Avasoft Blog

When Google rolled out its Panda algorithm change, a number of other changes were also rolled out at the same time.  This resulted in business website owners frustrating on what solutions they should take to recover their ranks.  Google is constantly changing its ranking algorithm to improve search results for its users, but that doesn’t mean that every website owner has to be constantly analyzing these algorithms.  That would lead to madness!  Instead, Google recommends that website owners focus on the quality of their site rather than the algorithm that result in their search ranking.

Website publishers love to develop sites that are very graphically appealing and full of videos and other content that can take a while to load.  The issue with this is the fact that this can completely kill your search engine rankings.

The Value of Speeding Up

Google now uses the speed of your website to determine how high it should be placed on its search engine rankings, and they did it just by tinkering with the search algorithms just a tiny bit.  Studies have shown that people spend more time on sites that load more quickly, so it just makes good business sense to ensure that your website is loading very rapidly.  In fact, having a site that loads faster even cuts down your operating costs, so it is vital that you make your website as speedy as you possibly can.

Of course a multi-lingual site is one that provides information in multiple languages, while a multi-regional site targets people in more than one country.  It’s possible to have one or both of these situations in place on your site, but understanding the “language” of these types of sites is essential if you want to put them to work for you.

It’s important to realize that while building a single language website in a single country does present a few problems, those problems are multiplied when you include other countries and languages.  You’ve got to create alternate versions of your site for other languages, and you probably want different versions targeted at each country.  After all, what appeals to users in one country may not appeal to users in another country—even if they speak the same language.

Having video on your website is a great way to showcase your business, but videos cause a few problems for business owners who do not understand how they work.  After all, it’s one thing to run a business and quite another to manage a website.  Learning the three best practices for having video on your site is the key to using this medium successfully.

Moving your website seems like it’s as easy as taking down the old site and setting the new one up at your new address, but it’s not that simple.  One of the main concerns you have is making sure that you keep your search engine rankings and transferring them to your new domain.  In order to make this happen, there are several things you can do to prevent a “File not Found” error from opening when users click on a link that should lead to your site.

1. One of the most common reasons for a site migration is changing the name of your product or brand.  This should be done in two steps.  Start by moving your current site to the new address.  Save the redesign of the site until after you see that it has made a smooth move to the new address.

Having your site indexed is the only way your customers will be able to find you through the search engines. So what does it mean to have your site indexed? It basically means that the major search engines have discovered it and stored a listing of the site’s keywords to use as a reference directory. Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines all send out their web crawlers on a regular basis to search for new websites that they haven’t found before. These crawlers take note of the keywords that are used on the sites so that they can direct search engine users to places that have information on the topics they are searching.

If your site is very new, then it probably won’t be indexed yet because the search engines simply haven’t found it yet. The search engines have a way of finding your site on their own. You could also choose to take a few minutes and simple report your site to the three top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Everyone rants and raves over the value of content when working towards the best search engine optimization practices. However, really getting the most out of your site actually depends on much more than that. Search engine optimization also means a website with a good, logical structure. After all, how can your site benefit from visitors if they have a hard time finding what they need to see while they are on it?

Levels Mean Better Search Engine Optimization

The most effective approach to creating a structure that is search engine optimized is to begin with a high level and go down from there. The top most, or highest level should be very broad, covering general topics or categories. This gives visitors an easy way to find a starting point. Not only will human visitors have an easier time navigating your site, but web crawlers will, too. This type of search engine optimization helps ensure all pages are properly indexed.

Search engine optimization is vital to the success of your website. Although there are many different areas that you should consider when working towards better rankings, the URL structure should not be overlooked. You may not realize it, but you could be losing valuable hits all because of the way your URL is spelled out. Make sure you have done all you can to ensure your website gets the most search engine optimization benefits it can.


What Makes a Good URL?

Search engine optimization aside, your URL should be friendly for human readers as well as computer readers. URLs should be structured logically and as simply as possible. It is much easier for human visitors to read and understand your URL and possibly remember it later. Although this can also impact search engine optimization, it is also important for actual visitors.

Anyone who performs search engine optimization and/or owns a website should know what the term “canonicalization” means. Believe it or not, this is an actual term created by Google. The easy explanation is that canonicalization is the process of selecting one URL from a group to represent that group. For example, your homepage may have many variations. When Google discovers this, the search engine will select only one and ignore the rest. Google chooses the one it feels is the best representation of the group and the remaining URLs are viewed as duplicates. This can severely impact search engine optimization.

That sounds simple enough. It is understandable that Google would want to choose only one. After all, the results might look a bit strange with many of the same homepage listed with a few variations. However, this can have dire consequences on your search engine optimization efforts.

Search engine optimization is very important for anyone who owns a website and wants to see it thrive. If you want to rank well, you must learn how to play the keyword game while providing quality content. Google is becoming smarter and the old methods are not cutting it anymore. Poor search engine optimization practices are being penalized, which means businesses must stay on top of the best methods or suffer the consequences.

One popular approach to search engine optimization is through the use of sitemaps. A sitemap allows search engines to review all content on a site, including video and images. Ever since the first site maps were used in 2005, website owners have been adding them to improve search engine optimization by sharing details about a greater variety of content offered on their site.

What is a Site Map?

Simply stated, a site map is a list of the available pages on a website. These pages are used by search engine crawlers to gather information about that site. The reason site maps are preferred over traditional methods (such as simply accessing the landing page) is their detail for search engine optimization. The site map can include resources available on the site that the crawler may miss. This is especially important for those who wish to perform search engine optimization on a site that has dynamic content.