Search
Recommended Products
Related Links


 

 

Informative Articles

Online Marketing: Five Principles That Help You Succeed NOW
I have been working for Internet companies since 1994. First at America Online and now in my own marketing and design business. The only online marketing rule I adhere to is that things are constantly changing. That could make marketing difficult....

Submit Site To Announce It To The World!
SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO 10,000 SEARCH ENGINES!!! NO, don't bother! It's a waste of time, and you'll probably just receive lots of unwanted e-mail. Instead, submit your site to the major search engines and directories (i.e. Google, and a few others)....

Web Hosting for E-Commerce Sites
If you're going to pursue an e-commerce site, hosting is going to be an issue. Here's a primer on web hosting for your site. E-commerce web hosting is the technology of storing, servicing and maintaining files for one or more web sites...

WORKING WITH AFFILIATE PROGRAMMES
Copyright 2005 Robert Evans Affiliate programmes are springing up everywhere and cover every type of product or service imaginable. Some incorporate fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard products all over the world. Many have...

You've Got To Be Joking!
I don't know about you, but I get a lot of joke stuff arriving in my email. I've got one buddy in particular who hardly lets a day go by without sending something. Sometimes they're side-splittingly hilarious, and other times they just...

 
Jagger and the age of business failure. For what?

Jagger and the age of business failure. For what?



The latest Google update, Jagger, has search engine optimisers all around the world in a state of disorientation. With Jagger, Google once again attempted to outsmart huge numbers of SEOs who had spent a vast amount of time trying to outsmart their competitors by legitimately but falsely making their websites seem more relevant and important than they really are. But what comments would the architects of this disaster say to a company's debtors?



We all know that links carry significant weight within the algorithms of all the major search engines. As SEOs we have added value by swapping links and placing links on free directories. While there's nothing wrong with this in essence, we have to addmit that a lot of these sites don't really show that they are necessarily relevant or important to the host site.



Google much prefers it when the linking site adds value to enhance the value of a site's content or to increase credibility. And that's exactly what Jagger was meant to do - when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance, now deemed as: 1) Increased importance placed on Inbound Links Relevancy 2) Increased


importance placed on Outbound Links Relevancy 3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories related to Nos. 1/2)

Google is downgrading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of SEOs. As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

All well and good, but I wonder then if the architects of this fine update could explain why the search term "web site design bangkok" had an error 404 page in French at the #1 spot (now #5), for a month (http://www1.oecd.org/error.htm)? So much for relevancy!

A colleague's site disappeared from the listings for 2 months. Now we find that Jagger has almost de-listed us - and there has been little link building involved in this site. When I next talk to my clients and they ask the same question, doesn't Google carry some responsibility for this latest raft of online business failures?

About the author:

Media Director of V9 Design & Build, providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.