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Friday, April 27th, 2012
Webmasters and SEO staff who feel wrongly penalised by the keyword stuffing Penguin update can now report their concerns to Google.
Engineer Matt Cutts has tweeted a link for webmasters to flag problems with the Penguin search engine update – accepting that some genuine, honest sites have been negatively affected by the algorithm tweak.
The post gives people the chance to flag sites which are now ranking well, despite being full of nasty spam, as well as providing a feedback form for those who felt their site suffered unfairly after the launch.
Google search engine updates are released regularly to improve search results for users. That involves a series of complex algorithm changes designed to weed out those who use unfair tactics to manipulate the search rankings.
The latest tweak, Penguin, has directly targeted sites utilising keyword stuffing strategies. The ramifications for Internet marketing are clear: focus on natural, quality content.
Webspam sites usually have huge paragraphs of random keywords, odd hyperlinks jammed into unrelated content, or hidden text boxes full of key phrases.
Google recognises that many ‘white hat’, genuine SEOs can struggle to rank against these webspam sites – so Penguin was designed to level the playing field. It was also supposed to give websites who haven’t dabbled in search engine optimisation the chance to rank for their selected keywords.
Many websites reported huge Google ranking losses after Penguin launched on April 24. Three days later, Google has tweeted a link for webmasters to flag sites which they think were unfairly downranked.
The form requests a sample URL for the affected website, associated search queries, and a comments box for feedback. You can access the form here.
Everyone agrees that improving the quality of information on the Internet is a good thing. Those firms employing high-quality SEO copywriters shouldn’t have been affected by this update. Adhering to Google’s best practice guidelines for search engine optimisation minimises the chances of being negatively affected by its search engine updates.
It’s simply a question of playing fair.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Tags: algorithm update, Content, Google, Keyword stuffing, Matt Cutts, penguin, quality, ranking, results, search engine updates, spam, titanic, webspam
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Friday, April 27th, 2012
Google’s latest webspam algorithm tweak now has a name: the Penguin update.
The search engine has tweaked its system to try to weed out sites using webspam to manipulate the rankings.
But the update has seen many genuine sites downranked, with some less genuine ones suddenly appearing nearer the top of the results pages.
Some SEOs have dubbed the update ‘Titanic’ – in a cheeky nod to the way it has sunk strong sites.
Those Internet marketing firms affected by Penguin (of which, ClickThrough Marketing is not one), are now working on ways to re-establish sites that got hit by Penguin – whilst attempting to understand what factors Google is using to differentiate between quality content, and spam.
Introducing the update, Matt Cutts, from Google, said the idea was to level the search engine optimisation playing field – to penalise sites with huge swathes of keywords on a page (known as ‘keyword stuffing’), and those using link building schemes to fake veracity.
Google’s last big update like this was Panda – an equally cute animal name for an equally harsh update. Panda was designed to look at the quality of web content – meaning sites using ‘spinning software’ to robotically generate content would be found out, and lose ranking as a result.
Panda smashed through a host of previously well-ranked sites: many article repository sites were affected (due to the fact quality control on such huge volumes of copy is nigh-on impossible).
Using automatic means to verify the quality of content can be a difficult thing to rely on – and obviously, some genuine sites would be negatively affected, whilst some less genuine ones would see a boost.
Anyone working in SEO is acutely aware that Google is forever moving the goalposts. The vicious circle will no doubt continue, running along the lines of: Google releases an update, websites lose ranking, webmasters find a new way to increase ranking, Google releases another update, websites lose ranking… and so on and so on.
As time goes on, the indifferences caused by these updates will be rebalanced – especially if quality site owners continue to produce quality content. At least, until the next raft of search engine updates.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: algorithm, Content, Google, Keyword stuffing, linkbuilding schemes, lose ranking, optimisation, page one, Panda, penguin, quality, ranking, ranking loss, SEO, update, webspam
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Friday, April 27th, 2012
Google’s latest update – dubbed Penguin – is designed to stop ‘keyword stuffing’. The change was announced in an official Google blog post containing eight keywords in the first seven sentences. So what exactly is keyword stuffing, and is it still possible to optimise quality content without being penalised?
Here, Ali Harris, content manager for leading UK internet marketing company ClickThrough Marketing, looks at the implications of the latest chapter in Google’s cat and mouse game with the SEO industry.
SEO is a delicate art. We’re all painfully aware of the fine line between good, natural keyword density, and ‘keyword stuffing’.
I’m a big proponent of natural, keyword-rich copywriting – we’ve always aimed to produce high-quality, rank-topping content which strikes the right balance between readability and optimisation.
The general rule of thumb for SEO copywriters dictates it’s unwise to obviously overload an article with keywords. Google agrees – and the search engine giant has just released an algorithm update designed to root out and down rank websites which use keyword stuffing to trick its spiders and manipulate ranking.
The update is now live – and has officially been dubbed Penguin, despite the outcry of social-media savvy SEOs, who nominated ‘Titanic’.
Google engineer Matt Cutts originally warned that Google would be penalising ‘overly optimised’ sites. Google has since said ‘over optimisation’ was a poor choice of words: the update is designed to destroy webspam, not SEO.
None of our current clients has been downranked as a result of Google’s recent search engine updates – but, oddly, we’ve had a number of random calls from non-clients panicking because their website’s suddenly disappeared off page one, asking what they can do to fix it.
Many reputable webmasters have seen similar ranking divebombs – hence the cheeky suggestions to call the update Titanic.
Google has issued its own advice, of course, on top of its best practice guidelines, and the bottom line stresses the importance of high quality content.
But there’s an elephant in the room – the original announcement came in an official Google blog post which, surprisingly, was stuffed face-first with keywords.
The post on Google’s official blog features eight instances of ‘search engine optimization’-style keywords in the first seven sentences. ‘Search engine optimization’ features three times in the first paragraph alone.
For most SEO copywriters, this approach to front-loading keywords is usually a total no-go – based entirely on the fear that Google would discount their efforts as spam at best.
So, how come Google is looking to penalise ‘keyword stuffing’ whilst essentially overusing keywords itself?
Is Matt Cutts’ post an example of the much-vaunted ‘quality content’ which won’t be affected by the update? Or is it just sloppy copy?
The key here is readability. Yes, the first paragraph could probably be edited down to more simple sentences, and the triplicate mention of ‘search engine optimization’ perhaps wasn’t entirely necessary in traditional good writing terms (where repetition should generally be avoided).
But this is an article about search engine optimisation, honestly talking about search engine optimisation, to people interested in search engine optimisation. And therefore, including that term repeatedly in such a small space is seemingly okay, in Matt Cutts’ writing mind at least.
This update is designed to crusade against sites which use keywords as a crutch – where key phrases are randomly jammed into an unrelated paragraph, or whole pages are turned over to farm lists of various search terms. Other tactics include hiding little boxes of text at the bottom of a page, or putting keyword links into completely unrelated pieces of content.
These tactics can help rubbish websites rank higher than genuine sites – something Google wants to stamp out to ‘reward’ honest SEOs, level the playing field, and ensure users only get to see informative, quality search results – not spammy farms full of nonsense.
It hasn’t gone entirely to plan so far – examples abound of honest site rankings being obliterated, whilst spammy, low-quality sites suddenly soar up the SERPs.
The resulting downranking and outcry from honest webmasters could be put down to a lack of information about what Google was looking at with Penguin.
Of course, giving everyone a hint of what the changes entail would’ve given the spammers a heads up to make the necessary changes to avoid punishment – but the fact so many apparently white hat sites have suffered suggests webmasters need a little bit more information on these matters.
But where do most people go for information? Google search.
The name Penguin took a day or two to surface, but now it has, there are no official Google results on page one for a ‘Google Penguin update’ search.
At least we have a name now. When the update launched a day ago, there was one important announcement on keyword stuffing from Google’s own mouth – that on the official blog, written by Matt Cutts, stuffed face-first with keywords.
You’d hope that post would probably return in a Google search result for ‘keyword stuffing’.
It doesn’t.
Nor does it appear for search terms ‘keyword stuffing change’, ‘keyword stuffing algorithm’ or, even, ‘keyword stuffing Google’.
And herein lies the problem. With utter keyword overload in Matt Cutts’ announcement post, even the mighty Google can accidentally over-optimise their content. Where does that leave the rest of us?
We’ll be paying particular attention to the rankings over the next week, to see if honest webmasters survive and nefarious spammers are punished as the dust settles on the Penguin webspam algorithm update – here’s hoping Google does, too.
About the author:
Ali Harris is an award-winning journalist with more than ten years’ experience in printed press, public relations and online PR. He is the content manager for ClickThrough Marketing, an Internet marketing agency based in Lichfield, UK, specialising in SEO, PPC and conversion enhancement. For more information about ClickThrough Marketing’s web content services, call 0800 088 7486.
Tags: Content, Google, Keyword stuffing, penguin, SEO
Posted in Blog, Content, Google, Keywords, SEO
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Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
For some years, there have been regular ‘complaints’ about Wikipedia’s top position in the search engine results pages, with Wikipedia links frequently occurring in the top three (or at least first page) organic search positions on all of the major engines such as Google and Bing. However, is it unfair bias or is it really very simple SEO?
If we presume that there is no search engine algorithm bias towards Wikipedia, then it must be that Wikipedia employs a winning SEO formula. For any company looking to promote their website, there are few better sites to study to understand how and why these top SERPS are consistently achieved. The following are just a few of the ways in which Wikipedia beats most websites on most search terms, and a few questions to ask yourself about your own site and SEO strategy.
1. Unique, in-depth and regularly updated content
Check your own website. What percentage of pages have been updated recently? Is your content high quality and unique? What level of detail do your pages go into about your products and services? There will always be a level of debate about how these criteria apply to Wikipedia, but for your own site these are valid questions to be asking yourself about your content.
2. Keyword rich (including many related phrases) and dedicated topic pages
Each page on Wikipedia is dedicated to a single topic, and it may well also include references, sources and keywords relating to that subject. Obviously, your website does not need to be encyclopaedic in its approach, but it is important to ensure that a page keeps as close to a ‘theme’ as possible, without crossing the line and creating so many pages to cover all topics individually that navigation for your users becomes difficult.
There is also a maintenance issue if you add too many pages to your site in order to capture more search engine interest, unless you have a global community of crowd sourced editors to help you regularly monitor and check for broken links, out of date info etc.
3. A frequently referenced/linked to domain showing site authority.
Are you an expert in your field? Does your company enjoy the respect of others for the quality of your knowledge and expertise? Are you providing sufficiently good and unique content for others to wish to share? Are you effectively promoting your site so that others in your sector or those in your target audience are aware of the site and quality content?
4. Logical and strong internal linking structure
Information architecture is extremely important when building websites, and making sure the internal navigation flows easily to further information, related products and services, news items, photos and so on is critical. As we can see from the screenshot of Wikipedia, there are multiple internal and external links on each page, each with keyword rich anchor text.
5. Multilingual
Creating language specific content for a global audience or to reach customers in target countries is always a good idea, but make sure that your content is checked and double checked by several native speakers of the languages you choose.
Whether or not some of the Wikipedia pages deserve to be top of the SERPs is a moot point. The fact that so many are, on so many different engines, implies that the strategy employed and some of which is outlined above, means that it works and can do for your site too.
Tags: Content, information architecture, Keyword, multilingual, navigation, phrases, quality, SEO, serps, unique content, wikipedia
Posted in Blog, SEO
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Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
The UK’s Internet marketing and search engine optimisation industry is now worth more than £500m, according to a report by Econsultancy.
The online marketers’ site released the SEO Agencies Buyer’s Guide on March 19, with figures showing an 18% leap in the SEO market in 2011.
Econsultancy says the year-end value of SEO in the UK was around £514m – up from £436m in 2010.
The 2012 SEO Agencies Buyer’s Guide breaks down the valuation: explaining it was calculated using payments to agencies, investment and specialist costs for PR or social media marketing campaigns.
“It’s great to see that natural search has developed into a half-billion pound industry in the UK,” said Jake Hird, senior research analyst for Econsultancy.
“This also demonstrates the shifting landscape of the SEO marketplace. Now, search practitioners have to deal with elements such as social, mobile and local search, as well as continuing to optimise for other types of content, such as videos and images.”
The Econsultancy report also drew a correlation between SEO activity and other kinds of online marketing: with SEO becoming intrinsically important for PR, social media, content marketing and on-page information.
The report also looks at trends, changes and predictions for SEO, such as the focus on Google+, mobile search and increasing integration of SEO with other marketing campaigns.
The guide is aimed at companies looking to hire an SEO agency, with a breakdown of the UK’s most successful online marketing firms, together with their costs, services and achievements.
The guide is available to buy through Econsultancy.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: buyers guide, Content, Econsultancy, Google, industry, marketing, search, SEO, UK
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Thursday, March 15th, 2012
The ‘throttling’ of Facebook and Twitter results on Google – with evermore rare occurrences of either site popping up on the first page – has made social media marketing on either site somewhat isolated.
Of course, both Facebook and Twitter would love to be ranked more highly by Google: but it’s become a case of ‘tough luck’ for both sites since the search giant launched Google+.
Google are a savvy bunch: trying to launch a new social network whilst giving equal weight to your competitors – despite screams of antitrust breach – is not a good business practice.
As such – and you’ve probably noticed this – Google has made huge efforts to make Google+ profiles as visible as possible online. This includes great organic search rankings, as well as notable mentions in Google News searches where the author of an article has linked to their Google+ profile.
Combined with Google’s seemingly common preference to stick YouTube video results near the top of SERPs, it’s fast becoming obvious that pouring Internet marketing efforts into Google platforms has the potential to yield better results, especially if you’re able to cross-combine your campaign to maximise +1s, YouTube referrals, organic rankings, and content pointers for your freshly-written articles.
Facebook has launched an IPO which will trigger a wave of new money-making moves on the site: things which marketers previously enjoyed for free will dry up, meaning serious budgets will be needed to take advantage of the potential 800-million user reach of the site.
Google+, on the other hand, isn’t quite ‘there’ in the popularity stakes yet to monetise.
Get in fast before it does and there are some immediate benefits for your SEO. Here are two very simple benefits of setting up a Google+ account which will help support existing SEO campaigns.
Organic boosts:
Google+ pages rank really well – and with Facebook and Twitter failing to reach search agreements, Google+ profiles look set to remain the search result of choice on Google. Getting your personal profile sorted, and linked back to your company, allows you far greater visibility: producing regular industry-related content will set you apart from competitors and solidify you as an ‘expert’ in your field, without the need for huge swathes of keywords. Obviously, SEO remains very important, but Google+ provides a ready-made boost for your SEO campaign which shouldn’t be ignored.
Get recommended:
Whilst Facebook ‘likes’ flag up popular pages for Facebook users, Google’s +1 feature puts hearty recommendations all over Google’s portion of the web. Rather than relying on insular Facebook referrals by creating popular content, items on your Google+ account can be flagged up to every web user who utilises Google search. That’s nearly all of them, then.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: Content, experts, facebook, Google, organic, PPC, profiles, quality, search, SEO, twitter
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Thursday, January 19th, 2012
In recent times, search engines have made a number of advancements that allow them to look at and evaluate the content featured on websites in a much more comprehensive manner.
Gareth Owen, writing for Search Engine Watch, has attempted to pinpoint the ten elements of a “perfectly optimised page.”
Here are just a few of the elements highlighted by Owen:
Title Tags – Owens states that while title tags are important, it is vital not to “over optimize them.”
URL – The URL should ideally mention the keywords determined in your overall SEO strategy.
Content – Rather than featuring multiple keyword mentions, Owens states: “Content is now about semantically relevant supporting keywords.”
Using a recipe as an example, he adds: “In order to make béarnaise sauce there are specific ingredients that are 100 per cent relevant to the eventual outcome. One way of checking what keywords Google might consider as relevant is to do a ‘~keyword’ (or tilde) search.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: Content, Gareth Owens, Search Engine Watch, SEO, Title Tags, URL
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
In a landmark case, a judge in USA has allowed the seizure of nearly 700 domain names selling Chanel products, enforced the transfer all the domain names to GoDaddy with a redirection to a notice about seizure, and Google have been asked to “de-index” the sites.
All the sites were allegedly selling counterfeit Chanel goods, but there appears to have been little regard for the international nature of the sites, and in fact some are not registered in the USA and therefore require the international domain registrars to comply with a US ruling. This would appear to be slightly shaky ground, but is proceeding nonetheless, seemingly as an extension of the American “Operation in our Sites“.
The Operation should cause some cause for concern for anyone legitimately dealing in branded goods, as well as for those re-using content where the copyright holders are American. A few instances have come to light of genuine bloggers and sites who were operating with full permission of the rights’ holders but are now embroiled in trying to recover their domains.
One has to question the wisdom of this level of action, as surely it will just push counterfeiters away from .com and .net domains and register their domains in other countries, as well as using less SEO and more social media to avoid simple detection?
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is due to come in in the USA to try to further prevent such actions such as selling of counterfeit goods and illegal use of intellectual property. However, there is considerable opposition to SOPA, deemed to be censorship, and a threat to free speech.
For anyone selling online or sharing non-original content, the moves being made to close down sites, seize domain names, and prevent search engines indexing specific sites can only be a concern, as undoubtedly the actions taken by those enforcing such laws will also mop up entirely innocent sites in their trawls across the Internet, and not just those based in or accessible by US citizens.
Will this affect your company or product set or content in any way? Let us know your thoughts.
Tags: chanel, Content, counterfeit, domains, seizure, sopa, US laws, websites
Posted in Blog, Content, SEM Industry
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Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
Press releases are not going to go away, whichever new technologies come to the forefront. But there is a methodology to sending to them that will guarantee a higher chance of response and which should become a key part of your marketing strategy.
Firstly, you must build up an audience. This means getting in touch, via whichever means the journalist, publication or promoter prefers, and establishing a rapport. It is no good sending a PR out into the cold. And good relationships take time to establish.
Secondly, your PR must have substance. It needs to be newsworthy, timely and include links to further information to allow the author of any piece relating to that press release a chance to write a piece of value. Press releases should include links to video, audio, references, and if at all possible personalised and in-depth content. So, a Skype contact for a quick video conference, a Twitter handle with hashtag for a broad range of input on the subject matter or event, Youtube URLs, audioboos etc should all be included.
Top Tip: Add a QR code for a personalised page for that journalist. Relate some of your information back to previous pieces they have written to give a background or insight.
Thirdly, you must sell your story. The vast majority of press releases are simply puff pieces because the marcomms department thinks it is time there was a column inch or two about the company. Do not fall into that modus operandi. Only send out stories when there are meat and bones, when timely, and when you have a valid reason to see the company name in print.
But do not miss opportunities. This is where a great PR salesperson will come to the fore. A good marcomms person will be able to spot an opportunity eg when something is trending on Twitter, contact the people with whom they have established relationships, have a great piece that can be customised by the journo to suit their publication (without being yet another “Read similar stories” on Google) and who can push the whys and wherefores of this particular story to a specific publication.
Understanding how Online PR works in this fast moving environment where a story may die in a day is vital. And it requires fast action and slick processes in-house to work correctly, backed up by valuable content that is regularly added to your website. But get it right, and you could be viral for a few hours with a long tail audience for many months to come.
Tags: Content, journalists, marcomms, pr, press release, sales, twitter, viral
Posted in Blog, Content, Online PR
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Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Search engine optimisation is an extremely popular area in the world of Internet marketing. With its popularity comes a huge number of myths and falsehoods that circulate within the industry.
Writing for Search Engine Watch, Garry Przyklenk has attempted to dispel some of the most prevalent of those myths within SEO.
Here is a summarized version of a few of the best provided by Przyklenk:
Content is King –
According to Przyklenk, this is one of the most prevalent myths within SEO. He states that “while content, site architecture, social media and even technical intricacies” all play an important role in achieving an improved ranking, they aren’t as important as links. With this it is vitally important to strike a good balance between content and links in any search engine optimisation strategy.
Your site can’t be hurt by bad links -
While somewhat true – bad inbound links aren’t going to drastically affect rankings – a large amount of bad links, overwhelming the good ones, will cause a great amount of trouble. To nullify this threat, be proactive – measure inbound links and keep practicing good link building techniques on a regular basis.
Onsite SEO doesn’t factor –
Wrong. Przyklenk points out: “Internal links, title tags, semantic mark-up and clean code are just some of the onsite SEO factors that will contribute to significant improvements and rankings, usability and indexing.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: Content, myths, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
