News Keywords Metatag - Google's Latest Ranking Signal

It comes as a total surprise that Google has introduced a new "keywords metatag" to be used as a ranking signal when featuring the latest News items in its search results. Surprising, mainly because Google has already dismissed or downplayed the regular metatag and Google's spokesperson Matt Cutts is on record as saying: "You shouldn't spend time on the meta keywords tag. We don't use it."

This new metatag is even more surprising when you consider Google has blasted the practice of "keyword stuffing" with its Penguin Updates in recent months. Links and content which are too "keyword" focused have virtually disappeared from Google's Index. Sites which have used SEO to "over optimized" their content have received the same fate.

So what's up with this news_keywords metatag which will let publishers give the specific keywords for a news article. The tag will be like:

<* meta name="news_keywords" content="Emmys 2012, Homeland, Modern Family, Jimmy Kimmel, tv, tv shows" *> (Please remove the *'s in your actual HTML code.)

You can use up to ten phrases for each article and each phrase should be separated with a comma, Google says each keyword will be given equal value.

Now Google is asking you to classify or help it understand your news stories. It is intended to be a helpful tool to better gather and quickly present relevant news items to its users. But is this new tag the best option for Google?

Obviously, Google from past experiences, must know this kind of tag is open to abuse. Keep in mind, although this is a News-Related tag, alert webmasters will already know Google news items often appear in general Google search results.

That's why they already have quality guidelines in place to handle this kind of content. Google News is strictly for informational material directed at current events, important happenings, timely reports... other articles such as How-to, advice columns, general weather forecasts, stock data... will not be displayed.

In its News guidelines, Google also reminds us that Google News is NOT for promotional or marketing material and won't send its users to sites created solely to promote a product or organization. Google wants unique quality articles written by experts in the field and won't accept any aggregated content. News sites should have proper author biographies with clear contact information displayed for its users. Correct spelling and grammar should be used at all times as this provides for a much better user experience.

Google also reminds us this "news_metatag" is only one ranking signal of many it uses to rank content/sites on the web. Webmasters, journalists and news organizations should take advantage of this new tool, but given Google's recent crackdown on keyword stuffing, it definitely should come with a "use with caution" warning for anyone who would try to "misuse" this new metatag.

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Alexa Ranking Unplugged: It's Advantages, Disadvantages, Tips and Spider Competitor Analysis

Today a lot of business have taken up online marketing, with an aim to improve their conversion rate. And that's why there is so much importance given to search engines. Many look at Google to get their business to success and many also look at the Alexa Ranking System.

Alexa has been in business since 1996 as an ISP - Internet Service Provider. Later they came up with a term called the Alexa Ranking System. The Alexa Ranking System is been used by millions of webmasters to find out the rank of their website when compared to all the other websites over the Internet. This ranking system gives them a check on the number of visitors who came to their website which is been recorded by Alexa.

The algorithm on which it works is it records the amount of traffic from users. The users have to install the Alexa Toolbar, and this information is captured over a period of 3 months. There are 2 parameters that are taken into consideration that is "Page View" and "Reach" to measure the traffic. A page view refers to the number of times a webpage is viewed by an Alexa user. Reach refers to the number of Alexa users that visit a particular website in a day.

The first step involved in the ranking process is to calculate the number of page views and reach of all the websites that are available over the World Wide Web on a daily basis. The second step involves calculating the rank which is a geometric mean of page views and reach, which is averaged over a period of 3 months.

All one needs to do is to go to Alexa and download the Alexa Toolbar. The toolbar will display the rank of the website that you visit. It also shows the websites that have been surfed by web surfers that are linked to the website that you have visited. The Alexa Toolbar now sends all this browsing data to its central server and also the IP address is recorded. Now all the users that have installed the Alexa Toolbar, their data is collected and sent to the server on a daily basis.

Hence, the more number of visitors a website has the Alexa Rank would be good, meaning the rank would be towards one. The lesser the number, the better is your Alexa Rank.

Advantages of Alexa Ranking

It can be used as a competitive intelligence tool Advertisers and webmasters can see the marketing potential of your website, because better the Alexa Rank, the higher will they be willing to pay for placing their advertisements on your website Various pages within a domain and also sub-domains are ranked the same

Disadvantages of Alexa Ranking

It depends on the Alexa Toolbar All the users of the World Wide Web might not have installed the Alexa Toolbar As the sample size is small [depending on who all has installed the Alexa Toolbar], there could be a lot of sites who get a lot of traffic but are still not ranked Various pages within a domain and also sub-domains are not ranked separately The Alexa Toolbar can only be installed over Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox While ranking a website SEO factors like backlinks is not taken into consideration The Alexa Ranking System can be gamed

Tips to improve your Alexa Ranking

Install the Alexa Toolbar on your browser Encourage your visitors, colleagues and clients to install the toolbar and also rate your Alexa website profile Make use of Alexa redirects to your website Make use of Alexa auto-surfs Install the Alexa code on your website Write articles on Alexa and put them on your website Ensure that your website is listed on all the search engines SEO: What You Should Expect From Your Chosen Company   IP Subnetting for Your Convenience   5 Theories To Why Your SEO Strategy Fails   SEO Back Links or Unique Content? The Importance of a Balanced Approach   5 Ways To Tell Your Online Reputation Is In Trouble!   Why Keywords Are Essential to SEO   

Tips on Improving Your Website's Google Ranking

A great-looking website will still be worth nothing if it does not have a high search ranking in Google. For SEO practitioners, getting the highest Google ranking possible is their holy grail. There are lots of techniques to get this done, from the perfectly accepted to downright unethical. Those who employ unethical techniques may get the rush of traffic they get in the beginning, but the run the risk of getting banned by Google if their shenanigans are discovered. To be on the safe side, use only white hat SEO in improving your website's ranking chances.

The rules change constantly because Google always make changes in its algorithm, but here are some of the tried and tested ways you can use for your website:

Always Make Quality Content

Content is still king as far as Google is concerned and it is always on the lookout for websites that publish high volumes of content that has low quality. Given this fact, it is better to have lesser but high quality content. So if you have a blog, make sure to churn out quality articles with just the right amount of keywords in them. In case you haven't heard, keyword stuffing is already a no-no.

Quality Links

As it does with content, Google is also very particular with the quality of the incoming links that a website generates. This should come naturally given their preference for content quality. This means you no longer need to publish bulk amount of articles that contain unremarkable content. Place your efforts in making a handful of articles and incoming links that have high quality. Instead of making more copies for article directories, you should focus more on doing press releases. PRs can bring in quality incoming links and can be prove beneficial for your website especially if the articles get published in major publications or by well-known journalists.

You should focus on high quality websites in order to get high quality links. A great way to get quality incoming links is to do guest postings. A neat technique you can try is wrapping links in significant keywords.

Using Google Places

If you are using your website for business purposes, using Google Places can prove beneficial for your rankings. All you need to do is provide basic information regarding your business, such as address, contact numbers, nature of business, working hours etc. It would help if you also add photos of your store or operation.

Use Wordpress as Blogging Platform

If you are still in the process of creating your website, then you better sign up with Wordpress. It is considered as the most SEO-friendly platform, with lots of customization options for better optimization.

The ones mentioned above are enough to get you started but to improve the chances of your website in terms of ranking, it's best to do more research for more techniques that you can use. You may find a technique or two that can prove beneficial for your website in the long run.

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