WILL GOOGLE STARS AFFECT SEO?

You might have missed the new bookmarking app by Google called Google Stars because it came down just as fast as it went up.

Google Stars (originally spotted by Google watcher Florian Kiersch (who leaked the extension to the rest of us) is the Chrome-centric reinvention of the usual bookmarking we are used to and is said to offer far more features than what we are currently using. You could add notes, share files and folders as well as have filters for auto-categorising by images, web pages and videos. It’s intended to help users save, share and categorize web content.

When the extension is installed, Chrome automatically ‘magically’ collects a history of topics you might be interested in (from previous searches and we assume it will track your future activity) and adds your current bookmarks automatically by date (but you’ll be able to rearrange these).

Before the extension was pulled from the Google web store, search engine optimisation experts like Moz and Ruby Search Solutions had time to look at the interface and observe how this may affect how Google may use their bookmarking extension to further adapt your searches.

It’s easy to see how the underlying process to determine, track and populate your favourites or bookmarks will contribute to Google’s ever increasing objective to know more about you as an individual and use that data to relay information and useful suggestions about what to see, do, eat, experience etc.

Google could therefore base the results of your search on your current frequented sites and bookmarks. Currently, bookmarking is a one-way street. We make a list of our favourite sites and the list sits there until we manually decide which of those sites we would like to use or visit again. But with Google Stars, the search engine can extract info and combine it with your general search and sort the results based on user-defined bookmarked sites, images and videos.

Does this mean that webmasters are going to start paying asking people to bookmark their sites? Or another branch of internet advertising called BookMarketing (you heard it here first folks) will emerge into the vernacular of online marketers?

Hopefully not.

What we can take away from all of this, is the over-used phrase...“content is king”. Produce quality, relevant and engaging content that people will want to bookmark and keep you or your site at the top of their favourites list.

3 Successful SEO Tips For Off Page Optimization Techniques

Getting the optimization of your website’s content (On Page Optimization) is only half the battle. Off Page Optimization is also equally important for your website to rank higher in search results.

1) Link Building:  The most important part of Off Page Optimization is Link Building. You should try to get as many backlinks as possible from other websites. The number and quality of backlinks is crucial for your PageRank to increase and ultimately to rank higher in search results. PageRank is directly proportional to the no. of unique pages that are linking to your site. If you have high no. of backlinks from the websites with good PageRank, you will have a high PageRank. So, spend some time in getting those backlinks.

Here are some tips to get backlinks:

- Guest Blogging on sites related to your blog niche.

- Press Releases

- Forum Posting related to your blog niche.

- Article Submission to sites like Ezine, Hubpages, etc.

- Blog Commenting on ‘DoFollow’ Sites

- Image Sharing on sites like photobucket, flickr, etc.

- Video Sharing on sites likes YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

- RSS Feed Creation & Submission

- Directory Submission such as Dmoz.org, Technorati.com, etc.

- Use of Social Media: Share and promote your content on all the major social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Tumblr, Google Plus and Pinterest. All these sites can bring a huge amount of traffic to your site and also helps in link building.

2) Anchor Text:  Now another important factor in Off Page Optimization is Anchor Text. Anchor Text is the text to form a Hyperlink. If you are not choosing the right anchor text, then all of your efforts of getting backlinks will not be much useful.

For example, If I want to link to this page – http://www.youngblah.com/what-is-page-rank/ and the main keyword is Pagerank.

I can use “Click Here(Anchor Text) to know more about PageRank.”

But ‘Click Here’ doesn’t tell Google Bots what the link is pointing to. So, use the link on the keyword.

Right Method(Example), “Click here to know more about PageRank(Anchor Text)”.

So, you should try to get backlinks from other websites using the right Anchor Text to make your site more relevant in Google search results.

3) Best Practices:

- Quality and Natural Links matters.

- Avoid Paid Backlinks.

- Avoid Link Exchange.

- Try to get Backlinks from High Authority Sites or from sites with at least PR 1 or above.

- Try to get Backlinks from sites that are relevant to your content.

- A link in the footer of a website is weighted less by Google than the link appearing on the top or in the main content of the page. [Source: youngblah.com]