Here is a 7 minute video of what to expect relative to the Google SEO algorithm as of May 2013. This is a very rare insight into what’s coming from Matt Cutts. If you don’t have 7 minutes, great content is still king and black hat spamming still out.
Archive for SEO
Google Panda Update Info Graphic
As many of our readers know, the Google Panda Update has negatively impacted websites that acquired links from low quality article sites and other sources. Google’s algorithm has been updated to favor high quality, on-site content and social media dominance over off-site link popularity.
Here is a great info graphic that shows how things have changed.
Google Reinforces the Importance of Social Media with Realtime Search
As you would assume from the name, Google Realtime Search provides search results in real-time with a dynamic stream of content from across the Web, live and automatically updating instantaneously.
What Realtime Search does is,
- gather news stories,
- blog posts,
- updates from social networks
- and it presents them in a constantly refreshing stream
How it Helps You:
- Cut through the noise
- Beat journalist to the breaking news before it hits major headlines with Google Alerts
- See the entire conversation from initial comment to up-to-the second replies
- Look back in time to see what people were saying about a specific topic
- Refine a search to see what people in a specific area (town, state or country) are saying about a product, service, brand
Advantage for Businesses
If you are a business participating in social media, smile away, as Google is providing you another advantage over companies that are not. With the launch of real-time search, businesses that are active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn will have an advantage in getting found online because they will show up in real-time search.
Advantage for Marketers
Lucky us, we can now monitor online conversations about our clients FOR FREE! We can see how the press release we just distributed for our client was viewed by consumers and take a peak into the discussion surrounding our clients newest special offer.
2 Search Engines that Count…ah-relief
2 Search Engines — Google and Bing
According to Bing this a.m. Today I am happy to share that Bing is powering Yahoo!’s search results in the US and Canada (English only for now, the other languages will come in the weeks and months ahead)
Bye bye Yahoo search, hello Bing. Note the Powered by Bing at the bottom of the Yahoo! search page. Bing notes the migration to adCenter and the great milestone this is for Yahoo and Bing. We as marketers could not agree more, hello two search engines!
PPC is Quicker than SEO. True or False?
False. PPC is not necessarily quicker then SEO, anymore. Yes, PPC used to be a quicker way to get results on search engines, and in many cases still is, however Google’s focus on providing the latest, freshest results (Google Caffeinated) and including results from blog posts and social media platforms, often within minutes, has made it easier to get into organic listings more quickly.
The Importance of Links
UPDATED JANUARY 28, 2013
Link popularity has long been the basis of Google’s entire organic search engine ranking algorithm. That is, if you wanted to rank well in Google, you had to get a lot of high quality sites to link to your site. The logic was that if someone was willing to link away from their site to your site, then you must be a good company with a good reputation. While links are still important, Google’s recent ranking algorithm updates (called Panda and Penguin) have changed the importance and value of links.
Without getting into too much detail here – since this is just an update to a now outdated blog post…
Google now favors high quality content and social media presence or online reputation over link popularity. Think about it. If you have a huge list of followers on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, then you must be a good business. If you have great online reviews, then you must be a legit business. If your website has great content that people follow and naturally link to, then you must be a good company.
Link popularity is not dead, but it’s on the way out. Focus your efforts on creating content rich websites with great content. Focus your efforts on getting more traction in the plethora of social media sites.
Twitter Provides a Two for One w/ Tweet Button
1) Share Content
2) Promote
Say farewell to Tweetmeme and hello to Tweet Button. They could have come up with a more inventive name, but hey the tool’s pretty cool.
Not only can you now share content quickly via Twitter, such as a scandalous article about how MTV is giving Kanye West a second chance, you can promote strategic Twitter accounts at the same time while driving traffic to your website. Hello PR and SEO!
To put it into simple terms, you can simply choose your Button size from a choice of three, add the code to your site, and boom your enabling others to promote your company/Twitter account (PR) and potentially driving traffic to your site (SEO).
Choose from Three Twitter Tweet Buttons
Plus, with Twitter’s new Tweet Button you can build a custom tweet button for your Web site.
For additional information on Twitter’s new Tweet Button, refer to Goodbye TweetMeme: Twitter Launches Its Own Retweet Button.
Do Videos Help With SEO?
You bet they do — Video can increase your search engine optimization and increase traffic to your site — if orchestrated correctly
Small and mid-sized businesses often struggle standing up to the bigger guys — earning visibility when the larger organizations consume it all. Video SEO is a powerful method of drawing visitors to your Web site.
Gain Visibility in Search Engines with Videos
Surprisingly, videos can increase your search engine visibility significantly if hosted on entities other than your Web site, such as YouTube or TubeMogul. Businesses have experienced huge advantages, generated leads in hosting a video on a video hosting site rather than their own Web site, due to the following:
- A search engine spider cannot crawl your video behind the firewall on your Web site. This is a huge problem regarding video SEO because viewings lead to higher search engine rankings, search engine prominence. On a video hosting site, however your video can earn great search engine prominence the more it is viewed.
Don’t just Upload It Spiderfect it!
Video’s can be made spider friendly in more ways than one and here’s how:
1) Text is Queen The Video is, of course, King
Incorporate keywords into the text that accompanies the video, including the title of the video, category, tags. If possible, provide a transcript of what is said in the video to boost video SEO.
2) Inform They Shall Come
Drive traffic to the video on the hosted site so the video hosting provider can track viewings. Post the URL to the video on your Facebook page, LinkedIn Group, blog and even your Web site.
3) Quality, Quality, Quality
We, or Google, can’t say it enough. Sure, an inexpensive digital camera can be utilized to film the video, that is not what we are referring to in terms of quality here. Certainly try and make the video as aesthetically appealing as possible, but what we are referring to is the way you get people to view your video. Ensure you are using relevant, quality terms to get people to watch your clip. According to industry experts, sneaky people have been including links to their video using popular terms such as BP, Justin Beiber or Jet Blue Guy in order to get views to their video not so quality.
Beginner to SEO? Try a forum
Forums are these wonderful little creations that open up all sorts of topics to anyone with a question or just gathering information. They are usually niche-oriented because a forum that catered to all the questions anyone needed answered would be called the “Chaos forum.”
SEO is one of those industries that you can’t really learn everything about because it is constantly changing. I began my job a while ago and I still struggle to keep up with all the new lingo, tips and tactics that SEOers come up with daily. So, I go to a forum to check out latest news and happenings.
Do not be afraid of them! Forums are a way for everyone to advance their knowledge of a subject. If you ask a question and let current users know you are new, they will most always be kind to you and offer some REALLY great advice (just make sure your post is original. Sometimes they get a little miffed at repeated questions, which is understandable).
So without further ado, here are my top picks for SEO forums to get started in:
Guaranteed, any question you have has already been asked in one of these places, so do a little digging, read the posts and comments and you’ll probably come out of the forum way more educated than you were going in and good luck! » Read more..
Oh yeah? Well Sphinn THIS!
During my daily reading of Search Engine Land I was reading Google Free Fridays and Danny Sullivan mentioned his new product, Sphinn.
I took an initial look at Sphinn and all I have to say is wow, it’s great. Digg is for the techies, Reddit is for random weird stuff but Sphinn is a collection of articles from all over the place about SEO! What a great and NOVEL idea. So if you need an extra resource to get a glimpse of who’s who in SEO or just learn a little more information, this is a fantastic starting point. Kudos to you Danny and the rest of Search Engine Land. A product the web can be proud of!