In this article I’ll share 3 SEO tips that can dramatically improve your site’s rank in the search results. These concepts are easy to understand fundamentally, but are focused on advanced SEO topics such as first link priority, the Google panda algorithm update and the rel=author attribute value. If you are new to SEO you may want to check out my 5-step SEO course before diving into these advanced concepts. Let’s get started.
Tip 1: Understanding Google Panda
Google is releasing an algorythm update over 2011 which has been dubbed “Panda” or “Farmer”. The Panda update is actually named after Navneet Panda, a Google engineer, and exists currently as a quality filter on search results.
It uses survey data to generate a favorable or unfavorable view of a given website.
Watch this video by Guerila for a detailed overview of what we currently know about the Google Farmer/Panda update and it’s affect on your search ranking efforts.
Tip 2: Understanding The Importance Of First Link Priority
First link priority in a nutshell means that Google gives weight only to the first link back to your site.
Ben Stickland explains “First Link Prioritization occurs when Google looks at a webpage and analyses its outbound links.
The First Link Priority rule states that when a page links more than once to the same target page, Google will completely ignore all links after the first, often with negative SEO consequences.”
“In our example, Page A links to Page B twice. The first link is a graphical link, (in this case a banner image at the top of the page), whilst the second link is in the navigation bar and is a keyword-rich link with optimized anchor text.
The second link is put there for SEO value, and is what we want Google to see, (the anchor text in the link infers meaning), however, Google will completely ignore it. Instead Google only sees the graphical link (which contains no anchor text). The keyword rich link is of no value “
Here is a simple fix:
HTML Required
<a href="http://www.google.com" class="logo">Your link text</a>
CSS Required
.logo{
display:block;
text-indent:-1000em;
background: url(images/your-logo.png) no-repeat 0 0;
width:90px;
height:90px;
}For a complete walkthrough and additional fixes for First Link Priority, watch this video.
Tip 3: Understanding the impact of the Rel=author attribute value
The rel attribute, part of the HTML5 spec, is being purposed by Google to inform them who the author of an article on the web is by specifying a Google Plus profile as the article author (and creating a link back to the article from the author’s Google+ profile).
To establish what Google is now considering “authorship” of a webpage, you need to do two things:
• Link that webpage to your Google Profile
• Update your Google Profile with a link back to the home page of the site the webpage is on.
<a href="https://plus.google.com/your_user_id?
rel=author">Author's Google+ Profile</a>“To add links to your Google Profile, click Edit profile, then click the Links box on the right of the page and add the links you want to the Contributor to section. You don’t need to link to every article or post you create; just link to the home pages of those sites you contribute to.”
More info and a complete walkthrough of how to setup and use the rel=author: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1408986
If you watch this video with Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson from Google, they give you a clear indicator of where this whole authorship idea is going. There are some very clear clues about the impact this attribute value is currently having on search ranking signals.
Though this doesn’t appear to be a contributing signal in ranking at this moment, it is being used as a way for Google to identify “and credit” quality articles and their authors, and they basically say they consider that a useful metric in search ranking qualification.
As an SEO practice, I’d suggest looking into implementing this in your campaigns sooner rather than later.
Please share and comment below if you’ve found this useful, I’d appreciate it.
