Nilesh Patel - SEO

Basic Shortcut keys of Computer

2016-07-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

• F2 [Rename the selected item]
• F3 [Search for a file or folder]
• F4 [Display the address bar list in File Explorer]
• F5 [Refresh the active window]
• F6 [Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop]
• F10 [Activate the Menu bar in the active app]
• ALT + F4 [Close the active item, or exit the active app]
• ALT + ESC [Cycle through items in the order in which they were opened]
• ALT + Underlined Letter in menus and dialog box options [Perform the command for that letter]
• ALT + ENTER [Display properties for the selected item]
• ALT + SPACEBAR [Open the shortcut menu for the active window]
• ALT + LEFT ARROW [Back]
• ALT + RIGHT ARROW [Forward]
• ALT + PAGE UP [Move up one screen]
• ALT + PAGE DOWN [Move down one screen]
• ALT + TAB [Switch between open apps (except desktop apps)]
• CTRL + F4 [Close the active document (in apps that allow you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)]
• CTRL + A [Select all items in a document or window]
• CTRL + C or CTRL + INSERT [Copy the selected item]
• CTRL + D / DELETE [DELETE the selected item and move it to the Recycle Bin]
• CTRL + R or F5 [Refresh the active window]
• CTRL + V or SHIFT + INSERT [Paste the selected item]
• CTRL + X [Cut the selected item]
• CTRL + Y [Redo an action]
• CTRL + Z [Undo an action]
• CTRL + + or CTRL + – [Zoom in or out of a large NUMBER of items, like apps pinned to the Start screen]
• CTRL + mouse scroll wheel [Change the size of desktop icons or zoom in or out of a large NUMBER of items, like apps pinned to the Start screen]
• CTRL + RIGHT ARROW [Move the cursor to the beginning of the next word]
• CTRL + LEFT ARROW [Move the cursor to the beginning of the previous word]
• CTRL + DOWN ARROW [Move the cursor to the beginning of the next paragraph]
• CTRL + UP ARROW [Move the cursor to the beginning of the previous paragraph]
• CTRL + ALT + TAB [Use the arrow keys to switch between all open apps]
• CTRL + ARROW + SPACEBAR [Select multiple individual items in a window or on the desktop]
• CTRL + SHIFT + ARROW [Select a block of text]
• CTRL + ESC [Open the Start screen]
• CTRL + SHIFT + ESC [Open Task Manager]
• CTRL + SHIFT [Switch the keyboard layout when multiple keyboard layouts are available]
• CTRL + SPACEBAR [Turn the Chinese input method editor (IME) on or off]
• SHIFT + F10 [Display the shortcut menu for the selected item]
• SHIFT + ARROW [Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text within a document]
• SHIFT + DELETE [Delete the selected item without moving it to the Recycle Bin first]
• RIGHT ARROW [Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu]
• LEFT ARROW [Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu]
• ESC [Stop or leave the current task]

Windows key Shortcuts
Let’s check the keyboard shortcuts involving the Windows logo key. Most of them are introduced in Windows 8’s Metro UI, and can be used in Windows 8 and above.
• Win + F1 [Open Windows Help and support]
• Win [Display or hide the Start screen]
• Win + B [Set focus in the notification area]

Computer General Shortcuts
• Win + C [Open Charms]
• Win + D [Display and hide the desktop]
• Win + E [Open File Explorer]
• Win + F [Open the Search charm and search for files]
• Win + H [Open the Share charm]
• Win + I [Open the Settings charm]
• Win + K [Open the Devices charm]
• Win + L [Lock your PC or switch people]
• Win + M [Minimize all windows]
• Win + O [Lock device orientation]
• Win + P [Choose a presentation display mode]
• Win + Q [Open the Search charm to search everywhere or within the open app (if the app supports app search)]
• Win + R [Open the Run dialog box]
• Win + S [Open the Search charm to search Windows and the web]
• Win + T [Cycle through apps on the taskbar]
• Win + U [Open Ease of Access Center]
• Win + V [Cycle through notifications]
• Win + SHIFT + V [Cycle through notifications in reverse order]
• Win + W [Open the Search charm and search for settings]
• Win + X [Open the Quick Link menu]
• Win + Z [Show the commands available in the app]
• Win + , [Temporarily peek at the desktop]
• Win + PAUSE [Display the System Properties dialog box]
• Win + CTRL + F [Search for PCs (if you’re on a network)]
• Win + SHIFT + M [Restore minimized windows on the desktop]
• Win + (NUMBER 1-9) [Open the desktop and start the app pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. If the app is already running, it switches to that app.]
• Win + SHIFT + (NUMBER 1-9) [Open the desktop and start a new instance of the app pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number]
• Win + CTRL + (NUMBER 1-9) [Open the desktop and switch to the last active window of the app pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number]
• Win + ALT + (NUMBER 1-9) [Open the desktop and open the Jump List for the app pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number]
• Win + CTRL + SHIFT + (NUMBER 1-9) [Open the desktop and open a new instance of the app located at the given position on the taskbar as an administrator]
• Win + TAB [Cycle through recently used apps (except desktop apps)]
• Win + CTRL + TAB [Cycle through recently used apps (except desktop apps)]
• Win + SHIFT + TAB [Cycle through recently used apps (except desktop apps) in reverse order]
• Win + CTRL + B [Switch to the app that displayed a message in the notification area]
• Win + UP ARROW [Maximize the window]
• Win + DOWN ARROW [Remove current app from screen or minimize the desktop window]
• Win + LEFT ARROW [Maximize the app or desktop window to the LEFT side of the screen]
• Win + RIGHT ARROW [Maximize the app or desktop window to the RIGHT side of the screen]
• Win + HOME [Minimize all but the active desktop window (restores all windows on second stroke)]
• Win + SHIFT + UP ARROW [Stretch the desktop window to the top and bottom of the screen]
• Win + SHIFT + DOWN ARROW [Restore/minimize active desktop windows vertically, maintaining width]
• Win + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or RIGHT ARROW [Move an app or window in the desktop from one monitor to another]
• Win + SPACEBAR [Switch input language and keyboard layout]
• Win + CTRL + SPACEBAR [Change to a previously selected input]
• Win + ENTER [Open Narrator]
• Win + SHIFT + . [Cycle through open apps]
• Win + . [Cycle through open apps]
• Win + / [Initiate IME reconversion]
• Win + ALT + ENTER [Open WindowsMedia Center]
• Win + +/- [Zoom in or out using Magnifier]
• Win + ESC [Exit Magnifier]

Dialog box Shortcuts
These are the keyboard shortcuts that can be used in dialog boxes.

• F1 [Display Help]
• F4 [Display the items in the active list]
• CTRL + TAB [Move forward through tabs]
• CTRL + SHIFT + TAB [Move back through tabs]
• CTRL + (NUMBER 1-9) [Move to nth tab]
• TAB [Move forward through options]
• SHIFT + TAB [Move back through options]
• ALT + Underlined Letter in menus and dialog box options [Perform the command (or select the option) that goes with that letter]
• SPACEBAR [Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box]
• BACKSPACE [Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box]
• ARROW keys [Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons]

File Explorer Shortcuts
These are the shortcuts that can be used to work with File Explorer’s windows or folders.
• ALT + D [Select the address bar]
• CTRL + E [Select the search box]
• CTRL + F [Select the search box]
• CTRL + N [Open a new window]
• CTRL + W [Close the current window]
• CTRL + mouse scroll wheel [Change the size and appearance of file and folder icons]
• CTRL + SHIFT + E [Display all folders above the selected folder]
• CTRL + SHIFT + N [Create a new folder]
• NUM LOCK + * [Display all subfolders under the selected folder]
• NUM LOCK + + [Display the contents of the selected folder]
• NUM LOCK + – [Collapse the selected folder]
• ALT + P [Display the preview pane]
• ALT + ENTER [Open the Properties dialog box for the selected item]
• ALT + RIGHT ARROW [View the next folder]
• ALT + UP ARROW [View the folder that the folder was in]
• ALT + LEFT ARROW [View the previous folder]
• BACKSPACE [View the previous folder]
• RIGHT ARROW [Display the current selection (if it’s collapsed), or select the first subfolder]
• LEFT ARROW [Collapse the current selection (if it’s expanded), or select the folder that the folder was in]
• END [Display the bottom of the active window]
• HOME [Display the top of the active window]
• F11 [Maximize or minimize the active window]

Taskbar Shortcuts
Here are the keyboard shortcuts to work with items on the Desktop’s taskbar.
• SHIFT + Click a Taskbar Button [Open an app or quickly open another instance of an app]
• CTRL + SHIFT + Click a Taskbar Button [Open an app as an administrator]
• SHIFT + Right-click a Taskbar Button [Show the window menu for the app]
• SHIFT + Right-click a Grouped Taskbar Button [Show the window menu for the groUP]
• CTRL + Click a Grouped Taskbar Button [Cycle through the windows of the groUP]

Ease of access Shortcuts
These are the keyboard shortcuts to help you use your computer easily.
Taskbar Shortcuts
• Hold RIGHT SHIFT for eight seconds [Turn Filter Keys on and off]
• LEFT ALT + LEFT SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN [Turn High Contrast on or off]
• LEFT ALT + LEFT SHIFT + NUM LOCK [Turn Mouse Keys on or off]
• Press SHIFT five times [Turn Sticky Keys on or off]
• Press NUM LOCK for five seconds [Turn Toggle Keys on or off]
• Win + U [Open the Ease of Access Center]

Magnifier Shortcuts
Here are the keyboard shortcuts to help you use Magnifier.
• Win + + [Zoom in]
• Win + – [Zoom out]
• CTRL + ALT + SPACEBAR [Preview the desktop in full-screen mode]
• CTRL + ALT + D [Switch to docked mode]
• CTRL + ALT + F [Switch to full-screen mode]
• CTRL + ALT + I [Invert colors]
• CTRL + ALT + L [Switch to lens mode]
• CTRL + ALT + R [Resize the lens]
• CTRL + ALT + ARROW keys [Pan in the direction of the ARROW keys]
• Win + ESC [Exit Magnifier]

Narrator Shortcuts
These are the keyboard shortcuts to help you use Narrator.
• SPACEBAR or ENTER [Activate current item]
• TAB + ARROW Keys [Move around on the screen]
• CTRL [Stop reading]
• CAPS LOCK + D [Read item]
• CAPS LOCK + M [Start reading]
• CAPS LOCK + H [Read document]
• CAPS LOCK + V [Repeat phrase]
• CAPS LOCK + W [Read window]
• CAPS LOCK + PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN [Increase or decrease the volume of the voice]
• CAPS LOCK + +/- [Increase or decrease the speed of the voice]
• CAPS LOCK + SPACEBAR [Do default action]
• CAPS LOCK + LEFT or RIGHT ARROW [Move to previous/next item]
• CAPS LOCK + F2 [Show commands for current item]
• Caps + ESC [Exit Narrator]

Remote desktop connection Shortcuts
These are the keyboard shortcuts to ease the use of remote desktop connection.
• ALT + PAGE UP [Move between apps, left to right]
• ALT + PAGE DOWN [Move between apps, right to left]
• ALT + INSERT [Cycle through apps in the order that they were started]
• ALT + HOME [Display the Start screen]
• CTRL + ALT + BREAK [Switch between a window and full screen]
• CTRL + ALT + END [Display the Windows Security dialog box]
• CTRL + ALT + HOME [In full-screen mode, activate the connection bar]
• ALT + DELETE [Display the system menu]
• CTRL + ALT + – [Place a copy of the active window, within the client, on the Terminal server clipboard (similar to ALT + PRINT SCREEN on a local PC)]
• CTRL + ALT + + [Place a copy of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboard (similar to Print Screen on a local PC)]
• CTRL + ALT + RIGHT ARROW [TAB out of the Remote Desktop controls to a control in the host app (for example, a button or a text box). Useful when the Remote Desktop controls are embedded in another (host) app.]
• CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW
[TABout of the Remote Desktop controls to a control in the host app (for example, a button or a text box). Useful when the Remote Desktop controls are embedded in another (host) app.]

Help viewer Shortcuts
These are the keyboard shortcuts that can be used with the help viewer.

• F3 [Move the cursor to the search box]
• F10 [Display the Options menu]
• HOME [Move to the beginning of a topic]
• END [Move to the end of a topic]
• ALT + LEFT ARROW [Move back to the previously viewed topic]
• ALT + RIGHT ARROW [Move to the next (previously viewed) topic]
• ALT + HOME [Display the Help and support home page]
• ALT + A [Display the customer support page]
• ALT + C [Display the TABle of Contents]
• ALT + N [Display the Connection Settings menu]
• CTRL + F [Search the current topic]
• CTRL + P [Print a topic]

App rearranging Shortcuts (Metro)
Here are the keyboard shortcuts that can be used to rearrange apps on Metro screen. You should keep the Windows key pressed down continuously once you enter in the rearrange mode, then use the various commands. When you’re done rearranging apps, then release the Windows key.

• Win + . [Enter Rearrange mode and select apps or dividers across monitors]
• Win + LEFT ARROW [Move app divider left]
• Win + RIGHT ARROW [Move app divider right]
• Win + UP ARROW [Maximize app]
• Win + DOWN ARROW [Close app]
• Win + ESC [Exit Rearrange mode]

Happy New Year 2016

2015-12-31T20:06:00.001-08:00

A New Year is like a blank Book. The Pen is in your Hands. It is your chance to write a Beautiful Story for yourself. Happy New Year 2016

3 Reasons why SEO is one of the Best Investments for your Business

2015-12-18T01:16:00.007-08:00

Over the past few years many misconceptions have emerged concerning Search Engine Optimization. But which are some of the most misleading thoughts we have heard about SEO during the last year or so?

“SEO is dead; the social media guru proclaimed.”

“I don’t want SEO. I just want a good looking website similar to my competitor’s one.”

“Just built it and they will come.”

Such misconceptions still reside inside the heads of online marketing experts, business owners and business executives as a part of an overall digital mindset.

While I don’t feel sorry for the online marketing gurus that are just parroting the latest buzz words, tactics and magnify the above plus 100 more misconceptions, I do feel strong about my mission; My duty to inform the well-intended businesses that SEO still stands in 2015 at the forefront of investments for businesses that wish to increase their online presence.

SEO is an Investment

We can define SEO as an investment as it takes time and money to attract quality organic traffic through search engines. If money and time are properly invested then SEO will increase ROI due to the following three critical factors:

Accumulation

If you are building a new website from scratch the initial organic traffic will be zero.

Even with websites that have been in existence for years, the organic traffic can remain quite low if no or improper SEO strategy has been implemented.

And even though this may sound very discouraging, in reality it is a very positive thing for small businesses that are willing to implement a long term SEO strategy.

The reason for this is the compound rate effect and how it relates to SEO. For the websites of small businesses it is not uncommon to experience a 30%, 50% or even 100% growth in organic traffic per year.

So, imagine that even if the website that you are working on has only 100 unique visitors from organic (SEO) traffic per month, it is quite realistic to expect that in 3-5 years this same website can have 500, 700 or even over 1.000 visitors per month. This can be achieved with the implementation of continuous “white-hat” SEO actions due to the compound rate effect that helps websites accumulate increasingly higher levels of organic traffic over time with the same amount of SEO efforts.

Multiplication

As users we tend to perform our research through search engines by using many different keyword combinations so as to fulfill our needs.

While there is no sure-fire way to know beforehand the exact queries (search terms) that each user will enter into a search engine; what you can do is take advantage of the multiplier effect and essentially rank your website for thousands of search terms while targeting only a much smaller subset of these phrases.

In order to achieve that you have to exploit search engine algorithms to your advantage. While this sounds quite illegal and black-hat all it actually means is to invest in a long term “white-hat” SEO plan.

A well SEO optimized website for a certain subset of keyword terms that are relevant to the website’s niche is going to automatically reproduce 100s of different keyword terms that your website will rank for.

Longevity

Anyone that has active paid campaigns, like a Google Adwords campaign, knows that in the moment that the campaigns are off, the paid traffic that flows to the website dries up as well.

In contrast, an investment on SEO produces long term traffic that can be retained, after it has been built, even with minimal efforts in certain niches.

Even in competitive niches the most difficult part is to grow the SEO traffic for early stage websites or for websites that haven’t performed any SEO actions for years.

On the other hand well optimized websites with active SEO management can dominate the SERPs rankings much easier for the long haul with a certain level of SEO actions.

In conclusion, the accumulation factor through the compound rate effect will allow organic (SEO) traffic to pile up as the time progresses. The multiplication factor will allow the keyword terms to multiple automatically and as a result your website’s “keyword terms army” will grow and dominate the SERPs as time unfolds. Finally, the longevity factor will enable SEO traffic to produce (pay) dividends in the form of future – long term – organic traffic.

This trifecta of factors proves that SEO is rightfully considered as one of best investments for your business…and is still very much alive!

For More Info about Why SEO is Best for your Business

Google Panda 4.2 Is Here; Slowly Rolling Out After Waiting Almost 10 Months

2015-08-08T00:41:00.001-07:00

Google says a Panda refresh began this weekend but will take months to fully roll out.

Google tells Search Engine Land that it pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend.

Many of you may not have noticed because this rollout is happening incredibly slowly. In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out. That means that although the Panda algorithm is still site-wide, some of your Web pages might not see a change immediately.

The last time we had an official Panda refresh was almost 10 months ago: Panda 4.1 happened on September 25, 2014. That was the 28th update, but I would coin this the 29th or 30th update, since we saw small fluctuations in October 2014.

As far as I know, very few webmasters noticed a Google update this weekend. That is how it should be, since this Panda refresh is rolling out very slowly.

Google said this affected about 2%–3% of English language queries.

New Chance For Some, New Penalty For Others

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.

This is not how many of the past Panda updates rolled out, where typically you’d see a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic more quickly.

Panda Update 30 AKA Panda 4.2, July 18, 2015 (2–3% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

For More Info about Google Panda 4.2

Penalised by Google? Here are 11 reasons why and how to recover

2015-05-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

Search engines become smarter all the time. Google is constantly improving its algorithms in order to give users the highest quality content and the most accurate information.

Algorithms follow rules. Uncovering those rules – and taking advantage of them – has been the goal of anyone who wants their website to rank highly. But when Google finds out that websites owners have been manipulating the rules, they take action, by issuing those websites with a penalty. The penalty usually means a drop in rankings, or even an exclusion from Google’s index.

As a website owner you sometimes know which rule you’ve broken. But for many it’s hard to work out. Read our guide below to find out where you’ve gone wrong and what you can do about it.

Table of contents

What is a Google penalty?

How to tell if you’ve been penalised

What caused the penalty?

Collecting the necessary data

Contacting webmasters

The disavow file

The Reconsideration Request

How to avoid a future Google penalty

What is a Google penalty?

Google has been tweaking and improving its ranking algorithms since end of year 2000. That’s when it released its toolbar extension and when PageRank was released in a usable form.

Since then, Google continued to work on the quality of search results it showed to users as a result of their search queries. With time, the search engine giant began to remove poor quality content in favour of high quality, relevant information which it would move to the top of the SERPs. And this is when penalties started rolling in.

Next was the Penguin update which was rolled out in 2012 and hit more than 1 in 10 search results. These algorithm changes have forced site owners to rethink their SEO and content strategies to comply with Google’s quality requirements.

How to tell if you’ve been penalised

To discover the reasons you might have been penalised, you can watch this video and skip to the next section, or just keep reading.

A penalty can be either automatic or manual. With manual penalties, you’ll probably be notified that you’ve been doing something wrong that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

However, if the cause is a change of the algorithm, you may not always know you’ve been targeted.

Here are some clues you’ve been penalised by Google:

Your site isn’t ranking well not even for your brand name. That’s the most obvious clue as your site should always rank well on that one keyword.
If you’ve been on page one of Google’s search results and are dropping to page two or three without having made any changes.
Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results from one day to another.
You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
You notice a big drop in organic traffic in your Google Analytics (or any other monitoring tool you’re using) especially a few days after a big Google update.

If you don’t have access to Webmaster Tools or Analytics, you can determine if you’ve been penalised by using one of the following tools:

SEMRush – Check if your search engine traffic is decreasing every day and also if the total number of keywords ranking top 20 is starting to decrease quickly:

SearchMetrics – If your organic visibility has disappeared, then you’ve probably been penalised.

If you notice one or more of the above factors, then you can be sure that Google has penalised your site and you need to do something about it quickly.

What caused the penalty?

When dealing with a penalty, the first thing you need to do is try to figure out what caused it – spammy links, over-optimising your content, etc. Only then can you follow the steps to try to fix it.

The most common issue is having bad, low quality backlinks pointing to your site. To find out what links Google considers to be “bad backlinks”, check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes.

1. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

These backlinks are considered one of the worst type of links and they’re the main reason why many large websites have received a penalty.

Although money doesn’t necessarily have to exchange hands, a paid backlink can also refer to offering goods or services in return for a link back and even sending free products without specifically asking the customers for a link back to your site.

A good example of that is the Interflora incident.

The flower company sent out bouquets to make their customers feel better after a hard day’s work. Happy to receive the surprise, some of the customers wrote about the gesture on their own blogs/websites and linked back to the flower company. While you’d think this was just a very nice way of strengthening the relationship with their customers, Google tagged it as a marketing technique of buying links and penalised Interflora as a result.

2. Excessive link exchange

It’s common for company websites that are part of the same group to link to each other. This is why Google declared war only on link exchange done in excess. This is an old technique of getting backlinks as a webmaster would get a backlink easier from a site owner if they also returned the favour.

3. Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns

There are numerous websites out there that are accepting article submissions. So webmasters took advantage and started getting backlinks by writing random articles and finding a way to add their own link.

However these articles were of very low quality which is why Google decided to take action against those sites that were publishing articles just for the sake of the backlinks.

Guest blogging was recently added on the list of don’ts mainly because it has quickly become a form of spam. Webmasters keep sending emails to all sorts of websites asking to submit their articles in exchange for a link. Sounds a lot like all the other spam email you never asked for but keep receiving, doesn’t it? And it works the other way around too. Webmasters that manage many blogs found guest blogging to be a good way to make money:

4. Using automated programs or services to create links

There are many tools used by black hat SEOs to create automated links, such as ScrapeBox and Traffic Booster, but the most common tool is the article spinner. In order to get content to add links, the spinner helped webmasters get various pieces of content on the same subject without having to pay someone to write them.

With such poor quality content around a link, it’s easy for Google to realise this cannot in any way be considered a natural and earned backlink.

5. Text advertisements that pass PageRank

These types of links are created by matching a word to an advertisement. In the example below, the article is about banks in general but when you hoover over the word “bank” you get an ad to a specific business.

Since the presence of that business link is unnatural, this is one of the types of links that Google doesn’t like.

6. Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links

There are many websites out there filled with articles about various products and each article has at least one link pointing to an e-commerce website. The quality of the articles is rather low because the sole purpose is to just create enough content around a link.

7. Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases

Similar to the previous one with the exception that instead of contacting someone who has a website dedicated to building backlinks in exchange for money, these links are added to articles and press releases that get distributed over the internet through PR websites and free article submission websites.

There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.

8. Low-quality directory or bookmark site links

Directories used to play an important role and represented an online phonebook for websites. It was easier to find a website searching for it by category. As search engine advanced, the need for these structured directories decreased to the point where these are now being used for link building purposes only.

9. Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets

The best example is Halifax, the first bank that Google has hit. They had these mortgage calculators embedded on various irrelevant websites just for the backlink.

10. Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites

Sitewide backlinks are to be avoided at all costs especially if the links are on websites that are in no way related to your linked website.

If you place a link in the header, footer or sidebar of a website, that link will be visible on all its web pages so don’t link to a website that you don’t consider to be relevant for your entire content.

Most common footer links are either a web developer credit or a “Powered by” link where you mention your CMS or hosting provider (see the example below). There are also free templates out there that have a link in the footer and most people never get that link out.

Sidebar links are usually Partner links or blogrolls. Since the word “Partner” usually means that goods or services have been exchanged, this can be considered a paid link so make sure to always use nofollow. As for other related blogs, if they are indeed related, there should be no issue but if your list has links to ecommerce websites or you’re using affiliate links, you might want to nofollow those.

11. Forum comments with optimised links in the post or signature

Adding a signature link is an old link building technique and one of the easiest ways of getting a link. It has also been done through blog commenting. If you leave a comment on a forum or blog, make sure the answer is not only helpful and informative but also relevant to the discussion. If you add a link, it should point to a page that is also relevant to your answer and the discussion.

Collecting the necessary data

Now that you know how to identify those bad links, let’s see how you can go about finding each and every one of them:

1. Webmaster Tools

This is where Google shows you details on the backlinks it has indexed. It should be your starting point in cleaning up your backlink profile as it shows you how many backlinks each website is sending your way. This is how you can find most of your site wide links – mark them down as such.

2. Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, Link Detox, Open Site Explorer – Your choice

Depending on how many backlinks you have, you will probably need to pay for a good backlink checker tool.

Of course there are also free tools such as BackLinkWatch and AnalyzeBacklinks that you can use if you don’t have millions of backlinks in your profile.

The idea is to gather links from as many sources as possible as each tool has its own crawler and can discover different backlinks. So, to ensure you find as many as possible, it is indicated that you use various tools.

Next get all the reports in one file, remove the duplicates and see how many links you’re left with. You can sort the remaining links by URL (coming from the same domain) to find the ones that are sitewide, by anchor text (to find the exact-match anchors or “money keywords”) or by any other type of data that those tools provide such as discovery date, on-page placement and link type.

If you paid for links in the past or engaged in any of the link schemes Google frowns upon, try to find all the websites that still have your links by using a footprint. For instance, if you created website templates that you’ve distributed for free but have added a “Created by MyCompany” link in the footer, use the link’s anchor to find all the websites out there that have used your template.

If you’ve got a penalty but haven’t paid for links or engaged in any of the link schemes, check if your links might be considered spammy because of the websites they’re found on.

Not sure what spammy links are? Well, there’s no better classifier than your own eye so if you want to check a potential bad site your link is on, ask yourself:

Does the site look like spam – low quality or duplicate content, no structure, no contact page, loads of outbound links?
Does your link and anchor text look like it belongs on the site?
Are there toxic links on the site – Gambling, Viagra etc.?
Does the site look like it sells links – e.g. loads of anchor text rich sidebars and site-wide links?

If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, then your link should not be there.

When you go through the links, try to take notes and write down as much information as possible for each bad backlink.

Contacting webmasters

When you’ve checked every bad link and have all the information you need, start contacting every webmaster and ask them to remove or nofollow your links. Keep a copy of the email threads for each website as you will need to show proof that you have tried to clean up the bad links.

If a contact email is not present on their site, look for a contact form. If that is not available, try a WHOIS for that domain. If they’re using private registration then just mark it down as a no contact.

To make the process easier and save some time, here are a couple of automated email tools you could use:

rmoov (Free to $99/month) – This tool helps you identify contacts, created and sends emails, follows up with reminders and reports on results.
Link Cleanup and Contact from SEOGadget (free) – Download the bad links from Google Webmaster Tools and upload them into the tool. SEOGadget then shows you the anchor text and site contact details (email, Twitter, LinkedIn).
Remove’em ($249 per domain) – This solution combines suspicious link discovery with comprehensive email and tracking tools.

Be very persistent. If you’ve sent out emails and didn’t get a response, send follow-up emails after a couple of days. Even if you’re desperate to get the penalty lifted, keep in mind that those webmasters don’t owe you a thing and unless you’re polite and patient, you’re not going to get what you’re after.

Be organised. Create an online Google spreadsheet where you add your Excel list and also new columns to show:

The date of the first email
Response to first email
Links Status after first email
The date of the second email
Response to second email
Link Status after second email
The date of the third email
Response to third email
Link status after third email

If you don’t get a reply from a webmaster after three emails, they’ll probably never reply so it might be time to give up.

Add a column for the email threads. Copy/Paste the entire email discussion between you and a webmaster in an online Google doc and use its link in your main worksheet. Make sure to set the Sharing options to “Anyone with the link” so the Google Webspam team members can access these documents.

When you’re done, your online document should look something like this:

The disavow file

After you’ve finished contacting all the websites, you’re now left with the ones that haven’t replied, asked for money to remove the link or with no contact details.

You should take these websites and add them to the disavow file.

You can add individual pages from a domain or the entire domain itself. Since it’s not likely that a webmaster would create a bad link from one page and a good link from another page pointing to your site, you’re safer just disavowing the entire domain.

Use hashtags if you want to add comments such as:

# The owners of the following websites asked for money in order to remove my link.

# These are websites that automatically scrape content and they’ve also scraped my website with links and all.

# The webmasters of these websites never replied to my repeated emails.

URLs are added as they are and domains are added by using “domain:domain-name.com” to specify that you’re disavowing all the links that come from a specific domain.

This should be a simple .txt file (you can use Notepad). When you’re done, go to Webmaster Tools and upload it.

If you need to add more sites to an already submitted disavow file, you will need to upload a new file which will overwrite the existing one – so make sure the disavowed domains from your first list are also copied in your second list.

Be very careful when using the disavow file. Don’t add full domains such as WordPress or Blogger.com just because you had links from a subdomain created on one of these platforms.

Also, add a domain to the disavow file only after you have tried your very best to remove the link (and can show proof you’ve tried). Google isn’t happy for you to renounce the link juice from certain websites, it wants to see that you’ve also tried your best to clean up the internet of all of your spammy links.

The Reconsideration Request

When you have the final status for every website that sent a bad link to you and have also submitted your disavow file, it’s time to send Google an apology letter also known as a Reconsideration Request.

You can do this from Webmaster Tools:

There is a 500 word and 2.850 character (including spaces) limit so use this space wisely to explain what actions you’ve taken to try and clean up your site.

Things that you should include:

If you paid for links, then name the SEO agency you worked with to acquire links or any other similar information.
What type of bad links you found in your profile such as sitewide links, comment spam and so on.
What actions you’ve taken to make sure no more bad links will be created such as training employees to not buy or build links, retracting any free templates that had links in them, adding nofollow to the links in the widgets you provide.
Link to the Google Online Spreadsheet where you’ve documented your efforts of contacting webmasters and taking down links. Make sure these documents are shared with anyone that has the link.
Link to an online spreadsheet where you have a copy of the disavow file you’ve submitted.
Confirmation of reading the Webmaster Guidelines, understanding them and following them from now on.

If you haven’t managed to clean up all your bad links, Google will reply and give you examples of other bad links. You will then have to go through the remaining links again using all the tools available and see what other websites there are now after you’ve cleaned up most of the other bad links.

Every month more than 400,000 manual actions are applied by Google and every month the search engine giant processes 20,000 reconsideration requests. Some of these reconsiderations are not the first ones sent out by webmasters.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get your penalty removed on your first try. Not many manage to do so. Just go back and repeat the process until you manage to remove all the bad links from your profile.

How to avoid a future Google penalty

Even if your site hasn’t been penalised, don’t take a chance – go through the guide and identify your bad links. You can follow every step down to sending the Reconsideration Request. Since there’s no penalty message, there is no need for this.

You can disavow the domains that are sending bad links to your site. You should try to contact these websites first and always save every form of communication you had with the webmasters.

If a penalty follows, you’ll already have proof that you’ve started to clean up your site.

For More Info about Penalised by Google? Here are 11 reasons why and how to recover

Google Penguin 3.0 is coming and here’s what to do to prepare

2015-05-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

Update: Google Penguin 3.0 was launched on October 17th. As predicted, the company confirmed the update would help sites that have cleaned up bad link profiles in response to previous versions of Penguin. Owners of sites that haven’t recovered or have been adversely affected by Penguin 3.0 should follow the steps outlined below.

There is rarely a dull moment in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO). Haven’t you heard? A huge Google algorithm change is on the way. Scary.
Last month, Google said a new Penguin update would likely be launched before the end of the year, and now it looks like it may be here this week.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said at Search Marketing Expo East that Google “may” be launching a Penguin algorithm refresh sometime this week, which he described as “a large rewrite of the algorithm”. Also, Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land believes that this next update will be all good news and that it could make webmaster’s life a bit easier.

Understanding the major implications of these updates is critical to search performance, so today we’ll talk you through the upcoming release of Google’s Penguin 3.0 update, what it is, how it can affect your website and rankings and what you can do to prepare for its release.

What is Penguin 3.0 all about?

Over the past few weeks, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller has been actively discussing:

The imminent and long-anticipated Penguin update
Google’s efforts to make its algorithm refreshes rollout quicker
Helping websites to recover faster from ranking penalties

In a Google Webmaster Central hangout on September 12^th, Mueller confirmed that the new Penguin update would roll out in 2014. In the video he said:

Google is working on a “solution that generally refreshes faster” specifically talking about Penguin.
He mentioned that “we are trying to speed things up” around Penguin.
He also admitted that “our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time”, referring to webmasters’ efforts to clean up the issues around their sites being impacted by Penguin.

As you can probably tell from all the buzz on the web, Penguin 3.0 is expected to be a major update that will hopefully enable Google to run the algorithm more frequently. This would mean that those impacted by an update won’t have to wait too long before seeing a refresh.

In other words, those who have taken measures to clean up their backlink profiles should (in theory) be able to recover more quickly than in the past.

Here’s what Mueller said in a previous Google hangout on September 8:

“That’s something where we’re trying to kind of speed things up because we see that this is a bit of a problem when webmasters want to fix their problems, they actually go and fix these issues but our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time, so that’s something where it makes sense to try to improve the speed of our algorithms overall.”

Can a site recover from ranking penalties without an algorithm refresh?

A day after the September 8 Google+ Hangout, Mueller replied to a post in the Webmaster Central Help Forum, stating that while a Penguin refresh is required for an affected site to recover, it is possible for webmasters to improve their site rankings without a Penguin update.

With Google using over 200 factors in crawling, indexing and ranking, Mueller said that if webmasters do their best to clean up site issues and focus on having a high-quality site rather than on individual factors of individual algorithms they may see changes even before that algorithm or its data is refreshed.

“I know it can be frustrating to not see changes after spending a lot of time to improve things. In the meantime, I’d really recommend not focusing on any specific aspect of an algorithm, and instead making sure that your site is (or becomes) the absolute best of its kind by far,” Mueller recommended.

In the thread, “Has Google ever definitively stated that it is possible to recover from Penguin?“ Mueller replied: “Yes, assuming the issues are resolved in the meantime, with an update of our algorithm or its data, it will no longer be affecting your site.”

That’s also all the more reason for webmasters to welcome this next update with open arms.

The history of Penguin

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Overall, what Google is trying to do is to catch and penalise websites that are trying to rank higher in its search results through:

Keyword stuffing meaning loading a webpage with the same words or phrases so much that is sounds unnatural
Low quality backlinks, often generated using automated software
A large numbers of links optimised using the exact same anchor text
Excessive link exchange
Forum comments with links added in the signature
And various other link schemes.

Penguin focuses on the link-related aspects of this list.

Here’s a timeline of the previous Penguin updates:

Penguin 1.0 – April 24 2012 (affected 3.1% of searches)
Penguin 1.2 – May 26 2012 (affected 0.1% of searches)
Penguin 1.3 – October 5, 2012 (affected 0.3% of searches)
Penguin 2.0 – May 22, 2013 (affected 2.3% of searches)
Penguin 2.1 – October 4, 2013 (affected 1% of searches)
Penguin 3 – October 2014?

What can you do to clean up your link profile for future updates?

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

So, here are a few things you can do to prevent your site from getting penalised by a future Penguin update:

Do a thorough link clean-up and remove all unnatural links pointing to your site. When it comes to Penguin, bad links are usually the cause of the penalty so make sure you remove as many bad links as you possibly can and then disavow the rest. Here’s a good article with steps to find and remove unnatural links.
Make sure your disavow file is correct. Find out more about disavowing backlinks.
Assess the remaining “good” links. Do you still have enough valuable links for your site to rank well or do you need to build some more links? Don’t shy away from link building campaigns, just make sure that this time you build links on high-quality, relevant, authority sites.
Other common sense actions to ensure that you have a healthy website. Read this excellent article from Moz with some great advice on how to ensure your site is healthy and how to handle life after an algorithm update, whether it’s Penguin, Panda or any other Google update.
Don’t treat an algorithmic penalty as a manual penalty. Keep in mind that there may be other factors that might be preventing your site from ranking well, which may not be linked to an algorithmic penalty like Penguin or Panda. Check out this useful article with the complete list of reasons that may be causing your traffic to drop.

But if you do get hit, what are the signs?

Since this is an algorithmic penalty, if your site has been hit by Penguin, Google will never notify you which means that you will need to check your site’s traffic, among other things including:

You’re no longer ranking well for that one keyword you should always rank well for – your brand name. When this happens, it’s a clear sing you’ve been hit.
Your site is dropping from page one to page two or three in Google’s search results although you’ve made no changes whatsoever.
Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
Google Analytics (or any other analytics tool you’re using) is showing a significant drop in organic traffic a few days after a big Google update.

Check out our YouTube video on how to tell if you’ve been penalised by Google:

So, what we recommend is that you monitor your organic traffic closely for at least two weeks after a Penguin update. If your traffic dramatically drops during this time, it’s likely due to the update. Also make sure you keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools notifications to see if you have any manual penalties applied to your website.

If you do discover your site has been penalised, stop what you’re doing and go fix whatever it is that has caused your site to get hit.

What can you do to recover?

If you’ve been penalised by a previous Google update, we’ve got you covered with an in-depth guide on why your site may have been hit and what you can do to recover. This guide walks you through 11 reasons that might have caused your site to get penalised as well as specific steps to follow to help you recover after you’ve been hit.

Penalised by Google?

Check out our comprehensive guide on reasons why you got penalised and ways to recover. Make sure you bookmark it and use it in the event your site gets hit by a future Google penalty.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that there are over 200 factors that influence rankings for a site. It’s not enough to focus on one algorithm and fix those specific issues but instead look at the bigger picture. Search engines reward sites that provide searchers with the most informative, interesting and relevant content for their search queries and with the best user experience.

So while it’s ok to prioritise site optimisation and quickly fix certain issues that may arise, it’s even more important to put your users first and provide them with the best information and website experience they can ask for.

For More Info about Google Penguin 3.0 is coming and here’s what to do to prepare

Panda 4.1-Google’s 27th Panda Update-Is Rolling Out

2014-09-30T22:51:00.001-07:00

Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.

Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into next week, before being complete. Google said that depending on location, about 3%-to-5% of search queries will be affected.

Anything different about this latest release? Google says it’s supposed to be more precise and will allow more high-quality small and medium-sized sites to rank better. From the post:

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

New Chance For Some; New Penalty For Others

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.

The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by Panda might get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from Google this week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda Update is likely to blame.

About That Number

Why are we calling it Panda 4.1? Well, Google itself called the last one Panda 4.0 and deemed it a major update. This isn’t as big of a change, so we’re going with Panda 4.1.

We actually prefer to number these updates in the order that they’ve happened, because trying to determine if something is a “major” or “minor” Panda Update is imprecise and lead to numbering absurdities like having a Panda 3.92 Update.

But since Google called the last one Panda 4.0, we went with that name — and we’ll continue on with the old-fashioned numbering system unless it gets absurd again.

For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates, with some of the major changes called out with their AKA (also known as) names:

Panda Update 1, AKA
Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
Panda Update 2, AKA
Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 8 AKA
Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
Panda Update 26 AKA
Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 27 AKA
Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3-5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

The latest update comes four months after the last, which suggests that this might be a new quarterly cycle that we’re on. Panda had been updated on a roughly monthly basis during 2012. In 2013, most of the year saw no update at all.

Of course, there could have been unannounced releases of Panda that have happened. The list above is only for those that have been confirmed by Google.

For More Information about Panda 4.1-Google’s 27th Panda Update-Is Rolling Out

Beginner's Guide To Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps To Success

2014-09-16T00:02:00.003-07:00

Secret To Winning Web Analytics: 10 Starting Points For A Fabulous Start!

I want to share where in your web analytics data you can find valuable starting points, even without any context about the site / business / priorities. Reports to look at, KPIs to evaluate, inferences to make. Here's what we are going to cover:

Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.

Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.

Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.

Step #4: What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages.

Step #5: What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric.

Step #6: How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds.

Step #7: Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values.

Step #8: Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes.

Step #9: Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization.

Step #10: What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence.

The first time you go through the steps outlined in this guide it might take you more than 120 minutes. But I promise you that with time and experience you'll get better.

The World’s Quickest (Authentic) SEO & Marketing Audit In 12+1 Steps

2014-07-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

I am, according to those who know me, a very structured person. In order to function, I have to live by spreadsheets, task lists and processes. Without them, I’m lost. It’s just life. Isn’t everyone like that?

But despite my obsession with structure and process, I don’t like giving clients a one-size-fits-all web marketing campaign. It just doesn’t make sense. Every website is different and has different needs; therefore, the online marketing plan will have to be different as well.

The problem is, you really can’t know what any particular site’s needs are until after you’ve gone through and performed a thorough site audit — and that can take upwards of 5-20 hours depending on the site.

We can’t really give away several hundreds of dollars worth of work each time we get a request for a proposal — but we won’t do cookie-cutter, either. Quite the conundrum!

I’m sure we are not all that different from many other SEOs that will perform a quick assessment of a site in order to provide some specific feedback to the prospect. But we always want to make sure our assessments are meaningful. We don’t want to just say, “Hey, look at us, we know something!” We want to put together a proposal that addresses many of their marketing needs, so they understand that we truly have a grasp of what needs to be done.

Yeah, we could run the site through a couple tools that spit out some basic SEO information, but they can — and likely do – get that from anyone else. Instead, why not put a bit more effort into your initial audits, without breaking the bank on time?

12+1 Website Audit Steps

Below are 12 key SEO/marketing areas to assess — plus a quick PPC review — when drafting a proposal for prospective clients (or for any reason, really). When reviewing each of these areas, you should be able to uncover some definite actionable tasks and get a broader understanding of the site’s overall marketing needs.

1. Keyword Focus

One of the first things to look at is the overall keyword optimization of the site. Some sites have done a decent job writing good title tags and meta descriptions — others, not so much. Look through several pages of the site, glancing at tags, headings and content to see if keywords are a factor on those pages or if the site is pretty much a blank slate requiring some hardcore keyword optimization.

2. Architectural Issues

Next, look at global architectural issues. Things you can look at quickly are broken links (run a tool while you’re doing other assessments), proper heading tag usage, site and page spiderability, duplicate content issues, etc. None of these take too much time and can be assessed pretty quickly. Some of the solutions for these are quick and some aren’t; and undoubtedly, once you start digging deeper you’ll find a lot more issues later.

3. Navigation Issues

Does the navigation make sense for the site? Look to see if it’s too convoluted or maybe even too simplistic. You want visitors to easily find what they are looking for without being overloaded with choices and options. Determine if the navigation needs some tweaking or all-out revamping.

4. Category Page Optimization

Product category pages can have all kinds of problems, from poorly implemented product pagination to a lack of unique content. Look at each of these pages from the perspective of value and determine if a visitor or search engine will find any unique value on the page. You might need to add some content, product filtering options, or better product organization to make the page better for both visitors and search engines alike.

5. Product Page Optimization

Product pages can be tricky. Some searchers might look for a product name, a product number or a specific description of what the product can do. Make sure your product page content addresses each of these types of information searchers. You want to make sure the content of the product pages is largely unique, not just on your site, but across the web, as well. If not, there may be a lot of work ahead of you.

6. Local Optimization: Off-Site

Sites that are local, rather than national, have an entirely different set of criteria to analyze. For local sites, you need to see if they are doing a good job with their citations, maps, listings and other off-page signals. You don’t have to do an exhaustive check; a quick look at some of the main sites that assist with local signals should do.

7. Local Optimization: On-Site

Aside from off-page local signals, you should also look at the on-page optimization of local keywords. This often goes one of two ways: either there is very little local optimization on the page or far too much, with tons of local references crammed into titles, footers and other areas of the site. Assess the changes you’ll need to make, either way, to get the site where it needs to be.

8. Inbound Links

No assessment would be complete without at least looking at the status of the site’s inbound links, though you’ll have to dig a bit to get some information on the quality of the links coming in. It helps to do the same for a competitor or two so you have some basis of comparison. With that, you’re better able to see what needs to be done to compete sufficiently.

9. Internal Linking

Internal linking can be an issue, outside of navigation. Is the site taking advantage of opportunities to link to their own pages within the content of other pages? Rarely does each page of a site stand alone, but instead should be a springboard of driving traffic to the next page or pages based on the mutual relevance of the content.

10. Content Issues

This is a bit more of an in-depth look at the site’s content overall. It’s not about the amount of content, but the quality of the content throughout the site. Assessing the content’s value will help you identify problem pages and determine whether there is a need to establish an overall content strategy.

11. Social Presence

Social presence matters, so jump in and see where the brand stands in the social sphere. Do they have social profiles established? Is there active engagement on those profiles? Is social media being used as an educational tool or as a promotional tool? These things matter a great deal, especially when determining the course of action that needs to be taken.

12. Conversion Optimization Issues

Web marketing is not all about traffic. If you’re getting traffic but not conversions, then it doesn’t matter how good the “SEO” is. Look through the site for obvious conversion and usability issues that need to be fixed or improved. Just about every site can use conversion optimization, it’s more obvious (and urgent) for some sites than others. This assessment helps you determine if your time is better spent here or somewhere else.

Bonus: PPC Issues

The items above primarily deal with website and optimization issues. But if a PPC campaign is running, take a look at that and make sure it was set up and is being executed optimally. Many people don’t believe PPC can be profitable. Most of the time it’s not, but only because of poor management. If there is room for improvement with PPC, you’ll want to know.

It’s Just A Starting Point

Of course, you can spend hours assessing each of these areas, but that’s not the point. A quick 5-10 minute look into each of these areas can give you a wealth of information that you can use to improve the site.

This is the starting point, but as you dive into each of these areas, more opportunities will arise. The point is, you have to start somewhere. This is the most authentic quick SEO and marketing review you can give, without getting lost in the details or in an endless pit of time.

For More Information about worlds-quickest-authentic-seo-marketing-audit

Google Launches Panda 4.0

2014-05-22T03:14:00.003-07:00

It's official. Panda 4.0 has officially hit the Google search results.

The Panda algorithm, which was designed to help boost great-quality content sites while pushing down thin or low-quality content sites in the search results, has always targeted scraper sites and low-quality content sites in order to provide searchers with the best search results possible

Panda 4.0, which Google and Matt Cutts confirmed began rolling out yesterday, has definitely caused some waves in the search results. However, the fact that Panda 4.0 is also hitting at the same time as a refresh of an algorithm targeting spammy queries like payday loans makes it a little bit more difficult for webmasters to sort through the damage.

With the payday loans refresh impacting extremely spammy queries and Panda targeting low-quality content, some webmasters could potentially get hit with both of these or by just one or the other.

While usually people complain about losing rankings, Alan Bleiweiss from AlanBleiweiss.com showed via Twitter that Panda can also bring about some serious improvement to a site's traffic as well.

Prior to Cutts confirming via Twitter that Panda 4.0 hit, there had been plenty of speculation about a change with either Panda or Penguin, although many found it hard to pin down exactly what the change was.

"It was interesting to see the chatter amongst SEOs over the last few days," says Marie Haynes of HIS Web Marketing. "We all knew that something was going on, but there was significant disagreement on exactly what Google was doing. Most of the black hats were saying that it was related to Penguin because they were noticing huge drops in their sites with the spammiest link profiles."

This would have been the changes to the payday loans update, where the goal is to target the spammiest search queries Google sees. There was also plenty of debate on forums and Twitter about whether the shake-up we saw was Panda-related or Penguin-related. And with the payday loans update thrown in there for good measure, it was definitely confusing.

"I was really hoping that this wasn't a Penguin refresh because the majority of the sites that I had done link cleanup on were not seeing any improvement and if Penguin refreshed and none of my clients were seeing ranking increases, then that would not be good," Haynes says. "I was also puzzled because one site that I monitor that has been adversely affected by several Panda updates saw a vast improvement today. It does not have a bad link profile and would not have been affected by a Penguin update. "

"When I heard the announcements that Google had released two algorithms over the last couple of days – payday loans and also a big Panda update, everything made sense. And still, so many of us are waiting for that big Penguin refresh. It wouldn't surprise me if that happens in the next couple of days," she says.

Google has said previously that they try not to throw multiple updates at once or within a very short period of time, so it is interesting that they pushed out two completely unrelated updates – although updates that could both impact some the same sites – within a couple of days.

Releasing two back-to-back updates makes it a lot harder for webmasters to analyze the changes and what specifically was targeted in these updates, and could affect Google's ability to evaluate how well (or not) the two updates worked. It also means webmasters might have a challenge knowing what changes need to be made in order to recover search rankings.

However, Haynes speculated that some of the Panda change might have been to reverse some of the damage done to sites that had great content yet were impacted for other on-page reasons.

"I think it's too early to say what this new iteration of Panda is affecting, but I can tell you that in the case of the site that I saw big improvements on, no cleanup work had been done at all," Haynes says. "It was always in 'Panda flux.'"

She says some Panda refreshes would hit it hard and then occasionally the site would show a slight increase with a refresh.

"This is by far the biggest increase, though," Haynes says. "It really is a good-quality site and I believe that what caused it to be affected by Panda in the first place was a site layout that caused crawlers to get confused. Underneath that confusing layout is a site full of really good content. It may be that Google found ways to see past structural issues and recognize the good content as the structural problems would not affect users, just crawlers. But really, that's a guess."

Panda first blazed onto the scene in February 2011, and was believed to be Google's response to criticism of how well content farms were ranking. Google later announced that they internally called it the big Panda update, after Navneet Panda, the Google engineer who created it.

While there have been many smaller Panda updates and a couple larger ones, each rolled out monthly over a period of 10 days, Google had announced several months ago that Panda would be integrated into the algorithm updates and that the "softer" Panda would be less noticeable. However, that clearly isn't the case with Panda 4.0, which has had a widespread impact, both positively and negatively.

Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz also studied the changes they saw from the latest Panda update, and noticed that eBay got hit particularly hard.

Digging into the May 19th data (and before Google confirmed anything), I noticed that a few keywords seemed to show losses for eBay, and the main eBay sub-domain fell completely out of the "Big 10" (our metric of the ten domains with the most "real estate" in the top 10).

In fact, Meyers notes that eBay's drop was so significant that it dropped from 1 percent of their queries to 0.28 percent. It won't be surprising to hear of more sites who have seen a drop due to Panda 4.0 – especially sites that have been notorious for having low quality content.

We will definitely see more come out in the next few days as webmasters and SEO professionals have a chance to evaluate the changes and what might have caused sites (either their own or competitors) to either rise or fall in Google's search results. And since we're still awaiting a Google Penguin update (Penguin 2.0 launched a year ago this week), I wouldn't be surprised if we see one of those updates coming soon, especially in light of Google releasing both the payday loans and Panda 4.0 so close together.

For More Information about Google Launches Panda 4.0

Google Provides More Clarity Around Sneaky Redirects Against Their Guidelines

2014-05-01T21:20:00.003-07:00

Google announced on their Webmaster blog that they have updated two of their guideline documents to improve the clarity around what sneaky redirects are against Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google has expanded their guidelines to ensure webmasters are aware that using sneaky redirects through mobile site detection and redirection, is not allowed if the content is not the same. An excerpt from Google’s revised guidelines indicate a situation where “desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain,” as not in accordance with Google’s guidelines.

Here are the two new examples Google placed in their sneaky redirects guideline page:

Search engines shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different
Desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain

Google also updated the hacked sites page with an content about redirects that reads:

“Hackers might inject malicious code to your website that redirects some users to harmful or spammy pages. The kind of redirect sometimes depends on referrer, user-agent, or device. For example, clicking a URL in Google search results could redirect you to a suspicious page, but there is no redirect when you visit the same URL directly from a browser.”

Google added a warning at the end of their blog post saying that “with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take manual action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of the search results.”

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What’s new in social media and what is broken

2014-04-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

At least quarterly, it’s a good idea to find out what’s no longer working in different parts of digital marketing, particularly in fast-moving areas like social. This week, we’ll talk about what’s no longer working in social media, then we’ll move on to what’s new. And in our next series, we’ll also talk about search.

Before we proceed though, it is worth mentioning that participating in social media without a plan is asking for trouble. Really think about why you’re using social and what you hope to achieve. More visibility? An increase in website visitors? What are they supposed to do when they get to your website? Is your blog connected to your lead capture system?

Read also: 7 steps to elevate your social media presence

Also think about the role of social in your overall online strategy, whether it’s part of branding, marketing or customer service.

1. Blogging

It’s often forgotten that blogs were among the first social media tools – the best we’d had available since the online bulletin board or forum. The ramp-up to slow-down theory of blogging is no longer working. You can’t blog daily for six weeks, then slow down and blog when you “have time” and expect the same results.

Studies are now showing that ramping up to posting even every other day increases sales. So wake up that dead blog.You can start by asking people who have subscribed via email what they’d like to learn about.

Try doing more shorter, pithier posts, then one in-depth post a week.

2. Twitter

There was a time you could get away with broadcasting links into the general noise of Twitter, and be noticed due to the curiosity factor of Twitter’s firehose, and the fact that Google would pick up your tweets in real time, and even show them in real time on trending searches.

Now, not only has the Twitter firehose been hidden for years now, but Google’s relationship with Twitter has changed – no more real time tweets on hot searches.

Besides, Twitter was never meant to be a broadcast medium and most people ignore much of what is on their incoming streams, or whittle them down to a manageable level, full of only the people they most want to interact with frequently. Instead of trying to manage my full incoming Twitter stream,

I look at my Twitter lists, hashtags, and people who I’ve set to mobile notifications first. Most people on Twitter now have a system similar to this or a custom timeline – being followed is no longer enough to get noticed. You must provide value, and shouting “LOOK AT ME AND MY STUFF” isn’t doing it anymore.

Pick some non-competing colleagues (or even the competition if you’re confident) and share their most helpful content 6 to 8 times for every time you talk about yourself. I personally find that I get a lot more attention when I’m ready to talk about myself if I share my community with others.

Screen some Twitter chats related to your topic if you have trouble finding out who these people are.

3. Facebook

Oh #facepalm. Where do I begin with what doesn’t work on Facebook?

I’m tempted to say “everything”. For Pages, reach is down, because apparently Facebook differs from Twitter in that it either doesn’t see the value, or doesn’t have the capability, to show you everything you or your connections are subscribed to in the the public stream.

You’ve got to pay to play and even that can give you dismal results.

Ever since Facebook began to take away some of pages killer features, I haven’t been the fan I once was. It used to be easy to get prospects to opt-in to be contacted outside Facebook, to create posts natively using the Notes app, and many other things personal profiles have been able to do, or still can.

If you’re using your personal profile for personal interaction, it’s best to keep it that way. But if you’ve been using your profile’s ability to make certain information visible or hidden to certain groups via the refreshed Lists feature, that may be your best bet for visibility of informational posts that aren’t commercially heavy.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn used to have a kick-ass section called LinkedIn Answers. You could get a crazy amount of visibility by logging in once a quarter and answering questions until you were one of the top three in a sub-niche. I used to get very high quality client leads this way.

Now LinkedIn is letting more people into its Influencers program. Many don’t see the appeal to writing to an audience they already have. However, if you promote your LinkedIn posts as you would any other content marketing item or guest post, you will find that your audience expands outside the contacts you already have.

Test this out by applying to their program – if you’re accepted, test with a reworked blog post if you don’t have any new content on hand.

5. YouTube

Trying to grow your YouTube audience without interaction is much harder than it used to be. In years past, you could get away with just optimizing for search and exposing your videos to your own subscribers or your blog audience.

Now, the action on your page is part of the criteria for getting ranked, according to my favorite source on video SEO, ReelSEO (get it? Why can’t I think of things like that?) A dead channel is an ignored channel. Get out there and find the active users in your space. Delight them and lure them to your channel.

6. Google+

So here’s a weird one for you – the main thing not working for Google+ is ignoring it.

If you’ve hated Google+ for years, you had good reason. With lots of abandoned profiles and few of the features that now exist, 2011 was way too early to speculate about its potential.

However adoption among more regular people, business owners, bloggers, and even Android users is making Google+ the place to be, not to mention the ability to leverage additional spots in Google’s universal search rankings, or the personalized rankings of people you’re connected to via the site.

If for no other reason than to get your OWN blog more personalized rankings by being connected to more people than your nearest competition, Google+ is a must if Google search is part of your marketing strategy.

You may hate it, but even though we may hate accounting, we still make sure it gets done. Build out your profile and invest just 5 minutes a day making new connections on Google+ – if you do it right, it’ll be worth your while.

The takeaway

Sometimes it feels like our social media efforts are failing. And sometimes, this is actually true. The key question to ask isn’t IF there is failing but WHAT is failing. Before you give up, make sure the point of failure isn’t your strategy or technique.

For More Information about What’s new in social media and what is broken

Google Working On A Softer & Gentler Panda Algorithm To Help Small Businesses

2014-04-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced at Search Marketing Expo that his search team is working the “next generation” Panda update that would appear to many as being softer.

Cutts explained that this new Panda update should have a direct impact on helping small businesses do better.

One Googler on his team is specifically working on ways to help small web sites and businesses do better in the Google search results. This next generation update to Panda is one specific algorithmic change that should have a positive impact on the smaller businesses.

Matt Cutts didn’t mention when the new update is coming out but rather they are currently working on this update. My feeling is that it is far off from being launched, like maybe in two to three months at best, but that is my gut.

This would not be the first time Google released a softer Panda update. They did a softer update to the Panda algorithm possibly in July of last year.

Now Panda is more of a monthly rolling update and Google is unlikely to confirm future Panda updates.

Learn more about Google Panda updates.

For More Information about Softer & Gentler Panda Algorithm

How Search Marketers Succeed

2014-04-02T22:21:00.001-07:00

"How Do I Get Some Success Rolling In Search Engine"

The complicated algorithms of search engines may appear at first glance to be impenetrable. The engines themselves provide little insight into how to achieve better results or garner more traffic. What information on optimization and best practices that the engines themselves do provide is listed below:

SEO INFORMATION FROM GOOGLE WEBMASTER GUIDELINE

Googlers recommend the following to get better rankings in their search engine:

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as cloaking.

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

Use keywords to create descriptive, human friendly URLs. Provide one version of a URL to reach a document, using 301 redirects or the rel="canonical" element to address duplicate content.

SEO INFORMATION FROM BING WEBMASTER GUIDELINE

Bing engineers at Microsoft recommend the following to get better rankings in their search engine:

Ensure a clean, keyword rich URL structure is in place Make sure content is not buried inside rich media (Adobe Flash Player, JavaScript, Ajax) and verify that rich media doesn't hide links from crawlers.

Create keyword-rich content based on research to match what users are searching for. Produce fresh content regularly.

Don’t put the text that you want indexed inside images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo.

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Google’s Matt Cutts Gives SEO Advice For Times When Your Products Go Out Of Stock

2014-03-24T21:36:00.001-07:00

Google’s Matt Cutts answered in a video what webmasters and site owners should do about their out of stock products on their e-commerce sites.

Matt Cutts basically said it depends on the size of the e-commerce site. He broke it down into three sizes: small sites with tens of pages, medium sites with thousands of pages and massive sites with hundreds of thousands of pages or more.

Small E-Commerce Sites

Small sites that sell items, such as handmade furniture, that showcase a product that is out of stock should likely link to related products. This way the customer can see that this owner can make or design something as displayed but at the same time, show other products that are currently available in stock that the customer can purchase today.

Of course, it may make sense to add a manufacturing time next to the items that are out of stock.

Medium E-Commerce Sites

The normal, medium sized, e-commerce site, that sells thousands of products, and where some of those products are out of stock. In that case, the site owner should 404 – page not found – the products that are out of stock.

That is unless you know the date that the products will come back in inventory. If you know when the products will come back in inventory, inform the customer on the site and let them choose if they want to order it for later delivery or not.

Otherwise, 404 the page because it can be frustrated for a customer to land on a product page that they cannot buy.

Large E-Commerce Sites

For really large e-commerce sites, with hundreds of thousands of pages, such as Craigslist, you should set the date the page will expire using the meta tag, unavailable_after tag. This way, when the product is added, you can immediately set when that product page will expire based on an auction date or a go-stale date.

This information is treated as a removal request: it will take about a day after the removal date passes for the page to disappear from the search results. Google currently only supports unavailable_after for Google web search results

Here is the video:

For More Information about Google’s Matt Cutts Gives SEO Advice

The Resources You Need to Stay Current With SEO In Under 100 Words

2014-01-25T22:32:00.004-08:00

understatement: SEO has changed.

To understand what’s in store for the future (which you can learn about here), you have to know where SEO has been (which you can learn about here).
With that context, let’s lay out some resources to make you a modern SEO.
First, learn how to optimize your blog content — a cornerstone of top-notch SEO. Then, figure out how to integrate search and social.
Finally, stay on top of those constantly changing trends. Resources like this SEO coffee tips series, and this mythbusting guide will keep you in the know.

For More Info about The Resources You Need to Stay Current With SEO

The Latest SEO Challenge? Maintaining Rankings

2014-01-25T02:44:00.002-08:00

Unfortunately for hopeful small businesses with polished websites and great new content, staying high-up in the rankings of major search engines is an ongoing challenge. Because search engines constantly index content and search for new pages, it requires proactivity and perseverance to keep a website at the top of the rankings.

Several factors cause a website to slip in ranking. Namely, competitors optimize their own sites, which can cause theirs to rise in ranking and others to drop. There are also constant changes in search engine algorithms, which improve search engines, but often leave some websites behind which used older SEO methods. Not to mention changes in search engine market share, or the simple habits of online buyers.

Telx Web, a Miami website design business, announced today that they now provide new and improved rankings maintenance for clients. This means Telx Computers monitors clients’ rankings weekly for targeted keywords, they write articles and distribute them with links to clients’ websites, as well as back-linking from other sites and social media postings.

This Miami SEO company has a reliable and reputable staff that is dedicated to updating and maintaining clients’ website rankings. A few years ago, technology like “Meta Tags” was essential to maintaining traffic. As search engines have changed and grown, link building is considered much more important, and the largest search engines have changed their algorithms along these lines. Telx Web is one of the few search engine optimization companies that will actually continue to write and distribute articles with links to client websites, provide back links and social media postings, and monitor the search status of clients’ sites.

Being able to not only understand the current trends and search engine technologies, but being able to adapt and overcome changes in these trends is what Telx Web is set on accomplishing for customers. Through SEO consulting, Telx can teach clients how to successfully optimize their businesses for search engines of all types, and to reach the customers they intend to impact.

About Telx Web - A hallmark of the best SEO companies are full-ranging SEO features. Telx Web provides these, and more; On-Page optimization - which involves the use of correct keywords and metadata and Off-Page optimization - which is all about back-linking to a site via other sites. Not to mention Social Media Marketing through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networking sites, as well as manually submitting and monitoring the ranking of clients’ sites and pay-per-click campaigns. Telx also provides clients with scalable services, so that they can serve every budget and every business, small to large.

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SEO in 2014: How to Prepare for Google's 2014 Algorithm Updates

2014-01-10T09:02:00.001-08:00

It has been an incredibly eventful year in terms of updates from Google. Major 2013 changes included further releases of Penguin and Panda, Hummingbird taking flight, and the shift away from providing keyword data thanks to encrypted search.

Many have gone so far as to ask whether SEO as a profession is dead: for one interesting perspective, see my recent Forbes interview with Sam Roberts of VUDU Marketing. My own take is less alarmist: Google has taken major spam-fighting steps that have shifted the playing field for SEO professionals and anyone trying to get their site on the map in the year ahead.

At the same time, the need for an online presence has never been stronger, while the landscape has never been more competitive. The potential to make a real ROI impact with your company's online marketing initiative is greater than ever. But defaulting to so-called "gray hat" tactics no longer works. Instead, SEO professionals need to step up and embrace a more robust vision of our area of expertise.

You might call it a move from tactician to strategist: the best and most successful players in our space will work to anticipate Google's next moves and respond to them with laser focus. In a sense, the infinite digital game of chess that is SEO will continue, but the rules of the game have become more complex.

Through a mix of what I'm observing and reading and what I'm seeing working out in the field today for my clients, here are some suggestions for companies and SEO professionals that are thinking ahead to 2014 for their digital strategies.

Everything You Learned in 2013 is Still Relevant, Just Amplified

When you look closely at the targets of the 2013 updates (ie, websites that cheat their way to the top of the rankings or provide no value to visitors), I anticipate seeing these carried forward throughout 2014. We can continue to expect micro adjustments to Panda and Penguin that continue to target both link quality and content quality.

Smart marketers will benefit from keeping a close eye on their link profiles, and performing periodic audits to identify and remove inbound links built unnaturally. High quality content investments will remain critical.

A solid SEO performance in 2014 is going to be built on a foundation of really understanding what happened in 2013, and what these changes mean both strategically and tactically for SEO. SEO really has changed in critical ways.

Content Marketing is Bigger than Ever

Content marketing will move from buzzword to mature marketing movement in 2014. From an SEO perspective, Google will be looking at companies that have robust content marketing efforts as a sign that they're the kind of business Google wants to support.

Think of all the advantages of a good content strategy:

Regular, helpful content targeted at your audience.
Social signals from regular sharing and engagement.
Freshness or signs that your site is alive and growing.
Increasing authority connected to your body of work.

Sound familiar? It's the very approach to SEO that all of Google's recent updates have been designed to shape.

What changes you need to make in 2014 depends largely on where your company stands now in relation to an active content marketing strategy. Companies with existing content strategies will need to assess the role of mobile, specifically.

If you've just begun to move in the direction of content marketing, it's time to really commit and diversify. If you haven't started yet, it's time to take the plunge.

Social Media Plays an Increasingly Visible Role

Social media has been a major player in the digital marketing landscape for the last few years. First we saw the rise of mega platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In the last couple of years, visual content from networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and various micro-video services haa swept through.

Today, diversification is a major trend: depending on who you're targeting, it's no longer enough to be active on a single network. In fact, The Content Marketing Institute recently released a study that the most successful B2B marketers are active on an average of seven networks. Companies and SEO professionals will need to be asking the following questions in the year ahead:

Are we taking our social media seriously? Are we employing the pillars of strong profiles, good content, reciprocity, and engagement?
Is easy social sharing enabled for all of our content?
Does our content strategy include a dissemination phase that includes maximizing its potential for distribution through social networks?
Are we active on the social networks that matter in our industry?
Are we active on the social networks that matter to our customers?
Are we active on the social networks that matter to the search engines? (See below for more thoughts on making that strategic investment).
Does our social media marketing strategy stimulate the level of social signals required to achieve our goals?

Google's updates are likely to increasingly rely on social signals as active human curation of good content.

Invest in Google+

In addition to strengthening your overall social media marketing position, it's going to be absolutely critical that you are investing in your Google+ presence.

Moz's most recent study of ranking factors confirms that Google+ is playing an increasingly significant role in a solid SEO ranking. The immediate areas to focus on include:

Establishing Google Authorship of your content, and tying it to your Google+ account. Authorship, which brings your body of content together, will play an important role in the SERPs as well as strengthening your Author Rank.
Those +1's add up. It isn't clear exactly how much Google +1's directly contribute, but it's fair to say that it's a major factor in the "social signals" component of Google's algorithm. I expect this to increase in the year ahead.

Hummingbird Was Just the Tip of the Mobile Iceberg

2014 will be the year of mobile SEO. Hummingbird was just the very small visible tip of a very large iceberg as Google struggles to respond to the rapidly shifting landscape where half of all Americans own smartphones and at least one-third own tablets. Those statistics will probably shift upward, maybe dramatically, after the 2013 holiday season.

As a result, your site's mobile performance matters to your SEO rankings. Properties that you're trying to rank need to be designed first for mobile and then scaled up for the big screen. If you don't have a mobile-optimized website, this needs to be your top priority in terms of SEO and design investments for 2014.

Some underlying changes that happened with Hummingbird, including the increasing importance of both semantic search and Knowledge Graph, will continue to grow in influence. Practically speaking, this is to help prepare the search engine for the rise of voice search associated with mobile. But it also has direct implications (which we're still learning about) for broader SEO. This is one area that you should pay close attention to, from how you structure your content to what content you choose to put out.

The Long Versus Short Debate

Which is better, long content or short content? The answer depends on who is creating the content, who is reading it, what it's about, in what context it's being consumed, and how you define "better."

For the purposes of this argument, which form of content will help you best prepare to rank well in 2014? Frustratingly for some, the answer is more "both/and" than "or."

Vocus recently cited a study that showed that the top 10 results for a specific keyword search tended to be more than 2,000 words in length. The validity of that study has been debated, but it's probably fair to say that length is a proxy for depth of expertise and value delivered to the reader.

Google values both expertise and value. As a result, we've seen a trend where the "minimum desirable length" for text-based content has shifted from something in the range of 550 words to articles in the range of 1000-plus words.

Yet we're also confronted with the reality of the mobile device: if I'm reading about something I'm only moderately interested in, there's a high probability that I won't want to scroll through 2,000 words on my iPhone. That leaves content marketers faced with the challenge of producing mobile-friendly content, which tends to be (in a sweeping generality) much, much shorter.

Proposed solutions have run the gamut from content mixes to site architectures that allow you to point readers to specific versions of content based on their devices. This is great for the user experience, but where it all comes out on the SEO algorithm front remains to be seen. For now, I'll just acknowledge that it's an area of concern that will continue to evolve and that it's something you should keep your eye on.

Advertising and PPC has a Shifted Relationship with SEO

Since Google made the decision to encrypt the vast majority of its searches, our ability to access keyword data for research purposes has been restricted. However, there's a loophole. Keyword data is still available for advertisers using PPC on Google's platform.

More SEO budgets may be driven toward PPC simply because access to the data may otherwise be restricted. It's also possible that we'll see the release of a premium Google product to give us access to that data through another channel from Google in the year ahead.

Guest Blogging Remains One of the Most Effective Tactics, With a Caveat

Guest blogging has exploded in the past year, and it's going to remain one of the most effective means of building quality inbound links, traffic, and branding exposure in 2014. However, it's absolutely critical that you're creating high quality content, and using extremely stringent criteria when selecting your target sites.

In other words, you need to apply the same high ethos approach to guest blogging that you do to the rest of your SEO efforts. If you dip a toe into spammy waters where guest blogging is essentially scattershot article marketing with a 2014 update, you're likely to be penalized in a future Penguin update.

Conclusion

This has been a year of significant change in the SEO industry. Even contemplating strategies for 2014 can feel staggering.

The good news is that looking back, it's easy to see which direction the trends are heading in terms of the years ahead. Staying the course on solid white hat tactics and paying attention to a few priority areas that are shifting rapidly should give you the insights needed to improve your organic search visibility in 2014 and beyond.

What trends do you anticipate seeing from Google in the year ahead? How are you preparing?

For More Info about How to Prepare for Google's 2014 Algorithm Updates

Tags : googl's algorithm 2014, nilesh patel, seo services provider, nilesh patel seo

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 27, 2013

2013-11-28T01:41:00.006-08:00

Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the Web.

From Search Engine Land:

Google Keyword Planner Now Shows Trademarked Terms

At some point recently, Google started to indicate terms that are trademarked in the Keyword Planner with the TM mark. Dan Shure of Evolving SEO tweeted about the new feature, noting that McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” tagline is not marked as trademarked while Staples’ “The Easy Button” is marked as such. (Burger King’s “Have It […]

The Brave New World of SEO: Beyond Websites

We hear it regularly – the death knell tolling for SEO. In the past several years, we’ve been bombarded by a barrage of change in organic search, from Penguin to Panda to Hummingbird, from inbound link penalties to [not provided]. Let’s face it: the only constant in search is change. But I propose that SEO isn’t […]

3 Ways AdWords Scripts Will Make Your Holidays Merrier

The holidays are officially upon us, and if you’re reading this, I must give thanks to you for your time. When I still worked at Google, this was the time of year when new product launches came to a crawl since most advertisers were too busy to deal with change, and only the most persistent […]

How To Run A Successful B2B Social Media Marketing Campaign

Many marketers think of social media in the context of B2C companies: after all, 4 in 10 consumers buy products that they’ve favorited, liked, tweeted or pinned on various social networks. Yet, according to a recent study from MarketingProfs, 87% of B2B marketers use social media platforms in their content marketing efforts. In fact, of […]

Google Adds Big Change To Display Bidding: Pay By Viewable Impression In AdWords

In a significant move, Google rolled out CPM bidding by viewable impression in AdWords this week. Advertisers will only be charged for ad impressions that can actually be viewed in-screen by users, rather than on the traditional served impression basis. New reporting metrics are also available, all powered by Google’s viewability measurement solution, Active View, […]

For More Info about Search Cap

Google Keyword Planner Now Shows Trademarked Terms

2013-11-28T01:34:00.003-08:00

At some point recently, Google started to indicate terms that are trademarked in the Keyword Planner with the TM mark.

Dan Shure of Evolving SEO tweeted about the new feature, noting that McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” tagline is not marked as trademarked while Staples’ “The Easy Button” is marked as such. (Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” also gets a TM.)

What is marked as trademarked and what isn’t appears to be somewhat inconsistent at this point. For example, in this set of queries for several Pittsburgh Steelers’ related terms, “steellers” and “steelers pictures” are no’t marked as trademarked. I assumed that meant that “Pittsburgh” needed to be included in the search to trigger the trademark. However, for some reason “steelers hat” is marked with with the trademark symbol.

The NHL was the only major sports organization I could find that wasn’t marked, likewise NHL team names such as Pittsburgh Penguins are not marked.

The trademarked terms can still be added to campaigns. The “TM” mark is not included with the keywords when they are added. Presumably Google is adding the marker to help eliminate user surprise when trademarked terms get disapproved. The inconsistency could cause more confusion if in fact keywords such as “steelers pictures” are eventually disapproved for trademark reasons.

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Google Seeking Feature Requests For Webmaster Tools

2013-11-22T21:25:00.004-08:00

Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts posted on his personal blog a request for webmasters to provide feedback and feature requests for Google Webmaster Tools.

Matt and the Google search quality team is looking for new ideas on what would make Google Webmaster Tools more useful to you. Matt talked about how far Webmaster Tools has come but they want to continue to make it more useful.

To submit feedback, go to Matt’s blog and leave your feedback.

Matt’s disclaimer:

To be clear, this is just some personal brainstorming–I’m not saying that the Webmaster Tools team will work on any of these. What I’d really like to hear is what you would like to see in 2014, either in Webmaster Tools or from the larger team that works with webmasters and site owners.

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Google’s Matt Cutts : More Pages Does Not Equal Higher Rankings

2013-10-28T23:28:00.003-07:00

In a new video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, we learn that the more pages a web site has, does not necessarily mean you will have better rankings.

Matt Cutts said, “I wouldn’t assume that just because you have a large number of indexed pages that you automatically get a high-ranking. That’s not the case.”

He goes on to explain that the more pages you have, the more chances you have to rank for different keywords. Plus, the more pages you have, the more likely you have more overall links and PageRank, which do directly impact your rankings. But the number of pages on a specific site, does not have a direct ranking benefit.

Here is the video:

Matt said it at the end again, “just having a number of pages doesn’t give you a boost.”

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LiveZilla Live Chat Server Installation

2013-10-27T23:41:00.002-07:00

I. Users & Groups

________________________________________________________________________

The LiveZilla Server Admin contains several functions and options you will need to setup, update and maintain LiveZilla Server installations. The first step when setting up LiveZilla is to create a LiveZilla Server Installation on your webserver. Select "Create new LiveZilla Server" and press next to proceed.

You are asked to enter the details of your administration account on the first page of the wizard. The username and the password you specify here will be used to maintain and update the server you are going to create. Please keep username and password in mind. The administration account is your first internal user (=operator) which can also be used for all daily tasks. You can create additional internal users once you have finished this installation.

The next step will be to create the first LiveZilla Group. Please enter the email address of your support department and click next again.

II. FTP Upload

_________________________________________________________________________

You can directly upload the files to your webserver using FTP. All you need is a working FTP account with permission to create files and folders (write access). Enter the account details on the FTP setup page and do not forget to validate the target location for your LiveZilla Server Installation.

How to find / validate the target location for your LiveZilla Server?
Press the Select button in order to see the file structure on your webserver. Make sure to (create and) select a folder as target for the installation, it is elsewise possible that you overwrite some files of your website. Make also sure that you don't upload the files to a location above / outside of your public web folder (wwwroot, public_html or htdocs). You would not be able to access your LiveZilla Server elsewise. Press next to initiate the file upload process.

Alternative to FTP Upload: Extract to local system

__________________________________________________________________________

It's also possible (alternatively to FTP) to extract the files of the LiveZilla Server Installation to your local computer. In case you are working on the webserver you can extract the files directly into the public web folder.

This option should also be used if you intend to upload the server files to your webserver using a common FTP Client (like FileZilla). Keep in mind that You will need to set the file permissions manually.

III. Determining the Server URL

__________________________________________________________________________

When all files have been uploaded to your webserver you will be asked to determine the absolute URL of the folder of your new LiveZilla Server Installation. Please do not proceed until you have passed the server test, what guarantees that the LiveZilla Server URL is correct.

How to find the correct URL?
You should copy the URL suggested by the wizard and try to open it in your webbrowser. In case the suggestion of the wizard was correct you will see a page like this and you are done here. Elsewise, you will need to find the correct URL yourself. In case that you have uploaded the files to a folder named LiveZilla below your website structure, it's likely that the URL will look like http://www.yourwebsite.domain/livezilla.

Once you have determined the right URL and passed the Server Test click next to proceed to the next step.

IV. MySQL Database Settings

__________________________________________________________________________

The final step in this wizard is to setup the MySQL connection on your new LiveZilla Server.

MySQL Database

You will need to specify:

Host
The Hostname or IP of your MySQL / Database Server. Please note that all connections to the database will be initiated by the LiveZilla Server Script (PHP) and not by your local LiveZilla Server Admin application. In most cases, Webserver and MySQL Server are running on the same (logical) server which means that localhost will work as hostname. If your MySQL database is installed on a remote machine you will need to enter the hostname of the remote database server.
User
The database user you like to use for LiveZilla. The user needs the permission to CREATE/ALTER/DROP tables and SELECT/UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE data in the regarding database.
Database Name
The MySQL database you want to use for the LiveZilla Server Installation.
Prefix (optional)
The prefix entered here will be added in front of each table name. This will help you to organize data in a database and prevent one type of data from interfering with another.

Enter your database details and press Create Tables to create the set of LiveZilla tables. Validate database access and data consistency by pressing Validate Database.

Please note: you will not be able to create the tables and validate database access until the correct URL of your LiveZilla Server has been determined (previous page of this wizard)!

_________________________________________________________________

Congratulations, your LiveZilla Server is ready now. The final step is to integrate LiveZilla with your websites.

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Matt Cutts At Pubcon 2013: Moonshots, Machine Learning & The Future Of Google Search

2013-10-24T22:03:00.001-07:00

This morning, the head of Google’s webspam team Matt Cutts gave a keynote speech at Pubcon in Las Vegas. The keynote comes on the heels of a scathing day — 1 keynote from Jason Calacanis, who said that Google rules everything, that they were essentially evil. On Twitter yesterday, Matt asked if Jason wanted the polite response, or a thorough one. All of us here in attendance are hoping for “thorough.”

Matt starts with the state of the index talking about where will Google go in future.

He’s proud that Google as doubled down on ‘moonshot’ changes, specifically:

Knowledge Graph Google has been trying to understand entities — not just the searches. So essentially they are trying to learn about “things not strings.”
Voice Search
Conversational Search
Google Now Matt is proud that today, sometimes you don’t even have to search to find information you need.
Deep Learning Google is looking more into the relationships between words. Google will be able to read at a higher level and interpret the relationships between words. Works well with voice search when a user asks Google, “Who is the Prime Minister of Turkey?” then searches again for “How old is he?” and Google can reply with the previous context.

Core Quality Changes

Hummingbird This change targets better natural language translation. Search is more than just matching words — instead it’s looking at specific words that are more meaningful for intelligent scoring. For instance, a voice search for “what is the capital of Texas, my Dear” the “my Dear” isn’t that important — Hummingbird will be able to detect this. While Hummingbird affected 90% of queries, it was a very subtle change that most users didn’t recognize but will help users get more pertinent results.
Panda Softening This is something that Google has looked into to help bring some sites and content back.
Detecting/Boosting Authorities Not done by hand, but applies by topic areas. Webmasters can keep deepening their content on a topic to further their authoritativeness on a specific content area.
Smartphone Ranking Doesn’t have flash? won’t display a site that has flash to you then.

Webspam Changes

Penguin 2.0 & 2.1 Penguin 2.0 was released – not that intensive. Black hats said wasn’t big, so Google then released turned it up in 2.1. More changes will be continually coming, so buckle up.
Spammy Query Algorithms Items like porn and payday loans will be targeted for better results. Right now the SERPS aren’t great, but they will be working on it.
Advertorials/Native Advertising Google has cracked down on publishers selling ads that blended in as editorial with dofollow links.. You shouldn’t be paying for links that pass pagerank.
Spam Networks They’ve got a pretty good list, just working their way down them. Matt joked that he should talk a poll to determine who to axe next.

Communication

Google has done a great job of increasing the communication with webmasters, especially:

New videos for malware/hacking
Concrete examples in guidelines
>100 speaking events, Hangouts on Air, webmaster office hours
How search works website

Future of Search

Machine Learning Google’s goal is to provide the world information. The word “search engine” isn’t anywhere in their mission statement. They want to be able to give answers to specific queries.
Mobile Mobile is coming faster than anyone expected. 40% of YouTube videos are now served to mobile devices. If you haven’t thought about mobile, it’s time to start thinking about it.
Social/Identity/Authorship Matt starts with “Facebook did a great job of social and knowing who people are.” Then talks about the fact that signal is not just likes/+1s/Tweets but in the long terms; social signals are a sign of authority. You are someone worth listening to — search engines will think you are worth listening to as well.

Webspam Trends

Hacking Next 6 months – it’s going to look like we aren’t working on much. Now working on next generation of hacking. Queries like “buy viagra” still looks bad because people are breaking the laws.
Hot Topics Items like child porn, international issues and really nasty queries are being addressed.
No Toolbar PageRank scheduled for rest of year The pipeline for updating PageRank broke this year and PageRank stopped updating. Google realized that it wasn’t that bad and stopped updating as people seem to pay too much attention to the metric. It’s something they will reassess at a later time.

Advice

Mobile Get ready, you need a mobile plan.
Request Autocomplete New item in Chrome that allows users to auto-fill forms. Saves users time by using the standard to pull in all information and increase chance of conversions.
Ad-heavy pages above the fold Some tweaks are coming to “turn up” this algorithm. Users shouldn’t see a barrage of ads above the fold when they visit a site.
Tightening Authorship Matt mentions that a tightening of Authorship may provide better results. Google is looking for a 15% reduction to ensure that the quality of the authorship is still high and relevant.
Rich Snippets The ability to have and use rich snippets may be taken away for low quality sites in the coming months
Smarter on JavaScript Google is now fetching, rendering and indexing items called by JavaScript. Google is getting smarter and understanding smarter libraries.

Now to the Q and A section:

Matt talks about +1′s specifically and that they are a short term signal, but very bullish on long term signal of authorship. Next Matt talks about Negative SEO. Worked on Negative SEO for years. With Penguin, it not only removes sites, but can actually have a negative effect on the site. Disavow tool announced last year, use as a last resort. Use Webmaster Tools, find links and disavow at link or domain level. Webmaster tools is now giving better backlinks, not just A-Z, so use Webmaster Tools to help identify, can see 100,000 links.

In response to Jason Calacanis’ claims from yesterday, Matt polls the crowd on whether or not to go into the matter. Crowd wants to hear the response. Matt talks about the initial version of Panda and whether or not they should have rolled out slowly. Matt says that this wouldn’t have been good and cites multiple articles showing the degrading quality of the search results. Google needed Panda. A Googler made a personal blocklist to block specific sites and nearly 200k users installed — people did not want these content farms.

In response to Jason’s claims that Google wasn’t a good partner, Matt talked about the fact that no companies have partnerships with Google. There are YouTube partnerships, not Google search partnerships. In aggregate, Mahalo simply wasn’t a quality site and they came to an impasse at a personal meeting. This wasn’t even a webspam issue, it was a quality issue and nobody received special treatment.

With the Mahalo issue behind, Matt talks about press releases. “If you are paying for PageRank, you probably aren’t doing something right.” Google has identified “a lot” of the top Press Release sites and ignores the links but doesn’t penalize those who are using them.

On infinite scrolling issues, Matt recommends using some type of paginated versions as a safety guard to index all content. On the growing size of the Google bar, Matt mentions that they are aware of the size and pixels being taken up by Google.

That’s a wrap folks.

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Character Definitions for htaccess

2013-10-22T01:18:00.001-07:00

the # instructs the server to ignore the line. used for including comments. each line of comments requires it’s own #. when including comments, it is good practice to use only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores. this practice will help eliminate/avoid potential server parsing errors.

[F]

Forbidden: instructs the server to return a 403 Forbidden to the client.

[L]

Last rule: instructs the server to stop rewriting after the preceding directive is processed.

[N]

Next: instructs Apache to rerun the rewrite rule until all rewriting directives have been achieved.

[G]

Gone: instructs the server to deliver Gone (no longer exists) status message.

[P]

Proxy: instructs server to handle requests by mod_proxy

[C]

Chain: instructs server to chain the current rule with the previous rule.

[R]

Redirect: instructs Apache to issue a redirect, causing the browser to request the rewritten/modified URL.

[NC]

No Case: defines any associated argument as case-insensitive. i.e., "NC" = "No Case".

[PT]

Pass Through: instructs mod_rewrite to pass the rewritten URL back to Apache for further processing.

[OR]

Or: specifies a logical "or" that ties two expressions together such that either one proving true will cause the associated rule to be applied.

[NE]

No Escape: instructs the server to parse output without escaping characters.

[NS]

No Subrequest: instructs the server to skip the directive if internal sub-request.

[QSA]

Append Query String: directs server to add the query string to the end of the expression (URL).

[S=x]

Skip: instructs the server to skip the next "x" number of rules if a match is detected.

[E=variable:value]

Environmental Variable: instructs the server to set the environmental variable "variable" to "value".

[T=MIME-type]

Mime Type: declares the mime type of the target resource.

[]

specifies a character class, in which any character within the brackets will be a match. e.g., [xyz] will match either an x, y, or z.

[]+

character class in which any combination of items within the brackets will be a match. e.g., [xyz]+ will match any number of x’s, y’s, z’s, or any combination of these characters.

[^]

specifies not within a character class. e.g., [^xyz] will match any character that is neither x, y, nor z.

[a-z]

a dash (-) between two characters within a character class ([]) denotes the range of characters between them. e.g., [a-zA-Z] matches all lowercase and uppercase letters from a to z.

a{n}

specifies an exact number, n, of the preceding character. e.g., x{3} matches exactly three x’s.

a{n,}

specifies n or more of the preceding character. e.g., x{3,} matches three or more x’s.

a{n,m}

specifies a range of numbers, between n and m, of the preceding character. e.g., x{3,7} matches three, four, five, six, or seven x’s.

()

used to group characters together, thereby considering them as a single unit. e.g., (perishable)?press will match press, with or without the perishable prefix.

denotes the beginning of a regex (regex = regular expression) test string. i.e., begin argument with the proceeding character.

denotes the end of a regex (regex = regular expression) test string. i.e., end argument with the previous character.

declares as optional the preceding character. e.g., monzas? will match monza or monzas, while mon(za)? will match either mon or monza. i.e., x? matches zero or one of x.

declares negation. e.g., “!string” matches everything except “string”.

a dot (or period) indicates any single arbitrary character.

instructs “not to” rewrite the URL, as in “...domain.com.* - [F]”.

matches one or more of the preceding character. e.g., G+ matches one or more G’s, while "+" will match one or more characters of any kind.

matches zero or more of the preceding character. e.g., use “.*” as a wildcard.

declares a logical “or” operator. for example, (x|y) matches x or y.

escapes special characters ( ^ $ ! . * | ). e.g., use “\.” to indicate/escape a literal dot.

indicates a literal dot (escaped).

zero or more slashes.

zero or more arbitrary characters.

defines an empty string.

^.*$

defines one character that is neither a slash nor a dot.

[^/.]+

defines any number of characters which contains neither slash nor dot.

http://

this is a literal statement — in this case, the literal character string, “http://”.

^domain.*

defines a string that begins with the term “domain”, which then may be proceeded by any number of any characters.

^domain\.com$

defines the exact string “domain.com”

-d

tests if string is an existing directory

-f

tests if string is an existing file

-s

tests if file in test string has a non-zero value

Redirection Header Codes

301 – Moved Permanently
302 – Moved Temporarily
403 – Forbidden
404 – Not Found
410 – Gone

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