I’ve just published my new personal blog in Vietnamese language at http://vn.dunguyen.com (vn means vietnam country or vietnamese language).

I’ll update my 02 blogs, English and Vietnamese asap, esp blogroll.

Just want to note that all external links to sites in Vietnamese will be moved to the Vietnamese version.

Let me know if you’re happy or not with this, guys!

Last week Google (Inc) publicly announced its new privacy policy. The updated policy will be the same, consistently, for all of Google products (not like before, each one each policy) and affected from March 01, 2012. According to this new policy, the giant plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine. This is the first time, Google is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together a fuller portrait of users.

In November 3, 2011, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, in a post named “Google+ is not a social network, but it’s not a graveyard, either” said that Google Plus would be a NEW way of getting you to use all its web products rather than a standalone social network of its own.

And a long time ago (I don’t remember ) Google Search (product) uses personal information (browser history, gmail login, most clicked sites…) in its retrieving process.

The question is, how Google personalization will affect SEO industry? What are your ideas?
(I’ll share my thoughts on this, sooner or later. Now it’s time to prepare for a new working day! )

The list is picked out by Jahn Abrena, marketing consultant for Serverpoint (you can follow him on Twitter @johnabrena), added by Ben (from no. 13-15) of SEODiscovery, and me, Du Nguyen (from no.16 to the end).

1. Ross Hudgens

One of the best new generation SEOs I’ve seen, Ross Hudgens is currently based in Seattle, Washington, and works as the SEO Manager of Full Beaker Inc. He is an expert in thinking and administering scalable link building strategies, which he does share on his blog, http://www.rosshudgens.com. Interested in knowing his strategies and how he thinks? Follow him on Twitter @RossHudgens.

2. Jason Acidre

Started blogging about his experience on SEO last 2010, Jason Acidre quickly rose to the ranks of becoming one of the well known new generation SEO specialists in the world. Owner of his personal blog http://kaiserthesage.com, he now runs his own Inbound Marketing agency called Xight Interactive, composed of what he calls “a team of web mercenaries for hire”. Seek him out on Twitter @jasonacidre.

3. Justin Briggs

Justin Briggs is currently working for Big Fish Games as their SEO manager, but seriously, this guy is really advanced. I have read Justin’s blog posts on several known blogs like SEOmoz’s, and his way of thinking about SEO is just so mind blowing that I didn’t even understand some studies he’s saying (since I’m not that advanced). If you are curious about what he talks about, visit his site http://justinbriggs.org. Search him on Twitter @justinbriggs.

4. John Doherty

One of the industry’s new top dogs, John Doherty is quite the expert on SEO and social media. He currently works as a SEO Consultant for Distilled, a top notch SEO Agency who works for brands such as SEOmoz. His personal blog,http://www.johnfdoherty.com, has his own thoughts on SEO and social media. Oh and he also does his own photography stint every now and then, since he likes to visit various places. Travel with him on Twitter @dohertyjf.

5. Cyrus Shepard

Not really new on the business, but I still count him as a 2012 supernova. Cyrus Shepard has been around and known as an SEO for SEOmoz, but he now works as an SEO strategy consultant independently. I love how he describes SEO as “… a complex, slow video game. Except with ideas and money”. Check out his bloghttp://cyrusshepard.com and follow him on Twitter @CyrusShepard.

6. Ryan Clark

One of my mentor’s buddies, Ryan Clark is an SEO consultant for Linkbuildr, one of the great link building teams I know of. Ryan and his team do great scalable link building strategies for their clients. As they say on their site, “We build brands (not just links)”. Awesome tagline there. Follow him (and their team) on Twitter @linkbuildr.

7. Russ Jones

Currently Virante, Inc.’s Chief Technology Officer, Russ has been in the website design / development for nearly 10 years before he decided to shift into search marketing in 2003. He’s always excited about the latest updates about search marketing, immediately sharing them with his readers and giving perceptive insights along with them. Despite his technical background, he remains very humble which can be seen through his rants and raves over at @rjonesx. He also maintains The Google Cache, a search marketing blog, along with Jeff Staub, CEO of Virante.

8. Michael King

Bringing the cool onto your website has always been his game, and Michael King ain’t gon’stop anytime soon. He curates “SEO Must Reads” articles every Sunday on his website, IPullRank. Also found there are the funny comic strips he makes using Mr. Men characters. He bases the stories from his personal experiences working in the SEO industry. Michael’s Twitter is also packed with his trademark cool: He recently re-Tweeted a playlist of Christmas song mashups. Think Lil Wayne meets the Nutcracker. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is. Catch more of his awesomeness at @iPullRank.

9. James Agate

What I like about James is how he simplifies SEO ideas without totally watering them down. Or, to put it more bluntly, he does not dumb down the readers into thinking that SEO is something simple. His website and SEO consultancy firm, Skyrocket SEO, reflects those principles. He values passion and hunger for his career, thus making sure that there is only excellence in his work. But don’t be fooled, @jamesagate is very approachable and he’ll be happy to assist you through the SEO world.

10. Himanshu Sharma

The founder and sole owner of SEO Takeaways, Himanshu Sharma is extremely awesome when writing posts on his blog. I commend him too when it comes to coming up and innovating strategies for link building using link baits and other content driven styles. Better follow him on Twitter @seohimanshu for updates on what things he does in the world of SEO.

11. Jon Cooper

A perpetrator of eye-catching articles, Jon Cooper likes to use attention-grabbing headlines on his website, Point Blank SEO. He’s one of the younger generations of highly promising link builders out there, who provide consultation for various websites. Follow him on Twitter @PointBlankSEO if you want to know link building through a young person’s perspective.

12. Don Rhoades

When he’s not sharing random funnies on his own consulting firm website, Don actively imparts SEO knowledge through his Twitter account at @TheGonzoSEO. This father of three likes to keep things light and breezy, making it very easy for SEO newbies to learn under him.

13. Wil Reynolds

This guy is a beast! Wil is the CEO of SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia based internet marketing and search firm. I recommend subscribing to the blog at SEER and also checking out Wil’s Youtube channel – there are some very informative presentations there with actionable information. You can find Wil on Twitter at @wilreynolds.

14. Gab Goldenberg

Gab’s been doing SEO for a LONG time and has some awesome insights on his site SEO ROI. You can pick up some advanced tactics and tips from him that you don’t find many other places including this very handy usability testing guide. Just be sure to put your thinking cap on before visiting! You can follow Gab on Twitter @gabgoldenberg.

15. Ann Smarty

Ann is an editor at Search Engine Journal and long time SEO. Her blog, SEO Smarty, is a good place to pick up new tips and strategies for your SEO – she seems to have no shortage of cool new stuff! Also, if you haven’t used My Blog Guest for your guest blogging, well… I don’t know where you’ve been. Follow Ann on Twitter @seosmarty.

16. Danny Sullivan
Danny is currently the chief editor of Search Engine Land, a must-read resource covering Search news & industry. Danny rarely shares SEO viewpoints on his personal blog but he’s quite active at Google Plus and Twitter.

17. Rand Fishkin
Just like Danny Sullivan, Rand rarely blogs a/b SEO on his personal blog but there’s no doubt that Rand continues to be the most-wanted SEO expert this year 2012. Follow his Google Plus, Twitter & SEOMOZ’s profile for updated SEO news & reviews.

18. Barry Schwartz
Barry is a Search Geek & CEO of RustyBrick. You can follow him via Google Plus & Twitter. He is also the founder of SERoundtable (whose forums I’m proud of to be a moderator).

19. Matt Cutts
He’s NOT an SEO expert, but he is an “SEO spokesman” of Google Search team. He often shares insights from Google team via Youtube channel, and his personal blog. You can also follow him at Twitter, Google Plus too.

Hmm, there’re still many SEO experts that I don’t list here, but you can google their names then follow: Aaron Wall (SEOBook), Danny Dover (author of SEO secrets book), Michael Gray (wolf-howl.com), etc.

Good luck on your SEO career!

In this short guide, you will find good tips on SEO matters such as Title tags, Meta Description, Anchor Text, URL Structure, SEO Copywriting, Site Navigation, etc.

Check it out now for more!

Most Questions & Answers can be found at Google Moderator. But for convenience, I copy some Q&As here, thanks to PageTrafficBlog (you’ve got a new customer today, from Vietnam ). Also, you can find more feedbacks from other webmasters about this third Webmaster Chat event.

Q. “Since Google is against using ranking software (ie:WebCeO) to monitor SERP rankings, is there any plans on Google creating an approved, in-house rank check application that webmasters can use?”

Matt Cutts: It’s something that we’ve talked about. My concern is that sometimes people get too worried with paying attention to their “trophy phrase” and want to rank for that even if that’s not the best phrase for them, or concentrating on one phrase to the exclusion of all the other stuff they rank for isn’t the best idea. I think paying attention to server logs or analytics data gets you a really nice array of keywords that are practical to work on. But this is feedback that we’ve heard, and personally I think it would be nice if we offered this for some reasonable size of keywords.

Q. “Of late, I have been experiencing sudden drop in rankings for my sites. One day it would be on #3 and the other day it would go back to #19 or #26. Any specific reason behind this..”

Kaspar aka Guglarz; Most likely, you have been accessing different Data Centers checking your rankings. As Google DC’s are being updated continiously but not all simultaniously, slight variations in the SERP’s are possible. If you still believe there was an issue with your sites rankings, I would suggest to drop the question, including the domain on the Google Webmaster Help Group: groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/

There is plenty of savvy webmasters eager to help, along with Google guides monitoring the community and joining the discussions occasionally

Q. “Does Google plan to let us see rankings/positions of keywords in the webmaster tool?”

Susan Moskwa; We already do, for a limited number of keywords, in the “Top search queries” section of Webmaster Tools. While we generally don’t comment on future features or plans, expanding this functionality is certainly an idea that’s been suggested to us.

Matt Cutts; What Susan said, plus I personally think this would be cool to do.

Q. “Many believe that to rank well, you simply need “quality” backlinks. But how important is having your keywords in the, 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.

Q. “For SEO, I’d like to improve my rankings by removing technical obstacles (starting with dynamic URL parameters), what are the most important site fixes to make and how can I document before and after success metrics using the Google Webmaster Tool?”

JohnMu ; To check the crawlability of your site, I would recommend crawling your site with a crawler like Xenu’s Link Sleuth (freeware, for Windows). Doing that gives you a rough look at how search engines view your site and can point you towards areas where crawlers get stuck in a loop or start crawling duplicates based on the URL parameters.

Q. “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; Hi chrisff, 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).

Q. “Can my site be penalized if somebody else uses ranking check software on it?”

Kaspar aka Guglarz; No! Don’t worry abut that

Q. “Can you tell me how Google decides whether to include video on the first page of the SERPS or not? Views? Links? Age? Relevance? What’s the most important?”

Matt Cutts; I think relevance is always the top-level answer, because we want the best information (be it search results, videos, or even ads) to come up highly. And relevance for each property will vary–for ads it might be clickthrough, and for video it might be different signals.

Q. “Matt says, Google takes 200 signals for ranking a query and PR is one among those. If that is the case, why is it still showed prominently on toolbar. Any possibility of seeing PR info dropped from Google toolbar?”

JohnMu; Hi ROW, PageRank is just one signal that we use, but it’s also one of the easiest metrics to show to users and an easy one to understand where the metrics come from. So I think it’s something that (it) still provides value to users and still makes sense to show to them in the Google Toolbar.

Q. “Recently, you removed this suggestion: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!” from your guidelines. Is there any chance that you will be discounting these kinds of links for ranking value in future?”

Matt Cutts;Hey Marjy (testing out this ‘post a response’ thingie). There’s always the chance that we’ll discount directory links in the future. What we were seeing was quite a few novice people would see the “directory” recommendation and go out and just try to submit to a ton of directories, even if some of the directories were lower-quality or even fly-by-night directories that weren’t great for users. Right now we haven’t changed how we’re weighting directory links–we’ve only removed the directory suggestion from the webmaster guidelines.

Q. “Given, the incoming links are intact and there is no link buying/selling. Can there be any other reason for a drop in Page Rank?”

JohnMu; Assuming the number of links stays the same, it’s always possible that some links change with regards to the way they pass PageRank.

Q. “Do inbound links from other sites owned by the same company help or hurt rank?”

Matt Cutts; I find that inbound links from the same company tend to break down into two camps. You’ll find mom/pops that have a very few sites in one camp, and that can make sense if those sites are linked; in the other camp, I’ve see SEOs have 1000 or 2000 different domains and cross-link them. I definitely would not recommend that.

I think a lot of the litmus test in my mind is whether it makes sense to a regular person for those domains to be interlinked. If you look at a product like Coke, people aren’t surprised to see that they have coca-cola.co.nz and several other domains. If you go to coke.com, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask users which country they’re coming from, and then send them to one of a bunch of domains. But if a regular user lands on example.com and finds 20 or 30 cross-links at the bottom of the page and they look like off-topic or cookie-cutter or spammy domains, that’s going to look bad to almost anyone

Q. “Until recentley (the last six months or so) a high ranking was achievable by submitting articles to article directories (providing they were 40%-60% unique), it no longer seems to be the case. Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?”

Matt Cutts; In my experience, not every article directory site is high-quality. Sometimes you see a ton of articles copied all over the place, and it’s hard to even find original content on the site. The user experience for a lot of those article directory sites can be pretty bad too. So you’d see users landing on those sorts of pages have a bad experience.

If you’re thinking of boosting your reputation and getting to be well-known, I might not start as the very first thing with an article directory. Sometimes it’s nice to get to be known a little better before jumping in and submitting a ton of articles as the first thing.

Q. “Will Webmaster Tools ever give us an option to “disassociate” from sites that link to us? This feature exists in Yahoo’s Site Explorer, but not Webmaster Tools.”

Matt Cutts; So far because we work really hard to make it so that one site can’t hurt another site, we haven’t really offered this. It’s something that people have suggested and we’ve thought about though. Part of the challenge would be if a site owner wanted to disassociate a bunch of links from their site. If you have a ton of links pointing to your site, scanning all of them would get really tiring. So that’s a challenge, and since we haven’t seen a need for it yet, that’s why we haven’t offered it yet.

Q. “Are .gov and .edu back links still considered more “link juice” than the common back link?”

Matt Cutts; This is a common misconception–you don’t get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. Hah John, I beat you to it!

Q. “What weight is given to the links from social networking sites and blogs?”

Nathan J; I would treat social sites and blogs the same as any other site.

Q. “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.

Q. “For inbound links to a site, can Webmaster Tools display the anchor text in the link?”

Maile Ohye; Hi there, got it, this is a feature request we’ve heard before. I’ll add “Unnamed” from our Webmaster Chat to the request (seriously).

Keep-in-mind that we show anchor text in Webmaster Tools, it’s just not associated with each URL. We want to develop features in Webmaster Tools that really help you to build a better site and improve the web — I’m not sure if we’ve determined anchor text to backlinks to be a high priority. Nonetheless, we’ve noted your request.

Q. “What weight does the age of a site and the amount of time a domain is registered for have on it’s search placement?”

Matt Cutts; In the majority of cases, it actually doesn’t matter–we want to return the best information, not just the oldest information. Especially if you’re a mom/pop site, we try to find ways to rank your site even if your site is newer or doesn’t have many links. I think it is fair for Google to use that as a signal in some circumstances, and I try never to rule a signal out completely, but I wouldn’t obsess about it.

Q. “Duplicate content – www. and non www. – I understand the best practice is to have a perm redirect for the non www to the www. some appear to get away with it and rank high, others dont – Duplicate content agn – domainname.co.nz and domainname.com ?”

JohnMu; Hi Peter! Doing a redirect or not doing one does not significantly impact your site’s crawling, indexing or ranking in Google. I’d still recommend doing that though – otherwise it can confuse users to see different domain names for the same content. If you have a local (.com.nz) and a global (.com) site, then I would recommend using separate content for them (since there are going to be different users) — but I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you have the same content at the moment.

Q. “Suppose my website supports English and French. Should the English version of a particular page and the French version have different URLs? Any other best practices for multi-lingual site architecture?”

Matt Cutts; If you can afford it, I would do domain.com and domain.fr. If that’s not possible, I would consider doing en.domain.com and fr.domain.com. If that’s not possible, then domain.com/en and domain.com/fr can work. In webmaster tools, you can geographically target a site (and I believe parts of a site such as fr.domain.com), which will help as well.

Q. “Any chance of Google favouring sites with valid markup anytime soon? On the principle that if the webmaster has taken the trouble to write valid markup, it’s less likely to be a spammy site?”

JohnMu; Since less than 5% of the pages out there actually validate according to study done by Opera, it wouldn’t make much sense for us to give the other 95% of the pages any trouble. You can find the study at http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/mama-markup-validation-report/

Q. “Does 301 Redirect moves the Google Page Ranking to the new location? If so how long does it take for this to take effect?”

Wysz; Where appropriate, ranking signals will be transferred across 301 redirects (if the same page has moved from one URL to another). This may take some time, so you should probably leave the redirect in place as long as you have control over the URL. That way any new links will make our crawler follow the 301.

Q. “In addition to a XML sitemap, does it make any sense to have also an HTML sitemap on the same website? Does HTML sitemap helps improve the rating?”

JohnMu; A HTML sitemap file can help search engines, especially those that don’t use XML Sitemap files. Also, the 404 widget in Webmaster Tools (which you can place on your 404 pages) will use “/sitemap.htm” and similar files to help users to find the content they’re looking for. So yes, I would recommend making HTML sitemap files, however I’d focus on the user and not the search engines.

Q. “Does Googlebot strip URL fragments? In other words, is a link to /path/#fragment the same as a link to /path/ ?”

JohnMu; Yes, we remove URL fragments since they are processed on the client side and not relevant when fetching URLs from your server.

Q. “Does inconsistent capitalization of URLs cause duplicate content issues and dilution of page rank? For example www.site.com/abc vs www.site.com/Abc. On Windows hosts, these are the same page, but are different pages on Unix hosts.”

JohnMu; Hi John, based on the existing standards, URLs are case-sensitive, so yes, these would be seen as separate URLs. Since the content on the URLs is the same, we’ll generally recognize that and only keep one of them. However, we’d recommend that you try to keep all links going to one version of the URL. Keep in mind that this also applies to robots.txt files.

Q. “Does the geotargeting feature in Webmaster tools hold as much weight as having a country-specific TLD?”

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. Geotargeting 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. Geotargeting is not to be used for language targeting though.

Q. “Do you have any plan on integrating GoogleMapsLocalBusinessCenter with webmaster tool? There is alot of overlap and being able to verify ownership of an physical address via a website might be helpful/possible.”

JohnMu; That’s definitely something that we’re considering. However, it’s also important for us that these areas are available separately so that people who are looking to get a listing in the Local Business Center but who don’t have a website will still be able to access it easily.

Q. “Geotargeting + Dupe Content Question: Aaron D’Souza of the Search Quality team was reported as stating that publishing the same content on two separate geotargeted paths under your domain will not trigger the dupe content filters. Is this correct?”

JohnMu; Hey Richard! In general, in a case like that, we’d try to pick the best page based on various factors, including geotargeting and language choices. If that page is one which is also available for other geotargeting/language choices, we will generally try to pick the version that our algorithms feel makes the most sense.

Q.”For SEO, I’d like to improve my rankings by removing technical obstacles (starting with dynamic URL parameters), what are the most important site fixes to make and how can I document before and after success metrics using the Google Webmaster Tool?”

To check the crawlability of your site, I would recommend crawling your site with a crawler like Xenu’s Link Sleuth (freeware, for Windows). Doing that gives you a rough look at how search engines view your site and can point you towards areas where crawlers get stuck in a loop or start crawling duplicates based on the URL parameters.

Q. One person asked about cross-linking between sites owned by the same party. Google said that this is generally not an issue but to be careful of extreme situations:

“…if you run a sporting goods site, and you link to your sister companies for camping and tailgating equipment, that’s good for the user. More happy users can lead to more buzz, leading to better rankings.

If your sister companies are just linked at the footer of the page, in hopes of cross-advertising or getting more links, it’s not likely to add value to ranking or the user. In extreme cases, if it’s a bad neighborhood, these links will certainly not help you.”

Q.On Domain Age, this feature so highly vaunted by domain brokers was largely debunked:

“In the majority of cases, it [domain age] actually doesn’t matter–we want to return the best information, not just the oldest information.”

Q. Recent Google removed the passage suggesting webmaster submit their site to the DMOZ and Yahoo! Directories.

One user asked whether this is because links from these sites are now worth less than they were before. Google explained that this section was removed because some webmasters were fixating on directory submission, which is not an optimal strategy. Links from the DMOZ and Yahoo! directory may change in the future but are currently worth as much as they ever were.

Q. Google may be developing their own rank-checking tool!

When asked about Google’s dislike of rank-checking tools, the Googler’s on-staff mentioned that an in-house rank-checker may be in the works. Exciting!

Q. Link #Fragments: How are they handled?

As some SEO’s have known for a while, Google confirmed today that link fragments such as the #location in http://www.domain.com/page.html#location are dropped from URL’s before processing. This is not a cause of duplicate content problems.

“Yes, we remove URL fragments since they are processed on the client side and not relevant when fetching URLs from your server.”

Q. Is correct W3C markup rewarded by Google in any way?

No. Not in the SERP rankings, but adhering to these standards helps your site look right in all browsers.

Q.Does Google tell webmasters when their site contains guideline violations and has been punished?

Googlers clearly explained today that these situations are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Is your site generally good and your violation quite possibly an honest mistake? You are more likely to get a webmaster’s tools message explaining the issue.

Is your site a major spam hub and the focus of a massive linkfarm campaign? Don’t expect much assistance.

Q. Is there such a thing as domain-level PageRank?

No. PageRank is accrued solely on a page-by-page basis.

“PageRank is purely at a page level, so if you forums.domain.com has a high PageRank and links to new urls such as download.domain.com, that PageRank will flow immediately.”

Q.Previously it was mentioned that chaining 301 redirects may create issues with the Google crawlers, how many is too many?

“It’s ok to chain a few together; I would avoid doing a whole bunch, like 20 or 30.

Q. “How will social media or more specifically share of comments (buzz about a brand) influence the serps?”

Social media is great! But, there are a few things to say about this… Social media can add buzz to your site, finding new visitors, people linking to you, etc. That’s a bonus and the more users that enjoy your content, often the better your site will show in SERPs. We want results to reflect what users are searching for, so social buzz can certainly be helpful.

A few things to note: 1. If you allow user-generated content on your site, remember to monitor for spam. 2. Also, if you’re looking to get buzz to directly help your site in SERPs, know that we normally don’t crawl javascript, so if it’s hosted in javascript you’ll still get the user traffic from the buzz (which can eventually lead better rankings), but the user comments themselves won’t be indexed. 3. If you want to get the user-generated content associated with your site (as part of your URLs), then make sure you host the user-generated content on your domain (so it’s not link to a separate site).

Q. “Can we expect a Chrome Add-on using webmaster tools soon?”

Great question for the Chrome team. You can ask over here: http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help

Q. “Does a page load time play a crucial role in Google Page Ranking? If yes how important is it?”

I think the more important issue here is user experience. If your site loads fast, your users will be happy; if it loads slow, users will be less happy. Make your users happy, right?

Q. “Until recently external links from article directories could improve page ranking. Is this still valid? Do links from article directories have a better weight than links from web sites or blogs?”

Article directory links certainly aren’t inherently worth more and don’t get more weight than other web sites or blogs. I answered another question about article directories as well.

Q. “I have a website in 5 languages (and I cannot buy 5 different localized domains), which option is the best? To have different subdirectories (domain.com/en) or to have different subdomains? (en.domain.com)”

Both versions are fine. I personally generally recommend using a subdomain when the sites are completely different and using subdirectories when it’s more or less a shared site, but it’s up to you.

Q. “What is ok/not ok to sell links? We get requests on a daily base, we not offering to sell links, but sometimes we get a related request and wonder if we are “allowed” to sell one or two links without hurting our rankings?”

Paid links that pass pagerank are not a good idea; more info here – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

Q. “When we report a site for buying links, how long does it take for Google to act on it? If the violator is still listed—and the bought links are still present—what other action can we take?

It’s tough to give a specific time frame, but rest assured that we do look at all requests

Q. “If my sub domain got high Page Rank, how far it will contribute to the main domain?”

PageRank is on a page-by-page basis. The PageRank of a page (on a subdomain or not) is based on the links to it.

Q. “When we report a site for buying links, how long does it take for Google to act on it? If the violator is still listed—and the bought links are still present—what other action can we take?”

It’s tough to give a specific time frame, but rest assured that we do look at all requests.

Q. “If a website temporarily looses backlinks, but are re-instated shortly after, in theory once the pages are re-cached, would the “damage” be reverted? If the website the fails to return to it’s original place, would that suggest there are other causes?”

It’s difficult to say for certain without being able to take a look at the site. It seems strange to me that a site would temporarily lose backlinks… I’d definitely recommend starting a thread in the Webmaster Help Groups to let the advanced users there take a look at your site in specific.

Q. “Sub-Domains are considered as a new site for Search Engines, if a 5 years old site which uses forums.domain.com, www.domain.com now plans to add shop.domain.com and download.domain.com will this take another few years for both new domains to get rank”

PageRank is purely at a page level, so if you forums.domain.com has a high PageRank and links to new urls such as download.domain.com, that PageRank will flow immediately.

Q. “Before linking to a domain, how a webmaster could ascertain penalties if there are any imposed by Google, so that he is not affected by linking to a spammy site?”

When linking to another site, you should ask yourself, “Would my visitors find this useful?” Don’t worry too much about trying to find a technical signal that the site is not seen well by Google. If a site looks high quality to you as a user, you should be fine. And if you don’t want to vouch for a site (for example if your users can add links in comments), then you can use rel=nofollow in the link tag.

Q.”If I 301 redirect a well-ranked page to a new domain with the exact same content, will all of the rankings be replaced with the new domain once it has been indexed? How long after indexing can we expect the swap? And is the same thing true for 302s?”

If you’re moving from one URL to another (even if it’s on a different domain), ranking signals can be passed via a 301. A 302 is used for temporary redirects, so this is less likely to transfer ranking signals.

Q. “What is the #1 piece of advice you would suggest I give when helping guide people through search optimization projects?”

Check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Q.”Why there is a difference in the number of indexed pages between the “Sitemaps overview” at webmaster console and “site:” command?”

It’s possible that your Sitemap file does not include all the URLs that can be found when crawling your site. Additionally, it might be that we recognized that some of the URLs are more or less duplicates and therefore we might not be counting them in a site:-query.

Q. “Will it make any difference between a shared IP and a dedicated IP on SEO or search results, as opinions are divided on this aspect?”

Most of the web is on shared IP addresses, so it doesn’t make much sense for us to give those on dedicated IP addresses any advantages. That said, if your server is struggling with the load of your website, it might make sense to move to a dedicated server that helps to make sure that your users are happy when visiting your website.

The third online chat, Tricks and Treats will be held on Wednesday, October 22, at 9am PDT, noon EDT, and 4pm GMT (For GMT +07:00, Bangkok/Hanoi/Jakarta timezone, it will be 11:00 pm Wednesday, October 22, 2008).

• INTRO: A quick hello from some of your favorite Help Group Guides
• PRESO: A 15 minute presentation on “Frightening Myths and Misconceptions” by John Mueller
• FAQs: A return of our popular “Three for Three,” in which we’ll have three different Googlers tackling three different issues we’ve seen come up in the Group recently… in under three minutes each!
• And lots of Q&A! You’ll have a chance to type questions during the entire session (actually, starting an hour prior!) using our hunky-dory new Google Moderator tool. Ask, then vote! With this tool and your insights, we expect the most interesting questions to quickly float to the top.

Guys register now!

You may hear “Linking is the most important factor that Google counts”.

You may think “Inbound links make your pagerank”.

Or you just wonder “What are the differences among Internal Links, Outbound Links, and Inbound Links?”. And how to deal with all 3 types of these.

Or you’re only concern about “What are merit-based links?”

To clear you doubts, Maile from Google Webmaster Central (ah yes, sometimes I think she’s Vietnamese blood) starts a series of posts on Link topics that they call the “Link Week”. As usual, they make easy-to-understand illustrations for technical matrix.

So turn back here only if you really have something to comment.

P/S: What is your perspective on Inbound link’s value?

3 Perspectives on Inbound Link

The SEO war of redirects: 301 vs 302 vs meta-refresh tag. Source: Redalkemi.com.

Want to read more on 301 Redirects? Check here please!

When reviewing its Google Analytics, I saw the domain name was included in the Referral section. And the figure from this domain was more than 3 thousands visitors a day. This case is called Self-Referral.

As far as I know, self-referring often happens in 3 common cases thanks to Google Adwords Support.

1. Tracking code not installed on all of the web pages: If the tracking
   code is not installed on all of your webpages, Google Analytics will not
   be able to track the referral webpage and will assume the previous page to
   be a referral. For example, http://www.domain.com/forum does not have
   the analytics tracking code installed. Visits from this page could be
   construed as referrals.
2. Redirect: Generally, a website may appear as a self-referral if there
   is a redirect. If a website redirects from www.example.com to
   www.domain.com, Google Analytics will record the referral as
   www.example.com. When the user is redirected, the tracking code records
   the referral source as website the user was redirected from. If there is a
   redirect on your website, we suggest you remove the redirect or add the
   redirected URL as the Website URL in your account. Your webmaster or your
   hosting company should be able to assist you in removing the redirect.
3. Frames: Frames may also result in self-referrals. This is because a
   frame in your website may be used to load another webpage.

So if you get the same issue, that is Self-Referral in Google Analytics, please check if you’re in 1 of above cases to have the appropriate solution.

Back from the last-week’s 2-day trip, I find some things to learn and to think.

Most impressive point? Clean roads, modern buildings, no traffic jams, and no policemen at street corners.

How about people there? They all can speak English well, even the taxi drivers can, not only “where to go” but also casual activities in Singapore (not quite easy to understand though). People walking seems to be in hurry even in the late evening and early morning. And my legs seemed to want to say “goodbye” to my whole body: Sorry my Lord, I can’t help you chase with those “super walkers”. But if I live there for 1 week, I think my walking skill will be much better when coming back to Vietnam!

A taxi driver while taking me back to Bayview hotel from Yahoo! office wonders if I’m a Chinese: “You look like a Chinese, huh?”. Oh no, I’m a Vietnamese, a Vietnamese to the backbone!!! “So are you from Saigon?”, he asks. Ah yes, it’s called Ho Chi Minh city now… There are 2 common things among the 3 taxi drivers: all seem to be old and listen to radio in Mandarin Chinese for updating daily news!

I did take some pics there as I promised. But today I just like to “show” the one at Yahoo! Guest room.

At Yahoo! Southeast Asia's Guest Room

And I do think I’ll visit Singapore again so soon…

(Also this post will be updated when I have much more free time)