According to the Official Google Blog…

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

So, how did your websites do? Did you feel a “Google Slap” or did it help you?

For most of my own websites I saw a positive result increasing my sites one full PR point and I see other good coming from this.

Most of what I do is focused on helping local business owners who lately for the most part are benefiting from the changes Google is doing with the tweaking of their systems. Google Places pages showing up on page one for keywords in local niches is just one place that Google is helping.

Please post a comment below on how you think Google is doing.

About six months back my I had a major change with my business plans so I’ve been working more on other websites and projects and not doing much with this blog. Now that I’m further along with those projects we are working on doing the updates and theme changes that I want to make here on WhoIsHenry.com

It will probably take a week or two until I get things the way I want them so please pardon the mess while we work. I’ll give you a full update to the new things that are going on here after the site remodeling is done.

Watch and Listen to Peaceful Music Videos of Japanese Water Gardens

About three years ago I created a website called Great Garden Ponds as one of my niche sites for affiliate income. A couple weeks ago I had my WordPress Admin Jayson change the site from the old static HTML site into a WordPress blog. I have several other old static websites that need this same “face lift” to upgrade to WordPress.

If you have been following me for any length of time you know that I really like WordPress as a tool for building websites. Most clients of mine are people that are just getting started with doing business online and they don’t know how to create websites themselves.

With WordPress, you don’t need to learn all the techie stuff of using HTML editors and FTP’ing files up to the server and all. After the initial installation of WordPress, which takes about 5 minutes, and the configuration of WordPress plugins, about another 5 minutes, you are ready to start adding pages or posts to your website.

Another great thing about WordPress is that you can change the look of the site in about 5-10 seconds by switching themes. Themes are the templates that the site uses… many are free to download and install.

WordPress includes tools within the programing to help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that your website gets found and indexed by Google and other search engines and web directories. You can install other WordPress plugins, many are free to download and install, to increase your chances of being found and indexed on a regular basis.

OK, enough techie talk about WordPress. If you have not already clicked a link to visit my Great Garden Ponds blog… do it now. Turn up your computer speakers and watch and listen to some of the videos showing garden ponds and Japanese Water Gardens that others have built.

Do you wish you had a tool that could help you to easily optimize your websites?

Would you like a free tool that would do a professional job of optimizing your website for FREE?

Well, the Google Website Optimizer is a free, professional grade SEO Tool that will help you to discover the best website design and content using A/B testing and multivariate testing tools.

Tom Leung, product manager for Google Website Optimizer, says it’s not always easy to know what drives traffic without a tool like Website Optimizer to help. “In the old days, you would just make the changes and hope for the best, or you might look at your traffic the next week and see if there were any changes in your web analytics dashboard.�

The problem with that approach, Leung explains, is that you don’t really know why you saw more or less traffic hit your website. Was it due to your design change or maybe you had a really popular blog post that week?

If you are not testing using a tool like the Google Website Optimizer or, having a professional high paid SEO consultant do the work for you, you will have no idea what causes the changes in traffic to your website.

You can access this fantastic free SEO tool along with all the training and a free support group at Google to help you. Click the video link below to watch an overview of how the Google Website Optimizer works.

CLICK TO WATCH GOOGLE WEBSITE OPTIMIZER OVERVIEW