Google's Matt Cutts On When Old Sites No Longer Rank Well

Google's Matt Cutts On When Old Sites No Longer Rank Well Yesterday, Matt Cutts of Google released another video, this one answering why an old site that always ranked well, no longer ranks as well these days. The question posed was, "How can an older site maintain its ranking over time?" Matt said that some old sites that have been ranking well for years don't change anything. They leave the 15-year-old template, they don't add any new features...

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Hold Your SEO Client Hostage With Negative SEO Threats

Hold Your SEO Client Hostage With Negative SEO Threats A WebmasterWorld thread has a story of a webmaster who received a phone call from someone with an Indian accent threatening to use negative SEO on their site if they don't pay up. A form of search pirates, if you will. This is what the webmaster's client said: So I had a client phone me today and say he had a call from a guy with an Indian accent who told him that he will destroy his...

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Google's Matt Cutts: We Don't Have Different Algorithms For Different Ranking Positions

Google's Matt Cutts: We Don't Have Different Algorithms For Different Ranking Positions Google's Matt Cutts released a video yesterday answering the question; does Google have algorithms for different positions in the search results. So does position one through three use one ranking algorithm, position four through six use another and so on. The answer is no, at least with the web organic search results. Of course the ads have different algorithms,...

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Google: Your Rankings Dropped Because Of Links, Not Hummingbird

Google: Your Rankings Dropped Because Of Links, Not Hummingbird A Google Webmaster Help thread has an office furniture site complaining that his Google rankings dropped after the Hummingbird update was pushed out. Of course, you and I know that sounds a bit too much. Being that we do not know the exact rollout and dates of the Hummingbird algorithm. But it is nice to see Google representatives saying so too. Zineb Ait Bahajji from Google said...

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Google On What To Do If You Can't Have 100% Unique Content

Google On What To Do If You Can't Have 100% Unique Content Google has said time to time that having some unique content, even if it is a few sentences of unique content may be enough. So when Gary Illyes from Google responded to a thread at Google Webmaster Help - his response stood out. He wrote, "You want to keep in mind that the users (and also our algorithms) prefer unique and compelling content." But if you can't, then what? Gary wrote...

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Social Optimization: Your Content Or Yourself?

Social Optimization: Your Content Or Yourself? There is an interesting conversation going on at Cre8asite Forums about your clients participating in social networks and the importance of that. The given is that social is growing in importance, as it related to search rankings either indirectly and in the future, directly. The bigger question in the thread is, do you yourself need to be active in social or does your content need to be socially...

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Google: Can't Crawl Your Robots.txt Then We Stop Crawling Your Site

Google: Can't Crawl Your Robots.txt Then We Stop Crawling Your Site Did you know that if Google cannot crawl your robots.txt file, that it will stop crawling your whole site? This doesn't mean you need to have a robots.txt file, you can simply not have one. But if you do have one and Google knows you do and it cannot access it, then Google will stop crawling your site. Google's Eric Kuan said this in a Google Webmaster Help thread. He wrote: If...

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UserInteraction Schema For SEO & Social?

UserInteraction Schema For SEO & Social? A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who asked if Google will give him a boost because one piece of his content on his site hit over 1,000 Facebook likes. It is one of those weird questions that makes you nod your head sideways. Why? (1) Google said they don't use Facebook likes or even Google+s directly in their ranking algorithm. Heck, Google doesn't have access to Facebook data for the...

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Google: You Must Wait A Few Weeks To Submit A Reconsideration Requests

Google: You Must Wait A Few Weeks To Submit A Reconsideration Requests We know Google doesn't like it when you submit a new reconsideration request a day or two after you get a rejection response from your reconsideration request. They want to see you put effort in after you get that response. So now, it seems Google is telling webmasters who get reconsideration request responses that they need to wait a "few weeks" before submitting a new...

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Google Not Indexing Your Sitemap URLs? Might Be A Canonical Issue

Google Not Indexing Your Sitemap URLs? Might Be A Canonical Issue A Google Webmaster Help thread has a webmaster all upset that Google shows that they have indexed none of the URLs they submitted via the XML Sitemap file. Obviously, this can be concerning to any webmaster. The thing is, you need to be careful what Sitemap file you submit. If you verify a non-www version with Google Webmaster Tools and submit a www version of your sitemap,...

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