There are all kinds of dances out there, but one dance that relates to the SEO world which can make you happy in the morning and make you pull your hair out by night is the Google Dance.

What is the Google Dance?

When SEO companies start a new campaign on a relatively new website Google has trouble placing the website among the current positions. This placement issue causes the site to “dance” around various positions leading to confusion and frustration if you aren’t aware of it. Google also has multiple data centers across the country which can lead to a “dance” effect where different results are displayed depending on which data center you hit.

This can be a frustrating time in the SEO campaign. This also leads some SEO’s to question their practices leading to impulsive decisions. Don’t stray from what you know for the “Google Dance” typically lasts for 2-3 weeks for all data centers to sync.

Examples of Google Dance:
Site ranked for a targeted keyword within the first three pages early one morning. Later that same day the site was nowhere to be found within the top 100 sites.

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I read an interesting article over today at SEOmoz where randfish claims that footer links may be “devalued by search engines automatically” and furthermore that “Yahoo! says they may devalue footer links” and suggests that “Google might do this (or go further) as well.”

This is very alarming and can effect the rankings of many websites who rely on footer links to improve their rankings as well as webmasters who use footer links as a means of navigation (like we do in this site).  Footer text links serve an important role in web design and lots of times will give a website that rounded out feel.  Also, footer links are very helpful and beneficial for navigation with pda/phone/handheld devices that cannot render a full size page correctly, or pages that are specifically made for these devices.  Furthermore, people who are using text based browsers on terminals such as lynx or links also rely on such links for navigation purposes.

The ramifications of such a strategy is sure to shake up the SEO world and we here at Barlam Enterprises will definitely be evaluating our current link structure for our sites as well as our clients.

While Yahoo only claims a small share of the search engine market place, only time will tell if and when the big G will implement these ideas.  However, when or if they do, you can be assured many more will take notice than currently are.

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I like many other webmasters regularly check logs and statistics of my websites to see what type of traffic I am receiving, and where it is coming from.  It is a necessary part of search engine optimization and interactive marketing.  I personally use awstats (an open source project) for this task as it analyzes the key areas of my logs that I am interested in and outputs it in a very easy to read and use HTML layout.  However, awstats while very useful, doesn’t by itself allow you to deeply analyze the logs and see exactly who is visiting you which in turn determines to some extent whether your marketing campaigns have been successful.

Enter GeoLite City by Maxmind.  Another open source project (with licensed paid versions as well) that is easily added to awstats as a plugin.  GeoLite City is a database of ip address ranges showing the location they are registered to.  This allows awstats to check this database against every ip address that visits you, and prints this information into your awstat logs (screenshot)!   Pretty cool huh!  This information is extremely useful to determine how successful your marketing initiatives have been.

As an example, say you post an ad for investment properties in various local Dallas, Houston and Austin Texas newspapers.  In this ad you included your web site information.  With this plug-in you will be able to analyze exactly how effective your ads are pulling.  Not seeing the results you want and the hits from Houston?  Maybe pulling the ad, modifying it or changing the placement will yield better results and a positive return on your investment!  That is just a small example of you can utilize this software and the GeoIP database to your advantage.  The possibilities are endless!

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It was announced yesterday by MarketWatch that “the approval ratings for President George W. Bush have hit a new low, as only 25% of Americans like the way the nation’s 43rd chief executive has performed, according to the most recent survey from Gallup Poll.”

As readers of this site know, we often like to explore current SEO tactics as they apply to current events and after reading this article I was curious.  I decided to check out the President’s web site and noticed that its Google PageRank also dropped from a 10/10 to a 9/10.  It appears Google has also lost hope for the current administration as well!

What can be made of this new evaluation by the Google gods bots?  Has Google moved over to support the Dem’s and condemn the GOP?  Unlikely, as Barack Obama and John McCain both now support a PageRank of 8/10 (an increase from 7/10 last reporting period) so no favortism appears present there.  Perhaps it is much like the general sentiment of the American public…  that we would just like a change or shift in power to a new leader with a different set of policies.  A set of policies that can hopefully propel us out of this cesspool that the Bush administration drowned us in the past 8 years.