Remember a few months ago when I said, Gnome Likes is “back and better than ever in 2013!” Yeah… me either

In my defense, last month’s newsletter was jam packed with exciting SEO news. But you’re right: that’s not good enough, which is why I’m dusting off the cobwebs for an extra special edition of Gnome Likes!

So without further ado, let’s dive into the most interesting SEO posts/events/etc. from the past week…

Google Hits Mozilla with Spam Penalty Over User Generated Content

Without question, the biggest industry news from last week revolved around Google’s penalty against Mozilla.

In this post, Danny Sullivan does an excellent job describing the events that transpired. Here’s a brief account of what happened (followed by a few of my thoughts about the situation):

On April 22, Chris More (the Web Production Manager at Mozilla) asked for help on the Google Webmaster forums because the Google Webmaster Tools account for www.mozilla.org received a notice that stated, “Google has detected user-generated spam on your site” and “Google has applied a manual spam action to your site.”

Eventually, Chris received additional information on the forums from John Mueller. Specifically, John gave him a “particularly bad” example of spam on one of the Mozilla domains.

John also mentioned that the manual action was “granular” and that the message “does not mean that your site on a whole is critically negatively affected in our search results.” However, he didn’t specify how much of Mozilla’s site was impacted by the penalty.

Hours later, Matt Cutts finally provided Chris with the exact URL that triggered the manual penalty. This URL was the same example John previously mentioned, but up until this point in time, Chris didn’t know the specific circumstances surrounding the penalty.

This entire situation is borderline insane for at least three reasons. First, the mozilla.org domain has tens of millions of pages, but Google’s manual spam penalty only affected one of those pages.

Second, nothing about the spam notice indicates the trivial nature of the penalty (i.e., the notice makes it seem like the entire domain has been penalized). Additionally, Mozilla had multiple interactions with Google representatives before being told that the penalty only impacted a single page.

Everything about this situation seems like a monumental waste of time and resources. If the original notice had simply listed the guilty page, Mozilla could have immediately taken action, and everyone involved in this saga could have spent their time more productively.

Third, the spam notice didn’t even specify the correct subdomain that was impacted by the penalty. The guilty page was hosted on blog.mozilla.org, but since Mozilla didn’t have that domain registered through Webmaster Tools, the notice was sent to the www.mozilla.org account (making a crazy situation even crazier).

For even more of my thoughts about how Google handles penalty reporting, check out this Google+ post: Google is as Transparent as Mud.

I also discussed the situation briefly on this week’s Max Impact (it’s around the 30 minute mark):

Finally, for a nice post-mortem about this crazy story, check out this follow-up post by Danny: Q&A With Google’s Matt Cutts On What To Do If You Get A Manual Penalty.

The Wait is Finally Over… Shitbound.org is LIVE!

If you’re reading this, you probably already know about Inbound.org (the “Hacker News for Marketers”). But you might not be familiar with its brother from another mother: Shitbound.org (“The Home For The Shite That SEOs Write”).

The latter was originally announced at the end of October, and it instantly inspired the greatest Halloween costume in the history of time:

Unfortunately, after the site’s initial announcement, months quickly passed, and when the calendar flipped to 2013, Shitbound.org was still a work in progress.

But then something magical happened. On April 24, 2013, Twitter was almost completely shut down by this tweet:

Share your Shit – shitbound.org is live

— Shit Bound (@ShitBoundOrg) April 24, 2013

That’s right! After months and months of anticipation, Shitbound.org is finally live, and the Internet finally has a landfill for all the shitty content being published on a daily basis.

Google’s Penguin Update Celebrates A Birthday

April 24, 2013 was an important date because of the Shitbound.org launch, but it also marked the one year anniversary of Google’s Penguin update.

In honor of this milestone, at least two surveys were making the rounds last week in an effort to quantify the damage (and observed recoveries) associated with the update.

Here are the links to those surveys, and if your sites were impacted by Penguin, I strongly encourage you to fill them out:

And while we’re talking about Penguin, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you about the major Penguin update that Matt Cutts promised for 2013.

If your site has a lot of suspicious backlinks, now’s a great time to start removing them!

Fixing the Broken Culture of SEO Metrics – Whiteboard Friday

For many, MANY years, the SEO industry has been consumed with rank tracking. Where do I rank for this?! How do I rank for that?!?! Are my rankings going up?!?!?!

In this week’s edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin does an excellent job of explaining why this way of thinking is incredibly short sighted (and not at all aligned with your company’s most important business objectives). Then, he discusses the types of indicators you should be using to measure the success of your SEO and general marketing activities:

Over To You…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? What did you think about Google penalizing Mozilla? Are you actively preparing for the next big Penguin update?

In case you didn’t notice, the Gnome Likes series took an extended vacation over the holidays, but now, it’s back and better than ever in 2013!

There haven’t been any recent Google update announcements (Panda #23 went live right before Christmas, but that was weeks ago) so we’re going to jump right into this week’s featured SEO posts.

If you have a blog, you’re going to love this week’s posts (if you don’t have a blog, these posts might motivate you to get one). They include lots of content creation ideas and very exciting SEO-related tips. So without further ado, let’s get this party started…

Advanced SEO Tips for Blogs – 2013 Edition

Jason Acidre kicks off the new year with this excellent post about improving your blog’s organic search visibility in 2013.

Specifically, he provides 11 actionable tips for improving your blog’s SEO. I encourage you to read the full post for all 11 tips, but here are a few of my favorites:

For the rest of Jason’s excellent SEO tips (and more thorough explanations), check out his full post!

How To Blog Successfully About Anything

In this post, Tanner Christensen presents a simple strategy for blogging about any topic. Yes, any topic.

So what’s Tanner’s secret? Questions… lots and lots of questions!

As Tanner explains, questions can help make any topic interesting because 1) they give you an opportunity to learn and grow as a person and 2) they provide a built-in audience (others will be looking for answers to the same questions).

Thus, the very first step when covering a topic is to ask as many questions as possible. If you have trouble brainstorming questions, you can rely on the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, and why), or you can search for questions on Q&A sites (e.g., Quora, LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo! Answers, etc.).

Then, once you have a list of questions about your topic, you research and write blog posts that provide the answers to those questions.

And there you have it! A simple, yet incredibly effective, strategy for blogging about any topic: answering questions.

For more details about this strategy (and industry-specific examples), be sure to read Tanner’s entire post!

31 Types of Blog Posts for Every Day of the Month

If Tanner’s content creation strategy isn’t enough to fill your editorial calendar, this post by Amanda Gallucci will help finish the job!

To really get your content creation juices flowing, Amanda presents 31 different types of blog posts: one for each day of the month. I’ll let you read the full post for all 31 types, but here are a few exciting examples:

For even more excellent blog ideas, don’t miss Amanda’s full post!

SEO Audits with Alan Bleiweiss and Steve Webb

Now that your editorial calendar is full, it’s time to audit your site’s SEO. To learn how to do that, watch this Q&A with Alan Bleiweiss and me, which is the latest video in Max Minzer‘s excellent series of Max Impact Hangouts.

Of course, if you’d prefer to have the Web Gnomes take a look at your site, we offer a comprehensive SEO audit service.

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. What are some of your favorite types of blog posts? Do you have any questions about SEO audits that Alan and I didn’t cover in our Q&A?

In last week’s recap, we highlighted a few of our favorite discussions in the world of SEO. This week, we’re back to summarizing our favorite posts… with a slight twist. Since the end of 2012 is rapidly approaching, this week’s recap focuses on posts that review 2012 and make predictions about 2013.

But before we jump into this week’s recap, let’s take a quick look at last week’s Google activity:

According to this MozCast screenshot, Google made a significant change on Wednesday (12/5). Google hasn’t confirmed anything publicly, but Dr. Pete made the following observations in a Google+ post: (1) the “Average Result Count” declined steadily last week and (2) the “Big 10″ metric also dropped last week. For more information, read Dr. Pete’s post (and check MozCast’s metrics).

While we’re on the topic of Google, let’s visually review the Google changes that occurred in 2012…

5 Graphics that Recap the Most Important Google SERP Changes in 2012

This post by Nathan Safran takes a visual stroll down memory lane, highlighting a few of the most important Google-related changes in 2012.

Specifically, Nathan looks at the following 4 changes:

For each of these changes, Nathan provides a graphic that shows a before and after view of a Google search. The following graphic illustrates all 4 of the aforementioned Google changes:

For more information about these 2012 Google changes (and their corresponding graphics), I encourage you to read the full post.

Now that we’ve reviewed the past, let’s predict the future…

The Future of SEO in 2013

In this post, Gaz Copeland brings together 30 SEO experts and reveals their predictions for SEO in 2013.

As you can imagine, the predictions vary considerably from one person to the next, but a few topics are consistently mentioned:

(1) Expect more spam fighting Google updates (furry names optional)

2012 was dominated by link network take-downs, unnatural links notices, and of course: the Penguin update. Many of the SEO experts predict that we’ll see more of the same in 2013.

Google will continue to find ways to distinguish between editorially given links (votes for pages on the Web) and links intended to manipulate rankings.
- Bill Slawski

(2) Anchor text will continue to lose value

Every year, the power of anchor text is diminished more and more. In 2012, anchor text lost value and actually became dangerous due to the negative consequences associated with the Penguin update. Moving forward, many experts believe Google will continue to devalue anchor text.

We’ll see Google turn down the dial on the power of anchor text. It has always been a bug bear of mine that they put so much weight on it in the first place because real internet users do not link using exact match anchor text.
- Paddy Moogan

(3) Authorship and AuthorRank will become MUCH more important

Google+ is Google’s identity management system for the Internet. As such, Google will continue to promote the system and strongly encourage (and incentivize) webmasters to create profiles and associate their content with those profiles.

Authorship is only going to get more important. Google wants (read:needs) people to complete their Google Plus profiles and start using authorship for reasons that range from making their incredibly broken reviews system work to making sense of entities and the semantic web.
- Joel Klettke

(4) Semantic markup will continue to proliferate

Google presents rich snippets in the SERPs for a variety of verticals. In the coming year, more webmasters will take advantage of these rich snippets, and Google will experiment with new ways to leverage (and display) this data.

I think there’ll be a few more Schema based case studies next year and predict that SEO’s will get off their arses and actually get round to implementing it.
- Sean Revell

(5) Webmasters will focus more attention on user experience (UX)

If your website provides a negative user experience, you’ll quickly lose visitors (regardless of how valuable your products and services are). Since search engines have a vested interest in keeping their users happy, they won’t promote sites that don’t create a positive user experience.

The big thing for me next year is going to be User Experience (UX) – creating websites that deserve to be on the first page of Google
- Chris Dyson

Those are just a few of the most popular predictions. For even more, be sure to check out the entire post!

Web Gnomes Highlights

Since we’re reviewing the past and predicting the future, we’ll finish this week’s recap with a quick run-down of the most popular posts from our blog in 2012:

We have even more exciting posts planned for 2013, and as always, if there’s anything you’d like to see us write about, please let us know!

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What was the biggest change in 2012? What are your predictions for 2013?

In this week’s recap, we’re going to mix things up a little. Instead of summarizing our favorite posts, we’re highlighting a few extremely interesting discussions that took place last week (and are still ongoing).

Some of these discussions are attached to blog posts, and some of them just happened naturally. But all of them are worth a read… and hopefully, you’ll feel compelled to participate in these conversations!

Before we dive in, I have to give my obligatory weekly Google update. On Friday, Barry Schwartz reported that Panda 22 was released on November 21.

Interestingly, this is the second Panda update in a row that wasn’t officially announced by Google. I won’t put my conspiracy theorist hat on, but you have to wonder why Google chooses to announce some Panda updates but not others (and why they confirm them without announcing them).

And while you ponder that question, here’s our first discussion, which asks another Google-related question:

What is the Life Cycle of a Google Update?

Yes, I’m shamelessly plugging a discussion that I started on Friday. But in my defense, Dr. Pete left a few interesting comments in this thread so I’m really just promoting his thoughts .

The conversation focuses on Google updates. Specifically, what is their life cycle, and how should we interpret Google’s confirmation dates (e.g., November 21 for Panda 22)?

As the following image shows, a lot of SERP flux is observed BEFORE the confirmation dates of the two most recent Panda updates. Most of the corresponding discussion centers around potential explanations for this phenomenon.

I’ll let you read the full thread for more details, and I encourage you to share your thoughts about this topic!

An Open Discussion on the Current State of Link Building

As the name suggests, this post is actually a discussion about link building, and it’s outstanding. The post is structured as an ongoing conversation between 6 experts: Sean Revell, Don Rhoades, Anthony Pensabene, Peter Attia, Nick Eubanks, and Chris Dyson.

In a free-flowing Q&A, these guys give their opinions about the following questions:

Then, the conversation continues in the post’s comments as commenters touch on topics such as content marketing, branding, and the true value of links. Be sure to check it out!

What is SEO?

In this Google+ post, Gaz Copeland asks a “simple question” that everyone in the industry has had to answer at least once:

Not surprisingly, everyone had a slightly different answer, and the fundamental debate boiled down to the scope of SEO. Specifically, some people defined SEO as a purely technical discipline that deals exclusively with on-page issues, while others extended the SEO umbrella to encompass a range of activities (e.g., link building, content creation, etc.).

Rand Fishkin even joined the conversation with this week’s Whiteboard Friday: What’s Really Included in An SEO’s Job.

If you’d like to share your thoughts, please leave them in the comments, or join the aforementioned discussion!

Content Curation with AJ Kohn

Our final discussion is part of an ongoing series by Max Minzer called, “Max Impact Hangouts.” In this episode, Max interviews AJ Kohn about content curation.

Then, after the interview, a group of people discuss various aspects of content curation (e.g., advantages, best practices, etc.). You can watch the interview and the corresponding discussion in the following video:

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about these discussions. What are some of your favorite link building strategies? How do you define SEO?

Before I dive into this week’s exciting recap, I need to add a quick addendum to the search result hijacking post that was featured last week.

In that post, Dan Petrovic describes how he was able to hijack the search results of four different websites by posting duplicate versions of their content on pages with higher PageRank values. On Friday, Dan posted the following screenshot:

Apparently, Google finally caught on to Dan’s experiments, and the hijacked content was correctly attributed to the appropriate webmasters.

I want to believe this is an encouraging sign that hijackers will eventually get caught, but due to the popularity of Dan’s original post, it’s possible that Google took manual action in this case. So I’ll let you come to your own conclusion.

Now, with that update out of the way, let’s get on with this week’s show…

5 Quick UX Tips from the Guy Feedin’ Your Wife’s Kids

This is an outstanding post by Scott Skinner. If you don’t already know Scott, I want you to take a moment and read this. He recently burst on the scene, and I’m expecting really big things from him!

Scott begins the post by hammering home one very important point: “you should be busting your ass” to make your target audience happy. And a great way to do that is by providing a user experience on your site that doesn’t suck.

Here’s a quick summary of Scott’s user experience tips, and as always, I strongly encourage you to read the full post for more details:

Seriously, go read Scott’s post. It’s informative, and more importantly, it’s incredibly entertaining!

Growing a New Website to 100,000+ Organic Visits Per Month in Less Than 1 Year

In this post, Nick Eubanks presents a case study about a site he built that received 100,000 monthly organic visits in only 9 months:

First, Nick presents his team’s three key drivers for traffic growth: (1) math – they built a financial model to evaluate keyword opportunities; (2) analysis – they tested their model on various verticals to fine tune its parameters; (3) pumpkin hacking – only focus resources on what works.

Next, he details the site’s keyword strategy. Starting with a keyword database of around 50,000 keywords, Nick and his team began collecting data for each keyword. Then, they ran the keywords through their model, and they aggressively tested the ones with a high probability of success.

Nick also emphasizes the importance of an information architecture that is scalable (it can grow as large as you want), crawlable (search engines can easily find and index it), and tiered (authority flows through it in an optimal manner). Additionally, he discusses the value of an effective pre-launch, and he cautions that your hosting infrastructure is critical.

Overall, this is an excellent post about a real world, large-scale content marketing project, and you should definitely check it out for the finer details.

An Outreach Experiment for Paid Links in the Travel Industry

Paddy Moogan presents the results of a quick outreach experiment in this post. Specifically, he sent 122 emails (they were identical except for website-specific personalizations) to various webmasters, offering them a guest post. All of the emails were sent to travel websites, and they didn’t offer money or request a link.

Here’s a quick graph of Paddy’s outreach results:

Paddy received 53 replies. 10 immediately accepted the guest post, 17 wanted more information, and 26 would only provide a link if he paid for it (9 of those people provided a price in their reply, and the average cost of a link was $285).

After presenting his results, Paddy also makes a few more interesting observations:

Although this is a small experiment, it raises a number of interesting questions for everyone in the industry. And in honor of Paddy’s recent move to Queenstown, “Good on ya!”

So….What is #RCS??

This is an excellent Google+ post by Gaz Copeland that spawned a lively debate about one of the industry’s current buzzwords (“Real Company Sh*t”). Here’s a screenshot of Gaz’s original post:

Please read the corresponding comments on Google+, and feel free to join in on the conversation!

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? What’s your best user experience tip? How do you define #RCS?

Google finally broke their silence this week by releasing Panda 21. This is the company’s first publicly announced update in almost a month (Top Heavy 2 was announced back on October 9). Here’s the official tweet:

Panda data refresh rolling out. ~1.1% of English queries noticeably affected. More context: goo.gl/woSU3

— A Googler (@google) November 6, 2012

But I’m sure you’re tired of hearing and thinking about Google updates so there won’t be any more update talk for the rest of this recap. I promise. Now, let’s get on with the show…

How I Hijacked Rand Fishkin’s Blog

This is one of the most interesting (and terrifying) posts from last week because Dan Petrovic shows just how easy it is to hijack a site’s search results.

Search result hijacking is made possible by Google’s treatment of duplicate content. When Google identifies two duplicate documents, they pick the document with the higher PageRank, and they forward all links for the duplicate document to the document they selected. This image is an excellent representation of the process:

Thus, if you want to hijack a document’s place in the search results, you simply need to post the document’s content on a page with higher PageRank. To evaluate the technique’s effectiveness, Dan attempted to hijack pages from four different websites.

Shockingly, Dan was able to hijack a page from each of the four websites. The severity of the hijacking varied for each site (in some cases, he was able to completely replace to original page with the hijacked version, and in other cases, he was only able to hijack specific search queries), but the important takeaway is that search result hijacking is possible.

Your Guide to Social Signals for SEO

In this post, Jayson DeMers investigates a range of topics related to social signals and their influence on search rankings.

Jayson begins by identifying the elements of social engagement that provide a direct and indirect impact on organic search rankings. As shown in the following graph, the direct influencers are first order social engagement signals (e.g., number of Facebook shares, number of Twitter tweets, etc.):

Strong social engagement also has an indirect impact on rankings because it bolsters the following old school ranking signals:

Clearly, social signals already play an important role in ranking content, and that role will only expand over time. Therefore, Jayson concludes the post with a 5-step guide for launching your social media presence:

How to write universe-conquering proposals

In this post, Ian Lurie offers extremely helpful advice for writing proposals that will separate you from your competition. The post is written for an Internet marketing audience, but the tips are generally applicable to anyone that writes client proposals.

The beginning of the post makes one point abundantly clear: your proposal MUST focus on the WHY. Specifically, you need to explain why clients should hire you. Don’t just tell them what you’ll do or how you’ll do it. Tell them why you’re in business and why you’re the best option.

The rest of the post is focused on specific tips for building your proposal’s imputed value:

No, Content is Not the Only Way – Whiteboard Friday

One of the biggest buzzwords in the industry right now is “content marketing,” and it’s gotten to the point where people believe content is the only way to attract links. Fortunately, Rand Fishkin addresses this misconception in this week’s edition of Whiteboard Friday by describing a few inbound marketing strategies that don’t require content:

Over To You…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? How important do you think social signals are for ranking? What are some of your best tips for writing effective proposals?

It was another relatively quiet week for Google (it’s been three weeks since their last big announcement), but Matt Cutts did participate in an interesting interview with Danny Sullivan:

I did a Q&A with Danny Sullivan about the recent disavow links tool we launched: goo.gl/VtC4P

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 29, 2012

You can read the interview for all the details, but the biggest revelation is that the Disavow Links tool is not necessarily a Get Out of Jail Free card. If you don’t make an effort to remove your bad backlinks, Matt says you shouldn’t “count on” disavowals to save you.

In other news, SearchLove London 2012 was held last week, and as a result, it makes a few cameos in this recap. In fact, let’s kick things off with a little SearchLove…

How SEOgadget Builds Links – Searchlove London 2012

This week, Richard Baxter posted the slides for his SearchLove talk:

Richard’s presentation begins with a few embarrassing examples of link building gone wrong (e.g., guest posting abuse, terrible infographics, spammy outreach, etc.). Then, he dives into effective link earning methods (e.g., establishing your brand, building relationships, leveraging your technology, etc.).

Next, a large chunk of Richard’s presentation focuses on “audience targeting” with Twitter. The basic methodology involves identifying influencers on Twitter, analyzing the sites that influence those influencers (i.e., what sites are they consistently viewing and sharing), and then, publishing content on those sites. Richard describes more details in this post: Turning SEO Link Building into SEO Audience Targeting with Twitter Profiling.

Finally, Richard concludes with a few more link earning methods (e.g., geo-targeted mentions, link reclamation, creating remarkable content, etc.).

220 SEO tips and tactics from SearchLove 2012

In this post, Julie McNamee shares 220 SEO tips and tactics from SearchLove, which are conveniently categorized into popular topics (e.g., SEO, local search, link building, PPC, etc.).

I encourage you to scan through all 220 tips, but if you’re short on time, here are a few of the best tips from each category:

11 social media tips to go from zero to hero

If you haven’t already embraced the social Web, now is definitely the time to start. In this post, Monique Pouget helps you kick start your journey to becoming a social media hero with these 11 tips:

These tips are all valuable, but #6 is particularly important. To be successful on the social Web, you need to identify influencers in your niche as well as like-minded individuals with whom you can form relationships. How do you accomplish this task? Let’s find out…

Using Twitter for Link Relationships – Whiteboard Friday

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Ruth Burr gives a lot of helpful tips for building relationships on Twitter to ultimately generate social shares and links. Take it away Ruth:

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? What did you learn from SearchLove? What’s your favorite social network?

Happy Movember everyone! For the next 30 days, I’ll be growing a mustache to raise money for prostate and testicular cancer research and to help “change the face of men’s health.”

If you’re not familiar with Movember, don’t worry. This post will tell you everything you need to know, including what Movember is, why I’m participating, and how you can help. Now, let’s get started…

What is Movember?

In 2003, two Australians convinced their friends to grow mustaches during the month of November. 30 people participated, and Movember was officially born!

Since its humble beginnings, Movember has grown from a fun little campaign in Australia that didn’t raise any money to a global phenomenon that raised a total of $126.3 million last year.

And the idea is incredibly simple. Men all over the world grow mustaches while collecting donations and raising awareness about men’s health. It’s basically like a huge walkathon… but for your face

Why Are You Participating?

I’m doing this to help support cancer research and to raise awareness about the health issues facing men. Just like every other man I know, I’m terrible about seeing a doctor when a health issue arises. I don’t work out as much as I should, and my diet isn’t particularly healthy. All of those things need to change… and not just for me: for men everywhere.

Half of the male population will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime, but those diagnoses don’t have to be fatal. Many of the cancer-related deaths in this country could be avoided by early detection, increased physical activity, and a healthier diet.

How Can I Help?

If you’d like to participate in this year’s Movember, you have a few different options:

(1) You can join our team

If you want to grow a mustache on the Web Gnomes team, follow these simple steps:

(2) You can donate to our team

If you want to donate to the cause, simply follow these steps:

(3) You can spread the word

Even if you don’t join or donate, you can still help by telling your friends and family about Movember. Help the men in your life by telling them to have an annual physical, to go on more walks, and to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Have You Ever Grown a Mustache?

No. I’ve never grown a full mustache because (1) I look super sketchy with facial hair (I make the guys on “To Catch a Predator” look like upstanding citizens), (2) I never have the courage to keep the ‘stache when I’m shaving, and (3) my dad had a ridiculous mustache when he was my age (it wasn’t a pretty sight — I think he even burned the pictures).

Where Can I See Your Mustache?

I’ll be posting daily pictures of my mustache on my Facebook page and my Twitter profile. I’ll also be changing my avatars every day to reflect my mustache’s progress (or lack thereof).

Any Other Questions?

If you’d like to know more about Movember or my 30 day adventure, please let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, be on the look out for daily updates about my upper lip’s new best friend!

Last week was quieter than most. For the second straight week, Google didn’t announce any updates, and there weren’t any major conferences or new tool releases.

Despite the slow news week, the SEO posts were still flowing, and we still had more than enough high quality content to choose from. So without further ado, let’s get on with this week’s recap…

What Does “X% of Queries” Mean?

Up until a few weeks ago, Google was announcing algorithm updates left and right (e.g., Panda 20, EMD 1, Penguin 3, etc.). Each of these updates is focused on different characteristics of websites, but they all share at least one thing in common: their announcements reveal the percentage of queries that are affected. Here’s an example:

Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: goo.gl/AF5kt

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

In this post, Dr. Pete attempts to decipher Google’s most popular update phrase: “X% of queries noticeably affected.” First, he dissects the statement and tackles the following subquestion: is the reported percentage calculated using (1) the unique number of queries or (2) the total query volume? Based on a Twitter exchange with Matt Cutts, the reported percentage is based on query volume.

Next, Dr. Pete tries to clarify the meaning of “noticeably affected” with respect to queries. Again, based on a Twitter exchange with Matt Cutts, a “noticeable” change typically occurs on the first page of a SERP (with more emphasis given to the first few results). Consequently, if an update changes the fourth page of a query’s SERP, that query is probably not calculated into the percentage that appears in the update’s announcement.

Finally, Dr. Pete deemphasizes the importance of the aggregate statistics because ultimately, you only care if a particular update impacts queries in your niche. Algorithm chasers enjoy learning as much as possible about these updates (in a general sense), but the rest of the community should only worry about whether or not an update impacts their websites.

The Disavow Tool Works! Real Sites, Real Recoveries!

On October 16, Google launched a Disavow Links tool that allows webmasters to disavow suspicious links in their backlink profiles. In this post, Tim Grice presents case studies that illustrate the tool’s effectiveness.

Tim begins by explaining the purpose of the Disavow Links tool, disputing the existence of negative SEO, and suggesting that “Google cannot algorithmically tackle link spam.” He also makes it very clear that if your site has been negatively affected by manipulative links (e.g., you’ve received an unnatural links notice, you were hit by one of the Penguin updates, etc.), you SHOULD use this new tool.

Next, Tim provides 3 different cases studies to show the potential improvements that are possible with the Disavow Links tool. In all three cases, more than 60% of the suspicious links were removed, and at least one reconsideration request was rejected. Then, after the remaining spam links were disavowed (and a new reconsideration request was filed), the rankings recovered! Here is a screen shot of one of the recoveries:

Finally, Tim explains the difference between manual and algorithmic penalties, and he offers a 7-step approach for handling a penalty:

6 Months Later: Google Penguin Reactions, Predictions, Tools and Tips

In this post, Tom Anthony celebrates the 6 month anniversary of the original Penguin update by surveying 78 SEO professionals about their experiences with the update.

Tom’s first survey question asks the respondents to predict the target for Google’s next large update. The following graph shows the top 10 results:

The next question ask what types of links the Penguin update targeted. Not surprisingly, the most popular responses were sidewide links, directory links, comments / forums, and blog rolls. All of these popular responses have been mentioned in one or more Penguin-related posts or case studies.

The survey also includes a collection of Penguin recovery tips, helpful tools (e.g., backlink reporting services, Panguin, etc.), and quotes from the survey’s respondents. Be sure to read the full post for these additional details.

And for a comprehensive timeline of all things Penguin, you can always read…

Everything We Know About The Penguin Update – Part 2

Last week, we published part 2 of our popular Penguin timeline. This new edition covers more than 5 months of Penguin-related activities, including popular update announcements, posts, and videos.

Basically, if you want to get caught up on the last few months of updates, this is the post to read. Plus, you’ll be able to see pretty penguin pictures like this:

Over To You…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? Have you used Google’s Disavow Links tool? What do you think future updates will target?

Almost 5 months ago, I posted a timeline of events leading up to the first two Penguin updates. After it went live, I planned to write a follow-up as soon as the next Penguin update was released. So I waited… and waited… and well, you get the idea.

On October 5, Penguin 3 was finally released, and it had lots of friends (e.g., Panda 20, EMD 1, Top Heavy 2, etc.). In this post, I try to make sense of the chaos surrounding all of these updates by creating a new timeline that begins where the old one ended. This timeline includes important events (e.g., algorithm updates) as well as noteworthy posts, tweets, and videos that cover those events.

Now, let’s jump back in the DeLorean and relive one of the most “exciting” periods in the history of SEO…

June 5, 2012

During the “You & A with Matt Cutts” session at SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts makes it very clear that Penguin and Panda are not “penalties” because they do not involve manual action (i.e., they are algorithmic updates).

We have over 200 signals, and this is one of the signals.

Matt also announces that Google will eventually allow webmasters to disavow links “in a month or two or three.” (Or four.)

June 6, 2012

Danny Sullivan delivers a very memorable rant about links during the “Ask the SEOs” panel at SMX Advanced.

Here is the entire audio for the rant:

I’m not going to summarize the rant because it’s only 7 minutes long (just listen to it… you won’t be disappointed).

If you’re more of a visual person, Danny also explains his points in the following post: Link Building Means Earning “Hard Links” Not “Easy Links”.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the rant and/or read Danny’s post, but the following quote is the biggest take-away from both:

In much of life, the most valuable things are the things you have to work hardest to get. It’s no different with links. If you find an easy route to obtaining them, there’s an excellent chance you’ve found an easy route to obtaining links that either have, or will have, little to no value.

June 7, 2012

Tadeusz Szewczyk offers an important reminder that an effective SEO strategy extends well beyond just link building: You Want Link Building? You Need Something Else!

In the post, Tad emphasizes the importance of a more holistic approach to SEO (e.g., clean web design, linkable assets, a strong social media presence, and landing pages with compelling calls to action). Yes, links are important. But your site shouldn’t be awesome just to get links. Your site should get links because it’s awesome.

Daniel Tynski provides helpful update-related advice for business owners that extends beyond just the Penguin update: Want to Stay Ahead of Google’s Next Update? Change the Way You Think.

Daniel’s advice is presented as 6 tips, which are summarized below:

June 8, 2012

Google quietly releases a Panda data refresh (i.e., Panda 3.7). A few days later, they officially announce it on Twitter:

FYI Panda data refresh started rolling out on Friday. Less than 1% of queries noticeably affected in the U.S. & 1% worldwide

— A Googler (@google) June 11, 2012

June 10, 2012

TastyPlacement publishes an infographic based on a negative SEO case study: Testing Negative SEO.

As part of the study, the company launched a negative SEO attack against an internal property (Pool-Cleaning-Houston.com). Specifically, they paid $45 to build 45,000 comment links, 7,000 forum profile links, and 4,000 sitewide links (with money keywords in the anchor text) for a site they owned.

The links were built in phases (to monitor their impact), and not surprisingly, the sitewide links with overoptimized anchor text caused the most damage. In fact, these links effectively knocked the site out of the top 3 and completely off the first page of the search results. Consequently, this study serves as more evidence that negative SEO is possible.

June 11, 2012

Dr. Pete reports on an unconfirmed Google update (appropriately named “The Bigfoot Update”) that went live on June 4: The Bigfoot Update (AKA Dr. Pete Goes Crazy).

This post is extremely valuable for at least three reasons. First, it highlights an undisclosed update that created a significant amount of rankings fluctuations and lowered domain diversity by 2.6% (based on 1,000 monitored SERPs). The following graph illustrates this decline in domain diversity:

Second, the post suggests that Panda 3.7 wasn’t the only major update released around June 8. The official announcement for Panda 3.7 claimed that the update only impacted less than 1% of queries. However, as the following graph shows, Panda 3.7 (and a mystery update) created more SERP fluctuations than the Bigfoot update (the purple bar) and the original Penguin update (not shown):

Finally, this post serves as a clear reminder that we cannot rely on Google to tell us what is important or what changes we should be monitoring. If you want to be successful, you have to make your own observations.

June 14, 2012

John Doherty provides a helpful guide for identifying and handling the Penguin update: Strategies for Diagnosing Penguin and Recovering.

In the post, John describes a 4 step process for diagnosing a potential Penguin attack:

June 25, 2012

Google releases another Panda data refresh (i.e., Panda 3.8) about 2 weeks after the previous one.

Heads up: we’re pushing a new Panda data refresh that noticeably affects only ~1% of queries worldwide. More context: goo.gl/HNvCt

— A Googler (@google) June 25, 2012

Ann Smarty publishes an alarming post about the legality of linking to other sites: Am I Not Allowed to Link (Legally)?

Ann received a cease and desist notice from her hosting provider because one of her websites linked to another site. Backlink removal requests have become quite common post-Penguin; however, the link in question is a legitimate editorial link (i.e., it is not manipulative or associated with any sort of negative SEO).

This post truly captures the Penguin-induced fear and hysteria associated with backlinks.

June 27, 2012

Bing (not Google) officially announces a Disavow Links tool in the following post: Disavow links you don’t trust & SEO Analyzer updates.

For more information about the tool, check out Barry Schwartz’s coverage or Vanessa Fox’s coverage.

June 28, 2012

Jason Acidre provides a helpful guide for how to protect your site from negative SEO.

In the post, Jason provides a number of helpful tips for protecting your site against negative SEO attacks, including the following:

July 3, 2012

Julie Joyce lists 131 (legitimate) link building strategies, which emphasize various best practices (e.g., content marketing, social media, etc.).

Here are just a few of Julie’s legitimate link building strategies:

July 5, 2012

Ian Lurie makes an important observation about reconsideration requests in this post: How Google gave the spammers all the power.

Specifically, Ian argues that Google is being too strict with the reconsideration process, and as a result, legitimate sites are not being rewarded for their efforts to remove spammy backlinks unless every suspicious link is eliminated. Ian summarizes his point with this catchy phrase: “If any spammy links remain, your request goes down the drain.”

Finally, Ian begs Google to provide a “link disavow tool” (similar to what Bing released a few days earlier)… or to at least give site owners more credit for their link removal efforts.

July 9, 2012

Eric Enge publishes an interview: Matt Cutts and Eric Talk About What Makes a Quality Site.

During the interview, Matt expresses concern about infographics that employ spammy techniques (e.g., poorly researched information, deceptive linking practices, etc.).

I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree.

Moving forward, your infographics need to be closely related to your business, and they need to avoid manipulative linking practices. Deceptive widgets were already targeted in previous iterations of the Penguin update, and it definitely sounds like deceptive infographics are next.

Matt ends the interview with generic advice that applies to all aspects of SEO:

The main thing is that people should avoid looking for shortcuts.

July 17, 2012

Google adds functionality to Google Webmaster Tools that allows webmasters to download their backlinks, sorted by date.

You can now download links from Google *sorted by date*. Nice. Look for “Download latest links” in console UI. Pass it on!

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) July 17, 2012

July 18, 2012

Jane Copland sends the following tweet:

Really curious to hear what the SEO community has to say about this: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ios…

— Jane Copland (@jane_copland) July 18, 2012

The newsletter referenced in the above tweet is no longer available online, but here’s a screenshot:

As the newsletter explains, Children’s Furniture Company was forced out of business due to the Penguin update’s impact on their online sales.

Jane’s tweet compels numerous SEOs to reach out to the company in an effort to clean their backlink profile, but the company informs them that it’s too late to help. Consequently, Children’s Furniture Company becomes the most famous Penguin victim in the SEO community.

July 19, 2012

Google begins sending a new wave of unnatural links notices to webmasters. These notices appear to be identical to the ones that Google began sending back in March.

July 20, 2012

Matt Cutts explains that the most recent unnatural links notices are NOT the same as previous notices. Whereas the previous notices were sent when Google took action on a site as a whole, the new notices are being sent when Google distrusts individual links to a site. Here’s Matt’s explanation on Google+:

Danny Sullivan tries to make sense out of the confusion in this post: Insanity: Google Sends New Link Warnings, Then Says You Can Ignore Them.

July 23, 2012

Giuseppe Pastore posts a round table discussion about the importance of anchor text in a post Penguin world: Anchor text future according to 19 experts.

The discussion features 19 organic SEO experts (Gianluca Fiorelli, Julie Joyce, James Agate, Ian Howells, Mike Essex, Wiep Knol, Branko Rihtman, Jason Acidre, Peter Attia, Rishi Lakhani, Jon Cooper, Paddy Moogan, Annie Cushing, Stoney deGeyter, Ralph Tegtmeier, Hugo Guzman, Ann Smarty, IrishWonder, and Sean Revell), and although each expert expresses a unique opinion, the following observations emerge from the round table:

The discussion also includes recommendations for anchor text distribution as well as each expert’s unique advice about how to handle anchor text going forward.

July 24, 2012

Google releases another Panda data refresh (i.e., Panda 3.9).

New data refresh of Panda starts rolling out tonight. ~1% of search results change enough to notice. More context: goo.gl/huekf

— A Googler (@google) July 24, 2012

July 26, 2012

Dr. Pete announces a new tool for monitoring fluctuations in the Google SERPs: Mozcast.

July 27, 2012

John Doherty posts a video about using more effective internal linking on your website: Smarter Internal Linking – Whiteboard Friday.

In the video, John explains the dangers associated with using sitewide footer links, and he proposes a few ways to improve internal linking strategies.

Matt Cutts writes a post to clarify Google’s new unnatural links notices: New notifications about inbound links.

Matt begins by reviewing the original unnatural links notices that Google started sending back in March. These messages notify site owners that their sites have been penalized for unnatural links, and they represent severe situations that require action (and ultimately a reconsideration request).

According to Matt, these new notices are for less severe situations where Google is distrusting specific links (and not an entire site).

The new messages make it clear that we are taking “targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole.”

Next, he recommends that webmasters respond to these notices by checking their most recent backlinks (through Google Webmaster Tools) and cleaning up any links that appear to be “widgetbait, paid links, or serious linkspam.”

August 6, 2012

In response to people complaining about link building post-Penguin, Sujan Patel identifies 101 ways to link build in 2012.

Sujan’s list of 101 link building techniques is broken down into 9 categories, and here are a few of my favorites:

August 10, 2012

Google announces that they will begin incorporating “the number of valid copyright removal notices [they] receive for any given site” into their ranking algorithm: An update to our search algorithms.

Danny Sullivan analyzes this update in the following post: The Pirate Update: Google Will Penalize Sites Repeatedly Accused Of Copyright Infringement.

Google releases a list of their June and July algorithm changes: Search quality highlights: 86 changes for June and July.

August 15, 2012

Matt Cutts answers questions from the audience at SES San Francisco about a variety of topics. When asked about an upcoming Penguin update, he has this response:

You don’t want the next Penguin update… [the Google] engineers have been working hard.

He also predicts that the next wave of updates will be “jarring and jolting” for webmasters.

Not surprisingly, the SEO community freaks out (a common occurrence when Matt speaks publicly), and the interwebs are quickly filled with FUD about upcoming updates.

August 16, 2012

Matt clarifies his SES San Francisco comments to Barry Schwartz. In this clarification, Matt compares the current state of the Penguin update to the early days of the Panda update. The bottom line is that it will take time before the Penguin update becomes as consistent as the Panda update.

August 20, 2012

Google releases a Panda data refresh (i.e., Panda 3.9.1).

Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1% of queries noticeably affected. More context: goo.gl/wQRZ0

— A Googler (@google) August 22, 2012

Dr. Pete documents SERP crowding and shrinkage in the following post: SERP Crowding & Shrinkage: It’s Not Your Imagination.

Using Mozcast data, he highlights 3 important events for domain diversity in the Google SERPs: (1) a decline after the original Penguin update, (2) a decline after the “Bigfoot” update, and (3) a slight improvement around August 14.

Dr. Pete also identifies a large spike in the number of Google SERPs that contain exactly 7 results instead of the traditional 10 results. On August 13, 10.7% of the Mozcast data set contained these smaller SERPs, and on August 14, that number rose to 18.3%.

For even more information about these SERP-related changes, you can also read Danny Sullivan’s coverage: 7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain.

August 21, 2012

Jim Gianoglio explains how to use Google Analytics features to monitor Penguin updates: Monitoring Penguin Updates with Google Analytics.

In this post, Jim publishes custom reports, dashboards, segments, and alerts that you can import directly into your Google Analytics account to immediately begin monitoring your organic Google traffic.

August 30, 2012

Glenn Gabe provides an interesting case study about a client that had 3 domains impacted by Panda (1 of the domains was also hit by Penguin): March of the Penguins, Which Led to a Friendly Panda and Finally a Recovery.

Glenn helped the client make the same Panda-friendly changes to all 3 domains, but the domain that was hit by both Panda and Penguin updates (Glenn calls this “Pandeguin”) did not recover.

After months of investigation, Glenn and the client finally identified the domain’s spammy links (most of them were created before the client bought the domain). They removed as many of these links as possible, and then, they submitted a very thorough reconsideration request (even though the domain was affected by an algorithmic update — not a manual one).

On August 20, the Pandeguin domain recovered, which is interesting because it’s the same date that Panda 3.9.1 was released (see above).

This case study raises a number of interesting questions. Are the Panda and Penguin updates related? Was a Penguin update embedded in the Panda 3.9.1 update? Are Penguin updates secretly released without Google notifications? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are currently unknown.

September 3, 2012

Nick LeRoy details his experiences with Penguin 1.1 in the following post: How I Smacked Google Penguin In Its Ugly Little Beak.

First, Nick reveals that one of his personal websites lost around 75% of its search traffic after Penguin 1.1, and he identifies six possible culprits (e.g., spammy exact match domain, extremely low backlink anchor text diversity, templated content, etc.).

Nick systematically corrected many of the suspected culprits, but the site didn’t recover until he made the templated content unique (and noindexed the site’s remaining duplicate content). Nick doesn’t give an exact date for the recovery, but based on the following screenshot, the recovery appears to occur around August 20 (i.e., the same date Panda 3.9.1 was released, and the same date Glenn Gabe’s “Pandeguin” domain recovered):

If the recovery occurred on August 20, it raises the same questions as Glenn’s case study. Specifically, since Nick’s domain lost its traffic due to Penguin 1.1, why did it recover due to a Panda refresh? Are Panda and Penguin updates slowly morphing into a consolidated “Spam” update?

September 7, 2012

Anthony Tuite and the Barracuda Digital team release the Panguin Tool — a new Google Analytics overlay that illustrates the impact of Google’s updates (Panda, Penguin, etc.) on a site’s organic search traffic.

September 10, 2012

Ross Hudgens suggests that “term” anchor text might be a signal in future Penguin updates: Term Anchor Text – The Future of Penguin?

Ross begins this post by identifying the two link building practices that were hit the hardest by Penguin: (1) overusing “phrase” anchor text and (2) overusing sitewide links.

Obviously, if your site was impacted negatively by Penguin, you’ll want to clean up your backlink profile to avoid these practices. However, when modifying “phrase” anchor text to make it appear more natural, Ross cautions against ignoring “term” anchor text.

The idea behind “term” anchor text is simple. Take the anchor text distribution from your existing backlink profile, and convert it into an n-gram distribution. For example, if you have a backlink with “best link building” as its “phrase” anchor text, its 2-gram “term” anchor text is ["best link", "link building"].

Moving forward, Ross believes you should strive for a natural “phrase” anchor text profile as well as a natural “term” anchor text profile.

September 18, 2012

Google releases another Panda data refresh (i.e., Panda 3.9.2).

Panda refresh is rolling out—expect some flux over the next few days. Fewer than 0.7% of queries noticeably affected: goo.gl/woSU3

— A Googler (@google) September 18, 2012

September 27, 2012

Google secretly releases a major Panda update, which is eventually labeled Panda 20 (this is explained below on October 4).

September 28, 2012

Matt Cutts publicly announces the exact-match domain (EMD) algorithm update on Twitter:

New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) September 28, 2012

According to Matt, this update is meant to reduce the number of low-quality EMDs that rank high in Google’s search results.

September 29, 2012

Dr. Pete posts his initial findings about the EMD update: Google’s EMD Algo Update – Early Data.

The most notable observation is a 24-hour drop in EMD influence from 3.58% to 3.21% (as measured by the Mozcast data set):

September 30, 2012

Gregory Smith has the following exchange with Matt Cutts on Twitter:

@gregrysmith yes. 500+ algo launches/year mean 1-2 a day. I know of at least one other algo rolling out over same timeframe for example.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) September 30, 2012

Read Matt’s response carefully. He admits that at least one other update rolled out at the same time as the EMD update.

October 4, 2012

Google releases a list of their August and September algorithm changes: Search quality highlights: 65 changes for August and September.

Barry Schwartz reports that Google released a major Panda update on September 27 (i.e., it was rolled out around the same time as the EMD update): 20th Google Panda Algorithm Update: Fairly Major.

According to Matt Cutts, the update was a Panda algorithm update (not just a data refresh), and it affected “about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice.” To put things into perspective, that is the largest percentage announced since the first Penguin update back in April, which was announced to impact “about 3.1% of queries in English.”

To simplify update numbering, Danny Sullivan decides to label updates based on the total number of updates that have occurred. Thus, since this is the 20th Panda update, it’s called Panda 20.

October 5, 2012

Google releases a Penguin data refresh:

Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: goo.gl/AF5kt

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

Following the new update numbering system (initiated by Danny Sullivan), this update is called Penguin 3. The most interesting aspect of this update is that it’s not particularly “jarring” or “jolting” (see the comments made by Matt Cutts on August 15).

For more information, check out Matt McGee’s coverage or Barry Schwartz’s coverage.

October 8, 2012

Ben Milleare publishes a study about the impact of the EMD update: Google’s EMD Update: The Numbers.

As part of the study, Ben analyzed Google’s UK SERPs for 5,000 keywords, and he identified domain rankings before and after the EMD update. Here is a summary of his findings:

October 9, 2012

Google releases an update for their page layout algorithm (i.e., Top Heavy 2).

Minor weather report: Update of goo.gl/OpIDL launching today. ~0.7% of English queries noticeably affected.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 9, 2012

The purpose of this update is to devalue websites that don’t have sufficient content above-the-fold (i.e., they have an excessive amount of ads above-the-fold instead of visible content).

For more information, check out Danny Sullivan’s coverage or Barry Schwartz’s coverage.

Matt Cutts posts a video about Google’s view on guest blogging for links:

The short answer is that high quality blogging will keep you on Google’s good side. As long as you don’t abuse guest blogging (e.g., spinning articles, “turning the crank to get a massive number of links,” etc.), you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

October 15, 2012

James Norquay publishes an Interview with an EX-Member of Matt Cutts’s Search Quality team!

This interview with Andre Weyher covers a number of Google-related topics, including Google algorithm updates and link building. In the early part of the interview, Andre makes the important observation that Google is “fed up with people breaking the guidelines on an industrial scale and are coming down very hard on webmasters who do.” Then, he provides this insight about link building:

… getting a link from a high PR page used to always be valuable, today it’s more the relevance of the site’s theme in regards to yours, relevance is the new PR.

Andre also gives three link building tips:

Finally, one of his last comments is probably the most important:

… if you want to please Google with your SEO, then forget about SEO.

October 16, 2012

Matt Cutts announces Google’s Disavow Links tool at Pubcon. Shortly thereafter, Google posts an official announcement: A new tool to disavow links.

For more information, check out Danny Sullivan’s coverage, Barry Schwartz’s coverage, or my post about the tool: 3 Conspiracy Theories About Google’s Disavow Links Tool.

October 17, 2012

Matt Cutts posts a video that briefly describes Google’s current thinking about specific link building strategies:

The important take-away from this video is that Google values “editorially chosen” links. Therefore, if you’re relying on link building techniques that force users to link to your site (e.g., widgets, theme-inserted links, etc.), you’re potentially putting your site at risk.

October 19, 2012

Rand Fishkin posts a video about The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning.

In this video, Rand makes the argument that Google’s latest updates are aimed at devaluing links that are “built” instead of “earned” (i.e., links that are artificially created instead of being acquired organically). He also advocates thinking about links the way we did before search engines existed: as vehicles that drive relevant traffic to your website.

With that in mind, Rand proposes link earning alternatives for 8 outdated (and potentially dangerous) link building techniques (e.g., link exchanges, article directory submissions, link networks, etc.).

October 24, 2012

The post you’re currently reading goes live

Now, It’s Your Turn…

I would love to hear from you in the comments below. Which of these events had the biggest impact on SEO? What are your predictions for the upcoming months?