Google announced a substantial change to their search algorithm four days ago. Usually Google’s search algorithm changes are much smaller but this time the change impacts 11.8% of Googles search queries. This is in alignment with Google’s goal of ensuring that they only return the most relevant of content. Google are targeting low quality sites which provide little information to users and that copy content from other websites. “Content farms” seem to be a key target.

According to Wikipedia, the term Content Farm is used “to describe a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader page views. Articles in content farms have been found to contain identical passages across several media sources, leading to questions about the sites placing search engine optimization goals over factual relevance.”

Interestingly, Ezine Articles seem to be one of the most affected sites but are also one of the few article directories that are very strict on the content that they accept. Perhaps Google’s objection is more related to the fact that sites like ezine articles main source of income appear to be making money via AdSense. Perhaps if Ezine Articles charged users to add content and retained their quality guidelines rather than gain their main source of income from AdSense then they would have fared better in this latest change. I am merely speculating here but if they charged user fees for article submission then the article quality would improve even further.

In any case, Ezine have announced that traffic to their site was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. To this end, Ezine Articles are considering making a number of changes. These include:

- Adding No Follow to resource box (this one now appears to be taken off the table)
– Adding a further 20% rejection rate to the already 40%
– Taking off some ads for better user experience (increase in CTR’s)
– Possibly not allowing content that is duplicated anywhere on the Internet
– Possibly making 400 words minimum

You can check out their blog post on the impact of Google Search Algorithm changes.  Other sites impacted include:

• Wisegeek
• Suite101
• Hubpages
• Buzzle
• Associated Content
• Articlesbase

You can see a list of some of the major sites impacted by Google Search Algorithm changes here.

However, what is clear is that there are some major lessons to be learned from this change. These include:

• Don’t rely on one source to drive traffic to your site
• Continue to vary your links
• Use fresh relevant content

Change in Googles Search Algorithm Impacts Many Sites is a post from: Learn Internet Marketing Effortlessly

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One pillar of Search Engine Optimization is using the right keywords on your website.  The problem is that not a lot of marketers understand the importance of keywords in Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately they they are the ones that control and brief the web designer to get their website up and running.

Fortunately, there are some quick SEO keyword tools you can use to check how effective your search engine optimization is. Using these tools will help you formulate the right SEO strategies and ask the right questions to your website designer. The first SEO analysis tool is Woorank. All you need to do is visit the site, enter in the URL and within a few minutes you will have access to a report that outlines what SEO improvements can be made to your site.  In a similar vein to Woorank, Website Grader also points out what things you can do to optimize your site.

The third tool is SEO Quake. This nifty little tool works with the Firefox browser and can be downloaded as a plugin. Once installed, the tool will tell you critical information about any website you are on. You can assess your own website by visiting the page and then activating the plugin.

Both tools will tell you information like:

• Information contained in the title
• Meta keywords
• Meta description
• Internal Links
• External Links
• Page Rank
• Alexa Rank
• Keyword Density
• Backlinks
• The age of the domain
• The number of internal links
• Sitemap
• Robots text
• And much more

SEO Quake is good for those people who already understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization and what the results mean. Woorank will tell you the same information but will also give pointers on what can be improved.

Three Useful SEO Tools is a post from: Learn Internet Marketing Effortlessly

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