Warnings About Rich Snippet Mark Up No One Is Talking About

I recently learnt about a neat little SEO feature called Rich Snippet, which lets you display a short snippet of data alongside your regular search engine search results. Such snippets instantly attract any user's attention and give you significantly higher CTR. When this feature was introduced, it was intended to enhance the design of search listings and pass more information onto the users in a subtle way.

Given the promise of higher CTRs and search traffic, webmasters raced to adopt this new feature, which is extremely easy to implement and can be applied to different types of web content like reviews, recipes, product listings, business listings, people profiles etc. All you need to do is add a few line of very basic codes that help search engines better parse the most valuable information on your page. Anyone with some entry level programming skills should be able to do it.

At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer. Why would anyone not want to do it? However, before you rush off to add this to your site, I'd like to share with you a couple of warnings you will not find on Google's official rich snippet page or the official schema website which provides instructions and examples on how to set up the rich snippets.

What you need to be aware of is that you could potentially LOSE traffic instead if those rich snippets are not implemented correctly.

Why does this happen?

Well, precisely because it is so easy to implement and its results so significant, unsurprisingly a lot of people couldn't resist the temptation and tried to manipulate it to gain traffic, like marking up data that do not exist. This directly pollutes Google's search results with fraudulent data. Given Google's obsession with user experience and search quality, this is a big no no and penalties should be expected.

If Google detects any problems in the implementation of your rich snippets mark up, there is a good chance you will be slammed by algorithmic penalty immediately. Your search traffic will drop anywhere between 10 - 40%. In Google's latest Penguin update, they have outlined a number of practices that would incur a penalty. Misuse of Rich Snippets is one of them.

Therefore, you should only consider adding rich snippets to your site if they are really relevant to your content and if your content is of high enough quality and depth that can fulfill all of the required properties. And then proceed carefully and make sure you mark up the data correctly.

It is very important for any SEO practitioner to remember it always comes down to data quality and user experience. In order to increase your search ranking, you must demonstrate to the search engines that your data is superior and your site is trustworthy. Do not attempt anything that could damage your site's perceived trustworthiness. Think in the shoes of Google, what would make you want to display your site ahead of these other high quality, highly competitive websites?

Dawson Gao is a member of lacartes.com - an online community that helps people find local businesses, meet new friends and search for jobs.

He has written numerous articles about SEO and internet marketing and regularly advices small businesses on e-commerce and free online marketing techniques.

What People Should Know About Dental Marketing Solutions

Are you a dentist who wants to promote your practice? Now, there is a way for you to help patients regain confidence and youthful looks once more. Hire an industry specific search engine optimization (SEO) company who has effective dental marketing solutions and watch your company grow. Here is a brief guide that can help you understand more.

What are dental marketing solutions?

If you know how a typical SEO company works, understanding dental marketing solutions should be easy. It is similar to SEO marketing solutions. The difference lies in its focus. While SEO marketing is broad and can cover several aspects about the business, dental marketing focuses on dental services and practices.

Your website will attract more visitors if you work with specialists who know what your target audience is looking for. Your chosen company should understand that your prospective clients are people with oral problems who may be looking for corrective or aesthetic dental treatments. These SEO specialists can optimize your site to promote your services, helping you reach more clients. If your site ranks well, you can be sure more patients will trust your services over other practices.

The firm you will be working with should be knowledgeable on different SEO techniques. This way, you can promote dental services like dental implants, veneers, crowns, laser dentistry, and dentures effectively. They should know how to make use of all forms of media available so you will rank well.

Your firm should have creative and innovative dental web design. Their web designers must have enough experience in conceptualizing and making attractive sites. Part of this includes knowing how to put interactive elements to make the site more appealing. Dental web design services must be carried out efficiently.

Key Elements of Dental Web Design

Your website should have a functional and quality web design. A good web design will make your patients more interested in the services you have to offer. While your design is trendy, it should also be simple enough to be self-explanatory and direct.

Usability

Your expert web designer should know that a user-centered design is important in converting web visitors to paying customers. They should put usable features and remove other things you do not need. A specific feature should fulfill a certain purpose.

Relevance and Speed

Give your visitors what they are looking for and make it fast. Most of the people who will come across your website will not like reading long content. In fact, most hardly read; they skim. Ask your SEO specialist to highlight important text or information on a website to stress a particular message.

Clean and Professional Aesthetics

As your focus is dental services, make sure you keep the design of your site clean and professional. Simple designs make highlighted key messages and content stand out better. It also assists visitors to focus on the information they need. Make sure you use colors that do not clash with the theme. Use real images if you can and make sure the font is readable. Your specialists should ensure everything in your web is readable and functional. With these in mind, you can now help people maintain good oral health.

SEO: Five Important Points You Must Know About Backlinks

Link building is very important in search engine optimization. Google and the other major search engines are not oblivious to the variety of SEO methods both ethical and unethical, used by website owners to rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google and the major search engines hire some, but not all of the most brilliant minds in the world to come and work for them. These employees make sure that when you type something in your search engine's browser, nothing comes out but quality content.

We, as website owners are fully aware that getting backlinks to our sites is an integral part of ranking high in the major search engines. Currently, the present view dictates that the one with the most number of links ranks high. Unfortunately, there is much more to be learned than just having numerous backlinks. Below are five important points you must know about backlinks.

1. The anchor text matters. We all know that Google likes variety. When you create the links to your pages, make sure that you use a variety of keyword rich anchor text for your links. Having the exact same anchor text for your links will look unnatural. Google and the other major search engines don't like unnatural.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. If the different links to your sites were created naturally, the degree of similarity of having the same anchor text is very small. Here is a simple and effective way on how you can get away with your links having the same anchor text. Use the exact keyword you're trying to rank that page for in eighty percent of your links while the remaining twenty percent are variations or different versions of this keyword. By variation, you can intentionally misspell the keyword or simply just a variation of the main keyword you're targeting.

2. Some of the webpages that contain links pointing to your pages should contain links that point to them also. In order to look natural in Google's eyes, this must be added to your backlinking techniques.

3. Some website owners don't like to allow other people to place links on their sites. They have No Follow switch on. This informs the search engines to pay no attention to links leaving the page. Of course this setting will not help us rank higher in the search engines. To look natural, you also must have some No Follow sites. If all your incoming links came from Do Follow sites, the search engines will view this as unnatural.

4. Avoid linking back to sites that have low reputation or are of low quality. What I mean by this is that when low reputation sites have links pointing to your sites, don't worry. Just make sure that you don't reciprocate those links. It will not seem natural. Sometimes you can't avoid it if they have links towards yours. Don't worry. Google will not penalize you for that.

5. Lastly, it's very important to stress that SEO isn't an overnight thing. It means that what you think you did wrong today will have an immediate effect on your site's ranking tomorrow. For example your site's ranking dropped the following day after you tried something new to increase its ranking. The result of your site dropping isn't caused by the new thing.

To summarize, whatever you do with your links, it's most important to make a conscious effort to make them look natural in Google's eyes and the other major search engines. Above all, never hurry when building your backlinks. Patience has its rewards.