What ‘Google’ Matt Cutts proposes for Gmail account security?

Hackers are on the prowl. What preventive measures your business has taken to secure your Gmail account?

Let us see, what the Google Web-spam team head suggested one of his friends to secure the Gmail account. (Courtesy: Matt Cutts Google)

Matt Cutts on Gmail Account Security -

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Wonder why search engine ranking took a toll? Perhaps Google took a manual spam action

Not sure, whether your site is still in the Google Index? Perform a site search on Google with your website details (e.g. site:domain.com). If the site does not show up, this indicates that your website gets prohibited for breach of Google webmaster guidelines.

In a case, Google prohibited a website, businesses can request for ‘reconsideration’ after necessary corrections and updates (in accordance with rules and principles of Google) on their website.

After the latest Penguin 2.0 algorithm update, Google has started taking SEVERE actions against all SPAM links on the web, to keep the search engine a ‘less polluted’ and a ‘friendlier’ place for the Internet users.

If your website used to rank earlier and the rankings dropped all of a sudden after the Penguin update, then this is a ‘warning sign’ that Google took manual spam action against your website.

Google Matt Cutts video on Meta Tags

Meta tags to optimize your website for Internet search engines: to own a website is not enough, but to be seen and found out by people should be your primary concern.

This educational video from Matt Cutts (of Google) will help readers comprehend - how much time one should give to Meta tags and the ones that matter.

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Blog and forum comments for participation and to establish connection

‘Blog comments’ - how effective are these for search engine page rankings?

Comments, notes on blogs and articles of others, feedback, opinions and reviews do help to establish a relationship with the writer. We can consider this an online ‘trust building exercise’.

The Internet domain is not different from the real-life world, where ‘real communication’ and social relationships matter the most. To create or run a weblog (along with a website) will be a better idea for businesses to stay connected with people.

No wonder, for online success – business enterprises not just maintain websites but also ‘blog pages’, to drive web-traffic through different sources and means.

Why not blog regularly and stay connected with the customer segment, in a better manner?

Some say their blog comments take time for approval (comment moderation). The reasons are obvious – SPAM. Google web-spam team may chase your sites. Thus, try to avoid spam posts/comments by all means and keep search engines less polluted.

Web Listings Inc requests comment on this thread. Thanks.

Inclusion of Sitemaps to help search engines decipher the website structure

It takes efforts to maintain online business in the competitive marketplace. People often ask us why Google does not index their website or slow to file/register their website in its directory.

Google is an automated search engine - and one does not require ‘manually’ submitting their websites to it. Try to include Sitemaps (an XML file/Extensible Markup Language) that help Google crawlers/robots to visit and index your website URL.

Google does not guarantee that the search engine will list all website URLs. Inclusion of Sitemaps helps to make spiders/crawlers comprehend the website structure.

In case after a site or URL modification/changes, one can update Google webmaster by submission of their website through the following, to ask the search engine crawl your page/website:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

Old sites rank, even without dedicated SEO?

What to do if older sites rank, irrespective of any dedicated SEO efforts on it? The problem is not new to various online marketing companies that handle different client portfolios.

After Google Penguin 2.0 updates, web-page rankings of many websites took a toll. Some that ranked on Page 1 moved to oblivion. Some online businesses could not even save their businesses, even with organic SEO tactics (including fresh and quality content, long tail keywords etc).

On the other, there are many who did not focus much on SEO, but their websites rank high on Google search engine. One may wonder what to do in such cases – when old sites rank, out of the blue?

In such cases, one needs to: play safe. It is not advisable to tinker with the URL, by any means, except for change in look and feel of the website. Ascertain the site load time. A thought to change the URL structure at this point can be harmful.

In case one wants to change the URL, create 301 redirects to newer URLs/pages.

Social Media and Network Sites – Participation does help

With loads of players in the competitive business market, everyone wants to know tips and secrets to help their online business rank high on different search engines.

If some try a free business listing, then others seek web SEO companies to increase traffic on the website. Every strategy works, but campaigns need to be executed in a proper manner.

People often ask how social media and networking sites help one in SEO. Yes, it does help. Membership/active participation in various social media and networking sites (like Facebook, Twitter etc) would help to: spread the message across, to build trust and generate traffic from various sources.

Facebook even has an option [on site], which lets users promote their pages and get more LIKES on a daily basis by PAYMENT. Some may even wonder if this is an acceptable method to boost rankings on search engines.

What do readers think about it? Join us for this forum.