IM (Internet Marketing) Optimizer| Search Engines Marketer India

Google: Adding Too Many Pages Too Quickly May Flag A Site To Be Reviewed Manually

2013-04-18T03:21:00.002-07:00

Google’s Matt Cutts answered a question submitted by another Googler, John Mueller, on YouTube asking, “Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages all at once or in stages?”
The question is, if you build out a new section of your website with tons of content – is it safe to just launch them all at once or should you do smaller chunks at a time?

Matt said that Google can handle it either way, but he did say that if a site released hundreds of thousands of pages overnight, it may raise a red flag and warrant a manual review by the Google spam team. And if you do not want Google to manually review your site and you don’t want to draw attention to your site – you may not want to release too many pages too quickly.
Here is the video:

Duplicate Content: How to solve the problem

2013-04-16T22:27:00.002-07:00

What is the root of the duplicate content problem?

As we saw in the previous post duplicate content comes from submitting multiple times the same content in different pages or websites, from using incorrectly multiple domain names and from using incorrect web development and SEO practices.

In the first case, the problem is usually caused by the webmasters who try to promote their websites by posting the same articles, texts or press releases in multiple websites. Additionally this could be the result of an incorrect link building strategy in which SEOs try to increase the number of backlinks by submitting the same content to multiple sources. Thus in this case, the root of the duplicate content problem is theuser who tries to promote his website with grayhat or blackhat techniques.

In the second case, the problem is caused by companies that acquire and use multiple domain names for the same website. For example by pointing incorrectly the example.com and the example.co.uk to the same website it is certain that one will face duplicate content issues. Thus again in this case, the root of the problem is the webmaster or the web development company that does not know how to setup correctly the 301 redirections and that does not use the best web techniques.

The third case is much more interesting and technical. The root of the problem is that the HTTP protocoldoes not provide a standard way to identify the “best” URL of a particular page. This means that one page can be accessed by multiple valid URL addresses and at the same time no information is available about the canonical URL.

Examples:

http://example.com
http://www.Example.com
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/index.html
http://www.example.com/index.htm
http://www.example.com/index.html?somevar=

All the above URLs could lead to the same page, but the HTTP protocol will neither point out the “best” one nor guarantee that all the above addresses are directed to the same page. So in the above example the http://www.example.com and the http://www.example.com/index.html could either lead to the same or to 2 completely different pages.

Also we need to have in mind that there are lots of different languages (PHP, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, CGI, ColdFusion, etc) and web technologies that can be used in order to support dynamic websites. Due to the fact that the various web technologies support different features (default vs index pages, case sensitive vs case insensitive etc) the situation gets more complicated.

All the above difficulties make it easy for someone who does not understand how search engines work to make mistakes in the link structure of the website and affect the SEO campaign. So the question is how can we avoid those mistakes?

How to solve the duplicate content problem

In the first case the solution is relatively easy. All you need to do is to avoid submitting the exact same content to multiple sources and always make sure you use whitehat SEO techniques. Make sure you prepare different versions for the same article or press release so that search engines will not consider it as duplicate. This will help you build better links and generate more traffic.

In the second case, when there is the need of acquiring multiple domain names for the same website make sure you select only one primary domain and setup HTTP 301 redirections for the rest. So say for example that for a particular website you use 2 domain names: example.com (primary) and example.co.uk (secondary). Then what you want to do is to setup a 301 redirection to the example.co.uk so that whenever someone types this domain he/she will be redirected to the example.com. There are several ways to do this (DNS settings, .htaccess, PHP/ASP/JSP redirection etc), but the most straight forward is by modifying the DNS settings from the panel of your domain provider.

The third case is a bit more complicated. As we said in the previous article, Search Engines do take steps to minimize the effect of the duplicate problem by identifying the best URL for a particular page. They use a set of rules that are applied in the URLs in order to identify the best possible version (for example the trailing / is added after “.com”, the domain name is converted to lowercase, they determine whether to use the www or the non-www version etc). After that they are forced to visit the different URLs and analyze the pages in order to determine whether they are duplicate or unique. Nevertheless even if search engines do try to solve the issue, the SEO campaign can be affected and thus it is highly recommended working on your link structure in order to eliminate those problems.

Working on your link structure

So what you want to do is to make sure that all the links of your site point to the best URLs and that there are no situations where 2 different URLs lead to the same page.

Here is a list of the most important things you should look out:

Remove all the URL variables that are not important from all the links (SESSIONIDs, empty variables etc).
Decide whether to use the www or the non-www version for your site and place a 301 redirection to the other version.
Decide whether to use the “index.html” in the URL when you point to the default page of a folder
Add the trailing / at the end of each folder.

There is a great article by Ian Ring on this subject so I am not going to discuss it further. Make sure you read his article “Be a Normalizer – a C14N Exterminator” and also the Wikipedia article on URL normalization. All these tips can help you optimize the link structure of your website and this is going to help you solve the major duplicate problems.

301 redirections

Another great way to solve the problem is by using 301 redirections. Especially in cases where the incoming links of a particular page are divided between the various duplicate versions of the page it is highly recommended to use the above rules in order to select the “best” URL and then setup 301 redirections to the rest of the pages. This can be done easily by using either the .htaccess file or a programming solution (PHP redirection).

Canonical Tag

When working on the link structure of the website is not an option there is an alternative called Canonical Tag. The Canonical Tag was proposed by Google in order to resolve the duplicate content issue.

To be precise it is not a tag but a value of the attribute rel of the <link> tag:

It is placed in the HTML headers in order to notify the search engines about the best URL for the particular page. Using the canonical in your pages is something very useful and it can help you reduce drastically the amount of duplicate content within your site. Additionally it is a great way to pass the link juice that is lost to the duplicates back to the canonical pages.

Keep in mind that this tag is only a hint, not a directive for the major search engines. In order to use it properly the URLs (both the canonical and the duplicates) must be almost identical.

For more information about Canonical URLs check out the article of Matt Cutts SEO advice: url canonicalization and the article of the official Google Blog Specify your canonical.

The best methods to solve the duplicate content problem

As we said above, there are several ways to solve the problem. Here is the list of the methods that you should use (Note that it is highly recommended to try solving the problem by using the first 3 ways):

Work on your link structure
Use 301 redirections
Use canonical tag
Exclude parameters such as sessionIDs from Google Webmaster Tools Console
Last resort, block the duplicate content with robots.txt

Source - webseoanalytics

What Is Your Company’s Digital Marketing IQ?

2013-04-12T00:03:00.001-07:00

There is a continuing disconnect with people’s personal use of the internet and how they then apply digital marketing to promote their business.

The company CEO will use Google for researching and buying a new car but when it comes to optimizing his web site for ranking high in Google he struggles to see the value and perceives that building a website is all he needs to do to be “found online” and generate mountains of cash.

The Company With A Feeble Digital IQ

Only the other day I heard about the owner of a company who had recently won a business award and when they came to present it they mentioned that everything was great about his business except they were surprised that he didn’t even have a website!

This disconnect between time spent on media and use of media for marketing becomes quite apparent when you look at the hard data and becomes apparent that organisations are lagging the consumer.

Companies Media Marketing Dollars Are Being Wasted

JP Morgan research shows that only 7% of media is consumed through our newspapers, yet corporate America is allocating 20% of its media dollars to traditional newspaper marketing (this is a bad forward leading indicator for shareholders of newspapers).

Looking at the Internet figures it reveals that only 12% of media marketing spend is allocated to online media but 26% of media time is spent online. If we dig a little deeper on the numbers it is even more damning. If you are under 40 and earning over $50,000, media consumption increases to over 50% for the internet. In essence corporations are spending much more on media where the consumer is no longer hanging out and is somewhere else.

5 SEO Tools You Might Not Have… Yet

2013-04-10T00:43:00.004-07:00

When it comes to lists of SEO tools, you typically see the same names bounced back and forth. Today, I’d like to share some tools I use on a regular basis that you may not have in your toolkit just yet. The best part – they’re all perfect for SEO’s and businesses with smaller budgets.

iSpionage

You can’t begin any search marketing campaign without a list of great keywords to target.iSpionage is known for their PPC research tools, but they also have powerful keyword research features as well. When you enter a keyword into their search, you will first see the top 10 PPC competitors along with a graph showing the advertising trend for the keyword.

After a block of related keywords is one of my favorite parts: a glimpse of the top-performing, longest-running ads in Google related to your keyword.

What’s nice about this is you can see how other websites are using the keyword. When you click on the Ads tab, you can review even more ad copy and landing page combinations sorted conveniently by the number of days seen. It can be a great way to spark some ideas on content and calls to action.

Last but not least, you can see the top SEO competitors in Google based on organic search traffic. Some results will list the number of backlinks, pages, and total number of keywords each competitor has in the search index. This can help you gauge what it will take to beat them for a desired keyword phrase.

Other handy features offered to paid members are the Keyword Monitor Dashboard and Competitor Alert. With the Keyword Monitor, you can keep track of your current rankings for the keywords you are tracking. It also includes a historical analysis so you can see the progress of your search marketing campaign.

With the Competitor Alert, you can enter your top competitor’s domains and be notified when they add new ad copy, PPC keywords, and SEO keywords. This way, you don’t have to keep checking up on your competitors to find out if they are targeting something new.

cognitiveSEO

Once you have your targeted keyword phrases organized, your next job will be researching the backlinks of your competitors. cognitiveSEO offers a visual approach to learning about your competitor’s backlink profile that includes charts for deep link ratios, dofollow to nofollow, website types, website categories, link trustworthiness, and much more.

You can also use the new Visual Link Explorer tool to see the link profile as a whole and drill down into the specifics.

You can also drill down into the traditional list of backlinks to filter out results.

cognitiveSEO also offers additional features to help you with your link building campaign including a link management tool that you can use to upload backlinks you have acquired / requested to monitor their status as well as a rank tracking tool to make sure your SEO efforts are yielding results. There is even a handy to do list feature to help you manage tasks assigned to various members of your team.

Broken Link Finder

The broken link building strategy is a great one to employ for link building, but it can be time consuming. Fortunately, there is a faster way to do it. The Broken Link Finder tool allows paid members to search for a keyword or keyword phrase and get potential broken link opportunities.

You can then export the backlinks for these broken links into a CSV to start contacting webmasters in hopes that your helpful tip about a broken link will result in your link getting placed on their page. You can use your membership credits to reserve a particular search result so that no one else can discover it again or use them to find similar broken link opportunities.

Whitespark

If you are working with a local website, then Whitespark is a must have resource. This citation finder will go out and find local search opportunities based on your website’s keywords and location.

You will get to see the domain, direct submit link, type of website, Majestic SEO AC Rank, Domain Authority, and date discovered. The results are based off of backlinks / citations that other local competitors have gained. It’s a great way to get new link building opportunities for local and non-local websites alike.

Link Detox

Unfortunately, if your website has acquired any form of bad links in the past, it is susceptible to a link penalty from Google. If you think your website has been hit with a Google penalty based on you links, then the Link Detox report from Link Research Tools is a must have. You simply enter your domain or upload your links from Google Webmaster Tools. It will then mark your links as healthy, suspicious, and toxic. This will give you a better idea of which links to remove first.

When you export your report, you will see details about why a link was marked as suspicious or toxic. Along with the reasoning, you’ll see the URL linking to your website, what page it’s linking to, anchor text, dofollow / nofollow, and other metrics.

Best of all, you don’t have to have a recurring membership plan with LRT to get access to this tool. You can sign up for a Daypass at $39 for 72 hours access and 3 Link Detox reports (plus access to some of their other tools). Just be sure to export your reports before your daypass expires.

These are some of the tools I use for keyword research, competitor research, local search, and link building. What are your favorite lesser-known tools for SEO?

Source: -.search engine journal.com

Google: 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical

2013-04-09T00:15:00.002-07:00

Including a rel=canonical link in your webpage is a strong hint to search engines your preferred version to index among duplicate pages on the web. It’s supported by several search engines, including Yahoo!, Bing, and Google. The rel=canonical link consolidates indexing properties from the duplicates, like their inbound links, as well as specifies which URL you’d like displayed in search results. However, rel=canonical can be a bit tricky because it’s not very obvious when there’s a misconfiguration.

While the webmaster sees the “red velvet” page on the left in their browser, search engines notice on the webmaster’s unintended “blue velvet” rel=canonical on the right.

We recommend the following best practices for using rel=canonical:

A large portion of the duplicate page’s content should be present on the canonical version.

One test is to imagine you don’t understand the language of the content—if you placed the duplicate side-by-side with the canonical, does a very large percentage of the words of the duplicate page appear on the canonical page? If you need to speak the language to understand that the pages are similar; for example, if they’re only topically similar but not extremely close in exact words, the canonical designation might be disregarded by search engines.

Double-check that your rel=canonical target exists (it’s not an error or “soft 404”)
Verify the rel=canonical target doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag
Make sure you’d prefer the rel=canonical URL to be displayed in search results (rather than the duplicate URL)
Include the rel=canonical link in either the <head> of the page or the HTTP header
Specify no more than one rel=canonical for a page. When more than one is specified, all rel=canonicals will be ignored.

Mistake 1: rel=canonical to the first page of a paginated series

Imagine that you have an article that spans several pages:

example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=1
example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=2
and so on

Specifying a rel=canonical from page 2 (or any later page) to page 1 is not correct use of rel=canonical, as these are not duplicate pages. Using rel=canonical in this instance would result in the content on pages 2 and beyond not being indexed at all.

Good content (e.g., “cookies are superior nutrition” and “to vegetables”) is lost when specifying rel=canonical from component pages to the first page of a series.

In cases of paginated content, we recommend either a rel=canonical from component pages to a single-page version of the article, or to use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” pagination markup.

rel=canonical from component pages to the view-all page

If rel=canonical to a view-all page isn’t designated, paginated content can use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” markup.

Mistake 2: Absolute URLs mistakenly written as relative URLs

The <link> tag, like many HTML tags, accepts both relative and absolute URLs. Relative URLs include a path “relative” to the current page. For example, “images/cupcake.png” means “from the current directory go to the “images” subdirectory, then to cupcake.png.” Absolute URLs specify the full path—including the scheme like http://.

Specifying <link rel=canonical href=“example.com/cupcake.html” /> (a relative URL since there’s no “http://”) implies that the desired canonical URL is http://example.com/example.com/cupcake.html even though that is almost certainly not what was intended. In these cases, our algorithms may ignore the specified rel=canonical. Ultimately this means that whatever you had hoped to accomplish with this rel=canonical will not come to fruition.

Mistake 3: Unintended or multiple declarations of rel=canonical

Occasionally, we see rel=canonical designations that we believe are unintentional. In very rare circumstances we see simple typos, but more commonly a busy webmaster copies a page template without thinking to change the target of the rel=canonical. Now the site owner’s pages specify a rel=canonical to the template author’s site.

If you use a template, check that you didn’t also copy the rel=canonical specification.

Another issue is when pages include multiple rel=canonical links to different URLs. This happens frequently in conjunction with SEO plugins that often insert a default rel=canonical link, possibly unbeknownst to the webmaster who installed the plugin. In cases of multiple declarations of rel=canonical, Google will likely ignore all the rel=canonical hints. Any benefit that a legitimate rel=canonical might have offered will be lost.

In both these types of cases, double-checking the page’s source code will help correct the issue. Be sure to check the entire <head> section as the rel=canonical links may be spread apart.

Check the behavior of plugins by looking at the page’s source code.

Mistake 4: Category or landing page specifies rel=canonical to a featured article

Let’s say you run a site about desserts. Your dessert site has useful category pages like “pastry” and “gelato.” Each day the category pages feature a unique article. For instance, your pastry landing page might feature “red velvet cupcakes.” Because the “pastry” category page has nearly all the same content as the “red velvet cupcake” page, you add a rel=canonical from the category page to the featured individual article.

If we were to accept this rel=canonical, then your pastry category page would not appear in search results. That’s because the rel=canonical signals that you would prefer search engines display the canonical URL in place of the duplicate. However, if you want users to be able to find both the category page and featured article, it’s best to only have a self-referential rel=canonical on the category page, or none at all.

Remember that the canonical designation also implies the preferred display URL. Avoid adding a rel=canonical from a category or landing page to a featured article.

Mistake 5: rel=canonical in the <body>

The rel=canonical link tag should only appear in the <head> of an HTML document. Additionally, to avoid HTML parsing issues, it’s good to include the rel=canonical as early as possible in the <head>. When we encounter a rel=canonical designation in the <body>, it’s disregarded.

This is an easy mistake to correct. Simply double-check that your rel=canonical links are always in the <head> of your page, and as early as possible if you can.

rel=canonical designations in the <head> are processed, not the <body>.

Conclusion

To create valuable rel=canonical designations:

Verify that most of the main text content of a duplicate page also appears in the canonical page.
Check that rel=canonical is only specified once (if at all) and in the <head> of the page.
Check that rel=canonical points to an existent URL with good content (i.e., not a 404, or worse, a soft 404).
Avoid specifying rel=canonical from landing or category pages to featured articles as that will make the featured article the preferred URL in search results.

10 Things SEOs & SMBs Should Know About New Google Places Dashboard

2013-04-09T00:11:00.003-07:00

Recently, Google announced some significant changes to their Google Places dashboard. The wires have been humming ever since, and the reaction has ranged from fall-off-seat excitement to ‘humph, is that it!?’

Whatever the opinion, the truth is that these changes signify a big development in the way Google handles ‘Local.’ Google has been talking up the importance of local for an age, and the increased real estate given to local results in SERPs backs this up. They have also updated and iterated their local product almost more than their main search product in the last 12 months.

But, despite this rhetoric and commitment, Google has given scant attention to how SMBs use and manage their data within maps/Google+ Local.

Tuesday’s announcement changes this. The new ‘Places for Business’ dashboard is all about making life easier and clearer for SMBs to manage their data and promotion within Google’s local products (Maps/Mobile/+Local), and they have really put some thought into solving the backend issues and providing a helpful, consolidated interface.

Hang on… before I go too far with the praise, let me make one thing very clear. This update is also designed to make it easy for SMBs to purchase Adwords Express. Google has struggled to monetize ‘Local,’ and this update puts AdWords Express front and center on the dashboard in the hope that SMBs will start to spend more with them. ‘Google the Benevolent?’ (Yeah, right…)

Listed below are ten things SEOs and SMBs should know about the new dashboard.

1. Phased Rollout – Many Changes Still To Come

This update has addressed a number of issues which have confused and frustrated SEOs and SMBs for years; but it has not improved all issues and niggles. This is very much a v1.0 for the new dashboard, and there are many more improvements to come over the coming months.

2. Only Available To New Profiles Or Newly Verified Profiles

The new dashboard is only available for new listings (newly created or newly verified) and not for existing, verified listings. As soon as a listing is verified, they will get access to the new dashboard. However, those of us with existing verified listings will have to wait until the rollout reaches us.

Also, the dashboard is only currently available in the US. Once rollout is complete in the US, then it will jump across to other territories. There’s no clear timeline on this; so, it’s a case of carry on doing what you’re doing and wait till Christmas arrives!

3. Easier, Faster, Clearer Update Route For Google+ Local Page

This change is a huge improvement – and a big thumbs-up to Google for sorting this out!

The current/old dashboard had a slow and tenuous link to the Google+ Local page with changes made in the old dashboard taking a long time to show up on the visible Google+ listing.

The new dashboard feeds data directly into Google’s updated ‘knowledge graph’ data structure. This enhanced structure makes management of data within Google better, and Google puts more trust in this data.

The upshot for SMBs is that any changes made via the dashboard have greater trust and should go live on their Google+ Local page faster – within 48 hours, according to various sources.

4. Verification Process Still The Same

Thumbs down on this one, I’m afraid!

The verification process for listings is still the same. Businesses still need to get a PIN via mail, SMS or phone call and enter this into their listings so they can take control of their listing.

But, there is a clearer process for disputed listings. If you want to take control of a listing which is currently claimed into a different Google account. there is a clear, stepped appeal process. Listings can no longer be claimed into multiple accounts, which will greatly reduce confusion over listing ownership and administration.

It also appears (fingers firmly crossed) as if this process is going to be overseen by a dedicated customer support team, which would be a hugely welcome change.

Sources - searchengineland

SEO Step Delivers Performance

2013-03-31T20:53:00.000-07:00

Having worked with some of the biggest brands in India and abroad, SEO Step has the relevant experience and expertise to accomplish high value projects. A strong team of optimizers have contributed to the impeccable reputation that it commands. The portfolio of SEO Step features international brands and boasts of some high performing websites, helped over 700 companies to take advantage of a site that is a lead magnet.

SEO Step provides value added services that ensure that the client’s online requirements are fulfilled. Apart from marketing, it also develops custom web applications that help organizations automate various business processes and generate revenue. All in all SEO Step is an integrated online marketing agency in Mumbai that delivers high quality web based business solutions.

SEO Step is an Online Marketing agency based in Mumbai that has, for over a decade, consistently delivered Performance Based SEO Services. SEO Step has maintained high standards and has created landmark sites in terms of online marketing. Over the last few years, SEO Step has accomplished some very challenging sites in terms of being extensive and involving complicated functionalists.

Author:

Study Finds Google’s Penguin Update Getting Stricter Over Time

2013-03-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

A study by Portent, an Internet marketing company, shows that Google’s tolerance of spammy links to trigger a Penguin algorithm ranking drop has declined by 30% since the Penguin algorithm launched.

The study shows that of the 500,000 links found, Google has been steadily reducing its tolerance for webspam. Now, Google is likely to penalize sites with as little as 50 percent suspicious links in their link profiles, whereas 80 percent was required when Penguin first launched.

Portent analyzed about 10,000 links pointing at each of the top 50 sites on the 2012 Inc. 5000 list. They then captured the SEOMOZ and Majestic SEO data for each incoming link. They designed a crawler to score the link as spam based on the page the link is linking to being related to the page the link is coming from. They did this and collected data on more than 250,000 links pointing at penalized sites, and 250,000 links pointing at non-penalized sites.

Here are the results over time:

Source: - Search Engine Land

Phone Numbers No Longer Allowed in Google AdWords Ad Text

2013-03-24T21:02:00.003-07:00

If you want to include a phone number in your AdWords ad, you'll need to use the call extensions feature. Starting in April, Google will begin disapproving any ads that include telephone numbers in the ad text, according to a recent policy update.

The official word from Google:

In the next few weeks, we will no longer allow phone numbers to be used in the ad text of new ads. Advertisers who would still like to promote phone numbers in their AdWords advertising can use the call extensions feature. We're posting this alert now to provide adequate lead time to make ad changes.
In April 2013, we will begin to disapprove ads that were using phone numbers in their ad text before the March 2013 policy change.

While an ad like this is currently showing, once April rolls around that ad will no longer be allowed in AdWords: Sources: - Search Engine Watch

Google: Sorry We Accidentally Penalized Your Site

2013-03-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Digg was completely delisted from Google's search index. Some thought it was an issue with their robots.txt file, some thought it was a Google bug and some had no idea what to think.

What was it? Google accidentally penalized the whole site. Yes, it was an accident.

Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, said on Hacker News, "we were tackling a spammer and inadvertently took action on the root page of digg.com."

Google released an official statement as well:

"We're sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We're correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly."

Google Launches Notes Service Google Keep

2013-03-20T20:44:00.002-07:00

Google today launched Keep, an app that allows you to save things, clip stuff from the web, hoard notes and what not and put them all onto your Google Drive. Yup, you guessed it — it is an imitation to Evernote and many other such applications. It is a good thing that Google has decided to compete with the likes of Evernote — it validates their market.

It might actually be good, or even better than Evernote. But I still won’t use Keep. You know why? Google Reader.

I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned.

Looking from that perspective, it is hard to trust Google to keep an app alive. What if I spend months using the app, and then Google decides it doesn’t meet some arbitrary objective? Evernote has my data and frankly, I’m glad to pay them to keep it because they are who they are. One of the reasons I use Evernote is because it is their only thing. (For now.) Evernote is focused on making the service better. And it keeps that focus every year.

Evernote is like Derek Jeter, playing shortstop and trying to win every day. Google? It is the digital Mr. Ripley.

Sorry Google, but you might not realize that you are acting like the company you wanted to replace: Microsoft. The Barons of Redmond used to float products into the market — smart displays and weird stuff — that companies like Samsung and LG would put out in the market, only to yank them later. In the end, I stopped believing in Microsoft and shifted my dollars and attention to other brands.

And by the way – how is this app strategic for you guys and Reader is not? A little clarity would certainly be appreciated.

How about a pledge? If you build it, we use it, and you use our personal data to make your other products better or your ad sales executives richer, then you will keep it around.

Source: Giga Om Image courtesy of Flickr user Dano

Redesign Your Existing Website? Here’s What You Should Consider

2013-03-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

It’s often a dilemma for marketers, whether they should redesign their website. Some of the fears of redesigning a website are that the web traffic would stall and the search engine rankings would drop. There are few aspects that need to be taken care of while redesigning the website. Following article would help you in getting your redesigned website right.

Continue Brand Theme:-

Though the approach towards the new website should be fresh, there should be a continuing string of brand themes and elements that need to be weaved into the new website. The redesigned website should be fresh but familiar to the loyal customers of the company. A drastic change in the design and interface of the website would alienate the customer and might result in a drop in recurring or nurtured leads.

Maintain navigation and user interface:-

Your leads are used to a certain format of navigation and browse about your site intuitively. Drastically changing your site navigation and interface could lead to the lead getting confused. Browsers like quick and easy navigation and this should be facilitated through an easy navigation and interface.

Minimum Page Layers:-

The number of new pages and links must be restricted as it would distract the user from the primary objective of his visit. Lesser the number of pages, more focused the site, and effect more effective. However care should be taken to see that the page and link restriction does not have an impact on the SEO efforts of the company.

Search Engine Rankings

One of the most important aspects that need to be considered during website design is the SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The web designer or the web designing company must ensure that the websites equity should not be affected. Google reindexing should be taken care of as the website may get recognized as a completely new site. There are ways to bypass SEO related hurdles. Some of the things that the web design company could do is to retain all meta tags and meta keywords. The URLs should also be kept unchanged as change in URLs could lead to those pages getting cached anew. There should be an effective use of canonical tags and 301 redirects. The sitemap must be immediately submitted to Search Engines, once the website is launched.

Maintain a backup of the old website, including images and content

Losing content and missing out on details happens often. To avoid this, it is essential to have a backupof the entire site. Moreover, it is important to maintain a repository of all the files and creatives used within the site.

If the above aspects are taken care of, transition to a redesigned website becomes easy.

Author:

Google Penalized One Article On BBC’s Web Site

2013-03-18T21:48:00.002-07:00

Google did end commenting on why the BBC received an unnatural link notification despite offering us a “no comment” on our story this past Friday.

Was the BBC penalized for unnatural links? Was it possible that the world’s largest news organization was not trusted by Google’s algorithms? The answer is, only one article was penalized.

Google Search Engine Updates

2013-03-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

Page Rank Has Changed, Google search engine update in full Effect. !!!

Feel like Chicken Little crying the sky is falling; one thing is for sure the sky is still up there, But is your posts still on page one of Google or on page ten. Is your post still number one on page one or number three four or five or at the bottom.
For some something wonderful has happened for other the Sky has just fallen. !!!
Really things are not where they were stuff that was on page one not there at all, thing that were on page 5 or 6 now on page 1 or 2.

This newest update on Google has really moved stuff around so much so, that everyone is going to notice that they are not where they use to be.
Now I just wonder how often stuffs going to move think this is a different Google Keeping it fresh and when someone comes along with new better information their going to step into that number one spot until better info is posted than they are out too.
I find this very exciting seem like Google has leveled the playing field so to Speak.
More to come!

Author:

Google Panda: 5 Tips You Should Know

2013-03-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

Google Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. CNET reported a surge in the rankings of news websites and social networking sites, and a drop in rankings for sites containing large amounts of advertising. This change reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12 percent of all search results. Soon after the Panda rollout, many websites, including Google's webmaster forum, became filled with complaints of scrapers/copyright infringers getting better rankings than sites with original content. At one point, Google publicly asked for data points to help detect scrapers better. Google's Panda has received several updates since the original rollout in February 2011, and the effect went global in April 2011. To help affected publishers, Google published an advisory on its blog, thus giving some direction for self-evaluation of a website's quality. Google has provided a list of 23 bullet points on its blog answering the question of "What counts as a high-quality site?" that is supposed to help webmasters "step into Google's mindset". Read more....(wikepedia)

It’s here. It’s inevitable. It’s called Google Panda, the latest Google’s search algorithm which aims to promote the high quality content site by dooming the rank of low quality content sites. Since its release and updates, many sites have been shown to be terribly affected by the algorithm, but the worst rumor here is, they can do almost nothing to recover the ranking and traffic.

(Image Source: famousbloggers.net)

Although the web haven’t sought out an absolute remedy to the Panda’s update, we all know that Panda is pretty much a content quality filter. We also know a proverb saying, “Prevention is better than cure”, so in this post we are going to provide 5 essential tips to help you to prevent the judgment by Google Panda. Full detail at the jump!

1. Separate Out Low Quality Content

The first and foremost thing you can probably do is to separate out all auto-generated content. Block the indexing and crawling of all low quality content to prevent it from lowering the ranking of your entire site. Low value content can cause the algorithm to slap down your entire site even if a great deal of your content is unique and valuable.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

To know whether your site content is low quality or not, here are some helpful questions asked by Google Webmaster Central Blog to aid you in determining the low quality content:

Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Interestingly, identical low quality content is particularly endemic across e-commerce websites. For example, why should a pair of audio cables be described differently in each website and in each page on your website? Theoretically to meet the "unique" content guideline every product should be given an unique description and listing to avoid being marked as “low-quality” content by Panda.

2. Focus On Unique Content

As we know the Panda update is aimed to bring the judgment to the content farm and those sites which steal and duplicate, that means in order to prevent Panda from blacklisting you, you have to stop stealing other’s articles, and really focus on creating unique content.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

Try to look at your place in your industry and say to yourself:

“What is the topic that my readers will be interested about?”
“What do I offer to my readers that are unique? What about my content is just here and nowhere else?”

Don’t copy or retype out the article from other site, but craft your article out with your own topic and opinion. Details? Check out our post on how to run blogs that inspire.
That sounds pretty much like old school SEO practice, you might ask? The answer is yes, but now it’s the most important SEO practice!

3. Concentrate on Clout & Authority

In Richard Baxter’s article entitled High Quality Web Sites – The New Google Ranking Factor, elements like trust and authority matter in the new Panda update. It may extend to your links, your tweets and your resources related with the site.

(Image Source: SmartBloggerz)

According to the writer, trust could be measured by the links awarded to the article, and the more authoritative the link, the more trustworthy the article. If significant volumes of links aren’t enough just yet, possibly a shorter term solution could be to analyze the social buzz associated with the article, such as Twitter and Facebook.
We often talk about the links, but the site content itself is the critical factor which will attract the authoritative links and judged by Google Panda in the term of authority. On this part, Google Webmaster Central Blog has listed out some questions for you as a guideline to produce what they thought is the “authoritative content”:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by expert/enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

So you know, these questions aren’t hard to answer, but challenging when it comes to implementation. Build your content with these questions in mind, and your site will be too good for both Google Panda and your fellow readers.

4. Keep Advertising Ratio Healthy

Sure we all like to be paid for ads, but apply ads with attitude. 3 sponsors at $10K are better than 20 ads at $500. Keeping your ads down to a healthy ratio is not only good with Panda but it also improves your reader’s user experience.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

So you know, ads is totally okay, but no advertisement scheme that will kill your reader’s user experience really fast, in term of visual experience and page loading speed. Healthy advertising ratio is even the reason that your readers will love and recommend your site than those sites with nastily cluttered ads, and by doing so will indirectly raise the trustworthiness and authority of your site.

5. Recognize & Track Panda Updates

Sites hit by Panda will show massive changes especially the page views. When using Google Analytics you will see an epic fall in traffic, that’s the possible sign of Panda. Limiting the search parameters in Google Analytics to the United States market will show the clear result of Panda attack. If you’re unfortunately the victim of the Panda, you can:

Implement the changes suggested above.
Ask Google to restore your rankings.

Don’t expect immediate improvement because Panda only updates periodically. If you still haven’t reached a Zen-like state of acceptance go and check out Barry Schwartz’s list and Panda archives at Seoroundtable.com or Mark Nunney’s Google Panda Survival Guide, or ultimately the Guidance of Building High Quality Sites by Google Webmaster Central Blog
And always remember that, all of these Panda updates are to remind you that, don’t be evil.

Source: hongkiat.com

8 Google Chrome Extensions to Boost Your Productivity

2013-03-03T20:54:00.001-08:00

1. Screen Capture

2. Send With Gmail

3. Write Space

4. Chroma

5. Google Voice

6. LastPass

7. Print Friendly

8. Tab Packager

Source: mashable

Yahoo Clues, App Search & Other Products To Shut Down April 1

2013-03-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Since taking over as Yahoo’s CEO, she’s spoken repeatedly on the need to zero in on being part of its users’ “daily habits.”

Today, the company announced the shut down of seven products that don’t fit that “daily habit” mantra. Included in the group are a couple search-related products, including one under-the-radar keyword research tool that we (and others) have written about fondly in the past.

Yahoo Clues will be shut down on April 1st. It was poorly named and was primarily positioned as a search trends product, but for SEOs it was an interesting keyword research tool. Clues launched in late 2010 and was expanded about nine months later.

It provided a snapshot of keyword searches over time, plus great demographic information about keyword preferences between male and female, different age groups and by location.

I don’t know how widely used it was by search marketers, but in my experience, every time it was mentioned in conversation or blog posts, people had good things to say about Yahoo Clues.

Yahoo App Search is also shutting down on April 1st. This was a fairly standard search product with apps sorted by category and various filters available to searchers. Search results sent users to the appropriate app store if they wanted to buy/download something they found. Itlaunched in 2011.

Also on Yahoo’s chopping block:

Yahoo app for Blackberry. This will no longer be available for download as of April 1st, but the existing will continue to work — unsupported — after that date.
Yahoo Avatars. This won’t be supported after April 1st.
Yahoo Sports IQ. This is shutting down on April 1st.
Yahoo Message Boards. Also shutting down on April 1st, but the message boards that within individual Yahoo sites (like Finance and Fantasy Sports) will remain active.
Yahoo Updates API. This won’t be supported after April 16th.

Source: Search Engine Land

How To Get Full Referral & Content URLs From Google Analytics

2013-02-28T02:22:00.000-08:00

While cruising through the standard reports in Google Analytics (GA), you may have noticed that you can only get URIs (the part of the URL that follows the domain, AKA hostname). You can’t get the full URLs. That can be pretty unhelpful. So, I’m going to show you some tricks to pull full URLs into your GA reports in an export-friendly format.

Helpful Export Tip

Before you even get started creating these reports, you’ll need to know how to get all of the rows from your report into your export. The GA interface caps you out at 500 rows. However, to get more, just look at the bottom-right corner of your report to see how many rows you have.

Then, choose 25 from the “Show rows” drop-down. At the very end of the report URL, you’ll see this: table.rowCount%3D25. This tells GA that you want 25 rows. Change 25 to however many rows you need in your export — which would be 6001, in my case.

Get Full Referral URLs

This isn’t immediately apparent, but if you’re in the Referrals report (Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals), the standard report is set up so that if you click on one of the referral sources, you’ll see the URI(s) visitors clicked through from.

Click for larger image

However, if you export the report (by clicking Export from the top navigation bar), you’re only going to get the URIs for the referral source you clicked on, not the sources and not the URIs for any of the other referral sources. Not very useful.

If you want the full URLs, you’ll need to create a custom report. If you’re not comfortable with creating a custom report in GA, I created a video walkthrough. You’ll never want to suffer the confines of standard reports again.

Here’s how I set up my custom report:

Click for larger image

Or, you can apply it to your own GA account by using this share link. Important: make sure you’re logged in to GA when you open the link — or copy it into a browser where you’re logged in. Otherwise, you’ll get a 404 error.

Pro Tip: If you want to create a pivot table with both the referral source and the full URL, use this custom report. This custom report will give you the ability to create a pivot table that lists the full referral URLs under the source to easily group multiple links from the same site. Your pivot table would look something like this:

Source:- Search Engine Land

Google Panda Two Years Later: Losers Still Losing & One Real Recovery

2013-02-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

Two years ago today, Google sent shockwaves through not only the SEO industry, but also through online publishing in general when it launched the Panda algorithm update.

It was originally called the “farmer” update because Google’s prime target was “content farms,” a name used to describe sites that created high-quantities of low-quality content that sometimes ranked highly in Google’s search results. Although Google didn’t specifically say it was targeting content farms when Panda launched, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, told us at the time: “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

People did.

And Google’s targets became more obvious in the days after Panda launched when several search and software companies began issuing lists of winners and losers — websites that had been hurt or helped by Google’s algorithm change.

Of course, for every loser that lost search visibility, there’s also a winner that gained search visibility. But few of those winners have spoken out in the two years since Panda.

As you’ll see below, on a list of nearly two dozen of Panda’s original losers, only two websites have returned to the SEO visibility that they had about three weeks post-Panda. The others have all continued to lose search visibility.

Some other Panda-hit websites have recovered, though not all of those recoveries have been permanent. We’ll look at all that later in this article. First, some background.

Background: Panda’s Original Winners & Losers

It only took two days for the first look at Panda’s winners and losers to come in. Companies like Searchmetrics, Sistrix and others used their own tools and data to tell which websites lost or gained visibility in Google’s search results. Though these reports are far from official, many of the sites impacted eventually stepped forward to confirm that they were hit.

Panda’s early winners included several major content destinations like YouTube and Wikipedia, plus large brands like eBay and Amazon. Hundreds of other sites, big and small, no doubt saw their visibility go up as others were hurt. As I said above, for every loser that drops out of Google’s search results, there has to be a winner replacing it.

Our reports on Panda’s early losers listed hundreds of sites; here are some that were commonly included:

EzineArticles.com
HubPages.com
AssociatedContent.com
Mahalo.com
Examiner.com
Suite101.com
Buzzle.com
Squidoo.com
Buzzillions.com

You might’ve expected to see some of Demand Media’s sites on that list, but they were largely left off the first lists of Panda losers. More on that in a moment.

How Are The Panda Losers Now?

In a nutshell: Still losing.

In fact, some of Panda’s losers no longer exist and others have completely changed their name and/or business model. That’s the topic of tomorrow’s article.

We recently asked Searchmetrics to go back to one of its original lists of Panda losers from two years ago, and run its same “SEO Visibility” report on some of them. The company did that last week, and provided loads of information. (Note: We also contacted Sistrix with a similar request, but didn’t receive a reply in time for inclusion in this article.)

Searchmetrics looked at 22 Panda losers and compared their visibility in Google’s search results at three points:

Before Panda (February 20, 2011)
After Panda (March 13, 2011)
Now (February 17, 2013)

The results? None of the 22 sites has returned to its pre-Panda visibility, and only two sites have improved their visibility today compared to their post-Panda visibility.

Here’s a spreadsheet that Searchmetrics shared with us (you can click to see a larger version):

(Note: The numbers reflect Searchmetrics’ “SEO Visibility” score, which doesn’t reflect estimated traffic losses, but instead reflects how visible a domain is in Google’s search results across millions of keywords that the company tracks.)

In the image above, the key columns are to the far right: H and I. The way to read it is this: Suite101.com has seen its SEO visibility drop 96 percent since before Panda and has dropped 81 percent from its post-Panda visibility.

If you browse down column I, you’ll only see two sites with a positive number: Both MerchantCircle.com and Business.com have rebounded enough to have their current SEO visibility score be better than it was after Panda launched. But, as column H shows, both are both still far less visible than they were before Panda came along — as are all of the other 20 sites in this Searchmetrics list.

The SEO visibility chart for Business.com, shown below, is an eye-opener.

Panda’s impact is obvious in February 2011, and the site’s visibility looks like a seesaw after that. It appears to have won back visibility in late 2011 or early 2012, around the time of Panda 9or 10. It’s bounced a few times since then and today is doing a little better than it was right after Panda, but nowhere near pre-Panda visibility.

What About Demand Media Sites?

They’re not included above because, for the most part, they weren’t originally among the big Panda losers.

The company’s flagship site, eHow.com — a site that many associated with the term “content farm” — was actually reported to have gained visibility when Panda launched. That didn’t last long, though; eHow was hit a couple months later when Google rolled out Panda 2.0. Searchmetrics’ chart shows eHow gaining visibility in February 2011 when Panda launched, but losing it in April 2011.

Although the site’s visibility appears to have gained a bit since September 2012, it’s still down 63 percent in Searchmetrics’ SEO visibility score compared to pre-Panda levels.

Another Demand Media site, Livestrong.com, spent much of 2012 on the rebound from Panda.

Searchmetrics says its SEO visibility dropped 35 percent in the first few weeks post-Panda — far less than some of the others mentioned above. But, as the chart below shows, it not only rebounded in 2012, but also far exceeded its SEO visibility … at least until the latter portion of the year.

After regaining visibility all year long, it appears that Livestrong was hit hard by Panda Update 22in late November. It’s been dropping ever since. Today, Livestrong.com is about 13 percent below its pre-Panda visibility.

Panda hurt Demand Media: A year ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that Panda was to blame for Demand suffering a $6.4 million loss in Q4 of 2011.

But just last week, in its latest earnings report, Demand Media said that page views were up 24 percent in 2012 (compared to 2011) on its owned and operated websites, “driven primarily by strong traffic growth on eHow.com and Livestrong.com.” In the statement, CEO Richard Rosenblatt said the company “improved content quality” in 2012 and is “now prepared to significantly increase our content investments in 2013.”

Despite that optimism, Demand Media’s sites appear to be a mixed bag at this point in terms of post-Panda recovery.

At least one other site, however, has done better.

MotorTrend.com: A True Panda Recovery

Motor Trend is a long-running magazine with a presumably trusted website, and its annual “Car of the Year” award is about as prestigious as it gets in the auto industry. I’m not a Motor Trend reader, nor have I ever spent quality time on the MotorTrend.com website. So, I can’t speak to whether it deserved to get hit by Panda. But it certainly did, as this Searchmetrics chart shows:

MotorTrend.com was obviously hit in the initial Panda update, then recovered in July 2011 around the time of Panda 5. It dropped again with Panda 7 — and we mentioned it in our coverage — then quickly recovered again a couple weeks later with Panda 8.

Source:- Search Engine Land

7 SEO Tasks That Are Wasting Your Time

2013-02-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

As a website owner or SEO, your time is limited. So why on earth would you waste on outdated tactics that are entirely unnecessary in today’s digital marketing environment? If you’re still carrying out any of the following SEO tasks, stop. There are too many other important areas to focus your attention on than to waste time using these techniques!

Task #1: Checking Your Traffic Every Day

While the number of visitors arriving on your pages is a useful metric to measure, it’s easy to find yourself sucked into the rabbit hole of obsessively monitoring the entrance and exit of every single visitor that checks out your site. Not only does this limit the amount of time you’re able to spend on the Web marketing tasks that actually have the potential to improve your site’s traffic, endlessly checking your visitor counts doesn’t really provide any meaningful information for your promotional campaigns.

After all, you could receive thousands upon thousands of visitors to your site, but if you aren’t actively engaging these visitors, they aren’t likely to result in sales or leads. Instead, look at traffic from a trend standpoint. If you’re doing things right, your visitor numbers will go up; if you’re doing things wrong, visitor counts will fall. Use these general trends as a barometer that lets you know whether or not you’re on the right course—and nothing more.

Task #2: Buying Backlink Packages

Nope. Just stop. Even though recent Google algorithm updates have made it pretty clear that the search giant intends to stamp out and devalue the worthless backlink schemes that have helped plenty of unworthy sites gain top positions in the SERPs, there are still companies out there that are selling “10,000 backlinks for $10” packages.

It can be tempting to take this easy road, instead of spending hours upon hours chasing the few legitimate link building opportunities that are available for any given site. But don’t let yourself be swayed! Putting all of your link building eggs in this unstable basket is only going to lead to disappointment when your backlinks are devalued and your site penalized in the search results.

Task #3: Monitor Keyword Density

In the past, plenty of SEOs went around proclaiming ideal on-page keyword densities of everything from 1 to 20 percent. As a result, gullible SEOs spent hours using automated tools to measure existing densities and rewrite content to some sort of arbitrary standard—all in an ill-fated attempt to secure top search ranking positions.

Obviously, keyword density as a ranking signal has no merit in today’s SEO world. Is it a good idea to include target keywords in key places, like your title tag and heading tags? Sure! But otherwise, it’s a far better idea to focus your attention on creating content that sounds natural than to worry about the number of times you’ve included your target keywords in your site’s body text.

Task #4: Submitting Articles to Directories

Old school SEOs should be well familiar with the promotional tactic of submitting articles to directories for the purposes of building both traffic and backlinks. Over time, though, a number of different factors have come together to completely invalidate this strategy.

First, plenty of article directories—conscious of the way webmasters were abusing their services for personal gain—switched over to “nofollow” links, negating the link building benefit of article directory submissions. Then, Google came along and knocked many of these directories’ articles out of the SERPs as part of the Panda update, minimizing the amount of traffic webmasters utilizing this technique were able to receive. The result? A promotional strategy that no longer offers a real SEO benefit and that should be wiped from your SEO task list entirely.

Task #5: Checking Your Rankings

Obsessively Yes, we all know that achieving high rankings in the natural search results is a primary objective for SEO marketers. However, if you’re spending all of your time monitoring your current search placements, you’re wasting time that would be better spent on the techniques that will actually make a difference in your ability to rank highly! Furthermore, it’s important to keep in mind that high search rankings are only one part of a website’s success.

Earning a Top 10 spot in the Google results doesn’t mean much on its own, especially if you aren’t effectively converting the traffic that results from this placement into leads or customers! So yes, check your rankings periodically, as movement up or down the SERPs is a good general indicator of whether your marketing techniques are positively or negatively affecting Google’s perception of your website. Otherwise, leave off the obsessive rankings monitoring to focus on the techniques that really matter to your success.

Task #6: Spinning Articles

Spinning articles used to be a big deal to digital marketers, with website owners investing tons of money in tools to automate the process and writers who could draft content using the unique syntax required by spinning programs. But if you’re still allocating your business’s limited funds to article spinning, it’s time to stop! Spinning articles rarely produces anything other than the thin content that’s likely to land your site on Google’s chopping block. It’s an outdated technique.

Plus, it’s one that’s entirely unnecessary, given that a single, well-written article published as a reputable guest post will do more for your site’s performance than a thousand spun articles published on devalued article directories ever will!

Task #7: Sculpting Your Site’s PageRank

Finally, another outdated SEO task that should be cut out of your Web marketing “to do” list entirely is the obsessive sculpting of on-site PageRank. Now, I’m not saying that you should pay attention to the way you’re using “nofollow” tags on outgoing or sponsored links on your site (especially since failing to handle the flow of PageRank to paid ads that link out from your site correctly can result in penalties for the advertisers).

However, if you’re still engaging in the practice of meticulously redirecting the flow of PageRank from your “unimportant” pages to your “important” content, you’re wasting your time! And just in case you don’t want to take my word on this, check out information published by Matt Cutts as early as June 2009, indicating that this strategy wasn’t a useful one for webmasters. Take the time you’ve been spending on this unnecessary task and redirect it to strategies that’ll actually make a difference in your site’s performance.

Once you’ve eliminated these seven tasks from your SEO activities, use the time you’ve freed up on the strategies that actual will produce a measurable improvement in your website’s results, including everything from split testing to legitimate link building techniques and more. By realigning your efforts in this way and avoiding the outdated tactics that can actually bring your website harm, you’ll stand to see much more online success over time.

What do you think? Are you still engaging in any of these outdated SEO tasks? Or are there others you’ve given up on because they don’t produce results for your site? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section below!

Image Credit: Shutterstock / Evlakhov Valeriy
Content Source: - search engine journal

Matt Cutts on Finding Untrustworthy Links, Why Google Won't Kill Toolbar PageRank

2013-02-14T23:07:00.001-08:00

Google has released two new videos in its popular Webmaster Help series that shed new light on a couple of hot topics in the SEO industry: how to you identify unnatural links and why Google wont switch off the PageRank Toolbar feature.

Identifying Unnatural Links

After the rollout of the Penguin algorithm in April 2012, the infamous unnatural link warnings were sent by Google. It quickly became clear to SEO professionals that they would need to delete or dilute to comply with Google’s webmaster guidelines. But one question has plagued the industry ever since: “how do I know which links to remove?”

A new video by Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts announces that Google will soon begin supplying example links that were detected as being untrustworthy.

“A feature that we’re working on and that we are in the process of rolling out, which I’m pretty excited about, is that we will basically give you examples. So as we’re building the incident, whenever a webmaster analyst is saying 'OK, these are links not to trust,' we’ll include an example link. You might get one, you might two, you might get three, but basically it will give you an idea of the sorts of links that we are no longer trusting.”
Cutts goes on to give a few specific examples of types of links that could trigger the warning, including:

Too many widget links
Keyword-rich anchor text links
Article directories
Paid links
While many methods for identifying unnatural links have surfaced, Google’s new example links will give SEO professionals and webmasters more information on exactly what is triggering the warnings.

On an interesting side note, Cutts states that a “webmaster analyst” reviews and qualifies inbound links, which implies that human employees are reviewing and approving or flagging inbound links.

Here's the full video:

Source - search engine journal