Ads Galore, Google+ SEO, SOPA, Social Web, Speedlink 03:2012 – iBlogzone.com

Hi everyone! Hope you all had an awesome week. SOPA issue undoubtedly has dominated the buzz this week, and you may have noticed that there were sites, such as WikiPedia, Craiglist, etc., that went dark for a whole 24 hours. All in protest for the proposed Software Online Privacy Act and the PIPA (protect IP Act) bill. Don’t know if you have an idea of what this is all about, but in case you want to know a bit more, Google has done a pretty good job providing more info about SOPA and PIPA. You can also visit SopaStrike.com to learn about the largest online protest in history.

On a side note, Google has yet again made an adjustment on their algorithms. If you display ads on your website, you may want to read this official bog post, where “page layouts” are now in the “eyes” of Google. This may be of interest to you as “way too many” ads, above the fold may affect your sites rankings. Here’s an excerpt:

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.

The problem here is that it can really be interpreted in many ways. Questions like, how much is too much? How many ads will Google consider excessive before it punishing your site? In a nutshell, I think that what they are saying is that if your “primary” content are difficult to access because of the hurdles you create (ads), then, there’s a good chance that your site may get affected. Just be on the safe side 🙂

As usual, in no particular order:

How can good sites that don’t know about SEO rank well?

Google would appear to favour sites that are built by those who know all the SEO best practice techniques (and follow your tips!). There must be many technically poor sites that actually have fantastic content – surely these shouldn’t be penalized?