Category: SEO

Starting in February of 2011, Google began updating its Page Rank algorithms to weed out what they deemed “thin content” and black hat SEO. Google’s algorithmic updates were specifically targeting low-quality content farms and websites engaged in dubious practices to increase their Page Rank, such as keyword stuffing or link schemes. With these updates, playfully named Panda and Penguin, Google seemed to be sending a volley out to the web marketing world to shape up or risk a deduction in Page Rank.

And what have most SEO-related blogs responded with? A histrionic outcry of, “SEO is dead!” While the melodrama may be a fun read, it couldn’t be less accurate. SEO is not dead, and it certainly isn’t dying. Google’s changes have surely changed the landscape of what SEO considers best practices, but that is far from the death knell that bloggers have been touting it as.

Rather than trying to render SEO irrelevant, Google is focusing on user experience in search results. Is your website informative and useful to the user? It seems the biggest focus of these updates is to promote higher quality content and to demote websites that provide the user with little or no substance at all.

Visitor engagement is the new key to higher Page Rank — a real and organic exchange of information and content rather than a detached link exchange. I suspect, since both Google and Bing have indicated that social networks are a factor in Page Rank, that having a reputable Twitter or Facebook account and sharing links there will become more and more important.

The focus is shifting from quantity to quality. Visitors want to know that a link they click will actually have the information they need rather than just look like it. Instead of using content farms and irrelevant linking, Google is encouraging the SEO world to produce real content for the real users who visit websites.

So stop shouting, “SEO IS DEAD” and start shouting, “LONG LIVE SEO!”

With Apple in position to steal some of Google’s mobile maps glory, the search giant is starting down a warpath. By boasting to the BBC about the superiority of Google Maps and touting their fancy Ground Truth technology that uses Street View data as an additional factor in verifying Maps data, Google is giving a clear message that they are not taking the replacement lying down.

While I’m sure the battle will be viciously fun to watch, the point that I find interesting is that Google is actually highlighting their error correction capabilities as a selling point. As someone that has spent more time than they would like reporting errors in G+ Local and editing Map Maker listings, I can assure you this isn’t an area I would necessarily be bragging about.

While the current “report a problem” system and Map Maker are definite improvements over previous support features, the whole error reporting system, from a business owner’s perspective, is still an overly convoluted experience that often requires repeated attempts for seemingly simple issues. For example, something as simple as a suite number not appearing where it should can take a significant amount of time and effort to fix, causing major headaches for customers trying to find the location in the meantime.

I’ll elaborate on the suite number issue because it clearly illustrates the struggles that many business owners go through with Google Maps error reporting systems.

Lately, suite numbers haven’t been properly displaying on live G+ Local listings. This has happened even if they were entered in the second address line field in the Local Business Center as is instructed in the Places quality guidelines.

One issue in resolving this is that the “report a problem” interface in G+ Local only offers a single line for editing the entire address. So when you attempt to get the suite number corrected using this method, Google automatically reformats your correction to exclude the suite number. You can override this by selecting your original formatting; however, it seems that then the address incorrectly transfers over to Map Maker as only one field rather than separate address and suite number fields, and the problem usually goes uncorrected because the fields are not properly linked between the two error reporting systems.

Map Maker handles suite numbers differently because, as opposed to the U.S., the majority of the world places the suite number at the beginning of the address rather than at the end. This can cause issues when editing suite numbers in Map Maker; if you place the suite number in the correct field in Map Maker, it typically transfers over to G+ Local incorrectly, with the suite number appearing at the front of the address line. One then has to use the “report a problem” feature to get the attention of someone on the G+ Local team to manually place the suite number in the correct location which involves them going against the correct Map Maker format.

Ultimately, Google needs to create uniform address fields that are correctly mapped throughout all of the databases connected to their local ecosystem. To me, this seems like it would be pretty easy to implement for a company that has the capacity to verify traffic directions by analyzing the road signs captured by their nearly world-wide fleet of Street View vehicles, but it seems I am wrong in that assumption. Maybe Apple has the right idea in using third-party providers to deal with these types of issues for them. Sure, relying on another company seems like it would take longer, but if there is any company that can strong-arm its data providers to meet their demands for quickly-updated, accurate and stable local data, it would be Apple. Let’s keep an eye on this story — as the maps giants duke it out, those of us down on the ground will have to adapt.

Have you had difficulty getting your address to show up properly in G+ Local? How was the process of fixing it?

We’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Brace Yourself: The Next Penguin Update Will Be Big — SEO Round Table

Matt Cutts didn’t just hint at the Search Engine Strategies San Francisco conference, he outright warned “You don’t want the next Penguin update.” More importantly, he gave insight into how the black-and-white creatures update. Panda is now a regular and quiet update, more like a ranking factor than an “update,” while Penguin still has some iterations before it will settle into the same kind of rolling boil. All this means for your online marketing is to be aware of the ever-changing search engine rank and to weather storms with sharable and linkable content.

Saudi Arabia thinks .anything is .offensive — CNN

Saudi Arabia and other countries are objecting to a variety of the new TLDs released for sale by ICANN. While Saudi concerns center around prurient and religious topics, other countries such as Australia are running into existing laws that prohibit certain terms in advertising. The ICANN has a detailed process to handle these concerns, but the simplest solution for this issue is something that many liberal democracies and net privacy folks might balk at: nationalized domain and TLD blocking.

Consumer Watchdog asks the FTC to Support Google’s competitors by blocking Frommer’s acquisition — The Inquirer

A decades-old consumer advocacy nonprofit is lobbying the FTC to block Google’s acquisition of travel guide publisher Frommer’s, echoing a statement from the Google competitors’ group Fairsearch.org. Consumer Watchdog cites the recent Cookiegate, which ended in the largest FTC punishment to any company ($22.5 million) to Google, as an example that the company “has repeated [sic] demonstrated it does not honor its promises.” Consumer Watchdog had no comment on the great value to Google that a combination of Frommer’s and Zagat would have, saying “What’s important is that it’s blocked.”

Google Plus Ghost Town? — UMPF

PR and social media agency UMPF posted an infographic comparing Google+ shares per user to other social networks. Per 100 million users, Twitter reigns supreme with nearly 200 shares; followed by Facebook and LinkedIn before Google’s 6 shares per 100 million. Yet, anyone on these social networks might smell a rat: . Marketing Land’s post on the subject brings up a variety of issues with the studies, but the most striking is that 100 posts is hardly enough to judge this kind of interaction. Interesting too is that “likes” and “+1s” aren’t shares, while Twitter only has a “share” feature through retweets and simple posting.

Guys! Bing Has Human Raters Too! — Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land reports that Bing’s quality judges are not too far off from their counterparts at Google. These contracted workers use a rubric based on relevancy to search intent as the main way to evaluate search results. Bing’s judges also should take “freshness” into account, echoing Google’s QDF status on certain search phrases. While the substance isn’t particularly different than Google’s evaluations, the subtleties show what a business can do to ensure high evaluations in the major search engines.

Got a killer link from this week? Let us know in the comments!

• Twitter Inching Closer To Giving You All Your Tweets, But Search Has A Long Way To Go – Search Engine Land

Twitter’s finally giving the people what they want: a way for users to search through their own history of tweets. While it seems like a pretty basic function for any blogging platform to implement, Search Engine Land’s list of current Twitter search engines shows how the company has been bafflingly negligent thus far.

• The USA Basketball Team’s Instagram Shots Are Ridiculously Awesome – Mashable

The U.S. Olympic basketball team invades social networking platform Instagram, thrusting themselves into the spotlight just before the games with a set of fantastic personal photos. Consider taking a page from their playbook, and see what a little creative photography can bring to your business.

• Google to open YouTube studio in London – The Telegraph

This week in “I want to go to there…!”, The Telegraph brings us news of YouTube’s upcoming ‘Creator Space.’ Opening in Google’s Soho offices, the Creator Space studio gives amateur UK film makers access to some serious production equipment. Check out the amazing tour video, and maybe consider booking that flight to London soon (as if you needed another reason).

• 15 Helpful Link Building Tools – Search Engine Watch

Fuel for the behind-the-scenes SEO associate in your life: Garrett Finch has a list of fantastic tools (some paid, many free) for building your links, and a few extras thrown in for increasing productivity.

• Are We Addicted to Gadgets or Indentured to Work? – The Atlantic

And while we’re on the subject of productivity… The Atlantic points out that you might be missing out on the “real world” experience by bringing your work home with you. The recent uptick in gadgets and productivity apps makes carrying your world with you easier than ever before, keeping job managers and taskmasters close at hand (literally) with their employees, around the clock.

We’re back with another 5 for Friday, a collection of the freshest and tastiest SEO news stories, blogs and recommendations from across the web!

Most importantly, this happened. Now for the rest:

Beluga Analytics Offers Demographics & Stats Behind Your Guiltiest Pleasures — AimClearBlog.com

We’ll start today with something really fun: Grooveshark released Beluga Analytics today, which is a wealth of demographic data using music as a touchstone for marketing data. Did you want to know what game systems Faith No More fans likely have? Maybe not, but beyond simple interest, this data gives a really interesting and sneaky way to target people for advertising. If you see that a certain band’s fans are disproportionally predisposed to own a certain product, targeting them with your Facebook ads might give you business you never thought existed.

Google+, Calendar to get events feature — ITProPortal.com

Amidst the hubbub of the Google+ Local Release, events were announced for Google+. Integrated with your Google Calendar, the new events will integrate Hangouts and other Google+ features, allowing you even more personalization and real-life interaction. This expands the social layer to yet another Google property, giving users more reason to join Google+ and differentiating the network further from the social media giants it competes with.

Helping to Create Better Websites: Introducing Content Experiments — Google Analytics Blog

Many marketers use A/B testing to make sure they’re giving their users the best possible experience. For years, Google’s Website Optimizer tool has been a standalone product, separate from analytics tracking. But now, Google Analytics, which has undergone a swath of changes lately on other fronts, is taking over for the Optimizer. With Content Experiments, Google has streamlined the process of conversion optimization and added in the power of their analytics platform to make it even easier to test. If you’re interested in A/B testing, you can always check your gut with Which Test Won, which puts out a new A/B test every week to test yourself against the users.

Why You Should Care That .Com Can Be .Anything — LawLawLandBlog.com

Top-level domains, like .com or .org, are now open to almost anything. For $185,000, you too can have a personal TLD! Google recently bought a bunch with $9,000,000 of pocket change. LawLaw Land talks about the ramifications for business, though most businesses just aren’t big enough to handle such a problem, much less even worry about the proposition. Still, it’s worth checking this list of new TLDs to make sure that you don’t want to get in touch with the owner of the generic TLD for your industry to strengthen your brand.

Facebook Allows Varying Levels of Admin Access — MarketingPilgrim.com

In the light of Google+’s recent expansions, Facebook gave itself new tools to help make it stand out too. Facebook expanded its options for page administration this week, allowing you to set up different kinds of managers to monitor and interact with your fans on the site. Combined with scheduled posts, Facebook is clearly seeking to edge out 3rd-party management software, which has been shown to have a lower CTR anyway. Keeping it all on the platform gives small businesses on Facebook an easy way to meet best practices.

There’s a little lagniappe this week for our readers, too: I got to write a guest post for Practical SEO, which focuses solely on stuff you can do today to help your internet marketing efforts.

3 Steps to Protect Consumer Privacy and Be FTC Compliant — PracticalSEO.org

Recently, The FTC and White House have been clamoring for more protections for consumers on the Internet. A 75-page report yields three actions to take to make sure you’re doing the most to ensure your online customers are aware of their ability to control how their data is used on the web. Revising your privacy policy, setting up a Do Not Track cookie on your site, and avoiding “gated communities” focused on privacy-eroding sign-ups gives a marketer or business owner a set of tools to both follow the FTC framework and increase the trust of your visitors.