Is your
website
being
falsely
labelled
in search
results
as a 'hacked' website even
though there's nothing wrong
with it? There isn't cause for
concern, because it might not
be something 'hidden' that
you apparently can't detect.
Google is reportedly working
on a new hacked page
classifier, and as a result, a
number of websites are
getting incorrectly marked as
'hacked' in search results.
This was acknowledged by
Google's John Mueller on
Google+.
We're slowly rolling
out a new hacked
page classifier and
noticed a small
number of
misclassifications.
We're sorry for any
trouble this may
have caused -- we
are working on
addressing the
issues.
Obviously, this is a very
serious problem, because
nobody in their right mind
would visit a hacked or
malicious website
intentionally, right? So if your
website has been effected,
here's what you do.
How to tell when your
website is effected?
First, do a quick search for
your site and see if a line of
blue text appears underneath
the title tag reading “This site
may be hacked.” If you don’t
see that line, you’re good. If
you do see that line, and
you’re certain your site is not
hacked, here’s what you can
do to fix it.
Fixing the problem
All you have to do is, fill out a
Google docs form for
misclassification of your
website. The link is given
below.
Google docs form for
misclassified websites
One you fill it out, someone
at Google will review it and
remove the label if your site
is in fact safe. It is not clear
how long you’d have to wait
before Google removes the
label on your site, but
hopefully they are quick
about it.
Mueller recommends getting
someone who is experienced
in working with hacked sites
to double-check whether or
not your site is really hacked,
because that’s a whole other
issue you’ll need to deal with.
If you have any further
questions, please feel free to
create a new thread in our
help forum, and we'll try to
help you our over there.
Leave your responses in the
comments section below.
Website
URL
structure
is an
important part of SEO that is
underestimated by many.
Beyond putting keywords into
the URL, many don't give it
second thought. And yet, it is
one of the simplest and most
important things to optimize,
and plays an important part
in search results. Today, we
will discuss some URL
optimization techniques to
improve your websites'
rankings.
When talking about URL
structures, a few things come
to mind, namely the URL
length, keywords, sub-
directories, special
characters, and the effect of
each of them on direct traffic
as well as search visibility.
Let's start with the simplest
of them all.
URL Length
The URL length isn't a game
changer in search rankings,
but it still is an important
factor. Not to say that long
URLs don't rank well - they
can because it ultimately
boils down to the content. But
on average, the dominating
search results mostly
average between 35-40
characters.
Not only that, the URL length
is a major contributor when it
comes to direct traffic - i.e.
people who come over by
typing the URL into their
browsers. The shorter the
URL, the easier it is to
remember.
Sub-directories
URLs often contain many sub-
directories/sub-folders. This
very page you are on
contains two. 2015/ and 05/.
As far as hierarchies go, it is
OK to have as few as you
want, or as many as you can
manage. There is no co-
relation between the number
of sub-directories and search
rankings. However, there are
a few things to keep in mind.
Generally, from the user-
friendliness aspect, it is
considered as a good
practice to keep it simple. It
accounts for more direct
traffic. Also, it is advisable to
keep numbers out of URLs,
and generally go with easy to
read words. For blog posts,
you can either use a dated
structure such as
site.com/2015/05/article.html,
or category structure such as
site.com/how-to/article.html.
Personally, I prefer the latter,
but you can go either way.
Also, make sure that the
images you upload are
named properly, so that when
opened, their URL is readable
and looks decent.
Keywords
Having a keyword within your
domain name and URL is a
declining factor in rankings. It
is becoming less important
over time since Google is
placing more emphasis on
other search factors. When
you create URLs within your
site, don’t worry about
making them keyword rich. It
doesn’t hurt to add keywords
if it makes sense, but you
shouldn't stuff your URLs with
keywords, or they will seem
unnatural.
Special Characters
Sometimes you see strange
characters in URLs such as
&, %, $, and @. It is more
difficult for search engines to
crawl websites if their URLs
contain a lot of these special
characters. Consider the fact
that Google has gone on
record to state that you
should be using dashes over
underscores because it
affects how their search
engine reads the keywords in
your URL. This is how
seriously you should take
these special characters.
According to an estimate by
Neil Patel, only about 0.2% of
high ranking URLs have
special characters in them.
If you are using images, don't
let spaces come in when you
name them. "autumn-sunset"
is better than "autumn
sunset" because the space
gets replaced by special
characters.
Long story short, optimizing
your URLs can't hurt your
rankings. However, don't
focus too much of your
marketing efforts on your
URL structure because it
doesn’t impact rankings as
much as backlinks or content
quality. It is just there to give
you a small edge, so might as
well avail it when you can.
Most often when you insert a
Facebook JavaScript or
AdSense JavaScript in your
blogger template editor, you
often come across XML
Parsing errors that prompts
and says "The reference to
entity "version" must end
with the ';' delimiter." Blogger
blogs are coded in XHTML
and XML is quite strict in
following correct syntax
formatting than HTML. XML is
surely unforgiving in this
case. Blogger interprets all
your document as XML rather
than as HTML. XML is
PCDATA (Parsed Character
Data) by default which means
that XML parsers will
normally parse all the text in
a document. As a result when
we insert JavaScript inside
blogspot templates, all script
inside the JavaScript tags is
treated as a text and due to
the presence of some illegal
special characters like "<" ,
">" and "&" , you often face
the following error:
Error parsing XML,
line 1458, column
64: The reference
to entity "version"
must end with the
';' delimiter.
What are the special
characters in XML that
causes error?
XML is a human readable
form of textual data. It parses
all the text in a document
and gives errors for the
following 5 special
characters:
1. (<) - less than
2. (&) - ampersand
3. (>) - greater than
4. (") - double-quote
5. (') - apostrophe or single-
quote
The following three are more
crucial:
"<" will generate an error
because the parser
interprets it as the start
of a new element.
">" will generate an error
because the parser
interprets it as the end of
a start-tag or an end-tag
"&" will generate an error
because the parser
interprets it as the start
of a character entity.
Two ways to fix XML errors in
Blogger
XML errors can be avoided by
using two methods:
1. Use CDATA
2. Escape HTML entities
1. Use CDATA
The term CDATA refers to
(Unparsed) Character Data
which is used about text data
that should not be parsed by
the XML parser. To avoid
errors, all script code is
enclosed inside a CDATA
section. Everything inside a
CDATA section including the
5 special characters is
ignored by the parser.
A CDATA section starts with
" ":
Next time when you add your
Facebook code, enclose it
inside CDATA as shown
below:
All your script code will exists
inside the CDATA and blogger
editor will not parse the
script code and thus wont
give any errors.
The reason why Facebook
script gives errors in blogger
is due to the presence of a
special character ( &) that is
used before the variable
"version" as highlighted in
the code above. "&" will
generate an error because
the XML parser interprets it
as the start of a character
entity and thus it prompts an
error that says:
The reference to
entity " version"
must end with the
';' delimiter.
2. Escape HTML entities
Another simple method is to
escape all 5 special
characters and instead use
the legal characters as
alternatives to the above 5.
Replace < with <
Replace > with >
Replace " with "
Replace ' with '
Replace & with &
PS: Note how every
alternative character set
ends with a delimiter (;)
This method will help you
encode your AdSense code
and paste it inside your
template without errors. It
will also help you paste
HTML code inside blogger
comments !
This method is also called as
HTML encoding and we
have built a Special tool for
this purpose to help you
encode HTML characters with
ease.
4. Here drop-down “jump to
widget” option and from that
list select Attribution1 as
highlighted below
5. Now in the editor press ctrl + F
and find for this line 
6. Now replace the locked=’true’
in to locked=’false’ as you can
see highlighted below
7. Once done click save template
8. Now go to layout option and at
the below you can see
attribution gadget, click edit.
9. In that popup window click
remove and you are done
Now go and view your site
where you won’t see the
“ powered by Blogger”
attribution.
Your copyright text is also
removed along with powered by
Blogger attribution. To add
copyright text just click add a
gadget in layout settings select
HTML/JavaScript, add your
copyright text and drag and
drop it below. Removing this
powered by Blogger attribution
adds uniqueness to your blog
and it shows your
professionalism. Hope this
helped you??
Outbreak of measles in the four
Area Councils of the Federal
Capital Territory (FCT) has
claimed the lives of 10 children.
The Executive Secretary of FCT
Administration Primary Health
Services, Rilwan Mohammed,
disclosed this in Abuja at a
press briefing to announce this
year’s follow-up measles
vaccination which kicks off on
November 21.
Mohammed said the 10 deaths
were recorded at an Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp
in Wasa, Abuja Municipal Area
Council (AMAC). He said the 10
children were from the 20 cases
recorded so far from the four
Area Councils – AMAC, Abaji,
Bwari and Gwagwalada.
The World Health Organisation
(WHO) said Africa had the
largest deaths from measles
and that Nigeria accounted for
the largest share. The
Executive Secretary, who spoke
through the Deputy Director,
Health Education and
Promotion, Hajia Nana Yusuf,
said the forthcoming follow-up
vaccination exercise was
targeted at reaching 100 per
cent of the children in the FCT.
Mohammed said the last
exercise in 2013 was able to
reach only 65 per cent owing to
poor awareness, cultural and
religious bias which prevented
many mothers from making
their children available for
vaccination.
He said: “Measles is a killer
disease responsible for the
deaths of thousands of Nigerian
children every year.
Measles vaccination campaign
will start in the FCT from
November 21 to 25. Take your
children aged nine months to
five years to the health centre
or vaccination post nearest to
you to be vaccinated even if
they have been vaccinated
before.”
[Daily Telegraph]