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LexiConn – May 2011 Newsletter
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In this Month’s Newsletter:
* Google
* Featured Client: sisterscoffee.com
* From the Blog…

Google

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In this section we’ll cover various topics related to Google. The first topic is the significant change that Google made to its search engine algorithm back in late February. The change was later called the “Panda Update” and was designed to stop content farms and sites with low quality content from ranking highly in Google.

Unfortunately, the update led to undesired results for many legitimate sites. This article from our blog has more information on the topic:

http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2011/03/google-panda-update-and-ecommerce/

To read some helpful Panda Update recovery tips, reference:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2072084/Google-Panda-Update-Recovery

How To Change Your Domain Name

Another Google related topic that we see come up periodically is how to safely change your domain name without affecting your rankings. Domain changes are needed for various reasons, e.g. branding/marketing, legal reasons, etc. but it is important to change domains properly in order to preserve your rankings.

Inside Google Webmaster Tools under the Site Configuration menu is a “Change of Address” tool. This tool gives you the ability to change the domain name in Google’s search results, without waiting for your site to be re-indexed. You would still of course want to put a 301 redirect in place from your old domain to the new one in order to be certain established rankings are preserved. More complete details on this subject can be found in our blog at:

http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2011/04/how-to-properly-change-your-domain-name-without-seo-penalties/

How to Protect Certain Content

If you have content that you do not want Google to index, e.g. sensitive material that you don’t want to show up in search results, there are a couple of steps to take to achieve this. The first step would be to edit your robots.txt file with a disallow line. For example, you would add this to it to exclude a folder called private:

Disallow: /private/

This line would go anywhere underneath the ‘User-agent: *’ line which means that this section applies to all robots. The next step in the process is to log in to your Google Webmaster account. Once logged in, go to Tools -> Remove URLs. From that screen you will be able to select an entire website, directory or individual files. Once selected, just press the ‘new removal request’ button and then Google will soon thereafter delist that content.

For a comprehensive article on URL removals for site owners, reference the following post from Google’s Blog:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/easier-url-removals-for-site-owners.html

How To Remove Malware Listing

Another type of delisting refers to the kind you would have to do if your site ever became infected. Hackers upload malicious content into websites usually via a compromised FTP account. Google penalizes infected sites as it obviously does not want to spread malware. Google notifies you of this infection by displaying a large red banner on your Webmasters Tools dashboard stating “This site may be distributing malware”.

The first step you would take in the delisting process would be to make sure that your site is clean. Once it is, log in to your Google Webmasters Tools account and click on ‘More Details’ on the warning banner. You can then fill out the form and click on the request a review button and Google will then take action, usually within a few hours. To read more about this process, reference:

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/10/malware-warning-review-process.html

Featured Client: sisterscoffee.com

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This month’s featured client is sisterscoffee.com. Sisters Coffee Company was established in 1989 in a small 500 square foot coffee shack in Sisters, Oregon and has grown to two locations totaling 8000 square feet! They sell coffee made from their own mountain roasted custom gourmet blends.

http://www.sisterscoffee.com/

For more detailed information on this month’s featured client as well as a listing of all past featured clients, please go to:

http://support.lexiconn.com/news/viewforum.php?f=4

From the Blog…

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Here are some recent posts from The LexiConn Blog:

Newsletter Revenue Reporting with Urchin & Google Analytics – how to use custom URLs to track visitors coming in from a newsletter and where to view the corresponding revenue report.
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2011/05/newsletter-revenue-reporting-with-urchin-google-analytics/

How Choosing the Right Web Host Can Increase Sales – a good web host is required to improve site speed to the fullest.
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2011/05/the-right-web-host-can-increase-sales/

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As always, feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. Complete contact and support options can be found at:
http://www.lexiconn.com/support.html

Sincerely,
- The LexiConn Team

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