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    Summary of Search Engine Optimization, June 2013

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    The world of SEO is still reeling from Google’s latest Penguin update, and many are questioning Google’s new guidelines. Having a well-known worldwide brand wasn’t enough for the Salvation Army – nor was it enough for Dish! We added on two more link building techniques Penguin 2.0 seems to penalize, for a total of 7 so far: 1. Exact match anchor text 2. Spammy links to subpages 3. Link networks / schemes 4. Links from de-indexed and banned websites, including old directories. 5. link velocity “spikes” 6. Paid Links 7. Sitewide links – especially blogroll and footer links Google updates in June: Even though Panda is now “rolled into the main Google algorithm”, there was some sort of refresh event last month. Google is being very tight-lipped about updates lately, and would not comment on at least one event this month that looked like an update. Some updates are being said to rollout over the “next 1-2 months”. Blackhat SEO – where SEOs attempt to fool search engines – are surviving these updates on some level. At a recent conference, Matt Cutts(Google’s engineer in charge of combatting webspam) mentioned specific actions against sites ranking for “Payday loans” in Google UK. A few weeks later, paydayloansfrommrcutts.blog.co.uk started ranking in the top 3! We do not recommend black hat SEO for brands, companies or sites with longterm value – but these blackhats are definitely keeping google on their toes! With Google’s upcoming (and continued) emphasis on authority links, we recommend the longterm strategies of 1. link building for business development, making connections that also build your google rankings 2. Content Marketing Link Building: Using compelling content to create brand awareness and links!

    Summary of Search, May 2013

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    Around May 22nd, there was an update to Google’s search algorithms. It’s being called Penguin 2.0 (or sometimes Penguin 4) and is a major update. Matt Cutts said in a recent video that compared to the original Penguin update, this one does go much deeper. While the impact is supposed to be 2.3% of English queries, the effect is very large considering the number of Google keyword searches! Here is the full history: Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries) Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%) Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries) Penguin 4 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries) Much of the analysis of Penguin 2.0 is still in progress, but some big brands were hit, including SalvationArmy.org and even Dish.com. As far as we can tell so far, Penguin 2.0 penalized: 1. Exact match anchor text 2. Spammy links to subpages 3. Link networks / schemes 4. Links from de-indexed and banned websites, including old directories. 5. link velocity “spikes” Penguin is impacting sites with unintentional webspam. We’ve seen scraper sites (targeting adsense keywords) delivering the worst links to clients’ profiles. These sites weren’t created for a link building campaign, but instead just adsense revenue for some site owner in a distant land. While they could be ignored before, they cannot be any longer. Now their penalties are our penalties. The approach we recommend is: 1. Protect Authority link building is the only protection against both negative SEO and Penguin penalties in general. Authority links are gained primarily from great content, promotion and involvement. One authority link can beat hundreds of spammy links in the algorithm of “the new Google”. 2. Defend Find and remove as many unnatural links as you can manually before disavowing the rest. 3. Build Over the long term, these strategies will also help protect from Google penalties, and are of course great marketing initiatives: a. Great content Copy writing has gone through an evolution and cheap content is not going to cut it. Could it ever though? b. Promotion & Outreach for Social Media Marketing & Inbound Links Since the web’s inception, much content has been posted with little regard to promotion. Social, link building, and other outreach initiatives are vital to maximize dollars spent on premium content. c. Brand Name Searches Google knows big brands are searched. Their “buzz” is a signal of authority, although not yet on par with link building. d. User Engagement Once a visitor is onsite, engage them. Keep their interest and involvement. Good design and excellent content have never been so important. Google has been watching this for some time. e. Multi-tiered approaches Spread marketing dollars broadly across many initiatives. It creates a variety of signals to Google that you are legit.

    Hyper Dog Media receives Partner of the Year Award from Adams County Education Consortium

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    – For Immediate Release – Hyper Dog Media receives Partner of the Year Award from Adams County Education Consortium Louisville, CO. (April 26, 2013) — Hyper Dog Media, a metro Denver area search engine optimization and website analytics company, was named Adams County Education Consortium (ACEC) Partner of the Year at an April 25th luncheon. The Partner of the Year Award recognizes the great work of the ACEC partner who collaborated to make the greatest contribuition to enhancement of local academic development and career preparadness. This award provides inspiration to other local business leaders and educators to come together to support the mission of the ACEC. The award was presented at the Adams County Economic Development (ACED) Annual Awards Luncheon to be held on Thursday, April 25th at the Plaza at the Denver Mart. Hyper Dog Media shares the 2013 Partner of the Year Award with The Hanson Group in recognition of both firms contributions to the Experience 9 to 5 program website. ABOUT ADAMS COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Adams County Economic Development, Inc. (ACED) is a private, nonprofit full service economic development organization serving Adams County, which is predicted to be the fastest growing county in Colorado over the next 20 years. Adams County includes 1,192 square miles, nine municipalities, 8,346 businesses and a total population of 377,261. ACED is dedicated to playing a leadership role in aggressively driving economic vitality and sustainable business development in the region. For more information on ACED, visit our web site at http://www.adamscountyed.com/ ABOUT ADAMS COUNTY EDUCATION CONSORTIUM The Adams County Education Consortium’s (ACEC) mission is to develop a county wide partnership that will enhance the academic skills development, career knowledge and exploration, and relevant work ready skills for all learner groups in Adams County.  The group includes representation from the Adams County school districts, post secondary education, local governments, community based organizations, and the business community.  The ACEC executive committee is comprised of the area superintendents and community college presidents who unanimously support the initiative.  The director of the ACEC is located at Front Range Community College and reports to ACED. You can find the ACEC online at http://www.adamscountyeducation.org/ ABOUT HYPER DOG MEDIA Hyper Dog Media is a professional search engine optimization agency located in Louisville, Colorado. They help small, medium and large organizations in the Denver, Colorado metro area achieve increased search ranking and targeted website traffic. Hyper Dog Media is on the cutting edge of search engine optimization, mixing innovative new strategies with tried-and-true best practices. Contact: Jim Kreinbrink President, Hyper Dog Media 720-650-1014 or sales@hyperdogmedia.com

    Hyper Dog Media, a Sponsor of the 2013 BMA of Colorado Gold Key Awards

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    – For Immediate Release – Hyper Dog Media Sponsor of the 2013 BMA of Colorado Gold Key Awards Louisville, CO. (April 26, 2013) — Hyper Dog Media, a metro Denver area search engine optimization and website analytics company, was a sponsor of the 2013 Business Marketing Association of Colorado Gold Key Awards. The BMA Gold Key Awards honor the great work of creative Colorado companies, a notable achievement for the winners while also striving to provide inspiration to other local business leaders. The award-winning work was presented and celebrated at a banquet was held on April 26, 2013 at the Seawell Ballroom in the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, Colorado. This is the second year that Hyper Dog Media sponsored the BMA Gold Key Awards at the Ingot level. About the Business Marketing Association The Colorado Business Marketing Association provides a forum for marketing, advertising and communications professionals to learn, network and collaborate. Members receive access to a wide variety of eductaional resources including outstanding speakers, BMA publications, webinars, white papers and case studies. Members may also become certified through the BMA’s industry leading marketing professional certification. Local members utilize a plethora of in-person networking events as well as online tools for nation-wide collaboration. About the Gold Key Awards The BMA Gold Key Awards are held in high esteem, due in large part to the prestigious panel of judges who review and score the submitted work. Each entry is scored on creativity, production, selling proposition and results. Scoring is totaled to determine winners of the Gold Key and Silver Key awards. The leadership of the BMA Gold Key Awards hopes to foster an environment where it is evident that members love what they do and this drives them to success. In highlighting these great results, the BMA Gold Key Awards inspire local professionals to work with passion and creativity to achieve great things. About Hyper Dog Media Hyper Dog Media is a professional search engine optimization agency located in Louisville, Colorado. They help small, medium and large organizations in the Denver, Colorado metro area achieve increased search ranking and targeted website traffic. Hyper Dog Media is on the cutting edge of search engine optimization, mixing innovative new strategies with tried-and-true best practices. Contact: Jim Kreinbrink President, Hyper Dog Media 720-650-1014 or sales@hyperdogmedia.com

    Summary of Search, February 2013

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    Some SEOs speculated a Panda update was in the works a couple of weeks ago, but none has been confirmed by Google. It’s actually been a pretty calm month in the world of Organic SEO. What does Google want these days?! Overall trends and our collaboration with other SEOs reveal four important trends: 1. Google wants content published by Brands Keyword rich domains have lost much value in the last year. Google is giving preference to brands. They expect constant publishing and distribution of content. 2. Google plus is gaining in importance Will the Google plus economy replace the link economy? It’s too soon to say. But with the increasing importance of Google plus, it is becoming more vital to have profiles built out and maintained. 3. Negative SEO is alive and well One of our Black Hat SEOs on the panel has a thriving business doing “Negative SEO” for clients. Instead of building up his client’s authority with links, he’s creating as many horrible links as possible to competitors. The process is phenomenally easy, and the results mean a scary new chapter for SEO. Building sufficient authority with good links is the only possible defense. 4. Links from authority sites are more important than ever Getting links from important sites, whether in the niche or just more important overall, is a sign of confidence affecting rankings now more than ever. Moving Forward To reiterate last month’s emphasis on the New Google, and add on a 4th item: 1. Google continues to reward branding, social signals, and links from authority websites. 2. Even larger brands have to pay ever more attention to their technical SEO. No longer can duplicate content or thin content be overlooked. 3. Google expects sites that engage users: Videos, images, animations, and other forms of engaging media are important in the new Google. And content needs to match keyword targets wherever possible. 4. The more that media can be spread and leveraged, the better. New SEO Approaches: If you have a content creation initiative (or can get one started), our Content Marketing Link Building is the best way to go. If not, see our Business Development SEO Cycle. 1. “Content Marketing” Link Building involves gaining links for clients based upon their excellent content. 2. “Business Development Link Building” gains links through regular business development activities: providing sponsorships, getting listed on resource pages/”hub pages” in a vertical, and being involved in related conversations in forums and blogs.

    Summary of Search, January 2013

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    Summary of Search, January 2013 It’s almost been 2 years since the first Google Panda update, and it looks like there is a new update about every 4 weeks now. Update 24 was released on Jan 22nd, impacting 1.2% of English queries. Branding and Content Other updates have included a “brand signal update” on the 17th. Some felt this update more than the Panda update 5 days later! Image search Google rolled out changes to their image search interface, touting these changes as better for webmasters. The consensus among webmasters has been that visitors from image search are down, and that’s not a good thing. Google hasn’t been forthcoming in how this was to help – were they trying to help reduce server bandwidth?! At any rate, Google is not likely to change image search interface back. Moving Forward Businesses expect perhaps less marketing over time, that there will be efficiencies and even possibly a “maintenance mode” for online marketing. With the new Google, nothing could be further from the truth: 1. Google continues to reward branding expertise, social signals, and authority linking. 2. Even larger brands have to pay ever more attention to their technical SEO. No longer can duplicate content or thin content be overlooked. 3. Google expects sites that engage users: Videos, images, animations, and other forms of engaging media are important in the new Google. New SEO Approaches: If you have a content creation initiative (or can get one started), our Content Marketing Link Building is the best way to go. If not, see our Business Development SEO Cycle. 1. “Content Marketing” Link Building cycle: KW Research Help with analysis. Content Creation Integrate/tag with keywords, as well as connect you with copywriters. Content Publishing Make sure content being posted is being indexed by search engines. Content Sharing & Distribution Get content indexed, and create links to the content to build authority. Share and distribute to maximize link authority. Campaign measurement Provide analysis, always optimizing the approach. 2.”Business Development” SEO cycle: KW Research Send possible link ideas every month, based on your keyword targets and industry. Business Development Link Building Provide possible sponsorships, “hub pages” in your vertical, and related conversations in forums and blogs. Link Contact Information Provide the best contact/submission info, which can be as hard to find as the link! Link Outreach Strategies Suggest approach, based on our experience in link outreach. For companies, link outreach is best done in-house – but let us know if you need us to do the outreach instead. Campaign measurement Our end-of-month reports will help measure and optimize the approach for each next month.

    Summary of Search December 2012

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    In 2011, Google said they wouldn’t make large changes around the Holidays. This year, all bets are off. Google released Panda update 23 on December 21, impacting 1.3% of English queries. Another change Google made on December 13 attracted quite a bit of attention. Google could not confirm there was an update, but the most logical assessment might be seomoz’s idea that it was a “PMD update” affecting domains that partially used their targeted keywords. Last month, we summarized 3 kinds of content that Google Panda updates penalize: Scraped content, thin content that isn’t unique, other forms of duplicate content. Befriending Google Panda 1. Improve the site’s text content Remove all lower quality content. Invest in good copywriting, written for prospects instead of search engines. Copy should connect with the right audience, solving problems and informing them. Keywords should be used naturally, prominently, but not according to any specific density formulas. If you need help finding a copywriter, let us know: We recommend Laurie Macomber at Blue Skies Marketing. 2. Fix the site. Broken links, grammatical errors, misspellings, and other aspects of the site must be fixed. 3. Enhance the “richness” of the site. Use internal links to communicate keyword relevance. Videos, images, animations and other forms of media can also communicate relevance. Google’s Penguin update SERoundtable recently conducted a Penguin Recovery Poll: 94% Of Google Penguin Victims Did Not Fully Recover http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-poll-16162.html 81% said they had no recovery while 13% claim a partial recovery and only 6% claim a full recovery. That is based on over 500 responses to our poll. Disavowing links 1. Disavowing links may be seen as a confession. Consider carefully before using the tool. 2. If your site only has spammy links, do not disavow them: You will have no links. Bing snapshot is much like Google’s knowledge graph. Google’s weakness appears to be freshness of data, but only time will tell which service has the most accurate up-to-date answers at the top of SERPs.

    October 2012: The only constant in Organic Search is change

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    October 2012 was another busy month for Google. The search giant started the month by announcing 65 changes they made during August and September. Google also pushed out a new Penguin Update (v3) on October 5 – these Penguin updates penalize the overuse of keywords both on a website, and through links. We have had a few clients with really bad – and sometimes profane links. They may consider Google’s new disavow links tool, just released. But we recommend caution with the tool right now: Some SEOs are speculating Google may see this as a confession! Information also came out early in the month about Google penalizing domains that were more “keyword rich” than authoritative. This Google update (called EMD, or Exact Match Domain) is hitting domains like cheap-flights-from-denver.com. They would have been favored in the past for searches like “cheap flights from denver”, but no longer. Authoritative sites were not hit though: ski.com still ranks #1 for “ski”. Google also had an update to it’s penalty for “Top Heavy” sites – those with too many ads at the tops of the page. Highlights of Google’s 65 recent changes include: 1. Changes to titles and snippets. Google is ever more treating the robots.txt directives, title and meta description tags as “suggestions” from webmasters. Sometimes this can be helpful – such as when titles have “comments on” or other generic phrases. Other times, Google’s choices may directly conflict with choices the webmaster has made. 2. Google is using more like terms, and expanding their autocomplete suggestions. A search for “telecom provider” returns results where the term “carrier” is bolded as well as “provider”. Google is sure getting smarter, and it’s a good time to diversify keywords! The Google webmaster guidelines were also updated this month, and reflect their move away from counting low quality directory as well as low quality bookmarking sites. There wasn’t much news for Bing this last month, but a recent report from antivirus vendor Sophos found that Bing search results contained more than twice as many malware-infected pages as Google’s search results(which is still at a hefty 30%).

    The month in Search

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    There haven’t been any Penguin updates this last month, but Google Panda 3.9.1 happened on August 20, 2012. We didn’t see any impact to most client rankings. Penguin v1.2 update is still expected to happen any day now, and (Google Spokesperson) Matt Cutts says to expect a bumpy ride. The early revisions of Panda were wild and somewhat “wooly”. Is page 1 top 7 now?! Around mid-month, Google started showing only 7 results, and from fewer sites, for a good chunk of queries(Estimated: 18%). Page 1 now means “top 7” for many searches. The percentage of users clicking through from positions 8-10 has been negligible in most studies, but this is a major change in how results are displayed and another clear departure from the 10 blue links of yesteryear. Change is the rule Rankings are more volatile than ever. One SEO shared: “Something like 80% of the Top 10 SERPs we measure change every night, to some degree.” On August 10, Google posted 86 changes they made in June and July. Many were small, but those of interest to us involve the boosting of “trusted sites” (usually means large brands) as well as changes to sitelinks. The new clustering and boosting of trusted sites is often creating monopolies for larger brands. Google used to only show 2-3 links maximum from the same website. Now it is possible for larger brands to dominate the top 7 or 8 results. “Transition Rank” Patent Application Google has a new patent application regarding “transition rank.” It’s aimed at punishing Black Hat SEO techniques through random ranking changes: “Some of the techniques used by rank-modifying spammers include keyword stuffing, invisible text, tiny text, page redirects, META tags stuffing, and link-based manipulation.” Many SEOs are speculating this has been part of the algorithm for some time.

    Changes last month in the world of Organic Search

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    There weren’t any Penguin updates this last month either, but Google Panda 3.9 happened on July 24, 2012. We didn’t see any impact to client rankings. But Google Panda updates should be a constant reminder: Have you added to your site lately? Have you added something of real value to your visitors, something that will interest them, and something they will “Like” (or plus one!) Penguin v1.2 update is expected to happen any day now. With Google Penguin, websites are more vulnerable to competitors practicing “Negative SEO” than ever before. Since Google Penguin Update actually penalizes websites for links that may have not been created by them, or for them, it is a change for the SEO industry. Some SEO companies are offering “link pruning” services, but it is quite time consuming. Webmasters on these bad websites are bordering on extortion: Asking for compensation to remove links. Bing, for it’s part, has created a tool to disavow bad links. Google claims to be working on a similar feature in Google Webmaster Tools, but no news yet on when it will be ready. Some expect the tool’s release to coincide wih the next Penguin update. Google sent out 20,000 “unnatural link” warnings last month, but then created some confusion by telling webmasters to ignore them. Google’s Matt Cutts explains: “Fundamentally, it means we’re distrusting some links to your site. We often take this action when we see a site that is mostly good but might be might have some spammy or artificial links pointing to it.” The link building techniques he identified are: 1. “widgetbait” This is where sites distribute a badge or other graphic with a link back to their website. Some web stats sites send these out, and Google has noticed. 2. “paid links” Google wants to be the only site selling links, I think. Or maybe they just want to make sure that advertising related links do not help rankings. 3. “blog spam” Blog entries and comments that are spammy detract from the web. 4. “guestbook spam” Guestbook / forum postings that have nothing to do with the conversation are certainly annoying, and Google does not want to encourage them with it’s algorithm. 5. “excessive article directory submissions” We do not submit to article sites. Many SEO firms have been submitted “spun” articles that resemble gibberish. Google does not see this as a good thing for the web, and also is seeking diversity of link types. 6. “excessive link exchanges” Google knows webmasters are likely to exchange links where it makes sense, but do not want to see this on a mass scale. 7. “other types of linkspam” There are always going to be new types of linkspam. Every time there is a new type of website! Google+ Google is also rewarding sites using their Google+ social network. If you haven’t created a profile and/or switched over your Google Local/Maps profile, this is a good time to get it rolling. Need help? Let us know: We’ll steer you to the right partner or help you ourselves.