The once great Bruce Clay has offered up some sound advice despite becoming a pariah of SEO after a recent ‘Local Paid Inclusion’ scandal featuring Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Regardless of his status at this point in time, his track record for white hat tactics has for many years been without blemish and his latest piece of insight is most certainly relevant and useful; link pruning, which may become a term SEO hears a lot of in upcoming weeks.

The term is something Bruce Clay may or may not have coined, but its utterance is spreading wide and fast with many commentators on the subject. The process of property pruning your websites of links does take a lot of research and development so it might not be the best option for all instances; it may even be easier to just wipe the slate clean and try again. However there are signs you one can see to find out just how useful link pruning may be for your website; the following characteristics are ripe for link pruning:

-      Sites with no focal topical theme, linking to all manner of subjects; content farms.

-      Machine generated content and translations, poorly written sites in regards to content.

-      Sites with generous amounts of links embedded in the footer; generally link farms.

-      Links coming from sites with the same exact IP address, site owners or companies.

-      Sites which feature link selling keywords; ‘free link’ or similar examples.

In these cases, you’ll almost certainly be hit by the Penguin but the good news is if you’ve insisted on high quality strategies for your linking then the Penguin would’ve simply waddled on by without incident. In most cases site administrators were wooed by promises of high ranking through unscrupulous ways; similar to an enthusiastic music aficionado being unaware that concert tickets he bought were bootlegs. The greatest omission most site owners may have succumb to is not a lack of knowledge but of specific ignorance in terms of SEO white-hat/black-hat tactics; and now they are being penalised by Google. Look out for my next article in which I’ll go into more depth about how site owners can go about link pruning.

Link Pruning May Be the Answer to the Not-So-Happy Feet Update

Google Expanding Its Mobile Market Reach

Motorola Mobility Holdings is now a completely owned subsidiary of Google. The $12.9 billion acquisition has equipped Google with a sound smartphone patent portfolio which the search engine giant will use to develop mobile devices closely integrated with its services; a highly attractive offer for consumers. Although Motorola has hit a lull over the past few years, the company has over eighty years experience in the mobile manufacturing business, giving Google a lease in an entirely new segment of the mobile market- mobility hardware. According to Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO, “It’s a great time to be in the mobile business, and I’m consistent that the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come.”

New Leadership at Motorola Mobile Holdings

Some drastic changes are being made to the Motorola Mobile Holdings line up post Google acquisition. Dennis Woodside, Google’s president of the Americas region, will replace Motorola executive Sanjay Jha and oversee the transition past the Google acquisition. New financial, marketing and human resources leaders will be appointed in order to implement and drive the company’s new direction and align Motorola’s hardware knowledge and with Google’s services. In a press release Woodside commented that Google’s aim is to focus Motorola Mobility’s talent on fewer, bigger bets and that a different set of services can be provided by the same device for different carriers. This has some Google Motorola acquisition analysts thinking that the Google giant intends to complete directly with Apple.

Google and Android

Amid concerns by other mobile manufacturers of the Google Motorola acquisition, Google has announced that Android will remain an open system and that Motorola Mobility will be a licence. Google has also announced that it will further develop its Nexus offerings. Analysts following the acquisition have made it clear that Google and Mobile are now under pressure to effectively compete in the tablet market, which Apple currently dominates. They will also have to compete with Microsoft and Windows phones in the smartphone market and with Facebook’s pending social media advertising developments (funded by Facebook’s IPO revenue).

What will Change?

Google’s Motorola Mobility Holding acquisition will no doubt change the Android market as the search engine and software leader pushes and evolves the operating system to ensure its competitiveness. As consumers continue to migrate to mobile, so will leading brands and thus advertising revenue. With the hardware and software knowledge available to the company through Google acquisition, the company aims to better the user experience, collect accurate consumer information and deliver tools for more effective targeted marketing campaigns. Experts have estimated that by 2015 mobile advertising revenue will reach $19 billion as sales hit $119 billion, around 8% of all online sales. Smartphones will play a major role in this growth and thus marketers need to look away from an isolated and static online business strategy to one that incorporates mobile SEO services. Be sure to follow developments closely.

Google Acquisition of Motorola Mobility Aims for Competitor’s Piece of the Pie

A platform that is exclusively used to express individual’s interests and help them discover interesting recipes, crafts and topics, Pinterest hosts over 12 million unique visitors on a monthly basis- 80% of which are female between the ages of 25 and 44. All the stats suggest that Pinterest drives retail sales and provides a targeted audience. Convinced yet? Even Barack Obama uses it.

Pinterest’s 5 Best SEO Strategy Tips

1. Pinterest Boards: Make sure that the titles of your boards are keyword rich and meaningful. Categorise correctly in order to increase your visibility in Pinterest search.
2. Don’t just ‘pin’ images, optimise them: Seeing as ‘pins’ can rank in search page results, picture captions should be treated as optimisable copy. If you were to ‘pin’ a picture of the Eiffel Tower and include an appropriate key-phrase crafted description, people Googling pictures of the Eiffel Tower would potentially see this:
3. Image Link Building: Yes, that’s right- all images that you ‘pin’ to your boards can be linked back to your site. Go the traditional image SEO strategy route and use the Google Webmaster Central Blog in order to get your upload/web-sourced picture indexed.
4. SEO Social Media Marketing Strategy: It’s all about integration. Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook should be used harmoniously together. Share your ‘pins’ on two of the most popular social networks and who knows, they might just go viral.
5. Use Quality Non-Copyrighted Images: With the rise of Instagram, we’re all budding photographers. Maximise the potential ‘re-pins’ of your image by using quality rather than quantity. Also remember to only ‘pin’ images that you have a license to use.

In order to get behind search engines’ use of social media interactions as an assessment of search authority within their algorithms, optimisers are advised to adopt an SEO image linking strategy. So if you’re in it to win it- pin it. Use Pinterest.

Pin it to Win it: Using Pinterest as Your SEO Strategy

Google sites in April 2012 that were inherently driven by video viewing on YouTube were ranked at top of the list in terms of views with 157.7 million unique viewers. This was followed by Yahoo sites with 53.6 million, VEVO with 49.5 million, Facebook with 44.3 million and then Microsoft sites with 42.8 million. This has signified the continued growth of certain sites with Google up 10.5%, Yahoo sites up 0.8%, VEVO depleting with the loss of 10.3%, Facebook down 5.1%, and Microsoft sites also down 8.0 %. This poses the question, what are Google and Yahoo doing for these improvements in online videos and ads?

There has also been a significant shift in the use Search Engine Optimisation in online videos and video ads and with the staggering numbers of views these videos are gathering, this is sure to become a cemented movement.

April Sees A Record Breaking Amount Of Video Ads Viewed

While sheer volume of tweets and number of followers seem to be key aspects that Google will consider for search rankings, content, bios and number of retweets (sharing) will also be strong cues for high search rankings. Volume is the simplest metric for the GoogleBots to convert into large search ranking changes, and generally retweet volumes will follow, with a some SEO specialists claiming 7,500 tweets may just get you to that number one spot! Retweeting may also be judged on the influence and search the authority of the retweeter in regards to their particular ranking and also in the comment of the retweet, whether positive or negative. While links in Twitter do not rely on anchor text, could Google attached bio links to accounts and count those as votes, or assign hashtags with an aspect of authority? Lastly spammer followers may be a negative association that could damage your search rankings as we all understand Google’s policies on spam and quality over quantity, as Penguin has showcased, is more important than ever for search rankings.

With the availability of the new social reporting function in analytics, SEO’s and Social Media cowboys around the world will be clamouring to find the influence of social on search rankings. So how do you think Google is judging your SEO agency social outreach programs using Twitter?

Search Rankings May Get Juice From Twitter Signals

Why have directory sites at all when it’s easy enough to just use your favourite site for finding what you need? Well there are those for and against directory sites and both have equally compelling answers.

For those who swear by directory sites, search engine spam and not being able to find exactly what you’re looking for is a good enough reason to justify directory sites while those against them argue that they are usually crammed with spam that don’t offer any ranking assistance at all.If there was any doubt which side of the argument Google was on before, recent developmentshave destroyed any shadow of a doubt.

Some SEO observers have noted a 50% cut from indexing for free directories; one such example is site:global-web-directory.org which returns zero results. However, updated reports are putting the number closer to 16% which isn’t as substantial but relative to how much one continues to search; 16% of 500 was observed, but could be much larger is one were to try 5000 for example. It seems that Google is cleaning house at the moment and although steps against free online directories was taken years ago, it’s finally time to grant these sites the ultimate death; de-indexing.

Google’s treatment of a certain directory, Best of the Web, is the example by which others will soon follow it seems. However as a strange enough knock-on effect, paid directory sites are seeing a resurgence as far as rankings are concerned. There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the new development though, as is usual with new Google updates, but some have suggested the difference between paid and free directory sites is very little with quality being the main factor for the cuts. Google does take a hard stance against paid-review or manipulation of ranks, but some of these paid directory sites don’t explicitly offer a paid-for service which keeps them relatively safe; it’s a blurry line.

Time will no doubt show the fate of directory sites, but the recent spate of drops doesn’t paint a hopeful image for them at all. Perhaps next Google will finally decide to let go of DMOZ, which is something that some SEO pundits are happily anticipating.

Google Takes Action Against Free Directory Sites

The search giant has always been recognised as an information-based engine, and a pretty good one at that. This has heavily relied on an established list of links to other websites. With the development of its latest “Knowledge Graph”, confidence is high that this is taking one of a series of steps towards producing more informed search results – search results that are not as linear and don’t only acknowledge keywords, but rather understand the context of the search.

About 3.5 billion different attributes are used in the Knowledge Graph to organise results based on your search. These help Google to determine the context of the search and then display summary boxes containing results that are deemed more relevant.

On top of this fresh method for calculating search queries, Google results pages will subsequently be getting a makeover. Space on the right hand side of the SERP will be used to display these results in order to stand out more. Tablets and smart phones will be optimised differently for these purposes. Where Search Plus Your World paved a way for personalised results, the Knowledge Graph takes this to a new level, aggregating common search queries from countless sources.

Amit Singhal of Google provided an example, explaining, “The information we show for Tom Cruise answers 37 percent of next queries that people ask about him,” This just gives you an idea of how much search time will be saved by having the most popular information displayed on the results page without having to redirect to other sites. This could also result in users spending more time on sites that generate advertising revenue for Google.

There’s a general buzz in the air that Google’s revamped Knowledge Graph is a search milestone and only the beginning of plenty more to come. In a marriage of collective input and Google’s intelligence, search results are about to take a whole new shape. Arriving in America first, the rest of the world will be getting their surprise search soon enough.

Intelligent Search Results. Thanks Google Knowledge Graph

In this post I will be looking at what your fans want and how to go about acquiring some of their loyalty. We are not discussing Facebook advertising in the form of paid banner ads on Facebook  – I’ll leave that to another post in this series. For now we are looking at the community whom you can reach out to via messaging and your fan page. This of course presumes that your business has a place on Facebook. The argument for a Facebook presence is not equal for all businesses. Ecommerce stores fair quite well, however you will face some challenges if you are a B2B company such as law firm specialising in contract law.

It is vitally important that you evaluate where your audience is to be found and whether Facebook is actually the right platform for your business. Furthermore you need to decide what “Success” looks like in order to set some goals and expectations.

Given you have considered the above have defined our Facebook objectives then one of the first considerations relates to the quality of the fan base. Embarking on a mission to increase your numbers needs to be a targeted drive. You could ask your friends to like you and ask friends of friends, and then you could go hire an Indian company who will make up fake profiles and get you lots of Russian speaking fans. (OK I made that up, but you get the idea – that is not a plan for a successful campaign!) The quality of your fan base is going to directly affect your success to marketing to them. There are specialised companies who will create campaigns that will indeed win you the right type of fans however you will need budget to initiate such a campaign, and then you will need to have done some good sums to work out your break-even point & ROI.

Next we need to look at what your fans want. They certainly don’t want to be marketed to. They are on Facebook to catch up with who’s doing what and to get the low down on the latest. There are constant conversations happening, and what you want to do is become part of that conversation. You need to give your fans something worth talking about. So a luring prize contest, an unmissable special, or discount voucher is something that they may pick up and run with. It needs to be good enough for them to consider sharing it amongst their friends. Then you will get take-up on your offer, whether it is to acquire more fans and brand awareness or to actually move some product.

Cutting to the chase: Given that you have done the sums and have decided to take the plunge, you need a plan. Work out what strategy you will be adopting and do some reading. There are dozens of articles out there on creative ways to engage and increase your fan base. Some articles are old but bear in mind that you are addressing a community and play into their interests. Once you have formulated your plan you need to allocate resources to make it happen and to keep at it. Put a structure in place that periodically checks, maintains, and innovates. And then be sure you are able to measure your returns, whether it be via analytics or whether you are counting likes, get your monitoring tools in place. Create community guidelines and set expectations internally such that you are clear about how you will be engaging with your audience. Facebook themselves offer this Best Practice Guide.

Some other resources & interesting posts to help you along:

The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing

9 Facebook Marketing Success Stories you should Model

Facebook Marketing Guide

To Facebook or not to Facebook? That is the question: Part 2

Even the most experienced search ninjas cringe when confronted with the latest Google overhaul. Trusty SEO tools aside, the recent Panda and Penguin updates have succeeded in compromising the rankings of legitimate blogs and websites that were stuffing their content with keywords and spammy links. The result? Change.

Having some of the best SEO tools at our disposal, many professionals have learnt that the need to self-evaluate their list of best practices is an essential habit for remaining at the top of their game. In this case, optimisers have been forced to put on their camo-masks and run through the jungle of poisonous back links and webspam to reach the Promised Land: farm-fresh content and a fertilizer-type concoction of social media shares mixed with a portfolio of strong varied links. In other words, perform a site-search audit.

Free SEO Analysis Tools Needed to Perform the Audit:

1. Webmaster tools: An indispensable means for finding low page-ranking back links.
2. On-site SEO: Check your site for duplicate content, keyword stuffing, malware, performance and caching.
3. Off-site SEO: Get networking. The more social media, news sites and blogs providing you with niche back links and publicity- the better.
4. Google Analytics: The best SEO tool to measure search traffic and the effect of Google algorithm updates on your blog or website.
5. Back links: The main reason behind sites being ‘penguinated’, beware the use of unvaried spam links.

In terms of SEO tools, cultivating organic results is the equivalent of going green. No blackhat magic can replace Google algorithm’s estimation of unique, engaging copy. Using a balance of optimising techniques and back linking, sites that have lost their ranking will be able to regain the ladder in no time.

What’s New in the SEO Zoo? How to Handle Google’s Penguin and Panda Additions

As a long-time SEO copywriter, my knee-jerk reaction is to defend the tools of my trade and say that words will always be superior to images when it comes to SEO strategy; that a carefully-worded article crafted to perfectly balance optimisation with creative expression will do more for any SEO agency’s strategy than a simple “pretty picture” ever could. However, as a copywriter I also know that searchers respond better to articles that draw the eye easily to relevant points in the content by using:

•    Short and concise paragraphs;
•    Headings and subheadings;
•    Bulleted lists;
•    Infographics;
•    Images and video content.

This points towards a decidedly visual culture online, and highlights the need for agencies to adjust their SEO strategies accordingly. Like it or not, searchers are undeniably fond of those pretty pictures, and if you’re still in any doubt, the stats speak for themselves:

Facebook
Approximately 250 million photographs are uploaded to the social network daily, and according to a study by Harvard Business School, activities cantered around visual content account for around 70% of all Facebook activities. This includes image uploads, comments and Likes.

Pinterest
MediaVision has blogged before about the role Pinterest could play in SEO strategies, and the social photo sharing platform really is red-hot right now, with over 11 million registered users. These statistics have led SEO agencies to include Pinterest as part of their strategy for clients, particularly those in the retail sector.

According to Shareaholic, Pinterest is currently driving more referral traffic than YouTube, Google Plus and LinkedIn all put together! In fact, Pinterest could soon be giving Twitter a run for its money – check out Shareaholic’s referral traffic report for more details…

Instagram
This platform is a photo sharing favourite worldwide, attracting its first 1 million users a mere 2 months after launching and soaring to 15m by the end of last year, with a rate of 60 image uploads every second.

While skilled copywriting, both in onsite and meta copy, will always remain an essential component of any SEO strategy, it would be unwise to dismiss the importance of the role played by visual content; this is the age of the image, and the time has come to embrace visual content as a part of the “bigger picture”.

Picture Perfect: The Role of Visual Content in SEO Strategy