Not too long ago a document was making the rounds of the Internet that appeared to be the newest official Google Quality Guidelines document.  This document, most people hoped, would hold the secrets to ranking well within Google.

Now, you might wonder how this can happen.  After all, Google is especially secretive about what it takes to rank well within their site so how could it possibly be that the document used by Google Raters made it’s way online?  Was it a fake?  A distraction?  Something conjured up by a savvy online marketer to gain exposure?  Sounds very conspiracy-theorist doesn’t it?

Well, it’s actually not as exciting as one might think.  The fact is, Google hires folks from all around the world to do work for them and help them detect whether or not a particular web site should be ranked where it is based upon a variety of factors.  These people that Google hires, receive a document that tells them what specifically to look for and how to determine the merits of a site.  Due to the vast numbers of people who do this work, it’s not unheard of for one of these documents to make its way online.

The document (which has since been taken down online at the request of Google), contained an area that talked about spam; and how to determine what should be flagged as spam and what should not.

Whenever one of Quality Raters took a look at a website, it is their job to mark a site as:

• Spam
• Not Spam
• Maybe Spam

Pretty basic right?

The criteria for marking a web page as spam should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been in the industry for even as little as a few months.  It’s really very basic knowledge, but just to clear up any confusion, here are the definite “no-no’s” when it comes to your own site (and which you can also read here:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3).

• Don’t use cloaking;
• Don’t use hidden text;
• Don’t use framed pages;
• Don’t keyword-stuff your URL’s;
• Don’t use JavaScript Redirects
• Etc.

Again, pretty common sense stuff.

But, what you don’t see here is that according to this document, Google Raters are to mark pages without any useful content and designed only to make money, as spam.

There’s no doubt that you’ve come across these pages yourself.  These are the ones that have domains parked on them and where there is nothing more than a listing of ads; pages that are chock full of ads that have very little unique content on them, etc.

And yes, it should be noted that even if a site is attempting to generate income using AdSense ads (Google’s own product), that this will likely be marked as spam as well.

As a matter of fact, the blatant abuse of this has likely prompted Google to recently announce at PubCon that they (Google) will be taking a look at content that is immediately above the fold on a web page.  The assumptions are that Google will begin to penalize those sites that show ad-related content above the fold; above the fold meaning the content you can see on a web page without needing to scroll down.

Which brings me back to the whole point of the title of this post.  Does it make a difference in where you rank if you aren’t trying to sell anything?

Well, yes, and no.  We don’t know how sites are going to be affected by this new rule of having ads above the fold, but it is unlikely that major retailers who say, show products at the top of their pages in response to a specific product query, will not be penalized.

On the other hand, if a site is nothing more than a few bits and pieces of content yet chock-full of ads, especially ads above the fold, then it can be assumed that you would be penalized.   We’ll all just have to wait and see how it plays out but for now, if you’re one of the ones who has advertising listed above the useful content on your site, it would be advised to move those ads to a different location.

Think about it, if you had 10 websites and had to write content for those 10 websites, this could get a little tedious. Especially if one of the sites could overlap with another one.  For example, a site about Affiliate Marketing and one about Search Engine Optimization.

In many cases, webmasters used shortcuts to lessen their load and would use the same content on both of these sites.  Not only that, with the popularity of article marketing, now not nearly as prevalent as it used to be, these same website owners needed to get their articles syndicated and what better way, then to use content they already wrote right?

What happened along the way however, was something called a duplicate content issue.  This meant that the search engines were finding duplicate, or at least incredibly similar content across a wide variety of sites.  They had to keep their users happiness in mind and make sure that they were delivering relevant content.  So adjustments were made, some sites were penalized for having this duplicate content, while others seemed to rise above the fray.

Aside from these two issues; using the same content on sites owned by the same person and submitting the same article to article directories, there was also a third culprit which is called scraped content.  This is essentially those programs that promise you that all you need to do is install a blog, and they’ll do the rest (for a fee).  Generally this “rest” that they would do would be to take content already available across the Internet, add it to your blog and viola! you had instant content.  Not exactly a great idea.

And while written content is the major culprit here, duplicate content isn’t just contained to articles.  It can be in the form of something as similar as the structure of a website.  Yep, if your website setup looked a lot like another site’s content, this too could be considered duplicate content.

Now, you might think you’re out of the woods if you’ve never done any of these things, if you only own one website for example, if you’ve never syndicated articles, or never touched a program that published stuff for you, etc., but you might not know that even if you only own just one website, the content on your site might actually be considered duplicate.  Why?

This often occurs when a site owner hasn’t structured their site properly using the canonical link element.  As a matter of fact, in case you weren’t aware, Google considers the following sites completely different from one another:  

• http://Somesite.com
• http://www.Somesite.com
• http://Somesite.com/
• http://www.Somesite.com/

Yes, they all go to “Somesite.com” but as far as Google is concerned, these are all separate websites and if you’re canonical isn’t set up correctly you could have been penalized and not even know it.

Google helped website owners make huge strides when it introduced this canonical link element.  Without this, Google may think that you’re publishing the same exact content on multiple different websites.

But there are other ways too that you can be sure you aren’t falling into this trap.  One of the most recent pieces of help that Google has given to us is something that you’ll find within Google’s Webmaster Tools. In the event that you haven’t yet added a canonical link element to your web pages but you HAVE set up a Google Webmaster Tools account, Google will now notify you if it detects duplicate content.

In addition to this simple change however, there are other things that you can do as well to avoid it all together.

The easiest one to avoid is using articles that other people have written on your site as content.  While it might seem really easy to do (and it is), Google will likely have already located the original document and your site will be considered the “duplicate”.  Which further means that you likely won’t show up in the search engines for the keyword you want.

Another big issue that comes into play is when you’re moving your own website.  If you do decide to move an existing site to a new domain, it’s incredibly important that you use a 301 redirect.  This will help the search engines understand that you are permanently moving the data from one site to another.

Lastly, to make absolutely certain that your content is attributed to you and no one else, use the rel=author attribute on your articles.  This way, Google will know that you were the original author of the content and in the event that someone else uses your content without your permission, then Google will know it was you who originally wrote the content in the first place.

After all, if you’re linking to one of your own sites, you want any PageRank to pass along to your own site, you need to be especially careful when you’re choosing a URL shortener so that this does in fact occur.

This has been a question in many SEO’s minds for quite some time.  Before Google started indexing sites like Twitter, it really wasn’t all that big of a deal.  But now that Twitter, as well as many other sites like them are getting indexed more and more frequently, it’s important that if a page does follow a link that the shortener that was used passes along that PageRank.

That said, it should be noted that Twitter does not follow links – therefore the PageRank theory is null and void in this case but this does not mean that other services like Twitter don’t employ the same tactic.  I use them as an example only because it’s one of the more well-known micro-blogging platforms online.  As a matter of fact, there are many, many places where you would employ the use of a URL shortener and when you do, you want to make certain that you are getting any and all PageRank passed on to you.

Most URL shorteners are pretty good at this and do it the correct way by using a 301 redirect.  In case you’re still unsure which one to use, in the video below Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team specifically says that shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl do in fact employ a 301 redirect.

Here’s the question that came into Matt and his answer on the topic:

First off, rich snippets are a way to showcase certain things about your business.  If you run a website that shows recipes you can use rich snippets to display that recipe.  Additionally, you can also use these snippets to show reviews of your business, products your business has, and even events that you may be holding.

Now sometimes this can be a little confusing because there are multiple ways to refer to this kind of content that you add to your site.  The actual content itself is called a “rich snippet” but the code that’s used to format this content is referred to as “microdata“, “microformats” or even “RDFa” (and if you have a recipe you want to showcase, then you would use the hRecipe microformat).

The best way to understand these snippets is to simply show you.  Here’s a screen shot of an organic search result after doing a search for restaurants in Chicago.  Note the reviews shown in the organic listings.

These rich snippets also include breadcrumbs, prices, and more.  And remember, these rich snippets are data that show up within the organic listings.  This is important because typical organic search results are often very similar.  There’s a blue link that will take you to the page of the site that’s listed, a brief description of the page, and the web page’s URL.  That’s about it.  But with rich snippets, you can take this so much further and make your listing stand out from the rest of the listings.

It’s important to note that just because you’re using these snippets on your web pages does not mean that you will rank higher in the search results nor does it mean that Google will automatically start showing these snippets but they do say that they’ll check your site for these snippets when they come to pay a visit.

Now although the name might sound a little intimidating, all it really takes is some basic knowledge of HTML in order to implement these snippets onto your own site.  And you can choose whichever format you prefer, the microdata, microformat or RDFa.

Once you’ve picked one of these for your own site, you can also use Google’s Rich Snippets testing tool to see how your site may appear in the search results with this data.  Google also offers a way to tell them that you have this data available on your site.

Although it might sound a little confusing right now, visiting any one of the above sites will show you examples of rich snippet data.  The bottom line is, if you have any of the following located on your site:

• Reviews
• People (Think LinkedIn)
• Products
• Recipes
• or Events

You’ll want to strongly consider adding rich snippets to your site if anything, to make certain that you stand out in those search results.

In a recent Google Webmaster Help video (see below), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team answers one of the most popular questions that many websites have and that is “Does Google use Twitter and Facebook Links as a ranking signal?”  The definitive answer, from Matt is “Yes”.

To be honest, this rather surprised me because rarely have I ever heard Matt answer a question with such forthright authority.  Usually the answer is more along the lines of “Yes, but…” with all kinds of subjective material added to the answer; making it virtually impossible to detect if what you’re doing yourself actually matters at all.

This question stemmed from a recent article written by Danny Sullivan Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land.

In this article (which is a great read by the way), Danny offers responses by both Bing and Google on specific questions such as:

1. If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
2. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
3. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
4. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
5. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight on Facebook depending upon who posted the link?

It’s very interesting to read the answers and even more interesting to associate it with your own activity on both of these social networks.

Part of the curiosity with Twitter in particular, is because Twitter does not follow links.  They used to, but I believe it was back in 2009 some time, they added nofollow to all of their links.

What this means is that even though you’re tweeting a link and others may retweet it, the “nofollow” portion of that link is telling the search engines “Hey, if you see this link, don’t follow it to its destination and give that destination credit for it.”

But what’s so much more important here is what Danny has referred to as “SocialRank”.  And I am totally on board with him here…let me explain…

Years (and I mean years ago) when Google especially was gaining ground as the “go to” search engine, people realized that you could manipulate the rankings by:

1. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your meta keywords tag (and if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter any more anyway).
2. Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
3. Hiding text on the page in the same color as the page background so that the search engines could read it but your site visitors couldn’t.

When this failed to work any longer, people realized that links were a major factor in where you ranked.  And so…reciprocal linking came along (that’s when you trade links with someone else in an effort to help increase the importance of your website.)

Again, Google soon realized that this wasn’t really a *true* indicator of authority and so it began discounting these kinds of links.

So it became important to try and get links to your website from other important websites (“important” as deemed by Google), in order to help your own website ranking.  This “importance” at least in reference to Google is referred to as PageRank which you can see by installing the Google Toolbar within your browser.

But…it’s also important to understand that the PageRank that you see in your browser for a web page is NOT the *true* PageRank of a web page or website.  As a matter of fact, it’s quite old information.  According to Google PageRank Data, the last time it was updated was April 2, 2010 (it’s now late December 2010).  So…over 8 months ago.

The fact is, Google updates this internally quite often but what you may be looking at today is in fact, 8 months old.

So, all this comes down to this:  Google has hundreds of ranking factors that determine where to place you within it’s search results and for what given terms.  People know a little about how Google determines importance of your web pages, but like all indicators that we at least know of, it can all be manipulated.  Whether or not you choose to manipulate it is up to your own moral standards, but the one thing that is extremely difficult to manipulate is your online reputation.

Who believes you?  Who trusts what you say?  Who retweets your links?  Et cetera, et cetera…

This is what Danny refers to within his article.  And I truly believe that this is the wave of the future for websites and their owners; simply because it is so difficult to fake.  If people trust you, they’ll read more of your stuff.  If you offer valuable information, you’ll be talked about more online, and so on.

Consider a great example of Mari Smith who is trusted by thousands of people online for her information and advice on how to use Facebook effectively.  She is a fantastic example of how SocialRank likely works.  I guarantee that if Mari posts a link, it’s retweeted and shared on Facebook a thousand times over.  She has “SocialRank”.

Take the time to read the article by Danny – I think you’ll find it very enlightening.

P.S.  The video by Matt is below…

It first began when a variety of webmasters began to notice significant changes in their website traffic especially where long-tail keywords were concerned.

One site saw it’s traffic drop 50% over the course of a few days.

Another site saw 90% of it’s traffic disappear.

Some had smaller drops in traffic of around 10% while others saw no significant difference.

So what happened?

Initially when this was first discussed, it was simply a “theory” – but because it was happening on such a massive scale to so many sites, it soon became clear that something was happening although there wasn’t any official word from Google on what was actually going on.

Finally, after a few weeks, Google’s Matt Cutt’s did in fact, disclose that yes, there was an update to their algorithm that affected long-tail keywords and that this was a permanent algorithm change and it will not be rolled back.

Google doesn’t exactly tell us why some sites were affected and why some were not but Matt did re-iterate the same information he’s been giving for years. (see video below)

Matt states in his video “If you were affected by MayDay the sort of thing to think about is to go back and ask yourself ‘Have I got the highest quality site?’, ‘Am I showing up for the most relevant searches?’, ‘What sort of things can I do in terms of adding great content?’, ‘Am I making sure that people consider me an authority?’, that I’m not just matching something that’s off-topic or that users won’t find all that useful.”

So if you happened to see your site drop in rankings for some long-tail keyword search queries, take a look at who may be showing up for those search queries now.

• What are they doing differently that you could implement?
• Do they have more content?
• If so, what kind of content do they have?
• Where are they optimizing these long-tail keyword search phrases? And so on.

Make some changes on your own pages that you see some of your competitors doing and you might just see your listings start moving upwards yet again.

Quick Update: It was noted in the comments (see below) that at least one person was not able to view the new Google layout.  The video below was shot using the Chrome browser but I also tested in Firefox and Safari – in both instances I WAS able to see the new layout.  However, I could NOT see it when testing it in Internet Explorer.  I’ll be interested to see if any of you notice the same thing.

Quick Update #2: Just after posting the update above I went back to Chrome, and searched yet again using the same topic of “coffee”.  And I was NOT able to see the navigation.  However, I CAN in Safari.  So I’m wondering if this is just a quick test or if they’re just rolling it out in some areas?  Curious indeed and just a little more than disappointed that I can’t *now* re-create it.  I’ll keep checking during the day to see if it shows up again.

What I did find interesting, and something that I liked very much was that it allows you to filter the keywords by:

• Ad Share
• Competition
• Local Monthly Searches
• Global Monthly Searches
• Estimated Average CPC and
• Search Share

Here’s the video in its entirety.  Enjoy!

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Now, Errioxa’s native language is Spanish but in his post he did a tremendous job of trying to convey the information he discovered.  And here, I’ll try and lay it out for you the best that I can so that you can start using (and testing) this idea yourself.

Essentially what it comes down to is that if you have multiple links on your web page, using link anchors for those links (instead of just a basic static link with nothing more than just anchor text), will generate a unique listing of your site within the search results.

So let’s say you had a website about “weather”.  And on that site you had different sections about:

• Rain
• Snow
• Sun

One of your web pages contained three links.

1. A link to the page about Rain.
2. A link to the page about Snow.
3. A link to the page about Sun.

Links to these pages might look like this:

An example (simple anchor text link):

<a href=”http://www.WeatherSite.com/rain.html”>Rain </a>

Example of using link anchors:

<a href=http://www.WeatherSite.com/snow.html#SNOW“>Snow</a>

<a href=”http://www.WeatherSite.com/sun.html#SUN“>Sun</a>

What Errioxa discovered was that by using the link anchors (bolded in the examples above), those pages showed up within the Google search results as an individually targeted and indented page.

I suggest that you try this out for yourself and where you can, add in some link anchors to your own site and see what happens.

For more details, visit the original post at SEOMoz.