Ever wanted to find out more about how Google works?

View this great video by Matt Cutts which explains it all.

Are you going through the process of a website rebuild?

There are some very important points to take note of during this process, to make sure that your site:

• does not lose any search engine rankings, or
• have any broken links, be they within your website, or through anyone who has bookmarked your website.

So what are the things that could affect my website?

Each page in your website will very often have an associated rank, especially with Google. If your page is named www.website.com.au/page.html, and in the new site this exact page is now called www.website.com.au/new-page.html then Google will view this as a new page, and your rankings could start from scratch.

Of course wherever possible keep the old page names exactly the same as the original names.

How do you minimise the risk of a loss in rankings?

A 301 redirect in a .htaccess file on the server is the best way of doing this. The 301 redirect is a command that shows you have moved that page permanently. You may still find a temporary drop in rankings of pages within your site, but from experience, I have found that this generally ranges between no time at all, and a two to three weeks.

Please note, the above reference to a 301 redirect will not work on a windows server. Refer to your Windows hosting support for this reference.

Other important elements to think of, that can also affect your search engine rankings, as well as lost traffic/business.

• Bookmarking – When people have bookmarked your website in the Internet Browser – a 301 redirect will fix this.
• RSS feeds – Internal and External.
• Social Media/Networking/Bookmarking sites, and Directories – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• Internal Links – Internal links within your website carry SEO value from one page to the next.
• External Websites that link to you – These can be very important, as Google places high value in some external links that point to a website. Changing your pages, could result in a large drop in rankings. – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• HTML Structure – Is it the same as it was, or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.
• Meta Tags – Are these the same as they were or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.

Please note, that using the 301 redirect method will certainly ensure there are no broken links, however it will not pass on the same SEO value associated with each site link, so it is important to update as many of these links as possible, to ensure minimal impact to your site.

If you need help with your site move, contact us today for a quote.

Historically the Google PageRank update takes place approximately every three months. At the date of this post, the latest Google PageRank update is almost two months overdue causing frustration to many website owners and SEOs who wonder when the next update will appear, or if one will appear at all. There is talk in the search community that PageRank will no longer be used by Google as a measure because it has been abused by some who have tried to inflate their rankings unfairly.

If speculation is correct and Google will no longer display the PageRank of a website, I daresay that quite soon we will see PageRank removed from every website across the internet.

While I for one share some of this frustration, the end result could be a positive one. In the end website owners will no longer pay such close attention to the little green PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar.

Too many website owners and SEOs spend too much time focusing on how to get as many links to their site as possible, and not enough time focusing on developing their site to become a more quality resource in its own right, for their target market. While there is no argument that inbound links play a very important role in how Google ranks a website, it often distracts website owners from building a quality website.

An important consideration: Google PageRank is not the only determination or the most important one on how well your site ranks in the search engines. We have clients whose sites have only a PageRank of 2 or 3, and yet are listed at the top of the Google Search results – above sites with much higher PageRank.

At the end of the day, it isn’t about what PageRank a website shows, but where that website locates in the search results. So focus your efforts on building a quality website that will keep both existing customers interested in what you have to offer, as well as driving new customers to grow your business.