08 Jun 10 Article Marketing and the Highs and Lows of SEO

Someone asked me the other day about the value or de-value of article marketing.  This person was frustrated because all of the articles they posted had very little if any on their search engine rankings.  Let’s be honest…organic search marketing can be a tiring process that has its highs and lows.  Even people like me who are very passionate about search engine optimization get tired when we hit walls optimizing.  Many A few years ago article marketing was hot topic for the SEO world.  After a while the search engines caught on to the aggressive internet marketing that SEO operatives were using and it seemed that at least Google was not valuing the links as high anymore. 

As a publisher and SEO specialist I have always valued content and posting articles online.  Posting articles on article directory sites, blogs and websites creates a new opportunity to promote websites and brand companies.  To me, the recent Google May Day algorithm update reiterated that search engines are committed to driving traffic to relevant authority websites.   I noticed that websites I’m working that were negatively affected by the Google May Day update were my sites that had little or poor content.   Most of the other websites saw the traffic volumes remain steady and some websites have even experieiced a pleasant rise in rankings. 

Article marketing requires good planning and a pragmatic plan with a committment for fresh and insightful content in an effort to maximize search engine rankings.  I believe that writing compelling content will enhance most SEO campaigns and separate the performance of websites.   Search engine algorithm changes can be an SEO specialists worst nightmare, but on the flip-side it can be an exciting ride offering the rewards of higher rankings as well.   – Bryan Dornan

Tags: article marketing, Google May Day, organic search marketing

02 Feb 10 Google on Page Speed as Ranking Factor

A few months ago, Google’s Matt Cutts informed WebProNews that page speed could become a factor Google considers when ranking search results.  Cutts’ comments usually get a lot of attention with the SEO community.  Many search marketing insiders believe that Google has not considered page speed for ranking websites until recently.  Web Pro News makes it clear that Matt Cutts never actually said that page loading speed would become the top criteria for ranking factor on Google.  Cutts posted an SEO video discussing page speed as a ranking factor on Google.  This has become a popular video with search engine marketing enthusiasts.

Google Video: Is Speed More Important Than Relevance?

The video is a response to the following user-submitted question:  Since we’re hearing a lot of talk about the implications of Page Speed, I wonder if Google still cares as much about relevancy? Or are recentness and page load time more important?  In the video Matt addresses the question posed to him Relevancy or Page Speed?  Cutts answers, “No. Relevancy is the most important. If you have two sites that are equally relevant, you’d probably prefer the one that’s a little bit faster, so page speed can be an interesting theory to try out for a factor in scoring different websites. But absolutely, relevance is the primary component, and we have over 200 signals in our scoring to try to return the most relevant, the most useful and the most accurate search result that we can find.”  Cutts continued, “If you can speed your site up, it’s really good for users, as well as potentially down the road, being good for search engines.” 

What are Google’s 200 ranking factors for search engine placement?  WebProNews points out that once you get into how much weight each one carries, it gets even more difficult to speculate. 

I think we can all agree that ensuring your website loads quickly is in the best interest of your visitors because offering a good user experience is important to your site’s credibility and we know Google values the “user experience.” Therefore it’s logical to think that Google would factor speed into their algorithm for ranking websites.  Google offer webmasters various tools to enhance the website loading speed.  Read the original WebProNews Article written by Chris Crum > Google Sets Record on Page Speed as Ranking Factor