Penguin 2.0 Went Live Last Week – Were You Affected?

After several weeks of baited breath and waves of smaller changes to Google’s algorithm, it seems that the penguin is at last out of the bag, as announced by Google Webspam Head Matt Cutts on his blog on May 22. According to Cutts, 2.3% of English-US queries are affected by the update, the largest percentage since the original roll out of Penguin 1.0 in April 2012. The update also affects searches in other languages to different extents; according to some, the impact was greater in German-language queries than English. The goal of the update was to reward genuinely valuable sites, and punish sites that have gained ranking with black hat techniques.
The original Penguin was Google’s first update to specifically combat off-page factors, especially targeting link networks and unnatural linking strategies. This update affected over 3% of all English queries, dramatically altering the search engine’s results pages and obliterating any ranking for some particularly bad, black hat offenders.
Penguin 2.0 uses new, highly advanced spam-fighting techniques that continue to punish unusual and “fishy” activity, penalizing sites that acquire large numbers of links very rapidly (usually through paid means), that get links from irrelevant sites, and those that overuse exact match anchor text. This update also will be specifically targeting ads with dofollow links (since the introduction of the nofollow tag, Google has told webmasters to use it to differentiate paid links and avoid passing on ranking value and trust), and improve the detection of hacked sites.

How Do I Know If I’ve Been Affected?

In some cases, the wrath of Penguin 2.0 will be immediately evident – a dramatic drop in traffic due to your site completely falling out of the results. If you normally get a high volume of incoming traffic from Google and are suddenly getting next to none, you’ve most likely been hit. For some shady webmasters, this won’t be a surprise – it’s probably something you should have been expecting for a while now. But for some business owners in particular, this will be a rather nasty surprise. If you’ve engaged in shady link building practices in the past, or paid someone who did it without your knowledge, those get-ranked-quick schemes may be coming back to bite you now.
For others, the effects might not be quite as obvious. A couple unnatural links may have knocked you back in the results a few spots or pages. Your search traffic may have dropped for some of your keywords. Your sales might fall for products to which you’ve built tons of exact match anchor text. Take a look at your organic search tracking in Google Analytics and look for differences before and after May 22 in particular.
If you’ve been engaging in high-quality link building, however – getting some great guest posting opportunities or getting awesome editorial links for your infographics or blog posts, you may actually see the flipside of these issues. Google isn’t implementing these updates to screw over businesses (well, as long as you’re playing by their rules) – they’re creating them to reward great content, like what you’ve been creating. Nice job! If your competitors have been penalized and lost ranking, you might have seen rises in ranking for your own site, and consequently an increase in traffic.

An Unexpected Boost to Local Results

Amidst the panic surrounding Penguin 2.0, Trevin Shirey from the SEO company WebpageFX seems to have been the first to notice an unusual trend in the SERPs. According to Shirey, Google seems to have been integrating large numbers of localized results into organic searches.
In their examples, such as a search for “hockey” in Dallas, Texas or a search for “marketing” in Miami, Florida, up to 5 results on the first page are local, sometimes even ranking above the results one would expect to see, such as Wikipedia.
The hockey example is especially striking, with two Dallas Stars results from stars.nhl.com appearing above the Wikipedia page for ice hockey. The Dallas Stars’ Wikipedia page also features prominently in the results.
You will probably notice some of these changes to broad keyword searches in your own queries. For me, in a search for “chocolate,” my favorite local café (which happens to also sell chocolate) appears above Ghirardelli, a premium international chocolate company, in the results. WebpageFX gives some other examples of searches to try, such as “ford,” “coffee,” and “computers.” You will probably see some of your favorite local spots featuring highly, as well as business listing websites such as Yelp and Yahoo! Places.
This is definitely a great bonus for local businesses. As Shirey puts it, “local and regional businesses could stand to gain from an update like this as it increases their exposure for informational queries.” However, he adds that it is unclear how this change will be perceived by Google’s users. He adds, “Do searchers really want such hyper-local results for broad queries? Google’s research must show that they do.”
How has your business fared since the onset of the newest rendition of Penguin? Share your experiences in the comments.
resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/31/penguin-2-0-went-live-last-week-were-you-affected/

Pay Per Click Advertising: A Strategy for Better Profits

In recent years, pay per click (PPC) advertising has become wildly popular among small business owners seeking to increase their online traffic and improve ranking in search engine results. Knowing how to keep your costs down, while at the same time meeting your advertising goals, is an important component of a successful PPC campaign. Here are some key factors to consider before launching a pay per click advertising campaign of your own:

1. Enticing Advantages

For business owners looking for a cost-effective way to drive more traffic to a website, PPC offers many advantages:

• You set your budget and enjoy low start-up costs – (search engines do not charge to insert a PPC advertisement; but an initial set up cost may apply).
• Real-time trackability gives you immediate feedback on how your ad is performing; this feature allows you to make responsive parameter adjustments.
• PPC provides an opportunity for any business anywhere in the world to gain increased visibility through ads that appear on the search results page.

2. Pay per Click vs. Offline Advertising

With the advent and wide acceptance of mobile devices, pay per click advertising offers customers the opportunity to view your ad any time of the day or night. In addition to the convenience factor, PPC delivers other features that offline advertising just can’t do. With PPC:

• Customers are in the driver’s seat informing themselves about your brand at their own pace. Further, PPC allows for a greater range of engagement, such as:
  • Direct sales options;
  • Links to read or to post a review;
  • Instant social media connections through tools like Twitter and FB.
• Site names are easier to remember and can be instantly bookmarked for later browsing (which then travels with customers on their mobile device unlike print material which is rarely available when you really need it).
• Contact information is kept current and easily accessible; your business location can easily be mapped while the customer is still interacting with other features on your site.

3. Tips to Jumpstart your PPC plan

Paid search options for digital marketing can be effective for business owners seeking an increase in search engine visibility, but sometimes PPC campaigns can be frustrating and costly. To avoid the common beginner pitfalls, here are a few pay per click tips that can help you get the most out of your time and money.

• Set a reasonable budget or roll out your plan in stages.
• Narrowing keywords down (making them very specific) should lessen the competition for them.
• Check the default settings and then check them again; all of Google’s default settings may not be best for you and can cost you more than you intend to spend.
• Focus on geographic areas where you will most likely get conversions.
• Take advantage of “day parting” where you have certain ads run at various times of the day; just be sure to adjust for time zone differences.

Put part of your budget into developing metrics to enhance your PPC results and adjust parameters according to usage.

4. Pay per Click isn’t right for every situation

While PPC can be highly profitable when clicks convert to sales; there are times when pay per click is not the right choice. Here are some of those times:

• Your target market does not typically buy online or is not Internet savvy.
• You are in a highly-competitive, fully-saturated niche — (most likely you will end up paying too much with little ROI).
• You are selling something so new that people are not yet searching for it; social media would be best to create a “buzz” first.
• Your profit margins are small; the average click costs $1 to $2. Depending on the conversion rate for your product you may need lots of clicks to bring about a sale.

Knowing when PPC is right for you and how to plan out a strategy to maximize results is worth the time so that you do not waste valuable resources. Taking time to understand the whole pay per click landscape including the pitfalls can help you make wise decisions.

5. Conclusion

Trends and developments in digital marketing continue to unfold presenting both opportunities and challenges for business owners looking to improve website effectiveness and develop a profitable digital marketing campaign. While some business owners hire consultants, other savvy professionals enroll in Internet marketing training through online programs. Reputable online programs offer business leaders the opportunity to stay ahead of trends in search marketing and further develop valuable Web analytics skills. As the range of online tools available to promote a small business continues to evolve, business professionals who know how and when to use strategies like pay per click will remain ahead of the competition and will be better prepared to leverage future trends toward increased profitability.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/23/pay-per-click-advertising-a-strategy-for-better-profits/

Four Benefits of Cloud Computing for Your Online Business

Cloud computing is one of the newest phenomenons in the online business world that is taking companies to new levels of efficiency.
Many small- and medium-sized online businesses are choosing to improve their efficiency by making use of the greater computing power cloud computing can give them. This power is usually provided by a third party.
Since small businesses can now delegate their mail storage, customer care, data storage, software delivery etc. to the cloud, they can compete with larger businesses without being forced to foot a large technology bill.
Here is a look at how you can use cloud computing both to improve your efficiency and increase the opportunities available to your small online business.

1. You will have fewer operational issues

The third party that provides you with your cloud computing services will use standardized processes. Standardization helps ensure there are fewer errors and issues with your processes. This will give your business certain continuity. As a result, you will spend less time trying to fix operational failures and spending more time on the important things such as drawing more customers and connecting with them.
With cloud computing, you will be able to use the same service or integration of several services each time and in similar projects. You will, therefore, see the same result each time. This predictability will help you to have services based on predetermined design patterns.

2. You can open up new business models

With powerful computing within your reach, you can now have access to various projects and business models that had not been possible in the past. You can start new innovations and open up new streams of revenue. There are many companies that are using cloud services dedicated to build completely new propositions and business models and offering new services. Small businesses are doing this the most. Other examples include Spotify, a digital music portal that brings mood-specific music to all devices ranging from tablets, mobile phones, computers and home entertainment systems.

3. You can achieve business agility

With having a reliable third party offering you remote assistance with several processes, you can get the computing resources you need exactly when you need them. This means that you will be able to deliver results in a more timely way. You will also be able to provide cheaper services because efficient business will bring your own overall costs down by reducing the time to send your product to the client.
As a result, you will be able to offer your services at competitive rates and attract the loyalty of your customers. It can be possible for cloud computing to bring down a project such as a data analytics project to three weeks from a projected time period of four months.

4. You can make better use of resources

When you find your brand launching and completing projects that are more efficient, and that your employees are spending less time on struggling to fix operational issues, you know you are making the most of your resources. You and your employees now have valuable free time to devote to other activities that can add value to your business and help it grow.
Of course it’s not easy to quantify such value, and it differs from business to business. However your employees are assets as well and, therefore, if they are able to engage in activities that improve them, this is valuable for the business.
With cloud computing, you will also find yourself benefiting from what is known as the ‘economies of scale.’ Your cloud computing service provider will be able to make better use of physical resources and bring down consumption of energy when compared to standard traditional ways.
It’s important to note that cloud computing third-party services are usually provided without a contract. What is great about this short-term operational expense mode is that you are not making any long-term commitments in this case. You don’t have any upfront expenses, which is great for small businesses with limited funds. You can start your projects much faster than if there was an upfront expense required and can also end the projects quicker with no loss through investments in cloud computing.
Take the lead today and see what cloud computing can do for your business. You will be surprised at the true power of what is known as the cloud.
Internet Marketing Services
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/23/four-benefits-of-cloud-computing-for-your-online-business/

Drawing Visitors to Your Site with Tablet and Smartphone Apps

There are now over 1 million smartphone and tablet applications available in the various online stores. According to a recent study by the E-tailing Group, phone and tablet users spend 82 percent of their mobile minutes with applications, and just 18 percent with web browsers. The average person has 40 apps downloaded, and regularly uses 15.
Since mobile usage continues to skyrocket, it’s clear that if you want to grab the attention of small screen users, you have to do so through an app, not (just) a mobile website. Savvy content developers, however, have discovered that engaging applications can often drive higher traffic numbers via the web to sites of all classifications. The same is true for critical inclusion inside the most heavily used aggregation apps. So if you want to increase traffic and revenues on your ecommerce site, blog, or other web space, engaging with mobile users is a critical strategy.

Application Considerations

If your business has yet to jump into the world of apps, you have a couple of considerations to ponder before development. Answers to these questions will help you determine if a native app is required, and if so what platform, as well as the choice to just be included inside the biggest apps in the biz.

• Know your audience – A deep and detailed understanding of who your target audience truly is remains critical to success in all arenas. If your metrics show you attract a different audience than you intend, don’t be afraid to be organic and shift perspectives, or to broaden your horizons. Our instincts about who will be best served by the products we offer aren’t always spot-on. Trust the data, and act accordingly.
• Know what makes a great application in your space – Before you dive into application production, study the market to see what exists in your niche, and find what’s working and what’s not. Don’t duplicate the efforts of a competitor; make sure what you offer is both filling a need and unique to the space. Since users engage regularly with just 15 apps, you don’t have the luxury of repeating what’s been done. It may be that you decide to be included inside the likes of eBay, CraigsList, Yelp, and other big names. Don’t assume you have to reinvent the wheel to be successful.

Types of Applications

Smartphone and tablet applications fit 5 distinct categories, and not all may be appropriate for your business.

The categories are:
1) Games – It’s no secret that people love to play games. The gamification of the app world has taken every day activities like eating out and running errands and made them competitive (thank you, FourSquare). 42 percent of time spent on mobile devices involves playing games.

2) Social Networks – Facebook is the obvious example, and apps like these take up 31 percent of smartphone users’ attention and time. It’s not wise to take on the creation of a new social networking app, unless that’s already your core business, but you can use the Facebook addiction to your advantage. Facebook has made mobile advertising its top priority now, with targeted ad buys appearing in user feeds, making this a great marketing option to reach the mobile audience.

3) Information Discovery – Big names like Yelp, CraigsList, and TripAdvisor get very high traffic on their apps, which people use to access the next film, restaurant, concert, activity, or vendor they’ll partake in. If your business relates in any way to the content these discovery apps offer, you should petition each app/site to also be included.

4) Utilities – Considered the primary way people interact with their phones and tablets, utility apps include things like email, calendars, maps, cameras, and clocks.

5) Branded Applications – Major brands like Burger King and Nike have a myriad of app choices with heavy branding. These are normally less popular than more ubiquitous options, but when they go viral, it’s a huge windfall.

iPhone Versus Android

All mobile users are not created equal. Per a new report from the Arbitron Mobile US Smartphone Panel, iPhone users engage with apps 54 percent more than their Android counterparts. iPhone users additionally spend 20 percent more time with apps (an average of 105.3 minutes per month, versus 87.6 for Androids), and shop 19 percent more too. If you’re going native, iPhone still reigns supreme.

The Most Popular Apps

The app that boasts the highest traffic is eBay, used by 14.3 percent of US smartphone owners. Amazon Mobile is second, followed by Groupon, Passbook, and CraigsList. These are your top five aggregators if you’re after a mobile audience. If, for example, you own an online business, you should absolutely be selling some of your products on eBay, if only to expand your horizons and find new customers.
While more users access web domains than application counterparts, they spend far more time interacting with app content. The top ranking mobile domain is Amazon, accessed by 34.7 percent of users. Their corresponding application has only a third of that traffic, but users spend twice as much time (19.8 minutes versus 40.) Since engagement offers the keys to the kingdom in online revenues, applications clearly offer more revenue boosting opportunities than their web domain counterparts.
The conclusion is clear: If you’re not playing in the mobile space, you’re missing the boat. Whether you determine your business would most benefit from creating their own app, or you garner inclusion in the world’s biggest discovery apps, you need to have phone and tablet users engaging with your brand. Apps are available everywhere these days; from the Apple Store and Google Play to Windows 8, Facebook, and beyond. Mobile isn’t just the wave of the future, it’s the platform of today.
SEO Company India
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/23/drawing-visitors-to-your-site-with-tablet-and-smartphone-apps/

Maximizing Google+ For SEO

SEO Services Company
After much debate about Google+ and whether it is worthwhile or not, more and more people are accepting it and jumping on board. There are some definite SEO advantages to having a Google+ profile. In order to enjoy the benefits, you need to ensure you have it properly set up. Let’s take a look at the benefits and then go over the setup.
Some of the benefits that come with a Google+ profile are:

• Google+ allows you to link to all of your social media profiles, sites and Blogs in a neat, organized manner. You can also link to any sites that you regularly contribute to. All of these links are followed links AND you get to select the anchor text (in your bio).

Tip: The more people share your posts, +1 your posts or link to your profile, the more valuable these links become to you. The takeaway here is that you need to network and build connections that will help spread your content.

• Google will also follow the links in your posts and again the value of these links increases as the post is shared, linked to and +1ed

Tip: If your post is really good and goes viral or is shared by a high authority profile, the value of the links increases more.

• With many social media sites, you have little to no ability to edit your content once it has been posted. Google+ allows you to go back and make edits to posts as you see fit. They don’t restrict you. This is great if a post has spread and gained traction and you want to update the information. You can easily go in and add to the post, bringing the information current and to your satisfaction.
• Content on Google+ is indexed pretty darn quickly. Some say almost instantly. It’s a great way to get posts by you into Google’s index quickly when there is a hot topic.
• You can network with influencers in your industry (see more on that below).
• Author/Publisher markup (rich snippets) creates extra exposure for your listing in the SERPs (search engine results pages). This one is worth expanding on. Google knows you have gone to a lot of effort to create your high quality content, so they want to ensure you can truly take ownership of that content. The author tag is for an individual claiming content on a page. The publisher tag goes on the homepage and is for a business to claim ownership of a site.

NOTE: You need a Google+ profile in order to implement the Authorship Markup. And you do want to implement authorship markup. Trust me, you do!
The benefits are:
1. It makes your listing more robust, because it includes a photo, your name and links to more content by you. It’s a great way to make your listing stand out in the SERPs and get more exposure. There are also indicators that your authorship markup may give you a boost in rankings. While some say it doesn’t directly help, others have reported an increase in rankings after implementing it.
2. Your authorship markup also helps you build trust – wouldn’t you trust a nice smiling face next to a listing over one that has no imagery? It establishes you as a real person in the often anonymous online world.
3. It also allows you to claim your name (you don’t want someone trying to steal your name!) and your content (you’ll be seen as the original and rightful owner of the content and won’t have to worry about a copy scraper outranking you).
4. You can improve your click-through rate by playing with your profile image (which is what is shown in the SERPs). Most people are finding that different images get different click-through rates. Images that perform best seem to be close-ups where the eyes are looking to the right towards the listing in the SERPs.
Let’s move on to how to properly set up your profile to ensure you get maximum benefit.
To set up a personal profile, you can go to:
https://plus.google.com/?hl=en
Business profiles can be set up here:
http://www.google.com/+/business/
You can use the same login for both and in the upper right corner, if you click to the right of your photo, you’ll see the business page listed. All you have to do is click that to view/use the business page.
Below is a screenshot of my account as a sample. The button circled in red takes me to my personal profile and the one circled in yellow takes me to the business page.

Once you are logged in, click on Profile on the left hand side to bring you to the section you need to complete.

Business Pages:

Make sure you use keyword phrases (never stuff keywords, use them strategically) in the Tagline and Introduction boxes under the Story section. Google indexes this, so it’s a great place to ensure you write compelling info that includes your keywords.
In the Links section, you can link to your site and Blog. If you have a critical site page, you can also link to specific pages.
When you write your Description be sure you also use keywords and create links (don’t forget to use keywords in the anchor text). The keyword you choose to use should be related to the page you are linking to. Again, I have to remind you, Google won’t tolerate spammy practices so don’t turn your profile into a link farm.

Personal Pages:

On the personal profiles, it’s important to get keywords in the Occupation and Skills section and also in the Tagline and Introduction. Think of the Occupation section as your Meta Description tag (on a normal site) so you want to ensure you have your main keywords in there.
In the employment section, put a description of services offered and not just the company name.
Tip: Once you’ve completed your profile and you start posting, keep in mind that the first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag. As you probably know, the Title tag impacts rankings and influences click-through rates.

Rich Snippets: Author Vs Publisher Tag

Don’t be fooled (I was) by Google’s ‘rel=publisher tag’. It’s still a good idea to use, but you won’t get the image in your SERP listing like you do in the authorship tag! I should clarify. What I mean is, if you test the publisher tag in the rich snippets testing tool, it looks like your logo will appear next to your listing. That is not the case right now. The tag will expand in the future so it’s worth using.
Right now, the author tag DOES display an image, so you may want to consider using that.
A couple things to keep in mind: you can’t use both the author and publisher tag on the same page AND if you use the publisher tag, it’s only for the homepage, not internal pages. You can use the author tag for internal pages with content.

Networking on Google+
There are a lot of different ways to connect with influencers in your industry. Networking with influencers is often one of the core focuses of people using Google+. It’s fairly easy to do because there are so many ways to do it, but be sure you don’t abuse the privilege. If you get known as a spammer, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your presence.
Here are some of the ways you can reach out and connect:
Depending on their particular settings, they will be notified if you:

• Mention them in a post
• Share a post with them directly
• Share a post and you’re in a circle they subscribe to
• Comment on a post they created
• Comment on a post after they comment on it
• Add them to a circle
• Suggest new people to add to their circles
• Tag them in a photo or tag one of their photos
• Suggest a profile photo for them
• Comment on a photo after they comment on it
• Comment on a photo they are tagged in or that they tagged
• Start a conversation with them
• Send them an invitation or update an event
• Any activity on events they created

The above actions are a great way to connect and let people know you are there. It’s worth repeating, do not abuse this system and spam people. Only reach out via one of these actions if you plan to truly connect and create a conversation of value.
While Google+ numbers aren’t as large as Facebook, they are growing and as with most things, it’s the early adopters that do well in the long run. Get in now and establish your position.
Looking to get active on Google+ without spending too much time? Take a few minutes a day and do the following:

• +1 great posts or comments
• Comment on posts and engage people in conversation
• Start a hangout
• Grow your circles

Tip: Ensure you add a +1 button to your pages so your visitors can easily +1 your content. Don’t forget to +1 your own Blog posts and key site pages.
Google+ is likely here to stay and also likely to get more important to your rankings and traffic.

Is Liking Something On Facebook An Act Of Free Speech?

Facebook importance for SEO Services
Last year, a Virginia judge ruled that a Facebook "like" is not protected by the First Amendment. The story goes like this: Deputy Sheriff Daniel Ray Carter of Hampton, Virginia "liked" the page of "Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff." Carter's boss, Sheriff B.J. Roberts, saw this, and then when Roberts won the election against Adams, Carter was fired. Carter claimed it was the Facebook "like" that led to his termination. He sued, but the judge determined that a "like" is not protected free speech.

Should a Facebook "like" be considered free speech, and protected under the First Amendment? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Carter appealed the decision, and Facebook stepped in to argue that a like is free speech in the same way that a political bumper sticker is. Facebook filed a brief in Carter's defense, saying, "When a Facebook User Likes a Page on Facebook, she engages in speech protected by the First Amendment."

"The district court's holding that ''liking'' a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection' because it does not 'involve actual statements,' J.A. 1159, betrays amisunderstanding of the nature of the communication at issue and disregards well-settled Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit precedent," the company continued. "Liking a Facebook Page (or other website) is core speech: it is a statement that will be viewed by a small group of Facebook Friends or by a vast community of online users."
"When Carter clicked the Like button on the Facebook Page entitled 'Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff,' the words 'Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff' and a photo of Adams appeared on Carter's Facebook Profile in a list of Pages Carter had Liked, J.A. 570, 578 – the 21st-century equivalent of a front-yard campaign sign," Facebook continued. "If Carter had stood on a street corner and announced, 'I like Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff,' there would be no dispute that his statement was constitutionally protected speech. Carter made that very statement; the fact that he did it online, with a click of a computer's mouse, does not deprive Carter's speech of constitutional protection."

The debate certainly has large ramifications for not only practices on Facebook, but on the Internet at large, which as we all know, has become very, very social.

This week, a panel of three judges in Richmond, Virginia heard the case, and Facebook once again stepped up to defend Carter, though really it's a defense of Facebook users in general. It can't be good for Facebook if people start becoming afraid of what they can or cannot say on Facebook. Some people have even talked about leaving the social network because they don't allow pictures of breasts. More censorship can't be good for user growth.

According to a report from Bloomberg's Tom Schoenberg, Facebook lawyer Aaron Panner told the judges, "Any suggestion that such communication has less than full constitutional protection would result in chilling the very valued means for communication the Internet has made possible."
The company was reportedly given three minutes of argument time, and the judges refrained from asking Facebook any questions. The report also shares some quotes about Facebook "likes" from Robers' lawyer:

"It's like opening a door into a room," Rosen, of Pender & Coward PC in Virginia Beach, Virginia, said. "You can't see what's in there until you click on the button. That's not speech."

"Facebook has 3 billion 'like' clicks a day," he said. "Is each one of those speech? I don't think so."

As far as Facebook and many others are concerned, yes, each one of those is free speech.

At the same time, Roberts is claiming that the Facebook activity is not even the reason Carter (along with other employees) was fired, and that performance was the real reason. Still, the subject of the Facebook "like" remains the hot button issue, and has been argued throughout the case.  

Google Removes More Search Features

By now the masses are likely done mourning the upcoming demise of Google Reader (slated to swim with the fishes this summer), but some are noticing key Google toolbar features disappearing like a gaggle of phantoms too.
As always, there’s a method to Google’s madness (namely, they say these features just weren’t used enough), but this could very well be a case of quantity trumping quality. SEO experts, business owners, and search influencers alike are frustrated with Google’s willingness to yank once-touted top features, with little to no warning or fanfare.
While these folks undoubtedly represent the minority in terms of sheer numbers, many rank as top experts and consultants tasked with ensuring Google’s results are of the highest caliber. Furthermore, it seems many of Google’s rolled out features go unnoticed because people simply do not know to where to look for new releases, or to even expect they may arrive. Google is playing a numbers game, while many experts wish they would consider quality and communication first; and ultimately, stop taking away functionality that has helped make the web a better place, albeit in small doses.

They Give, They Take Away

Google released a fancy new sidebar in 2009 that came loaded with a slew of advanced search options, including sentiment analysis snippets, longer snippets, timeline, recent results, dictionary auto-linking, SearchWiki, Wonder Wheel, and related searches. Sadly, many of these features are no longer available.
The Wonder Wheel, along with related searches, were both considered top-tier tools, even if only a select few heavily used them. The Wonder Wheel showcased search terms in a visual format to let analysts and business owners discover keywords related to those currently targeted. You’d simply type in a keyword phrase – say, “London attractions,” and a circle pattern would appear connecting “London” to other related keywords, like “Big Ben,” “Picadilly Circus,” and “British Royals.” Handy, no? One year later, the feature was removed, and a chorus of cries commenced, without recourse (thankfully, other tools like the ‘Contextual Targeting Tool’ (http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/ctt.html) picked up the slack.)
Now, the frustrated growls are expressing the loss of the related features tool. Related features enabled users to efficiently eyeball search results for queries similar to the one selected. For example, if you typed in “gifts for mom,” the tool might suggest terms like “Mother’s Day presents” as good alternatives.
For SEO experts, this tool was a goldmine. You could start with a broader term like “gift ideas”, and use related searches to drill down into similar yet more effective key phrases. Why did Google remove related searches? “We weren’t seeing enough usage of this filter to maintain it in the toolbar,” they wrote recently, “but we do display related searches at the bottom of the page when they seem relevant enough.” When they seem relevant enough? That’s not exactly reliable nor overly usable.

Is Google Disregarding Their Heaviest Users?

There is a lot of frustration around Google’s sudden related searches axe. In a recent Google+ thread, SEO expert AJ Kohn stated, “Okay, so is Google then saying that Reading Level and Verbatim are therefore used more than Related Searches was?” Kohn is referring to a couple newer and lesser used options, and rightfully wonders why a tool heralded by Google’s top influencers is gone, when some features that hardly anyone sees value in still remain. Kohn also brilliantly shined a light on why this may be a major misstep for Google. “Just like the decision to terminate Google Reader, Google doesn’t seem to understand they need to address influencers.”
SEO professionals don’t just use their skills to help clients reach top rankings in Google and other search engines, they actually help Google maintain credibility and high user satisfaction too.
Google’s algorithms are built to favor high-quality sites with comprehensive information and intuitive layouts. SEO professionals, at heart, help clients create user-friendly websites and content. Helping these integral web marketers do the very best they can should therefore be one of Google’s top priorities.
Creating tools like Wonder Wheel and related searches goes a long way to achieve this synergy, but taking them away without warning obviously does just the opposite. While there are some new features added in recent times (verbatim, dictionary, and visited pages, to name a few), the list of deleted tools is just as long, if not more so. And with each eradication, Google risks inhibiting the success of people dedicated to helping them succeed. To add salt to the wound, just last year related searches was heralded as a top new feature from Google. Many internet marketers followed suit by loyally using the tool – an experience that was unfortunately short-lived.

Going Forward

Because Google still has a massive search engine market share, their antics are unlikely to improve any time soon. Some remain hopeful, however, that top executives will start to rethink their propensity to add and remove features at will, based solely on popularity, and instead consider weighting the voices of their top influencers. Webmasters and SEO professionals will never outnumber average web users, but if they celebrate a given search tool, Google would be wise to keep it in the mix. Without the tools they need to test and create top-notch sites and keywords, Google results could go back to endless lists of gobbledygook.

Top 40 SEO Myths You Should Know About – Part 2

The whole point of SEO is to gain traffic and get people to stay on your site so they can be entertained or buy your products and services. As such, SEO very much goes hand in hand with usability, because this is what will make a difference in whether or not someone stays on your site for long. If your site is hard to use or navigate, it is very easy for people to go to the next search result. Also, the search engines themselves will look at layout and usability. If your site is hard to navigate for your viewers, it will be hard for the crawler as well, and having bad usability can definitely affect your rankings.

Myth #16: The .edu and .gov Backlinks are the Best

It is true that most .edu and .gov sites are well ranked and have a high authority, because typically they are official sites that are well maintained and contain no spam. However, if you have a backlink from one of these sites, it will only be as good as the authority that site has. You gain nothing by the fact that it is an educational or government site. Having a backlink on an obscure .edu site will not help you any more than posting it on an obscure blog.

Myth #17: SEO is based on the Quantity of Links a Site Has

Believing that the success of a SEO campaign is based on having as many backlinks as possible is misunderstanding how ranking works. Any ranking algorithm, whether it is Google’s, Bing’s, Facebook’s, etc. will rank sites based on many different factors. To do successful SEO, you have to address all of these factors, and having a lot of links is just one small piece of the puzzle. Also, each link has its own quality value. Often, a single link from a popular news site talking about your product will be much more valuable than spamming hundreds of links to unknown blog sites.

Myth #18: Backlinks are More Important than Content

SEO usually costs time and money, and as such it is unrealistic to think you can do everything possible in every facet of online marketing. So often you have to make choices, and some may be tempted to focus on link building instead of content. However, the goal of SEO is to bring good traffic to your site. Quality is very important, not just quantity. Not having good content means your site has no value to anyone, and as such it will quickly lose any benefit that the extra links gave you. In fact, the most useful backlinks are usually not those you have direct access to. They are reviews from celebrities in your niche, news sites, and anyone who already is an authority talking about your product. By having good content, those links can actually come by themselves, simply through PR or word of mouth. But a bunch of backlinks on low authority blogs will not help you much at all, and the ranking you may get from them will not last long as those sites clean up those links. Instead, focus on your audience and try to know who you are writing for. By producing good content you are helping your site more over the long run.

Myth #19: Paid Links will get You Banned from Google

There are a number of ways to get links and some include some type of payment. Not all paid links are bad. It depends on how that payment occurs. For example, many sites, including Google, offer advertising services. You can buy an ad on Adwords, you could go to another ad network, and many sites offer their own ad services. While some of them will not give you any ranking, others might, and those are completely legitimate. Paying a site that focuses on your niche to have a link in a strategic location will likely not get you banned. However, you have to remember that there are methods that will. Buying low quality links in bulk is one of the best ways to get your site removed from Google’s index.

Myth #20: Good Content is All You Need

Just like building an army of links will not help you keep traffic for very long, having good content and nothing else is also not enough. Most people agree that good content is the cornerstone of having a successful site. By having engaging, useful posts for your visitors, you can ensure that they will want to visit your site and stay there for a long time. However, simply building it does not make it known. Even a very good site has to do some SEO in order to bring traffic. Branding is incredibly important for any site and getting your brand out there through SEO is the only way you will get those eyes onto that content. Your articles and posts have to be paired with good incoming signals, and that includes doing a lot of the typical SEO methods which can get you ranked in search engines so that people can find your content.

Myth #21: Google actively Penalizes Certain Sites

Anyone who has done some work in SEO has been puzzled at some point when seeing strange drops in ranking. It may seem as if you did nothing wrong. You increased all of your marketing efforts, yet somehow Google decided to rank you lower. It may be easy to think that your site was penalized in some way, but most often that is not the case. Google clearly states that they only penalize sites that break their terms of use by actively going after black hat methods like spamming users. In most cases, the problem is elsewhere. One potential cause may be things that other sites have done, and not you. For example, maybe your competitor received a large influx of links because they appeared on a popular TV show. Another reason might be that Google changed some part of their internal algorithm, which happens fairly often and can be disastrous for some sites. Many people remember the Panda update which changed the ranking of millions of sites. Unfortunately in these cases it can be very hard to find the root cause and fix it, and you may have to simply work harder at SEO in order to gain your ranking back. Resist the temptation to go to black hat methods or to blame Google for it.

Myth #22: Google AdWords will give You Preferential Treatment

Adwords is a very useful program by Google where you can place an ad on other sites to advertise your own. It should be part of any online marketing campaign. However, AdWords by itself does not help boost your rankings. Some think that because a company pays Google, Google will give them preferential treatment in organic search, but that is not the case. On any typical search page, you can easily see that organic results are separated from paid advertisements. A PPC ad campaign will give you a ranking in the sense that it will allow you to be seen on the ads side of the page, but it does not affect your ranking on the organic side in any way.

Myth #23: SEO is Something Done Once Only

A lot of sites make this mistake. When a site is new, the owners will invest in doing some SEO, and then think that everything is done. But just like marketing in the real world, SEO is not something you can do once and then forget. Instead, it is a continual process which has to be done over a long period of time, often the entire life of the site. This is because the web is not a written encyclopedia. It is a medium that changes constantly. New competitors appear, search engines change their algorithms, new opportunities for marketing appear, and links that used to be good can become stale and not that important anymore. By constantly keeping an eye on your SEO efforts you ensure that your ranking does not drop, and you can keep focusing on new techniques that may prove to work better.

Myth #24: SEO Companies can get Guaranteed Results

This is a very common yet completely bogus claim which some marketing firms like to use. They claim that by using their methods, your results will be guaranteed. But the truth is that no one can claim a certain method is foolproof for the same reason that SEO is not something you do once then forget. Everything changes online and you never know when something that used to work well will stop working. Some tactics are clearly better than others, but none is guaranteed. Also, if there was a magical way to get a high ranking, you can be sure that it would leak out at some point, and then everyone would be using that same tactic, making it worthless.

Myth #25: Placing too Many Links Per Page can Penalize You

Some people have been told that a certain number of links on a page can be bad for your rankings. For example, placing more than a hundred links on your landing page will be bad for Google and you will get penalized in some way. While it is true that spamming links on a page is something you should not do, and the Google bot has ways to detect when a page is link bait, you should not be afraid to create pages with lots of links. As long as they are relevant and part of the normal navigation of your site, then there will be no penalty. The worse that could happen in these cases is that Google may decide to ignore links past a hundred, but that’s all.

Myth #26: Internal Links don’t Matter for SEO

Many people think of linking only in terms of backlinks, and only focus on having other sites link to their own pages. But internal linking is also important, just like your site layout is important, because search crawlers try to act as much like a normal web viewer as possible. If your site has bad internal navigation, Google will be able to detect that, and this could penalize you. Take the time needed to create good internal links and an easy to use navigation system for your site. This is something that is easy to do and should not be overlooked.

Myth #27: Facebook Likes or Tweets are the Number One Factor in SEO

Social media has taken a central role in how people find information on the web today, and the signals sent by these sites are fed into search engines in real time. No modern business should ignore social media, simply because of the amount of time people spend on Facebook or Twitter. However, no one social site is the holy grail of SEO. Even if getting Facebook likes is important, it is not any more so than the many other techniques that can be used. Also, there are arguments that point to the fact that while many people spend a lot of time on social networking sites, they do so to talk to friends, not to buy products, so the benefit of a like is still not as understood as the benefit of ranking well on Google. You should not ignore traditional SEO to focus solely on social media.

Myth #28: Keywords are no Longer Relevant

Sites used to be created with a paragraph at the bottom filled with keywords in order to attract more traffic using something called keyword stuffing. In recent years, knowledgable marketers have realized that this is no longer needed. In fact, it is a practice that is heavily discouraged by search engines. However, this does not mean that keywords are not still very important. While you should not do keyword stuffing on a page, getting a good percentage of your keywords in your actual text is still crucial. When someone looks for a specific term on Google, the number of times a keyword comes up on your page still weighs heavily in the search results.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/06/top-40-seo-myths-you-should-know-about-part-2/

Google+ and Facebook With Author Rank Breeds Success

SEO Firm
Google+ and Facebook can nab you a high Google ranking. Add author rank and you have a powerful combination.
You must first have Google+ and Facebook accounts, but these are easy enough to get. All you have to do is to use Google as your web browser, and also know how to create a Facebook Business Page, rather than simply use your Home Page and Facebook Wall.
We shall assume you are already using Google+ and Facebook. On Google, click on the +YourName link at the left side of the black Google menu bar. If you don’t already have an account, go to the Google search engine page and click on +you link on the same bar. You can then create an account by clicking on the red rectangle at top right.

Google+ Pages

Once you have joined Google, and are on your Google+ page, scroll down the left hand navigation bar until you come to ‘more.’ Click on that and then ‘pages’ — you will find instructions on setting up your first Google+ Page.
Google+ enables you to create groups of people known as Circles. The defaults of ‘friends,’ ‘family,’ acquaintances,’ and ‘followers’ explain what Circles are about. You can also create a circle of people with similar expertise or interests.
So how do you use Google+ to help your Google ranking?
Google gives more weight to links to and from its own social networking applications. A Google+ +1 vote is worth more to Google than a Facebook ‘like’ — but you can still make use of both. You can create a link from one to the other and back again. Then, when you post either to your Facebook business page or to your Google+ page, the link will be visible on each publication.
By the simple expediency of including a link to a page on your website or blog, you will have generated a powerful link network that is extremely friendly to Google Panda and the Penguin update. You can increase that effect by maintaining a regular website and also a blog as a subdomain on the same main domain. You can then expect to receive multiple listings on the search engines, particularly Google, for each of these publications.

Google Webmaster Tools and XML Sitemaps

To maximize your ranking, you must register your main site with Google Webmaster Tools. Then verify ownership by means of one of the options that Google will give you, and submit an XML sitemap. If you have a WordPress blog, then there are excellent plugins available that will do this
automatically. If you have a regular site, you will find sitemap generating tools available online. They are free for a one-time use, which is all that you need.
You can make the best use of Google+ by including a +1 link on your website — in fact include one on each page.
The Google+ chicklet is known as a +1, and it works in much the same way as a Facebook ‘like.’ Each vote is known as a +1, and the more you accumulate the better. It is assumed that your ranking is partially influenced by the +1 votes you accumulate.

Authorship and Author Rank

When you are able to claim authorship of the content you write and articles you publish, your name and profile will be published in the search listing for each of your web pages. Your photograph might also be published if you have submitted one to Google+. This is an excellent way of being recognized as an expert in your business or niche. In effect, Google is endorsing your content.
Make sure that you have linked the website containing the content to Google+ by means of an official e-mail address belonging to and listed on the site, or by adding a few lines of code to your site. Then you can claim authorship for all content on your site. Webmaster Tools explains how to do this. Author rank is a measure of your authority in your niche.
Each time you publish content away from your linked website, simply write ‘Author=yourname’ to get author ranking for the content. ‘Yourname’ is your username for Google+ or any other name associated with the account.
Article directories do this for you when they publish your articles, but you can do it yourself for blog posts and when guest blogging.

Social Media Integration and Google PageRank

By using Facebook ‘likes,’ Google +1 and authorship, you can make a significant impact on your Google ranking. It is important you take the time to learn how each of these work, and how they can be integrated to your advantage.
There are many other social networking sites that can be integrated in this way.
It is likely that author rank and +1s will supersede Google PageRank as a major factor in page ranking positions on the Google search engine. Algorithm updates over the past couple of years appear to be trending toward social media and author rank rather than PageRank calculated from conventional links between Web pages. Take the time to learn how Google+ and Facebook can be integrated to rank well in Google.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/03/google-and-facebook-with-author-rank-breeds-success/