Search Engine Optimization Tips

Halloween Inspired SEO Tricks to Keep Spiders at Bay

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 05:22:00 +0000

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of prodigiously extolling search engine best practices per contra to taking shortcuts designed to trick search engines into trusting that an online destination is something it is not. This Halloween, I’ve decided to produce an antithetical essay to my digital morals and beliefs by way of parody and embrace the dark side of search engine spoofs.
Fear of spiders?
Not a problem. There are many ways to keep unwanted arachnids from crawling through your content.
For starters, why not avoid using visible text on your website? Embed as much content as possible in images and pictures. Better yet, make your site into one big splash page that appears to scroll to infinity and beyond.
Also, make certain that the imagery loads as slowly as possible. Consider yourself lucky that you will be able to streamline your web metrics around paid search campaigns and not worry about those pesky organic referral terms [not provided] by Google anymore. Keeping spiders out of your content is your first step toward complete search engine invisibility.
If your site is inherently text heavy, consider using dropdown and/or pop-up boxes for navigation. Configure these with Flash or have them require JavaScript actions to function. If possible, put the rest of your web content exclusively in frames. Designing a website in such a manner is another great way to keep all those bad robots out of your site.
When it comes to URL structures, try to include as many ampersands, plus signs, equal signs, percentage signs, session IDs, and other dynamic parameters as possible in a multifaceted, splendidly deep file structure. That way, your website will be made up of really long URL strings that can confuse humans and spiders alike. Even better, add filters and internal site search functionality, metrics tags, and other superfluous attributes to your URLs, just to keep the search engines guessing about your site structure. Get ready to burn your site’s crawl equity to the ground, while watching your bandwidth spend soar, when you wrap your site up like a mummy with this navigational scheme.
If you really want to turn your website into a graveyard for search engine spiders, consider using completely unnecessary redirects on as many different URLs as possible, taking multiple hops along the way. Combine permanent and temporary redirects with soft 404 errors that can keep your content alive in search indices forever. Make certain to build in canonical tag conflicts, XML sitemap errors, perpetual calendars and such, reveling in the knowledge that you will never have to waste precious development time fixing broken links again!
Content creation budget got you down? Build in new economic efficiencies by using the exact same content across as many domains as your budget can spawn. Invest in machine-generated content instead of having to listen to those troublesome user reviews. Make “Spamglish” the official language of your website. Since you don’t have to worry about looking at what keywords Google allows to send traffic to your Frankensite, feel free to target irrelevant keywords on as many pages as possible.
Additionally, try to keep all the title tags exactly the same on the critically important pages within your site. Spiders don’t have good eyesight – sometimes you have to shout to get their attention. Consider keyword stuffing as a way to make certain that the search engines understand precisely what your site is all about. If you don’t have room to stuff unnecessary contextual redundancies into your web content, consider using hidden text that flickers like a ghost when users mouse over what looks like dead space.
Still not convinced you can hide your site from the search engines this Halloween?
Break out the big tricks, my friends, because we’ve got some link building treats to share.
If your ultimate goal is to bury a domain name for all eternity, make certain that you participate in as many link farming free-for-all sites as possible. When you get a chance to do so, go ahead and “splog” other’s guest books and forums. In addition to buying site-wide text links, demand that your backlinks be placed in the footers. While you’re at it, sell a similar “service” to others.
Consider hiding some links in places that surprise visitors and always embrace bad linking neighborhoods. You know the type of sites I’m talking about… they’re the spooky ones and the non-paranormal that a business person would avoid.
Have a wonderful Halloween this year, with the knowledge that you too can make a website completely disappear!
Disclaimer: I don't actually endorse that you try any of the above; everything in this particular column should be taken with a serious dose of tongue-in-cheek.

The Value of Referrer Data in Link Building

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 05:20:00 +0000

Before we get into this article let me first state, link building is not dead. There are a lot of opinions floating around the web on both sides; this is just mine. Google has shut down link networks and Matt Cutts continues to make videos on what types of guest blogging are OK. If links were dead, would Google really put in this effort? Would anyone get an “unnatural links” warning?
The fact is, links matter. The death is in links that are easy to manipulate. Some may say link building is dead but what they mean is, “The easy links that I know how to build are dead.”
What does this mean for those of us who still want high rankings and know we need links to get them? Simply, buckle up, because you have to take off your gaming hat and put on your marketing cap. You have to understand people and you have to know how to work with them, either directly or indirectly.
I could write a book on what this means for link building as a whole, but this isn't a book, so I'll try to keep focused. In this article, we're going to focus on one kind of link building and one source of high quality link information that typically goes unnoticed: referrer data.
I should make one note before we launch in, I'm going to use the term loosely to provide additional value. We'll get into that shortly but first, let's see how referrer data helps and how to use it.

The Value Of Referrer Data

Those of you who have ignored your analytics can stop reading now and start over with “A Guide To Getting Started With Analytics.” Bookmark this article and maybe come back to it in a few weeks. Those of you who do use your analytics on at least a semi-regular basis and are interested in links can come along while we dig in.
The question is, why is referrer data useful? Let's think about what Google's been telling us about valuable links: they are those that you would build if there were no engines. So where are we going to find the links we'd be happy about if there were no engines? Why, in our traffic, of course.
Apart from the fact that traffic is probably one of, if not the best, indicator of the quality and relevancy of a link to your site, your traffic data can also help you find the links you didn't know you had and what you did to get them. Let's start there.

Referrers To Your Site

Every situation is a bit different (OK – sometimes more than a bit) so I'm going to have to focus on general principles here and keep it simple.
When you look to your referrer data, you're looking for a few simple signals. Here's what you're looking for and why:

Which sites are directing traffic to you? Discovering which sites are directing traffic to you can give you a better idea of the types of sites you should be looking for links from (i.e. others that are likely to link to you, as well). You may also find types of sites you didn't expect driving traffic. This happens a lot in the SEO realm, but obviously can also happen in other niches. Here, you can often find not only opportunities, but relevancies you might not have predicted.
What are they linking to? The best link building generates links you don't have to actively build. The next best are those that drive traffic. We want to know both. In looking through your referrer data, you can find the pages and information that appeal to other website owners and their visitors. This will tell you who is linking to you and give you ideas on the types of content to focus on creating. There's also nothing stopping you from contacting the owner of the site that sent the initial link and informing them of an updated copy (if applicable) or other content you've created since that they might also be interested in.
Who are they influential with? If you know a site is sending you traffic, logically you can assume the people who visit that site (or the specific sub-section in the case of news-type sites) are also interested in your content (or at least more likely to be interested than standard mining techniques). Mining the followers of that publisher for social connections to get your content in front of them is a route that can increase your success rate in link strategies ranging from guest blogging to pushing your content out via Facebook paid advertising. Admittedly, this third area of referrer data is more akin to refining a standard link list, but it's likely a different audience than you would have encountered (and with a higher-than-standard success rate for link acquisition or other actions).

As I noted above, I plan to use the term referrer data loosely. As if point three wasn't loose enough, we're going to quickly cover a strategy that ties nicely with this: your competitor's referrer data.

Competitor Data

You probably can't call up a competitor and ask them for their traffic referrer data (if you can, I wish I was in your sector). For the rest of us, I highly recommend pulling backlink referrer data for your competitors using one of the many great tools out there. I tend to use Moz Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO personally, but there are others.
What I'm interested in here are the URLs competitors link to. While the homepage can yield interesting information, it can often be onerous to weed through and I generally relegate that to different link time frames.
Generally, I will put together a list of the URLs linked to, then review these as well as the pages linking to them. This helps give us an idea of potential domains to target for links, but more importantly, they can let us know the types of relevant content that others are linking to.
If we combine this information with the data collected above when mining our referrer data, we can be left with more domains to seek links on and broader ideas for content creation. You'll probably also find other ways the content is being linked to. Do they make top lists? Are they producing videos or whitepapers that are garnering links from authority sites? All of this information meshes together to make the energies you put into your own referrer mining more effective, allowing you to produce a higher number of links per hour than you'd be able to get with your own.

Is This It?

No. While mining your referrer data can be a great source of information regarding the types of links you have that you should be seeking more of, it's limited to the links and traffic sources you already have. It's a lot like looking to your Analytics for keyword ideas (prior to (not provided) at least). It can only tell you what's working of what you have already.
A diversified link profile is the key to a healthy long term strategy. This is just one method you can use to help find what works now and keep those link acquisition rates up while exploring new techniques.

30 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase Your Site's Linkability

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 05:17:00 +0000

Well here's the big problem with that: yes, I can just handle it and send you a report each month and I have clients where that works very well. But every single one of those clients has someone else handling all the "other" stuff that I'd be doing or thinking about, or they're knowledgeable themselves.
Link building can exist in a bubble and it can be successful that way, but it can't reach maximum success without the client getting involved on some level, and I'm talking about doing more than paying the invoices.
While we're on the subject of invoices and money, that's another problem: paying someone to do link building for you can get very expensive, especially if they're really good at what they do. For some small business owners, the cost is difficult to justify so they have to either do it themselves or accept the fact that they probably won't be able to compete very effectively.
The beauty of building links is that there are many, many things that can be done to both get you a link and raise your visibility so that your likelihood of generating more links increases. You can get a link from:

Handing out your business card.
Talking to your neighbor who mentions your business to the barista who makes his morning latte and is overheard asking another customer if he knows of anyone in town who does what you do because he wants to interview them for his side project, a personal blog.
Emailing someone and asking for it.
Someone who finds your content in a search.

You can also invest some time in making your site a better and more efficient resource for your users. Link building isn't just about doing something that immediately gives you a text link. Links can be built from 100 different paths, some of which you'll never be able to accurately track.
It's hard to get that idea across to many clients who want to get lots of links and get them right now.
You have no idea how many times I've gone to a client and said "you know, if we rewrote the content on this page a bit so that it better reflected the anchor you want us to use, I think we'd be better off" or "you might want to figure out where the contact us form goes because when I tested it, it went nowhere and no one got in touch with me" and they basically (and usually nicely) tell me to keep quiet and just build them some links.
You also have no idea of the times we've lost link opportunities when a webmaster said "I can't even get their site to load" or asked why we wanted specific anchor text when it made no sense.
For example, if I'm writing a post like this one and I need to cite a source about a topic, I'm not going to use a site that takes a full minute to load. I'm not going to use one where there are 50 spam comments with no legitimate ones. I have my personal biases as does everyone else, and if those biases mean that a site loses a link opportunity, then it's something that could be fixed in order to improve the odds of a link opportunity.
Let's go through a few quick things that any client can do on his or her own, just to get started on the path of (eventually or immediately) building links and improving the linkability of the site.
You probably won't see massive changes overnight with any of these ideas, but they're all practices that we conduct ourselves and advise clients to do. They're also quick and easy (with the exception of the few more intensive initial ones), and they're a great way to get more comfortable with doing all the things you need to be doing in order to maximize your online visibility.
The key here is to make time to do something, even if it's just 15 minutes here and there.
You know how writers tell you that if you want to write, you should just set aside a few minutes a day and write something, just to get into the habit? Do the same with link building.

If You Have a Nice Chunk of Time

Analyze your backlink profile.
Analyze your competitor's backlink profile.
Make a list of what you have to offer a potential linking partner. If you don't have much, figure out what you can add.
Check your Site Speed Suggestions in Google Analytics. It's under Behavior > Site Speed. I've found this to be incredibly useful in identifying issues that are causing sites to lag.

If You Have an Hour

Find a top referring URL in your analytics that has a very low time on site/visit duration listed. Figure out why they're bouncing so fast. Does your site content that they're landing on seem misleading based on the anchor or the topic of the page that led them there? If they're landing on your contact form page and not spending much time, that might be fine, but if they're landing on a page where you'd expect them to stick around for more than 15 seconds, you might need to update your content, find a better landing page for that link and try to get it changed, or even change the anchor so that it better reflects its target.

Write a blog post about something relevant to your industry, something big happening, etc.
Rework an outdated blog post or page on your site. See what you wrote about a year ago and update it in a new post. Socialize that you've updated it.
Write a response to another blog post on someone else's site and email or tweet to them to let them know about it.
Set up Google Authorship.
Check your site on a mobile device and move around. Do the links work properly? Is everything rendered correctly? With more and more people using a mobile device to surf the web, you really need to make sure that your site works well there.

If You Have 30 Minutes

Set up Google Analytics if you haven't done it already.
Set up Google and Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven't done it already.
Make sure you're listed in Google and Bing Places.
Set your business up on Foursquare.
Read Google's Webmaster Guidelines on link schemes.
Set up a social profile somewhere where you don't have one already, but only if you're prepared to use it. If you're a Twitter maniac but don't have a Facebook profile and can handle both, set up a Facebook page for your business. Set up a LinkedIn page. Set up a Quora account and go answer some questions.
Do a search to find any unlinked brand mentions. "Brand Online Niche" -site:site.com -press -release.
Do some manual rankings checking to see how your results look from a potential user's perspective, and not just to check the spot where they appear. For example, I recently found a result for one of my clients that was ranking at position 3 consistently but the CTR was terribly low. Once I saw the result and how it appeared, it became obvious that people were clicking on the other results (even further down the page) because their results looked much more enticing and mentioned a lower price, free software, etc.
Create a list of Potential Partner sites that you want to reach out to when you have more time. Go ahead and note the contact info, your idea for the site (guest post, potential linking partner, getting added to their resource page, etc.) and any other info that will help you.
Check to see if you are throwing any 404 errors and if you are and there are good links coming to these pages, either 301 redirect them somewhere else on your site (to the most relevant page, or the homepage if you have to although that isn't great for usability) or rebuild the page.

If You Have 5-10 Minutes

Set up Google Alerts (and/or Talkwalker Alerts) for your main keywords and your competitors' brand names, adding to it whenever you have a few extra minutes.
Reach out to a site that's authoritative in your niche and ask if there's a chance you could do a guest post there. To avoid irritating them, first check to see if they have a policy about this. Some have specific rules to follow for submissions, but some state that they don't accept guest posts so check to see if they list their policy before contacting them.

Ask someone authoritative in your industry if you could interview him or her for your site. That builds links and visibility as the people interviewed tend to promote these pieces.
Email or call one of the sites on your Potential Partners list that you created for this exact purpose.
Find more relevant people to follow on Twitter. Followerwonk is good for searching Twitter bios by keyword.

Interact with people on Twitter. This almost sounds silly but honestly, you'd be amazed at how many people do nothing other than occasionally tweet out links to their own content with nothing else ever being socialized. Most people who use social for the interaction aren't going to bother with you if that's how you work social.
Socialize an older blog post that's still relevant. (On that note, when you do write, work in some evergreen topics to increase the chances that you'll always have relevant content on the site.)
Thank someone who's just given you an unsolicited new link. Thank them on Twitter, thank them via email, etc. Just say thanks.
Send an email to your employees asking for content ideas and volunteers to write content.
Ask your employees or customers to ask you questions or identify areas where they're having difficulty. Sometimes when I'm stuck trying to decide what to write about, I'll ask a couple of my link builders to let me know where they're having trouble, for example. It's great fodder for content as the chances are they aren't the only ones having this issue. They can also point out issues that you've overlooked, so it's a great chance to fix something.

Summary

Just remember that building links involves more than doing something that immediately generates a link. Sometimes the process takes a very long time.
You might write a blog post that doesn't do well for months then suddenly someone uncovers it and links to it. You might send an email asking a webmaster to update his or her link to your site because you have a much better target that fits the anchor and it takes 6 months to get a reply saying it's been changed.
This post certainly isn't even close to being an exhaustive list of ideas of what you could do in small amounts of time, but hopefully it can help you realize that little changes can have big results.

Targeting Weird Niche Audiences for Links

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 06:45:00 +0000

Want to know an extremely successful strategy to get links and gain rankings? This one is actually a sub-strategy of the "limited edition" link building strategy.
Instead of making huge adaptations to your product or service, make small changes to make the product suitable for a weird niche audience.
The choice of your target audience should be illogical, but you should be able to defend it in the media. The fact that you created a special product specifically for that particular group of people makes you linkable.

Here are a couple of examples:

"New dating site for LARP-ers" (Live Action Role Playing)
"Hyundai SUVs for midgets"
"Unique solar energy service for the Amish"
"Lingerie line suited for transsexuals"
"Restaurant leftover timeslot for poor people"
"Special car insurance for natural blonds"
"Trendy 'high school' bulletproof vests"
"Fast food discounts for recently divorced men"
"Strict celibacy group travel"

Once you've figured out what new audience you're going to address, you can start attracting media attention.
Select various angles from which your story is interesting to different media.
Prepare enough background information for each angle on your website so you're linkable to everybody.
Always try to involve any existing industry specific news sites. These will probably be interested in your explanation on why you see your new audience as an untouched market potential.
If your product has a technical aspect, make sure you're able to explain the inner working and how that appeals to your unique audience. If your storyline can be interpreted as a stance for or against a certain viewpoint (or group), make sure you attract attention from both sides. If possible, try to get a discussion about the ethics of your approach going.
Try to roll out the story within a week or two. This way no one interprets it as yesterday's news and they'll all want their share of the story's momentum.
If you need more time to contact all your preferred media partners, give them scoops under the embargo that they may only launch when the rest of your campaign does. This allows them to prepare the story and allows you to help and them in creating perfect link bait for your website.
Timing is key, but links and ranking are sure to follow.

What '(Not Provided)' & Google Hummingbird Mean for Small Business SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 06:41:00 +0000

Many small businesses measure the performance of their SEO agency based on keyword-level data. They believe the value proposition stems from better rankings on specific keywords that they select. Small businesses generally approach SEO firms with the assumption that better rankings will equate to more business.

Small Business SEO Monthly Reports

As time goes by, the small business will receive a monthly report that will explicitly show that great progress has been made moving the rankings of the selected keywords in Google and Bing/Yahoo. More sophisticated agencies transform raw keyword analytics into several buckets.
It has been popular to bundle keywords that are branded (i.e., use some form of the company's name or brand in the search phrase) against those that are non-branded. An increase in non-branded traffic has been attributed to SEO, while increases in branded traffic were attributed to other marketing efforts.

'(Not Provided)' Kills Specific Analytics Reporting

Regardless of the politics of the decision, Google’s recent move to 100 percent secure search has decimated the branded/non-branded keyword analysis used by many small businesses to evaluate their SEO firms. But this is OK.

SEO is Changing (Again)

Google has made several large algorithmic changes in 2013. The net result of these changes is that many old tactics for link acquisition are no longer helpful.
Additionally, both small business owners and SEO firms need a new orientation to remain successful.

Brand is Important to Rankings

The death of branded versus non-branded keyword traffic may be a blessing, as many now believe that branded mentions are a key signal in the Google algorithm.
While no one will deny that backlinks remain the primary driver of rankings, the anti-spam filters have also become much more sophisticated.
Mentions of a small business company name, even when not accompanied by a backlink, are believed by many to be a signal of legitimacy.

Breadth of a Website Matters to Hummingbird

Whereas small businesses used to obsess over the rankings of their top money keywords, Google's new Hummingbird algorithm implies their focus needs to be elsewhere.
It is now critically important that the website answers questions for end users.
Yes, content is still king. In fact, content that answers specific questions may be critical for Hummingbird success.

Replace Non-Branded Keyword Traffic with Entrance Pages

A healthy website is constantly expanding in breadth. In other words, SEO post-Hummingbird requires that a site gain new keyword rankings every month to demonstrate that it is a helpful resource.
The easiest metric to review is the number of unique entrance pages used by users to get to the website.
A website with more entrance pages:

Is a stronger resource for answering questions.
Offers expertise on more topics.
Ranks on more long-tail keywords.
Has more breadth in a specific space.

How to Grow Website Entrances Pages

Websites can't grow their entrance pages without introducing new content regularly. While hard to believe, there are many webmasters who don't update their websites, have no blog, and refuse any assistance.
While introducing new pages of helpful, high-quality content is a great start, the issue of syndication and recognition remains a barrier – particularly in highly competitive keyword spaces.
Webmasters and small business owners need to be very creative to be noticed:

Newsjack hot stories in their areas of expertise.
Create infographics.
Make videos to post on YouTube.
Utilize staff to promote in social media.
Use a small budget to promote the best content via PPC.

Measuring Keyword Traffic Was Wrong Anyway

While new alternatives to keyword-level analytics, branded and non-branded traffic are rapidly emerging, the punchline is that measuring keyword rankings and traffic was the wrong criteria. The real return on investment from SEO comes from an increase in new customers.
Lead tracking remains the single best measure of how a small business website is performing. Many websites lack the appropriate web-to-lead and phone tracking (up to 50 percent of leads come through phone calls even when the website was found via a search engine) integration to have a complete picture.

Conclusions

This year has proven to be very dramatic for SEO with major changes from Google in the form of Hummingbird and "(not provided)". Small business owners who once obsessed over their top keyword rankings and traffic from a few "money terms" now need to adjust their thinking.
Google's secure search has removed the popular branded keyword traffic data, but offers an opportunity to instead focus on the breadth of a website via entrance pages. And Google Hummingbird clears the path for small business owners to generate high-quality content that really answers questions.

Big Brands, Google, Penalties & You

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 06:37:00 +0000

For years there has been controversy about big brands and their special place in Google's heart. For the most part, Google's supposed brand bias is really an SEO myth told late night over beers in darkened corners at conferences and in forum postings.
Most sites that are big brands rank well because they meet so many points on Google algorithm – everything from authority, to quality score, to links, to social signals.
If you see Wikipedia everywhere, as annoying as it may be, it positions so well because it has tons of content and more links pointed at it than stars in a desert sky. This doesn't mean Google prefers brands; it means the site is algorithmically awesome.
OK, so "algorithmically awesome" isn't really an SEO term, but it might as well be. If you naturally meet more points on the algorithm than any of your competitors, then your gift from Google will be to occupy a higher position in the search results. It just kind of works that way.

Wait, What About Google's Vince Update?

Yes, there was an algorithmic update called Vince in 2009 that threw big brands some special algo points.
That same year, there was "brand affinity." This quote from Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO at the time, probably said it best:
"Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component."
So big brands were wired into the algorithm with Vince, then even more so with Panda. Yet, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts said big brands "can't do whatever they want" and are subject to the algorithm just like regular sites. What is an SEO to believe? Which is it?
Well, it's really all of the above. You don't automatically get to the top by just being a big brand. If you have a poor website and are in general not doing well on the algorithm, you might do well for a few terms sure, but overall, no.

Big Brands and Search

Being a big brand naturally helps you with some algorithmic factors, including perceived site authority and quality. You also have the one thing most mom and pops don't: brand affinity.
One sentence of the Search Quality Rating Guidelines is telling: "Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?" Brands are more well known to users by simply being a brand, so the user intent is more likely to be Target the store then say target the bullseye.
Wikipedia ranks well everywherebecause, frankly it should. That said, you don't always position well just because you are a brand.
I once sat in a site clinic in which one of the largest ecommerce sites on the web didn't understand why it couldn't position for selling television sets. The problem? There were no signals from the site that it deserved to position to sell television sets. While the site did position well for things related to its core brand, it just didn't for things that weren't.
So where is the benefit for big brands outside of having a bit more ability to extract authority, quality, and large value points on links and social and rank for being a known brand?
Well mostly it seems limited to penalties.

Penalties and Big Brands

Many big brands have a direct connection at Google, which means someone at Google that will tell them when they crossed a line or at least one to Cutts to answer a question or two. And if you're really big, Cutts will warn you himself (see Mozilla)
Big brands also more likely to survive a Google penalty than a small- or medium-sized business (SMB) site, partially because they are stronger sites, partially because their penalties do seem to have much more limited damage.
Seriously, when was the last time you heard of a big brand being removed entirely from Google's index? Sure they get hit with penalties all the time, I know Cutts isn't misleading us about that. But the damage is much more focused and much more limited.
Remember JCPenney and Overstock? They lost keyword traffic, not their entire website.
Go to Google forums see how many SMBs can say the same.
Now some theorize that it is because Google gives these sites leniency – in the hey – they were at #1 they could not rank any higher, so those link buys didn't actually help them. Others believe it is just a strict brand preference.
Personally, my SEO brain has settled on it is a set of algorithmic factors, I like to term "the expectancy factor" or the "should be there factor" (this is just an easy way to say algorithmic factors combined with the fact that the sites are just stronger and the brands are given leniency and limited penalties).

'Should Be There' Status

Some sites should be in Google's index – not just because Google thinks it should be there, but because searches by end users have indicated to Google that they expect it to be there.
If one of these "should be there" sites didn't show up in Google's results, then the searcher might think Google has a pretty lousy product.
So Google protects its product by making sure to limit the effect of penalties on big brands by warning them directly and by helping certain ones recover quickly if a penalty is more damaging. Whichever it is, big brands are like a naval carrier in the middle of a penalty storm; your SMB is a Tiki raft.

Google Penalties – Big Brand Leniency

So how does it work in the real world when you have "should be there" status?
While a standard SMB site might receive one penalty and find itself without a homepage in the Google index (and many have), a big brand might look like this:

This is the manual action viewer of a big brand site.
Under each of these penalties, except for one, in the manual action viewer were approximately 1,000 pages (the maximum the viewer can handle). These penalties were on the subdomain, but the main domain was also penalized.
Both the main domain and the subdomain lost key terms in the search engine and key placements, but it did continue to position for new, highly trafficked terms though less relevant and longer tail, didn't cause enough damage that its core business functions were threatened.
Now what happens if you're a company that doesn't have "should be there" algorithmic triggers? And you receive even one of these manual actions on your site over a multitude of pages or even just a percentage of them?
You would have probably woken up to this:

But this big brand site never saw this graph. This site hardly noticed the blip. Partially because it creates new pages all the time, which were positioning (well enough), which helped cover up the loss, but mostly because the penalties were isolated and not cross sectional.

Penalty Removal: Big Brand vs. SMB

These penalties were there for quite some time. So, if your site was not expected to be in the index, if you did not have site authority, site strength and your site was not a big brand, you would probably expect the road back would be pretty tough (noting that you would at most be dealing with one or two of these penalties as no small site would survive more than that without getting their homepage kicked out of the index along with the rest of their site).
Here's what the site looked like after one reconsideration request and one penalty removal.
Within a few days they regained 100 percent of their impressions, or 2 million (on average). This change shows that their site was repositioned into key terms and their new content was likely being shown highly in the search results.
We did a hand-check and yes, they regained key category terms and they were now positioning for relevant, highly competitive terms, even highly competitive phrases with short life expectancy (terms that would live only a few days).
If you aren't a big brand, you site isn't likely to work the same way. At the same time as this big brand site was recovering, we helped an SMB recover.
Instead of days, the SMB site took three months, three requests (one rewrite for depth and breadth), and a complete site rebuild. Only then did the homepage just start to show for their own name on the fifth page of Google.
This is more likely the outcome for an SMB. If you recover at all.

So Why do You Care About What Big Brands do?

Maybe that big brand corporation site is getting away with some black hat tactic, and your (clueless) boss, marketing team, board of advisors, or some other stakeholder knows about it.
"If they can do it, well we can, too!" they say.
No. You can't.
Unless you have algorithmic awesomeness, authority, and expectancy (and that expectancy is the key) you will much more likely end up losing your position, your pages or your homepage if you buy links or engage in other practices that violate Google's guidelines.

What Else Can You Learn From Big Brands?

Acting like a big brand is your best method for achieving success. Big brands send out strong signals to Google that tell Google there is a company and people behind them. These signals tell Google that the site is taken care of, that the company is awake at the helm, and that the site is going to be a good product.
Now not all big brands put out great websites, in fact a lot of them put out horrible websites, which is where expectancy (brand) can save them and where you can beat them.
Google has provided some guidance on building high-quality sites, in the form of these 23 questions. Follow these concepts, check your site. Does it meet the criteria of what Google (not you) considers a high-quality site? You don't have to hit every point, but the more signals you send Google the better.

Be a Big Brand in the Making

Get your site to send out big brand signals. If you mimic all the good things a brand does well, Google will give you some of those authority and quality points:

Create content.
Build a natural link profile.
Use social.
Create more content (and more content).
Have a blog.
Make sure your site is technically sound, fast, visually appealing, and easy for users (and search engines to navigate).
Utilize experts in the industry to audit your site and tell you what you're not doing well, so you can do it better.

You aren't likely to get those valuable expectancy signals unless you have offline indicators as well, but that's OK. If you build a better site, with authority and meet more brand points on the algorithm, you don't need that to compete.
Brands do have leeway, but that is a much stronger case when it comes to penalties. Being a brand just means they need to be there and found, not found in the top position except for their name and a few core key terms.
Expectancy, being a brand, having authority doesn't get you automatic position; it just gets you some advantages in the game.

Securing the Future of SEO: Global Brands & 5 '(Not Provided)' Solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:52:00 +0000

SEO has changed forever.
The great philosopher Heraclitus once said "change is the only constant". But wait? Einstein said a similar thing about the universe. Even the very subject on the correlation of change and constant in life is open to debate.
This sums up the situation that search marketers face themselves in today. SEO has a new meaning, a new direction. How we deal with it is driven by marketers' perception and the word "secure" now has more than one connotation in our market.
When Google made it apparent that 100 percent of its keyword data will be "(not provided)" (to the SEO community), many reacted with anger, angst, and frustration. Others sat back to absorb the news and some, content-based marketers, embraced the news as part of the natural evolution of SEO. They saw it coming and planned ahead. Read more

What Has Changed?

Since 2011, Google began making secure search the default for signed-in users. This shift signaled the market that the existing model of keyword-centric SEO.
Add to this content 'Pandas', link spam 'Penguins', and now entity-based 'Hummingbirds'. We should have all seen this change coming. Google's Carousel also shows us that search results are not just about one query and one result anymore.

Moving Forward – Reactive vs. Proactive SEO

http://www.notprovidedcount.com/

SEO has morphed into marketing. Proactive marketers took this into consideration a long time ago and began to focus on social signals and convergence, page-centric methodologies, and content-based marketing approaches to increase relevancy, authority, and influence. After all, Google gave us all the signals in advance.

Drive Your SEO Skills Forward at SES Chicago 2013:

See the full agenda.

Reactive marketers still focus on the "SEO is dead" debate and look for quick workarounds to "(not provided)" conundrums. Proactive marketers "invested and innovated" while reactive marketers now "repackage and repurpose".
Now, let's be honest and cut straight to the chase. Google is looking to monetize its data (it is a public company). However, it is also trying to protect its data and online privacy.
Regardless of your point of view, argument is like a pencil with no lead – pointless. There is no going back so let's focus on the future.

5 Top Tips From Brands on Dealing With Secure Search

Secure search has brought challenge, that is unavoidable, but it has also brought opportunity. Last week, I spoke with a few leading brands and agency customers on the impact of "(not provided)".
Below are some insights and top tips on moving forward in a "(not provided)" world.

1. Embrace Google Change

Raj Rao | Vice President, Global eTransformation – 3M:
"We applaud Google's shift in natural search from key words to the meaning of words, in relationship to one another. This enables 3M to rank well, and in some cases better (e.g. 'which abrasive do I use to grind aluminum').
"Rich content, the cornerstone of 3M's strategy for SEO, remains a critical aspect of our success going forward in the face of these recent changes. We need to get even better at structured data since what Google is looking for is pre-defined fields plus metadata, like providing better descriptions for our products.
"With the search phrase not being provided, it is extremely difficult to understand which searches are driving traffic and conversions. We will, instead, rely on Search Traffic to Pages versus detailed Keyword data to guide our organic search tactics. Content and context rich pages, alongside paid search optimization, will be even more important."
Everett Whitehead, SEO Manager - Monster.com
"With the change, most SEOs will shift to page-level analysis and reporting. As a result, many marketers will double down on on-site content investment by publishing new pages and lengthening existing pages in order to increase the traffic value of site pages.
"Although page-level analysis will become more prominent, we shouldn't stop doing keyword-level analytics altogether. Marketers will still have access to referring keywords data from other search engines such as Bing and ballpark click data from Google Webmaster Tools (at least for now). Additionally, a site's historical referring keyword data can be mined for keyword research purposes.
"SEOs can also utilize keyword referral data from their Google Adwords account to help inform optimization decisions. Perhaps this is the opportunity to finally break down the silo between SEO managers and paid search managers and to usher in a more holistic approach to managing the SERPs."
Warren Lee, SEO Manager - Adobe
"The fact that keyword level data is now 100% '(not provided)' has not taken away our ability to derive the insights we need, it has only changed how we get those insights.
"We're still able to analyze the performance of Google organic search traffic at the page level and we can also analyze keyword level performance by combining page level signals with other signals from a variety of other sources.
"We are continuously working on developing solutions that help search marketers get the insights they need. In the near future, Adobe will be sharing a few new methods and solutions to solve for keyword-level insights on the Adobe Digital Marketing blog."
Dixon Jones, Majestic SEO
"The biggest takeaway here is that (yet again) the only constant is change in SEO. The ability of technologies to foresee potential changes in the landscape and protect themselves in particular against changes made by Google will always sort the men from the boys in the tool space".

2. Focus on Quality Content

Ellen Mamedov, Sr. Manager of Enterprise Search – American Express
"The impact has been significant since from the SEO perspective, we've been forced to analyze paid search data and any keywords level data we can get our hands on. Instead, we've been trying to focus more on quality content and social media to connect users to relevant information and use the analytics that are available to see impact.
"Being able to get that data back or find smarter ways to anticipate trends and topics would be something we would love to see in the future."
Robin Francis, Sr. Manager, Search + Web Content – Autodesk
"We still have the user intent available to us in the form of the SERP itself. Take the time to vet if your site belongs in that result set at all before going after any keyword. Get really good at reading between the lines of what Google is showing you and you can deliver on what the user actually wants with your great content.
"Now is the time to focus on Schema.org markup to differentiate your result on the SERP. Not everyone is in this game yet and you may be able to reap the potential increased click through rewards and get a handle on auditing your content at the same time."

3. Ensure You Get the Most From Your Data

Jason Tabeling, Partner – Rosetta
"In order to get the most out of your data, we recommend the following steps:

Link your AdWords and Webmaster Tools accounts for increased visibility.

a. Read Rosetta's POV
b. Set up an automated, daily report to be delivered to you so that you do not miss out on the organic data since it is only available for the past 90 days.

Continue gathering organic search data, but review as an overall channel vs. digging into specific keywords.

a. Align increases in overall performance with specific optimizations to understand impact and drive future recommendations.

Focus on different SEO metrics, such as deep-linking page visits, to understand what content is optimized and appealing to searchers.
Utilize non-Google search engine results, as well as third-party trend/insights tools.

Bing and Yahoo organic search data is available (unless the engines are used in a browser blocking search terms) and directional for all organic optimizations.
Google Search Monitor and enterprise SEO tools can provide your company's information as well as competitors for more impactful analysis."

4. Move Toward Page-Centric SEO

Chris Keating VP, SEO, CO and Data Feeds - Performics
"We see this as a healthy development that allows us to further evolve toward broader strategies to help our clients acquire and retain customers. While still a highly effective tactic, SEO is only part of the larger picture. We have been expanding our practice to address performance content, social content, experience optimization and more.
"The industry has become overly dependent on keyword referral as a data point. We will continue to leverage other search engine-provided data, but our main source of advanced metrics will cover page-level performance, share of voice, and other enterprise measurements."
Sean Kainec, Senior Manager, SEO – Home Depot
"Bringing things together at the page level is how everyone needs to approach SEO today and into the future."

5. Focus on Revenue and Conversions at a Page Level

Bryson Meunier, Director, SEO Strategy – Resolution Media

"What we need to be thinking about is how to increase revenue from organic search and this change might help us help all of our clients do that. Since keyword-level conversions are more difficult to get for everyone, we can shift attention to page-level metrics and overall increases in revenue from organic search.
"It's also a good challenge for SEOs. The best SEOs have thrived in adversity and become even better. The best SEOs are figuring out how to take what many are calling an impossible situation and make it work for them. Really looking forward to seeing great solutions that this challenge will inspire."

Conclusion

It should come as no surprise that authority, relevancy, and influence will dictate how we optimize going forward. Future SEO revolves around these three centers of excellence.
Optimizing content based around your audience and developing strategies that allow you to track and measure what is happening with your content, on your webpage, allows you to move away from pure keyword dependency methods of management and reporting.
Keywords still play a huge part in what we do and you can still be creative with correlation methodologies and workarounds.
If you really want to drive forward with Future SEO you need to act and think like a marketer more than ever. Understand structured data, the semantic web and how Google looks to "link" topics and entities. Build content to help facilitate this "link" and become an authority on topics relevant to your users.
Finally, look at social signals and utilize social media to drive traffic to your site. Structure your site accordingly. Make sure you have a page manager.
Simple keyword reporting methods have become obsolete. That doesn't mean SEO has. It's just a question of definition and moving forward.

Will Google Punish a Guest Posting Strategy Due to Unnatural Link Patterns?

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:50:00 +0000

"The Missing Link" is a Search Engine Watch exclusive reader-driven Q&A column with veteran content publicist Eric Ward. You can ask questions about all aspects of links and link building and Eric will provide his expert answers. Submit your questions here, and you may be featured in a future installment!

Until Google's recent algorithm changes we consistently ranked on top of the search results for our primary keyword phrase. Now we are on page two for that phrase so I am looking into pursuing guest posts on other sites. To my understanding Google will detect and penalize unnatural link patterns. As a result I am wondering if I obtain guest posts from a blog network would or could this be easily detected and penalized as a pattern?
– Blue on Page 2

I'll give you a short answer and a long answer.
Short answer: Writing posts for other sites (which is a form of guest posting) is still an effective way to build credible links.
The devil is always in the details though. Here's a longer answer.
First, a video from Google's Matt Cutts addressed this exact subject. I strongly suggest you watch it:
Of everything Cutts said, the thing that struck me most was when he said, "It's a long and time honored tradition" for writers with expertise in certain topics to share content with each other. In other words, it's absolutely acceptable.
In fact, this column you're reading likely falls into that category. I've written this post for Search Engine Watch and nobody else.
Technically, this is a guest post. But this is much different than a guest posting approach where you aren't selective about where you seek out posting opportunities or, on the receiving end, you aren't selective about who you accept guest post content from.
Here are few guidelines/criteria that may help you as you seek out guest posting opportunities:

Look for signals/signs of credibility and longevity:
- How long has the target site been on the web? Longer may mean more credibility.
- Who owns/operates the site? Have you ever heard of them?
- Is there an editorial team with clearly stated guidelines? There should be.
- Is the target site's content made up of mostly guest posts? If so, be very cautious. Search to see if the posts have appeared on other sites.
- Look at the other guest posts on the site. Search on author names to see who they are and what kind of web presence they have.
If you want to take your credibility analysis really far, do a backlink analysis of the target site, as well as the target sites of the guest posters, to see just how credible their existing link profiles are. I personally stay away from any site that has any evidence of a spammy backlink profile, because I don't want my site to have any negative signal association with those sites.

One final point: at the start of your question, you specifically mentioned your Google rankings. Consider that even under the best guest posting circumstances, you can only take guest posting so far as a ranking-specific strategy.
You can't permanently guest post your way to the top of the search rankings. Nor should that be the only goal.
In fact, I look at guest posting opportunities for their potential to help my direct traffic and exposure to an audience I'm interested in reaching. I don't guest post for search rank. Seeking search rank via guest posting can lead you to make poor decisions and leave a linking footprint that Google can detect as manipulative.

3 SEO Success Factors for 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:49:00 +0000

I recently came upon one of my old articles, "SEO Factors for 2011". I chuckled to myself, not only about how some of the details were actually still relevant but also how many seemed so elementary compared to today's search environment.
Yes, we still need to worry about the possession of "natural-looking" link profiles and how we feed our data to the engines. Those items will always be of consideration.
However, the nostalgic review of my piece had me thinking about what factors we need to consider for successful SEO as online marketers in 2014.

Social, Local & Mobile

We've spent the last handful of years practicing and preaching the importance of being in social, mobile, and local. This mindset was proactive. It allowed us to not solely focus on keywords and search results, but how these elements were going to change the search results our users saw as well as our user's experience.
While we walked down this road, at first it felt as if we were making strides to build silos of these efforts. Soon we saw the convergence of local and social sites molding into Google local results (e.g., Yelp reviews in Google local listings). We've also seen the fast paced growth of mobile and how localization of results has brought a more relevant delivery of results in this arena.

Search in 2013

This year has brought upon a lot for us to understand as marketers. As we close out 2013 algorithmic intelligence is changing faster than ever, at least in my opinion.
The buzz of 2013 and even more so the last few months has been upon the advancements of the Knowledge Graph, Local Carousel, Google Now, Hummingbird, and the great secure search/"(not provided)" change.
That's not even to mention Penguin and Panda, but those changes are more about what you may have done wrong in the past. We're here to talk about the future.

The Future of SEO

While the "(not provided)" announcement was a smack in the face to SEO professionals, hopefully it has helped you to realize that our intentions shouldn't be so focused so solely or intently on ranking a keyword in search results.
After watching what Google has been doing over the last year or so, where do keywords tie into the above-mentioned rollout features? They each in some way or another tie into local, mobile, or social.

Will keywords help you with the Local Carousel? No, proximity and review generation will.
How will Google Now propel your keyword strategy? It won't, but social efforts will.
Do you think that Google will give you a Knowledge Graph box for a keyword and link to your site? If so, you're dreaming.

Add in the Hummingbird update, and all of these changes tell us that Google is moving closer to bringing everything together through the tie-ins of localization and semantic improvements for conversational search, which is popular on mobile.

SEO Isn't Dead, It's Converging

SEO at its core will never be dead. All of the on-site needs of yesteryear will remain important in 2014. All of the newer processes of creating informational, enticing, and insightful content for link building and social digestion are still the hot topic now and will be heading into the future.
My point is that we need to watch the converging of our old silos into the new SERP display. SEO has taken on a converging role with other mediums which impact SERP display.

For example, you've created optimized local listings for your local business, but know that the display weighs even more heavily on reviews, have you done your job at local-social integration.

Do you want to display your social activity in SERPs?

2014 Will Still be Big for SEO

Sites must be crawled efficiently, content must be targeted, and yes we still want to rank where desired. The focus as we move down the road is more so on what vehicles we use off-site to help drive traffic to our sites.
How we use the previous discussed pillars alongside their continual convergence by Google will determine how successful your online marketing strategy will become.
Quick takeaways:

Don't build a local listing. Allow your audience to help you build a local presence.
Don't build a brand. Build a community, a socialized brand, one that can keep your audience in tune with you in real-time.
Don't just optimize a site. Optimize an experience for those that are mobile and content hungry.

Ecommerce Product Pages: How to Fix Duplicate, Thin & Too Much Content

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:47:00 +0000

Content issues plague many sites on the web. Ecommerce sites are particularly at risk, largely due to issues that can stem from hosting hundreds or thousands of product pages.
Typical issues with ecommerce product pages are:

Duplicate content.
Thin content.
Too much content (i.e., too many pages).

Left unchecked, these issues can negatively impact your site's performance in the SERPs.
If you run an ecommerce site and you've seen traffic flat-line, slowly erode, or fall off a cliff recently, then product page content issues may be the culprit.
Let's take a closer look at some of the most common content woes that plague ecommerce sites, and recommendations on how to can fix them.

Duplicate Content

There are typically three types of duplicate content we encounter on ecommerce sites:

Copied versions of the manufacturer's product descriptions.
Unique descriptions that are duplicated across multiple versions of the same product.
Query strings generated from faceted navigation.

Copied product descriptions

A large degree of ecommerce resellers copy their generic product descriptions directly from the manufacturer's website. This is a big no-no. In the age of Panda, publishing copied or duplicated content across your site will weigh your site down in the SERPs like a battleship anchor.

How to fix it

The solution here is to author original product descriptions for every product on your site. If budget is an issue, prioritize and get fresh content written for your highest margin product pages first and work backwards.

Unique yet duplicated product descriptions

With many ecommerce sites, site owners have authored original product descriptions, which is fantastic. Where they run into trouble is they sell multiple versions of the same product (different sizes or colors or materials, etc), and each product version has a different page/URL with the same boilerplate description.
Now even though this content is technically unique to your site (it's not copied from somewhere else), it's only unique to a single page. Every other page it lives on is considered duplicated content.

How to fix it

The solution here is to concentrate multiple product version pages to a single page, with all the different product options listed down the page. Or you can position them as a list in a drop down menu, like Zappos does.

Once you combine all pages to a single page, 301 redirect the other URLs to that single page, in the event they've attracted links and/or accrued link equity. The redirects will also help Google sort out the true version of your product page, and can help with any potential crawl budget issues.
Depending on the ecommerce platform you're using, concentrating multiple versions of a product page to a single URL can be difficult or impossible. If that's the case, think about moving to a SEO-friendly platform, like Magento or Shopify.

Faceted navigation issues

Many ecommerce sites host category pages with a range of filters to help users easily navigate their site and drill down to specific products, like this Weber Grill page on Home Depot.

A faceted navigation menu like the one above can create dozens if not hundreds of query strings that are appended to the URL, thereby creating duplicate versions of the same page. Faceted navigation can be a fantastic UX feature for consumers, but can problematic for SEO.

How to fix it

There are a few ways to prevent searches engines from indexing duplicate content from faceted navigation:

Block faceted pages via Robots.txt file.
Parameter handling via Webmaster Tools.
Add self-referential canonical tags (rel="canonical") Note: this may help Google distinguish original from duplicate content, but it won't address crawl budget issues.

Thin Content

Even if a site has 100 percent unique product descriptions, they can often be on the thin side (i.e., a few bullets of text). Now, product pages with light content can still rank well where domain strength helps supersede potential thin content issues.
But most sites don't have the backlink profiles of Amazon or Zappos, and I like to think in terms of risk/reward. Thickening up descriptions makes sense because:

It can reduce any risk that thin content issues might negatively impact SERP visibility
It adds more content for engines to crawl, which means more opportunities for your page to rank for a wider basket of search queries.
It freshens up your page, and freshening up your content can definitely pay dividends with Google.

To audit word count for every page on your site, crawl the site with Screaming Frog and looking for potential trouble spots in the "Word Count" column.

How to fix it

Some of the ways you can address thin content on your ecommerce product pages include:

Enable (and solicit) user reviews and feedback. User-generated content is free and helps thicken up your content with naturally-written text (not "SEO" content). This additional content can help improve potential relevancy scoring, time on page, user engagement levels, and can help the product page rank for a broader basket of search queries. Also, user reviews offer social proof and can improve conversion rates as well.
In the previous example, I spoke about condensing multiple versions of the same product to a single page. Doing this would also help thicken up that pages since you'd list all the different dimensions, size variations, colors available to consumers.
Write some additional, original content. You can hire a writer to help thicken up these pages with additional features and benefits, or you can do it yourself. Again, given it could be very costly to thicken up every product page on the site, you can prioritize your highest margin products first.
Pulling in mashups of links/text of similar products, product accessories, special offers and recently viewed items is another way to add more content to a page, and a tactic many larger ecommerce sites use like Amazon.com.

Too Much Content

Saying that a site has "too much content" may sound contradictory to the issue of having content that's too thin. But when I say an ecommerce site may have too much content, I'm really talking about two distinct issues:

Too many product pages.
Improper handling of paginated product pages.

And specifically how having too many pages of low value content can cause PageRank and crawl budget problems.

Too many product pages

This is really an addendum to the duplicate content issues posed by faceted navigation or hosting multiple versions of the same product on different pages.
Aside from low value content concerns, hosting a mass of duplicated product pages dilutes your site's PageRank or link equity, which weakens its overall ranking power of your important content.
The other issue pertains to your site's "crawl budget" (i.e. how deep/how many pages Googlebot crawls each time it visits your website). If a large percentage of your site if comprised of duplicate or low value content, you're wasting your budget on junk content and potentially keeping quality pages from getting indexed.

Improper handling of paginated product pages

Another concern of hosting "too many pages" is not handling pagination correctly. Often times, ecommerce sites can have product categories containing hundreds or thousands of products that span multiple pages.

Like duplicate product pages, excessive paginated results rob link equity from important pages and can hurt your crawl budget.

How to fix

Some of the ways to address equity dilution or crawl budget issues that can stem from too many product pages include:

Rel=next, rel=previous: This markup tells Google to treat ecommerce product listings spanning multiple pages in a logical sequence, thus consolidating link equity (rather than diluting it) with all pages in the series.
Canonicalization: It's effective for consolidating link properties (thus solving equity dilution), but it won't solve potential crawl budget issues, since Googlebot will still crawl all your dupe content.
"Noindex, follow": If your goal is to optimize crawl budget and keep duplicates or pagination out of the index, use brute force and block Googlebot via robots "noindex, follow" meta directive.

The Causal Nexus of SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:45:00 +0000

There are some aspects of online marketing that play a huge role in the bigger picture, but aren't as easy to see. Things like emotion, motivation, awareness, and relationships can be hard to gauge with our usual metrics.
But sometimes the effects of an action aren't evident right away. There are times when we can't associate cause and effect directly. But everything we do in SEO fits into a much bigger chain reaction and we might not able to see every piece.
When something doesn't fit our typical measurements it may be easy to write it off entirely. There's actually a word for that: floccinaucinihilipilification.
The exact definition of floccinaucinihilipilification from Dictionary.com is "The estimation of something as valueless." It's actually the longest non-technical word in the English language. Sorry, antidisestablishmentarianism.
Aside from being a semi-useful piece of party trivia, floccinaucinihilipilification is actually a great description of one of the most frustrating aspects of modern SEO. There are just so many things that are easy to dismiss because they are outside of our usual expectations for results.
Search is evolving to a point where we get much less instant gratification. Things take a much less linear path than they did in the past; you can't just walk across the room and turn on the light anymore. You have to use a Rube Goldberg machine to do it.

The Social Part of Social Media

In social media you can measure friends, followers, retweets, circles, referral visits, and sales through unique promotions. There are all sorts of fantastic metrics for judging how well a social campaign is performing. Of course not every one of those translates to visits, or dollars.
If a comment on your wall doesn't result in a sale or if a retweet doesn't improve rankings, then does it matter? Yes.
With social media it's also about the prospect of exposure. It may not be as clearly measurable when someone shares something on Facebook and one of their friends sees it and later searches the brand name. It's not always obvious when retweeting someone's post and getting a "thank you" leads to that person clicking on the Tweeter's site in the SERPs because they recognize the name.
If social media efforts aren't directly impacting your rankings, or the traffic numbers aren't approaching search engine referral proportions, that doesn't mean the campaign isn't working.
A comment on a wall may not mean much on its own. But a comment may lead to a new fan that may lead to a new sharer, who could grow to be an evangelist if the relationship is cultivated.
While direct leads are a possibility from social media, there's more to it than that. It's access to a huge and active audience if you're willing to play to the crowd.

Simple, Single Links

Links are probably one of the hardest places to deal with all of the changes in the last year. Links have been both the salvation and devastation of too many websites.
Bought links, links with keyword anchor text, easy, cheap, unlimited links weren't supposed to work, according to the rules. But they did. So forget the rules, people made money. Except now, best case scenario they don't work as well and worst case, they can tank a site.
So now links mean a totally different thing. They aren't as easy to get any more. They don't necessarily go to the pages where products live and links that go to different kinds of content don't always work the same way.
Links with your URL as anchor text probably won't move a site up for its head terms as quickly as a hand full of links brandishing keywords used to. So now maybe it's a about getting a link from a small community organization instead of 150 directories. But those little links are a much bigger deal now.
It's never going to be the same, but this is where we live now. A link from a person's enthusiast site for a how-to guide may not seem as effective as syndicating an article across 300 sites, but it's real. Things that are authentic may take longer to feel.

Trust and the Human Factor

Google has shown a continued effort to become scary close to emotional intimacy with the preferences of its users.
Authorship is one indicator of Google's improving efforts to identify individuals as entities. Public signs point toward their increased attempts to incorporate that information into how they evaluate websites. This interest in using real people's association with websites to determine trust, should be more than enough to pique our in getting onboard early.
On the other side, Google also seems to be trying to figure out which sites people trust through their own choices and patterns. That means visitor loyalty isn't just important for repeat sales, the signals it sends can be beneficial for SEO.
Some loyalty is measureable. Getting people to want to return to a site is measurable. We can see when the percentage of repeat users goes up.
We can measure how many people come to a site through subscription based newsletters or email marketing. We can measure when people become regular commenters or forum posters.
But it's hard to measure where those relationships start. Was the first time they came to your site searching for what you sell? Or is it possible it's because they knew you before they needed what you sell?
It isn't always as clear cut as which search word brought you the most visitors, or what was the last click before the sale. Sometimes that sale was months in the making based on a chain reaction that couldn't be tracked.

A More Convoluted Path

Each action that creates a positive connection has value even if it falls outside of our traditional data tracking.
We absolutely have to evaluate numbers, show correlation and prove ROI. That's the job of anyone working in SEO. But trying to optimize within the new system, we've had to get more creative.
It may take time for an initial action to produce a desired end result and there may be 10 steps in between instead of 3. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it.
So don't immediately floccinaucinihilipilificate an effort in which direct results are a little ambiguous. There may be more at play than is immediately evident.
There's a time to give up on something that isn't working, sure. But make sure you're not comparing more slow-burning efforts to the precedents of the past.
At this point, shortcuts are getting shut down more and more every day, and the long way is about the only option left. So yes, an action might not lead to more rankings, traffic, or sales directly, but that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't work; it may simply be the first domino to fall.

Top Search Result = Poor Ad CTR [Study]

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Advertising network Chitika released a study today that showed how ad click-through rates on a website vary when users come to that website from Position 1 in the organic search results versus other positions. Data showed the highest CTR on ads in a website occured when users found the site from Position 10 in the SERPs.

As a follow up to Chitika's study last summer that showed how rankings yielded traffic, Chitika said this is a stark contrast in terms of ad performance.
"What is clear from the data set is that although the first position of a Google search result drives the most search traffic, an average visitor coming from that link is the least likely to convert into an ad click," according to Chitika.
Chitika said the reason why Position 10 might be driving the most ad CTR on a site could be due to unsatisfactory results.
"When a user scrolls down and clicks on a link at Position 10, it is more likely that they have not found what they were looking for, increasing the probability of that person clicking on an ad related to their search query," Chitika said.
Chitika said that marketers shouldn't necessarily be vying for 10th position on every keyword, but that in terms of driving ad revenue, it's not a bad place to be overall.

"On a popular search term, 2.4 percent of potential visitors still represents a sizable audience, and by being the number 10 result, it's likely a site will see higher ad revenues," Chitika said in its report. "However, for lower volume or specialized search terms, ranking as high as possible will help in attracting the largest audience, since the proverbial 'pie' of users on those terms is already fairly small, along with the potential revenue impact of higher visitor CTRs."
So what's a marketer to do with this data? Cristian Potter, a data solutions engineer at Chitika, said it's important to note that this report examines aggregate traffic trends, and may not apply to groups of sites.
"Hitting the sweet spot requires some analysis of an individual site's traffic, for example, understanding how users are finding the site, and how certain campaigns have impacted actions undertaken by users on the site itself," Potter said. He added that this research can serve as a "as a point of reference in plotting metrics and key performance indicators."
While the data seemed to show an interesting relationship, sites that go after ad revenue have a seemingly delicate balance of providing a great user experience and making money. Not having the most relevant content (Position 10 versus Position 1) and subsequently driving users away through an ad doesn't seem like a great idea, either.
Potter agreed.
"User experience is always a key consideration when it comes to deciding on the number and placement of ad units," Potter said. "This also ties in with expected CPM on each ad unit - it should be worth the site's while to place an ad in a prime position. However, this study was solely behavior focused. The characteristics of the one or more ad units on each site within the sample will have varied considerably."

New AdWords Estimated Total Conversions Tracks Consumer Purchases Across Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:42:00 +0000

Starting today and over the next few weeks, Google AdWords will roll out a major reporting update to conversion tracking called Estimated Total Conversions. This feature provides estimates of conversions that take multiple devices to complete and adds this data to the conversion reporting we see today.
Following the launch of enhanced campaigns this year, search advertisers have combined mobile and desktops with the ability to further modify bids by mobile and other targeting factors. One gap in reporting and comprehension of the campaigns effectiveness has been the limited data on how consumers are navigating and converting via multiple device options.

What is a Cross-Device Conversion?

Consumers constant connectivity has enabled them to browse, shop, and interact with businesses on the go and from multiple devices.
A September 2013 Google study found that more than 90 percent of multi-device consumers move sequentially between several screens like mobile to desktop, or mobile to tablet to complete a transaction online. Google found that a high percentage of converters actually jumped from desktop to desktop too, presuming a work desktop to home desktop computer.

How Estimated Total Conversions Works

Google calculates cross-device conversions for a particular advertiser based on how their customers convert when they are logged in. They then use this as the basis for extrapolating out to the complete data set to form an estimate of what total conversions that cross devices might look like. This data is only used in aggregate and not personally identifiable.

What's Next?

Estimating conversions across devices (estimated cross-device conversions) is only the beginning and one conversion type Google intends to measure.
In the future Google plans to incorporate other conversion types such as phone calls and store visits where advertisers are hungry to gain new insights into how their advertising is working.

Link Building 101: Competitor Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Link building is something anyone can accomplish. There's no great secret, just hard work, creativity, and determination to get links that matter.
When you're looking for some practical link building opportunities that will help you find and acquire quick, yet quality, links, there are five "quick wins" you should explore at the beginning of a link building campaign:

404 Pages and Link Reclamation
Competitor Analysis
Fresh Web Explorer/Google Alerts
Local Link Building
Past/Current Relationships

Competitor Analysis/Backlink Profile

Competitor analysis is an integral step in any link building campaign. Why? Because running a backlink analysis on a competitor:

Teaches you about the industry:
- Gives you a sense of which sites within the vertical are providing links
Helps you understand your competitors, including:
- Their link profile, and why they're ranking
- Their strategies used to acquire links
- Their resources that didn't acquire many links

Gives you a list of obtainable links (if they can, why not you?)
Competitor backlink analysis is great – you get the initial research into the industry done, it helps you understand the competition, and it gives you a tidy list of high opportunity links.
So, let's dive into the how of competitor backlink analysis:

Make a list of competitors
- Direct
- Indirect
- Industry influencers
- Those ranking for industry money keywords
- Watch fluctuations – who's winning and who's losing
Take those competitors and run their sites' through a backlink tool previously mentioned (OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, CognitiveSEO, etc.)
Backlink Analysis
Download the top 3-4 competitors' backlinks into CSVs. Combine into a single Excel sheet, removing duplicates, and find obtainable quality links already secured by competitors.

Step 2 and 3 were previously covered in "Link Building 101: How to Conduct a Backlink Analysis", and step 1 is pretty self-explanatory.
To recap the advice for these steps:

Don't phone-in the list of competitors. Spend time doing research and investigation, giving yourself a well thought out and understood list of potential competitors.
Information you should be examining in a backlink analysis:
- Total number of links
- Number of unique linking domains
- Anchor Text usage and variance
- Fresh/incoming links
- Recently lost links
- Page Performance (via top pages)
- Link quality (via manual examination)
Additionally, think creatively while looking through competitors' backlinks. Think about:
- Which resources/pages performed well
- Which resources/pages performed poorly
- Commonalities in competitor's link profiles
- Differences in competitor's link profiles
- Strategies likely used to acquire links

How to Find Obtainable Quality Links

So, that takes us to Step 4: downloading competitors links into CSVs, combining in Excel, and drilling down into the data to find worthwhile links and insights.
Honestly, SEER has done an amazing job of writing a very easy to follow guide for Competitor Backlink Analysis in Excel.
To summarize their steps, you:

Download CSVs of competitor's backlink portfolios (‘Inbound Links' will give you a list of all the pages linking, ‘Linking Domains' will give you only the domains).

Note: if you're unfamiliar with your own (or client's) backlink portfolio, you may wish to include their backlink portfolio in this process for reference.
Using OSE don't forget to filter to the whole domain:

Open the CSVs and combine (copy and paste) all the data into a single Excel sheet.
Filter down to clean URLs, keeping the originals intact.
- Move Column J (target URL) to Column P (to be the last column)

Delete Column J (the now empty column)

Duplicate the URL and Target URL columns on either side

Remove http:// and www. from both column A and column P - select the column, click control+H (find and replace shortcut), type in what you want to find (http:// and www.) and replace them with nothing (by leaving the second line blank).

You might want to rename column A and P at this point - call them bare URL and bare target URL, or whatever you so desire (in the SEER article they were called ‘clean').

Remove duplicates

Make sure it's only for column A (bare URL) and P (bare target URL)

Notice the check mark on "My data has headers". This is important to keep your data from being jumbled up. Anytime you're removing duplicates make sure this box is checked.
This will give you a complete list of stripped URLs next to the full URL linking (along with the rest of the important information provided by OSE) and a list of full target URLs next to a complete list of stripped target URLs.
Note: you'll still likely have a lot of duplicate URLs in column A (the linking URLs) at this point. This is because there's multiple links on the same page going to different landing pages – which is potentially important information (shows a competitor acquired multiple links per page).
If you'd like to delete these multiple link pages/URLs to reduce data noise, highlight column A, and run ‘Delete Duplicates' again - making sure to have the ‘My data has headers' box is checked:

Now, you'll be down to unique URLs (pages, not domains if you've used Inbound Links) linking to competitors. If you're looking for only referring domains, you should start back at step 1 and download a CSV of referring domains, as opposed to all links.
At this point, you're still dealing with a lot of data, so you'll want to filter it further. I recommend filtering by domain authority to see the most authoritative links first.

This will make your list ordered from highest domain authority to lowest – pretty useful information. Keep in mind however that the domain authority is thrown off by any subdomains hosted on a popular site – example.wordpress.com, example.blogspot.com, etc.
So, don't take the domain authority as absolute – you'll need to verify.
There's also a few other filters you can use to find interesting data:

Page Authority (PA)
Anchor Text
Number of domains linking (shows best ranking pages - don't get stuck on home pages)

Take time and play around with the data. Look through the top DA's (manually excluding anything artificially inflated), then PA's, check out top performing pages via number of domains linking, and even play around with filtering the anchor text.
This should be the fun part - the analysis. You've filtered the data down to a semi-digestible level, and should start taking advantage to find insights and understand your competitor's links.
Remember, any links your competitor has should be considered fair game for yourself. Once you've determined quality links from domains you haven't secured, look into the link and pursue it appropriately.

More Insights

If you're looking for an even better (and more advanced) deep data insights you can move all this information into pivot tables. Simply select all rows, click over to the insert tab, and select ‘Pivot Table':

Once here you have the option to choose which fields you'd like to further examine:

Playing with this data should reveal potential insights, although we're getting a bit beyond Link Building 101.
Furthermore, if you want to really dive into pivot tables (or excel in general), I can't recommend Annie Cushing enough. Check out her Moz article "How to Carve Out Marketing Strategies by Mining Your Competitors' Backlinks".

After '(Not Provided)' & Hummingbird, Where is Google Taking Us Next?

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:36:00 +0000

We've come a long way in a little over two decades of search. Archie, Veronica, Jughead, Excite, Wanderer, Aliweb, Altavista, WebCrawler, Yahoo, Lycos, LookSmart, Google, HotBot, Ask, dmoz, AllTheWeb, Goto (Overture), Snap, LiveSearch, Cuil, Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu... and too many other also-rans to name.
The earliest were simply a collection of resources, initially just in alphabetical order, then some introducing an internal search capability. Eventually, some began to crawl the web, while others contented themselves with using the indexes of others.
Among them all, Google now stands out as the giant. About two-thirds of all global searches happen on Google. So that means that those of us who want our sites to be found in Google's search results need to color between the (webmaster guide)lines, while trying to figure out what Google wants to see, today and hopefully, tomorrow.

Search Today

Figuring out what Google prefers to rank isn't really that complex. Pay attention, use some common sense, don't look for silver bullets, and provide quality and value. Get that down pat and you're in pretty good shape.
Most folks who find themselves crosswise of Google got there because they (or someone they hired) tried to take a shortcut. Do shortcuts still work? You bet! Do they still last? Not so much!
Google has gotten a lot better at detecting and handling manipulative tactics. No, they're not perfect – not by a far cry. But the improvement is undeniable, and a couple of recent developments offer hope.
What happened?
Google unleashed a one-two punch recently, with two important changes that stirred up a lot of chatter in SEO and marketing communities. And I'm not convinced they're unrelated. They just mesh too well to be coincidence (not to be confused with correlation, my friends).

1. '(Not Provided)'

The recent extension to "(not provided)" for 100 percent of organic Google keywords in Google Analytics got a lot of people up in arms. It was called "sudden", even though it ramped up over a period of two years. I guess "it suddenly dawned on me" would be more accurate.
As my bud, Thom Craver, stated perfectly, if you're one of those who is saying that no keywords means SEO is dead or you can't do your job, then you shouldn't be doing SEO to begin with.
That sums it up pretty well. There are still ways to know what brought users to your pages. It's just not handed to you on a silver platter any more. You'll have to actually work for it.

2. Hummingbird

Now let's look at the other half of that double-tap: Hummingbird. Since Google's announcement of the new search algorithm, there have been a lot of statements that fall on the inaccurate end of the scale. One common theme seems to be referring to it as the biggest algo update since Caffeine.
Wrong on both counts, folks! First, Caffeine is a software set for managing the hardware that crawls and indexes, not search. As such, it's not an algorithm. It was also new, not updated, but we'll let that slide.
That second point, however, applies strongly to Hummingbird. There is no such thing as a Hummingbird update. It's a brand new search algorithm.
Jeez-Louise. if you're going to speak out, at least try not to misinform, OK?

Why Might they be Related?

Now understand, there's a bit of conjecture from here on out. I can't point to any evidence that supports this theory, but I think many of you will agree it makes some sense.
Killing the easy availability of keywords makes sense to me. People have focused on keywords to a degree that approaches (and often passes) ridiculous. Google has finally, however, achieved a sufficient level of semantic ability to allow them to ascertain, with a reasonable amount of accuracy, what a page is about, without having exact keywords to match to a query.
Methinks it's a good idea for the folks who are generating content to try the same.
So... we can no longer see the exact keywords that visitors used to find us in organic search. And we no longer need to use exact keywords to be able to rank in organic search.
Yeah, I know, pure correlation. But still, a pattern, no?
My theory is that there's no coincidence there. In fact, I think it runs deeper.
Think about it. If you're no longer targeting the keywords, you can actually *gasp* target the user. Radical concept for folks who are still stuck in a 2005 rut.
Bottom line: You need to start building your content with concept and context in mind. That'll result in better content, more directed to your visitors – then you can stop worrying about whether Google has a clue about the topic your page is focused on.
Just communicate. If you do it right, it'll come through, for both. Just think things, not strings.

Where is Search Heading Next?

Here's where I think the Knowledge Graph plays a major role. I've said many times that I thought Google+ was never intended to be a social media platform; it was intended to be an information harvester. I think that the data harvested was intended to help build out the Knowledge Graph, but that it goes still deeper.
Left to its own devices, Google could eventually build out the Knowledge Graph. But it would take time, and it would undoubtedly involve a lot of mistakes, as they dialed their algos in.
With easily verified data via Google+, Google has a database against which they can test their algos' independent findings. That would speed the development process tremendously, probably shaving two or three years off the process.
But my theory doesn't end there. Although I suspect it wasn't a primary motivation, the removal of keywords, coupled with the improved semantic ability of Hummingbird, puts a whole new level of pressure on people to implement structured data. As adoption cranks up, the Knowledge Graph will be built out even faster.
As I said, I doubt that motivating people to implement structured data markup was a primary focus of the recent changes. But I'll bet it was a major benefit that didn't go unnoticed at the 'Plex.
The last week has definitely brought some changes to the way we'll be handling our online marketing and SEO efforts. The Internet continues to evolve. Those who don't follow suit may soon be extinct.
For my part, I'm pleased to see the direction that Google seems to be moving in. It's a win-win.

5 Things We've Learned From Google's New War on Links

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:35:00 +0000

It's been 18 months now since Google's Penguin update launched and a similar amount of time since the first manual penalty messages were sent to unsuspecting webmasters.
That's a long time in the world of digital marketing. While most industries deal with a level of change, the rate of iteration across the web is unprecedented.
Such a level of change requires an agile approach to processes. Google practices a Kaizen approach to product development and penalties, so it's imperative that we consistently reexamine how and why we do everything.
The same rule applies to how penalties are dealt with. It's a given that the tolerances Google allows across metrics have changed since those penalties were first introduced. Industry opinions would certainly support that theory.
Strangely, for a content led company, the digital marketing agency I run is now very experienced in penalty recovery, as a result of new clients coming to us looking for a way to market their companies in a different way.
It means, in short, that I have lots of data to draw conclusions from. I want to share our recent findings based on recent real world work, including a few key tips on areas that you may be missing while clean up is going on. Here are some top takeaways.

Link Classification

While Google has long been giving out examples of links that violate their guidelines, in recent weeks things have changed.
Until recently it was so easy to call a "bad" link you could spot them with your eyes closed. The classification was so easy it has spawned a proliferation of "link classifier" tools. And while they prove to be useful as a general overview and to help do things at scale, the pace of Google's iteration has made manual classification an absolute must.
So what has changed?
We've always known that anchor text overuse is a key metric. Here are the results of a charting study we ran across those clients escaping either manual or algorithmic penalties:

It isn't perfect, but the data shows an irrefutable trend toward a less tolerant stance on "spam" by Google.
I don't want this to be seen a definitive result or scientific study because it isn't. It is simply some in-house data we have collated over time that gives a general picture of what's going on. Recovery. in this instance. is classed either as manual revoke or "significant" improvement in rankings and traffic over more than a month.

The Link Types Being Classified as 'Unnatural' are Changing

The view that things are indeed changing has been supported by example links coming through from Google in the past four weeks as part of its manual review communication.
Instead of the usual predictable irrelevant web directory or blog network, the search giant seems to be getting much more picky.
And while I can't share exact links due to client confidentiality, here are a couple examples of specific link types that have been specifically highlighted as being "unnatural":

A relevant forum post from a site with good TrustFlow (Majestic's measure of general domain "trust").
A Domain Authority (DA) 27 blog with relevant and well-written content (DA is a Moz.com metric measured out of 100).

Ordinarily these links would pass most classification tests, so it was surprising to see them listed as unnatural. Clearly we can't rule out mistakes by whoever reviewed the site in question, but let's assume for a moment this is correct.
In the case of the forum post it had been added by a user with several posts and the text used was a relevant and part of the conversation. It looked natural.
The blog post was the same in being natural in almost all metrics.
The only factor that could have been put into question was the use of anchor text. It was an exact match phrase for a head term this site had been attempting to rank for in the past. That might be an obvious signal and is one of the first places to look for unnatural links, but it gives an interesting nod to where Google may be taking this.

3. Co-Citation and the End of Commercial Anchors?

A lot has been written about the changing face of anchor text use and the rise of co-citation and co-occurrence. I penned a piece a few months ago in fact one the future of link building without links. It seems as though Google now wants to accelerate this by putting more pressure on those still using exact match tactics.
It is certainly my view now that links are playing a less significant role in general rankings. Yes, a site has to have a good core of links, but Google's algorithms are now much more complex. That means Google is looking at more and more metrics to define the search visibility of a domain, which leaves less room for "links" as a contributory factor.
Given that semantic search also isn't reliant on links and that Google has made clear its intentions to move toward this future, it's clear that brand mentions, social sharing, and great content that is produced regularly and on point, is becoming more critical.
Links are by no means dead. Anyone that says that is crazy. But there is certainly more contributing to visibility now.

4. Check Your Page-Level Anchor Text

Penguin 2.0 has also changed the way we look at penalties in general. While it was OK to simply take a domain-wide view of link metrics such as quality, anchor text, and relevance, that's no longer enough.
The search giant has become much more targeted in its application of penalties, certainly since Penguin 2.0. As a result, we're now seeing partial penalties being reported in Webmaster Tools, as well as full manual actions and a plethora of other actions.
This means one thing: Google understands its data better than ever and is looking at the quality of links in a much deeper way, not just as those pointing directly to your site but even where those sites are getting their link juice from.

5. Look Out for Different Pages Ranking

One sure-fire sign of issues with individual page over-optimization or penalization is where Google struggles to index what you would consider as the "right" page for a term. This is often because Google is ignoring the "right" page and instead looking to other pages on your site.
If you see different pages ranking for a specific term within a few weeks, then it's worth checking the anchor text and links specifically pointing to that page.
Often you may find just one or two links pointing to it but 50+ percent may be exact match and that seems now to be enough to create issues.

What Now?

The key is to be informed. Invest in multiple data source to ensure you have the full picture. You can use the following:

Ahrefs
Majestic
Open Site Explorer
Webmaster Tools
CognitiveSEO – which also uses Blekko, SEOKicks

The above combination allows you to take a full picture view of every link on your site and gives you a second opinion should you feel it necessary. Removing links is a significant strategy. It pays to have more than one view to back up initial findings on things such as anchor text use and link quality and trust.
Alongside that, it's worth running a check of every linked-to page on your site you can then check anchor text ratios for every one. That way you can reduce the impact of partial actions.
The key is to reduce the use of exact match anchors as much as humanly possible as tolerated percentages are only going one way!
Above all, it may be time to start thinking beyond links entirely and onto a world of "brand as publisher," creating great content from a clearly defined content strategy, and then supporting it with an informed distribution strategy. But that's a story for another day.

How to Build Links Using Expired Domains

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Image Credit: Travis Isaacs/Flickr

Many people have had great success snapping up expired domains and using those sites for link building purposes. One of the main reasons for this was that it saved work, as you could grab a site that already had content and backlinks and at least a baseline established presence.
However, after the past year with all the Google changes that make link building trickier than ever, this process is no longer as easy and safe as it once was, but it can still be valuable if you think about what you're doing and don't just buy every domain that has your desired keyword in it then hastily 301 redirect it to your own site or trash the content with links to your main site, expecting miracles.
Affiliate marketers are also fond of expired domains to use for their work so while we won't go into detail on that, we will cover some topics that are relevant for that specific use.

How to Find Dropped/Expired/Expiring Domains?

Domain Tools is one of the main places that I check but there are many sites that list expired or about-to-expire domains that are up for grabs. Network Solutions has custom email alerts where you can put in a keyword and get an email when domains matching that are expiring so that's a nice option for those of you who like a more passive approach.

Snap Names is also good, as is Drop Day. You may find that there are certain sites that are best for your purposes (whether it's keeping an eye on ones you want or getting ones that just expired) so look around and figure out what best suits you.
Want a domain that's at least 9 years old and has a listing in DMOZ? Domain Tools is where I'd go for that, for example:

Of course if you come across a domain that you like and it's not set to expire any time soon, there's nothing wrong with emailing the owner and asking to buy it.

How to Vet Expired Domains

Check to see what domains 301 redirect to them. I use Link Research Tools for this as you can run a backlink report on the domain in question and see the redirects. If you find a domain that has 50 spammy 301s pointing to it, it may be more trouble that it's worth. Preventing a 301 from coming through when you don't control the site that redirects is almost impossible. You can block this on the server level but that won't help you with your site receiving bad link karma from Google. In that case, you may have to disavow those domains.
Check their backlinks using your link tool of choice. Is the profile full of nothing but spam that will take ages to clean up or will you have to spend time disavowing the links? If so, do you really want to bother with it? If you want to buy the domain to use for a 301 redirect and it's full of spammy links, at least wait until you've cleared that all up before you 301 it.
Check to see if they were ever anything questionable using the Wayback Machine. If the site simply wasn't well done 2 years ago, that's not nearly as big of a problem as if you're going to be using the site for educating people about the dangers of lead and it used to be a site that sold Viagra.
Check to see if the brand has a bad reputation. Do some digging upfront so you can save time disassociating yourself from something bad later. You know how sometimes you get a resume from a person and you ask an employee if they know this Susan who also used to work at the same place that your current employee worked years ago and your employee says "oh yes I remember her. She tried to burn the building down once"? Well, Susan might try to burn your building down, too.
Check to see if they were part of a link network. See what other sites were owned by the same person and check them out too.
Check to see if they have an existing audience. Is there an attached forum with active members, are there people generally commenting on posts and socializing them, etc.?

How Should You Use Expired Domains?

Many people 301 redirect these domains to their main sites or secondary sites in order to give them a boost. Others turn them into part of their legitimate online arsenal and use them as a proper standalone resource.
Some people add them to their existing blog network and interlink them. Some people keep them and use them to sell links. Some people keep them and try to resell them. Some people use them to try their hand at affiliate marketing.
However that's talking about how people use them, not about how they should use them, but how you should use them is up to you.
I once worked with an account where we used tons of microsites. They were standalone sites that each linked to the main brand site and we built links to them. It worked for a while (and still works for many people according to what I see in forums) but as far as I can tell, most of those microsites are no longer in Google's index or no longer contain live links to the brand site. That's because in that case, it stopped working and became more of a danger than anything else. They served no purpose at all other than to host a link to the brand site, and since they gained no authority, it just wasn't worth the trouble of keeping them up.
I've also dealt with someone who successfully bought expired domains and redirected them to subdomains on his main site in order to split it up into a few niche subdomains. He didn't overdo it, and each expired domain had a good history with content relevant to what the subdomain was, so it all worked very well.
As mentioned early on, affiliate marketers also use expired domains. One big benefit of this is that if you plan to just use PPC for affiliate marketing, you don't have to be as concerned about the backlink profile of the domain as you might not care that much about its organic rankings.

Some Good Signs of Expired Domains

Some of these probably depend upon the purpose you have in mind, but here are a few things I like to see on an expired or expiring domain but please keep in mind that these aren't discrete defining features of a quality domain; they are simply a couple of signs that the domain might be a good one to use:

Authority links that will pass through some link benefits via a 301 redirect (if I'm going that route.)
An existing audience of people who regularly contribute, comment, and socialize the site's content (if I'm going to use it as a standalone site.) If I'm looking to buy a forum, for example, I'd want to make sure that there are contributing members with something to offer already there. If I want a site that I will be maintaining and adding to and plan to build it out further, seeing that there's an audience of people reading the content, commenting on it, and socializing it would make me very happy.
A decent (and legitimate) Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) that is in line with where I think it should be. If I see a site that is 7 months old and has a TBPR of 6, I'll obviously be suspicious, and if I found one that was 9 years old and was a TBPR 1, I would hestitate before using it, for example. I also have to admit that while I don't rely on TBPR as a defining metric of quality, I'd be crazy to pretend that it means nothing so it's definitely something I look at.
A domain age of at least 2 years if I was going to do anything other than hold it and try to resell it.
Internal pages that have TBPR. If there are 5000 pages and only the homepage has any TBPR, I'd be a bit suspicious about why no internal pages had anything.

A Few Red Flags of Expired Domains

Suspicious TBPR as mentioned above.
The domain isn't indexed in Google. Even if you look at a recently expired site and see it has a TBPR of 4 with good Majestic flow metrics, is 5 years old, and has been updated in some way until it expired (whether through new blog posts, comments, social shares, etc.), it's safe to ssume it's not indexed for a good reason and you probably want to stay away from it.
Backlink profile is full of nothing but spam.
All comments on the site's posts are spammy ones and trackbacks.

Bottom Line: Is Using Expired Domains a Good Idea?

As with almost anything in SEO right now, some tactics aren't really great ideas for the long-term but since they work for the short-term, people still use them. Some tactics that won't work in one niche will still work well in certain other niches and some sites seem to be able to weather just about any algorithmic change in Google.
That's why it's hard to say that you shouldn't do this, or you should do that, because every case is different, every webmaster/site owner has a different idea about risk, and a lot of people have made a lot of money off doing things that I personally wouldn't do.
I don't have time to keep up the blogging on my own site so I would never expect that I could keep it up on five sites, each devoted to a specific area of my industry, but with the right manpower and the right people, this can be a successful strategy for many.
If you plan to use them for affiliate marketing and you're going to use PPC for that, you don't have to worry about some of the things that you would have to be concerned with if you planned to rank well.
In the end, it depends on what you want to do, how much time and effort you have to put into doing well, and how much risk you can handle, just like everything else.

Google Panda Update Coming Within Days; 'Next Generation' of Penguin in Works

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:46:00 +0000

You can expect another Google Panda update to roll out this Friday or Monday, according to Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts.
Also, Cutts has revealed that Google is working on a significant change to the Penguin algorithm.

Google Panda Update Coming Within Days

Panda is Google’s algorithm aimed at surfacing high-quality sites higher in search results. It was first released in February 2011.
The next Panda update (or refresh) is due to arrive either Friday (March 15) or Monday (March 18, Cutts said according to reports coming out of the SMX West conference. Google’s last Panda refresh (and only one so far in 2013) was January 22 and affected 1.2 percent of English queries.
Keep on your analytics over the next few days. If you see an unexplainable surge in traffic, it could indicate that Panda is about to maul your website.

Google Penguin: The Next Generation

It isn’t known when the next Penguin update will arrive, but Cutts revealed Google is working on a “new generation of Penguin.” The Penguin algorithm, initially released last April, was designed to reduce web spam and also hit website that had link profiles that appeared unnatural. The most recent Penguin refresh was in October.
Also, Cutts said the update will be significant and one of the most talked about Google algorithm updates this year. Which would make that two years running.
Cutts also put out word that Google plans to target more link networks this year, including one or two big ones within the next few weeks.
Could the next generation of Penguin somehow be related to another big change Cutts had already announced Google is working on involving merchant quality? Hard to know at this point, but what’s clear is the next few months are likely to get pretty bumpy for many websites and merchants on Google.

Google Panda & Penguin Help

4 Steps to Panda-Proof Your Website (Before It’s Too Late!)
After Panda & Penguin, is Google Living Up to Its Great Expectations?
Insights From the Recent Penguin & Panda Updates
Algorithm Updates, Duplicate Content & A Recovery
Life After Google Penguin – Going Beyond the Name
SEO, Why You Are Doing it Wrong

Algorithm Updates, Duplicate Content & A Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:45:00 +0000

Like many in search engine optimization, I watch the major algorithmic updates or “boulders” roll down the hill from the Googleplex and see which of us will be knocked down. For those of us who get squashed, we stand back up, dust ourselves off, and try to assess why we were the unlucky few that got rolled. We wait for vague responses from Google or findings from the SEO community.
Panda taught us that “quality content” was of focus and even if you were in the clear sites that link to you may have been devalued, thus affecting your overall authority. My overall perception of the Penguin update was that it was designed primarily to attack unnatural link practices and web spamming techniques, as well as a host of less focused topics such as AdSense usage and internal linking queues.
Duplicate content was mentioned here as a part of meeting Google’s quality guidelines but my overall observation was that it was not mentioned by many to be a major factor in the update.

The Head Scratching Period

After the Penguin update of late April 2012 hit, I quickly noticed that one of my client’s traffic began to slowly lose rankings and traffic. At first, it didn't seem to be an overnight slam by Google, but more so a slow decrease in referrals.
I soon began my post Penguin checklist and noticed that no major Penguin topics were ones that should be providing negative effects on the client site. This ultimately left me at the point of content quality.
I reviewed the content of the affected site sections. It looked fine, was informational, not keyword stuffed, and met Google’s Quality Guidelines. Or so I thought.

The Research

Time progressed and other site recommendations were placed on unaffected site areas as I tried to determine why rankings and referrals continued to fall in the aforementioned informational site areas.
I quizzed the site owner as to who developed the content originally. He stated it was himself using content found from other sites and placed on the site in the last few years.
First, I took a look at several years of organic data and noticed that they were hit very hard at the Panda rollout. Shaking my head but also glad we had found the issue we took to the site to pinpoint how much duplication was done.
Using tools such as Webconfs Similar Copy tool and Copyscape we found several site pages with either a large percentage of cross domain scraped duplication down to exact content snippets in copy originated by other sites.

The Resolution

A content writing resource worked quickly to rewrite unique copy for these pages to reduce the percentage of duplication. All of the affected pages were then released in their new unique state.
I had assumed that the recovery period may take a slow progression as the penalty in this case had come about slowly. Surprisingly, soon we saw that our pre-Penguin rankings and traffic appeared in a day’s time.

Questions

The rankings and traffic came back and are still there. After celebrating it is time for some after action review that leads to many questions including:

Is duplicate content, scraping, all that is included in Google’s Quality Guidelines more of a factor in the Penguin update than the SEO community considered?
If you get your pre-algorithmic update rankings back in a day, why weren’t they all lost in a day?
I also understand that there are multiple algorithmic updates on a daily basis, but it is interesting that the ranking and traffic decline happened right during Penguin. There have been other algorithmic happenings and refreshes in the period from then to now but am used to update refreshes being a leash easement on the algorithmic update and usually you see a rankings improvement. Why did I continue to see the slow negative trend?

Ultimately, I think the above story shows that it is quite important to know where your SEO client’s or company’s content originated if it precedes your involvement with site SEO efforts.
A recent post by Danny Goodwin,”Google’s Rating Guidelines Add Page Quality to Human Reviews”, rang for a while inside my head as it reinforces that even more so we need to be mindful of our site content. This includes ensuring it is unique first and foremost but engaging, constantly refreshed and meaningful for consideration in SEO improvement.
Unknown scraping efforts are, in my opinion, more dangerous than incidental on-site content duplication via dynamic parameter usage, session ID usage, on-site copy spinning (e.g., copy variations on location pages, etc.). All of these dangerous practices knowingly or unknowingly fall into the realm of content quality and showing devotion to your site content will allow you to provide fresh and unique copy that post Caffeine (yet again, another big algorithm update) Googlebot will enjoy crawling.

Insights From the Recent Penguin & Panda Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Google recently rolled out three major algorithmic updates that have left many websites reeling. In between two Google Panda refreshes (on April 17 and 27) was the April 24 launch of the Penguin Update.
The Panda update is more of a content related update, targeting sites with duplicate content and targeting spammers who scrape content. The first Panda update was over a year ago and Google has been releasing periodic updates ever since.
The Penguin update algorithm appears to be targeting many different factors, including low quality links. The purpose per Google was to catch excessive spammers, but it seems some legit sites and SEOs have been caught with this latest algo change.

What Exactly Happened?

An analysis of six sites that have been affected in a big way by Google Penguin offers some helpful insights. The Penguin algo seems to be looking at three major factors:

If the majority of a website’s backlinks are low quality or spammy looking (e.g., sponsored links, links in the footers, links from directories, links from link exchange pages, links from low quality blog networks).
If majority of a website’s backlinks are from unrelated websites.
If too many links are pointing back to a website with exact match keywords in the anchor texts

Some of these sites had only directory type and link exchange type backlinks that were affected. Some other sites had variety of different types of links, including link buys.
Google must be looking at the overall percentage of low quality links as a factor. Penguin doesn’t seem to have affected sites with a better mix of natural looking links and low-quality links.
A few other websites lost search rankings on Google for specific keywords during the Panda and Penguin rollouts. It appears anchor text was to blame in these cases, as the links pointing to these sites concentrated on only one or a few keywords.
What’s it all mean? The impact of Penguin will vary depending on how heavily a site’s link profile is skewed in the direction of the above three factors. Some sites may have lost rankings for everything while some sites may have lost rankings on only specific keywords.

Specific Details About a Few Sites Affected by Penguin

We used some backlink analyzers to look at the below factors to try and figure out what may have caused the drops:

Presence of footer links
Links from unrelated sites
Consecutive sponsored links, with no text descriptions in between the different links
Site-wide links
Too many exact match keyword links in anchor texts being the majority of the links
Specific keywords that had dropped in rankings having over 10 percent of the links in anchor texts

We also looked at site SEO and duplicate content as a factor.
Two sites had done little link building other than manual directory submissions and link exchanges. Those sites had the following problems:

Majority of links were unrelated due to high number of directory type links. The unrelated links were as high as 90 percent. By unrelated, I mean the subject of the sites linking to the impacted sites didn’t have similar/related content or were too general.
More than 50 percent of links were targeting keywords vs. brand name or non-keywords.

Four sites had a variety of different types of links such as directories, link exchange, articles published on different blogs, sponsored links, and social media links. Those sites exhibited these problems:

Between 50 and 70 percent unrelated links
More than 50 percent of links targeting keywords vs. brand name or non-keywords
Those that had sponsored links had some consecutive sponsored links (i.e., a bunch of links with no text descriptions in between)
Those that had sponsored links had some footer links (i.e., the links coming from external sites to them were placed towards the bottom of the page; it could also be on the right panel, but if you view the source code, the links would be in the bottom 5 percent of the text content)

In addition, two sites out of the last four had duplicate content issues.
One affected site had too many doorway pages with city/state pages. Google specifically mentions that doorway pages, which are only built to attract search engine traffic, are against their webmaster guidelines. Regardless, many people still use this technique.
It seems these doorway pages may have affected this specific site’s ranking. From what we can tell the doorway page penalization was due to Panda, as the site started losing rankings on April 17. However, they lost further rankings on April 24, so the Penguin update also hit them.
A different site had some duplicate content issues from their affiliates who copied their content. It’s still unclear if this had an affect on the drop.
Another site was selling links on his website in the footer area. The links were relevant to the subject of the website. Two sponsored links were located on the main page. Some internal pages also had sponsored links, but no more than three on any given page. This also may have been an issue.
The majority of your links shouldn’t be from directories, as two sites learned. Many sites unaffected by Google Penguin also had directory links, but they escaped because they also had relevant and high quality links. The good news: if you do your own relevant link building, then you don’t need to worry about a competitor doing negative SEO to try to get you de-ranked.

What to do if Your Site was Affected by Penguin

Here are four suggestions to start cleaning up your site:

If you have links from too many unrelated sites, such as directories, either remove some or try to get more links from related sites. You should have links from related websites at the minimum at 20 percent of your overall links.
If you have too many keyword links coming in, then vary your keywords and mix your brand name and URL in the links. Have at least 20 percent of your keyword links be non-keyword or brand-based.
If you are doing sponsored links, be careful! Cancel or remove any links you have from footers. Remove any sponsored links that don’t include a text description next to it. Contextual links are much better, meaning it’s better to have links from within text content of a website.
Make the above changes a few at a time and wait a few days to see if rankings come back, before proceeding. However, Penguin will only run periodically like Panda, so it could be weeks before any affected websites recover their rankings.

If you do your own SEO, then you probably have an idea of which links are low-quality and what you should do. However, if you are a newbie and don’t know how to analyze your backlinks, try SEOMoz or Majestic SEO. They both offer limited free analysis, but for a more detailed analysis or analyzing more than one website, you would need to get the premium version.
If you use an SEO firm, then you should make sure to ask for a detailed link report to see what exactly your SEO firm is doing. There are many SEO companies that keep their clients in the dark and never send link reports.
You need to make sure the company you are using discloses what they do and that they don’t engage in tactics that Google may not like. If the company refuses to release this info, that means they are either hiding something that they don’t want you to find out, such as black hat tactics or they really don’t have much to show you. In that case, run and cancel their service ASAP.

After Panda & Penguin, is Google Living Up to Its Great Expectations?

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:42:00 +0000

It all starts with Google, doesn’t it? Not really – it’s all about Google today because Google is the most used search engine.
Google, like any other software, evolves and corrects its own bugs and conceptual failures. The goal of the engineers working at Google is to constantly improve its search algorithm, but that’s no easy job.
Google is a great search engine, but Google is still a teenager.
This article was inspired by my high expectations of the Google algorithm that have been blown away in the last year, seeing how Google’s search results “evolved.” If we look at some of the most competitive terms in Google we will see a search engine filled with spam and hacked domains ranking in the top 10.

Why Can Google Still Not Catch Up With the Spammers?

Panda, Penguin, and the EMD update did clear some of the clutter. All of these highly competitive terms have been repeatedly abused for years. I don’t think there was ever a time when these results were clean, in terms of what Google might expect from its own search engine.
Even weirder is that the techniques used to rank this spam are as old as (if not older than) Google itself. And this brings me to a question:
The only difference between now and then is the period of time a spam result will “survive” in the SERPs. Now it's decreased from weeks to days, or even hours in some cases.
One of the side effects of Google's various updates is a new business model: ranking high on high revenue-generating keywords for a short amount of time. For those people involved in this practice, it scales very well.

How Google Ranks Sites Today: A Quick Overview

These are two of the main ranking signal categories:

On-page factors.
Off-page factors.

On-page and off-page have existed since the beginning of the search engine era. Now let’s take a deeper look at the most important factors that Google might use.
Regarding the on-page factors Google will try to understand and rate the following:

How often a site is updated. A site that isn't updated often doesn't mean it's low quality. This just tells Google how often it should crawl the site and it will compare the update frequency to other sites’ update frequency in the same niche to determine a trend and pattern.
If the content is unique. Duplicate content matching applies a negative score)
If the content provides interest to the users. Bounce rate and traffic data mixed on-page with off-page).
If the site is linking out to a bad neighborhood.
If the site is inter-linked with high-quality sites in the same niche.
If the site is over-optimized from an SEO point of view.
Other various smaller on page related factors.

The off-page factors are mainly the links. The social signals are still in their infancy and there is no exact study yet that clearly shows a true correlation of the social signals without being merged with the link signal. It is all speculation until now.
Talking about links they could be easily classified in two big categories:

Natural. Link appeared as a result of:
- The organic development of a page (meritocracy).
- A result of a “pure” advertising campaign with no intent of directly changing the SERPs.
Unnatural. Link appeared:

With the purpose to influencing a search engine ranking.

Unfortunately, the unnatural links represent a very large percentage of what the web is today. This is mainly due to Google’s (and the other search engines’) ranking models. The entire web got polluted because of this concept.
When your unnatural link ratio is way higher than your natural (organic) link ratio, it raises a red flag and Google starts watching your site more carefully.
Google tries to fight the unnatural link patterns with various algorithm updates. Some of the most popular updates, that targeted unnatural link patterns and low quality links, are the Penguin and EMD updates.
Google’s major focus today is on improving the way it handles link profiles. This is another difficult task, which is why Google is having a hard time making its way through the various techniques used by SEO pros (black hat or white hat) to influence positively or negatively the natural ranking of a site.

Google's Stunted Growth

Google is like a young teenager stuck on some difficult math problem. Google's learning process apparently involves trying to solve the problem of web spam by applying the same process in a different pattern – why can’t Google just break the pattern and evolve?
Is Google only struggling to maintain an acceptable ranking formula? Will Google evolve or stick with what it’s doing, just in a largely similar format?
Other search engines like Blekko have taken a different route and have tried to crowdsource content curation. While this works well in a variety of niches, the big problem with Blekko is that this content curation is not too “mainstream” putting the burden of the algorithm on the shoulders of its own users. But the pro users appreciate it and make the Blekko results quite good.
In a perfect, non-biased scenario, Google’s ranked results should be:

Ranked by non-biased ranking signals.
Impossible to be affected by third parties (i.e., negative SEO or positive SEO).
Able to tell the difference between bad and good (remember the JCPenny scandal).
More diverse and impossible to manipulate.
Giving new quality sites a chance to rank near the “giant” old sites.
Maintaining transparency.

There is still a long way to go until Google’s technology evolves from the infancy we know today. Will we have to wait until Google is 18 or 21 years old – or even longer – before Google reaches this level of maturity that it dreams of?
Until then, the SEO community is left with testing and benchmarking the way Google evolves – and maybe try to create a book of best practices about search engine optimization.
Google created an entire ecosystem that started backfiring a long time ago. They basically opened the door to all the spam concepts that they are now fighting today.
Is this illegal or immoral, white or black? Who are we to decide? We are no regulatory entity!

Conclusion

Google is a complicated “piece” of software that is being updated constantly, with each update theoretically bringing new fixes and improvements.
None of us were born smart, but we have learned how to become smart as we’ve grown. We never stop learning.
The same applies to Google. We as human beings are imperfect. How could we create a perfect search engine? Are we able to?
I would love to talk with you more. Share your thoughts or ask questions in the comments below.

4 Steps to Panda-Proof Your Website (Before It’s Too Late!)

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:39:00 +0000

It may be a new year, but that hasn’t stopped Google from rolling out yet another Panda refresh.
Last year Google unleashed the most aggressive campaign of major algo updates ever in its crusade to battle rank spam. This year looks to be more of the same.
Since Panda first hit the scene two years ago, thousands of sites have been mauled. SEO forums are littered with site owners who have seen six figure revenue websites and their entire livelihoods evaporate overnight, largely because they didn’t take Panda seriously.
If your site is guilty of transgressions that might provoke the Panda and you haven’t been hit yet, consider yourself lucky. But understand that it’s only a matter of time before you do get mauled. No doubt about it: Panda is coming for you.
Over the past year, we’ve helped a number of site owners recover from Panda. We’ve also worked with existing clients to Panda-proof their websites and (knock on wood) haven’t had a single site fall victim to Panda.
Based on that what we’ve learned saving and securing sites, I’ve pulled together a list of steps and actions to help site owners Panda-proof websites that may be at risk.

Step 1: Purge Duplicate Content

Duplicate content issues have always plagued websites and SEOs. But with Panda, Google has taken a dramatically different approach to how they view and treat sites with high degrees of duplicate content. Where dupe content issues pre-Panda might hurt a particular piece of content, now duplicate content will sink an entire website.
So with that shift in attitude, site owners need to take duplicate content seriously. You must be hawkish about cleaning up duplicate content issues to Panda-proof your site.
Screaming Frog is a good choice when you want to identify duplicate pages. This article by Ben Goodsell offers a great tutorial on locating duplicate content issues.
Some suggestions for fixing dupe content issues include:

Meta directives (e.g. noindex, follow).
Canonical tags (rel=“canonical”).
301 redirects.
Block pages via Robots.txt file.
Remove URLs via Webmaster Tools.
Choose your preferred domain in Webmaster Tools.

Now, cleaning up existing duplicate content issues is critical. But it’s just as important to take a preventative measures as well. This means, addressing the root cause of your duplicate content issues before they end up in the index. Yoast offers some great suggestions on how to avoid duplicate content issues altogether.

Step 2: Eradicate Low Quality, Low Value Content

Google’s objective with Panda is to help users find "high-quality" sites by diminishing the visibility (ranking power) of low-quality content, all of which is accomplished at scale, algorithmically. So weeding out low value content should be mission critical for site owners.
But the million dollar question we hear all the time is “what constitutes ‘low quality’ content?”
Google offered guidance on how to asses page-level quality, which is useful to help guide your editorial roadmap. But what about sites that host hundreds or thousands of pages, where evaluating every page by hand isn’t even remotely practical or cost-effective?
A much more realistic approach for larger sites is to look at user engagement signals that Google is potentially using to identify low-quality content. These would include key behavioral metrics such as:

Low to no visits.
Anemic unique page views.
Short time on page.
High bounce rates.

Of course, these metrics can be somewhat noisy and susceptible to external factors, but they’re the most efficient way to sniff-out out low value content at scale.
Some ways you can deal with these low value and poor performing pages include:

Deleting any content with low to no user engagement signals.
Consolidating the content of thin or shallow pages into thicker, more useful documents (i.e., “purge and merge).”
Adding additional internal links to improve visitor engagement (and deeper indexation). Tip: make sure these internal links point to high-quality content on your site.

One additional type of low quality content that often gets overlooked is pagination. Proper pagination is highly effective at distributing link equity throughout your site. But high ratios of paginated archives, comments and tag pages can also dilute your site’s crawl budget, cause indexation cap issues and negatively tip the scales of high-to low-value content ratios on your site.
Tips for Panda-proofing pagination include:

“No index, follow” paginated pages.
Tag paginated content with “rel=prev” and “rel=next” to indicate documents in a sequence.

Step 3: Thicken-Up Thin Content

Google hates thin content. And this disdain isn’t reserved for spammy scraper sites or thin affiliates only. It’s also directed at sites with little or no original content (i.e., another form of “low value” content).
One of the riskiest content types we see frequently on client sites are thin directory-style pages. These are aggregate feed pages you’d find on ecommerce product pages (both page level and category level); sites with city, state and ZIP code directory type pages (think hotel and travel sites); and event location listings (think ticket brokers). And many sites host thousands of these page types, which other than a big list of hyperlinks have zero-to-no content.
Unlike other low-value content traps, these directory pages are often instrumental in site usability and helping users navigate to deeper content. So deleting them or merging them isn’t an option.
Instead, the best strategy here is to thicken up these thin directory pages with original content. Some recommendations include:

Drop a thousand words of original, value-add content on the page in an effort to treat each page as a comprehensive guide on a specific topic.
Pipe in API data and content mash-ups (excellent when you need to thicken hundreds or thousands of pages at scale).
Encourage user reviews.
Add images and videos.
Move thin pages off to subdomains, which Google hints at. Though we use this is as more of a “stop gap” approach for sites that have been mauled by Panda and are trying to rebound quickly, rather than a long-term, sustainable strategy.

It’s worth noting that these recommendations can be applied to most types of thin content pages. I’m just using directory style pages as an example because we see them so often.
When it comes to discovering thin content issues at scale, take a look at word count. If you’re running WordPress, there are a couple of plugins you can use to asses word count for every document on your site:

As well, here are some all-purpose plugin recommendations to help in the war against Panda.
All in all, we’re seeing documents that have been thickened up get a nice boost in rankings and SERP visibility. And this isn’t boost isn’t a temporal QDF bump. In the majority of cases, when thickening up thin pages, we’re seeing permanent ranking improvements over competitor pages.

Step 4: Develop High-Quality Content

On the flipside of fixing low or no-value content issues, you must adopt an approach of only publishing the highest quality content on your site. For many sites, this is a total shift in mindset, but nonetheless raising your content publishing standards is essential to Panda-proofing your site.
Google describes “quality content” as “content that you can send to your child to learn something.” Which is a little vague but to me it says two distinct things:

Your content should be highly informative.
Your content should easy to understand (easy enough that a child can comprehend it).

For a really in-depth look at “What Google Considers Quality Content,” check out Brian Ussery’s excellent analysis.
When publishing content on our own sites, we ask ourselves a few simple quality control questions:

Does this content offer value?
Is this content you would share with others?
Would you link to this content as an informative resource?

If a piece of content doesn’t meet these basic criteria, we work to improve it until it does.
Now, when it comes to publishing quality content, many site owners don’t have the good fortune of having industry experts in house and internal writing resources at their disposal. In those cases, you should consider outsourcing your content generation to the pros.
Some of the most effective ways we use to find professional, authoritative authors include:

Placing an ad on Craigslist and conduct a “competition.” Despite what the critics say, this method works really and you can find some excellent, cost-effective talent. “How to Find Quality Freelance Authors on Craigslist” will walk you through the process.
Reaching out to influential writers in your niche with columns on high profile pubs. Most of these folks do freelance work and are eager to take on new projects. You can find these folks with search operators like [intitle:“your product nice” intext:“meet our bloggers”] or [intitle:“your product nice” intext: “meet our authors”] since many blogs publish an author’s profile page.
Targeting published authors on Amazon.com is a fantastic way to find influential authors who have experience writing on topics in your niche.

Apart from addressing writing resource deficiencies, the advantages of hiring topic experts or published authors include:

Authoritative authors raise the perceived value of your content.
You can leverage authorship credentials on Google+.
Author profiles display in the SERP snippets, and can improve CTR and help users find great content.
AuthorRank! It may not be a ranking signal just yet, but it will be.
Authorship engagement and satisfaction which may contribute to AuthorRank.
Higher engagement levels lead to longer clicks vs the short clicks. And I have to assume “time on page/site” is a signal Google pays attention to.

Finally, I wanted to address the issue of frequency and publishing quality content. Ask yourself this: are you publishing content everyday on your blog, sometimes twice a day? If so, ask yourself “why?”
Is it because you read on a popular marketing blog that cranking out blog posts each and every day is a good way to target trending topics and popular terms, and flood the index with content that will rank in hundreds of relevant mid-tail verticals?
If this is your approach, you might want to rethink it. In fact, I’d argue that 90 percent of sites that use this strategy should slow down and publish better, longer, meatier content less frequently.
In a race to “publish every day!!!” you’re potentially polluting the SERPs with quick, thin, low value posts and dragging down the overall quality score of your entire site. So if you fall into this camp, definitely stop and think about your approach. Test the efficacy of fewer, thicker posts vs short-form “keyword chasing” articles.

Panda-Proofing Wrap Up

Bottom line: get your site in-shape before it’s too late. Why risk being susceptible to every Panda update, when Armageddon is entirely avoidable.
The SEO and affiliate forums are littered with site owners who continue to practice the same low value tactics in spite of the clear dangers because they were cheap and they worked. But look at those sites now. Don’t make the same mistake.

Google Rolling Out First Panda Refresh of 2013 Today

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:36:00 +0000

Beware the Panda. According to a tweet from the official @Google Twitter account this morning, a new data refresh is rolling out today.
This update, according to the notice, should only affect 1.2 percent of English language queries. No other information is available so far.

This is the first Panda data refresh of 2013. It also marks the third consecutive month of Panda data updates.
The first Panda update was nearly two years ago in February 2011. Google's stated goal of Panda is to reward "high-quality sites."
While Google has never formally defined what a "high-quality site" is, Google has its own list of bullet points on their blog post from early 2011. The rationale has always been the same: to find more high-quality sites in search.

Google Goes Boom on Low-Quality Sites...So They Say

Chances are good that you or someone you know has seen some ranking changes today as Google rolled out a new algorithmic update. With the recent announcements aimed at "low quality sites" (many interpret this to mean content farms), even less than two weeks ago, Google stated they were exploring different new methods to detect spam.
"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on," Google announced last night.
No one can say this one came out of left field. Google launched an algorithm tweak in January to combat spam and scraper sites, though that affected a much smaller number of sites.
This IS a big one. We're talking 11.8% across the board. Now, the big question is did they do it right?
From the looks of it, Google is not simply devaluing sites serving duplicated content, they are going after sites here with specific types of backlinks, spying through Chrome extensions, and this is only within the first 24 hours! More will become clear once site owners see drastic changes in their traffic stats.
As with every major Google update, SEO forums are dedicating a thread to this and they are filling up fast with reactions and reports. Since BackLinkForum.com tends to have the skilled gray/blackhat crowd, and because this update is only happening in the U.S. (for now), BLF is a great place to see what is really happening down in the trenches.
Two possible things happening there worth noting:

Sites with the majority of their backlink profiles consisting of profile links could be a target.
Not every content farm was red flagged. This may have been a response to the scraper update along with bigger content farm sites. Similar to the recent Blekko update.

Although coming to a conclusion about the update within 24 hours is extremely risky, I would be willing to bet that this is targeting self-service linking as much as content farms.
However, sites like eHow, Answers.com, and even low-level scraper sites still seem to be saturating the SERPs. That leaves me asking, "Who was penalized then?"
As with any Google algorithm changes, some innocent sites are going to be slammed. Some SEOs have reported seeing 40 percent traffic drops to their sites.
This latest update may just more evidence that Google simply can't distinguish between "good" or "bad" content.
Let us know what you're seeing today -- the good, bad, and disastrous.

Blekko Removes Content Farms From Search Results

In an effort to combat web spam, Blekko will block from its search results 20 of the worst-offending SERP clogging content farms, including Demand Media's eHow and Answerbag, TechCrunch reports. This list of barred sites are as follows:

ehow.com
experts-exchange.com
naymz.com 
activehotels.com 
robtex.com 
encyclopedia.com
fixya.com 
chacha.com 
123people.com 
download3k.com 
petitionspot.com 
thefreedictionary.com 
networkedblogs.com 
buzzillions.com 
shopwiki.com 
wowxos.com 
answerbag.com 
allexperts.com 
freewebs.com 
copygator.com

Blekko seems to be taking spam seriously. Last month, the newest search engine introduced the spam clock, which announced that 1 million new spam pages are created every hour. As of this morning, the total number of spam pages was at 750 million and counting (though Blekko admits it is more "illustrative more than scientifically accurate.")
The reasoning for the spam clock, according to Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta:

"Millions upon millions of pages of junk are being unleashed on the web, a virtual torrent of pages designed solely to generate a few pennies in ad revenue for its creator. I fear that we are approaching a tipping point, where the volume of garbage soars beyond and overwhelms the valuable of what is on the web."

So Blekko seems to be doing its small part for cleaning up its own search results.
Meanwhile, Google has also announced an algorithm change to combat spam. But as Mike Grehan notes in his column today "The Google Spam-Jam," spam "is a problem that Google has had from day one and it's not likely to go away anytime soon" with its current search model.

Google's War on Spam Begins: New Algorithm Live

Google's Matt Cutts today announced the launch of a new algorithm that is intended to better detect and reduce spam in Google's search results and lower the rankings of scraper sites and sites with little original content. Google's main target is sites that copy content from other sites and offer little useful, original content of their own.
Positing on Hacker News, Cutts wrote:

"The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content. An example would be that stackoverflow.com will tend to rank higher than sites that just reuse stackoverflow.com's content. Note that the algorithmic change isn't specific to stackoverflow.com though."

On his blog, Cutts wrote:

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content.

Cutts said the change was approved last Thursday and launched earlier this week. Cutts announced Google's intention to up the fight against spam in an Official Google Blog post last Friday.
In response to criticism that Google's results were deteriorating and seeing more spam in recent months, Cutts said a newly redesigned document-level classifier will better detect repeated spammy words, such as those found in "junky" automated, self-promoting blog comments. He also said that spam levels today are much better than five years ago.
At Webmaster World, there is discussion about big drops in traffic. Are you seeing any changes as a result of this change?

Negative SEO Case Study: How to Uncover an Attack Using a Backlink Audit

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Ever since Google launched the Penguin update back in April 2012, the SEO community has debated the impact of negative SEO, a practice whereby competitors can point hundreds or thousands of negative backlinks at a site with the intention of causing harm to organic search rankings or even completely removing a site from Google's index. Just jump over to Fiverr and you can find many gigs offering thousands of wiki links, or directory links, or many other types of low-quality links for $5.
By creating the Disavow Links tool, Google acknowledged this very real danger and gave webmasters a tool to protect their sites. Unfortunately, most people wait until it's too late to use the Disavow tool; they look at their backlink profile and disavow links after they've been penalized by Google. In reality, the Disavow Links tool should be used before your website suffers in the SERPs.
Backlink audits have to be added to every SEO professional's repertoire. These are as integral to SEO as keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building. In the same way that a site owner builds links to create organic rankings, now webmasters also have to monitor their backlink profile to identify low quality links as they appear and disavow them as quickly as they are identified.
Backlink audits are simple: download your backlinks from your Google Webmaster account, or from a backlink tool, and keep an eye on the links pointing to your site. What is the quality of those links? Do any of the links look fishy?
As soon as you identify fishy links, you can then try to remove the links by emailing the webmaster. If that doesn't work, head to Google's disavow tool and disavow those links. For people looking to protect their sites from algorithmic updates or penalties, backlink audits are now a webmaster's best friend.
If your website has suffered from lost rankings and search traffic, here's a method to determine whether negative SEO is to blame.

A Victim of Negative SEO?

A few weeks ago I received an email from a webmaster whose Google organic traffic dropped by almost 50 percent within days of Penguin 2.0. He couldn't understand why, given that he'd never engaged in SEO practices or link building. What could've caused such a massive decrease in traffic and rankings?
The site is a 15-year-old finance magazine with thousands of news stories and analysis, evergreen articles, and nothing but organic links. For over a decade it has ranked quite highly for very generic informational financial keywords – everything from information about the economies of different countries, to very detailed specifics about large corporations.
With a long tail of over 70,000 keywords, it's a site that truly adds value to the search engine results and has always used content to attract links and high search engine rankings.
The site received no notifications from Google. They simply saw a massive decrease in organic traffic starting May 22, which leads me to believe they were impacted by Penguin 2.0.
In short, he did exactly what Google preaches as safe SEO. Great content, great user experience, no manipulative link practices, and nothing but value.
So what happened to this site? Why did it lose 50 percent of its organic traffic from Google?

Backlink Audit

I started by running a LinkDetox report to analyze the backlinks. Immediately I knew something was wrong:

Upon further investigation, 55 percent of his links were suspicious, while 7 percent (almost 500) of the links were toxic:

So the first step was to research those 7 percent toxic links, how they were acquired, and what types of links they were.
In LinkDetox, you can segment by Link Type, so I was able to first view only the links that were considered toxic. According to Link Detox, toxic links are links from domains that aren't indexed in Google, as well as links from domains whose theme is listed as malware, malicious, or having a virus.
Immediately I noticed that he had many links from sites that ended in .pl. The anchor text of the links was the title of the page that they linked to.
It seemed that the sites targeted "credit cards", which is very loosely in this site's niche. It was easy to see that these were scraped links to be spun and dropped on spam URLs. I also saw many domains that had expired and were re-registered for the purpose of creating content sites for link farms.
Also, check out the spike in backlinks:

From this I knew that most of the toxic links were spam, and links that were not generated by the target site. I also saw many links to other authority sites, including entrepreneur.com and venturebeat.com. It seems that this site was classified as an "authority site" and was being used as part of a spammers way of adding authority links to their outbound link profile.

Did Penguin Cause the Massive Traffic Loss?

I further investigated the backlink profile, checking for other red flags.
His Money vs Brand ratio looked perfectly healthy:

His ratio of "Follow" links was a little high, but this was to be expected given the source of his negative backlinks:

Again, he had a slightly elevated number of text links as compared to competitors, which was another minor red flag:

One finding that was quite significant was his Deep Link Ratio, which was much too high when compared with others in his industry:

In terms of authority, his link distribution by SEMrush keyword rankings was average when compared to competitors:

Surprisingly, his backlinks had better TitleRank than competitors, meaning that the target site's backlinks ranked for their exact match title in Google – an indication of trust:

Penalized sites don't rank for their exact match title.
The final area of analysis was the PageRank distribution of the backlinks:

Even though he has a great number of high quality links, the percentage of links that aren't indexed in Google is substantially great. Close to 65 percent of the site's backlinks aren't indexed in Google.
In most cases, this indicates poor link building strategies, and is a typical profile for sites that employ spam link building tactics.
In this case, the high quantity of links from pages that are penalized, or not indexed in Google, was a case of automatic links built by spammers!
As a result of having a prominent site that was considered by spammers to be an authority in the finance field, this site suffered a massive decrease in traffic from Google.

Avoid Penguin & Unnatural Link Penalties

A backlink audit could've prevented this site from being penalized from Google and losing close to 50% of their traffic. If a backlink audit had been conducted, the site owner could've disavowed these spam links, performed outreach to get these links removed, and documented his efforts in case of future problems.
If the toxic links had been disavowed, all of the ratios would've been normalized and this site would've never been pegged as spam and penalized by Penguin.

Backlink Audits

Whatever tool you use - whether it's Ahrefs, LinkDetox, or OpenSiteExplorer – it's important that you run and evaluate your links on a monthly basis. Once you have the links, make sure you have metrics for each of the links in order to evaluate their health.
Here's what to do:

Identify all the backlinks from sites that aren't indexed in Google. If they aren't indexed in Google, there's a good chance they are penalized. Take a manual look at a few to make sure nothing else is going on (e.g., perhaps they just moved to a new domain, or there's an error in reporting). Add all the N/A sites to your file.
Look for backlinks from link or article directories. These are fairly easy to identify. LinkDetox will categorize those automatically and allow you to filter them out. Scan each of these to make sure you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, as perhaps a few of these might be healthy.
Identify links from sites that may be virus infected or have malware. These are identified as Toxic 2 in LinkDetox.
Look for paid links. Google has long been at war with link buying and it's an obvious target. Find any links that have been paid and add them to the list. You can find these by sorting the results by PageRank descending. Evaluate all the high PR links as those are likely the ones that were purchased. Look at each and every one of the high quality links to assess how they were acquired. It's almost always pretty obvious if the link was organic or purchased.
Take the list of backlinks and run it through the Juice Tool to scan for other red flags. One of my favorite metrics to evaluate is TitleRank. Generally, pages that aren't ranking for their exact match title have a good chance of having a functional penalty or not having enough authority. In the Juice report, you can see the exact title to determine if it's a valid title (for example, if the title is "Home", of course they won't rank for it, whether they have a penalty). If the TitleRank is 30+, you can review that link by doing a quick check, and if the site looks spammy, add it to your "Bad Links" file. Do a quick scan for other factors, such as PageRank and DomainAuthority, to see if anything else seems out of place.

By the end of this stage, you'll have a spreadsheet with the most harmful backlinks to a site.
Upload this Disavow File, to make sure the worst of your backlinks aren't harming your site. Make sure you then upload this disavow file when performing further tests on Link Detox as excluding these domains will affect your ratios.

Don't be a Victim of Negative SEO!

Negative SEO works; it's a very real threat to all webmasters. Why spend the time, money, and resources building high quality links and content assets when you can work your way to the top by penalizing your competitors?
There are many unethical people out there; don't let them cause you to lose your site's visibility. Add backlink audits and link profile protection as part of your monthly SEO tasks to keep your site's traffic safe. It's no longer optional.

To Be Continued...

At this point, we're still working on link removals, so there is nothing conclusive to report yet on a recovery. However, once the process is complete, I plan to write a follow-up post here on SEW to share additional learnings and insights from this case.

Google Penguin 2.0 Update is Live

noreply@blogger.com (Sudha) — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:31:00 +0000

Webmasters have been watching for Penguin 2.0 to hit the Google search results since Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts first announced that there would be the next generation of Penguin in March. Cutts officially announced that Penguin 2.0 is rolling out late Wednesday afternoon on "This Week in Google".
"It's gonna have a pretty big impact on web spam," Cutts said on the show. "It's a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentinally only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."
In a new blog post, Cutts added more details on Penguin 2.0, saying that the rollout is now complete and affects 2.3 percent of English-U.S. queries, and that it affects non-English queries as well. Cutts wrote:

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.
This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.

Webmasters first got a hint that the next generation of Penguin was imminent when back on May 10 Cutts said on Twitter, “we do expect to roll out Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though.”

Then in a Google Webmaster Help video, Cutts went into more detail on what Penguin 2.0 would bring, along with what new changes webmasters can expect over the coming months with regards to Google search results.
He detailed that the new Penguin was specifically going to target black hat spam, but would be a significantly larger impact on spam than the original Penguin and subsequent Penguin updates have had.
Google's initial Penguin update originally rolled out in April 2012, and was followed by two data refreshes of the algorithm last year – in May and October.
Twitter is full of people commenting on the new Penguin 2.0, and there should be more information in the coming hours and days as webmasters compare SERPs that have been affected and what kinds of spam specifically got targeted by this new update.
Let us know if you've seen any significant changes, or if the update has helped or hurt your traffic/rankings in the comments.
UPDATE: Google has set up a Penguin Spam Report form.

Learn More: Google Penguin