10. Identifying Web Spam
Major search engines like Google are engaged in an unending fight with “spam” websites that target unsuspecting users. Those sites employ exploitative keywords and referral links, sending themselves to the first page of search results while providing no useful content to those who click through. Instead, the main focus of these sites is simply to earn revenue. Matt Peters is the “spam guru” of SEOMoz, and talked to interested professionals about this growing problem. A full 17 percent of websites will be penalized for spamming users this year, while 5 percent will be banned from major search engines and directories entirely, according to Peters.

9. Living in a Post-Penguin World
Greg Boser talked to MozCon attendees about coping with Google’s latest search algorithm changed, and encouraged SEO professionals to think of Penguin as a behavioral change, rather than a radical departure from previous SEO techniques. Penguin existed to refine banner ad placement, refocus efforts on intuitive keywords, and promote authoritative and fresh website content over recycled blocks of keywords. To that end, it has largely been successful at changing habits, he contends.8. Online Reputation Management Does Matter

Websites need to keep their public reputations in good repair, according to Rhea Drysdale. The public relations experts urged websites not to “play dead” when it comes to combating a negative public image, instead urging them to take control and develop a better reputation through good search placement, fresh content, and a new approach. The internet moves fast, according to Drysdale, and a bad reputation isn’t a chronic condition

7. A “Whole Customer Focus”
Brings in Business Marty Weintraub believes businesses should be looking to cater to the “whole” customer using their SEO practices, rather than just viewing them as an engine of commerce and increased revenues. When that happens, people feel a stronger connection to a brand and are more likely to return

6. Don’t Speak an SEO-Centric Language to Clients
For SEO professionals who work with outside businesses to boost their rankings, Will Reynolds, of SEER Interactive, urges leaving the technical jargon behind. Instead of speaking in terms of keywords, rankings, referral links, and other technical terms, SEO professionals should communicate with clients in familiar terms: profits, revenues, exposure, and authority.

5. Design, Design, Design
Jenny Lam, of Jackson Fish Marketing, spoke to the quality of design at this year’s MozCon. Indeed, design is increasingly the “front door” of any company’s first impression. New customers will directly associate a usable, intuitive, and attractive design, with good customer service, well-regarded products, and a solid reputation. When combined with SEO, this one-two punch can be a major competitive advantage.

4. Michael King and iPullRank
Michael King showed up to talk about his company’s new product, iPullRank. At the heart of this product’s mission is well-composed content. King contends that this content is the key to successful inbound marketing, and his company is looking to leverage the importance of good content for clients as it improves their ranking with authoritative, keyword-rich blocks of written content.

3. To Excel, Businesses Should Use Microsoft Excel to Manage Data
Annie Cushing, also of SEER Interactive, urged attendees to use Microsoft Excel to manage keywords, statistics, and other data related to inbound marketing and content creation. She showed off a number of macro and formatting tools for attendees, and demonstrated the difference between well-organized websites and those who have no control over their own statistics or data at all.

2. Links are About Relationships
Jen Lopez gave a great presentation on the importance of relationships when seeking referral links from other websites. These links are a form of relationship in and of themselves, she contends, but that’s not enough. Website owners need to form relationships with the people whose websites are linking to their content. These are an important way to ensure that a rising tide — rankings, in this case — lifts all boats. This kind of togetherness can benefit both websites in terms of visitors and revenues.

1. Testing and Feedback are Crucial to Success
Jennifer Sable Lopez, of SEOMoz, gave a presentation that speaks to the importance of testing and feedback in creating effective SEO approaches and effective content. She urged all website owners, and SEO professionals, to encourage feedback and put it to good use, talking it up as the number one way to be nimble in the marketplace and able to easily edge out the competition.

The post MozCon 2012: The Top 10 Highlights from This Year’s Conference appeared first on MindBOX SEO.

How SEO Works

SEO is not magic. There are no tricks that will make your page more valuable to readers. If you want to get top billing with the search engines, you simply have to provide content that is relevant to what your customers are searching for. SEO tricks and shortcuts only serve to undermine your efforts. The search engine spiders are very smart and will pick up these tricks quickly. The best way to enjoy more page views is to employ ethical strategies to increase web traffic. A professional SEO company can provide this service for your company.

Trick #1: Unrelated Keywords: 
If “Justin Bieber” is a trending topic, don’t expect to sprinkle his name on your automotive blog and get more traffic. You may trick users into visiting your page, but you won’t be able to get them to stay. Getting your customers to linger on your site is one of the best ways to increase page rank.

Trick #2: Keyword Stuffing: 
The search engines are keen to this trick and will punish you with fifth page status if you keyword stuff. Keyword stuffing involves repeating a key term multiple times in order to attract search engines.
“Our cars for sale in New York are some of the best cars for sale in New York so buy your New York cars for sale from us,” is an example of a keyword stuffed sentence. Don’t do this. Write for your readers and the search engines will follow.

Trick #3: Cloaking: This occurs when a site uses two separate domains to take searches to a totally different page from what they searched. A user searches for San Diego Zoo, only to be taken to a site selling perfume. Many webmasters use this trick to get more users to their page. Once again, search engines are wise to this trick and you won’t get away with it for long.

Trick #4: Comment Spam: One of the most annoying to readers is comment spam. These spammers place links to their site in the comment section of a well-read blog to drive traffic. In the comment section of a news blog, a spammer posts the comment, “Great article. Meet quality singles in your area by clicking here.” It’s a nasty trick that decreases not only your page views, but that of the blog. The search engines will punish you for this as well.

Trick #5: Domain Squatting: This is the trick of registering a domain with the name of a famous person or company with the intention of selling the name at a high rate. Courts have ordered webmasters to give up domain names when used strictly for this purpose. In many cases, you can be sued for copyright infringement if you create negative information on your site that hurts the company.

White Hat Techniques That Work: If you want to get higher placement on search engine pages, there are a few ways to do this. The main way is to simply provide content that is relevant to your searcher. This is the simple formula the search engines use to find pages. They look for the sites that best match the search term. Create interesting content, keep your site user-friendly and readable and you will enjoy high placement and increased traffic. SEO is not magic and dirty tricks will get you nowhere.

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Google Panda: A Look at Google’s Biggest Search Result Algorithm Change in Years
Website owners had long catered specifically to Google’s methodology of ranking websites in its search engine results, and this resulted in a large number of websites that practically built themselves from the ground-up on northing but keywords. That might be fine, in limited cases, but the team at Google noticed that most of these websites were full of so-called “keyword spam.” This is defined as highly repetitive keywords which add absolutely no value to the written content of a website and serve only to trick Google into ranking the page highly based strictly on keyword density.

As the problem deepened, most search engine users who relied on Google for quality content were finding that they would increasingly be led to a site which offered them no information, no authority, and no improved understanding of the topic which they were hoping to learn about with their relevant Google search term. This caused a “trust gap” between the end user and the results Google would return based on a keyword search, and it began to make searching for content relatively useless in many cases.

Google Panda was unleashed in 2011 to blunt the spread of keyword spam, and it began to focus specifically on websites which had sensible content, well-reasoned blog posts, and used keywords in ways that were semantically appropriate within typical sentence structure. Websites were rewarded for their perceived authority, and the “freshness” of brand new content resulted in a noticeable improvement in the site’s ranking. Google Panda was made intelligent enough to discern the nature of a site’s content, emphasizing those sites which consistently came up with new posts and ideas while relegating sites with excessive keyword usage to the “back of the line” in most cases.

Google Penguin: The Successor to the Panda Which Changed Everything
With keyword spam mostly a thing of the past after the release and implementation of the Google Panda algorithm in 2011, Google next turned its focus toward those websites which tried to boost their search engine rankings with linked keywords to either irrelevant sites or nonexistent websites altogether. There was a time when Google actually rewarded sites for placing a number of links throughout content and sidebar areas in a typical design but this, too, was soon abused by more nefarious website owners throughout the world. Once again, the company set out to elevate the quality of the content returned on the first page of search results and to help restore consumer confidence in the pages they’d inevitably be invited to click after performing a search.

This culminated in the release of yet another algorithm change in April of 2012, this time given the name of Google Penguin. The change implemented by Google Penguin specifically punished website operators with excessive links or a large number of links to irrelevant or missing websites. It also began to take into account the placement of advertisements on a given website, with excessive incidences of above-the-fold advertising causing a page to drop further behind in its Google page rank.

Overal, Google Penguin was a much more design-based change to the Google ranking system, as it began looking through XHTMl advertising and linking elements to determine whether a website was reputable or simply setup to generate as much revenue as possible without helping consumers in the process. This has led to a discernible change in the value of content which is displayed in Google’s first search result pages, and it almost certainly will lead to an increase in consumer trust in the next few months as the changes become more obvious and returned websites become higher in value and reputation.

Google is Now in the Reputation Business
Before the release of both Google Penguin and Google Panda, the search giant was large in the business of evaluating keywords. That has all changed, and the world’s leader in internet searches is now focused squarely on the value of a website’s content, its reputation among visitors, and what it can offer in terms of helpful content in addition to links and important keywords.

The post Google Panda and Google Penguin: An Overview appeared first on MindBOX SEO.

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With Google’s Penguin fully functional and live at this point, people have become worried. At this time, there is no way to know for certain if you have been dinged by Penguin. Google suggests the website owners track their traffic. If the traffic to your website has decreased immensely since Penguin dropped on April 24, then chances are you were hit. If your traffic has increased, then you are actually benefiting from Penguin. The system is working in your favor.

Fortunately, if you feel you have been hit by Penguin then chances are Google has attempted to send you emails regarding the potential spam on your website. If you are unaware of any emails being sent from Google, they are more than likely waiting for you in Google Webmaster Center. All this means is that you have to verify your account through the Webmaster Center. Once everything is squared away, you have been verified, and the potential spam issues have been resolved, Penguin should become your friend again.
If you feel like you were incorrectly dinged by Penguin, Google has developed a form for web owners to submit so they issue can be investigated. The website is Feedback on our recent algorithm update (“Penguin”)

While there are people who have been negatively affected by Penguin, it is most likely due to the fact that they were spamming the search engine. Furthermore, while they web owners are upset over this new update, Penguin, it should be recalled that Google does own its own website, Google. Although it does have somewhat of a monopoly on search engines, there are other search engines out there that can be utilized by spammers. That is until those search engines wise up and include a Penguin-like update. The internet is still very much a business and Google doesn’t fall out of those parameters.

While there is some debate over whether or not Penguin is a good rollout or not, it remains unsettled. Some riot that Google is trying to shut small business down since they don’t use AdWords. Essentially, the companies that deserve the traffic are now getting the traffic they deserve and spam is less prevalent. Indubitably some web owners were incorrectly dinged by Penguin but by following simple procedures put in place by Google, these issues can and will be resolved.

The post Google’s Penguin Update – What is it? appeared first on MindBOX SEO.

Fresh Content

As Google continues to improve the way it ranks companies in its search results, the company has unveiled new changes based on content “freshness” that will impact an estimated 35 percent of search results. The company will now be evaluating website content based on how recently it has been posted, how relevant it is to search being conducted, and how often a website revises the content it publishes. This shift in search engine rankings is even bigger than the company’s Panda update, which affected 12 percent of searches conducted through Google.

Adjusting for Hot Topics, Recurring Events, Quality

One of the truisms about the world is that it is always changing, and Google’s goal with its improved search engine rankings is to reflect the fact that more recent information is often more accurate. The company estimates that its adjustments for considering content freshness will alter and improve search results by impact three typical types of searches:

• Searches for recurring events: Google will take into account whether a user’s search term pertains to an event which occurs on an annual basis, or even more frequently. It will then show the results which are “freshest” and thus pertain to the most recent instance of that event, rather than one which accused a year or two ago.

• Hot topics: The internet has become a place that quickly shifts its focus between a few hot topics, and those topics change by the day. Google’s search results will now be updated to reflect this; a search for a particular musician, for example, might focus on websites and news articles which relate to their most recent antics, rather than things which occurred several years or decades ago.

• Overall freshness of content: Google will also be rewarding websites with better search engine rankings for overall content freshness. Those websites with the latest content, the most frequent update, and the most accurate information will be ranked first by the search engine, while those which are typically lax on posting updates, or feature out-of-date content, will be relegated to lower overall search result rankings.

Freshness Could Lead to New Forms of Spam

As with all of Google’s search ranking algorithm changes, the emphasis on freshness is designed to thwart SEO spammers who have learned how to trick the company into ranking malicious pages first. But freshness is easy to attain for customers who merely alter “just enough” of their article for it to count as new, fresh content. In that way, it might end up being particularly futile for Google to value freshness. With clever rewording, old content can sound new; with a little work, outdated information can be perceived as the latest facts and figures.

Despite Focus on Freshness, Twitter Still Missing

Google has yet to fully integrate Twitter users and their tweets into its search results, which is almost comical as the company continues to promote website “freshness.” If the internet contains just one source of freshness, that source would be Twitter.

The company insists that it simply has no efficient way to crawl the abundance of data and information being shared by users of the microblogging service, which it stopped attempting to do in July. When contrasted with the way the company is punishing the keepers of internet content, it’s almost hypocritical for Google to neglect this robust source of breaking content.

Freshness is Improved, Not New

Google has always accounted for the freshness of website content when ranking those sites in its search results, but the company’s new algorithm is a big change to how it perceives new content. The company’s focus on fresh information isn’t new, but the way it crawls that content and checks it for accuracy and relevancy is all-new. Whether its improved algorithm will lead to improvements for website operators remains to be seen, but those in the search engine optimization industry should keep tabs on their analytics to monitor potential seismic shifts in their click-through rates.

The post Algorithm Change For Freshness Impacts 35% Of Searches appeared first on MindBOX SEO.

The change was implemented due to user complaints that searched content was difficult to find after clicking a result. Searchers do not want to have to scroll past advertisements to get to what they want. Sites that present with large blocks of ads upon loading instead of relevant content are a poor experience for the user. Such sites will have a lower rank in the future.

Having ads at the top of a web page is a common practice, as it helps webmasters to monetize content. The change to the algorithm will not affect sites that contain a normal amount of ads, but will penalize those that devote an excessive amount of space to advertising above the fold. Packing the top of a page with ads moves content down and frustrates the user.

It is estimated the change will affect less than one percent of all searches conducted on Google. This would lead to results being reordered for one in 100 searches. Any webmaster who notices a change in ranking should look over their site and reconsider the presentation of ads to content. Google offers a browser resizing tool to help webmasters see how their site looks in different resolutions and across devices. There are other tools available as well.

Any changes to a webpage’s layout will be updated immediately after the next full crawl. The length of time it takes for the process to complete depends on the number of pages on the site, and how well the crawler can read the content. Most websites require several weeks of crawling before the changes show up in search results.

In the meantime, Google encourages webmasters to concentrate on providing the best possible content and to not worry about the algorithm adjustment, as it is only one of 500 changes planned for 2012.

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Though SEO constantly changes, a few key factors remain the same. These factors have proven themselves pivotal in a website’s success for search engine ranking.

Off-page ranking factors

1. Global link popularity

Receiving quality backlinks from other established websites is a great way to boost your site’s SEO rank. However, obtaining these quality links may be difficult for new site owners. Most site owners find that by simply creating quality content, other website owners may link that post in their own articles.

2. Rate of new inbound links

For every new post, you should include quality inbound links to other sites. Google favors sites that include links to other informative articles.

3. Popularity/relevance of the traffic from the linking website

Google uses various statistics, such as bounce rates and direct traffic, to help determine the quality of a linking website. If the linking website has quality traffic that follows the link to your site, it may help your SEO rank.

4. Trust rank

Google highly indexes sites that it deems safe to visit. Some site owners have experimented with various privacy policies and discovered that their sites with a privacy policy tend to have more organic traffic than their sites without a privacy policy.

5. Age of website

Sites with quality content tend to rank higher after a few years of existence. However, sites with duplicate or poor content will not improve in rank, no matter how old it gets.

6. Top-level domain extension name (.edu, .com, .org, .au)

The domain extension name does not really affect SEO rankings in a local sense. However, if your site has a .au extension, it will appear higher on Google.au, rather than Google.com. Therefore, Australians will be your primary audience. Moreover, it is impossible to purchase the .edu and .gov extensions. Those extensions are exclusive to specific websites.

On-page ranking factors

1. Keywords in the Title

Some people claim that keywords are losing steam in the SEO game. However, logic will tell you that Google relies on these words the most to find relevant content according to various search terms. Google must index sites that match users’ search terms.

The keywords in the title, however, are especially important. These words tell Google what the content of that specific post is about. If a user wants to read a post about new SEO methods, Google will find a website with an article about that topic, relying on the post’s title’s keywords to match the search terms.

2. Keywords in the content

The content is the most important part of a website. Therefore, the words in the content are a very important aspect of SEO. The title keywords help Google initially recognize relevant content, but the words in the content assure Google that the content is relevant to various search terms.

Moreover, the keywords in the content must somehow relate to the keywords in the title. Otherwise, Google will negatively score that website for misleading content. Do not create a title about fishing methods if your content relates to how to buy various types of fish.

3. Page / Site Speed

Google has indicated that their search algorithms are due to change again as the search engine will factor in how quickly a web page loads to how well a site ranks in Google. I anticipate page and site speed to be even more important  in the next year or two.

4. Keywords in tags

Keywords in html tags — h1, h2, h3, bold and italics — used to have a great affect before 2006. However, Google places less importance on these tags, especially if they are keyword stuffed. Additionally, tags that are keyword stuffed may negatively affect the website’s SEO ranking.

5. Quality of website content

No doubt, content is king in the SEO game. Therefore, make sure your content is top-quality. You want to give your readers something of value, something that keeps them coming back.

6. Internal link popularity

The links you include on your site should point towards other high-quality sites. Don’t link to spammy or low-quality sites.

7. Keywords in domain name (www.keywords.com)

When users perform a Google search, Google will usually include any sites that have that exact search term as the website’s domain name.

8. Keywords in webpage URL (www. abc.com/keywords)

The name of each page on your website has ranking relevance. Page names show on your domain name. Make sure each page name is relevant to the content within the page.

9. Keywords in images

Any image on your site should have an alt text that has a keyword relevant to the image. Users who perform image searches may come across your image, which will link to your site.

10. Meta description

This method is less effective, but still usable. Meta descriptions have SEO relevance, so include keywords in your meta description.

11. Meta keywords tag

Some websites have specific meta keywords tags that allow site owners to properly identify what type of content is in the site. Use appropriate keywords in these tags.

12. Age of your document

As your article ages, it will become more established on Google. Google will refer to that document before other newer documents.

13. W3C validation

This method does not affect your SEO ranking(unless it causes spiderability issues), but sites with errors in their html tags may deter visitors from returning. Errors result in off-centered text and even blank pages causing site abandonment.

The post Google Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors for 2011 appeared first on MindBOX SEO.

Getting the different concepts regarding the internet can be a bit difficult. It can help to compare these concepts with real life situations. A concept which most website owners have difficultly grasping is that of backlinks. To get a better picture about what these are, an easy way is to compare them with references.

A website can be compared to a resume. Like with ordinary resumes, the website will comprise different features. The goal of every website is to stand out among other competing websites. Also, two resumes can be similar in terms of content and presentation. The difference usually comes at the references. A resume can have numerous references or just a few. The quantity doesn’t count much. The quality of the references is what usually counts. Take the following example.

You are a human resource manager and currently going through different resumes in search of a potential employee. Since you had asked for a specific set of qualifications, almost all of the resumes are similar. However, in order to find the right person to employ, you are likely to look at the references. The people that the applicants put as their references says a lot about the applicants familiarity with the position to be filled. For example, a professor in statistics will be a better reference than a close relative for an applicant seeking a job in a research firm. A handful of references who are relevant to the job in question is better than many who don’t have a clue what the job is about.

Backlinks act in the same way as references when it comes to websites. Search engines can be compared to potential employers. There are many websites competing for high ranking positions. The search engine should be able to determine which website goes where in ranking. Since most of the websites will already be optimized for ranking for particular keywords, the search engine will have to use other methods to determine ranking factors. One of these is the use of backlinks.

Like for the case of a resume, the quantity of backlinks doesn’t count much. The website might have many backlinks from non authoritative websites or even irrelevant websites. Such links are low quality and don’t help search engines much. Websites which have quality backlinks will rank higher in search engines than those with many irrelevant backlinks. This however doesn’t mean that you should seek to have only a handful of backlinks from authoritative websites. In fact, linking only to authoritative websites which rank high in search engines might negatively affect your websites ranking. A good way to make the best of backlinks is to balance between the quantity and quality.

If you have a web based concept which needs translation, you can let me know and I’ll do my best to simplify it for the masses.

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