Penguin Update

Following hot on the heels of the Panda updates comes the Penguin update (first of many as the algorithm evolves – so many more sleepless nights for webmasters!). The Penguin update is supposed to improve search engine results by removing sites that have spammed Google with poor quality links, and repetitive anchor links.  Once again we emphasise our mantra: Content, Content, Content – that is unique, original, and fascinating content.

So once again we remind that you should be developing sites for your users NOT the search engines – this way you will not get hooked into over SEOing your site.

If you need to “promote” your site, then make sure your links appear natural – incoming links should be coming from a variety sources: other sites, article directories / blogs, forums, blog commenting, press releases, guest posts on blogs. Make sure your anchor text is diverse, and the links are placed within content about your “theme”. Avoid stupid signals to Google – why have a link to your perfume site in an article about dog training? Don’t’ forget to use your own site to its full capacity: make sure you use internal linking between pages.

Penguin Update Posts:

Link-Assistant.Com Suggests a Coherent Strategy for Dealing with Major SEO …
As a result of Google Penguin update, some webmasters report on dramatic traffic drops, others are worried their turn is yet to come. To give the SEO community a hand, we have put together best tips to survive the update unaffected. Link-Assistant.

Link-Assistant.Com Suggests a Coherent Strategy for Dealing with Major SEO …
“The idea behind the so-called Penguin update is straightforward and apparently benefiting for the search landscape: produce great content, avoid webspam techniques (keywords stuffing, link schemes and such) and rank high,” says Viktar Khamianok, CEO, …

Planning on duplicating content? Think again, says Google
Google’s Penguin updates are known to instil fear in marketing execs across the globe as they scramble to update their online campaigns to suit its latest features. And while trying to predict what will happen next is a little bit like playing a very …

Penguin Update Video

Using Blog Networks

Using Blog Networks has been a popular route for webmasters / seo firms to gain links via articles. Of course, you are trying to game Google and when Google finds out it will devalue such links. That time is now – so you have been warned. Andy Williams and others have outed Build My Rank – no doubt other blog networks may follow.

Firstly Andy Williams …

Build My Rank – one of the blog networks I used on sites that have dropped from page 1 to page 2 or 3 has seen lots of its websites de-indexed from Google.  Other blog networks have seen similar de-indexing.

I think this is a big lesson for marketers to learn.  If you take on Google to try to beat the system, it may work for a while, but eventually big G will catch up on you.

More details: http://ezseonews.com/internet-marketing-tips/ezseo-newsletter-332/

Other Blog Network reports

Build My Rank Deindexed – The Future of Link Building
…known private blog network, was deindexed by Google on 3/19 and shut their doors effective 3/20! Lots of people are scared and aren’t sure what this means going forward. What happens to the future of link building? What does it mean for the future of blog networks? I’m working on a full analysis – with interviews. No worries, we’re on top of it!…
from Michelle MacPhearson – Mar 20, 2012 (2 days ago)

How Garbage Ranks in the SERPs: a Case Study
…and private blog network posts?  Wouldn’t that be helpful?  Even for the ultra-white hats, using this approach could eliminate these cheap links and make it more efficient to identify legitimate editorial links that you might try to match. Taking Link Analysis a Step Further — Using Semantic Markup to Identify Link Types The good news i…
from SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Blog Network Outed & Google Responds
I was doing some answering on Google Webmaster Central this morning when I spotted a thread where someone outed a link network publicly. This should be a little alarming to those blackhatter’s out there who do the same thing and don’t cover their tracks. What’s even more strange to see is an actual Google employee …
from Link Building

Related articles

• Link networks de-indexed – now what?(skyrocketseo.co.uk)

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• BuildMyRank Shuts Down Their Link Network(bloggingtips.com)

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• Google De-indexes and Penalizes Private Blog Networks(webpronews.com)

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• Google Search and Destroy of Private Blog Networks(lostballinhighweeds.com)

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1. Great Headlines
The goal of the headline is to stop readers cold and draw them into your post. You can’t do that if you use cute, clever or confusing headlines.

2. Linking to old posts
Just because you’ve published a post doesn’t mean you should forget about it. Each post is a valuable asset in which you can give new life to with each link.

3. Linking to other Bloggers
Outbound Links (especially to authority sites) ALSO help you to get authority juice.

4. Fill out your page title and description fields
The meta data is critical to search engines crawling and indexing your site. And when you use keywords properly, it tells those spiders what the page is all about. You can use plugins on WordPress to automate this process such as All in One SEO.

5. Creating clunky URLs
Those long urls with ? and lots of = can be easily replaced in wordpress by using a simple permalink structure.

So a good url will be something like www.mydomain.com/keyword-rich-post-title

6. Quality Unique Content
Do not copy others (!!) – don’t plagiarise; and make sure credit the sources.

7. Publish Regularly
SoeMoz recommend that you publish an article / post at least onnce a month!

8. Use short sentences
Make it snappy and avoid long sentences like the plague. You are trying to engage with readers (potential customers) so make it easily readable.

9. Use Social media
Use Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Social Bookmark sites to publicise your post

10 Invite readers to comment
Good to engage with your readers but also more free content!

Full article and more advice: 12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time

Related articles

• Understand and Rock the Google Venice Update(seomoz.org)

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Link Building Strategy: Adding NEW links to OLD pages

“Old” pages on your site might already have authority and Page Rank so adding a new link on an old page will help you to rank a new page. Yes, this might have been true in the good ole days but no more.

Tim Grice wrote a report: Links In Old, Crawled Content Don’t Pass Weight which confirms that old authority pages do not pass “oomph” you expected.

Adding NEW links to OLD pages: Freshen Content

However, this is not the end of the story. It seems that you need to freshen your old page before getting the oomph you expected. So OK add your new link but work in some new content around the link as well. Google will see the page extra fresh material and reward your link accordingly. Whilst adding the new content, it may be wise to freshen your title tag to reflect the new content.

Does the same apply to external links? Say you can persuade a webmaster to update a link to your site from the webmaster’s site – will that pass rank too? Well, it seems the same applies – try to work in some new content again. Of course, some webmasters are resistant to adding new content. So it is up to you to boost the authority of the webmaster’s page with some social media links or other inbound links.

The SeoMoz video below explains the theory more fully:  Adding NEW links to OLD pages

Google Reference:
Why would this happen? Why would Google care if it’s an old page or a new page? We don’t know exactly, but we do have some hints from some patent filings that Google has filed, specifically, Document Scoring Based on Document Content Update. It’s been filed over and over again in different variations throughout the years. It’s kind of like the manifesto of how Google runs its search engine.  So it seems that Adding new links to old pages CAN work if you take a fresh approach!

One of the questions we are constantly asked about is the use of Flash (particularly on the home page). Jonathan Hochman has an interesting article on this topic. Here is an extract.

Search-Friendly Flash

Search engines have the ability to read Flash files and extract text and links. In particular, Google and Adobe announced a new algorithm for indexing textual Flash content on June 20, 2008. As explained by Rand Fishkin in Flash and SEO – Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don’t Mix, and Vanessa Fox in Search-Friendly Flash?, hoping that search engines can decipher you Flash is not a substitute for providing indexable HTML content.

Requirements for Successful Use of Flash

Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space, without wrecking page design. For technology sites, Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. At the other end of the spectrum, art and entertainment sites have a real need for multimedia, and Flash is the perfect solution.

When using Flash, we’d like to satisfy each of these objectives:

•     Clean design
•     Search Engine Optimization
•     Accessibility for a wide variety of browsers, including screen readers and mobile phones
•     Code validation and standards compliance
•     Correct functionality with IE

Reference: How to SEO Flash

Strategic SEO:SeoMoz expose a very tactical approach to SEO, where the content is built specifically for users searching for those things that deliver everything they want in the content.

Step 1: Establish the full list of keywords
Step 2: Target User Content
Step 3: Multiple or a singular keyword page focus?
Step 4: Find longer tail keywords
Step 5: Build content: Mapping keywords to content

Anyhow let’s discover the Strategic SEO approach in the Video below.

Video: Strategic SEO

If you have an existing site how do you take a Strategic SEO approach to this situation: Well SEOMOz recommend: “You can take an existing site right now, run through this process, and have just a huge win both in terms of your ability to target searches and rank for those keywords as well as your ability to better convert those visitors because of how you’ve targeted the relevance and the user intent.”

Social Media and Links

How can we use Social Media to build links? The video lays out a very scalable way to build links for just about any business.

The video reals useful social media tools to use, and explains how to use them.

Also tips on how to use Twitter and Google +. So fix yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy the tips about Social Media.

Unique Backlinks

Building unique backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) for two reasons. The first reason is that it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is very important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly. The second reason is that it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice. The more backlinks you have, the better. Period.

However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming, boring process. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money… Or you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee! SocialMonkee is an instant backlink builder allowing you to build 25 unique backlinks, every day, FREE! All links are on unique C-Class IP addresses and domains. Imagine being able to create 25 unique backlinks every day, with the click of a button, FREE! Well, you can stop imagining…

So, 25 unique backlinks every day… That’s a total of 175 backlinks every week, 750 every month. If you upgrade, you will be able to build 100 uniques backlinks, 3 times a day! That’s a total of 2,100 backlinks every week, 9,000 every month! The good news is… you can get a Premium Account, FREE! All you need to do is to refer 12 members, and your account will automatically be upgraded. If you’re not really into referral marketing, you may upgrade right now for a low one-time fee.

Submitting a page to SocialMonkee via the members area takes under two minutes, but there’s an even faster way! They created a Firefox plugin that allows you to submit your page to up to 100 sites in just a few clicks, using nothing else than Firefox! If you have a Premium Account you will also get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great to keep track of your backlinks and get them indexed fast. Submitting your RSS feeds to RSS submitters is actually a very important step in link building.

So what are you waiting for? Join SocialMonkee now while it’s still free!

Bloggers and website owners everywhere know how important it is for a site to have high page rank. Google is very specific about the parameters that must be met in order for a site to rank well within their search results. Generally the only sites that make it to page one on Google has a high page rank. These steps will help you figure out what you need to do next in order to boost the page rank of your website.

Using internet marketing expert and You need to start working double-time to develop vital backlinks from other sites in your niche or related niches that have high page rank themselves. Don’t just reach out and ask for backlinks from other websites; take the time to get to know all about them first.

The easier you make it for sites to link to yours the better the odds are that you’ll get plenty of high page rank super high quality backlinks coming into your own site. Give them a reason to give you a backlink and you won’t be disappointed. If you take your time and slowly and steadily add new content of the highest quality to your site you will build those vital links.

An Internet Marketing Tip: Your site needs an RSS feed to remain competitive so make sure you have one and that it has been distributed. Every website that syndicates your RSS feed will have a backlink to your site on their page, which will help you garner some really good links which adds up your site’s page rank. You don’t even have to have a lot of content on your site to make this work for you.

Don’t get caught up in the details or lost in the process of trying to improve page rank fast and focus instead on how you can change it for good. Make sure you don’t lose sight of the long-term goals and the results they are sure to bring about. As your page rank improves so will the number of people you can reach through the search engines.

Silo Categories

You may already have heard of silos in relation to website design and realise that you are better off focusing on this new design and format when you’re chasing those all-important search rankings. A site that is constructed in silo style has a very rigid architecture. Every silo symbolises a category and articles which are positioned within each category must be relevant to the overall category keyword.

There is one way of thinking within search engine optimisation London experts however all too eager to clarify, which says that internal linking in a website is highly important. Significant it may be, but if you link unnecessarily it is possible to lose points in the bigger scheme of things. The truth is, the search engine robots are merely able to perform what they are designed to do, algorithmically. They cannot say to themselves, as it were, “ah, that’s what she or he was meaning to do here.” Therefore, if you link from one article to another spot on your site which is by all intents and purposes an irrational association, then the robots will essentially arrive at a dead end.

For you to get as many search engine ranking points as you possibly can depending on your on-page SEO work, your site needs to be constructed appropriately and rationally. If you have developed your silos with your connected articles underneath each silo/category head, then the articles in each silo should only link to other articles within that exact same silo. You should not, as an example, link from a deeper article in one silo across to some deeper article in another.

Linking inside a silo structure ought to be essentially up-and-down within the silo and cross-linking from silo to silo should only be performed from a category head. Keep in mind virtual assistance now!

There is a lot to think about when setting up a site from a pure SEO perspective. For those who are not really sure about how a proper silo structure ought to be applied here, when shopping for assistance with search engine optimisation London professional companies are available for you.

Links and Silos

Related articles

• SEO Video: How to Properly Silo Your Website! (seodesignsolutions.com)
• Video Demo: Website Silo Architecture Made Dangerously Simple (theme-zoom.com)