Search Engine Learning Place

Latest SEO News 2013

The latest Google Webmaster video features Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts talking about what
webmasters can expect to see in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google, particularly changes combating black hat web spam from many different angles in a variety of areas.

Here are nine search and SEO changes webmasters will likely see – although, as always, Cutts warns nothing is set in stone and it should be taken with a grain of salt.

1. Next Generation of Penguin – Penguin 2.0

This update is to try and target more black hat web spam. The new Penguin 2.0, which is the name Google uses internally for the next gen Penguin, will be much more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0 and it will go deeper and have a larger impact than the original.

2. Advertorials

Many advertorials (a.k.a., native advertising) violate Google's quality guidelines. More importantly, they should not flow PageRank.

Google is planning to be a lot stronger on their enforcement of these types of paid links and advertising, disguised as “advertorials”. Cutts did clarify there is nothing wrong with advertorials, simply that they don't want them to be abused for PageRank and linking reasons. If you use advertorials, Cutts suggested that they should be clearly marked and obvious that it is paid advertising.

3. “Payday Loans” in .co.uk

Cutts mentioned that this is a problematic search, and there are others like it, so they are tackling it a couple of different ways. For those that play in that space, however, you're out of luck since Cutts isn't revealing exactly how they are dealing with it, just that it will be happening.

He said that they are targeting specific areas (another example he included was porn queries) that have traditionally been more spammy.

4. Devaluing Upstream Linking

Again, Cutts isn't going into details about this, but they are working on making link buying less effective and have a couple ideas for detailed link analysis to tackle this issue.

5. Hacked Sites

They want to roll out a next generation of hacked detection, as well as being able to notify webmasters better. They would like to be able to point webmasters to more specific information, such as whether they are dealing with malware or a hacked site, and to hopefully clean it up.

6. Authority

If Google's algorithms believe you or your site is an authority in a particular area, they want to make sure those sites rank a little bit higher than other sites.

7. Panda

They are looking for some additional signals for sites that are in the "gray area" or "border zone", and looking for other signals that suggest the site truly is high quality, so it will help those sites who have been previously impacted by Panda.

8. Changes to Cluster of Results From the Same Site

If you're doing deep searches in Google, and going back 5, 6 or more results pages deep, you can see the same site popping up with a cluster of results on those deep pages.

Google is looking into a change where once you have seen a cluster of results from the same site, you will be less likely to see more and more from that same site as you go deeper. Cutts mentioned this as being something that came specifically from user feedback.

9. More Information for Webmasters

Cutts said they want to be able to keep giving webmasters more specific and detailed information via webmaster tools. He mentions specifically example URLs to help webmasters diagnose problems on their site.

He believes that the changes will really make a difference with the quality of the search results, as well as impact the amount of spam that is showing up.

Bottom Line

Cutts says if you are focused on high quality content, you don't have much to worry about. But if you're dabbling in the black hat arts, you might have a busy summer.

1. Article Directories

2. Low-Quality Directories

3. Low Relevance Guest Posts

4. Low Relevance/Accuracy Infographics

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

5. Paid Guest Posts

6. Anchor Text

7. Doorway Pages

8. International Sites

9. Blog Carnivals

10. Poor Quality Content of Any Kind

Some Overall Rules of Thumb

• Is an argument required for you to prove it's a good link? A good link should not be the subject of an argument. No argument is required with good links, when you see a good link you know it right away. Once you start debating whether it could be considered a good link, or justifying it, it isn't.
• Would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist? Any good link is something that has value even without search engines.
• Does the nature of the link enhance your brand in front of your target customers? Would you show it to a target customer as evidence that you are a high-quality, trustworthy business?
• Did the person giving you the link intend it as a genuine endorsement? If not, Google wants to torch it, and so should you.

Summary

4 Steps to Panda-Proof Your Website (Before It’s Too Late!)

It may be a new year, but that hasn’t stopped Google from rolling out yet another Panda refresh.

Last year Google unleashed the most aggressive campaign of major algo updates ever in its crusade to battle rank spam. This year looks to be more of the same.

Since Panda first hit the scene two years ago, thousands of sites have been mauled. SEO forums are littered with site owners who have seen six figure revenue websites and their entire livelihoods evaporate overnight, largely because they didn’t take Panda seriously.

If your site is guilty of transgressions that might provoke the Panda and you haven’t been hit yet, consider yourself lucky. But understand that it’s only a matter of time before you do get mauled. No doubt about it: Panda is coming for you.

Over the past year, we’ve helped a number of site owners recover from Panda. We’ve also worked with existing clients to Panda-proof their websites and (knock on wood) haven’t had a single site fall victim to Panda.

Based on that what we’ve learned saving and securing sites, I’ve pulled together a list of steps and actions to help site owners Panda-proof websites that may be at risk.

Step 1: Purge Duplicate Content

Duplicate content issues have always plagued websites and SEOs. But with Panda, Google has taken a dramatically different approach to how they view and treat sites with high degrees of duplicate content. Where dupe content issues pre-Panda might hurt a particular piece of content, now duplicate content will sink an entire website.

So with that shift in attitude, site owners need to take duplicate content seriously. You must be hawkish about cleaning up duplicate content issues to Panda-proof your site.

Screaming Frog is a good choice when you want to identify duplicate pages. This article by Ben Goodsell offers a great tutorial on locating duplicate content issues.

Some suggestions for fixing dupe content issues include:

Meta directives (e.g. noindex, follow).
Canonical tags (rel=“canonical”).
301 redirects.
Block pages via Robots.txt file.
Remove URLs via Webmaster Tools.
Choose your preferred domain in Webmaster Tools.
Now, cleaning up existing duplicate content issues is critical. But it’s just as important to take a preventative measures as well. This means, addressing the root cause of your duplicate content issues before they end up in the index. Yoast offers some great suggestions on how to avoid duplicate content issues altogether.

Step 2: Eradicate Low Quality, Low Value Content

Google’s objective with Panda is to help users find "high-quality" sites by diminishing the visibility (ranking power) of low-quality content, all of which is accomplished at scale, algorithmically. So weeding out low value content should be mission critical for site owners.

But the million dollar question we hear all the time is “what constitutes ‘low quality’ content?”

Google offered guidance on how to asses page-level quality, which is useful to help guide your editorial roadmap. But what about sites that host hundreds or thousands of pages, where evaluating every page by hand isn’t even remotely practical or cost-effective?

A much more realistic approach for larger sites is to look at user engagement signals that Google is potentially using to identify low-quality content. These would include key behavioral metrics such as:

Low to no visits.
Anemic unique page views.
Short time on page.
High bounce rates.
Of course, these metrics can be somewhat noisy and susceptible to external factors, but they’re the most efficient way to sniff-out out low value content at scale.

Some ways you can deal with these low value and poor performing pages include:

Deleting any content with low to no user engagement signals.
Consolidating the content of thin or shallow pages into thicker, more useful documents (i.e., “purge and merge).”
Adding additional internal links to improve visitor engagement (and deeper indexation). Tip: make sure these internal links point to high-quality content on your site.
One additional type of low quality content that often gets overlooked is pagination. Proper pagination is highly effective at distributing link equity throughout your site. But high ratios of paginated archives, comments and tag pages can also dilute your site’s crawl budget, cause indexation cap issues and negatively tip the scales of high-to low-value content ratios on your site.

Tips for Panda-proofing pagination include:

“No index, follow” paginated pages.
Tag paginated content with “rel=prev” and “rel=next” to indicate documents in a sequence.

Step 3: Thicken-Up Thin Content

Google hates thin content. And this disdain isn’t reserved for spammy scraper sites or thin affiliates only. It’s also directed at sites with little or no original content (i.e., another form of “low value” content).

One of the riskiest content types we see frequently on client sites are thin directory-style pages. These are aggregate feed pages you’d find on ecommerce product pages (both page level and category level); sites with city, state and ZIP code directory type pages (think hotel and travel sites); and event location listings (think ticket brokers). And many sites host thousands of these page types, which other than a big list of hyperlinks have zero-to-no content.

Unlike other low-value content traps, these directory pages are often instrumental in site usability and helping users navigate to deeper content. So deleting them or merging them isn’t an option.

Instead, the best strategy here is to thicken up these thin directory pages with original content. Some recommendations include:

Drop a thousand words of original, value-add content on the page in an effort to treat each page as a comprehensive guide on a specific topic.
Pipe in API data and content mash-ups (excellent when you need to thicken hundreds or thousands of pages at scale).
Encourage user reviews.
Add images and videos.
Move thin pages off to subdomains, which Google hints at. Though we use this is as more of a “stop gap” approach for sites that have been mauled by Panda and are trying to rebound quickly, rather than a long-term, sustainable strategy.
It’s worth noting that these recommendations can be applied to most types of thin content pages. I’m just using directory style pages as an example because we see them so often.

When it comes to discovering thin content issues at scale, take a look at word count. If you’re running WordPress, there are a couple of plugins you can use to asses word count for every document on your site:

WP Word Count
Admin Word Count Column
As well, here are some all-purpose plugin recommendations to help in the war against Panda.

All in all, we’re seeing documents that have been thickened up get a nice boost in rankings and SERP visibility. And this isn’t boost isn’t a temporal QDF bump. In the majority of cases, when thickening up thin pages, we’re seeing permanent ranking improvements over competitor pages.

Step 4: Develop High-Quality Content

On the flipside of fixing low or no-value content issues, you must adopt an approach of only publishing the highest quality content on your site. For many sites, this is a total shift in mindset, but nonetheless raising your content publishing standards is essential to Panda-proofing your site.

Google describes “quality content” as “content that you can send to your child to learn something.” Which is a little vague but to me it says two distinct things:

Your content should be highly informative.
Your content should easy to understand (easy enough that a child can comprehend it).
For a really in-depth look at “What Google Considers Quality Content,” check out Brian Ussery’s excellent analysis.

When publishing content on our own sites, we ask ourselves a few simple quality control questions:

Does this content offer value?
Is this content you would share with others?
Would you link to this content as an informative resource?
If a piece of content doesn’t meet these basic criteria, we work to improve it until it does.

Now, when it comes to publishing quality content, many site owners don’t have the good fortune of having industry experts in house and internal writing resources at their disposal. In those cases, you should consider outsourcing your content generation to the pros.

Some of the most effective ways we use to find professional, authoritative authors include:

Placing an ad on Craigslist and conduct a “competition.” Despite what the critics say, this method works really and you can find some excellent, cost-effective talent.  “How to Find Quality Freelance Authors on Craigslist” will walk you through the process.
Reaching out to influential writers in your niche with columns on high profile pubs. Most of these folks do freelance work and are eager to take on new projects. You can find these folks with search operators like [intitle:“your product nice” intext:“meet our bloggers”] or [intitle:“your product nice” intext: “meet our authors”] since many blogs publish an author’s profile page.
Targeting published authors on Amazon.com is a fantastic way to find influential authors who have experience writing on topics in your niche.
Apart from addressing writing resource deficiencies, the advantages of hiring topic experts or published authors include:

Authoritative authors raise the perceived value of your content.
You can leverage authorship credentials on Google+.
Author profiles display in the SERP snippets, and can improve CTR and help users find great content.
AuthorRank! It may not be a ranking signal just yet, but it will be.
Authorship engagement and satisfaction which may contribute to AuthorRank.
Higher engagement levels lead to longer clicks vs the short clicks. And I have to assume “time on page/site” is a signal Google pays attention to.
Finally, I wanted to address the issue of frequency and publishing quality content. Ask yourself this: are you publishing content everyday on your blog, sometimes twice a day? If so, ask yourself “why?”

Is it because you read on a popular marketing blog that cranking out blog posts each and every day is a good way to target trending topics and popular terms, and flood the index with content that will rank in hundreds of relevant mid-tail verticals?

If this is your approach, you might want to rethink it. In fact, I’d argue that 90 percent of sites that use this strategy should slow down and publish better, longer, meatier content less frequently.

In a race to “publish every day!!!” you’re potentially polluting the SERPs with quick, thin, low value posts and dragging down the overall quality score of your entire site. So if you fall into this camp, definitely stop and think about your approach. Test the efficacy of fewer, thicker posts vs short-form “keyword chasing” articles.

Panda-Proofing Wrap Up

Bottom line: get your site in-shape before it’s too late. Why risk being susceptible to every Panda update, when Armageddon is entirely avoidable.

The SEO and affiliate forums are littered with site owners who continue to practice the same low value tactics in spite of the clear dangers because they were cheap and they worked. But look at those sites now. Don’t make the same mistake.

Baseline Measurement for Attainability

Broad Link Building

More Specific Links

From Broad to Specific

Link Building is Logical

Google Panda & Penguin: A New Way for SEOs to Measure True Impact

Each time Google rolls out an update or refresh of their infamous Panda or Penguin algorithms, SEOs go wild. Anecdotal stories and panic spread like wildfire across blogs, forums, chat rooms and social media networks. The impact of these updates is measurable on individual websites simply through analysis of web traffic.

More challenging, though, is getting a bigger picture of the impact, beyond the percentage of queries Google says are affected in their blog post announcements or tweeted “weather updates.”

Clay Cazier, senior director of SEO Strategy with PM Digital, offers a methodology for measuring the aggregate downstream impact of what he calls the Google Zoo, though he admits it isn't yet perfect.

“I’m not a statistician, so I’m sure there are going to be questions around the data. I think I solved most of the issues, but let this be the first step toward a more objective step toward a better look at the downstream impact, beyond opinion surveys. ” Cazier told SEW.

So what is it?

Cazier’s Impact Assessment compares year-over-year (YoY) and month-over-month (MoM) drops in organic click volume on Google, segmented by verticals. He developed a custom quantifier dubbed Google Organic Click Turbulence, or GOCT, using comScore Search Planner data, to measure negative changes in Google organic clicks.

An Interesting Predicament: Are SEOs Sabotaging Their Own Success?

The purpose of his research was to determine whether Panda and Penguin actually had the negative impact reported by SEOs. Early in 2012, digital marketers were surveyed to determine which of Google’s search changes had affected their business. Fifty-four percent voted for Panda. In May, 65 percent of SEOs reported less traffic after April’s Penguin update.

Do opinion-based surveys reveal the true state of search after an algorithm change, though? “A desire to measure the perceived, negative effect of Google’s updates vs. the true, statistical effect is the impetus for this whitepaper,” says Cazier. He hopes the GOCT quantifier can be discussed and refined by the SEO community.

His motivation for undertaking the analysis is a relevant question: “Given the fact that Google updates impacted at maximum 12-13 percent of U.S. searches, how is it that 40 percent of SEOs and website owners are reporting an impact?” he said.

“This fear and doubt Google has put into organic with these updates has certainly resulted in increases in paid activity. There may be an echo-chamber effect, where activity in forums and on blogs results in decision-makers moving budget to paid,” said Cazier. “Google certainly has no reason to correct these perceptions, so SEOs and marketers need a way to measure the actual effect of an update on their own.”

This raises an interesting question, one Cazier is currently looking into. Are panic-stricken SEOs their own worst enemies when it comes to Penguin and Panda updates? A lack of confidence in organic could be causing decision-makers to reallocate budget away from SEO, to paid search.

The next time you read or write a misinterpreted “Jarring and Jolting” doom and gloom post or cry that the sky is falling, consider the effect on the SEO industry as a whole. If that’s not inspiration enough to hold your tongue or look deeper, consider the loss of faith in your own abilities on the part of the people who pay you.

How Cazier Developed the GOCT Quantifier

ComScore provided the data used to measure organic clicks, from a global cross-section of about a million U.S. internet users who had given comScore permission to track their browsing and transaction behavior.

To measure the negative impact of a Google update on a specific vertical, such as travel, says Cazier, one could either look at rankings or click volume. He chose to focus on click volume as a more accurate measure of the bigger picture.

Cazier then removed non-US TLDs from their dataset and used comScore’s “category definition” to determine which websites composed a vertical. Profiles for each vertical range are comprised of URL sets ranging from 14 to 233 URLs.

Cazier explains:

In our quest to establish a quantifier to measure the impact of Google updates, it’s tempting to simply count and sum each negative move within year over year (YoY) and month over month (MoM) Google click data to produce a formula like negative YoY months + negative MoM months = quantifier but a introduction of non-Google organic click data is necessary.
Looking at the difference in Google YoY and non-Google YoY rates of organic click change will yield a plus/minus factor that focuses the YoY and MoM data on extra-ordinary changes, not variances within Google due to seasonal consumer search patterns or data issues.

With this in mind, let us establish a few useful definitions: Cross-SE YoY Differential: The difference in Google vs. non-Google, organic YoY clicks Cross-SE MoM Differential: The difference in Google vs. non-Google, organic MoM clicks If the Cross-SE YoY Differential is Google-negative it is a “YoY Loss” If the Cross-SE MoM Differential is Google-negative it is a “MoM Loss”.

A count of “YoY Losses” and “MoM Losses” are what should be summed and quantified.

He did also account for MoM drops due to seasonality.

Google Panda & Penguin: A New Way for SEOs to Measure True Impact

How Cazier’s Impact Assessment Works

In his report, Cazier explains how it works using the following example:

From the report:

In the example above, only the items in bold red, large font are counted as YoY or MoM Losses for a total Google Organic Click Turbulence score of 8. We will see that is a very low number = a vertical with “calm” Google organic click traffic.

Cross-SE YoY Diff for Jul 11 through Sep 11 was not counted because the overall Google YoY organic click growth was positive.
Cross-SE YoY Diff for May 12 through Jun 12 was not counted because the non-Google organic YoY click decrease was greater than the Google organic YoY click decrease.
Cross-SE MoM Diff was tallied the same way.
Quantification of each vertical’s GOTC should be compared across verticals, Cazier explained. Verticals with a comparatively higher GOCT had greater negative click growth than those with lower scores. Measurement of this quantifier against those of sites independently verified as impacted by Panda 2.5 and Penguin 1.0 can provide the upper GOCT threshold.

Penguin 1.0 and Panda 2.5 - Not As Bad As Reported?

Cazier analyzed Google organic and non-Google organic clicks across key verticals from February 2011 to present, with clicks graphed from January 2010 to provide YoY data. His complete analysis in each vertical is available in the full report.

He admits that the strength of the study and his conclusions may be affected by “undiscovered data issues or through creative manipulation of the sites that compose a vertical.” The GOCT serves as a “line in the sand” from which SEOs can move forward, he notes.

Cazier reports:

Google’s Penguin 1.0/Panda 3.5-3.6 release in April 2012 negatively impacted 50 percent the study’s 12 groups. March 2012’s release of Panda 3.4 appears to have a similarly-scaled negative impact.
Government, education and B2B verticals show little organic click volatility. With their baseline set at 6-8 GOCT, we can quickly look to see that the real estate, retail (general) and retail consumer electronics verticals were also relatively untouched.
The news, retail apparel and retail department store verticals saw moderate Google Organic Click Turbulence with the most impactful Google updates appearing to be Panda 3.4-3.6 and Penguin 1.0
The Panda 2.5 and Penguin 1.0 reference groups set the expectation that a GOCT score > 20 means the vertical was hit particularly hard by Google updates. There is one vertical in particular that appears to have been hardest hit by Google’s updates across the board: travel.
So what of the surveys mentioned earlier, where more than 40 percent of SEOs believed their site traffic had been harmed by Google Penguin or Panda?

“Regrettably, we cannot make an apples-to-apples comparison of these percentages versus YoY or MoM declines,” Cazier reported. “It’s unavoidable to conclude that either some polling bias occurred, or there’s an undue, oversized negative perception of Google’s updates.”

Cazier’s report includes a list of unresolved questions and he encourages SEOs to take part in the conversation.

”I wanted to provide a basis for people to know whether the world is truly collapsing around them and they can make better decisions around organic and paid,” Cazier told us. “I mapped out paid for these updates as well and it’s crazy, you can see these huge spikes in paid search around Google Panda and Penguin updates, that aren’t accounted for by seasonality.” That report on paid search activity in relation to Google updates is due out later this year.

What do you think of Cazier’s Impact Assessment method using Google Organic Click Turbulence as a measure of the overall impact of an algorithm update? Perhaps more importantly, how could you use these insights in your business? Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

What is SEO?

Addressing the question "What is SEO", this ultimate small business SEO guide will give you a comprehensive, and easy-to-understand guide to all aspects of SEO for small business.

This main aim of this SEO guide is to help entrepreneurs, bloggers and small business owners understand and appreciate every aspect of SEO in a logical and practical way.

In addition to breaking down SEO into it's six major constituent disciplines, you'll also get practical and in-depth advice and information on:

Different types of SEO

This guide covers all major aspects of SEO, including:

content SEO
analytical SEO
performance SEO
Technical/HTML SEO
Image SEO
Off-site SEO
Where possible I will demonstrate techniques (or refer to other articles) with verifiable SEO examples that you can look at on Google.

Content SEO

Content SEO refers to the techniques you can use to help content appear higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

How to implement content SEO: Content SEO requires you to know which SEO keywords and phrases you want to target. This in turn means you need to do some SEO keyword research before sitting down to write.

What's new in content SEO: Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm updates hit a lot of sites. Not all of the updates affected content SEO - Penguin focused on spammy backlinks, for example.

However, almost all of Google's updates are designed to improve the quality of the content returned by their search. Quality! That's the new buzzword. Good content SEO starts with high quality content that is useful, engaging, valuable or entertaining.

Analytical SEO

Analytical SEO makes use of traffic analysis through an analytics service like Google analytics. By analyzing the sources, demographics, browsing patterns and conversions of organic search traffic, it is possible to improve your SEO strategy.

What's new in analytical SEO: Still in beta, Google analytic's Real-Time opens up a whole new world of analytical possibilities for SEO and Internet marketing. Check out this article entitled "The latest Internet marketing techniques & SEO tips using Google analytics' Real-Time".

Performance SEO

Performance SEO is a personal favorite of mine. It requires an excellent knowledge of programming (usually PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, DOM), combined with knowledge web architecture, search engines, caching, compression, aggregation and more.

Unless you have some pretty serious in-house expertise on these matters, it's best to consult with a technical SEO expert.

How to implement performance SEO: Fortunately, if you are using a decent CMS like Drupal or WordPress, a reasonable amount of performance related SEO is handled for you automatically.

The following articles show some surprising statistics and results about performance SEO and how to implement and test it (the second one is specific to Drupal, but still holds plenty of advice and tips that apply to all website platforms):

What's new in performance SEO: One of the most exciting aspects of performance SEO is that it is more "science" than most other SEO disciplines. It can be tested by cool new tools for SEO developers. Check out the article entitled "How to test SEO: Top free SEO tools to easily check the SEO of any page".

Top 10 local SEO tips, 2012

Implementing local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques has become more and more important, from an Internet marketing perspective, over the course of 2012.

Over time, Google has a built up a significant bias in favor of localized search results.

This makes it important to incorporate local SEO strategies into content, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), blogs, and any other media that is within the reach of search engines.

Not only can local SEO help to drive more traffic, it can also provide additional points of exposure to drive higher quality traffic that converts better.

This article looks at the ten best local SEO tips and tricks that every blogger, small business and Internet marketer should be using in 2012.

Local SEO top 10

If you are not familiar with local SEO and the benefits of incorporating it into a blog or website, I recommend you read Local SEO guide: How to refine local search terms to master Google search, which provides excellent background information on local SEO and why it has become so important.

1. Use local SEO to focus content

Local SEO doesn't restrict you to targeting a single location. Rather, it's about introducing local relevance.

For example, you might spend a week writing content that targets traffic in New York; the following week, London; the week after, California.

Local SEO brings focus; not restrictions!

2. Local SEO dominates local search

The most important point to remember about local SEO is that it can help to capture a specific market.

It is far more valuable to be on the first page of search results for many different localized searches, than on the second page for one popular, but generic search term!

3. Build trust with local SEO

Creating content in a language that people are familiar with can make a real difference. There's nothing more detrimental to trust than reading content that claims to be one thing, when the language itself suggests another.

Readers are incredibly sensitive to local slang and dialects, so it pays to put in some keyword research to find out the best way to phrase certain key sentences.

Have you downloaded a copy of our hugely popular, free small business SEO eBook? Master SEO quickly to drive traffic and make money online.

4. Master local SEO keyword research

Certain SEO keywords and phrases are more popular in some regions than others. For example "small business ideas" is a phrase that is very popular in the U.S, whereas "small business opportunities" is very popular in South Africa.

Often, the process of researching which SEO keywords and phrases to use in which regions can help uncover information that improves the quality of your content for that target demographic.

You can learn more about SEO keyword research by reading How to research SEO keywords: Five SEO tips from top SEO experts.

5. Use local listings online

There are many resources that specialize in providing local data (like Yell.com), and you should take some time to find out where they are and how to add your info. This is especially helpful for local businesses that rely on foot traffic.

Top 5 weekly SEO tasks for bloggers and small business

"Want to ensure that your blog or website continues to drive organic search traffic and avoid Google algorithm penalties caused by inadvertent SEO problems?"

Any blogger or business that relies on the Internet as a source of revenue should spend some time, each week, on search optimization.

SEO changes all the time. Bloggers and small businesses that want to stay on top of search optimization need to keep tabs on search industry news, latest techniques, analytics, and more.

Weekly SEO top 5

This SEO list for bloggers and small business will show you five things you should do at least once a week in order to ensure that your blog or website is driving as much Web traffic as possible.

In many cases, the SEO or search optimization related tasks mentioned in this list should be performed more than once a week.

1. Create content

Add content to your site at least once a week. If you rely on revenue from the Internet then it is definitely worthwhile creating content on a more regular basis, as a high authority, highly ranked niche website can bring great ROI (Return on Investment) online.

New content must be original and relevant to your blog or business niche. In addition, you might consider doing some SEO keyword research to further enhance the rankings of your content in search.

2. Monitor analytics

Analytical data, provided by a service like Google analytics, can tell you a great deal about how a blog or website performs. In particular, it is important to pay close attention to the following aspects:

Overall traffic volumes: This metric can provide strong evidence for how well or poorly various marketing and SEO efforts are paying off.
Traffic originating from organic search: This provides insight into how well your blog or website ranks in the SERPs( Search Engine Results Pages).
Top content: This can tell you which posts bring the most traffic and allows you to tailor advertising or marketing on these pages, or work to help other pages move up in the rankings.
Conversions: If you have set goals, analytics can provide data about how well your blog or site is converting traffic to meet predefined objectives, such as newsletter signups or product purchases.
Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate may indicate poor or confusing web design, or poor quality content. A low bounce rate is a good indication that your blog or site is engaging readers well.

3. Check Webmaster Tools

While analytics focuses on providing information about visitors and traffic, Webmaster Tools provides information that Google knows about webpages, site structure, content, and even you, as the author.

In particular, the following metrics are very useful:

Crawl Errors under Health can indicate if Google is accessing your site correctly
Malware under Health can alert you to the presence of malicious, foreign content or code
Search queries under Traffic provides insight into what search keywords Google ranks your blog or site on
HTML Improvements under Optimization highlights many of the most common webpage structural problems that can affect the user experience
Author stats under Labs gives great insight into how your content is shared and viewed online even if it is published on a different domain
You can learn more about implementing Author Stats by reading Google Webmaster tools releases Author stats.

4. Check & interact on social networks

One of the most important metrics that Google uses to determine site and page rankings in search results is the number of natural backlinks a site or webpage has.

Social marketing and interaction via the major social networks is the best way to build up a following, trust and authority (collectively termed influence). The more people talk about your content, blog or site, the higher Google will rank that content, leading to additional exposure and visibility in the search results.

Be careful to share content only where appropriate and relevant to do so. Many social networks are inundated with spam and don't look kindly on "self promotion". There is a comprehensive, and growing, list of social network bookmarks that are freely available on seo entrepreneur's dashboard.

5. Check Google blogs and forums

Last, but certainly not least, it is important to find and follow Google's major sources of news and information. Often, for example, Google employees will forewarn the public of impending algorithm updates through blogs or social media like Twitter.

If your blog or website suddenly drops out of the search results, and you are already aware that there was, say, a Panda algorithm refresh at the same time, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort finding out what went wrong, since you already know the likely culprit.

5 top SEO tips from Wikipedia

"Want to learn the five most important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tips that allow Wikipedia to dominate Google organic search results?"

Its fairly obvious to most people who use search engines that Wikipedia often appears at the top of search results. What's not obvious is how Wikipedia does it.

With over 200 ranking indicators included in Google's search engine algorithms, it can be hard to determine which aspects of Wikipedia's SEO outshine everyone else's.

This article will highlight 5 top SEO features that make Wikipedia such a stellar SEO performer.

Wikipedia's top 5 search optimizations

Bloggers, and small businesses stand to benefit by learning about SEO and implementing great fundamental SEO basics - as demonstrated by Wikipedia.

Please note that I have focused on the SEO tips and techniques that most small businesses and bloggers can implement for themselves - in other words, I'm not going to advice you to suggest you try create millions of individual articles, like Wikipedia.

1. Highly focused

Wikipedia offers articles that cover very specific topics. In fact, most Wikipedia article headings consist of only one or very few words.

The reality of SEO today is that unless Google knows an article is precisely focused on a specific search term or phrase, it is unlikely it will rank highly for that exact search phrase.

The reason is that there is simply so much content being generated that there will always be many tens, hundreds or thousands of articles devoted to each and every niche SEO term.

Don't expect an article focusing on "small business tips" to rank highly for anything other than a search on the phrase "small business tips". It might, if it becomes popular, but chances are it won't.

2. Authoritative

Wikipedia content is both well written and comprehensive. This means that it is used as a reference source by many people - it is quoted and linked to all over the place.

Any good article stands a chance of being referenced and passed around in social media. Look at the quality of Wikipedia articles (they're by no means perfect) and ensure that your content matches or exceeds that quality.

3. Fresh

Wikipedia content is regularly updated. New articles are added and old ones are improved and edited.

Google tends to favor content that is fresh. It's no longer sufficient to build a website, add content, and watch organic search traffic continue to roll in indefinitely.

Regularly add new content. Update existing content. Improve or correct outdated or incorrect content.

4. Great linking patterns

Wikipedia content is full of internal and external links. Internal links help readers find or research related content. This lowers Wikipedia's bounce rate and is a good indication that their content is engaging and relevant for readers.

In addition, Wikipedia cites information from high quality sources and Google also monitors outbound links.

Link naturally to encourage a flow of traffic internally, and link to other high quality websites and blogs where it is appropriate to do so.

5. Great document structure

Wikipedia articles are generally well organized and easy to follow. Document structure is important to Google and is a good indicator of quality content.

Always ensure that you utilize a single <H1> title tag for each article, and break up chunks of content into logical categories headed by H2, H3 and smaller heading tags.

In addition, make use of <em> and <strong> tags to indicate important SEO terms and phrases.

Above all else, ensure that your documents are structured in such a way as to be easy for humans to understand and utilize.

That's my top five list. But, there are plenty of other great reasons why Wikipedia dominates Google organic search rankings. Can you name a few more? Share them in the comments.

5 Important Post-Penguin Guest Post Prospecting Questions

Several months have passed since Google declared its game-changing sphenisciform seabird formula update back in April of this year. In terms over overall website impact, most SEOs detected an on the spot impact in rankings as a results of sphenisciform seabird, however, solely those WHO tried to urge away with SEO shortcuts (like deliberate keyword stuffing, spamming, and link exchange schemes) instead of legitimate link building strategies older really negative impacts.

But despite whether or not you\'ve got ever practiced any of the shortcuts on top of, there ar many issues that any SEO skilled with any reasonably link building strategy will take pleasure in to make sure that your website performs well with post-Penguin Google bots.

When it involves having a comprehensive link building strategy, the massive payouts dwell guest posting. Guest posting has been Associate in Nursingd still remains to be one amongst the foremost vital parts of an end-to-end SEO strategy, and in terms of execution, it all starts with correct guest post prospecting. Here ar 5 vital queries you ought to raise yourself so as to possess Associate in Nursing updated and effective Post-Penguin guest post prospecting strategy:

1) however tightly relevant ought to the niche of the blogs you’re targeting and also the topic of the post itself be to your site’s?

This is undoubtedly one amongst the primary queries you ought to raise yourself before you start gathering prospects for any explicit website. though in some cases you won’t got to be as open-eyed concerning relevancy as in alternative cases, as an example if you’re link building for a consumer that doesn’t mind wherever links ar coming back from, generally, relevancy could be a systematically key think about building long run SEO worth during this post-Penguin world.

A good thanks to break down guest post prospect relevance is in 2 pieces:

Domain relevance

Guest Post Topic relevance

When Google crawls a page, it takes into consideration the subject of the whole domain address, further because the topic of the page on that the guest post lives. Ideally, you’ll wish to possess each domain and topic to be as closely relevant to your target link as attainable.

For instance, if you\'re making an attempt to make links for Norton Antivirus at http://us.norton.com/, a documented antivirus package, the simplest guest post prospects would dwell the safety technology niche, and your guest post topic ought to likewise ideally have one thing to try to to with viruses, malware, and alternative tightly connected topics in security technology.

If it’s impractical to urge an explicit match in relevance in domain and/or guest post topic, or if you’ve happened to exhaust those choices, your next best bet is to focus on guest post prospects that ar usually technology connected, and to author guest posts that ar in tangentially connected technology topics. the most purpose is, the additional closely relevant at either level, the better.

2) What minimum quality standards must you place in place?

Your minimum quality standards can vary looking on many factors, like what website you’re link building for, consumer wants, and the way way within the link building method your performing at. However, let’s assume you’re beginning contemporary and are attempting to be pretty aggressive in your link building strategy so as to maximise SEO payout. There ar many main issues to form in terms of guest post quality standards:

3. Prospects of a minimum Page Rank (PR)

Page Rank is decided by several factors, however it\'s primarily a consistent thanks to gauge a site’s authority, and it ranges from PR0-10 (very new sites have a “-“, that is not up to 0). once link building for Associate in Nursing already reputable  website, it’s ideal to appear for guest post prospects of PR3 or higher; PR1-2 ar acceptable however ought to be used meagrely.

4. Prospects of a minimum Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority is in a different way to measure a website’s authority and provides a rank on the full domain, instead of by page like PageRank. DA ranges from 0-100, with a hundred being the foremost authoritative. Compared to PR, not as many purchasers actively get a particular DA, however those that do keep a threshold of thirty or thirty five and on top of.

5. Prospects with sensible overall presentation and quality content

Sometimes, you’ll realize prospects with sensible PR or DA, however ar subjectively and visually but appealing and don’t appear to be up-to-date with posts. On the opposite hand, you may realize prospects that ar nearly however just about at the best threshold for PR or DA, however ar professionally designed and jam-packed with nice content. These following notes ar a useful guide for sorting through sites supported overall presentation and quality content:

Look for prospects that update ofttimes, and whose most up-to-date update occurred among the past 3 months
Look for prospects that don’t have scrolling or blinking texts and pictures
Look for prospects that don’t have offensive or off-putting words within the address
Look for prospects that don’t have an amazing quantity of banner and text ads
Look for prospects that continue topic throughout their content; their archive of post topics truly relate to the niche it\'s holding itself bent on be in
Look for prospects that ar well connected on Social Media
3) What style of timeframe ar you operating below to possess posts placed?
When you’re link building through guest posting, it’s sensible to line expectations on the overall timeframe within which you may be ready to fulfill guest post orders, whether or not you’re doing it for your own portfolio of websites or if you\'re fulfilling guest posts for purchasers.

Since you’re at the mercy of the blogs and publications at that you\'re seeking to possess posts placed, realistically, you\'re gazing a decent four to 6 weeks to possess posts placed and live. a decent thanks to create mentally why it would take up to 6 weeks to urge a guest post placed (and this is often useful to clarify to clients) is that this basic timeline:

Week 1-2: Prospect is contacted, and a guest post topic is given
Week 2-3: Guest post is written
Week 3-4: Finished guest post sent back to prospect
Week 4-6: Prospect could post straightaway, schedule it for a future date, or come post for written material

4) is that this a singular domain?

If you guest post with any regularity, it\'s very useful to enlist some style of structure system by that you\'ll be able to filter through domains you’ve seen before versus distinctive domains. this is often notably helpful if you\'ve got a portfolio of websites that you just ar building links for and if any of them happen to overlap in topic and niche. That way, you\'ll be able to produce a method of cross-referencing existing links by link profile, like by niche, by responsiveness, and by whether or not they were a self-made prospect in previous reaching.

Two platforms that ar nice in serving to accomplish this ar Google Docs or BuzzStream. Either platform permits for various levels of customization and filter choices, however each enable you to store and kind through an outsized variety of guest post prospects for a additional organized guest posting method.

5) What anchor text ar you using?

The entry to obtaining the foremost worth out of a guest post is by victimization the correct anchor text to purpose back to your website. before the Google sphenisciform seabird update, it had been attainable to urge away with having a backlink portfolio jam-packed with several of a similar or similar, short, precise match phrases as anchor text, and really having the ability to with success rank for those phrases while not abundant drawback.

But today, doing the on top of observe amounts to one thing known as “over-optimization” within the eyes of Google, and it reflects negatively on a site’s SEO for wanting too unnatural. Instead, the best anchor text to focus on post-Penguin ar ones that lend selection to a site’s backlink portfolio, like branded anchor text, long tail anchor text, Associate in Nursing actual address, and natural terms. This tells Google that the location is being connected from naturally and licitly for a spread of comparable terms within the acceptable niche.

• Find the right thing
• Get the best summary
• Go deeper and broader to discover more about the search

How is the Knowledge Graph Transforming Google?

"We've always believed that the perfect search engine should understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want. And we can now sometimes help answer your next question before you've asked it, because the facts we show are informed by what other people have searched for."

How is the Knowledge Graph Transforming SEO?

• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses and organizations
• Recipes
• Events 
• Music
• Video

Focus on These Metrics 

• Content Keywords: Which give and idea of keyword variance in the index and relevance
• Search Queries: Which give an idea about correlation
• Number of Impressions: Which give an idea about how well the search engine is able to combine and sync the on page signals with the off-page signals.
• Landing Pages: This gives us an idea about how well each URL is getting indexed along with proper relevance and the correlation factor.
• Click-Through Rate: This indicates the success factor of the on-page titles and descriptions of the landing page for that relevant search query.

Factors to Focus on When Writing & Sharing Content

• Content and Authorship Markup: The quality of the content and the authorship markup in the code of the page gives the identity to the writer or the brand. If the content meets the quality standards of Google and is represented using microformats then Google is able to extract the rich snippet for the author and other meta data used to represent schemas and microformats from the code of the page. This gives the content and the writer their due in SERPs.
• Connectivity: Tim Berners-Lee (The man who invented the World Wide Web and created the HTTP protocol) had once said that all data on the web – whether it is government, enterprise, or social data – is inter-linked and has relationships and all these signals are establishing your web presence. How well you refer to other sites having relevant content and how many sites refer back to the content considering it a valuable resource determine the inter-connectivity of data and documents. Other social signals like the shares, likes, +1s, etc. are a medium to quantify these signals.
• Relevance: Relevance is self-explanatory, but what needs to be kept in mind is that every piece of content is relevant to a certain specific topic so that it becomes the relevant landing page for the various permutations and combinations of the search queries related to that page or content. If the connectivity to the content and from the content is of relevance and topical it further adds to the relevance factor.
• Correlation: The content, connectivity, and the relevance of the content cause the correlation. And surely every SEO has heard the statement "Correlation is not causation."

Some Points on Correlation & Causation

• Almost all SEO is correlative rather than causative.
• Moreover, a correlation need not be causative.
• You need a sizable chunk of data over a period of time (at least 4-6 months) in order to establish any connect between the correlation and causation to come to any onclusion.
• This correlation analysis requires a lot of time, effort, and an eye for detail by an expert.
• Jumping to quick conclusions will just cause more confusion.

Authority, Security & Trust

• Authority: The authorship markup gives the content writer or brand an identity but if the content is shared by multiple users and authority accounts of that relevant industry then it adds to the goodwill and generates an authority factor. The social signals by way of retweets, likes, +1s, user-generated content in the form of comments, etc. add the magnitude to the signals. The quantification of social signals is still at the initial stages as the social and search integration is also still at the budding stage. But, the authority factor is one of the key quality factors to determine a site as a quality site as mentioned on this article
• Security: If the site safeguards the user's privacy and the user feels confident in sharing the data asked in the form or feels confident using his credit card for payment then it adds on to the trust factor and this factor has the potential for making a first time user a regular visitor or online customer.
• Trust: Trust is the end result of all these factors in action. Trust is the emotional and logical aspect of the users decision to refer and recommend the site and content if he has been getting valuable information from the site.

It All Starts With Content