Exciting things you can do with Google

Google’s remarkable ability to produce speedy, relevant results to search queries has changed the way people find information. To google means to search; the company’s name has become a verb in English, German, and other languages. However, many average computer users are not aware of many of the functionalities built in Google. Here, I will share a few tips to enhance your googling experience.

• Searching for a term and its synonyms

Prefix a word with the tilde character “~” with no space between, in the Google search box, and Google will return web pages relevant to the word as well as its synonyms. For example, a search for ~auto will list web pages containing the terms auto, automobiles, cars, vehicles, trucks and more.

• Precision searches for lyrics, book titles etc.

If you are looking for information about exact phrases such as song lyrics or book titles, you should add quote marks around your query. Thus, typing “I should have known better” into Google will return web pages about the song by The Beatles. Google ignores common words like and, is, are, the, of, on and to when they are used in search queries without quotes.

• Browse the world’s libraries online

You can browse or read the entire text of books that are not copyrighted, by searching for a topic at print.google.com. Google has scanned and indexed millions of volumes from the libraries of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, New York Public library, etc.

• Google for scholarly research

If you are a research scholar looking for scientific papers and academic journals, search for them at Google Scholar (scholar.google.com).

• Google as your dictionary

If you type define followed by any English word into the Google search box, you can see a quick definition of the word at the top of the search results.

• Google as your calculator

If you enter a mathematical expression into the Google search box, Google will compute the answer. You can use numbers and symbols as in (113 + 25) or use words as in (ten plus two), or a combination such as (10% of fifty million).

• Google as your phone book

If you enter a person’s or business name, city and state into the Google search box, you will see the matching phone and address listings at the top of the search results.

• Get instant stock quotes

If you type a stock ticker symbol into the Google search box, you can get instant stock quotes for any public company listed on NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, or American Stock Exchange.

• Google as language translator

You can translate text and web pages among several languages using the automated translation service built in Google.

• Maps and driving directions

Enter a city and state or just a zip code in Google search box, and Google will provide a direct link to its own map and direction service (maps.google.com), as well as those by Yahoo and MapQuest.

• Get instant answers on your cell phone

If you are in the U.S., send a text message to the number 46645 (GOOGL) with your query, and Google will reply you back with instant answers. So, you can get phone numbers, stock quotes, movie information, etc. even when you are on the go.

These selected features just provide a glimpse of the limitless possibilities for accessing information using a search engine such as Google.

SEO Tips for launching a new website

Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.

• Registering a domain name

Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.

• Domain Hosting

Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.

• Registering with Search Engines

Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.

• Build trust with Search Engines

To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.

Google Filter: Minus 30 penalty

Google is harder to manipulate compared to other search engines because of various filters it incorporates in its algorithm to prevent spam. Minus 30 penalty is one such filter for handling spam in Google algorithm.

So, what is this minus 30 penalty? If your site was previously ranking high in Google search results, and suddenly its ranking drops by 30 positions, there is a chance that the minus 30 penalty is applied to your site. Normally, if you do a search on your domain name, you would expect to see your site at the first position; but if you see your site at 31st position, it is very likely that the minus 30 penalty is in force.

Most likely candidates to experience this penalty are affiliate sites which do not add much value for the site visitors. However, many non-affiliate sites also have reported this penalty. Though there is no proven theory which can identify sites which are likely to face this penalty, sites with excessive low quality inbound or outbound links and lots of non-unique content may have a minus 30 ranking penalty applied.

The only solution to avoid this penalty is to have unique content on your site, to get links from well trusted sites and to link to high quality sites. For detailed information, please refer to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Single Canonical URL for better Google ranking

A Common SEO mistake made by many webmasters is that they are not consistent when it comes to linking to their URLs across their site.

If some of your links go to the URL http://yoursite.com, and the rest go to http://www.yoursite.com/, your link popularity gets divided among these two URLs - thus affecting the pagerank as well as the ranking for that URL. So, it is better to pick the URL that you want and use it consistently across your entire website, as well as for your incoming links. One cannot, however, control how other sites would link to his website. So you have to inform Google which URL you prefer to be canonical. Google calls Canonicalization as the process for picking the best URL when there are many alternatives.

‘Google Sitemaps’ offers an option to select a canonical URL for your site. Another way to achieve canonicalization is by adding a 301 redirect (permanent redirect). So, if you want your default URL to be the www version, then you can 301 redirect your non-www version to the www version. Having a single, canonical version of every URL on your site will improve your site rankings as well as the pagerank.

Things To Remember When Creating a Site Map

• Use plain text links.

Search engine spiders can have a more difficult time "seeing" JavaScript. To receive the most benefits from having a site map, make sure that the links are created as plain text links!

• Things To Remember When Creating a Site Map

There isn't a lot of sense in creating a site map if you don't put a text link to it on the front page of your site where site visitors and search engine spiders can easily find it.

• Use anchor text links.

Use your exact page titles so that you can take advantage of anchor text back links. Once again this will increase link popularity for your site.

• Add descriptive content.

Many search engines don't like pages that are filled only with links. By adding descriptive content (much like search engines do) you can have a page filled with links and still have relevant content.

• Organize into categories.

Remember that your site map isn't created just for search engines. Organize your site map into categories. By following the structure of a table of contents that you'd find in the front of a book, you'll make it much easier for your visitors to find what they are looking for!

Content Optimization

Good copy equals conversions.

This is probably the hardest selling point to get across to a client when seo speak begins. Sure people know they need to get ranked in Google, and they know you need to build an online presence, and of course, they all know that they need to get traffic to their site.

But site copy? Anytime that topic is brought up, most clients proudly boast that they have already posted their brochure's information on their site and that works just fine.

Well, it doesn't. Content optimization is a skill that few people possess. Words sell, images don't. You need to get the user to take action! So, in that spirit, here is a list of things to do and ones to avoid:

Things to do:

• Use the main keyphrase you are targeting on every page, except for the home page.
• Use keyphrases in your hyperlinks.
• Create a page title that is intriguing and eye catching. Remember words sell, graphics don't.
• Limit your keyword usage to 2 or 3 keywords per page. Otherwise, you may get tagged for keyword spamming.
• Create supplemental content like FAQ pages, how-to pages, industry glossary and related articles about the product.
• Use the description meta tag. Google refers to this when it can't find content or a listing in DMOZ.
• Always keep an eye on competitors and how they rank for the same keywords.
• Focus on the the pages that have your best conversion rates.
• Think like a reporter, asking the five W questions (who, what, when, where, why).
• Display your location. Studies indicate that people look for local vendors, even when online.

Things to avoid:

• Inserting keywords into copyrighted material.
• Forgetting what your audience is looking for.
• Leaving the title of your page as "Untitled".
• Using too many graphics.
• Waiting to implement copy changes for expected seasonal sales. You need 6-months when optimizing seasonal content to give the engines time to adjust to your alterations.

Content optimization is a continual process of monitoring and updating. By staying true to this course, you'll see the results in your sales.

-To your online success!

Creating A #1 Rank in Google

Impossible, right? Not really worth the time, right? Wrong on both accounts.

Many times while entering phrases into Google, I find a lot of somewhat related sites, but hardly ever anything exact. So why bother on getting these supposedly un-searched terms?

Because there is a perception that having your site in the #1 spot in Google means that your site is an authority on that particular subject. As any experienced user knows, this is most often not the case, but perception is reality.

Granted, some of the phrases that you can get ranked on may not be very popular, but you never know what a user is going to enter into the search box, or do we ever know at what point of information gathering they are at.

One of the most common traits of searching is that when a user firsts begins a search, they use a broad term, but as they get further along into their search, the phrases become more precise as they themselves filter out the un-related sites.

This is the same concept of which a successful PPC campaign can be run. While it may be great to get tons of traffic for the keyword "shoes", if a user is really looking for "Nike running shoes", the site has wasted money on that search.

Another curious stat that web analytics reveal is that a consumer that comes to a site through PPC is not a life-time customer. They are usually interested in the quick fix, or easy solution. Compared to a user who arrives through organic search engine optimization, they are more likely to be lifetime consumers since they tend to trust a company that has "earned" it's way to the top of the rankings.

By the time a user has a four to five keyword phrase entered in for their search query, chances are that they have already eliminated the "noise" and are focused on the "signal" i.e. the product or service that your site is offering.

One final item to remember is that if you have an exact phrase that is not common to a search engine query, once it gets indexed, it will most like appear in the number one position since the search engines always try to find an exact match when other factors aren't available.

As an example, here are some articles I've written that have a #1 ranking in Google (as of March 14, 2007):

The SEO Halo Effect
All Links Matter
The Benefits of Black Hat Techniques
It's All About Me Advertising
Automatic SEO
Clinically Proven SEO
Why You Need Outbound Links

-To your online success!