was working on what it calls Universal Search, think again. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, as well as several minor search engines such as A9, are all working on their own versions of a universal search that will display different media types. These versions are currently still in the testing phase, but they could be rolled out at any time. What all this means for you and your search engine optimization company is that the face of SEO will be changing dramatically over the next several months - or it won't. Only time will tell.

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee of your company's search engine performance.

Google's Supplemental Index - What You Need to Know

Have you ever heard of the Google Supplemental Index? I never have... but a recent article from SiteProNews, authored by Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 tells you everything you need to know.

Before you begin, keep in mind that Google continually changes its algorithm so I'll be sure sto stay on top of this issue moving forward.

If you run an online website or business you have probably already heard about Google's Supplemental Index. You may have even heard it being referred to as Google's Gulag, Google's Digital Dungeon, or the moniker that seems to have stuck: Google Hell.

Hate it or love it, webmasters are passionate about the big G. There's no argument on that point for one good reason: Google simply delivers the most search engine traffic on the web. For any webmaster with at least a few white SEO connected brain cells Google can supply 60% or more of their traffic.

Therefore, suddenly getting the majority of your pages thrown into Google's Supplemental Index can result in a correlating drop in business. A few examples of this were reported in a recent Forbes article by Andy Greenberg entitled "Condemned To Google Hell".

It recounts how two online jewelry businesses lost traffic and sales by having their pages falling into Google's Supplemental Index. They speculated on what had caused this to happen: duplicate content? buying links?

Matt Cutts, Google's main spokesperson (some say pacifier) to worried webmasters everywhere, responded in his own blog: "Having urls in the supplemental results doesn't mean that you have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank."

However, regardless of what Google maintains, being in the supplemental results is not a good thing for any webmaster or business. Just the fact it's called a supplemental index means it's not as important as the main index. This index is seen as duplicate pages, less important or less trusted by Google, thus the lower PR.

All semantics aside, webmasters should try to keep their important web pages out of this supplemental index. Why would anyone be satisfied with having their pages or website buried in dusty boxes in the backroom when they want them displayed on the Front Store Window, preferably in the #1 spot?

Lately, despite webmasters' wishes, Google seems to be placing more emphasis on the Supplemental Index and putting more pages there. One can only guess, but it may have to do with improving their SERPs -- the more relevant Google's search results become, the higher quality their flagship product will achieve. Or it may just be an easier way of spidering and managing all those countless pages that exist on the web.

Regardless, you do not want your pages in this Supplemental Index unless they are really unimportant pages and these can have the 'no follow' attributes in the robots txt file. However, you still need to check this supplemental index for your own pages.

Simple Way To Check Google's Supplemental Index

You can go to Google search and type in:

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked

replacing 'yoursite' with your domain/site to see what pages are indexed in Google's Supplemental Index.

If you see any important pages there you should check your whole linking structure of your site. Are these pages linked properly? Are they orphaned? Are they well positioned in your internal site architecture? If there are obvious interior linking problems with these pages, fix them.

It is also a good idea to see what percentage of your pages are in this index.

How To Calculate Your Supplemental Index Ratio

You can get your percentage of Supplemental results by dividing the number of pages in the supplemental index by the total number of pages in the main index.

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
___________________________________
site:www.yoursite.com

This will give you a good indication of the overall health of your site. If you have too high a ratio or too many pages in the supplemental index you should fix your site's linking structure and remove duplicate pages. Make sure robots can crawl all of your pages or at least the ones you want them to crawl.

If you do find your site or too many of your pages in Google's Digital Attic, simply try to increase the PageRank of those pages. This is the main remedy supplied by Matt Cutts:

"The approach I'd recommend in that case is to use solid white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites on the basis of merit)."

In other words, raise your PageRank to get those pages out of the supplemental index. This has always been the basic key to getting traffic from Google. Quality content plus quality links equals quality traffic from Google.

Likewise: QC + QL = No Supplemental Index

It is always a good practice to keep on the good side of Google. No need to be paranoid, but you don't want to do anything to bring unwanted attention to your site, especially the kind of attention that get your pages thrown into Google Supplemental Index in the first place. Besides, you never know how long it will take to get your pages back out and into the main index where they truly belong. Rumor has it, that place takes forever to freeze over!

About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools For the latest Google Marketing Strategies go here:Google Cash File Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Who Can Beat Google? I'd Like to Know.

Can Google be beat? Is there a brand out there that could possibly topple the giant in Search?

This is a great question and one that Topix CEO Rich Skrenta, recently commented on in his Web Pro News column. He thinks someone out there can compete with Google, and he offered suggestions on how that might happen (hint: think vertically).

Choose your poison: Google in search or Google in advertising. If you've ever heard of the phrase "Hobson's choice", picking a competitive ground with Google looks more like no choice at all.

Skrenta thinks differently, even though it was he who suggested Google is the environment a couple of months back. His most recent thoughts on beating Google read more like a primer of why it can't be done head to head.

"A conventional attack against Google's search product will fail," Skrenta said. "They are unassailable in their core domain."

Kind of tosses the 'how to beat Google' theme out the window straightaway.

"You need both a great product and a strong new brand," he writes. "Both are hard problems."

The shoemaker Nike demonstrated this. Over the years as Phil Knight and company built the brand, it took quite a while before they were confident enough to put the swoosh on their products like hats and shirts without the word 'Nike'.

So you can't beat Google on search. You can't beat them on brand; Google is a dictionary word that to Internet users means search. It's like traveling in the South and ordering a soda at lunchtime. Everything is a Coke, even if it's a Sprite or a Mr. Pibb.

Where next? Skrenta suggested the vertical approach without coming out and calling it that:

You need to position your product to sub-segment the market and carve out a new niche. Or better, define an entirely new category. See Ries on how to launch a new brand into a market owned by a competitor. If it can be done in Ketchup or Shampoo, it can be done in search.

Google came about as many people sought to solve a great problem of the rapidly growing Internet with search. Once Google emerged by doing what people wanted - giving them a quality result immediately - most competitors fell by the wayside. Yahoo is the closest and they still trail Google by roughly 20 percent in the US search market.

That's general web search. Vertical search has become a rising field; witness the heated competition and product launches in the local search segment alone. Healthcare stands out with sites like Kosmix and Healthline delving into quality resources for their search results.

That's sub-segmenting the market. Skrenta nails the wisdom needed here by observing "The editorial value of search is in the index, not the interface." Google has proven that less is more with a minimalist approach.

Keeping that approach in mind goes along with Skrenta's later points: users tend to want to type two words in a box, and they aren't interested in fancy-schmancy "clusters, or tags, or categories, or directory tabs, or pulldowns. Ever."

Beating Google? Probably not going to happen right away. The winners in search will probably be the hyper-focused verticals, which makes sense. When creating an online business, entrepreneurs try to fill a niche. Search should work out the same way.