October 25, 2013

Search and Social Will Not Be Separate Marketing Endeavors in 2014

Social Signals Significance in Search
Image Credit: techi.com
If you do a search on Google for “search marketing” and compare it to a search for “social marketing”, you’ll see that there are pretty much no similarities. The two disciplines have been separated for a long time and companies usually focus on one or the other (though it seems like everyone offers a little of both). As 2014 draws nearer, the need to keep these two disciplines separate is starting to fade.

In fact, talking about them separately is starting to become a huge mistake.

Search is getting more social. Anyone who is watching the way that Google and Bing present their results and determine rankings on keywords can see this. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (not to mention Google+, which is trying to seamlessly tie in search with social) are all becoming more prominent in search while continuing to improve their own internal search engines. These two facts are pushing us towards a collision course where search marketing and social marketing are becoming the same overall concept.

It is already a best practice to consolidate strategies around a singular overarching goal. That has been the case for years, even before the rise of social and the true harnessing of search. The change that is happening today and looking to intersect completely in 2014 is geared more around the activities that are required to make both sing properly for a business.

Search is Looking to Social:

All that one has to do to truly see the importance of social signals from a search engine optimization perspective is to look at the most recent Search Engine Ranking Factors analysis from Moz. As you can see in the image above, three of the top are social. One may think that it’s a small portion compared to the number of factors, but with the majority at the top of the list having to do with inbound linking, it’s clear that those are all individual portions of the same basic factor.

In other words, if you break it all down properly, you’ll understand that page authority is #1, Google +1s are #2, inbound links are #3, and Facebook sharing is #4. Page authority is an abstraction of the following three plus the domain authority itself, so the actual actions that are at the top of the list would look like this:

1. Get Google +1s
2. Get inbound links
3. Get Facebook shares

Two of the top three ranking factors that one can act upon to improve rankings in Google are social signals according to the survey that gets the opinions of the best of the best in search marketing. That’s significant.

Social is a Part of Search:

It’s hard to do a search on either Google or Bing that does not pop up something from a social perspective. Bing recently integrated Pinterest directly into their image listings. Google+ pages are instantly added to any search where a business is associated.

Searching for companies by name will yield the company website first followed by a flurry of social and review sites. If the Facebook and/or Twitter accounts are active, they’re almost certainly listed on the front page of search results.

Taking it a step further, most social sites are working their own variations of internal search engines to make content on the sites themselves easier to find. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are constantly tweaking their search engines to show more, more, and more.

What it All Means:

There can no longer be two separate strategies for search and social. To try to separate them is like trying to serve portions of a meal at different times. Instead of giving them spaghetti and meatballs, you would be serving the spaghetti noodles first, then bringing out the sauce and meatballs on a separate plate when they were done with their noodles. It’s an odd analogy, but that’s really what many businesses and marketing agencies are doing with search and social.

The strategies must be unified. It has worked okay in 2012 and 2013 but as we draw near to 2014, the distances between the two disciplines must be removed. We cannot treat them as two different disciplines. They should be worked together with an overall strategy that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

Source: http://www.techi.com/2013/10/search-and-social-will-not-be-separate-marketing-endeavors-in-2014/

Universal Analytics will Become the Default for all Google Analytics

Our goal is to enable Universal Analytics for all Google Analytics properties. Soon all Google Analytics updates and new features will be built on top of the Universal Analytics infrastructure. To make sure all properties upgrade, Classic Analytics properties that don’t initiate a transfer will be auto-transferred to Universal Analytics in the coming months.” Said Google.

Google has a step by step instruction to upgrade to universal Analytics:

Step 1:
It is a new tool shown in your property settings in the coming weeks that transfer your properties to Universal Analytics enabling in the admin section of all accounts. Here is the screenshot:

upgrade to universal analytics

Step 2:
After completing step 1, you will be able to upgrade your tracking code. Use the analytics.js JavaScript library on your websites, and Android or iOS SDK v2.x or higher for your mobile apps.

October 24, 2013

New Realities of SEO

Google Search Timeline

Back in the day, SEO was more technical and less, well, semantic. Now I realize that for most a term like semantic query relevancy might as well be the name of computer programming language, but the fact is Google’s customers, the searcher and the advertiser, are no longer content with results based on related page keyword content.

To improve accuracy Google and Bing both are attempting to understand what is actually meant by a search and refine results based on things like recency, location, context and of course relevance.

For example if you search “best place to buy a MacBook Pro” there was a time when search engines would return results of blog posts about good places to buy a MacBook Pro or maybe even computer reviews. From that you might have been able to find what you were looking for, but with semantic knowledge graph built in Google is more likely to think – oh, you want to buy a MacBook Pro and I know where you are and I know the inventory levels of the nearest stores with sale prices, so here are your results.

What this means for website owners is they can no longer count on writing content about a subject, optimizing it and going to work on links to the page. Sure, that stuff will always play a role, but there are other significant factors at play today.

Google officially rolled out a new search algorithm recently that employs a great deal of their progress in semantic search. The update is called “Hummingbird” and while traces of it have been coming in previous updates, this one is significant and lasting.

Search has been heading this way for some time now. So, no SEO is not dead once again, unless you mean quick SEO – SEO that doesn’t contain relationship and authority building. Bottom-line though – quality, frequency, depth and authority matter more than ever.

Below are Five Realities that Site Owners and SEO Professionals Must Address in Order to Remain Relevant:

Social Signals Matter a Lot:

One of the biggest factors baked into search results are signals that search engines can receive about content quality based on social interactions. How many +1s a page has matters greatly as do shares, likes and retweets. My guess is that it’s nearly impossible to get most content to rank without it.

In Depth is the New Snack Sized:

One of the things blogs ushered in was the ability to create small little bits of content frequently. While readers seem to enjoy this, often the content lacked much depth and certainly did not engender many retweets and shares (unless you are Seth Godin and you’re followed by 113,000 people on Google+ even though you’ve never shared anything on Google+)

Many people still throw out thinly disquised lists as link bait, but nothing gets shared and strongly indexed today like long, in depth narrowly cast articles. Google has even created markup standards for in depth articles as long as 2000-5000 words.

Who Writes it Matters Too:

Authority based on authorship has grown to be a major ranking factor. Claiming your own Google+ Authorship for your content is vital. This includes telling Google other places where your content appears.

While there is no “kloutlike” scoring system as of yet, understanding whose content is thought of authoritative because that’s your relationship building hit list!

Link Building is Networking:

Past Google updates with names like Panda and Penguin were different than Hummingbird as they we updates to fix stuff, mostly artificial link building. Like it or not the more sophisticated algorithms become the harder it is to fake link relationships. Link building in the old school SEO fashion is going the way of the compact disc so you better get good at writing high quality content, sharing high quality content and building authoritative relationships with people that Google thinks matter when it comes to content.

In case that sounds like good old fashion networking that’s because it is.

Keyword Not Provided is the New Deal:

Site owners long ago made a deal with Google – let us crawl your site and we’ll tell you who is visiting your site and why – just kidding – take a look at your Google Analyitcs these days and see if your “keyword not provide” or what terms someone searched on that brought them to your site is hovering in the 100% range like mine is.

There are some clever ways to hack together this data (future post on that) and word on the street is Google may find a way to sell it back to you through some sort of premium analytics, but look for some 3rd party tools to fill this gap and get used to a world without the ease of knowing why someone came to your site. (I suppose this is actually a step back into the more technical SEO need.)

Tomorrow I’m going to give you a look into my top 5 recommended action steps for addressing the new realities of SEO today.

Source: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2013/10/14/new-realities-seo/

October 22, 2013

For Google Strong and Bold Treated the Same for Ranking: Google’s Matt Cutts

bold vs strong tag
In a recently published webmaster video, Google’s Matt Cutts answered that the bold <b> and strong <strong> HTML tags are treated the same for SEO and ranking purpose.

Here is the Question:

"Hi Matt, In terms of SEO, what is the difference between strong tag and bold tag for emphasis on certain words of text. From the user perspective, both tags have the same effect (words in bold). Which tag should we use, in which circumstances?" - Jean-Marc G, Paris, France

Here is the Video:



October 20, 2013

Changes Need to Implement after Google’s Hummingbird Update on Website

search queries

On his 15th birthday, Google officially announced that they have already rolled out the Google Hummingbird Update. The update was specifically geared to deal with more complex search queries.

With this algorithm enhancement, Google set more importance on conversational search and semantic processing of queries. Instead of processing a simply by related the use of words on web pages stored in the index, Google now is aware of the real context of the query and returns exact answers. Consequently, there are some changes that you must apply on your website in order to make the most of this update.

1. Increase the Domain Authority of Your Website:

Google wants to present the most authoritative content to its users and one of the best ways for it to recognize genuine sites is by evaluating the high quality of content and the links pointing to them. So having links from high quality resources always helps to increase your website’s online search engine presence. Links held a similar importance in the past and will continue to be important in the future. Here I want to point out that Google has improved focus on keeping track of organic backlinks versus artificial but appropriate backlinks. Following a properly organized link baiting strategy to obtain organic links is much butter obtaining link using the old methods of cheap content marketing. Earning links (editorial link) by providing your customers well and increasing your brand value is the way to follow for the long run.

2. Use Google Authorship:

It is a priority task to implement Google Authorship on your site. The big brands always remain an exception but for the rest of us, the best way to let Google identify you and move from the unknown web to the named web is by using Google authorship. Here I also want to point out that it also helps to improve the click-through-rate (CTR) as people usually click more often on search results displaying an author image as opposed to unknown search results.

3. Optimize Website for Mobile Devices:

Today the uses of mobile devices are increasing day by day and having a mobile friendly site is your best bet to accommodate these users. Hummingbird has specially tailored itself to provide the needs of mobile users. The better way is to create a mobile friendly website with a faster loading time, fewer images and simple navigation. The most important point is that your site should be easily crawlable and quickly loadable coz users hat sites that are slow.

4. Use Schema Mark Up:

Schema mark up is a revolutionary vocabulary that can be applied on any site using variant languages like microformat, microdata and RDF etc. Rich snippets like rating and reviews, recipe preparation time, data highlighter and product pricing etc all are the form of schema mark up.

The best way to enable Google to clearly understand the content displayed on your website is with the help of schema vocabulary. Many website owners are unacquainted with this, but the point is, you can apply schema mark up on almost every kind of content irrespective of your industry. This is a change to improve the semantic value of your website and make it stand out in the search results.

5. Add Question Answer Pattern in Content:

People are looking for answers (solutions) and, if your website can be tailored towards a question answer pattern kind of content, then that would perform best after the Google Hummingbird update. It is not strange to see QA websites rising up the rankings.

That does not mean you to start rewriting all your existing content and add a QA pattern to it, but focusing on creating that contain a “How to” approach and that present definite solutions to user queries will help. Please keep in mind that not all websites can match this pattern and an interesting point here is that not all queries demand a QA like pattern being return back by Google.

A study of search patterns indicates that implementing the 5 strategies noted above is the best approach in regards to the Google’s Hummingbird update which has impacted around 90% of all search queries.

October 18, 2013

Two New Features Rolled Out by Twitter

Twitter with the new features
Image Credit: arkarthick.com
In its continued quest to make the service better and easier for brands to use, Twitter has rolled out two new features that business owners might find useful.

First, if your Twitter inbox suddenly becomes full of direct messages, don't be alarmed. You probably haven't been spammed. Twitter has quietly released a new feature that allows Twitter users to receive direct messages from anyone who follows them.

While your personal Twitter account might not see a flux in direct messages, your company's official Twitter account might. The new feature was likely created so that businesses can receive private messages from their customers and other people who follow them on the social network, the Verge reported.

Yesterday, Twitter also announced a feature that allows users and brands using Twitter's advertising products to schedule tweets, including promoted tweets. Businesses can create and schedule tweets up to a year in advance from the blue Tweet button on the top right corner of the navigation bar at ads.twitter.com or from the "Creatives" tab in the top navigation bar next to Campaigns and Analytics.

In the lead-up and aftermath of filing for its IPO, Twitter has announced a number of changes and new features -- especially ones geared at businesses and TV partners. Just last week Twitter said Comcast pay-TV subscribers will be able to use the social network to watch and record programs aired by Comcast-owned NBC Universal. Tweets about certain shows -- such as The Voice and Sunday Night Football --will include a "See It" button in the expanded tweet that users can click on and watch those programs.

Content Author: Jason Fell (www.entrepreneur.com)

October 17, 2013

Google Translated Content is the Same Thing as Auto-Generated Content Spam

translation


It is clearly mentioned in the content guidelines section on automatically generated content, it spells it out there too saying: “Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing

Berry Schwartz had also talked about this in their recently posted article.

October 16, 2013

How to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy?

content marketing
Image Credit: toprankblog.com
Be honest with yourself: Why should customers and prospects care about what you have to say? Everywhere your customers look, they are being bombarded with sales messaging. Instead of contributing to the noise, be truly helpful. Be their go-to informational resource. This type of quality storytelling can act like steroids for your search rankings and social media, as customers share with their networks.

That said, very few small businesses have the skills and training to create a content marketing program and consistently deliver on that promise. So how do you create content that moves your customers and prospects to take action?

It's possible. Take the small business Copy blogger Media, for example. Based in Boulder, Colo., Copy blogger sells software, but they also have more than 200,000 regular subscribers to their daily blog posts. Their revenue growth comes from having a loyal audience who will buy their products because they trust their content. Another example is Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners, a small venture capital company whose site has more than 20,000 entrepreneur subscribers. Those subscribers rely on the site for information on a regular basis.

Here are six principles that should be core to your content marketing strategy:

1. Fulfill a Need.

Your content should answer some unmet need or question for your customer. It needs to be useful in some way to the customer, over and above what you can offer as a product or service. In some cases, it may fill an emotional need -- take Coca-Cola or Red Bull's storytelling, for example.

2. Stay Consistent:

The great hallmark of a successful publisher is consistency. Whether you subscribe to a monthly magazine or daily email newsletter, the content is always delivered on-time and as expected. This is where so many companies fail. Whatever you commit to in your content marketing, you must consistently deliver.

3. Be Human:

Find your voice. The benefits of not being a journalistic entity is that you have nothing holding you back from being you. Find your voice and share it. If your company's story is all about humor, share that. If it's a bit sarcastic, that's okay too.

4. Have a Point of View:

This is not encyclopedia content. You are not giving a history report. Don't be afraid to take sides on matters that can position you and your company as an expert.

Chipotle's runaway viral hit The Scarecrow clearly has a point of view -- that locally sourced and responsibly-produced food is superior to processed foods. Don't be afraid to take a stance.

5. Step Away from the Sales-Speak:

At my company, when we create a piece of content that is about our own products or services versus an educational post, it only garners 25 percent of the page views and social shares. The more you talk about yourself, the less people will share and spread your story. It's that simple.

6. Be the Best of the Breed:

Although you can't get there right away, you want your content to be best of breed. This means what you are distributing is the very best of what is available in your particular content niche. I know this may sound overly simplified, but if you expect your customers to spend time with your content, you must deliver amazing value.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com

October 15, 2013

Boost Your Sales: Useful Tips about Branding

Boost your sales with Effective Branding
Image Credit: bjcbranding
Branding is the marketing practice of creating a unique name and image for a product or a service in the customer’s mind.

Good branding creates trust and can make it easier to sell a product to customers. While the brands we choose as clients can be reflections of our beliefs and values, the right kind of branding can steer us toward products or services that we may otherwise not have book looking for. So it seems sensible that companies that have good branding can generate more sales;

Here Five Useful Tips:

1. Be Consistent.

Regardless of what your startup is about, it needs to be consistent for people to recognize it as a brand rather than a product. Especially in the earlier stages of a brand, people's trust is only established once they are confident that they understand what your brand does well and what it stands for.

Not sure what I mean about consistency? Think about Starbucks. When we go there, we've come to expect great service and personalization. When you think of film director Michael Bay, you'd probably think of big-budget movies with lots of explosions and special effects.

This is consistency. This is about branding.

We have these expectations of brands or people who are brands because they have delivered consistently in the past and indirectly promise to continue doing so.

2. Be Authentic:

No one likes to be misled. Remember that products become brands when people start to trust what will occur when they interact with your brand. While a small lie may seem necessary, it can have major consequences for a brand if ever exposed.

Being yourself should help your message resonate with people. Radio host Howard Stern is an example of authenticity. Lots of people don't agree with what he says or his sense of humor, but he sticks to his guns and produces his show the way he wants to. Because of that, he has droves of loyal listeners.

3. Focus on a Niche:

It can be smarter to focus on winning over smaller demographics one at a time rather than trying to appeal to everyone all the time. Focus on building products for different niche groups in order to unite all those groups into one single brand.

Car manufacturers do this by designing cars that appeal to different segments of their clients. While certain elements like reliability, performance or design features remain brand-centric, their approach is niche in exposing new clients to their brands.

4. Be Relatable:

People often connect with brands and other people who evoke an emotional response from them. Controversial movies are talked about a lot because they evoke our emotions. Brands are no different. Make sure you are relating to people's emotional values such as sharing in their problems or showing empathy.

Think of brands like Nike, which relates to its customers' understanding that winning is difficult through its slogan "Just Do It."

5. Be Extraordinary:

Products don't become brands for nothing, just like people don't become known for being simply ordinary.

While ordinary is safe, recognition and high praise are given to those who step out of the traditional in favor of the unconventional. While trying to be extraordinary, make sure you don't stray too far to the left and lose sight of being authentic.

An example of this is Apple, which entered the computer space with a product that was designed with the user experience in mind and, at least initially, was less susceptible to viruses than the PC. By doing something extraordinary, rather than doing something slightly better, you attract the attention of many. But you will have to keep it up or people will catch on fast and move on just as quickly.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229304

Should Webmasters Focus On More Than Just Ranking In Search Results?

A new webmaster video published on October 14, 2013. The question is: “Since Google is been actively updating its search results, it is hard for people to trust Google anymore. Should one start focusing on getting leads from social media other than search engine results?
Shubhamstunter, India”

October 14, 2013

10 Ways Google's Hummingbird Will Shape Future SEO and Content Marketing

SEO and Content Marketing
Image Credited to LocalSearchGroup
We all know that Google’s Hummingbird – A search algorithm update already on the march. It affects approx 90% of all searchers. While no one knows the more information of the algorithm, there are clear implications for the future of SEO and content marketing. The route of journey is well articulated by Google and it has to be resolved by promoters in their upcoming strategies.

1. The Future Is Mobile:

This will come as no surprise as Smartphone penetration and usage continues to grow. Recent research from Telemetrics shows that 50% of people start their search on a mobile device and an increasing number of people use mobile exclusively for search. For certain type of searches such as restaurants the search figures are much higher, Yelp report 59% of all their searches are on mobile.

Google referenced mobile extensively when announcing Hummingbird, sentences started with “You can pull up your phone and ..."  They focused on improvements to their mobile search "It’s cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch" and "results (are) clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for."

Google clearly understands the importance of mobile and it will shape future SEO and content marketing strategies. At a minimum all content absolutely has to be optimized for mobile.

2. Mobile Will Lead To Greater Voice Search:

Apple bought Siri as they understood the future of search on mobiles would increasingly be voice. Siri is currently the most-used medium for mobile voice-based search. Google also acknowledges that people want more intuitive and simple to use interfaces such as voice search. Speech input is already the primary interface on Google Glass. Earlier this year Topeka Capital Markets analyst Victor Anthony said voice search was the next stage of long-term growth for Google. He commented "We believe voice search will aggressively expand Google's influence beyond the confines of the desktop, and into virtually every function of human lives."

3. More Natural Language and Complex Queries:

Search queries using voice are more likely to use natural language than text searches. This will mean longer, more complex queries. Google recognizes this and the Hummingbird Algorithm is designed to deliver better results for mobile users asking a question out loud. Google also recognizes that people are not searching for a keyword but something more complex such as an answer to a question. Content marketers equally need to understand the intent behind a user's search in order to ensure their content addresses this need.

4. Semantic Search To Deliver Accurate Results:

Google's semantic search approach is seeking to provide more accurate search results by both understanding intent and refining results based on context such as location and other data they know about the searcher. Thus with Hummingbird Google is trying to understand the whole query and not the keywords. Amit Singhal, Google VP of Search says “With more complex queries, the algorithm can better understand concepts vs. words as well as relationships between concepts.”  Thus this Natural Language Processing will benefit long tail content rather than keywords.

David Almerand calls this an important transition from “strings to things” where search engines understand concepts rather than just words. For marketers semantic analysis and providing in-depth content will be more important than a keyword strategy, more so since Google has stopped reporting keywords in Google Analytics.

5. Content Must Be Helpful:

Through Hummingbird Google is seeking to provide more accurate answers to queries. It is aiming to understand the intent of a query and provide accurate answers. Thus for marketers you need to understand what questions your customers have and be developing solutions across your platforms including your website, Google Plus and relevant communities, YouTube etc. If you are addressing the needs of your audience you are more likely to rank according to Hummingbird.

This is again not something new but a confirmed direction of travel. Jay Baer has talked extensively of Youtility and the importance of content marketing being helpful. I personally like the concept that you need to create content marketing so helpful people would pay you for it. By understanding and addressing the questions of users your content will perform better.

6. Content Must Have Authority:

Google is increasingly concerned to find content that is relevant and trusted, in essence content with authority.

There are many ways to gauge authority which will continue to include links and references from reputable sites and social signals. An important step in this direction is Google's Authorship markup. In essence a way to link content to your Google Plus profile, which for Google is increasingly the hub of your personal online identity. Once your authorship is established you will gain goodwill from your content articles as they are linked to from reputable sources and shared online by people with authority. This will grow your reputation and increase trust in your authority in relevant subject areas.

There is no direct evidence of Google using an author rank yet or that authorship will improve your content ranking but Mark Traphagen, an authority in this area, says there are definite benefits to authorship that can have a positive impact on search traffic and rankings.

Google have also introduced in-depth articles where the authors are established, where the publications or sites are reputable and the articles are long and in-depth.

There is no question that authors that are respected, and that produce relevant and original content will continue to have an advantage in the new world. Marketers have to address their authority and longer form content.

7. The SMO of SEO:

There has beeen a lot of talk recently about the social media optimisation of SEO. Social media is concerned with recommendations by users, the sharing of content and the credibility of writers. There is evidence that search engines increasingly look to these social signals to help find relevant content. Some argue that social signals give a better indication of what is valuable on the web. It is very likely that Hummingbird will add a social layer to the search algorithm given its objectives.

For marketers this means a need to focus on social engagement, reputation, authority and social proof through the sharing of content by people with authority, not simply numbers of shares or likes.

8. Prediction And Knowledge Building:

The advances in search means that queries are not only understood but used to build knowledge which is retained and can be used to answer future queries. This is a move from understanding user intent to actually predicting user intent. This can be seen most obviously with Google Now.

Being able to answer queries in this way via Google's Knowedge Graph also means users are kept on Google longer and they may not even need to visit other sites for standard queries. For example, typing in Shard vs Gherkin, two recent tall buildings in London, brings up a lot of information on the two buildings that Google predicts I may be after (such as height, date opened, architects etc.,) and places this immediately above the other search results.

9. Links Can Actually Be Negative In A Social World:

In the new social world more links to your content are not necessarily better and in some cases may actually reduce your ranking.

If you post a link and lots of people interact with it and share it then we can assume that this will have a positive impact. However, if you post a lot of links on Google Plus or other forums and people do not interact with these posts you may create a negative impact.

It is possible that an algorithm will see a lot of links but also see few people actually interacting or sharing the posts. The algorithm may come to the conclusion that people do not value the content and give it a negative rating. Thus people who drop lots of links in many places and communities, risk receiving less interaction each time and actually risk getting negative ranking feedback as a consequence.

10. Google Plus Is The Future:

It has been said before but Google reiterated at Social Media Week in September that "Google Plus is the social spine that improves the user experience across Google."

Whilst Google have argued that plus ones do not influence search results it does seem likely that Google Plus is increasingly helping Google SEO to produce more accurate results.

For marketers Google Plus is the future. If you do not have a Google Plus profile or page or you are not active on the platform or you haven't set up your Google authorship, now is time to get going. Being active in Google Plus communities, helping answer queries, curating helpful content and producing fresh, original, in-depth content will increase your Google reputation.

Source: http://socialmediatoday.com/steve-rayson/1796646/10-ways-googles-hummingbird-will-shape-future-seo-and-content-marketing

October 10, 2013

Redirect User Based on Location is Not a Spam: Said Google's Matt Cutts

Here in a webmaster video, Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, clearly stating that the geo-location or redirecting users based on location is not spam.

Google expects you treat GoogleBot as a user accessing your web site from the United States. When you redirect GoogleBot to a web page of content that users cannot see, that is considered spam and a form of cloaking, according to Google’s guidelines.

Here is the Video from Matt:


The question is:

Using Geo-detection technique is against Google, I am offering the useful information (price, USP's) to the users based on the Geo-location, will Google consider this as a Spam i.e. showing X content to SE and Y content to user.” - Peter

October 9, 2013

Google Hummingbird Update: Will It Affect SEO?

Google hummingbird
On their 15th birthday, Google announced a new search algorithm called "Hummingbird" is live, which is the biggest update to their search engine since the "caffeine update" in 2009 especially designed to provide direct answers to your search questions.

How the Google Hummingbird update works:

Hummingbird has power to quickly analyze long and enabled Google to better understand the content it indexes. It uses conversational searches instead of traditional keyword searchers to provide search results that are more on point with what users are looking for. It also displays search content right on the search pages themselves, which makes it much simpler for searchers to find out more appropriate results.

Hummingbird expands Google’s use of the Knowledge Graph so that it can provide answers to queries that don’t actually have simple solutions. In an article, The Sr. Vice President of Google Search, Mr. Amit Singhal, points to a search like "Tell me about impressionists artists" which now returns a broad set of appropriate information when submitted through a mobile device.

Looking ahead, Google can be expected to continue pushing the development of predictive search and voice search, because writing on mobile device is slowly, boring and often impractical.

Want to get more information on the Google Hummingbird update then read the article about Hummingbird FAQ, written by Danny Sullivan.

Is SEO Dead?

The answer is No. Google says there is really nothing new you need to worry about. Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and better ways. The main words of advice remain the same: produce original, relevant content.

At 4th October, 2013 Google rolled out Google Penguin 2.1 update.

October 8, 2013

Google’s Matt Cutts about Toolbar PageRank

PageRank is only about the number of links and the quality those links and how they point to your website hope that makes sense, said Matt Cutts, Head of search spam at Google. Here is the video:



Here is the question:

"Our website is not improving in Google PageRank despite having regular updates and foolproof content authorized by proven editors. What could be the reason for this? Kindly help in sussing out the issue. Thank you." asked by Dileep from India.

October 7, 2013

Google Penguin 2.1 aka Penguin 5 Rolled Out to Target more Specifically on Paid Links

4th October, 2013, Matt Cutts, The Head of Google’s Web Spam team, shared the news on twitter regarding the launch of Penguin 2.1 update. Penguin 2.1 affects ~1% of queries to a noticeable degree, said Matt Cutts.
Matt Tweet about Penguin 2.1

What is Google Penguin Algorithm?

Google Penguin is the official name given to the Google WebSpam Algorithm that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine ranking of websites that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines by following Black Hat SEO techniques and web spamming.

Factors that into Consideration for Penalization are:

Rate of Exact Match Anchor Text in Poor Quality Articles
Rate of Bad Links coming from autoapprove, non-moderated blogs
Rate of No real On-site Activity by any visitors compared to inbound links

As per the numbering count this is the fifth Google Penguin update. Here are all the confirmed releases of Penguin to date:

1. Penguin 1 released on April 24, 2012 - 3.1% queries were affected
2. Penguin 2 released on May 26, 2012 - less than 0.1% queries were affected
3. Penguin 3 released on Oct 5, 2012 - 0.3 % queries were affected (English Language)
4. Penguin 4/Penguin 2.0 released on May 22, 2013 - 2.3 % of queries were affected
5. Penguin 5/Penguin 2.1 released on Oct 4, 2013 1% of queries gets affected

What Does Penguin 2.1 Do?

Through Google Penguin algorithm was released earlier for penalizing the sites that has bad backlinks, Google still produces spammy websites and webpages on search results in some areas. With this Penguin 2.1 update, Google pushes down those spam websites that escaped from the previous update. Google focused more on websites some specific areas this time particularly paid or purchased links.

So What to Do Now?

Monitor your backlinks and make sure your website is free from bad backlinks
If you see bad backlinks on your website, send an email to the corresponding website owner and ask them to remove your links from their website.
If that does not work out, disavow those links by sending request to Google.

October 6, 2013

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Why It is Popular?

Introduction: What is SEO?

SEO is the abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving website visibility in major search engines. It is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

Why Do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Website?

  • Improve the online search engine friendliness of your website.
  • Improve your website’s ranking for a well-researched group of keywords and phrases over a period of time.
  • Improve your website's rankings by using a well planned and executed SEO campaign, which will cost more than you would have thought.
  • Leverage well written, useful, helpful, entertaining or otherwise interesting content to mount an effective link-building campaign which will result in ranking improvements.
  • Optimize your website's textual content by incorporating a select number of search phrases into the text (not keyword-stuffing), and utilizing the new text to develop an internal link structure which helps magnify the importance of those search phrases for the major search engines.

Types of SEO:

SEO is differentiated into two, white hat SEO (the good kind or organic and natural), and black hat (the not good kind or unethical).

1. White Hat SEO:

White Hat SEO refers to the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies. Also called Ethical SEO.

2. Black Hat SEO:

Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, methods and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not follow search engines rules and guidelines. Some examples of Black Hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, clocking and doorway pages.

Benefits of SEO:

Five major benefits that make SEO popular, that are figure out here.

FREE Targeted Traffic:

Traffic is the main benefits of SEO over any other type of internet marketing. Once your website is ranked in the top 10 for your keyword phrase, you should be able to keep it there with at the least hassle. This means that you will receive free traffic as long as you keep it up

Superb ROI:

Return on investment is one of the significant benefits of SEO compared to pay-per-click advertising campaign. A site takes some time to get rank and after the site ranked, the ROI will be great.

Cost-Effectiveness:

SEO is one of the most cost-effective methods of promotion. If the site is properly designed and optimized then it has a longer standing.

Better Usability:

The site is easily available to the large portion of the online users. A better optimized and designed website always attracts lot of visitors.

Higher Sales:

Increased visibility, cost effectiveness and accessibility leads to the higher product sales.