… continued from yesterday …

Question: Does the Geo-Targeting feature in Webmaster Tools hold as much weight as having a country-specific TLD?

Example: www.domain.net vs. www.domain.co.uk

Kaspar aka Guglarz: Google uses a bunch of signals like location of the server or the TLD in order to determine which users might be interested in the sites content. Geo-Targeting is a way for Webmasters who use non-country specific TLD’s like .net/ to tell Google which your target group was, if the site is specifically targeted to users from a particular area. Think of the site of a small, local hardware store or a vet for example. Potentially, their main target users would be people living in the nearby area. Geo-Targeting is not to be used for language targeting though.
Using the tool may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won’t be the same as having the country-specific TLD. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).

According to what I have witnessed, having the country specific TLD is always preferred.

Question: Do you feel that the Webmaster should be informed in case of a manual penalty & the reconsideration requests should be looked into more seriously in case of a manual penalty.

Kaspar aka Guglarz: Imagine you have a site on which you add original content and/or tools on a regular basis. If it has been hacked and contains hidden content/links or you are a website owner and your webmaster did something he/she was not aware of being outside Google webmaster guidelines, like a 0 seconds redirection. In that case chances are high you would be informed about a temporary removal from Google results via Google Webmaster Tools. The message will surely contain hints regarding the problem on the site. Once you have fixed it, your reconsideration request will be reviewed very carefully.

On the other hand, if you have a couple of hundreds of identical sites with – for example – scraped content from other sites, these are not adding any value to the Internet and I would not expect any notifications from Google.

While Google does the best job of the “Big Three” in terms of informing website owners of potential problems, many of the issues go unreported.

Question: Some Blackhat linked to my blog from 300+ adult splogs as revenge for calling him out. My blog had #1 ranking for it’s keywords, now it is on the second page at best. Can mass amounts of links from “bad neighborhoods” cause a drop in site ranking?

Nathan J: We work hard to make sure a site can’t have a negative effect on another site. Feel free to report spam if you think you find some.

While Google maintains that incoming links cannot have an adverse effect on a site, I disagree as I have tested this hard and incoming links can and do damage sites – with an exception. It seems clear that sites who do not have the proper link foundation when flooded with garbage links, their link profile tips severely and rankings begin to drop rapidly. Having a solid link profile creates a type of “bullet-proofing” of your site against attacks such as these.

Question: Will too much of “rel=nofollow” or totally “nofollow” to all outgoing links by the author of a blog be stamped as over optimization and penalized? Is there any penalty for over optimization sort of stuff?

JohnMu: I wouldn’t worry about this, Raj. I would try to work on making the site as natural as possible.

I asked Matt Cutts this at PubCon in ’07 and he said you can be as aggressive as you want with “nofollow” on your site and you won’t see any negatives. I’ve tested this since then and it is true. I have never seen a negative issue solely related to aggressive use on a site.

Question: Is the bounce rate and speed taken into account when ranking a page? i.e. if you see a searcher click on a result then return very quickly and choose another result, is the first page ranked lower?

JohnMu: Assuming that users will be jumping out of a site like that, there’s a high probability that they won’t be willing to recommend it to others (or come back themselves). So yes, indirectly at least, if a site is made in a way that users run away right away, then chances are that we might not be recommending it as much as other sites that users like (and recommend to others).

I have seen evidence that click-through and bounce rate is being measured in the SERPs.

Question: Many believe that to rank well, you simply need “quality” backlinks. But how important is having your keywords in the title, meta tags, and throughout your site? Is keyword density of any importance to show what the page is about? What % is suggested?

Wysz: Links are just one factor involved in Google’s ranking of pages. We look at both on-page and off-page content, so what you have on your page can be an essential part of ranking. However, there is no recommended “keyword density.” Your content should be high quality and written for users. If you try writing for search engines, the language can become very unnatural, which may end up hurting you more than it helps.

While this is an excellent question, it is similar to asking a politician, “Tell us all the lies that you have told.” Do you really think you’re going to get a straight answer? Here are my testing results:

Title Tag: If you have the keyword phrase in the Title Tag, it is possible to have the content of the page be blank and gain a Top Ten ranking from incoming links alone. I have done this personally as had SEO phenom Leslie Rohde. The Title Tag does have weight, but it must be used in conjunction with a solid link campaign.

Meta Tags: Google doesn’t read the Keyword Meta Tag, however, you can read more on Google Meta Tags.

Keyword Density: The On-Page factors with Google aren’t as vital as they are with Yahoo! or MSN. I recommend you stay 4% or below and I generally keep in the 1-2% range.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.