Well it’s new years eve and Google has decided to squeeze one last page rank update into the year.

This site SEOUnique has suffered a reduction in page rank, no doubt to the hackers that sent out over 500 hidden links to viagra sites and other “adult” sites.

If you want to check the true PR value of your site then visit www.digpagerank.com

Have a great new years eve everyone!

People know (or at least they should do) that implementing a number of SEO techniques and methods on any given page can influence the search rankings in a positive way. There are plenty of resources to help explain how you can create the “perfect page” in regards to SEO but are there any clear metrics for success? What can you expect if you change or alter page content, or perhaps the Meta data?

One thing we do know is that if a good SEO gets their hands on your website or specific page you will see positive results. What I’ve been doing is benchmarking when the changes take place in Google and whether the changes are positive and negative.

The Google update test

I optimised around 50 pages of a website I own that I initially setup around 3 months ago, the Meta data, page tags and content was not optimised at all. I created a strategy to optimise these pages, the actual content of these products were products i.e. one product per page. I changed the following:

1.    Optimised the meta data
2.    Included keywords and alternative keyword phrases on page
3.    Optimised the images on the page

I had read somewhere that updating large numbers of pages on a website all at once could lead to a possible penalty, although I have never seen this I thought this test would help determine this theory.

I benchmarked data over a six week period on Google, based on individual pages and their targeted keywords, which had been optimised.

Week 1
Around 80% of the pages actually increased rankings in the first week with around 15% remaining the same and only 5% dropping rank

Week 2
In the second week there were some more keyword increases and very few positions dropped - a good week all round.

Week 3
In the third week it was the complete opposite, just over 85% of the keywords dropped below their original ranking with 5% remaining the same and 10% increasing

Week 4
Huge increase of positions, now around 70% of the pages I originally optimised are ranking well above their previous position with many on page 1 or 2. Very few position drops from original positions but there were some.

Week 5
Not much movement between keyword positions but 30% of keywords have improved from week 4, 80% remain the same with around 10% dropping slightly.

Week 6
Final week and only one page has increased from week 5 while 2 pages dropped slightly, the rest remained the same.

Time for some graphs:

The first graph is has been taken as an average from over 40 optimised pages over the period of 6 weeks so visually you can see the update life cycle.

The next graph shows five randomly selected keyword behaviours over the 6 week period

The final graph shows another 10 randomly selected keywords and their position changes

Google’s Page Update Life Cycle

Yep, think that’s what I’m going to call it! Anyway I’m aware that this lifecycle of position changes probably goes on for a bit longer but the data over the 6 week period was the most active. This is something that I’ve seen many times before but have never benchmarked for such a test. It’s also worth mentioning that you do see position changes before Google has re-indexed the optimised page.

So if you go about updating pages of your site don’t worry if they go all over the place for the first month or so, if they have been optimised correctly then you should see some kind of improvement.

Google maps is continuing to grow in popularity, especially as search is becoming more personalized and local. Achieving a top position in Google maps is worth while period. However there has always been sponsored listings which appear on the left side of the screen above the explanations of the characters i.e. (A = Mr Jone’s Book Store).

Take a look at the screen shot below:

I have drawn an arrow to two small little logo’s which are Google’s sponsored listings. So Google will now show PPC ads in Google maps themselves, not all bad at the moment as this is quite new although I have a feeling this may over crowd the maps a little. Would love to hear some thoughts and insights on CTR’s and traffic.

As any subscribers of my blog realise I am always keen to be on top of Page Rank updates, it’s an interest and benchmarking process more than anything. To my surprise I have discovered Google have updated their toolbar page rank as recently as early November 2009 and no-one has noticed.

So far in 2008 there have been 5 exports to the Google toolbar, far more than any previous years. Dates of the previous updates are below:

• 11/01/08
• 29/02/08
• 29/04/08
• 25/07/08
• 28/09/08

During these dates all pages within a domain would have each individual page updated with toolbar visible page rank. However I have seen pages, including my own which have been updated within the last week. This is also not an isolated incident – SEOMOZ also has pages updated.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/differential-diagnosis-a-broken-website-ranking-atop-google - this post was created on the 8th of November but is showing a PR 0, not a usual N/A.

See another example below:

However not all pages on every website seem to be experiencing this. I have many blogs and some posts which I consider to be more valuable still have no PR, even though they are older and have more backlinks.

So, what is this update? Throughout my own network of sites I have seen a slight trend and would really appreciate some other SEO’s and webmasters feedback and results on this.

1.    I have noticed Page Rank updates on blog posts that have no external links in the content
2.    I have noticed Page Rank updates on newer posts but less backlinks
3.    I have noticed Page Rank updates on “trusted sites” on posts only a week old with external links
4.    I have noticed Page rank updates on new blog posts for the past 3 weeks consecutively

Obviously we are all aware that Page Rank is something that Google wants to distance themselves from i.e. removing the mention in the toolbar download. However perhaps this is a new visible algorithm change for Google?

I would love to hear your thought’s people!

Local search has always been one of those areas where people assume the technique is nothing more than a small addition to a larger SEO strategy. As search in general is becoming more user centric based on individual preferences and location any SEO or agency would be seriously misguided if they did not take this technique to the next level.

Around 4-5 months ago I decided to reinvest some time into local search and the strategies and legitimate SEO techniques that it involves. Resources at the time consisted of no more than “Stuff your listing with keywords” – although this made perfect sense it didn’t seem ethical or particularly long term. To add to the unreliable information being provided most of the top local business listings didn’t actually contain a great deal of keywords, if any.

Now I created a standard business listing for the top keyword phrase plus l location (i.e. London) and within 3 weeks my listing was at the top of Google before all organic listings for a very highly searched phrase. A phrase that would have taken me months to get to – so you can see the real value in local search. Google local business listing also provides stats on the views and impressions of your listing so these make great additions to reports.

Of course Google has now announced that keywords in listing titles will result in a negative penalty and although they have not implemented this change yet, here is a list of other local search optimisation techniques you can employ;

1.    Use your Business name only for the listing title, if you’re lucky your business name will contain a keyword
2.    In the description, consider this like page Meta data – keyword it up!
3.    For category selection select at least two that are suggested in the drop down and enter the rest more specified to your industry
4.    Upload a company logo and video
5.    The more information your write on the listing – generally the better it will perform

Now what you can do to assist your local search listing on site:

1.    Include your company address in your contact page title and meta description
2.    Include a Google maps snippet
3.    Include your company address in your page copy

Link building:

1.    Look for local business directories and add your listing (must be geographically near you)
2.    Look for resource pages with your region mentioned in copy and setup a link
3.    Start using anchor texts with a specific region i.e. “Keyword London”

If you follow these tips then you will get to a very good listing and drive extras traffic to your site.