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Tag: google algorithm

5 For Friday: Winning at Local Search, Snippets in Search, & Investing in Content

1. Google Structured Snippets Officially in Search Results
– Search Engine Land

Schema markup and other forms of structured data are being used by webmasters to display Google structured snippets, but this isn’t the only way more data is pulled into the search results. Google has been testing out new forms of this “structured data.” Data for a particular search result is now being pulled from “Knowledge Graph and other data sources.” Google is pulling more and more information from sites to show in search results in order to “provide the most relevant information to the user.”

2. Be Careful of Switching to HTTPS to Improve Google Rankings: The Buffer Story [UPDATE]
– Search Engine Land

In early August, Google announced they would be putting more trust in secure sites as a ranking factor. One particular case in which a site adopted this practice early actually saw a major drop in traffic immediately following. This was an issue on Google’s part during the roll out of this new algorithmic adjustment. It has since been corrected, but the moral of the story is: Be cautious before making such a big website change.

3. How to Win at Local SEO with Reviews, Citations, and Local Events
– Search Engine Journal

Recent Google algorithm updates have local businesses panicking trying to react to these new updates. While it is not time to panic, it is time to make sure you have all your local SEO basis covered. Make sure you are still completing all of the long lasting local search practices – consistent local listings, social media presence, and on-page optimizations. Make sure to take things to the next level by optimizing your local listing and reaching out to customers for reviews. This article takes local search even further by explaining how to leverage your local events online!

4. How to Use Keyword Research to Find New Landing Page Testing Ideas
– Search Engine Watch

Deciding on which elements of a landing page to test can be difficult and the options are endless. This article describes a shortcut for coming up with winning test ideas, which is competitive keyword research. Many available tools online allow you to view the landing page for given keywords your competitors are using. By viewing different competitors and their landing pages, you can get many different A/B testing ideas to improve your paid search campaign.

5. Don’t Forget to Invest in Content (Not Just “Content Marketing”)
– Search Engine Watch

Businesses are jumping on board with the idea of content marketing, but many are solely investing in content creation. They know they need to be using content in their marketing strategy but they are getting their intern to work on it. Business owners need to be focused on the actual content creation process and what is being published because anyone can write but it may not be representing your brand in the best way. This article focuses on 4 main reasons business owners need to invest in content, not just “content marketing.”

Image Sources:

Google Algorithm Image

Local Business Pin Image

September 26, 2014
The Beheading of Google Authorship

So unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know, or at least have an idea, of what happened to Google Authorship. Back in June, we saw the ominous sign that Google removed Authorship circle count and photos from search results. Between its low implementation rates and high error of implementation, Google Authorship was simply proving not to be a strong search signal. Google’s continual changes are almost always driven by the goal to improve usability and to make search results more relevant to users.

Why?

So, why, after 7 years, is Google getting rid of this feature, and why did they even have it in the first place?

In 2007, Google patented Agent Rank (aka Author Rank) with the idea of creating a search signal to improve the rankings of authoritative, reputable authors. They understood the power of personal connection and the desire for people to connect with other people online. As the years went on, rel=”author” was rolled out to webmasters everywhere, and with the start of Google+, the Authorship project came full circle. This was, at the time, a solid way to prove authenticity of writers for those searching for trusted results.

However, as time went on, it became apparent that the use cases of Authorship markup were either limited or done incorrectly. In a study performed by Stone Temple Consulting, which sampled 500 authors over 150 different major media sites, it was found that 70% of authors didn’t even try to connect their content and authorship to one another, and that 72% of sites that did attempt markup, had errors.

Google’s research also found that providing author information in search results didn’t help users, and if anything, distracted from search results.

Now What?

First, this doesn’t mean that Google is diminishing the value of markup in general, just this particular type of markup. In a post on his Google+ page, John Mueller said, ”Going forward, we’re strongly committed to continuing and expanding our support of structured markup (such as schema.org).”

It is clear, that in their ideal world, Google will find a better way to come back to this Authorship feature. According to Mark Traphagen, Sr. Director of Online Marketing for Stone Temple Consulting, this is far from the end of authorship. Google just needs to have the ability to more confidently determine who the voices of a niche are without relying on markup. In Mark’s words, “author authority is going to have to be based on much more sophisticated means of machine-based identification and understanding,” which, as you can imagine, we are a long way away from.

Moving forward, I think it is important for authors to continue using the best Authorship practices, because Authorship still exists, just with a lesser role in search results. And there is no evidence that having a strong Authorship presence won’t influence your results in a more indirect way. Also, quality content will always be a strong ranking factor, and providing multiple, non-spammy ways to access said content across the web (like through the “Contributor to” section of your Plus page), will always be a good practice.

Image Source:
Thumbs Up Gif

September 23, 2014
5 For Friday: Local Search, News, Advice, Measuring Success, and Penguin Refresh

1. Local Businesses: Watch Out!
– Search Engine Watch

Apple’s newest gadget, the Apple Watch, is likely to have a major impact on local search. The expected increase in hyper-local searches means added pressure will be placed on businesses to ensure they can be found easily online. “Users will be able to search for locations via dictation or favorites, map out the routes and receive touch feedback at each turn – including different notifications to denote right or left turns” said Apple’s Vice President of Technology Kevin Lynch.

2. SEO Success: Ranking #1 Isn’t What it Used to Be
-Search Engine Land

Following “Pigeon”, Google’s latest algorithm update, it has become increasingly apparent that rankings do not equal success. Instead you should focus on the following 5 metrics to more effectively measure SEO success: organic traffic, organic landing pages, organic conversion sources, Google My Business impressions and clicks for driving directions.

3. Awaiting the Penguin Refresh
– Search Engine Watch

Google’s John Mueller recently announced that a Google is working on a Penguin update that is expected to launch in the “reasonable future.” In the meantime, Muller encourages webmasters to “focus on cleaning up site issues and making sure the sites are as good as they can be in and of themselves rather than focusing on individual factors of individual algorithms.”

4. Social Customer Service: Now More Important than Ever
– Search Engine Watch

The social media revolution has had countless impacts on the success and failure of businesses. Consumers have more power than ever before; therefore, it is crucial businesses are aware of their concerns. Tips for success include: taking complaints and issues offline as quickly as possible, responding in less than an hour, and creating content that helps the customer, while maintaining a positive attitude.

5. App-sessed
– Marketing Land

A new study shows that users spent 21 percent more time on apps in the last year. The data revealed that users are spending the longest amount of time on music-related apps and the shortest (but also most frequent) amount of time on social networking apps.

Image Sources:

Pigeon Update Image

Social Media Apps Image

September 19, 2014
5 For Friday – Amazon Ad Challenge, Facebook Changes, Twitter Spam, & Google’s Snafu

1) Amazon Takes on Google Adwords – Wall Street Journal

The war for Internet supremacy rages on between Google and Amazon. The increasingly competitive relationship between the two giants has grown even more strained as of late, but their tenuous relationship has survived largely because Amazon is one of Google’s largest advertisers for text ads. But that may change.

Amazon is working on a competing in-house platform, and testing could commence as early as later this year. Using the plethora of shopping data the online retailer has amassed, the program could almost instantly become a major force against the search engine’s online ad dominance.

2) Despite More Ads, Facebook Promises, “We Will Not Show More Ads” – Digiday

Speaking of Internet giants, Facebook is in the news again. In a rather quiet update earlier this month, Facebook amended its advertising policy to allow marketers to show ads more frequently in users’ News Feeds.

The update allows advertisers to show the same ad twice a day, as opposed to the previous once a day restriction. The new update also allows advertisers to show users two News Feeds ads per day from a page that they did not explicitly “Like,” again up from just one.

Facebook emphasizes that you will not see more ads from various companies, just possibly more ads from the same company. A Facebook spokesperson said of the change, “This does not change ad load. We will not show more ads; rather, we are updating the spacing between ads, and relaxing some of the parameters around the insertion of ads.”

Hmmm… more ads is more ads, no matter who they are from.

3) More from Zuckerberg & Co: Facebook is Finally Cracking down in Upworthy-Style Click Bait – Gizmodo

We’ve all seen it – an annoying, attention-grabbing headline like “No One Would Help This Little Girl from Being Bullied. What She Did Next Will Shock and Amaze You.”

Of course, these headlines are designed only to generate clicks, but dang, am I intrigued. I mostly refuse to click them simply on principle, but even when I do succumb to the temptation, I am always disappointed.

Thankfully, Facebook is finally taking steps to eradicate this spammy click bait by looking at how long people actually read the articles they click on as well as comparing the click ratio to comments, “Likes,” and shares.

Facebook also announced that links should be posted in a “link format” instead of shared in the status update and captions of photos. Posts that have links in the captions will be given less priority in the News Feed.

4) Meet Twitter’s Spam-Fighting Tool – Marketing Land

And now, a word from that other social media juggernaut: Last week, Twitter gave an inside look at their super spam-killing system known as BotMaker. Since launching the system recently, spam metrics have dropped 40% overall.

BotMaker is designed to prevent spam content from being created, reduce the amount of time spam appears on Twitter, and reduce the reaction of new spam attacks. To accomplish this, Twitter uses a combination of systems that detect spam at various stages: Scarecrow (real time), Sniper (near real time), and Periodic (over extended periods of time). What makes it even more effective is its ability to adapt quickly with new models and rules to combat the ever-changing production and proliferation of spam.

To learn more about the creation of BotMaker and how it works, feel free to dig in deep over on the Twitter Engineering Blog.

5) Moving to HTTPS: Good or Bad? – Wall Street Journal

Google recently announced it would be giving a boost in search rankings to encrypted websites. But in an effort to push site owners to switch to HTTPS, Google overlooked the fact that many web components, including its own Trusted Stores and AdSense, are not completely compatible with those types of sites yet.

To protect sensitive info, sites were already required to have their checkout pages encrypted, but the announced rankings boost spurred many sites to try and convert all of their “non-sensitive” pages as well.

This caused a bit of a problem with user experience. Trusted Stores is not compatible with basic encryption, meaning that the required badge cannot be displayed. Without this badge, Google will not accept HTTPS sites into the Verified Stores program.

As for AdSense, Google now acknowledges that “if you convert your HTTP site to HTTPS, ads on your HTTPS pages might earn less than those on your HTTP pages.” This is because the HTTPS ads don’t compete in auctions with HTTP ads, which lowers rates. Whoops!

Image Sources:

Amazon in Browser

Do Not Push Button
“Oops my bad”

August 29, 2014
Give Your Site Some Link-building Lovin’

With this year’s Google algorithm updates, we’ve heard a lot of buzz about implementing disavows and getting rid of bad, non-relevant links to your site. However, what we’ve heard less about is what to do after you get rid of all of those links. Now that those disavowed or deleted links are no longer helping, (or hurting) your site, it’s important to build up a profile of links that are strong, relevant, and influential to help elevate your site back to its previous authority and status. Here are some tips to help give your site the link building lovin’ that it needs.

1. Create A Link Building Strategy

Just like with any marketing endeavor, it’s important to create a roadmap and set goals to get a clear sense of where you want your efforts to take you. Take a look at the current links pointing to your site. Then, decide which types of links are relevant and helpful to your site (the kind of links you’d like to pursue more of). Based on that, allocate a budget, time, and metrics to measure your upcoming link building efforts.

2. Use Real-Life PR Opportunities

A great way to get natural links back to your site is to do it the old-fashioned way with PR opportunities. Host an event, go to conferences, engage in your community, leverage relevant organizations — all of these activities not only build your brand, they also provide credible linking opportunities for your website.

Remember: Almost anything that happens offline can be captured online as well.

3. Leverage Great Shareable Content

The adage “content is key” is especially applicable when it comes to link building. People are consuming massive amounts of content on the Internet everyday. Content is a great way to capture viewers’ attention. Additionally, when viewers share a piece of content or use it on their own site, your website is attributed as the source.

Getting rid of old, irrelevant links to your site is just like cleaning out your closet. Every wardrobe needs updating, so send last season’s links to the thrift store and go find yourself the latest collection of new links to give your site a boost.

Image Sources:

Link Memes

August 26, 2014
Survive Your Serving of Google’s Pigeon Pie

Late last week, influencer Erika Karas wrote an informative blog about Google’s algorithm update, Pigeon. The new Pigeon update might make it more difficult for individual businesses to rank among sites that Google deems more useful and relevant to local searchers’ results. Most local directories received a boost in rankings thanks to Pigeon. It makes sense if you consider the fact that when most people search for things like “pizza New Orleans,” they want to see a list of their options along with reviews, making sites like Yelp and Zagat more relevant than just a link to one pizza place in the area.

So, how can you make sure you stay relevant with this in mind? First, search for common phrases that your targeted audience looks for. Next, see what sites Google is ranking highest and get your business on there with detailed and correct information.

In the research I’ve done since the algorithm update, these are the sites I’ve found most often: Yelp, Zagat, Urbanspoon, Thumbtack, TripAdvisor, and Yellowpages. For obvious reasons, Google Plus is the first place your listings should be claimed and optimized. Yellowpages and Yelp are also great places to start, because they both have backend business portals that make it easy to claim and update your listings. They also require phone verifications by the business, which makes them more authoritative and trusted by Google. It’s best to provide as much information as possible in these listings and be consistent in the information you provide. Your name, address, phone number, website, and hours of operation should all be the same on your listings as they are on your website.

Also, look out for categorical sites like HealthGrades, RateADentist, HomeAway, and the like that are relevant to your industry. You might want to look into getting your business on these industry sites, as they will also play a key role in rankings post-Pigeon. In some of my Pigeon research, I noticed our golf and dental clients were affected the most. These clients were pushed down in rankings in favor of categorical sites like RateADentist and GolfNow.

Although these tips aren’t guaranteed to aid your rankings, they will help keep you relevant and appearing among industry-specific results.

July 31, 2014
Has Panda 4.0 Got You Down?
Now that we are 4 weeks post-Panda 4.0, there is a decent amount of data to sift through and determine if a website got caught in the Panda filter.

Panda is supposed to provide consumers with search results that are helpful to their needs. This means websites that have some authority and provide a service to consumers are going to be more trusted and rank better. The better websites offer answers to consumers for what they are looking for and help them make decisions based on useful information. The content is engaging and gets people the information they need.

Not Too Much Panda Drama

Panda started rolling out May 19, so that’s our magic date for before and after data. When looking only at Google organic traffic and comparing May 19, 2014-Jun 15, 2014 to Apr 21, 2014-May 18, 2014, I saw a 6.71% increase for one plastic surgeon’s website. This is a respectable increase when you consider that summer is generally thought to be the start of the slow season for plastic surgery as an industry.

For this plastic surgeon, I looked at the same date range for the last 4 years. Every year, this same date comparison resulted in a minor and expected decrease of Google organic traffic. This illustrates the typical seasonality. Given that history, we’re pretty excited to see an increase from Google organic traffic going into summer.

I looked at another client’s website, this time for an apartment complex, which is up 15% in Google organic search. Last year showed a decrease for the same time frame comparison. Unfortunately, the client didn’t have Analytics data for 2012. I have always thought that summer would be a high season for his industry, but he says for his complex and his location, summer is not necessarily the busy season. I always like to see double-digit growth in Google organic traffic (that’s a no brainer), but I worry about the monthly Panda data refresh leveling things back out, which happens all the time. The fact that the site had an increase at least tells us that the site is trusted, and we are on the right path, so that’s the story to celebrate.

One of our account managers has a charter-fishing website (which I think would be super fun to work on). This fishing charter client had a whopping 115% increase, but you have to consider that this is his high season. Last year the same time frame comparisons saw a 65% increase. Even with the seasonality, I think he was a winner with Panda 4.0. He has lots of great original photos and lots of engagement – it totally looks fun to go out on his boat! And that’s a major part of what makes a quality site.

In the health industry, we have a drug rehabilitation clinic website, which experienced a 19% increase after Panda 4.0. So, the interesting part for this client is that their content is solid. We have been working more heavily on their citations and less on their content, so it’s possible this client is simply readjusting from the previous Panda. It’s also possible that clean local citations are helping the site’s quality and trust.

Magic?

I know everyone reads these posts for some super secret insight, to learn some nugget of goodness, and I will probably disappoint. The efforts of our account managers have helped our clients’ websites, some shown above, but really, as a group, we have done nothing extraordinary. If it’s an older client, we have taken the time to review all of the past years of work and get back to the basics. We fixed any technical SEO problems we found. We are also constantly refreshing content, constantly reviewing citations, and building social channels with planned content calendars. If it’s a newer client, we work on building a solid foundation of fresh content, consistent business data, and getting social.

There is no magic here, just thoroughness.

This Wasn’t Just Any Ol’ Panda Update

This Panda update is largely thought to be a significant algorithm change rather than the monthly refresh. Barry Schwartz says it succinctly, “Panda 4.0 must be a major update to the actual algorithm versus just a data refresh. Meaning, Google has made changes to how Panda identifies sites and has released a new version of the algorithm today.”

What does this mean? It means that if you look in Google Analytics and your visits took a dive towards the end of May 2014, then you need to dedicate some time, effort, and resources to your website. When there is a Panda data refresh every month, it’s not going to get better without some serious website rehab.

As a side note, most of the clients I looked at had a small bump up in first week of June. I don’t know if there was a Panda refresh just 2 weeks after the Panda algo update, but I definitely see it across a large number of clients.

The Panda Checklist

There is so much you can do to “clean your house” for Panda, but here are the first efforts I would take to tackle the Panda beast.

#1 Crawl Before You Can Walk

Start with a detailed crawl of your website. You can use whichever website crawler you prefer (At Search Influence, most of us use the Screaming Frog SEO Spider). You’re really just looking for a comprehensive spreadsheet where you can look at your website as a whole. The crawl will give you a list of pages, images, CSS files, and many other goodies.

With this list, you can sort, filter, get organized, and clean up your site.
- Review how many H1s and H2s each page has. Subheadings are wonderful. Use them.
- Check your canonicals. Make sure they are set up properly.
- See what is being redirected.
- Find what is 404ing.
- Read the meta data for each page and see how amazing or how lame it is.
With this list, you can find multiple pages on a single topic. Often enough, we find a client has multiple pages and posts on a single topic. I looked at a client two weeks ago who had 8 pages all on the #1 service she offered. Wow! I was so overwhelmed. I can’t imagine how a casual site visitor would feel (“Where in these 8 pages is the info I need?”) or how the Google bots sort this out. Confusion within your own site is absolutely a no-no. If I am confused about which page I should read, then the Google bots sure won’t know what to say about it. If they could talk and all.

Once you review your site crawl and have some action items to improve the tags and architecture (i.e. make it easier for the consumer to find what they need), you can laser focus on individual pages within the site.

#2 Am I a … Plagiarizer?!

Put your site through a content checker. There are a few out there, so try several because no single tool is the best. If you wrote your content years ago or someone wrote your content for you, it’s a good investment to check for duplication. Who knows who has scraped your content or if your writer ripped it off from some other unsuspecting website owner.

Search Influence’s Tracy Stoller, Content Lead, asks a pointed question, “Google is looking for quality content that is useful to searchers. If the content is on 40 other sites, what makes your site the useful one?

#3 Improve the Content

If you’ve discovered some redundant pages, you need to merge those pieces into a single primary page for the given topic. This is tedious, but it absolutely must be done.

If you happen to find some duplicate content, rewrite it. Sit down and knock out some new text. If you are the business owner, then you know the details of your product and service like no one else. I like to suggest that a business owner talk about the service—just talk—and record him/herself. Then, have a transcript service type it up from the recording. This usually generates the most natural and most detailed text, even after editing.

How long has it been since you updated the content on your site?

I logged into a client’s WordPress site last week and saw that the page I was on had not been updated since 2010. We have been updating their content slowly, but, clearly, we missed this one. Some topics may not have much change in four years, but we can look at how the visitors came to that page and where they went after and how long they spent on the page, and we can certainly refresh the page with this information in mind. We can rewrite with more details and offer easy links to the most often visited next page. We want to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to get the information they need.

Remember, content does not mean just text. Content is text and videos and images and calculators and quizzes and slideshows, etc. Multifaceted media on a single page creates an extremely consumer-focused experience.

#4 Take Some Pictures!

You need relevant images on your page of text. Text and images should be focused on a single topic. The image should be optimized around the same topical idea as the text on the page. If you create the image, and it’s original, that’s even better. I have combed through a client’s Facebook, Flickr, and Pinterest to grab any original images they have and reuse them on the website. If they already exist, and I have access to them, it’s one less thing I have to ask the client to do. You really need to see the impact of authentic, original images.

Really, which of these says more to the consumer?

#5 Blogging

Pages and blog posts are different animals. Pages are for the topics that are evergreen and should represent a business’ core products or services. Blog posts are for
- Commenting on current events,
- Answering specific questions that require high levels of detail (Q&A)
- Showing current trends in your industry
- Real engagement with your audience!
Paula Keller, Search Influence’s Director of Account Management, says, “We see blog posts written about specialized topics from seven years ago still driving organic search engine traffic to a website. Blogging is good for the readers who come across it today, good for the search engines as the new content publication brings them back to your site, and has long-lasting benefits on your site’s authority.“

#6 Video

Video is not entirely necessary to overcome Panda, but it is a great addition to your content. The best videos are created with some input from the client or are created by the business owner with a handy smartphone.

The best videos are instructional how-to’s or tutorials: 30 seconds on unclogging a sink, installing an ice maker water line, or one minute of an attorney educating us how to behave if we get pulled over or… (Yikes!) arrested.

When you have a video created and ready, add the video to your Google account’s YouTube channel, and embed it on the topically relevant page. Mark it up with proper schema! I would add videos at a pace that is both slow and steady – once a month, once a quarter – whatever frequency you think you can actually stick to.

#7 Consistency is The Key

Okay, so I know that local citations work is not the first thing we think of when we are considering Panda (typically thought of as strictly a content algorithm). Panda is really searching for the quality, authoritative websites. Way back at the very first Panda, Google said, “It will provide better rankings for high-quality sites.” And one of the key efforts in building high-quality sites is having clean consistent business data across the local ecosystem.

David Mihm started his Local Search Ranking Factors “to help small business owners confused by Local Search, or those strapped for time, to prioritize their marketing efforts.” Many industry leaders contribute to the Factors (including Search Influence!). It was last published in August 2013, and it reveals that citation volume, NAP consistency, and other local signals account for 16% of the ranking factors.

Our own Mary Silva, Senior Internet Marketing Associate, adds, “Consistent and correct business NAP (Name, Address, Phone, and often Website) is the key to getting your site to rank locally. If Google finds inconsistencies in your business information across the web, then your business and its associated site are considered less authoritative and not as trustworthy.”

You can clean your listings yourself, but be forewarned, it’s a serious time investment. There are tools out there to help you in this endeavor. Be sure to allocate some hours every month to reviewing those tools and taking any action to edit and update listings as you go.

Learn to Love the Panda!

If you need help getting your site back on track from Panda, we would love to help out. Just know that Panda can be your friend. The latest update shows that it’s a simple matter of some spring cleaning, getting back to the basics, and being a good citizen. We can help you get there!
June 18, 2014
Hummingbird: Google Answers Your Questions, Anticipates What You Want to Know

Google’s most recent algorithm update, Hummingbird, or as some are calling it, the silent update, snuck it’s way into our lives under the radar a few weeks ago. The update was revealed at a celebratory meeting⏤hosted in the legendary garage that Larry and Sergey rented when Google started⏤commemorating the 15-year anniversary of Google’s founding. Although we don’t know much about how the update works (Google wouldn’t release the technical specifics), we do know that it will affect 90% of searches worldwide.

You may have noticed that Google has gotten better at offering up direct answers to long, complex questions. This update was the most noted change and will allow Google to quickly parse full questions instead of parsing word by word. It will also allow Google to identify and deliver answers to those questions from the content it’s indexed. Other noted changes were updates to Google’s Knowledge Graph that allow for comparison questions and push notifications for Google on iOS. With more people speaking into their phones for searches, Google needed to come up with a new algorithm to turn this process into a more natural conversation and even more accurately anticipate the answer you are ultimately searching for.

If Google is using information presented on your site in its Knowledge Graph⏤Google’s encyclopedia of 570 million concepts, or any other display of info on its search engine results page⏤it means that it trusts you so much that it is willing to quote and/or paraphrase your information to searchers. While PC World dubs it to be “poaching pageviews” from the actual websites that are answering our questions, our belief is that it is either an indication of the strength and authority of your site, or that it will help boost such in the long run. The update was less focused on adjustments to SERPs when people are searching for products and services to purchase and more geared at answering questions. Google did say that this was the biggest overhaul to their engine since the 2010 “Caffeine” update (which was focused on speed and including social network results into search).

How will this update affect you?

The algorithm was silently put into place weeks ago, so if you have not already noticed any significant differences in your rankings, you probably will not see them from this Hummingbird update. It is probable that as you search, you will not notice a huge difference in search results, especially for small businesses. Instead, you will be able to ask Google specific, complex questions and receive a relevant answer.

Share with us in the comments any interesting shifts in your rankings, or any interesting tricks Google seems to be throwing your way when you search!

October 16, 2013
Google’s Comin’, Yo! Penguin Update Resources You Can Use

Over the past couple of months, there has been a great deal of hysteria surrounding the unnatural link warnings being sent out in Google Webmaster Tools. These warnings and the release of Google’s Penguin update mean that now is definitely the time to start trying to “act natural” with your link-building methods. While I don’t have any major revelations about this alarming issue, I have been following it rather closely and have some informative posts on the subject to share.

Barry Schwartz’s article at Search Engine Land was interesting because it contains some insight from a Google spokesperson about the warnings people are receiving in Google Webmaster Tools. The spokesman says rather than it just being the effects of Google going after paid blog/link networks, it is Google choosing to report about these issues more so than in the past.

Carson Ward’s post on SEOmoz was especially insightful as it was from the point of view of a self-identified reformed link network spammer. This post gives a highly thorough run down of paid blog networks and identifying posts from them, the webmaster tools unnatural link warning and the best way to apply for reinclusion, and basic advice on how to build a more natural link profile going forward.

Norma Rickman’s post at redmenacemarketing.com has a message of staying calm and chugging along. It goes a bit further in the advice for building a natural link profile by detailing several safer sources of link building. Her ideas on using sources like social bookmarking, Youtube, and guest posting on blogs while maintaining a diverse set of anchor texts are definitely something to take a look at.

While there are many more great posts out there on this subject, I felt that many of them had too much of an alarmist tone to them. It is true that these warnings are cause for any webmaster to be alarmed but it doesn’t mean that panic and overreacting should occur. The best thing that you can do if you are currently dealing with the unnatural link warning issue is to keep a clear head. Do some research and try to get a broad understanding of the situation and how to tackle it before starting the sky-is-falling routine.

May 10, 2012