Google's Giant Sandbox
If you pay any attention to the search engine optimization community, you have probably heard about Google's sandbox. Knowing exactly what the sandbox is might be a little confusing, but it is an important concept to know if you hope to eventually be successful with Google.
What is the Sandbox?
Before we get too far into an explanation as to what Google's sandbox is, it must be noted that not everyone even agrees that the sandbox exists. The sandbox is actually nothing more than a theory developed to explain what many different SEO experts have witnessed with their listings. Whether or not the sandbox really exists is actually irrelevant when we know that the effects of the sandbox exist.
Google Sitemaps for SEO
This just in: Google sitemaps is finally a useful tool. When Google launched sitemaps in June of 2005, they predicted that sitemaps would either be an enormous success or a colossal failure. Up to this point, sitemaps looked as if they were going to be that colossal failure. The system simply did not offer enough benefit to website owners for the amount of work required to put together and maintain an XML sitemap.
But it seems as if Google sitemaps is going to get new life. Google upgraded sitemaps to be far more powerful than before. Sitemaps is no longer a tool to simply get your website indexed, it is now a useful tool to quickly find problem areas on your website that might be hurting your ranking or indexing.
SEO According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines
by Mark Daoust
Every SEO expert has their own set of rules as to how they believe Google ranks websites. Most of the time, these rules tend to vary slightly from one another. But what does Google tell us? Fortunately they gave us all the guidelines we need. This article will look at these guidelines in depth.
Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Your website's navigation is the foundation of your entire website. It binds all the pages together into a common theme and provides a clear vision to your website visitors.
Clear navigation is extremely important for search engine spiders. Spiders want to find as many pages on your website as possible. However, if your navigation is confusing, or worse, incomplete, search engine spiders will not discover your entire website.
How do META geo tags influence the search results?
Matt Cutts from Google regularly posts tips on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel, the short videos normally offer small pieces of advice on how you can impact your site's ranking in Google. The most recent video, posted yesterday answers a question raised by Jochen from Stuttgart, Germany "How do META geo tags influence the search results?"
New Search Engines - Can Anyone Beat Google?
by Titus Hoskins
Can any new search engine beat Google, probably not, mainly because Google isn't going anywhere but up. It is the dominant search engine with around 72 percent of U.S. online searches and its percentages are much higher in other parts of the world. (Source: Hitwise) However, there are some serious new competitors that may just take a bite out of Google's rosy search numbers. Never know, one or several of them, may just give Google a run for those all important search engine dollars.
