Rand Fishkin from SEOMOZ  talking about negative SEO tactics and how these practices function. Negative SEO is definitely not something we condone but education around these techniques can be a helpful, precautionary method that could prevent you from being the subject of malicious intent.

How to Diagnose a Google Ranking Ban, Penalty, or Filter

If you undertake black or gray hat techniques, you run a fair chance of having your site penalized in the search results. But even if you are not engaged in these techniques yourself, your site may be punished for associating with black hat purveyors. Hosting on a shared server or sharing domain registration information with bad neighborhoods can lead to to ranking problems, if not punishment. Certainly linking to a bad neighborhood can lead to discipline. If you purchase a domain, you’ll inherit any penalties or bans imposed on the prior version of the website.

There are a wide range of penalties and ranking filters that search engines impose and a still-wider range of effects that those penalties produce. In diagnosing and correcting ranking problems, more than half the battle is figuring which penalty, if any, is imposed and for what violations. Ranking problems are easy to fix but arduous to diagnose with precision. Sudden drops in rankings might lead you to suspect that you’ve received a penalty, but it might not be a penalty at all.

In the following section we’ll look at some specific penalties, filters, conditions, and false conditions, and how to diagnose ranking problems.

Google Ban

The worst punishment that Google serves upon webmasters in a total ban. This means the removal of all pages on a given domain from Google’s index. A ban is not always a punishment: Google “may temporarily or permanently remove sites from its index and search results if it believes it is obligated to do so by law.” Google warns that punishment bans can be meted out for “certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in removal from our index.”

One of the most newsworthy instances of a total ban was when Google, in 2006, issued a total ban to the German website of carmaker BMW (http://www.bmw.de). The offense? Cloaked doorway pages stuffed with keywords that were shown only to search engines, and not to human visitors. The incident became international news, ignited at least partially by the SEO blogging community. BMW immediately removed the offending pages and within a few weeks, Google rescinded the ban.

How to Diagnose a Total or Partial Ban

To diagnose a full or partial ban penalty, run the following tests and exercises:

• Check Google’s index. In the Google search field, enter the following specialized search query: “site:yourdomain.com.” Google then returns a list of all of your site’s pages that appear in Google’s index. If your site was formerly indexed and now the pages are removed, there is at least a possibility that your site has been banned from Google.
• Check if Google has blacklisted your site as unsafe for browsing (type http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mysite.com with your domain at the end).

• Check for Nofollow/Noindex settings. It might seem obvious, but check to make sure you haven’t accidentally set your WordPress site to Noindex. To check, go to your WordPress Dashboard and click the “Privacy” option under “Settings.” If the second setting, “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors” is set, then your site will promptly fall out of the index. A stray entry in a robots.txt file or in your WordPress template file can instruct search engines not to index your entire site.

• Check Google Webmaster Tools. Sometimes, but not always, Google will notify you through your Webmaster Tools account that your site has been penalized. But you won’t always receive this message, so you can still be penalized even if you don’t receive it. See the image below for an example message.

Google Webmaster Tools penalty message. In this example, the message notes, “we detected hidden text....”

PageRank Adjustment/PageRank Penalty

An alternative penalty short of an outright ban is a PageRank adjustment. The adjustment can be partial (a drop from a PR4 to a PR2) or can be full (a drop to PR0). With a PageRank adjustment, Google simply adjusts or removes the PageRank value for a site. Google often imposes this punishment upon low-value general directories that sell links. Part of the difficulty with diagnosing and repairing a PageRank penalty is that the PageRank that Google shows to users is historical, sometimes six months pass between PageRank updates.

How to Diagnose a PageRank Penalty

To diagnose a Google PageRank penalty, run the following tests and exercises:

• Check your inbound links. Whenever your PageRank drops, the most likely reason is that you’ve lost valuable links. Check your link profile in Yahoo Site Explorer. Have you lost any premium, high-PR links you had formerly? Use the reliability of the PageRank algorithm to help diagnose: if you have a PR4 link pointing into one of your pages, and that PR4 link has only one outbound link, that one link alone will be strong enough to make the destination page a PR1 or a PR2. If despite such a link your page remains a PR0, that raises the likelihood of a PageRank penalty.

• Check all pages. Be sure to check every page on your site, you might just have your PageRank shifting around within your site. It is true, however, that generally your home page will have the highest PageRank value of any page of your site. So, if you’ve got a PR0 on all pages including the homepage, a PageRank penalty is suspect.

• Check canonicalization. Recall the “www” and “non-www” distinction and that search engines see these as separate domains in some cases. WordPress handles this automatically, but some online tools don’t check this for you so you have to be sure your are checking both the www and non-www versions of your domain.

• Compare PageRank. Compare Google’s reported PageRank score for your pages with SEOmoz’ mozRank. Typically, these two scores will correlate loosely (within about 10%). If the Google score is much lower than the SEOmoz mozRank score, it’s likely that Google is trimming some PageRank. You can see the SEOmoz Page Rank score with the free SEO Site Tools plugin or by visiting http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/.

Visible evidence of a Google ranking penalty in the SEO Site Tools plugin; all the elements of a ranking penalty are present. The inbound link count is healthy with over 3,500 links pointing to this domain. SEOmoz' mozRank (erroneously called “Page Rank” in the screenshot) is a healthy 4.41. Nevertheless, Google's PageRank is a zero. This is clear evidence of a Google PageRank penalty.

• Check internal links. In Google Webmaster Tools, Google reveals its profile of internal links on your site. See the figures below for examples of an unhealthy internal link profile, and a healthy link profile. If your site has 100 indexed pages, but Webmaster Tools references only a handful of links, it means that Google is not properly processing your internal links. We need to be careful here because a range of conditions can cause this. It can potentially arise from a PageRank penalty but also from poor internal navigation structure.

This Google Webmaster Tools screenshot shows an unhealthy internal link profile, and is the same site shown in the screenshot just above. This site is a low-value link directory, a likely candidate for a Google PageRank penalty.

 

This Google Webmaster Tools screenshot shows a healthy link profile. All or nearly all pages on the website are represented on the internal link profile and the numbers of links to each page is relatively constant.

The -950 Ranking Penalty

Google sometimes employs a -950 ranking penalty to individual pages (but not to entire sites) for particular search queries. The -950 penalty means that for a particular search, your page would have 950 positions added to it. So, a term for which you ranked on page one of Google’s search results in position three, you’d now rank on page ninety-five of the search results at position 953. Sound harsh? It is, and Google has made faint references to it as a penalty for over-optimization. Some SEO professionals contend that they have seen the penalty imposed for shady link building practices.

How to Diagnose a -950 Ranking Penalty

Diagnosing a -950 ranking penalty is easy: try search terms for which you formerly ranked (hopefully you noted their exact former position) and follow the search results out to page 95 or 96. Remember that you can always set Google to display 100 results instead of ten by using the advanced search option at Google.com, which is convenient for checking ranking position in the 100s and above.

The -30/-40 Ranking Penalty

Google often serves up another variety of penalty: it’s the -30 or -40 position penalty. This is an often-imposed penalty, and is applied by Google to entire sites, not just particular pages and not just for particular search queries. This penalty is common enough to trip up legitimate webmasters for very minor oversights or offenses. Most signs point to the -30 penalty being applied algorithmically and is “forgivable,” so changing the condition that led to the penalty automatically reverses the penalty. This penalty has historically been imposed upon sites for serving up poor quality content. For example, the penalty has been imposed upon sites that display thin content. Thin content is content that is partially generic, as with an affiliate site repeating common descriptions of products it sells. Low-value directories have also been served this penalty.

How to Diagnose a -30/-40 Penalty

If you suspect that your site has been been hit with a -30/-40 penalty, there is one sure-fire test to determine if you tripped the penalty. Perform a Google search for your domain name, with out the “www” and without the “.com” or “.net” part of the domain. This search, in normal circumstances, should return your site at or near the first position (depending a bit on the competition of that term). If this test yields your site showing up in a position dropped to the 40s or 50s, it is almost certainly is a -30/-40 penalty.

False Positives That Aren’t Penalties

Don’t assume you’ve been penalized by Google just because your rankings drop or because your rankings remain poor for a new site. Ranking positions can jump around naturally, especially just before algorithm updates, when Google updates its search engine rules. You may also have lost one or more valuable inbound links, that can lead to a drop in rankings. You may also be alternating between Google’s personalized search modes. Personalized search is a Google feature that returns results based on your personal browsing habits. So, if you’ve visited your own website in the past few days, Google will return your website near the top of the results, figuring that it’s one of your personal favorites. Personal search is a convenience tool, but it doesn’t return true rankings. To see actual ranking results you need to make sure personalized search is off. To do this, look on any Google search results page in the upper left hand corner for “Personalize Search On.” Click on the link just under it that reads, “Turn it off.”

Google penalties are almost never imposed for no reason at all. Yes, Google imposes penalties on light offenders while more egregious violations go unpunished. While that might not seem fair, it doesn’t change the fact that if you have perfectly complied with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you are extremely unlikely to be penalized. If you’ve been penalized, there’s a reason.

What is this Google unnatural links message?

Google has sent the following message to many webmasters:

"Dear site owner or webmaster of example.com.

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"

What will happen when you get such a message?

Webmasters who received such a message observed that many sites were penalized 3-4 weeks after the message. The penalty is for the keywords that are included in the unnatural links.

If most of the links that point to the website are unnatural links then the whole website might be penalized.

What are unnatural links?

There are several backlink types that Google finds unnatural:

1. Public backlink networks:Google doesn't like fully automated or paid backlink networks. If you participate in a backlink network that can be joined by anyone (even for a fee) then it is very likely that Google has already penalized the network or that the network is a target for the near future.If you can find the backlink network, Google's engineers can find it, too.
2. Private backlink networks: some SEO agencies have private backlink networks. Google probably has the technology to detect these networks without creating accounts.
3. Paid sidebar links: if your website has too many backlinks from the sidebars of other websites, Google might find them unnatural.
4. Over-optimized anchor text: if the links to your website all use exactly the same anchor text, it is likely that Google might reconsider the rankings of the linked pages.
5. Fake forum and social media links: some tools create fake forum and social media site accounts to get backlinks to your website. Chances are that Google can detect that type of link.

What should you do?

If you used one of the methods above to get backlinks to your website, try to get rid of these links as quickly as possible.

The formula to high rankings on Google is very easy:

Good content + good backlinks + no spam = high rankings

Optimize the content of your web pages to make sure that Google and other search engines know what your website is about. Then get good backlinks to show search engines that your website can be trusted.

Google has become more aggressive regarding spammy backlinks. In the past, a website might get high rankings for several months until Google detected the site. Now it seems that the it takes a maximum of 3 months until Google detects the spammers.

Do not fall for SEO solutions that promise quick and easy backlinks. It doesn't make sense to get high rankings for 2-3 months just to get penalized after that time. If you are serious about your business, you have to use strategies that deliver high rankings that will stay, even if it takes longer to get these rankings in the short term.

• Autocomplete with math symbols.

[launch codename "Blackboard", project codename "Suggest"]

When Google process queries to return predictions in autocomplete, Google generally normalize them to match more relevant predictions in Google’s database. This change incorporates several characters that were previously normalized: “+”, “-”, “*”, “/”, “^”, “(“, “)”, and “=”. This should make it easier to search for popular equations, for example [e = mc2] or [y = mx+b].

• Improvements to handling of symbols for indexing.

[launch codename "Deep Maroon"]

Google generally ignore punctuation symbols in queries. Based on analysis of Google’s query stream, Google now started to index the following heavily used symbols: “%”, “$”, “\”, “.”, “@”, “#”, and “+”. Google continue to index more symbols as usage warrants.

• Better scoring of news groupings.

[launch codename "avenger_2"]

News results on Google are organized into groups that are about the same story. Google have scoring systems to determine the ordering of these groups for a given query. This subtle change slightly improves Google’s scoring system, leading to better ranking of news clusters.

• Sitelinks data refresh.

[launch codename "Saralee-76"]

Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the respective site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users. Google recently updated the data through Google’s offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks).

• Improvements to autocomplete backends, coverage.

[launch codename "sovereign", project codename "Suggest"]

Google consolidated systems and reduced the number of backend calls required to prepare autocomplete predictions for your query. The result is more efficient CPU usage and more comprehensive predictions.

• Better handling of password changes.

Google general approach is that when you change passwords, you’ll be signed out from your account on all machines. This change ensures that changing your password more consistently signs your account out of Search, everywhere.

• Better indexing of profile pages.

[launch codename "Prof-2"]

This change improves the comprehensiveness of public profile pages in Google’s index from more than two-hundred social sites.

• UI refresh for News Universal.

[launch codename "Cosmos Newsy", project codename "Cosmos"]

Google refreshed the design of News Universal results by providing more results from the top cluster, unifying the UI treatment of clusters of different sizes, adding a larger font for the top article, adding larger images (from licensed sources), and adding author information.

• Improvements to results for navigational queries.

[launch codename "IceMan5"]

A “navigational query” is a search where it looks like the user is looking to navigate to a particular website, such as [New York Times] or [wikipedia.org]. While these searches may seem straightforward, there are still challenges to serving the best results. For example, what if the user doesn’t actually know the right URL? What if the URL they’re searching for seems to be a parked domain (with no content)? This change improves results for this kind of search.

• High-quality sites algorithm data update and freshness improvements.

[launch codename “mm”, project codename "Panda"]

Like many of the changes Google make, aspects of Google’s high-quality sites algorithm depend on processing that’s done offline and pushed on a periodic cycle. In the past month, Google pushed updated data for “Panda,” as Google mentioned in a recent tweet. Google also made improvements to keep Google’s database fresher overall.

• Live results for UEFA Champions League and KHL.

 Google added live-updating snippets in Google’s search results for the KHL (Russian Hockey League) and UEFA Champions League, including scores and schedules. Now you can find live results from a variety of sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, NHL and others.

• Tennis search feature.

[launch codename "DoubleFault"]

Google introduced a new search feature to provide realtime tennis scores at the top of the search results page. Try [maria sharapova] or [sony ericsson open].

• More relevant image search results.

[launch codename "Lice"]

This change tunes signals Google use related to landing page quality for images. This makes it more likely that you’ll find highly relevant images, even if those images are on pages that are lower quality.

• Fresher image predictions in all languages.

[launch codename "imagine2", project codename "Suggest"]

Google recently rolled out a change to surface more relevant image search predictions in autocomplete in English. This improvement extends the update to all languages.

• SafeSearch algorithm tuning.

[launch codenames "Fiorentini", “SuperDyn”; project codename "SafeSearch"]

This month Google rolled out a couple of changes to Google’s SafeSearch algorithm. Google updated Google’s classifier to make it smarter and more precise, and Google found new ways to make adult content less likely to appear when a user isn't looking for it

• Tweaks to handling of anchor text.

 [launch codename "PC"]

This month Google turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Google’s experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made Google’s scoring cleaner and more robust.

• Simplification to Images Universal codebase.

[launch codename "Galactic Center"]

Google made some improvements to simplify Google’s codebase for Images Universal and to better utilize improvements in Google’s general web ranking to also provide better image results.

• Better application ranking and UI on mobile.

When you search for apps on your phone, you’ll now see richer results with app icons, star ratings, prices, and download buttons arranged to fit well on smaller screens. You’ll also see more relevant ranking of mobile applications based on your device platform, for example Android or iOS.

• Improvements to freshness in Video Universal.

[launch codename "graphite", project codename "Freshness"]

Google improved the freshness of video results to better detect stale videos and return fresh content.

• Fewer undesired synonyms.

[project codename "Synonyms"]

When you search on Google, Google often identify other search terms that might have the same meaning as what you entered in the box (synonyms) and surface results for those terms as well when it might be helpful. This month Google tweaked a classifier to prevent unhelpful synonyms from being introduced as content in the results set.

• Better handling of queries with both navigational and local intent.

[launch codename "ShieldsUp"]

Some queries have both local intent and are very navigational (directed towards a particular website). This change improves the balance of results Google show, and helps ensure you’ll find highly relevant navigational results or local results towards the top of the page as appropriate for your query.

• Improvements to freshness.

[launch codename "Abacus", project codename "Freshness"]

Google launched an improvement to freshness late last year that was very helpful, but it cost significant machine resources. At the time Google decided to roll out the change only for news-related traffic. This month Google rolled it out for all queries.

• Improvements to processing for detection of site quality.

[launch codename "Curlup"]

Google made some improvements to a longstanding system Google have to detect site quality. This improvement allows us to get greater confidence in Google’s classifications.

• Better interpretation and use of anchor text.

Google improved systems Google use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website.

• Better local results and sources in Google News.

[launch codename "barefoot", project codename "news search"]

Google deprecating a signal Google had to help people find content from their local country, and Google building similar logic into other signals Google use. The result is more locally relevant Google News results and higher quality sources.

• Deprecating signal related to ranking in a news cluster.

[launch codename "decaffeination", project codename "news search”]

Google deprecating a signal that’s no longer improving relevance in Google News. The signal was originally developed to help people find higher quality articles on Google News. (Note: Despite the launch codename, this project has nothing to do with Caffeine, Google’s update to indexing in 2010).

• Fewer “sibling” synonyms.

[launch codename "Gemini", project codename "Synonyms"]

One of the main signals Google look at to identify synonyms is context. For example, if the word “cat” often appears next to the term “pet” and “furry,” and so does the word “kitten”, Google’s algorithms may guess that “cat” and “kitten” have similar meanings. The problem is that sometimes this method will introduce “synonyms” that actually are different entities in the same category. To continue the example, dogs are also “furry pets” -- so sometimes “dog” may be incorrectly introduced as a synonym for “cat”. Google been working for some time to appropriately ferret out these “sibling” synonyms, and Google’s latest system is more maintainable, updatable, debuggable, and extensible to other systems.

• Better synonym accuracy and performance.

 [project codename "Synonyms"]

Google made further improvements to Google’s synonyms system by eliminating duplicate logic. Google also found ways to more accurately identify appropriate synonyms in cases where there are multiple synonym candidates with different contexts.

• Retrieval system tuning.

[launch codename "emonga", project codename "Optionalization"]

Google improved systems that identify terms in a query which are not necessarily required to retrieve relevant documents. This will make results more faithful to the original query.

• Less aggressive synonyms.

 [launch codename "zilong", project codename "Synonyms"]

Google heard feedback from users that sometimes Google’s algorithms are too aggressive at incorporating search results for other terms. The underlying cause is often Google’s synonym system, which will include results for other terms in many cases. This change makes Google’s synonym system less aggressive in the way it incorporates results for other query terms, putting greater weight on the original user query.

• Update to systems relying on geographic data.

[launch codename "Maestro, Maitre"]

Google have a number of signals that rely on geographic data (similar to the data Google surface in Google Earth and Maps). This change updates some of the geographic data Google using.

• Improvements to name detection.

 [launch codename "edge", project codename "NameDetector"]

Google improved a system for detecting names, particularly for celebrity names.

• Updates to personalization signals.

[project codename "PSearch"]

This change updates signals used to personalize search results.

• Improvements to Image Search relevance.

[launch codename "sib"]

Google updated signals to better promote reasonably sized images on high-quality landing pages.

• Remove deprecated signal from site relevance signals.

[launch codename "Freedom"]

Google removed a deprecated product-focused signal from a site-understanding algorithm.

• More precise detection of old pages.

 [launch codename "oldn23", project codename “Freshness"]

This change improves detection of stale pages in Google’s index by relying on more relevant signals. As a result, fewer stale pages are shown to users.

• Tweaks to language detection in autocomplete.

[launch codename “Dejavu”, project codename "Suggest"]

In general, autocomplete relies on the display language to determine what language predictions to show. For most languages, Google also try to detect the user query language by analyzing the script, and this change extends that behavior to Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean. The net effect is that when users forget to turn off their IMEs, they’ll still get English predictions if they start typing English terms.

• Improvements in date detection for blog/forum pages.

[launch codename "fibyen", project codename "Dates"]

This change improves the algorithm that determines dates for blog and forum pages.

• More predictions in autocomplete by live rewriting of query prefixes.

[launch codename "Lombart", project codename "Suggest”]

In this change Google rewriting partial queries on the fly to retrieve more potential matching predictions for the user query. Google use synonyms and other features to get the best overall match. Rewritten prefixes can include term re-orderings, term additions, term removals and more.

• Expanded sitelinks on mobile.

Google launched Google’s expanded sitelinks feature for mobile browsers, providing better organization and presentation of sitelinks in search results.

• More accurate short answers.

[project codename “Porky Pig”]

Google updated the sources behind Google’s short answers feature to rely on data from Freebase. This improves accuracy and makes it easier to fix bugs.

• Migration of video advanced search backends.

 Google migrated some backends used in video advanced search to Google’s main search infrastructure.

• +1 button in search for more countries and domains.

This month Google internationalized the +1 button on the search results page to additional languages and domains. The +1 button in search makes it easy to share recommendations with the world right from your search results. As Google said in Google’s initial blog post, the beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results).

• Local result UI refresh on tablet.

Google updated the user interface of local results on tablets to make them more compact and easier to scan.

Alexa orders web sites according to Alexa Traffic they get. That means a site with a rank of 1000 gets more traffic than a site with rank of 1001 according to Alexa, of course.

How Alexa Rank Is Calculated

Alexa Rank is calculated considering how many Alexa Toolbar users visited a certain web site and how many distinct pages they viewed in that site over a period of 3 months. Below is the Definition from Alexa itself,

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.

Important points from the definition,

• Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period.This means rankings are not accumulated. If a web site got lots of Alexa Visitors last 3 months but not get any of them next 3 months, it’s Alexa Rank goes down. Its previous rank is not going to help which is a good point because a web site has to keep a continued interest in its visitors. And also any boosting gimmick will not work continually.
• A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews.This means if Site A got 10 Alexa Visitors and each of them viewed only the home page and Site B got only one Alexa Visitor and he viewed 20 different pages, Site B gets 20 Alexa Credits while Site A gets only 10.This reminds you to think about the quality of your content and your site navigation.
• multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview.This means if your site has 10 pages and you visit each page 10 times each day thinking you will get 100 Alexa Credits daily, then you only get fed up. Here you get only 10 Alexa Credits daily. (URL - Uniform Resource Locator means the address of a web page). This also ensures that any auto refreshing software doesn’t help much.
• Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only. This means if your site has separate sections (sub domains or sub directories) like www.your-site-name.com and mail.your-site-name.com, you don’t get two different Alexa Ranks for them. Instead Alexa calculates overall traffic to your-site-name.com using all the sections in your site.Does this mean that if you start a blog in Blogger where you will get an address like your-name.blogspot.com you won’t have your own Alexa Rank? Reread the sentence unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs.This means you will hopefully get your own Alexa Rank (Little bit controversial, isn’t it?).It means that Alexa has some kind of Algorithm to determine sub domain (or sub directory incases like Geocities) traffic in sites like Blogger.com. But it seems that it takes time. That’s why you see Alexa Rank as 18 in new Blogger blogs which is the Alexa Rank of main domain, Blogger .com.

Why Alexa Rank Is Important

Do a search in Google on Alexa Rank and you will get lots of discussions and posts saying Alexa Rank is not important because its relative and so and so. But it is still considered in major advertising networks like AdBrite and Text Link Ads (That means if you have a higher rank you will get higher rates for publishing their ads) and also despite the argument any web master will feel higher respect when you have higher Alexa Rank. Yes, it’s human nature

Remember that even though Alexa is relative it has over 10 million users which is a good number for any kind of research and also it says Yahoo! is number 1, MSN is 2, Google is 3 and eBay, Amazon, MySpace are always in top 20 which is true according to any other research or in our own experience.

How to Improve Alexa Rank

Improving Alexa Rank can be really tedious if you consider it as a project and try to do it mechanically. I suspect most of the people in the discussion are the people who tried it hard way and got fed up. However there are some simple ways to improve it.

• Still if you haven’t done, install Alexa Toolbar in Internet Explorer and view couple of web pages (or more) of your own everyday. You may be a Fireox fan (So do I) but do this at least as testing on how well your pages perform in IE.
• Think about ways to get geeks to your site. They may not buy or click on your ads but most of them have Alexa Toolbar installed and will surely improve your Alexa Rank, for one case or another, some people still like IE.Marketing forums can be a good starting point. Your subject may not be Marketing but you will surely get benefited from these forums on matters on marketing your web site online. Think about a handy signature. Preferably this can be led to a useful tool in your site which will make repeated visits. Some other places are social networking sites like Digg and Delicious.
• Distribute Alexa Tool bar in your site. To make it a concern, Alexa allows Customized Alexa Toolbars where you can put your logo (which directly link to your site) and Amazon Associate ID (which can make you money if users buy from Amazon going through your Alexa Toolbar. FYI: Alexa is an Amazon company).
• And other web commandments remain. Quality content, constant improvement and being patient are always winning solutions.

What Else in Alexa

Alexa Rank is not the only thing Alexa provides. It has some other good information like Related Sites and User Reviews. To find all the Alexa Information of a site, just replace its domain name in following address format, insert it into your browser address bar and hit enter.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=yahoo.com

You will find four links at top to the right saying, Overview (where you are now), Traffic Details, Related Links, Sites Linking in. Explore these links and you will get lots of useful information. Begin your research with Yahoo! because it contains data for all the sections which may not be the case for a new site.

Then try your site. If it has nothing in the Contact Info section, it will provide you a link to enter that information (You will need an email address in your domain name for this. Email aliases also work). There you will also have a link to update the Thumbnail of your site. Once your details are there, you can edit them following the same procedure.

In addition to these, Alexa provide some Webmaster Services and Data Services which can be useful in various aspects.

Alexa Widgets

Alexa Toolbar alone provides some good information like Site Info and Related Sites. But the toolbar is only for IE users. This is a problem for Firefox users and has been a considerable issue to Alexa too. Alexa describes it in Alexa and Firefox and recommends some widgets to get same information.

Knowing Alexa Rank at a glance can be really useful. Search Status provides this facility for Firefox. It shows both Alexa Rank and Google Page Rank in Firefox status bar which is a good combination to measure the quality of a site. Once installed, right click on it and choose Show as Text to see ranks in numbers. Defaults are graphical bars which only show numbers when you mouse over them.

Remember that these widgets only query Alexa Data and provide you results. They do not send back data like number of page views to Alexa which is a major aspect of Alexa Toolbar.

Far and away, though, the most elusive prediction to get right has been “It’s the Year of Mobile!” Having heard this mantra since 2005 or so, it felt like my annual rallying cry regarding the Chicago Cubs World Series chances, with the results always seeming to fall short of expectations.

Expectations and reality finally crossed paths in 2011, and I now feel confident proclaiming that 2011 was indeed the “Year of Mobile” for consumers and marketers alike. More than 50 percent of all new phones purchased in the U.S. are now smartphones, and these devices are the clear driving forces behind the surge in mobile Internet usage.

But if 2011 was finally the Year of Mobile, then 2012 will be about the bifurcation of mobile devices. Tablet adoption has skyrocketed at a blistering pace, reaching almost 36 million devices in the U.S. by the end of 2011.

Although smartphones and tablets share many common attributes, they differ greatly as it relates to where the devices are used, what they use them for, and most importantly, how you should market via search to consumers on the different devices.

How are These Devices Different?

A recent webinar collaboration between comScore and Performics explored the differences between the smartphone and tablets from both a behavioral and functionality perspective, and then dug into some specific techniques you can utilize.

Behaviorally, the first thing to note is where consumers use the devices.

Smartphones accompany consumers pretty much everywhere they go. As they explore the world, their search activity on this device mirrors this ambulatory motion. People look for maps, news bites, pricing comparisons, restaurants, and the like. This on-the-go activity is further supported by the fact that 63 percent of all smartphone Internet access is done via the mobile network.

Tablets, on the other hand, are primarily being used in the home at this time, with 92 percent of tablet Internet access happening on WiFi networks. People use their tablets while lying on the couch, possibly in bed watching TV, surfing the web while lounging. Perhaps it’s the first truly lean-back/lean-forward device. Ultimately the search activity on tablets more closely reflects that of the PC given the similarly stationary environment.

Similarly, data from Performics indicates that tablet and desktop searchers spend more money directly on their device when compared to smartphone searchers. This helps to reinforce searchers desire for different content and experiences by screen size.

Functionally, the search experience on a smartphone device is vastly different from that of a tablet, so here are some recommendations for how you should think about your search strategy across channels.

Smartphone Strategy

The small size of the search engine results page (SERP) and the on-the-go search needs on these devices means you should keep it short and simple. Assuming you're already optimizing your keyword lists for those “on-the-go” terms, the following are your top five most important strategy considerations:

• Bid for positions 1 & 2: Anything lower will most probably never been seen and your CTRs will plummet.
• Add sitelinks: You can take up almost one-quarter of the page by expanding the size of your ad creative
• Include location extensions, hyper local formats, and local offers.

• Include Click to Call/Click to download options: It’s critical that your calls to action and KPIs reflect the unique needs of mobile searchers. Remember, this mobile device actually still makes phone calls.

• Optimize for organic search: Combine the top paid link with the top organic link and you pretty much have your own mobile SERP.

Tablet Strategy

As noted earlier, the tablet searcher will share more similarities with the PC searcher than the smartphone searcher, so you need to adjust your strategy accordingly. Your top five tablet search strategy considerations are:

• Bid strategy can account for positions beyond 1 & 2: The large interface and the simple scrolling gesture to view the entire SERP allows for a more nuanced approach to the page/position rank optimization. Although being in position 1 is ideal, tablet campaigns can still work with lower positions.
• Gear your copy and site links to tablet users: For example, “Purchase now from your tablet.” Since tablet users are most likely at home, your messaging should reflect the types of actions best suited to that environment (click to download is much better suited than click to call).
• Drive tablet searchers to desktop and tablet specific landing pages: You don't want to serve a tablet searcher your smartphone optimized mobile landing page.
• Avoid Flash: iPads make up more than 90 percent of all tablet traffic and they don’t render Flash, so avoid the technology for now.
• Don't simply use your smartphone keyword list: Remember, think of tablets like desktops and adjust your keyword groups to best serve this type of searcher. Tablets will allow for longer tail and higher funnel awareness keywords.

Mobile marketers last year began to test the waters of targeting mobile devices differently than they would PCs and desktops. This was a good start, but the multiplicity of devices in use combined with the increasing sophistication of targeting options available is eventually going to require additional effort on your part to best optimize your mobile spend.

Take the time to study the numbers, stay up to date on the evolving trends, and you’ll find your mobile search ROI will move in the right direction.

Orginally Posted on http://searchenginewatch.com by Eli Goodman.

When it comes to PageRank there’s a lot of people desiring instant results. Let me tell you that instant results don’t exist but you can find good results if you work night and they in your blog or website. Increasing your PageRank could be a great challenge for almost everybody and I personally think that this is something that is absolutely possible. I have been successful and I would like to share with you what exactly you have to do to succeed increasing your visibility in search engines. The following are just some recommendations that will help you to boost your PageRank during the following 3 months.

1. Work efficiently on your keyword tags: Your keywords tags should be treated for you very efficiently so that everything is under control with your in front of search engines. It is very important that you have in mind that and when you are configuring your blog or website you should use keywords that are based on your niche. Within the content try always to use your keywords even in the title of the articles. It will help you a lot to get a good ranking in search engines.

2. Promote your website everyday: The promotion of your website, blog and web content should be everyday during the next 90 days. If you really want to lift your PageRank from the scratch to something that you can feel proud you should work work very hard. I definitely believe that if you work very hard during three months you don’t have to make a huge effort in the near future.

3. Produce high and extended web content: When you write long articles –having at least 500 t0 600 words– and these articles has a good keyword density –about 2% or 3%– you will get a huge visibility in search engines. No matter how powerful is your competitor, you will receive the benefits of search engines in a good time.

4. Link to related sites: This is a wonderful practice for those who are looking for backlinks that produce good effects. When you make a link try to build links with sites that do the same with you.