SEroundtable have recently touched on the fact that the Google ‘did you mean’ feature was effecting some clients websites as the search engine was trying to be too clever. This not only moves the real results down but can lead search engine users astray.

I see this quite a lot when typing in customers key phrases, I have also seen it effect Creare.

When i first started to enhance our ’search engine optimisation’ listing i noticed that Google would try and point me too ‘search engine optimization‘ (notice the American ‘z’). The search has since evolved and now recalls the UK results for this phrase. I would suggest that Google will try and iron out any of the errors with such problems, but its search results can still be frustrating especially when liaising with clients.

We currently have an optimisation campaign with a client dore.co.uk. They wanted to appear for ‘ADD’ a huge phrase meaning (Attention Deficit Disorder). We have managed to successfully gain them a page 1 position in Google.co.uk, But their listing is less impressive due to Google added a ’see results for’ section in the middle of the page.

This has resulted in our clients web site being 10th rather than the actual placement of 6th. see image below:

As you can see from the search results, our client has been pushed down by a recommendation from Google that personally i think to be irrelevant.

References -

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019340.html

So what governs the power of a text link from a friends, industry related or high ranking web site. I was recently reading a older article on Getfoundnow.com about ‘Link Juice’. It talked about the factors that they take into consideration when buying or finding a link to benefit their optimisation campaigns.

It talks about various variables that can easily be identified, The list below talks in more detail about the factors that Creare and others take into consideration.

Page Rank - If i site has aquired a high pank rank then it would suggest the content of the site if of a high quality and that google sees the site as a respected information source. I would personally not recommend that any links are worth buying  or sourcing if they have a PR of 0 (zero).

Outbound Links - If the site has a large quantity of outbound links then this may be easily identified by Google as selling links, this can cause the site to lose there page rank. I have seen this on tristarwebdesign.co.uk (PR7 - PR4) and seroundtable.com (PR7 - Pr4). Plus the ‘juice’ of the link is reduced.

Google Adwords or Sponsored Links -  Similar to the outbound links, if the webmaster has gone overboard with sponsored listing the quality of your link will be reduced.

Content -  Personally i think that it is vital that the content on the page reflects your industry or business in someway. This then shows Google that you have industry related websites that are willing to promote your website. Meaning that link juice is high.

These points are basic, but important. Just take some time to look at the web site you intent to buy or request links from to ensure that they will not hinder you current listings.

References:

http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/link-juice-explained.html