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Recently I have noticed that quantity of my “indexed pages” in Google has overcome real quantity of pages on my site. The real quantity is 150 pages, while Google shows bout 300. Checking and counting indexed pages through “site:” search, I found actual quantity of indexed pages and number of pages displayed by Google differ. It is more likely to be a bug, but I think that it can be some kind of concealment, just like they’ve did it with backward links.

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Filed under: Google Optimization

I have noticed that pictures that have proper titles and links are giving about 15% of all target traffic that comes to one of my site. Did anybody tried to do the same? I mean get target traffic by optimizing pictures?

Usually I give a name that corresponds to general site title and specific item of pic. For instance in the site is about cars and there is a Lamborghini Diablo on a picture, I’d call it lamborghini_diablo_cars.jpg, or cars_lamborghini_diablo.jpg - depending on which keyword it must be stressed.

What do you think about optimization of pictures? Do you use pictures optimization on your sites?

//Max

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Filed under: Google Optimization

Many of us have heared about overoptimization, many of us had experienced it. So what is overoptimization and how to avoid it. Actually, I know just few examples of what overoptimization is and I’d like you to share your opinions concerning this question.

Most frequent overoptimization mistake is too high keyword density, proximity, frequency. This means that you overstuff your page with keywords. To avoid keyword overoptimization one should use keyword density analisying software.

Then we have overlinking mistake, when you put too much inbound links to your site and get sandboxed. To avoid this mistake - try to increase quantity of links slowly, I’d say “naturally”. Imagine that your are not a SEO webmaster, but an ordinary webmaster, who had created an interesting site. Site will probably receive one link after week of existance, one more after two weeks, plus two in three weeks and so on. This is what “natural” way means.

Third mistake is overoptimization in anchor text - overstuffing of anchor text with keywords. It is probably the same to keyword density and almost all analisyng software includes anchor text in check.

These are that important overoptimization spots of a site, but maybe you will tell about your own experience and what overoptimization mistakes have you seen?

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Filed under: Optimization News

This is a problem that many webmasters are ought to deal with sooner or later. Especially those, who have old sites, which were all based on .html files. Of course one can just change all .html extensions to .php and replace the same characters in pages’ code. However, if you deal with SEO and your old good site occupies good position in SERPs, such changes can be fatal for your project for the following reasons:

1. All indexed .html files must be indexed again with .php extensions.
2. All links pointing particular page will be lost, unless you report all of your link partners and site owners, who link to you (re-indexing of new links will take some time too).
3. You will lose a lot of traffic from search engines during re-indexing of the whole site will occur, even if you put an error page that will redirect surfers somewhere to your .php pages.
4. Nobody knows whether your site will return back to good positions in SERPs after it will drop out.

So, what to do if you don’t want to change file extensions for the purpose of SEO, but need to include some php code in your pages anyway? There are several methods.

The first, and the most obvious is to use mod_rewrite (in case if your server supports mod_rewrite and you have permissions to modify .htaccess file). If yes - put the following strings in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html $1\.php

Now all requested .html pages will be automatically substituted with .php pages.

Another method works with .htaccess again. Add the following string to .htaccess file:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php .html .htm

I think that this method is the most convenient one, because it simply allows executing PHP scripts to run in .html files. If you have no access to your .htaccess file, contact your hoster and request to make appropriate modification of httpd.conf for your site.

If you were using SSI on your site, for instance like this:

Than you can replace it with the following string in your .php files:

< ? include('file.txt'); ?>

You can also ask your hoster to add the following to httpd.conf file. In this case you can avoid using mod_rewrite:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml .htm .html

//Max

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Filed under: HTML and Page Coding

Hi, everybody! I’m very glad that you find UptimeNews useful and that it helps you (I hope). And thank you for interesting discussions we make here: your comments. However, due to that I receive a lot of spam comments, I want to give short guidelines on writing comments:

1. This guidelines are currently concern just few vistors, who flood comments that have no significance.
2. We allow posting your urls, signatures under posts like “Visit my cool site” and URL, but we don’t accept insignificant and senseless comments, that make no sense for visitors of this site and me. For instance, I have received 4 comments, which were as follows “Cool, keep goin”, “Thanks for good article”, “Heh, good”, “Yep”. Such comments are allowed in topics like “Attention, Webmasters!”, where I asked general opinion of visitors. Other topics are for discussion and I won’t approve any comments of such kind, unless it is a comment given by author, who had good posting history before. Please, make reading interesting, do not flood it and you will enjoy this site and facilitate my job. Thanks.

P.S. This guidelines are only for those who come to spam here. I beg pardon of everybody else, but I had to write this.

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Filed under: Uptimebot.com News

I want to discuss relationship of Link Popularity, relevancy and text links. As you surely know, link popularity is counted exactly by number of links pointing certain page, but these are just basics. Method of building certain value of Link Popularity that I have already described was working on Google few years ago, but it had changed and that is the point of interest - what changes occur and how can we improve our link popularity strategies?

Certainly, when relevancy became one of the most important criteria of appreciation of each page, it has also affected Link Popularity calculation. Due to my little investigation, a page that has ten inbound links with same keyword in link text will have better link popularity than a page that has the same ten inbound links, but with different keywords inside this link.

However, there is some limit of quantity of same inbound links, and you risk to get your site filtered or banned for spamming if you cross this limit. I tried to guess what can I do in this situation and the only thought I had is to put synonims and associated words after each thenth ibound link to my sites. For instance if I’d had a site about gourmet food, I’d put 10 links with “gourmet”, ten links with “delicious” and ten links with “tasty” keywords. This will dilute keyword density, but prevent my site from loosing link popularity, because Google knows that
these keywords are synonyms.

The other way I think about is that Google considers two phrases to be same when they are identical by symbols. If you add some extra words like adding “gourmet food” to “gourmet” - you will lose relevancy of your general keyword “gourmet”, but popularity is lost because of dilusion by something meanful and I thought what will happen if I add something senseless to my keyword? For instance if I add “+” to “gourmet”, then “gourmet +” will be different to “gourmet”, but at the same time it won’t gain any additional meaning. I consider the same tactic, when choosing domain names. Google likes, when domain is corresponding site title and most frequent keywords on site, but the majority of good domains are already taken. At the same time if you buy a domain that contains extra words, it is loosing relevancy. That is why I oftenly buy domains like “gourmet1″ or “gourmet-1″ that are containing my general keyword and a meaningless symbol that won’t affect relevancy and popularity.

These are techniques I use, but I’m sure you have much interesting to tell too. Waiting for your opinions.

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Filed under: Dealing with Keywords, Google Optimization, Link Popularity FAQ

Jay G. Have written an interesting comment, so I have decided to put it in articles. Jay, you can write articles and submit your questions right here - it is more useful than submitting it in comments, because more people will see it and it is more likely that you will receive answers for your questions.

Jay G. Says:

I read a lot about how you should link your site with others of similar content. Of course we should all do this, not only because it is good for our site visitor, but it seems like it would make sense to the search engines.

I do have one question though…if it’s all about related content…how does DMOZ have such a high pagerank? And Yahoo? They are all scattered…linking to pages having little to do with one another and vice-versa. I know that shear volume counts, but there are many sites, such as general directories that have very high pagerank. Doesn’t make much sense to me.

Here is my theory…forget all about the algorithms for a minute. I think pagerank and good search engine results are achieved simply by how many times the search engine visits your site. Seems simple, but think about it. If you are linked to by many sites with low pagerank, you will be scanned by the search engines. You may not be scanned deeply and you may not be visited often, therefore giving you a low pagerank. If you are linked to by many sites with high pagerank, you will be scanned much more frequently and more deeply, giving you a higher pagerank.

So I think the volume of sites that link to you matters as well as the pagerank of the site. Fewer sites with higher pagerank would equal many sites with lower pagerank.

Perhaps I am way off, but from my observance over the years, this is the simplest way to figure it out, since none of us really “know.” I do love reading all of the crazy theories though.

Last example….I was just analyzing a motorcycle related website with a pagerank of 7. There are tons of links going to it…the majority from real estate websites, cooking websites, etc…what does that say about relevancy?

Makes you think…

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Filed under: Optimization News

Creating I site I don’t care details of each banner and text link, but when the traffic is already flowing through my site, I try to increase conversion ratio. You can earn additional 15-20% by making your text and graphic advertisement more attractive for surfer.

There is no definite how-to, but you can always look throug your pages and ask yourself - is this banner attractive? Would I click it if I’d be a surfer? I find some misleading graphic and text ads and try to change it time to time and study conversion ratio. As far as I find the best variant - I leave it working and enjoy increased ratio.

For instance: if you are advertising with help of banners, it is good to provide each banner with text description giving more detailed description of what banner is telling about. Make meanful stresses on advantages that surfer may receive if he will purchase the product.

In case if you are using PPC (Pay per click) strategy - add text description to the top of the page that, for instance, you suggest to click through search results because various companies offer discounts, wholesales and so on and it is necessary to see a couple of sites to find the best offer fitting surfer’s needs.

Just think about it and interesting ideas of increasing ads productivity will definitely appear. Same traffic + optimized ads are really increasing your income - just work on it.

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Filed under: Optimization News

This is the question I have every time I find a promissing optimization guide. There are a lot of SEO professionals that release guides based on their experience and their research.

Unfortunatelly, since Google has made a great shade over it’s algorythm, the majority of articles and guides of this sort became worthless. I’ve seen a hundred of them and all were talking about same things in different words - “make good content”, “stay in good company”, “build link startegies”, etc. I mean that each and every guide tells us about already known facts and each of them say that it’s a pack of unique and brilliant ides.

Of course its up to you whether to purchase such guides or not, but in my opinion they are really worthless, because a lot of same ideas and guides are available for free - for instance see my previous post - many of my suggestions are sold in variety of “brilliant” guides for huge price.

Anyway. If you are going to buy such a thing - discuss it on forums. If the guide is worth purchasing, then you will definitely hear a lot of positive testimonials concerning it. If not - consider to avoid it.

That’s all IMHO, but I really haven’t seen any worthy guide for over a year.

P.S. This all is about optimization in general. Some interesting articles about, for instance, usage of SEO services, maintaining hosting to meet google’s demands and so on are still useful, but I repeat, discuss such things to save your time and money.

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Filed under: Optimization News