Developing a corporate writing style will unify your company’s communications and create a unique ‘voice’ that enhances corporate recognition and brand awareness. To ensure that your corporate writing style is applied consistently, you need a style-guide.

Writing style refers to the words and expressions - as well as to the spelling, grammar and punctuation - a person uses when writing letters and memos. Each of us has a personal style of writing which, like our speaking voice, is usually recognizable.

To distinguish itself from its competitors your company also needs its own writing style, one that will make it recognizable and enhance brand awareness.

The problem is that corporate communications are written by many people, each with their own personal style. This is especially true where particular documents, such as newsletters, technical manuals and corporate brochures, websites and ezines, contain contributions from several people.

Thus there is a need to create a company writing style that unifies written communications and reflects corporate identity and image.

If you examine the brochures and websites of major corporations you’ll see that the style of writing varies - sometimes subtly but always distinctively - from one company to the next. You will also notice that the corporate literature of each particular company reflects a unified style, as if it had all been written by the same person, ie the same corporate personality.

The best way to achieve a unified writing style that is stamped with your corporate personality is to create a document called a style-guide.

A style-guide is a booklet that covers word, phrase and sentence usage, and approaches to be taken in structuring particular types of communications, such as brochures, technical manuals or ezines, as well as common errors in grammar and syntax. It lays down the ‘rules’ to be followed when writing corporate literature.

A style-guide should provide your corporate communications with a distinct vocabulary and cadence that is appropriate to your business. Obviously a writing style that is suitable for a financial services company or bank must differ greatly from the style of a fashion house. An appropriate style-guide will provide your company with the overall tone and word-quality you need to communicate successfully with your target audiences.

When devising a style-guide, an independent consultant is essential to preserve objectivity. Giving the job to an in-house executive may result in writing style that is contentious because everyone within your company is likely to have views on what is an appropriate and ‘correct’ style. An external writing consultant will have the experience needed to devise an appropriate style - it’s his main job after all.

>The consultant will begin with an examination of your company, its marketing efforts, communication channels and target audiences. He or she will also peruse the company’s marketing communications and other corporate literature. This getting-to-know-you phase must be done thoroughly which can take time.

Once he understands your company, its communication objectives and typical audiences, the consultant will be in a position to draft a corporate style manual and agree its content with senior management. To illustrate the value of the proposed writing style, he or she should rewrite some of your recent corporate literature and show how the proposed style will enhance corporate recognition and branding.

You should always ensure that the final guide is delivered in electronic format so that it may be printed and distributed among your staff without restriction. Once it has been issued, you will also need to take steps to ensure that the writing ‘rules’ are followed in all communications with markets and shareholders.

A well-thought out writing style-guide with clear understandable rules, which are applied consistently to all corporate literature - print and electronic - will ensure clarity and harmony in your corporate communications and reinforce corporate personality. It’s just as important as your logo and visual imagery.

Technorati Tags: Copywriting, Corporate Writing, Marketing

I read an article earlier which I feel is worth posting (see here) up as an archetypal view on the process of getting new pages listed early on the search engine Google. Having been developing search engine ready websites for several years now, I am certain that there does exist some kind of filtering system for new websites. And why not, if the process were so simple, a huge faceless multi-national could simply create a new domain and buy their way to the top of the Google organic listings without the prerequisite of authority or content.

Firstly, where does the term Sandbox originate? Well it’s an Americanism for the area where kiddies play with their plastic toys in the playground. In other words, a virtual holding area for juvenile websites where the authors can fumble around amongst the dog pooh and syringes whilst finding their niche and focusing on it.

In my recent experience of publishing new sites, one cannot rely on all being instantly blocked for all but the most irrelevant search terms (in general the main clue that a site is ‘Sand boxed’) from the search results on Google. In particular, new, well written and original commercial Blogs published using Wordpress CMS often find instant favour with Google - no doubt the reason why so many of us in the SEO community and many of our clients use this method to promote our cause. An example of this are the 3 domains listed below;

Aimed at promoting holiday rentals in regional Spain www.almeriaaccommodation.co.uk was published early on the week of 23rd June 2008 and although I used some credible link building to get the site listed, together with a well researched domain name, the indexing has produced no favorable results. Not withstanding that, if you are reading this article more than 6 months later I have no doubt if you were to search Google for our target keyphrase you will find the site in the top 5.

A second project was a corporate currency exchange site, where I used a similar well researched domain name, purchased some time ago as was the previous example, re-directed in the same way for a set period to create an artificial aging yet for currency conversion and currency exchange keywords and phrases www.fx-foreignexchange.com is ranking well and producing immediate organic visitors. Most notably the terms ‘global currency exchange’, and ‘global money conversion’ where it ranks top ten.

Finally, launched 1 month ago (well within the normal ‘Sandbox’ gestation period) is the corporate Blog www.diamondsurfacing.co.uk a regional website for a company providing patio, driveway and window cleaning both commercially and privately in Braintree, Basildon and the Essex surrounds. Spelling mistakes within keyphrases from visitors aside, this site has already produced visitors from over 60 very different keywords and phrases, many highly competitive and most targeted.

So is the Sandbox anything more than just a mythical excuse dreamed-up by anxious SEO’s trying to protect their reputation? Well this SEO does not believe so. And thumbs-up to Google for exercising veto on behalf of of the ‘man in the street’ and allowing all publishers to play on a more level playing field. Keep up the good work.

Technorati Tags: Google, Marketing, sandbox, SEO

With an article title like this, it almost seems like I am playing the fool, by telling you something doesn’t exist and then telling you that I will show you how to beat that thing I said does not exist. Maybe I am the fool, or maybe, I have something valuable to share with you today. You be the judge.

I Don’t Believe In The Google Sandbox, Dragons or Unicorns…

I was browsing the Digital Point forums earlier, when I came across this quote:

“The Google Sandbox is something that people either believe or don’t believe. It usually means that within the first 6 months - 1 year you won’t get a lot of love from Google.”

I saw the quote shown above and I had a good laugh. Yes, many people believe in the existence of the Google Sandbox, and I am not one of those people. I place the “Google Sandbox” in the same category as the leprechaun… they both make a neat children’s story, but I see no truth in either.

What Is Google Love?

Google love is the imaginary “feeling” that Google has for the websites in its index. The more Google loves a website, the higher that website will rank in the Google search results.

No matter how many search results Google shows for a particular search term, Google will only show a maximum of 1,000 website listing in its search engine result pages (SERPs). However, few people, except nuts like me know that as you go to each consecutive page in Google’s SERPs, the actual number that Google is willing to show you gets smaller with each additional page visited.

For example, I just did a search on the keyword phrase “Google Love”. My default Google settings are set to 100 results. When I first typed the search phrase, Google showed 68,300,000 results, and Google shows me that I can look at ten pages of results. But, when I get to the tenth page in Google’s results, there are only three listings. Google only loves 903 web pages for the search term “Google Love”.

Google has told us that they attribute value to a web page, based on the number of inbound links that page might have. Google Love primarily comes from link popularity, which is derived from inbound links.

The Suggested Lifespan Of The Google Sandbox

I see the “sandbox” as being a term that some person working in SEO derived to explain why so many of his client’s new pages appeared in Google’s search results for about one month, before the pages disappeared into the deep recesses of the Google index.

In absence of a better explanation, some SEO person coined the term “Google Sandbox” to explain to his or her customers why a page disappears from the Google index and stays missing for months or years.

According to those who preach the Google Sandbox theory, the lifespan of the Sandbox is six months to one year. That is a lifetime when you are running an online business.

The Life Curve Of A Web Page

Google’s algorithms rely heavily on inbound links to determine the value of a web page. But a brand new web page has not had the opportunity to attract any inbound links, because after all, it is a brand new web page. So Google gives new web pages the benefit of a doubt.

News stories are a good example of web pages that may very well be important to the world-at-large, but its importance cannot be determined by the number of inbound links available to that page.

As a result, all brand new web pages on the Internet are given an intrinsic value by Google, as if the pages housed a news story. But what was important thirty days ago, will not necessarily be important today. So news stories are given early value and then their value fades with time.

Once the news cycle is completed, the web page will slide down to where it deserves to be according to the normal Google algorithms. This often means that a new web page will disappear into Google oblivion (or the theoretical Google Sandbox), if after 30 days the page has not generated any link popularity of its own.

After The News Cycle, All Normal Rules Apply

We have all heard it before. The way to get a web page to rank in Google is to build link popularity for the web page.

And how do you build link popularity for a web page? Build inbound links to that web page, of course.

Once the news cycle is done, a new web page must compete with every other web page, based on Google’s normal algorithm.

What If A Page Could Develop Link Popularity In 30 Days?

What if you were able to build inbound links and therefore link popularity for a web page, before the news cycle runs out? That would be a twist, wouldn’t it?

Personally, I know for a fact that if you can build link popularity on a page, within the news cycle window, that this new page will not fall into the dreaded and mythical Google Sandbox. The page will not fall into the Google Sandbox at the end of the news cycle, because the page will have already accrued some link popularity within Google’s primary algorithm.

You Are The Master Of Your Own Domain

As the master of your domain, you get to choose how long a page is sandboxed. Most people don’t realize they have that kind of control, but with smart link building, one can prevent a web page from entering the sandbox. Or, if the web page does slip into the sandbox, the smart online marketer can bring a web page out of the mythical sandbox in days or weeks, instead of months or years. The beauty of this truth is that you define the time line for when a web page exits the sandbox, not Google.

I Boast That I Can Prove It To You

I built a new page 16 days ago (June 10th, 2008) that is holding page one results in Google against 200,000+ websites, with my Blackhat Fish SEO Contest entry.

Now, one could argue that I am still in the news cycle for this web page, so in another two weeks, my page could disappear from the Google results. But, I have built so many inbound links to this page that I fully expect that when the news cycle is done, my page will remain outside of Google’s mythical sandbox.

I Challenge You To Test My Results

Test my proof by checking back here in a couple weeks, or even in four weeks or six. If I am right, you will be able to click this link to Google’s search results for the keyword phrase Blackhat Fish, and you will be able to see my page title on page one or two of Google’s search results: “Whitehat vs. Blackhat: Fish For Links or Die Trying”.

I say page one or page two of Google’s search results, because I would be surprised if I actually won the competition. However, if I am still in the top20 results for the search key term after July 10, 2008, then I will have proved to you that anyone can beat the sandbox, if only they exercised the right strategy for escaping the sandbox ahead of the end of the news cycle.

I have actually pulled this off with three web pages in the last 60 days. The above listed example is just one of many examples I could show you as proof of concept here. But for brevity’s sake, I am only including the one example here.

In Conclusion…

You can accept my analysis as sound, or you can call me the fool. It does not matter to me which you choose. If you want to believe that the Google Sandbox really exists to thwart your online business, then more power to your fears.

For those of you who have found my words worthwhile, let’s meet next Saint Patrick’s’ Day to share a green beer and a laugh.

by Bill Platt

Technorati Tags: Google, Marketing, sandbox, SEO

In keeping with the focus on user generated content from social MEdia sites, it could be that this new domain name may actually get legs and walk away with a target audience currently using .name domains.

The headline here leads to the wikipedia entry for .me. The dot me domain is actually a country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for Montenegro and in a twist that is almost too funny to be true … well here is the Wikipedia explanation of how this came about:

This follows Montenegro’s June 3, 2006 declaration of independence from Serbia and Montenegro, which used the code YU. The .me registry is operated by doMEn, which won a contract to do so after a bid process conducted by the government of Montenegro. In addition to declaring .me to be independent of .yu, a new .rs domain is to be deployed for Serbian use.

Wow! It’s almost like the “Who’s on First” sketch from Abbot and Costello and if you haven’t seen that - here ya go!

Well now that we’ve had our fun. Let’s learn a bit more about the sale of .me domains. It is currently not a live domain and is in what is known as the “Landrush” phase of sales in which you can put in your bid for $49 if nobody else bids for your .me domain until June 26, 2008, which followed the “Sunrise” period where trademark holders could buy domains first for $100 each.

On July 17, 2008 we reach the “GoLive” stage where anyone can purchase any unclaimed .me domain names. If you bid on a domain during “Landrush” and someone else bids on the domain you request, the bidders enter an auction in which the highest bidder pays that amount PLUS the $49 to take the .me domain you compete to win.

Technorati Tags: .me, domain names, Marketing

Over at the Search Engine Journal, the resident writer Ann Smarty has written an extremely interesting post about how Webmasters can increase the Google Crawl rate for their websites.

It is every important to understand one simple concept and it is that, you can never force or cheat Googlebot into crawling your website. But you can always employ certain steps, that would ensure that Googlebot gets attracted to your content and crawls it. Here are a few ways to do just exactly that:

• You should always update your content as soon as possible, because this effort really helps. You should update or add new content to your website at least 3 times a week (minimum) and then should immediately ‘ping’ (notify) Google.

• Page load time is another critical factor to be taken care of. If the crawler spends too much time crawling your huge images or PDF files, there will be no time left for it to visit your other pages.

• Double check your internal link structure. That means keep an open eye for any duplicate content that might arise via different URLs.

• It is imperative that your server should always return correct header response.

• Another great way to invite Googlebot is to assign unique title and meta-tags for each of your pages.

Following these steps, would make your content look attractive to Googlebot and will compel it to crawl your website.

Technorati Tags: crawl, engine, Marketing, rate, search, visit

Choosing a good domain name is crucial to the success or failure of your business. You may wonder how something so small and slight could have an impact on your business, but the best way to compare this is to think about how important location is to an off line business? If you do not have a good location, you are likely not going to get many visitors. The same holds true for a good domain name as well.

Here, you will discover the six qualities that a good domain name must have to ensure maximum success.

Memorable

A good domain name must be memorable. Yes, we have the option of bookmarking a site that we enjoy; however, the hard truth is that many people do not take advantage of bookmarking. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that your domain name is one that is easy to remember and makes an impact. It should be easy, memorable, and straight forward. Avoid complexity and it is usually a good idea to avoid initials in most cases. The only exception to this rule would be if the letters represented the website name or business and was still easy to remember.

Short and Sweet

Twenty characters is the maximum that you should use for a good domain name, ten is even better. A long and complicated domain name is not going to help you. Your best bet is to keep it short and sweet. A great domain name is less than ten characters; a good domain name is less than twenty characters. A bad domain name goes over twenty characters.

Be Choosy On Your Extension

There are several domain extensions available to you such as .com, .net, .org, .tv, .info, .gov and so on. However, some of these work better than others and are more memorable at the same time. It is important to understand that some extensions also have restrictions such as .gov is reserved specifically for government websites. The .com domain name extension is the best by far, because it is the most widely used.

The .net extension is the second best, but be prepared most people will type .com before they will .net if they cannot remember which extension you use. The type of extension you use might also have a bearing on the type of website. Some people have come to expect certain things when a particular extension. For example, .org is typically used by not-for-profit organization and educational websites. The .info extensions are generally used for informational websites.

Spelling Means Everything

Having a difficult to spell domain name could cause you some trouble. Again, many do not even make use of bookmarks; therefore, if your domain name is hard to spell, they may end up at a competitor’s website.

pronounce, have a good combination of words or letters that are used in every day language, and does not contain foreign words that may be difficult to non-native speakers.

Tells a Story

A good domain name should be descriptive and tell a story. In other words, when your visitors, customers, or potential customers see your domain name they should instantly be able to tell what they are going to find. For instance, if it is your business, a business name is good.

Avoid Fancy Symbols

It is never a good idea to use numbers or hyphens within your domain name. Even if your domain name is memorable, many people will not pay attention to the symbols, which could lead them to someone else’s website.

Technorati Tags: Domain Name, Internet, Marketing, SEO

There is now no doubts that blogging your company’s services, products or business can produce a very effective increase in visitor levels but watch the pitfalls. Here is the portfolio of our agency’s blogs and 5 reasons why errors in blogging for business can cause your efforts to produce lacklustre results;

• www.costa-blanca-properties.eu
• www.cyprusprops.com
• www.blog.fx-foreignexchange.com
• www.gatehouseestates.co.uk
• www.gatehouseestates.com
• www.gatehouseinternational.com
• www.gatehouserental.com
• www.ibizavillasforsale.com
• www.italyvillasforsale.com
• www.mallorcavillasforrent.com
• www.mypolarisworld.eu
• www.portugalprop.com
• www.sellmyvilla.com

• No clear objectives. With all the buzz and promise of increased search engine visibility, improved customer communications and PR, many companies task their IT group to “set up a blog” without ever planning exactly what the key objectives are. A few weeks later, you’ll often hear, “OK, we have the blog installed and a few posts made, where’s all the traffic? What do we do now?”There are many reasons to start a business blog ranging from PR goals like building thought leadership and better connecting to customers to serving as part of a SEO program by archiving newsletters, FAQs and “link bait” content. The key is to identify the objectives for the corporate blog, get key metrics identified and create a content creation and promotion plan consistent with reaching those goals.

• Unrealistic expectations and resource allocation. Blogging is work, no doubt about it. Not everyone is a natural blog writer and community builder. A successful business blog puts a personality on the company and both listens and responds to the community. Expecting a blog to be a silver bullet purely based on the SEO friendliness of blog software for example, is as shortsighted as expecting on-page SEO alone to solve a web site’s search engine ranking problems.Successful business blogs require a forecast of resources (people, process and technology) so there are no surprises and so the blog doesn’t “run out of gas”. Setting short and long term goals along with mechanisms for reporting them is key. It’s also important to implement measures of accountability for those involved. If a company is going to start a blog, they should plan for success rather than treating it like a crapshoot. Commit or go home.

• Not sourcing content for the long term. One of the most common reasons business blogs lack content or posting frequency is a combination of not participating in the blogging community conversation and not identifying content sources. Keyword researched blog categories can serve as a sort of editorial guide on what to write about as well as identifying a mix of post types to be written on a regular basis. For example, we run polls, review SEO blogs, cover conferences, write about common client marketing issues, invite guest posts, review books, list “top 10 resources” and interview well known people in our industry. That list makes up our editorial guide so we don’t “run out”.Companies would also do well to identify multiple people to write for the company blog so no one person is tasked with too much. Businesses can also tap into the knowledge and idea streams that come from front line interactions in their organization such as those between customer service and clients as well as sales and prospects. Aggregating common issues from those interactions provides excellent content sources for a business blog.

• No feedback mechanisms. Comments and trackbacks are a big part of why blogs are different than web sites. However, many business blogs don’t allow comments because they fear the time/expense of staffing required to handle them. They also fear what readers might say. My opinion is that a blog without comments isn’t really a blog. Comments are a goal not a liability. Feedback from readers, good and bad creates a conversation that includes the company. The conversation is already happening elsewhere, why not have it in your own backyard?The second part of the feedback mechanism is analytics. Web visitor analytics, RSS feed analytics, on-site search, social media monitoring, inbound links and comments on other blogs all provide abundant opportunities to measure the effect of a business blog and its reach. This kind of feedback can motivate the right mix of resources to evolve the blog as a key component of the organizations PR and marketing program just like any other marketing effort.

• Do it yourself syndrome. Companies can setup blogs themselves quite easily, but judging by the number of “dead” blogs out there, it’s a very different thing to setup a blog than to start a blog and be successful with it. As with any potentially complicated and lucrative venture, anticipating all the contingencies and dependencies is near impossible unless it’s been done before. As blog consultants we encourage companies to start their own internal blogs and see what’s involved. That way they can appreciate the challenges of developing a successful blog. Substantial time, money and effort can be saved by having the right consultant provide strategic and tactical insight. For the same reasons people hire guides on jungle, mountain or desert excursions, businesses can realize the benefits of blogging more efficiently and cost effectively when working with a capable consultant. Avoiding major risks due to uninformed decision making is also a benefit of working with a consultant either periodically or on an ongoing basis.

As well as link building and on-page optimisation, there are some other very important SEO factors which can help your website index and rank in search engine listings. The following techniques are grouped into the category named ‘website optimisation’ and should not be overlooked when preparing an SEO campaign.

Domain Age and Expiration Date

Google and other search engines include many factors within their ranking system. One of these factors is trust rank. Owning a domain that has history improves the trust rank as does registering the domain for a long period of time.

Website History

Again trust rank comes into play here. If your website has been archived in the search engine results for a long period then it will help improve rankings and indexing of webpages created in comparison with a fairly new website with no history.

Structured Navigation

When creating a website, it is important to provide a well structured navigation, not just for users but also to allow search engine bots to follow links and index webpages within your website. Structuring your navigation correctly can help all you webpages be indexed and should help the flow of Google’s PageRank spread through out the website.

Valid HTML

As with structured navigation, the importance of valid HTML to search engine bots is to allow all webpages within your website to be indexed within the search engine listings. Validating your HTML will ensure that the bots do not hit any ‘brick walls’ within the code that prevent them from reading the rest of the webpage.

Contextual Linking

To further help the indexing of your webpages and to even out the flow of Google’s PageRank, it is useful to include links within the content text of your webpages. Wikipedia is a perfect example of how this should be done.

URL Structure Including keywords in your website’s URLs will help you rank for those terms. If your website uses dynamic URLs created through variables then think about rewriting them. Separate keywords using a minus character (eg. search-phrase.html) and try and keep the important keywords as close to the beginning of the URL as possible.

Regional Targeting

If you wish to target a certain region then there are a few steps you can take to help this process. Firstly you can choose a relevant domain such as a .co.uk (UK) or .de (Germany) rather than a generic .com domain. Then look at your hosting IP location, search engines can access this information and will use it to decide your target audience. Finally, Google Webmaster Tools allows you to set a geographic target which is useful if you have a .com domain.

Site Maps

Search engine bots look for site maps when they visit your website. Providing a standard HTML site map will help improve the indexing of your webpages and allow bots to find webpages that they might otherwise have missed. You can now also provide and submit an XML site map which all the major search engines have took on as a standard. Use your robots.txt to tell bots where to find your XML site map and also submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Domain Name

If you are purchasing a domain name for a new website then think about including your main targeted keywords within that domain name. For example if you are building an online store that sells low price golf clubs in the UK and you buy the domain cheapgolfclubs.co.uk then you are definitely going to have a lot more of a chance for quickly ranking well for the search term ‘cheap golf clubs’ in UK search engines than you would with a more generic domain name. You would also do well for long tail search terms such as ‘cheap golf clubs in the UK’ and have more chance of ranking for ‘golf clubs’ in the long term.

Technorati Tags: optimisation, SEO, web marketing, website

Websites are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways of advertising. Whether it be a business, its product or service or something completely different, everyone of all ages are turning to the web as a method of getting their message out there. With the popularity of this marketing medium increasing and the number of websites always growing, it is obvious that everyone wants to appear at the top of Google’s search engine rankings. Achieving such a task is never an easy feat, however with a bit of perseverance, one can definitely increase their chances of reaching that glorious first page result.

Given that there is a heap of websites out there who are on the first page, what is their secret? It is a little industry term called “SEO” and it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO basically consists of the customisation of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website’s ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimise your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a pain staking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we’d want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with a hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website and webpage’s ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the list goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listing.

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.

2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL - Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

6. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page

7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant

9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page

10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes

The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

11. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)
12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership)
13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword
14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.

17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.

18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.

19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

20. Age of Link.

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

* Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots.

* Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index.

* External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites.

* Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages.

* Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming).

It’s now time to get busy! Start prioritising your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task, improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy, what might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you’re after.

Technorati Tags: Google, Marketing, SEO

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