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

Google’s engineers want to refine Google’s next generation search infrastructure which will lead to faster indexing speed, more accurate and comprehensive organic search results, and the inclusion of new dimensions that are not currently showing up in Google web search results. To develop the next generation search engine, Google has opened up a preview of Google’s new Caffeine update. You can help Google test the new Caffeine update search results:

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Google requires you to look for differences between the search results within the Caffeine preview and those within the traditional Google web search (e.g. www.Google.com).

To give feedback to Google (according to Matt Cutts):

If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.

Matt Cutts explained Google Caffeine in this video.

• Domain Names
• Web Hosting
• Keyword Research
• Site Architecture
• URL Structure
• Site Navigation
• Canonicalization
• Content Duplication
• Linking Building
• Paid Link Issues
• Google Penalties
• SEO Geo-targeting
• Social Media for SEO
• SEO for Blogs
• Universal Search
• Google Sitelinks
• SEO’s Future

SEO for Beginners

Optimize your website for Google organic search traffic.

• Google SEO for Beginners – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

Choosing Domain Names for Your Web Site

Before creating your website, the first step is to pick a domain name that will work for your potential customers and the search engines.

• Buying the Perfect Domain Name: Twelve Things to Consider – Jennifer Slegg
• Think SEO Before You Name Your New Company – Aim Clear Blog
• How to Choose Domain Names for SEO – SEO Book
• Who is the #1 Domainer in the World? – SEO Book

Keyword Research

Keyword research forms a big part in search engine optimization. You want to know how to find, analyze, prioritize and organize your keywords.

• Free Keyword Research Tools – The Ultimate Guide – Search Engine Journal
• Comprehensive Guide to Keyword Research, Selection & Organization – Search Engine Guide
• 6 Resources for Finding Negative Keywords – SEOptimise
• How to Build a Foreign Language Keyword List – Shimon Sandler
• SEM Keyword Research Tools – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi
• Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that are Costing You Money – Search Engine Land
• Google’s Relevancy Algorithms Change by Keyword: Longtail vs Core Category Words – SEO Book

Site Architecture & Site Navigation

Your website’s navigational structure needs to make sense to both the users and to Google.

• 12 Quick Site Architecture Tips – Stone Temple
• Web Guidelines – Site Architecture and Navigation – University of Texas at Austin
• Align Your SEO Strategy with Site Structure – SEO Book
• Importance of Link Architecture – Google Webmasters Blog
• Effective Site Navigation – Web Credible
• How to Create Effective Site Navigation – Search Engine Guide
• Building It Better – Small Business Site Architecture – Search Engine Watch

Changing Domains & Moving Web Hosting Services

When you have to change your site’s domain names or move your website’s hosting:

• Best Practices When Moving Your Site – Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Changing Domains – How Not to Screw It Up – Latitude Group
• How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect – iSiteBuild
• .htaccess, 301 Redirects & SEO: Guest Post by NotSleepy – SEO Book
• Beginners Guide to .htaccess File with Examples – Blog Hash
• htacess 301 redirect turorial – Taming the Beast

URL Structure, Canonicalization, and Duplicate Contents

As your website’s content grows, you risk creating duplicate contents.

• How a Search Engine Determines Duplicate Content – Search Engine Land
• URL Canonicalization: The Missing Manual – SEO Book
• Dynamic URLs vs Static URLs – Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Demystifying the Duplicate Content Penalty – Google Webmaster Central Blog

Link Building

Google evaluates the trust of your site by looking at the high quality incoming links pointing to your web site.

• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website – SEO Book
• B2B SEO: Link Building – Yoast
• Learn SEO, Link Building in 60 Minutes – Praveen Kodur
• The Fundamentals of Link Building – Audette Media
• A Big Roundup of Link Building Tools – Search Engine Land
• Creating a Natural Link Profile for Your Site – Jennifer Slegg
• Getting the Anchor Text You Want – SEOmoz
• Small Business Link Building Ideas – SEO Book
• How Much is a Link Worth to Your Business – SEO Book
• Good Times with Inbound Links – Google Webmaster Central Blog

Issues on Paid Links

Google dislikes paid links as they ruin the natural equilibrium of Google’s PageRank and link popularity systems.

• Text Links and PageRank – Matt Cutts
• How to Report Paid Links – Matt Cutts
• Selling Links that Pass PageRank – Matt Cutts
• Google and the SEO Benefits of Affiliate Tracking Links – Search Engine Journal
• Did Google Win the War on Paid links – SEO Book

Google Penalties

Google may algorithmically or manually apply penalties to some sites suspected of “spammy” activities. The penalized websites are prevented from ranking high in the SERP.

• How Many Google Penalties are there – Search Engine Journal
• Examining a Search Ranking Fluctuation – Slightly Shady SEO
• Hiding the Inner Shadiness of Your Blackhat Sites – Slightly Shady SEO
• Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories – SEOmoz
• Requesting Reconsideration Using Google Webmaster Tools – Google Webmaster Central Blog

Rel=”Nofollow”, Robots.txt, META Robots, Sitemap.xml and Sitemaps

Ensure you know how to use Robots.txt and Sitemaps to communicate with Google.

• Attribute “rel=nofollow” – Link Tutorial
• About rel=”nofollow” – Google’s Help
• 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck – Search Engine Journal
• Robots.txt File – Web Design Library
• Creating a Robots.txt File – Google’s Help
• Best Robots.txt Tools: Generators and Analyzers – Search Engine Journal
• The Ultimate Guide to Meta Name = “Robots” – Yoast
• Robots.txt vs Rel=Nofollow vs Meta Robots Nofollow – SEO Book

SEO Geo-targeting

Often you want to optimize your website to target multiple countries with unique contents to each targeted geo-location.

• How to Start a Multilingual Site – Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Guide to Geo Targeting for SEO and Usability – Blog Storm
• International SEO – Bruce Clay
• Changing Google Rankings in Different Countries for Different Searchers – SEO by the Sea
• SEO Geotargeting Strategies – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi
• Top 10 Fatal Localization Mistakes – SEOptimise
• Wordpress.com Subdomain Spam with Tags – Andy Beard

Leverage Social Media for SEO

• Using LinkedIn to Boost Your Company’s Search Result Reputation – Fathom SEO
• Market Your Company on LinkedIn – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn – Linked Intelligence
• Using Social Profile Pages to Your Advantage – SEO Scoop
• How to Write Posts that Set StumbleUpon on Fire – ProBlogger
• 21 Social Media Sites – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

SEO for Blogs

Everything you need to know about optimizing your blog for search engines: SEO techniques for blogs, Wordpress plugins, blog search engines, and blog comment anti-spam.

• The Blogger’s Guide to SEO – SEO Book
• Wordpress SEO: The Definitive Guide to High Rankings for Your Blog – Yoast
• SEO Plugins for Wordpress – Michael Gray
• 9 SEO Plugins Every Wordpress Blog Should Have – ProBlogger
• Blog Search Engines: The Complete Overview – Search Engine Journal
• 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog to – Search Engine Journal (2007)
• How to Grow Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog – ProBlogger
• Keeping Comment Spam off Your Site and Away from Users – Google Webmaster Central Blog

SEO for Google Universal Search and Sitelinks

Optimize your contents for Google’s Universal Search to increase your website’s traffic.

• How to Capitalize on Google Universal Search – Search Engine Round Table
• How Important is Universal Search within Google – Dave Chaffey
• Press Releases that Helps in Better Search Rankings – Organic SEO
• The Advanced Webmasters Guide to Google News – Blog Storm
• How to Get Included in Google News – Shimon Sandler
• Google Sitelinks: The Ultimate FAQ – SEOpedia

Run Your Own SEO Business

Staffs you need for your SEO team, how you get new clients your SEO proposals, and how you bring values to your existing clients.

• Organizational Structure of a Search Team – Shimon Sandler
• Why Should You Spend on an SEO Audit – SEM Inhouse
• The Art of the SEO Proposal – SEO Book
• SEO Sales Process: Overcoming Common SEO Objections – SEO Book
• Baking SEO into the Company Workflow & Culture – SEO Book
• Inhouse SEO Tips – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi
• Ranking Affiliate Sites vs Corporate Search Engine Marketer – SEO Book
• 30 Tips on How to Get, Convince, Keep and Deal with Clients, Be it in Web Design, Writing or SEO – SEOptimise
• How to Keep SEO Clients – SEO Book

Build and Maintain Your Own Website

Create your own site and make money out of it. You will still have to regularly maintain it.

• Small Business Website Tips – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

Future of SEO

Aaron Wall, Stephen Noton and others talked about the future of SEO.

• RedFly Interview with Aaron Wall of SEO Book – Red Fly Marketing
• SEO Tips from Stephen Noton – PPC Blog by Gordon Choi
• The Future of SEO and Google: How will We Exist 5 Years from Now – Slightly Shady SEO
• Search is Changing Forever – SEOmoz
• When SEO & Usability Go Head to Head – Site Visibility

Comprehensive SEO Resources

You may want to further comprehensive search engine optimization reading.

• The Most Useful Posts on the Hobo SEO Blog
• Stone Temple Consulting’s SEO Articles

Other facts related to the Internet

Other facts that we should consider when we’re working in the Internet world.

• China (.cn) is Now the World’s Most Popular Country Code – Multilingual Search
• China has 253 Million Users – Largest in the World – Search Engine Journal
• The Current State of Internet Penetration in Africa – Appfrica
• Marketing Lessons from Google – SEO Book
• Eight Reasons Why Now May be the Right Time to Invest Big in Your Site – SEO Book

• Site links can now appear under organic listings that are not in the first position.
• Up to four site links can appear as a single row can, as opposed to the 2-column format with up to 8 sitelinks.

Just like regular sitelinks, one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users.

For webmasters, this new feature means it’s possible that your site will start showing sitelinks for a number of queries where it previously didn’t.

Previously, the old 2-column sitelinks only appear under Google organic listings for searches on brand terms. Now the new one-line format allows sitelinks to show up for generic search terms, sometimes under multiple organic listings.

At the same time, the new one-line sitelinks have also been rolled out to Google’s Chinese organic search results.

For some brand term searches, you will see both the 2-column and the 1-line sitelink formats showing up.

The 2-column Google sitelinks below my PPC Blog search result listing have been changed to one-line site links.

Google does provide an option for you to block a web page from showing up as a site link for 90 days, via Google’s Webmaster Tools.

I believe the removal option is a way for Google to learn and improve identifying site links for all the websites, even though I don’t know if one day Google will roll out an option for Webmasters to suggest their web pages for sitelink inclusion.

How other blogs talked about Google’s One-line Site links:

• Start Optimizing Your One-line Sitelinks – Blogstorm

Google’s Official Definitions on SEO

• Google’s Definition on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Google 101: How Google Crawls, Indexes, and Serves the Web
• Google’s Technology Overview
• Google-friendly Sites
• Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

SEO Definitions and Glossary

Shoe Money created a list of SEO definitions out of various SEO gurus and SEO Book provides a comprehensive glossary on Search Engine Optimization.

• What is the Definition of SEO – Shoe Money
• Search Engine Marketing Glossary – SEO Book

SEO Guides for Download

The Google SEO Starter Guide has also been published to help beginners to understand basic search engine optimization guidelines. You can find other comprehensive Search Engine Optimization eBooks which are free for download:

• SEO Fast Start’s Free Guide – Dan Thies
• 52 SEO Tips – Big Oak

Quick SEO Tips from Other Webmasters

• The basics of Search Engine Optimization – Blogoscoped
• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – SEOmoz
• How to SEO Your Site in Less than 60 Minutes – Small Business SEM
• Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines – High Rankings
• 20 More Hard Core SEO Tips – SEO Theory

SEO Ranking Factors

You also want to know what factors Google has been using to rank web pages.

• Google Search Engine Ranking Factors – SEOmoz
• Main SEO Ranking Factors Reference – Dave Chaffey

Google Webmaster Tools

To put what you have learned about search engine optimization in practice, you should make use of Google’s Webmaster Tools which provides detailed reports about your website’s visibility on Google’s SERP. The reports show you about your site’s inbound links, outbound links, site links, robot.txt, sitemaps, 404 errors, geographic targets and other statistics.

• How and Why You Should be Using Google Webmaster Tools – SEO Boy

Run a search on “Gordon Choi” on Google.com, or copy and paste the following links onto your Internet browser, you will be able to see the Sitelinks:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=gordon+choi&btnG=Search

Previously, I have explained some of the criteria for Google Sitelinks to be shown for web sites on Google’s SERP.

Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from your site’s contents.

Because we generate sitelinks dynamically, this list can change from time to time.

• Page title tags
• Description META tag
• URL structure
• Site navigation
• Quality content
• Anchor text
• Heading tags
• Image optimization
• Robots.txt
• Rel=”nofollow” attribute
• Site promotion
• Webmaster tools
• Web analytics

As the guide’s name suggested, it contains nothing new to savvy SEO professionals. However, it is definitely a good starting point for new webmasters to learn to do search engine optimization according to Google’s standards.

Google later made the guide available in 40 more languages including the Simplified Chinese version (*.PDF).

I mentioned previously about Geo Targeting SEO Strategies for a Single Country. Besides top-level domain (TLD), local hosting, and business address, you will still be able to improve on other factors for each of the country that you want to target.

You should create country-specific content in each country’s local language. Properly setting up the site architecture to accommodate the content for different countries is vital. The next step is to determine if you are to use sub-folder, sub-domain, or a separate site (domain). Using a sub-folder (e.g. www.example.com/india) rather than a sub-domain (india.example.com) or even a separate site (www.example.co.in) allows the entire domain to be benefited from any inbound links.

Use Webmaster Tools to tell Google exactly which web pages of your site are to geo-target which countries. For instance, add the subfolder www.example.com/india as a site to Webmaster Tools, and set its geographic location to India.

How Google’s Webmaster Central Blog talked about SEO Geotargeting:

• How to start a multilingual site

Top-level Domain

A top-level domain (TLD) indicates to the search engines the location of your site.

• Use a .co.uk domain name if the majority of your customers are from the UK
• Use a .cn domain if you are to target customers mainly from China

Local Hosting

The search engines can determine your web site’s location through your web hosting. You should ensure hosting your site in the country where you are targeting.

However, there are exceptional cases. For instance, your site can be hosted with a UK hosting company, but the servers (and IP addresses) of this company are actually outside of the UK. Your site will not rank well in the UK.

Business Address

Placing your local business address at the footer of your site can certainly assist Google in determining the location of your website.

Language

It helps to have the site’s content being in the language of the country that you are targeting. It helps further when the copy is optimized so that for instance UK English can be distinguished from US English.

Inbound Links

Google has been using this extensively. If the majority of your site’s inbound links are from UK-based websites, even though your target audiences are actually Australians, your web pages will be ranked higher on Google UK than on Google AU.

Google’s Local Traffic

Google has also been using this information. If the majority of your site’s visitors via Google are mainly from Australia, your web pages will be ranked higher in Australia than in the UK.

As the future of SEO is to be integrated with branding, you should build or improve your site’s brand locally. You can consider local various advertising channels, whether they are online or offline. The hard work you have spent on branding your web site will eventually result in your target audiences searching for your brand via Google and increase on clickthroughs to your site.

Webmaster Tools

Under the “Set geographic target” option in your Google Webmaster Tools account, choose “associate a geographic location with this site” and pick the preferred country for your website to geo-target.

www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

All of the above URLs seem to be the same URL, however, technically they are all different (the www version is essentially different from the non-www version). A web server can be set up to return totally distinct content for each of the above URLs. In such case, Google would choose to crawl only one of the URLs.

However for most sites, all of the above URLs usually return the same page. Therefore what Google sees is identical content on different URLs. If you are fortunate enough not to have run into duplicate content issues, Google picks one of the URLs and stores the others in the supplemental index.

Also, you are not optimized on consolidating all the possible pagerank scores your home page received from both external (inbound) links and your own site’s internal links.

To resolve the problems, you should consider the following:

Use Google’s webmaster tools to set the preferred URL of your home page to the one of the versions (either www or non-www). By doing this, it helps Google to identify the canonical URL. Over time, Google will only crawl the preferred version of your homepage URL.

URL consistency is important. When creating internal links you should ensure using one URL format across your site. Take my blog for example, I only use www.gordonchoi.com whenever pointing to the home page, and not the non-www version (gordonchoi.com).

If you want your homepage’s default URL to be the www version, set up a 301 permanent redirect on the non-www version. This way, when the non-www version is requested, the www version will be served to the users.

Do not use commands in your Robots.txt file to block the non-www format of the URL. This is one of the common mistakes being made by some amateur webmasters. Otherwise, Google not only will stop crawling your non-www URL but will start removing your entire site from its index.

Google usually shows 2 to 8 Sitelinks for a site.

Google usually gives Sitelinks to a web site for its main keyword in which in most case it happens to be the site’s brand name keyword. Sites that have limited daily search volume keyword on its main keyword are not given Sitelinks. The number of clicks of the site to that keyword may also be a factor.

Google seems to take a web site’s domain age into account, when considering Sitelinks inclusion for a website.

High number of backlinks pointing to a site with the main keyword in the anchor text also increases the chance for a site to be awarded Sitelinks.

By placing the links of your most important web pages close to the top of your site’s homepage increases the chance of those webpages being selected as Sitelinks.

Sitelinks are essentially additional links given by Google towards your site. It is important to understand how you can optimize your website to get this free offer from Google.

Recently Google seems to be testing another feature for selected top search results. A search box is placed right below the top search result of a site, if the site’s main keyword is searched. Certain selected sites get both Sitelinks and this new search box for their top search results, which in my option is stuffing users with too much information – the concept of directory and search at one place.

Some webmasters have experienced dramatic ranking increase, only by switching from a shared or virtual IP to a dedicated IP. One of the reasons for the ranking increase is that search engines do take into account the faster loading speed while your site is hosted on a dedicated server. Very often with virtual hosting, your IP address is shared with over 500 other websites. Technically, if there are 20 visitors requesting web pages from other webmasters’sites on this IP who are ahead of your visitor, your visitor will have to wait in queue, resulting in slower page load times.

The second issue reported by some SEO professionals is that the search engine spiders are only able to index fewer pages on slower servers (as an IP is shared). This means there will be fewer pages of your site that are available to be shown in the SERP, which reduces your site’s overall visibility in the search engines.

Other webmasters, however, argued that they have no control of who their neighbours are with a shared IP. Your site may be sharing a server with an IP that is banned by the search engines.

However, Google’s Matt Cutts previously explained the above findings are mis-conceptions of how Google handle IP addresses.

“There is no PageRank difference whatsoever between a virtual hosting (shared IP) vs a dedicated IP.”

“It’s fine to run your website off your home DSL, as long as you configure your webserver correctly. As long as Google can load your web pages, it doesn’t really make a different whether the pages load in half a second or 5 seconds.”

Early in 2003, Craig Silverstein, Google’s Director of Technology, also tried to correct this mis-conception of many webmasters and SEO professionals.

“Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you’ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception.”

In November 2006, Matt Cutts re-confirmed the above statement.

“I’m happy to affirm that this statement which was true in 2003 is still true now. Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses.”

The bottom line is that hosting your site on shared IP does you no harm at all, unless you are those webmasters who deliberately try to push for Google’s spam filer, which is a totally different issue other than hosting on virtual IP.