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    February 2014 Summary of Search:
    Do as I say, not as I do

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    “Do as I say, not as I do” Sometimes Google does things it warns others not to do:1. Don’t be top heavyGoogle just updated it’s “Top heavy” algorithm. For sites that show many ads at the top, or make users scroll to see content, penalties can apply. 2. Don’t scrape content from other websitesMatt Cutts of Google is actively seeking reports of what would be considered “scraper sites”. One SEO responded with a screenshot of Google scraping wikipedia. 🙂http://www.seroundtable.com/google-scraper-site-report-18184.html In other news, Google will now start showing restaurant menus for those keyword searches. But the restaurant brands do not know exactly where Google is scraping this data from, and how to update it.Read the whole scoop here: http://searchengineland.com/now-official-google-adds-restaurant-menus-search-results-185708 3. Links on user generated content sites that pass pagerankFor most sites, Google insists that links created by site visitors are “nofollow”. But Google+ allows links that are curiously “dofollow”. Other sites could indeed be penalized by this. 4. Sell LinksAlmost $17 billion of Google’s almost $17 billion in revenue from last quarter was from “selling links”. But of course, they aren’t “dofollow”. A couple more items have garnered Google’s attention:1. Rich snippets should be used for good, not evilGoogle has been levying a manual penalty against sites using rich snippets in a spammy fashion.http://www.link-assistant.com/news/rich-snippets-penalty.html 2. Don’t try to insert too many keywords with your business listingThere used to be an distinct advantage in having your keywords in your business name. Now Google wants to make sure the business name you use in your business listing matches you business name.– Your title should reflect your business’s real-world title.– In addition to your business’s real-world title, you may include a single descriptor that helps customers locate your business or understand what your business offers.– Marketing taglines, phone numbers, store codes, or URLs are not valid descriptors.– Examples of acceptable titles with descriptors (in italics for demonstration purposes) are “Starbucks Downtown” or “Joe’s Pizza Delivery”. Examples that would not be accepted would be “#1 Seattle Plumbing”, “Joe’s Pizza Best Delivery”, or “Joe’s Pizza Restaurant Dallas”.See more: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en So what to do?Create a content generating, curating, sharing machine.1. Post full versions of your content to your site, but also Google+, linkedin, and promote your content at other relevant places around the web.2. Tag your content with rich snippets, facebook open graph, twitter cards to increase it’s “sharability” and categorization. PSST! Need a Free Link?We’d like to help you promote your own business, hoping more work for you brings more work our way! Join our newsletter for our suggestion this month: It’s a site with a pagerank of 9!

    Spam-Fighting Always Continues – December 2013 Summary of Search

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    Spam-Fighting Always Continues Google’s Matt Cutts promised a month free of major updates, but added that “spam-fighting always continues.” Indeed, there were some complaints from webmasters around the 17th and 19th that could have been Google taking out another link network. This month, Google made an example out of Rap Genius. The site was offering traffic for blog links. To participate, you had to link to their Justin Bieber page. And somehow feel good about yourself. Oh, and send them the link. Rap Genius would then tweet your link to their followers, sending traffic to your blog. Google caught wind of the link scheme, and severely punished Rap Genius in the rankings. The moral is that Google will always, usually, catch you! So how do you invest in search engine traffic for the long term? 1. Create Content Google wants compelling content: images, blog posts, videos, podcasts, surveys and more. Good content is long (1000 words plus for articles) and holds your visitor’s attention. Google does not want visitors leaving the site quickly (but will probably forgive if it’s an ad click!). 2. Tag Your Content Search engines are getting better at understanding what we humans create on the internet. But communication directly with “search engine bots” has never been easier. These technologies could be better implemented on almost every website: – Internal linking structures – Sitemap.xml – Title tags – Meta descriptions – Rich snippets   – Authorship 3. Get the Word Out Content outreach and marketing has never been more important. Content today is where websites were in 1998: Many build, and then are disappointed at the results. Good content competes against a dizzying array of distractions in an always-connected world, and must be actively marketed – even AGGRESSIVELY marketed – to make an impression. Content must be spread via social media (especially Google+), and marketed specifically for links. These are “earned links” and outreach for the purpose of links wonderful way to promote your content. As a bonus, this promotion of content will also promote rankings! Get a free link for your business: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business!

    Summary of Search, October 2013

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    (Not provided) Google recently started encrypting all searches, and is now showing “(Not provided)” in Google Analytics for most organic traffic. Some referral traffic will show up from Google.com, and is also organic traffic (But analytics cannot tell if the browser is being ultra-secure). There is no easy solution, but at the next Boulder SEO MeetUp we will be leading a presentation and discussion of alternatives.   Penguin Update Around October 4th, there was an update to Google’s search algorithms. It’s being called Penguin 2.1 (or sometimes Penguin 5) and is a major update. The Penguin updates penalize “over-optimization” and “web spam”, both on websites and looking at website links.   What is “over-optimization?” Using keywords too much in title tags and content Links with anchor-text (the blue underline) focused around too few phrases Anything with your site’s link profile that does not show a narural amount of diversity (duplicate pages titles, inbound links only from press release sites, etc).   What is “Web Spam”? Link networks / schemes Links from de-indexed and banned websites, including old directories, blogs & article sites.   While the impact is supposed to be 1% of English queries, the effect is very large considering the number of Google keyword searches!   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. Watch for “Negative SEO” campaigns where an unscrupulous competitor might be creating links to your site just to penalize you!   3. Build Over the long term, these strategies will also help protect from Google penalties, and are, of course, great marketing initiatives: Great content: Copy writing has gone through an evolution and cheap content is not going to cut it. Could it ever though? 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. Brand Name Searches: Google knows big brands are searched. Their “buzz” is a signal of authority, although not yet on par with link building. 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. Multi-tiered approaches: Spread marketing dollars broadly across many initiatives. It creates a variety of signals to Google that you are legit.   Bing While Google+ is trying to understand social connections & influence from it’s own network, Bing is leveraging Klout. Bing has announced deeper integration with Klout and more control regarding how profiles show up.   Get a free link for your business: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business! .

    Summary of Search, August 2013

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    Summary of Search Is Google backward compatible? The previous advice from Google, given in their 2008 Starter Guide for SEO, is now “out the window.” Google previously recommended that the underlined text of a link (aka “anchortext”) contained keywords, but now finds that somewhat spammy. The new Google direction is all about authority link building, not keyword-focused link building. It’s nice to occasionally say: “There was only one major update this month in Google.” It’s an as-yet unnamed update that changed the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in a way similar to Penguin 1.0. Google did, however, roll-out out an exciting new feature with this update: Special placement in search results for “high-quality, in-depth content” that is properly tagged. See their example:   How do you take advantage of this special placement? Try this: Tag everything to make it easy for google to figure out: Use schema.org “article” markup: http://schema.org/Article Provide authorship markup: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3280182 Include pagination markup, if applicable (rel=next and rel=prev) Create a Google Plus page, linked to your website: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1708844 Provide information about your organization’s logo: (organization markup) http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-schemaorg-markup-for-organization.html Create compelling in-depth content (so easy, right?) Lengthy – Google has given no numbers, specifically, but we recommend text content of 1000-3000 words in length. Engaging – Google is likely looking at many metrics, including time on page, as signals of engagement. Popular – Content that is popular has inbound links, shares, likes, plus-ones, etc. And it probably has links to it from the site’s homepage or other important pages on the site. See more about the announcement at: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2013/08/discover-great-in-depth-articles-on.html Google is communicating about penalties much better than in the past, too: They have added a feature to Webmaster Tools which will alert webmasters if a manual penalty has been levied. Recent interviews have revealed that disavowed links are not stored. This means that old disavowed links must be included in every new batch submitted. Disavowing some links appears to be a normal part of modern SEO. Multiple reconsideration requests are okay, and are considered independently of past requests every time. Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox?  Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE!

    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.

    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.

    6 PPC Secrets from a $100k campaign

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    There was an excellent story in the San Francisco Gate in May about Lake Champlain Chocolates, and the lessons they’ve learned with Pay Per Click Advertising. The story title is “PAY-PER-CLICK PROBLEMS: Emeryville gourmet chocolate company has a rough go of it“, but the real value of the article is the PPC secrets it gives away. The article discusses two chocolate retailers: Lake Champlain Chocolates and Charles Chocolates. Lake Champlain Chocolates has experienced successful growth due to their PPC campaign, but Charles Chocolates did see any measurable growth from theirs. 1. Use negative keywords In the article, words like “cheap” and “free” were used as negative keywords to avoid showing ads to less affluent searchers. Every time you show an ad it’s like holding out a dollar bill for your searcher to snatch away. Be sure to get a prospective customer in return! 2. Refrain from using the content network Google AdWords users expect that the content network will show ads in all the right places. In a perfect world, new customers would see your ad and keep you in mind for their next purchase. But it isn’t a perfect world(Don’t even get me started!). Consider: – Visitors probably will not click. Content ads are like billboard ads. How often do you see a billboard and pull off of the highway to make an immediate purchase? It’s highly unlikely. Like the company in the article learned, “The return was never there.” – Visitors who click your ad won’t buy that day. They were reading, not shopping. At best, they will signup for your newsletter or bookmark your page. Is the landing page converting them into bookmarking or signing up? Probably not. Either fix that, or turn off the content network for now. – Clickfraudsters will click your ad and keep half. Click fraud is a plague of the content network. Last June, Outsell estimated that click fraud could be as high as 14 percent. The real estimate is probably a little lower, but click fraud does exist. 3. Use large sets of focused keywords The successful Lake Champlain Chocolate seller had a keyword set as high as 70k at one time, and now has it trimmed down to 30k. That’s  a big keyword set! 4. Use advanced keyword features One of the issues Internet Marketing Consultant Lael Sturm found with the struggling Emerville Chocolate Retailer Charles Chocolates was that they “hadn’t modified the ad text to match each specific keyword.” Be sure to use the advanced keyword options that PPC engines like Google AdWords provide. In Google AdWords, the code is {keyword: your keyword}. This option shows the keyphrase your user was searching for in the text of your ad. 5. Measure and adjust Is money being wasted in your campaign? You won’t know unless you are measuring. Lake Champlain saw they spent money attracting a searcher for “Chocolate covered scorpions,” something they didn’t sell, and decided not to let that happen again. Along with measuring what ads are the most effective, be sure to measure what you are paying for and remove/adjust the ads lacking good ROI. 6. Outsource your campaign to professionals to dramatically increase your sales Even with Lake Champlain Chocolate’s success inhouse, they were able to DOUBLE their sales by outsourcing their PPC management to professionals. You just can’t beat having the right help. Get to your friendly neighborhood search marketing agency today!

    5 web design & SEO tips from the world of PPC

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    Many view the worlds of Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization as opposites. While they are certainly very different, the goals are similar: bring eyeballs(with wallets) to your site and make it easy for them to buy.  Here are 5 tips to improve your SEO based on lessons from PPC. 1. Converting keywords Some keywords convert into sales better than others. Use your analytics to discover which keywords are bringing you sales, then target them with your SEO campaign. PPC(Pay-Per-Click) ads are a wonderful testbed to discover those converting keywords if you are pressed for time. 2. Your title and metadescription are your ad When composing your titles and metadescriptions, remember they will be shown in the search engine result pages. It’s like having an advertisement to click, but without Google’s AdWords rules. Always remember you are competing against the other pages in the SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages) – who will get the click? 3. Landing pages It’s great to optimize for your homepage, but setup some (even more relevant) landing pages and be sure they get some of the inbound links you are building. 4. Optimize landing pages for different steps in the buying process As visitors reach your site, think about what step they might be at in their buying process? Are they conducting preliminary research?  Give them links to bookmark your content, send it to a friend, or signup for your newsletter.  Is their search so specific that they are probably ready to buy? Now is the time to wave the free shipping! 5. Split Test Internet marketing is measurable. Why not setup split tests when you design your web pages? Create a couple of similar pages(avoid duplicate content) and use your analytics to measure performance. When your sample size tells you which one is better, adjust the worst of the two and measure again. Or create a third page. Hey, why not? HMTL is still free.