• When a user accesses the web page in a browser.
• When a search engine spider (e.g. Googlebot) crawls the web page.

HTTP status codes are of 5 different categories:

• 1xx Provisional/Informational Response
• 2xx Successful
• 3xx Redirected
• 4xx Client/Request Error
• 5xx Server Error

The first digit of the status code represents one of five classes of response.

HTTP Status Codes

Google provides a list of HTTP status codes to webmasters, in which the most common and imporant status codes are below:

200 (Successful) – The server successfully processed the request. Generally, this means that the server provided the requested page. If you see this status for your robots.txt file, it means that Googlebot retrieved it successfully.

301 (Moved permanently) – The requested page has been permanently moved to a new location. When the server returns this response (as a response to a GET or HEAD request), it automatically forwards the requestor to the new location. You should use this code to let Googlebot know that a page or site has permanently moved to a new location.

302 (Moved temporarily) – The server is currently responding to the request with a page from a different location, but the requestor should continue to use the original location for future requests. This code is similar to a 301 in that for a GET or HEAD request, it automatically forwards the requestor to a different location, but you shouldn’t use it to tell the Googlebot that a page or site has moved because Googlebot will continue to crawl and index the original location.

400 (Bad request) – The server didn’t understand the syntax of the request.

403 (Forbidden) – The server is refusing the request. If you see that Googlebot received this status code when trying to crawl valid pages of your site (you can see this on the Web crawl page under Diagnostics in Google Webmaster Tools), it’s possible that your server or host is blocking Googlebot’s access.

404 (Not found) – The server can’t find the requested page. For instance, the server often returns this code if the request is for a page that doesn’t exist on the server. If you don’t have a robots.txt file on your site and see this status on the robots.txt page of the Diagnostic tab in Google Webmaster Tools, this is the correct status. However, if you do have a robots.txt file and you see this status, then your robots.txt file may be named incorrectly or in the wrong location. It should be at the top-level of the domain and named robots.txt. If you see this status for URLs that Googlebot tried to crawl (on the HTTP errors page of the Diagnostic tab), then Googlebot likely followed an invalid link from another page (either an old link or a mistyped one).

500 (Internal server error) – The server encountered an error and can’t fulfill the request.

503 (Service unavailable) – The server is currently unavailable (because it is overloaded or down for maintenance). Generally, this is a temporary state.

HTTP Status Codes for SEO

Other sources on HTTP status codes:

• SEOmoz.org – Regarding Google SEO, webmasters’ main objective is to increase Google PageRank (link juice) or to maintain Google PageRank values of their web pages. Only web pages returning either HTTP status codes 200 and 301 are Google SEO friendly and are able to pass link juice.
• SEO glossary includes the definitions of 301, 302, and 404 HTTP status codes as well as many other definitions related to search engine optimization.
• W3.org has a complete list of HTTP status codes.

HTTP Status Code 301

This test shows that Google recognizes 301 redirects and passes link juice from the redirecting web page to the redirected web page, as Google SEO traffic is not lost.

To set up 301 redirects on Microsoft’s Internet Information Server ( MS IIS ):

• You can redirect either a domain or an individual web page.
• You will need one source web page or site, and one destination web page or site.
• You can use the IIS control panel to create the redirects.

To set up 301 redirects on Apache:

• You will need one source web page or site, and one destination web page or site.
• When you have the mod_rewrite extension installed by default and need to redirect .htm files from an old server to the equivalent .php files on a new server using a 301 redirect, use a combination of mod_rewrite and the redirect directive to do the URL change and redirection.
• Use the redirect directive syntax in the .htaccess file: Redirect permanent /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory or Redirect 301 /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory

A example from SEOmoz shows it previously did 301 redirections involving redirecting canonical hostnames and redirecting specific files and folders from one domain to another.

HTTP Status Code 404

How Google prefers webmasters to handle 404 errors:

• Google defines the 404 response code should be returned for a file “Not Found” request.
• Google explains “hard 404s” and “soft 404s” and suggests avoid returning “soft 404s”. A soft 404 occurs when a user requests a non-existent URL on your site, but the server returns a web page with an error message and a 200 HTTP status code.
• “Soft 404s” may be confusing to both users and search engine spiders, and cause the Googlebot to spend unnecessary time crawling and indexing non-existent and duplicate URLs on your website.
• Google offers a soft 404s reporting feature under the Crawl errors section in Google Webmaster Tools.

To improve user-friendliness, webmasters can set up the servers to return a beautifully/friendly designed 404 error pages with messages.

Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.

Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.

Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.

Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.

Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.

Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.

Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.

Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.

Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

To better understand Google’s search algorithms and SEO guides/resources for webmasters/beginners, review:

• Google vs Bing Search Algorithms
• Content Farm Spams, Google Search Algorithm Update
• Google SEO Beginners Guide Update
• Increase Google PageRank
• Google, Yahoo, Bing Search Algorithms Revised
• Best Google SEO Resources
• Google SEO for Beginners

• Webmaster World
• Hobo SEO

Google Sitelinks are now available to all websites that are eligible for Google Sitelinks, as confirmed by Danny Sullivan and Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

Google Sitelinks shown under the first organic search result helps search engine users navigate websites.

• Google analyzes the link structure of your website and finds web pages that will be most useful to users.
• Google displays those web pages with titles as Google Sitelinks.
• Webmasters can disable any individual sitelink from showing up in the SERP through Google Webmaster Tools.
• Google Sitelinks include one line of text snippet that are of full-size text. Review optimize SEO META tags, page title, description, keywords, robots.
• Google Sitelinks are displayed differently from query to query.
• A maximum of 12 Google Sitelinks can show up for one site.

Google has been improving and changing the look-and-feel and layout of sitelinks in the SERP over the years. At one stage, Google showed one line Google Sitelinks.

PPC ads can also include sitelinks as Google Adwords PPC sitelinks.

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Google +1 Buttons on your web pages allow visitors to your site to recommend your content to other people. Google’s +1 annotations currently show up in SERP in US English language’s www.google.com.

Google +1 button is available in 4 different sizes:

• 15px (small)
• 20px (medium)
• 24px (standard)
• 60px (tall)

To add Google +1 Button to your sites, insert this Javascript tag in your web pages’ head or just before close body tag:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Insert this tag at where +1 Button should appear:

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

Google PageRank Sculpting Revised

How Google PageRank Flows between Web Pages:

• A decay factor of 10-15% loss applies to each time PageRank (link juice) passes from one web page to another.
• The rel=nofollow attribute is a method to indicate no PageRank (link juice) should be passed through to the web page being linked to from your web page.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains how nofollow should be used on SEOmoz’s Blog:

The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt’ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There’s no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow’ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don’t even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.

Let’s revise Google PageRank Sculpting. PageRank Sculpting can be used as:

• “Siloing” – Only pass link juice to web pages on your site with the same theme to improve ranking for keywords and keyword groups, that are both general and targeted keyword phrases.
• Signals to GoogleBot crawl prioritization for your site’s web pages.

Changes to Nofollow Attribute, PageRank Sculpting

Matt Cutts explains how nofollow attribute works after Google made algorithmic change to how Nofollow attribute passes PageRank (link juice) between web pages:

• For example, your web page has 10 PageRank points (from inbound links pointing to the web page). You set up 5 links pointing to other web pages on your site and 5 outbound links to other websites. You blocked PageRank from passing through the 5 outbound links with nofollow attribute.
• Before Google’s algorithm change, you could pass 2 points to each of the 5 web pages of your site, with a total of 10 PageRank points staying on your own site’s web pages.
• After Google’s algorithm change in 2008, you could only pass 1 point to each of the 5 web pages of your site, with a total 5 PageRank points staying on your own site’s web pages. The other 5 points are lost.

On a Google Buzz post Matt Cutts explains nofollow is great for:

• Links to sites that you do not trust
• Links to sites that you do not want to vouch for
• Paid links

As Webmasters, you should not add “nofollow” to all outbound links on your site.

Other SEO Techniques

Webmasters should avoid keyword stuffing and consider using other SEO techniques before applying nofollow attribute to websites.

• Google +1 Button Setup, Google +1 on SEO, Adwords
• Google SEO beginners guide update
• Google, Yahoo and Bing search algorithms
• Google SEO for beginners
• SEO geo-targeting

• Google’s +1 Button is similar to the Facebook’s Like button which allows users to vote up content within Google’s search engine results pages (SERP).
• Google’s +1 Button allows you to share recommendations to others and receive recommendations from others.
• Google +1 is one of signals Google uses to identify the most useful recommendations to you, including people you are already connected to you through other Google products such as GMail, GTalk, Google Buzz and Google Reader.
• Google’s +1 button will initially only appear on Google.com’s English search results.

Google’s +1 is Google’s social search.

Google +1 Button Setup

To activate and use Google +1 Button:

• Sign-in to your Google account.
• Go to Google Labs Experimental and click “Join this experiment” for +1 Button.
• Go to www.Google.com and do a web search.
• Click on a +1 button next to a web page.

• Click “Confirm and +1″ – You’re done voting the web page.

Next time when you search on Google and this web page shows up in Google’s SERP, your +1 and Google profile photo with “You +1′d this” will appear.

Google +1 Button for SEO

A Quora discussion on how Google’s +1 Button will affect SEO:

• +1 becomes the new Google PageRank – Google’s search algorithm may eventually rely less on link popularity.
• Google may give different weighing scale to +1′s from different users. Example, A +1 from Danny Sullivan on Gordon Choi’s Blog may carry much more weight than a +1 from an anonymous person.
• Google can build the BIG social graphs from your personal social graph (i.e. all the +1 recommendations your friends have contributed) and the +1 graph for a piece of content (i.e. all the +1′s recommended to a single web page).

Google +1 Button for Adwords

Google’s +1 Buttons will appear on Adwords ads, though Google officially announced +1 won’t affect Google Adwords Quality Score.

• All ads will be getting these buttons.
• Theres no way for advertisers to turn them off.
• Clicks on the +1 button next to ads do NOT count as a paid ad click.
• Advertisers will be able to see stats about which ads are getting the most +1s.

Google +1 Button on Your Site

Webmasters may add Google +1 Button to their websites, allowing visitors to +1 (recommend) the web pages (content) to Google and other users.

What are Content Farm Sites?

Content farms are large quantities of low quality content that can spam search engine results. Content farm sites are intended to:

• Acquire visitors from search queries through search engines
• Drive the search engine visitors to click on ads that are on the content farm sites

Wikipedia defines content farm sites:

Content farms are companies that employ large numbers of writers to generate large amounts of textual content. Content farms are criticized for providing relatively low quality content as they maximize profit by producing just “good enough” rather than best possible quality articles. Search engines see content farms as a problem, as they tend to bring the user to the less relevant and lower quality results of the search.

Google Search Algorithm Update

To minimize search engine spam from content farm sites, Matt Cutts confirmed Google’s search algorithm change will affect:

• Sites that copy other sites’ content and sites with low levels of original content
• The ranking of over 2% of search queries

Blekko Bans Content Farm Sites

Blekko.com, the slashtag search engine, is to remove a list of content farm sites from search results:

Google’s Content Farm Algorithm, Scraper Algorithm

Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Round Table said:

• Google hasn’t yet algorithmically block content farms.
• Google has launched a scraper algorithm to prevent low quality content from showing up in Google’s SERP.

• Glossary that define terms in the guide
• New examples in image format alongside the content
• Search engine optimization guidelines for mobile devices

Google’s new SEO guide does not directly mentioned how to increase Google Pagerank, but focuses search engine friendliness by helping webmasters to improve website’s crawling/indexing, ranking and click-through.

Crawling/Indexing

You want Google to index as many web pages of your site as possible.

To improve GoogleBot’s crawling of your site:

• Improve the structure of your web pages’ URLs.
• Improve your site’s navigation.
• Optimize website page load time.
• Use robots.txt to block content that GoogleBot should not access.
• Use Nofollow attribute (rel=”nofollow”) for links to block passing of link juice.

Ranking

Improve your web pages’ ranking by doing on-site web page level optimization.

• Use heading tags to identify the importance of your web pages’ content.
• Use descriptive anchor text for all the internal links of your site.
• Optimize your site’s images by using descriptive ALT tags.
• Create original and quality content. Avoid cloaking including keyword stuffing.

Click-through

You want to improve the click through rate of your website’s organic search results in SERP.

• Create unique page title for each web page.
• Use unique description META tag for each page.
• To show Google breadcrumbs in SERP, add breadcrumb navigation to your web pages.

Google Search Algorithm, SEO Issues

Since Stephen Noton listed Google, Yahoo and Bing search algorithms, Google’s search algorithm has always been improving.

To revise search engine optimization tips, review:

• Google SEO for beginners
• Best Google SEO resources

Use SEM keyword research tools to find out what keywords users are typing when searching for your website’s content. Google’s tools that will help webmasters on search engine optimization include:

• Google Webmaster Tools – Discover SEO issues on your site.
• Google Analytics – Track SEO traffic and other traffic sources to your site.

Google’s SEO Beginners Guide Download

Download (.PDF) Google’s new SEO starter guide.

Type your search query in the search box while “Instant is on”:

Google Instant Example: PPC Bully

With search query “PPC” in Google’s search box, followed by “b” and space, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “PPC Bully”. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “PPC Bully” shows up with one impression added to “PPC Bully”:

Google Instant Example: PPC Blog

Continue typing till “PPC Bl”, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “PPC Blog“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “PPC Blog” appears with one impression added to “PPC Blog”:

Google Instant Example: Adobe

Enter “Ad” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adobe”. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adobe” appears with one impression added to “Adobe”:

Google Instant Example: Adwords

Continue typing “w” to search query “Adw” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adwords“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adwords” shows up with one impression added to “Adwords”:

Google Instant Example: Adcenter

Backspace to remove “w” and then add “ce” to search query “Adce” into Google’s search box, Google Instant returns organic search results and Adwords ads for keyword “Adcenter“. Adwords ads and organic search results for keyword “Adcenter” appears with one impression added to “Adcenter”:

Reports for Search Impressions

Your website’s SEO impressions and/or PPC impressions may fluctuate due to Google Instant.

• Review SEO / Organic search queries’ impressions through Google Webmaster Tools search queries in Google Webmaster Tools.
• Review Adwords keyword impressions through Google Adwords Keyword reports of Adwords reports in Google Adwords new interface.

• Do searches on the Google.com domain.
• Search while signed in to a Google Account.

How Google Instant Works

With or without Google Instant, an impression is counted when your site is displayed in Google’s search results due to a user’s “completed” query.

Google Instant automatically predicts users’ query as they type and instantly show updated results – organic search results and Adwords ads. Google Instant redefines the way search impressions are measured. With Google Instant, an impression is counted when:

• A user types a search term on Google.com and clicks on a search result or an Adwords ad.
• A user stops typing for 3 or more seconds and search results are displayed.

Google Instant’s Impact on Search

As your websites may appear in Google’s search results and/or Adwords ads to users as they type, Google Instant may increase search impressions to your sites.

• Review organic search impressions through Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries in your Google Webmaster Tools account.
• Review Adwords impressions through Google Adwords Keyword Report of Adwords reports in your Adwords account.

If your track your site’s web traffic in Google Analytics, review your visitors report and traffic source report to understand the impact Google Instant may have on your website’s visits.

Compatible Browsers to Google Instant

Internet browsers that can support Google Instant including:

• Internet Explorer Version 8
• Firefox Version 3
• Chrome Version 5 or 6
• Safari Version 5 for Mac

Google Instant’s News on Official Google Blogs

Official Google blog posts that mentioned Google Instant’s launch and how Google Instant may affect users, organic search and Adwords ads:

• Inside Adwords Blog
• Webmaster Central Blog
• Analytics Blog
• Google Blog

One Domain, 3 or More Search Results

Google Operating System found that when your search query includes the brand name of a company/website, Google can return up to 7 web pages from that site within the first 10 search results.

Take UK’s BBC News site as an example.

Four search results from www.bbc.co.uk appear within Google’s first 10 search results:

www.bbc.co.uk/
www.bbc.co.uk/news/
news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/default.stm
www.bbc.co.uk/sport
news.bbc.co.uk/weather/
www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

Google Search Engine Optimization Tips

To adapt to the new search algorithm update, review Google’s SEO tips:

• Increase Google PageRank
• Optimize Website Page Load Time
• Google, Yahoo and Bing Search Algorithms Revised
• Best Google SEO Resources
• Google SEO for Beginners
• SEO Geo Targeting

Google SEO Reputation Management

Search Engine Land believes Google’s search algorithm change will make it easier for big brands to resolve SEO reputation management issues.

Google’s PageRank

Important web pages in Google’s index are:

• Assigned higher PageRank
• More likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine results pages (SERP)

Google’s PageRank considers the importance of each web page (in Google’s index) that passes link juice (or casts a vote).

• When a linked web page that receives two links, one from a more important web page and the other from a less important web page, the link juice from the more important page is considered to be a higher value vote to the linked page.
• Based on the entire web’s link structures, Google uses over 200 signals/factors including the PageRank algorithm to identify which web pages are most important. Then Google combines web pages’ importance, page-based text matching techniques and search query specific relevance to rank web pages in SERP.

Backlinks (or Inbound Links)

To increase your website’s Google PageRank, create content for your visitors and get quality links to your site.

To create relevant content for your visitors, figure out their issues or problems and offer various solutions on continuous bases. This helps your site to acquire backlinks through natural ways:

• Visitors may appreciate your solutions to their issues and link to your content.
• The links, in the long run, increase your site’s visibility and credibility/reputation in your niche/industry.
• When your site gain more lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers, more direct traffic will come through “word of mouth”.

To acquire relevant inbound links for your site, you can:

• Share your site’s content through Google Buzz, Twitter and other social media tools so that other sites can talk about your website’s content, and visitors to those other sites can find and re-share your content.
• Submit your site to Dmoz (Open Directory Project) and other reputable web directories.

When acquiring backlinks to your site, avoid:

• Participating in excessive link exchanging.
• Linking to web spammers or bad web neighborhoods.
• Selling or buying links, for example, paid links.

Website’s Link Architecture

To maximize your site’s Google Pagerank, make it easy for Google’s spider (GoogleBot) to crawl all your web pages. You should improve your site’s internal link architecture and allow link juice of all web pages to flow within your entire site. Consider site usability when designing your site’s link architecture:

• From your site’s home page, allow visitors to navigate easily to other sub-/child- pages of your site, without using site search.
• From any page (non-homepage) on your site, allow visitors to navigate easily to homepage and to other pages of your site, without using site search.
• Use text-based links as your site’s navigation links.
• Use breadcrumb navigation on your sub-/child- pages.

Anchor Text, PageRank Sculpting, Nofollow Attribute

Optimize your web pages’ Google PageRank by writing descriptive and relevant anchor text in your internal links.

• Anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is one of the important signals for Google to determine your web page’s SEO ranking for specific keywords. For site usability, descriptive anchor text helps visitors to better understand your content.
• Run anchor text analysis through this Backlink Checker tool.

PageRank sculpting could influence the true value of Google’s PageRank of an individual web page.

• Webmasters insert nofollow attribute within internal links of a site to sculpt individual web pages’ Google PageRank.
• Google’s search algorithm changes were made for counting outbound links from a web page and have minimized the effectiveness of Page Rank Sculpting.

How to Check Google PageRank?

Check your site’s Google Page Rank through one of the tools:

• Google Toolbar
• Search Status toolbar (for Firefox)
• SEO Chat’s PageRank Lookup
• Google Chrome Pagerank Checker

Other SEO Experts on PageRank

Google PageRank explained by other search engine optimization experts:

• What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers and Webmasters – Search Engine Land
• How PageRank Works & Why the Original PR Formula May be Flawed – SEOMoz

PageRank Updates

Matt Cutts reported on Google’s PageRank updates in the past:

• What’s an Update? (September 8, 2005)
• Fall Weather Forecast (October 11, 2006)
• More Info on Updates (October 17, 2005)
• More Weather Reporting (October 19, 2005)
• Jagger3 Update (November 5, 2005)
• Feedback on Bigdaddy Data Center (January 4, 2006)
• Bigdaddy progress update (February 1, 2006)
• Bigdaddy status update: almost there (March 22, 2006)
• Q & A thread (March 27, 2006)
• More Info on Pagerank (October 2, 2006)
• Explaining algorithm updates and data refreshes (December 23, 2006)
• New Toolbar PageRanks coming (July 24, 2008)
• Last Toolbar PageRank update of 2008 (December 31, 2008)

• Search Result Presentation: Title tag formats and lengths, description meta tag use, Google sitelink triggering and effectiveness, and main page result clearness on Google
• URLs and Redirects: Directory forms, subdomain forms, 301s, canonicalization
• On-page Optimizations: Heading tag use, H1 tag use, logo image link destination, logo image alt text, and descriptive internal anchor text

The 100 Google’s websites/products that have gone through the rating process in the SEO Report Card, include:

• Advertising and publishing systems: Google Adwords and Google Adsense
• Users’ search trend tools: Google Insights for Search, Google Trends
• Blogging / feed management tools: Blogger and Feedburner
• Personal profile: Profiles
• Site search features: Google Site Search and Google Custom Search Engines
• Product Tools: Google Store and Google Products
• Other tools / services: Picasa Web Albums, Google Finance, Map Maker, Fast Flip, Knol and more

Download (*.pdf) Google’s SEO Report Card.

Webmasters should use Google’s SEO Report Card and Google SEO for beginners as guidelines to run SEO audits on web sites.

Google Search Algorithm to Include Website Page Load Time

Matt Cutts confirmed that Google’s SEO ranking factors now includes a website’s page load time and you should:

• Regularly check your site’s page load speed
• Continuously improve your site’s page load speed

How to Test Your Web Pages’ Load Speed?

Test your website’s page load times through one of the tools:

• Page Speed
• Yahoo’s YSlow

Web Page Load Time Optimization

Tips to improve / optimize your web pages’ load speed:

• Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site – Yahoo’s Exceptional Performance team has identified 34 best practices in 7 categories for making web pages fast.
• Optimizing Page Load Time – Die.Net’s Aaron Hopkins offers tips to improve page load times, reduce server bandwidth and CPU required for the average page view, and reduce costs while improving user experience.
• Web Page Load Time Optimization – Taming the Beast’s Michael Bloch offers optimization tips to decrease load times and make site management a simpler task.
• How to Minimize Load Time for Fast User Experiences – UX Booth’s Andrew Maier detailed how to analyze the bottlenecks preventing websites and blogs from loading quickly and how to resolve them.
• 15 Quick Ways to Shrink Page Load Times – Web Jackalope offers methods and tools to ensure your website is running quickly and smoothly.
• Website/Page Load Speed will Affect Google Rankings – Web Hobo UK offers a list of page load speed testing tools, but believes page load time of your site is a relatively insignificant Google SEO ranking factor comparing to backlinks, page titles and page content that matches search engine visitors’ intent.

Search snippets links mostly appear on Google’s Wikipedia search results as the above examples for search queries “search engine optimization” and “online marketing”.

What happens is that Google indexes URLs that include anchors. The anchor-based search snippets links are generated algorithmically, based on page structure. Google’s Webmaster Central Blog suggests what you can do to increase the chances that the in-snippet links might appear on your pages:

• First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections.
• Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors.

Search snippets links only appear for search queries that Google “thinks” are relevant.

On Google.cn, search Snippets Links also appears under Wikipedia search results, but for Chinese search queries (e.g. Ou-Ba-Ma, meaning Barack Obama in Chinese Pinyin).

A search on Google.cn for Chinese historical hero “Sunzhongshan” shows Baidu Baike (Baidu’s Wikipedia) being the top SEO result with anchor-based search snippets links.

How other blogs talked about Google’s Search Snippets Links:

• Google Makes its Search Snippets More Useful – Search Engine Journal
• Google Jump To Links Within Search Snippets – Search Engine Land
• Links in Google Snippet Text – Icrossing
• Google Sitelinks for Wikipedia – Google Operating System