Today’s question comes from a poster over at the DP forums, he asks:

My site is have PR4 but the backlinks from google is very small. What are the best methods to get backlinks from google?

I hear this question quite frequently.

The link: command in Google is a funny tool nowadays. Since Google knows only webmasters, SEO and marketing people use the link: command, they decided to get a little tricky with all of us. The link: command only shows a small sampling of the true amount of backlinks Google has found.

A better subsitution would be to use Yahoo!. Yahoo! isn’t stingy with what they show you.

Another tool you can use, if you still want to use Google, is Google’s Webmaster Central. Their are a host of tools to use in this section. If you’d like to know if you’re getting incoming links to deep pages of your site, Webmaster Central will show you where they’re coming.

If you’re looking for desktop application, Aaron Wall’s Backlink Analyzer is an amazing FREE software that I’ve used over and over again. Really robust.

Today’s question comes from Spiceboy over at the WebproWorld forums. He asks:

Can anyone tell me how often the Supplemental Index is er..indexed? Is it a daily process, weekly, monthly, quarterly?

The supplemental index is categorized when the main index comes through. When the crawler comes through your site, caches all the pages, some pages are put in the main index and then others are put through the supplemental index, based upon the multiple filters that are in place to find pages that trigger those filters.

So, to answer you question specifically, whenever the search engine bots index your site. If you have a site that is indexed daily, they the supplemental index will be re-indexed with your pages…or without your pages.

Originally, the ’sandbox’ factor was used to describe an odd phenomenon noticed by SEO professionals in conjunction with the algorithm. What is the signs of “sandboxing” before ruling out other possibilities? - from DP

The Google Sandbox effect has been around since 2004. It was started to get rid of spammy sites that would be thrown up using automated tools, acquire thousands and thousands of links and rank for keywords within weeks. Google implements the “Sandbox” as well as a few other filters, to combat against these types of spammy ranking tactics.

I find that a majority of webmasters aren’t entirely sure what the sandbox is and how to get out of it. The sandbox is applied to new sites only. Now, when I say new sites, I mean brand new domains that have just launched a web presence. I run across clients that think just because they’ve owned the domain for 10 years, that they might not get into the sandbox, when in fact, the site was actually launched 5 months ago. Sandbox sites occur when the site is brand new to the web.

What happens? 2 things happen usually. Either a site will have 0 rankings in Google for all keywords or the site will have some rankings for a few weeks, then the rankings will disappear.

Another effect you might find yourself is that you think your site is not in the sandbox. This usually happens when you are ranking for keywords that are very long-tail or are not competitive at all. Recently, I ranked a site for “Bulletproof Fiberglass”. The site is still on the first page and has been since I launched the site. The keyword is very relative to the client’s industry, but the competitiveness for that keyword in Google is very, very small. Since competition is so small, the website ranked extremely high right out of the gate. Do I still consider this site in the sandbox? Yes. If I were to get rankings for more competitive keyword phrases, I’d have to sit a little while before rankings proceeded.

When you start to see rankings for 1st and 2nd tier keywords, you’re out of the sandbox and can enjoy great rankings and really start to nurture your search engine optimization efforts.

How do you get out of the sandbox? We’ll have to save that for another “Ask SEM Inc.” Till next time!

- Adam

This question is brought to you by DP forum member Aks:

Hi every oneis it cloaking good or bad, can I be banned from search engines for it?

I run across this question quite a bit. Its a trickier question then most, because there are a view variables you need to look at. If you want to go with the Google gods and follow strict procedure, then the answer would be “It’s bad”. But this type of question really need to have the “With this site - MySite.com - is cloaking bad?”.

Before we get into a semi-answer, let’s discuss what cloaking is. Cloaking is showing a normal web visitor one page and a search engine crawler another. The purpose of this is to show more qualified, optimized pages for the search engine crawlers, with the benefit of better rankings…potentially.

There are a couple ways of doing cloaking, either with javascript redirects or IP-based. IP-based is the best and least traceable by the search engines. How IP-based cloaking works is you have a list of all the crawler IPs and when a crawler hits your cloaked page, you show them the search engine friendly page. When any other IP hits the page, you show them the web visitor page.

Now to semi-answer the question. I’m going to give you a view examples of what I would qualify as “ok” cloaking. I was doing consulting for a real estate web design company. They provided templated web sites with a very robust backend for the agents to make changes their sites.

The Problem: There was a feature in the backend to having a potential buyer land on an email capture form before moving forward to the listings and other areas within the site. We wanted a way for the search engines to still crawl those pages, but not allow visitors to access them without signing up first.

The Solution: We used IP-based cloaking to show the search engine crawlers the listing pages, as well as informational pages within the site and when a web visitor landed on those pages from the search engines, they were still given the email capture form. We were able to get those pages indexed and ranked that were stuck behind the email capture form, where the crawlers couldn’t crawl threw.

In the scenario above, I believe it was OK to use cloaking. Google got more informative information from the agent’s website by indexing a ton more pages and the agent was still able to capture the visitors email to follow up with. Win-Win.

Other big companies do this, especially newspaper websites. They’ll let their content become indexed, but when you land on it from the search engines, you have to sign up to get full access. Now, I know that sucks to have to register, but if you’re in the shoes of a business owner, its a great way to build your business and have people register and pay.

The Future: I think eventually Google and others will have to let up the “White Hat” NO CLOAKING what-so-ever mantra. I do believe its a case by case basis, but not every person that uses cloaking is trying to make money from Adsense or affiliate programs.

I’m starting a new series of posts where you can submit your questions about search engine and internet marketing (which can be a variety of things). Today’s question comes from the DP forums. No one had answered this question yet, so I thought I’d use it as a start.

Hey,

I am using wordpress and I am wondering how to choose the names of the categories and posts. There is a field for the ‘name’ and a field for a ’slug’ (the slug is shown in the URL bar in the browser and the name in the menu )..

Now I would like to know what is the best way of choosing names for these two in regard of search engines.. for example :

Should I try to put keywords which I think a viewer will search for in google in the slug ? Or in the name field ? Or in both ? And which one is more important ?

Also, what about a name and a totally different slug ? Would that be bad ?

Regards,
-FOP-

I’d suggest putting both the keywords and whatever you’re going to use as the slug be the same. Keywords in the URL definitely help with optimization, but also, your keywords in the title of the blog post is going to help too. The blog post title usually is wrapped in H tags, which does carry little weight in the search engines.

If you really wanted to target the specific you were putting in the Title/URL, I’d suggest doing both, but if you wanted to target a few more broader keywords in the URL and the go specific in the title, that is an option too. You’ve got to remember though that you’re probably putting your blog posts in categories, which should be high-level keywords anyway. Example:

BlogAboutYoga.com/yoga-mats/best-yoga-mats-in-orange-county/

So keep that in consideration.

Good luck!