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Monday, May 14th, 2012
Paid search advertising can be a bit of a minefield – tactics which work on one PPC campaign aren’t always transferrable to another.
Managing profitable pay per click services involves a lot of foresight, analysis, and just a touch of guess-work. This experimentalism is absolutely imperative to ensure your paid ads are displaying to the right people at the right times, and getting the right results. Without experimenting, most PPC strategies will fail. Or, at least, fail to meet their potential.
Google’s always been acutely aware that the more tools it can give to search marketers, the more people are likely to spend on search marketing.
If you can analyse properly – to see where money is best spent and best avoided – you can afford to invest more in paid ads as you know you’re more likely to get the conversions you want.
As such, Google’s AdWords tool has, for some time, given search advertisers ways to project and forecast how a PPC ad may work at both the keyword and ad group level. Now Google’s improved its projection tools, allowing advertisers to forecast simulations at campaign level, too.
The change is designed to give advertisers a way to create reports on potential future campaigns even without the requisite level of data to do so at keyword or ad group level.
The tool allows advertisers to swap variables to check effects – such as lowering all bids by a certain percentage.
The system feeds back on how an advertiser can then use the data on a real campaign – with projections on potential necessary campaign budget and a downloadable summary. An AdWords Editor file is also available showing simulated bid amounts and applicable groups.
The changes have already gone live – check the Opportunities section of AdWords.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: ad group, advertising, adwords, campaign, display, Google, Keywords, Paid Ads, Pay Per Click (PPC), PPC, projection, search marketing, SEM, SEO, simulation, tools
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Friday, May 11th, 2012
Microsoft’s search offering, Bing, has undergone another revamp. And with a huge focus on social, Bing may have found a way to begin to oust Google from search dominance.
After joining a ‘search alliance’ with Yahoo!, the “New Bing” will try to usurp Google by offering things it currently can’t.
Of course, Bing will still return normal organic search results and paid ads, just like it used to.
But now its social annotations, scraped from public information across a variety of social networks, are being lumped into a special sidebar, giving you the chance to interact with social friends.
The sidebar will pull information from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare and even Google+.
Google has already fallen out with Twitter, and, to a lesser extent, with Facebook. It can’t return Twitter profiles in its search results, because the microblogging site has blocked their spiders.
Not so with Bing.
Whereas Google has faced accusations of throttling social results – leading Facebook and Twitter to publicly demand “Don’t be Evil” (a cheeky nod to Google’s original ethos) whilst falling out with the search giant – Bing isn’t discriminating.
Google isn’t going to be able to pull info from Twitter or public posts from Facebook until relations are mended. In the meantime, Bing has a big open deal which could allow it to steal a march on Google.
The ramifications of this social focus, on both search engine optimisation and pay per click campaigns, could be huge. It would see an integrated Internet marketing approach, where search marketing and advertising is combined with social media.
Friend recommendations could become key selling tools, for instance. Group discounts for social groups with similar interests could be offered. It’s still early days, but the potential to create more joined-up marketing campaigns certainly exists.
Bing has been quick to point out that in a blindfolded taste test – much like those undertaken during the 1980s cola wars between Coke and Pepsi – search users preferred Bing’s search results to Google’s.
“We regularly test unbranded results, removing any trace of Google and Bing branding,” they said. “When we did this study in January of last year, 34% preferred Bing, whilst 38% preferred Google.
“The same unbranded study now shows that Bing search results have a much wider lead over Google’s. When shown unbranded search results, 43% prefer Bing, whilst only 28% prefer Google results.”
Of course, internal market research is hard to qualify. And Bing still needs to convince people to leave the relative comfort zone of Google and try something new.
If that works, though, then Google could face a real fight to maintain its position.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: Bing, facebook, Google, LinkedIn, online marketing, optimisation, PPC, results, search, SEO, social, twitter, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Thursday, May 10th, 2012
By Ali Harris, content manager, ClickThrough Marketing
I just did a search for “Internet marketing”, out of interest, mainly, and I was bit surprised by Google’s first page of results.
The Internet marketing industry is currently feeling the harsh end of Google’s brickbat – with the Penguin update playing havoc with rankings as the engine looks to end webspam and keyword stuffing.
Examples of bad results have come up on various forums – we wrote yesterday about searching “Paypal France”. That term returns a whole load of spammy results.
That, suffice to say, wasn’t Google’s intention with Penguin.
We wrote earlier about another mistaken side effect of the algorithm update: the potential for successful negative SEO campaigns.
But until there are proven examples of negative SEO bombing an otherwise entirely reputable website, it’s the organic results that matter.
And the organic results remain skewed. I just searched “Internet marketing” on organic Google, without logging in, but with local UK search on (not by region, just country).
Two of the top five organic results are spam. That’s almost 50% spam. A few weeks ago, the top results for Internet marketing were all SEO companies.
So in this case, Penguin has made Google 40% more rubbish than it was.
Try it yourself: you’ll find returns for a telecoms company which offers phone numbers and telephonic systems – but has absolutely no apparent content, services, or information about “internet marketing”, as well as a site pertaining to offer the ‘new rules’ of Internet marketing, but actually only featuring two measly pages of absolutely terribly written content, and a seeming focus on Forex.
I’ve had a look at the sites themselves and can’t really see why Google thinks they should return in the top five results for an “internet marketing” search.
Maybe the search engine is having a laugh at the SEO industry – who are making money off Google’s free product (search) when Google would far rather they used its paid-for products (paid search or pay per click).
Or maybe this is another example of the recent Penguin update getting things very wrong indeed.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Black hat, Google, internet marketing, irrelevant, Keyword stuffing, optimisation, penguin, ranking, search, SEO, spam, update, white hat
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Thursday, May 10th, 2012
The Google Penguin update, launched last month, punishes sites participating in dodgy paid link schemes by removing them from the search results.
Now, post-Penguin, the Internet marketing industry is debating whether the algorithm change has become a charter for negative SEO.
Negative SEO is essentially search sabotage: giving competitors a Google Minus, if you will.
The idea is to use underhand, blackhat SEO techniques on a competitor’s website – as though the competitor had done it themselves. Google sees dodgy SEO activity on the competitor site, and downranks it as a result. Your site then sails up the rankings as your sabotaged competitors disappear.
It’s a horrible strategy.
Penguin’s introduction was supposed to bolster honest, white hat SEO: not destroy it.
But some commentators claim that by arbitrarily downranking sites with unnatural link profiles, Penguin has made negative SEO strategies a very stark reality.
One of the main problems is that most small websites can’t actually control their own inbound links. Bigger companies can afford lawyers to run round getting dodgy sites to remove links. Smaller sites cannot.
If you run a small e-commerce site, which currently ranks on the first page for your core products, will your business survive on Google’s first page if a nefarious competitor aims 50,000 bad links in your direction?
Some experts say it would be too hard to make negative SEO foolproof, and it would essentially be impossible to downrank well-established sites because of Google’s other ranking factors.
Negative SEO has always been in existence and it’s not something Google would want to promote.
Yes, Penguin has made backlinks a dangerous factor for all sites, but in reality, it shouldn’t really increase the prevalence of negative SEO campaigns.
That’s partly because backlinks are just one metric Google uses to analyse the quality of a website. The basic idea is the more backlinks a site has, the more trustworthy it must be, the more useful its content must be, and the more valuable it is to a searcher.
Sites like the BBC, Daily Mail or Wikipedia have massively strong link profiles, and they rank very well for a huge number of search terms as a result. Their SEO work, compared to smaller, less-known sites, is pretty much an effortless process.
Smaller sites are judged on the same metrics as massive global brands, and that includes backlinks.
Some experts have cited examples of negative SEO campaigns actually working on smaller sites – especially as SMEs don’t have the international recognition or consumer loyalty of bigger brands.
The advice for vigilant SEOs is to stay vigilant. You should be checking sites for evidence of negative SEO campaigns anyway – and there are some steps you can perform to help protect you against this kind of underhand campaign.
If you notice a spike in unnatural-looking backlinks, work quickly to try to get them removed. Contact sites who have given you positive links and establish a line of communication. If those links are suddenly removed by a fraud, you have more chance of getting the link back.
Other negative SEO tactics to look out for include crawlers sent to your site to scrape it and slow down load times – this can cause visitors to bounce very quickly, so you should always be checking the IPs visiting your site, and blocking potential crawlers.
Stealing content from competitor websites before Google has indexed it is another means of sabotage. If Google sees your content on a competitor site first, it will discount yours as duplicate or plagiarism (even though you wrote the piece). Using rel=canonical tags can help prevent this.
Other tactics can be harder to deal with: this includes spamming review sites with bad reviews, or even with good reviews, as a huge swathe of positive reviews (especially from the same IP address) would immediately appear dodgy to Google.
The first iteration of Penguin was always going to have a few creases to be ironed out.
It’s unlikely Penguin can be refreshed to recognise whether a site owner or webmaster has paid for backlinks, or whether a competitor has attempted to sabotage them.
But it’s also highly unlikely that Google will allow negative SEO success stories to become the norm.
Something’s got to give.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Tags: algorithm, backlinks, canonical, Google, internet marketing, link profile, negative seo, online marketing, penguin, spam, tags, unnatural, update, webspam, white hat
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Google’s Penguin update has sent the SEO industry into something of an ironic flap.
Almost a fortnight after Penguin went live, webmasters are still moaning and complaining that Google got it wrong.
And in some cases, the detractors have a point.
Penguin was designed to destroy the dark arts of SEO. Black hat tactics – such as keyword stuffing, or paying for spammy inbound links – have been utilised by cheeky webmasters attempting to manipulate the rankings. And Google’s had enough.
Penguin aimed to torpedo sites which used keyword stuffing to trick spiders into thinking their content was relevant, whilst also blacklisting sites which had paid for dodgy incoming links in an attempt to falsify credibility.
But Penguin clearly hasn’t worked exactly as Google planned.
Search industry forums are reporting examples of apparently ‘white hat’, honest websites being downranked, with examples of horrific, spammy ‘black hat’ sites suddenly displaying on the front page of Google for completely unrelated search terms (see below).
The thing is, though, is that Penguin hasn’t altered much in reality. It’s certainly not a game changer.
Google has always had good practice guidelines. But it hasn’t always had a way to police whether sites are adhering to those guidelines.
Penguin, therefore, is essentially a Google search copper, plodding the everlasting beat that is the results pages, looking for traces of the notorious Internet crimelords Webspam and Spammy Links, and attempting to bring the perpetrators of online offences to justice.
Now, the problem. It’s bit like a search version of RoboCop – Penguin appears to have been appointed judge, jury and executioner by Google.
And that, it seems, is where the problem lies. Penguin is programmed – it has been coded to look for telltale signs of black hat SEO. It’s not a human, and it’s not capable of rational thought (unless Google’s keeping something from us).
As such, Penguin was always going to be prone to mistakes – especially after first launching. That in itself should account for the ‘funny behaviour’ reported by webmasters immediately after Penguin went live. Some went as far as to claim Penguin “broke Google” – others petitioned for the update to be reversed.
Google realises that placing arbitrary decision-making into the hands of a dumb robot isn’t going to reap foolproof results and is prepared to reinstate accidentally downranked websites.
Webmasters who feel unfairly punished by Google can flag up their complaint. Those meeting Google’s good practice guidelines should be reinstated as a result. Conversely, you can also report instances where spammy, rotten sites are returning high in the results when they really shouldn’t be.
This level of teething problems and fall-0ut clearly wasn’t part of Google’s intention with the Penguin update.
Google wanted Penguin to go some way towards levelling the playing field for search engine optimisation. Some feel it’s an attempt to push people towards paid ad-based Internet marketing.
It’s clear Google still has some work to do, either way.
And until then, those genuine sites which have lost rankings – and business as a result – are going to have to weather the storm.
- Have the Rules for White Hat SEO Changed After Penguin?
A Sideways View On The News, by Ali Harris, content manager for ClickThrough Marketing
Penguin wasn’t a game-changer – it was simply a means to enforce the ‘rules’ already laid out by Google.
Those who had got away with breaking, or just bending, the rules for some time have now been penalised. That may’ve meant some previously top-ranking sites suddenly plummeting.
Anyone adhering to Google’s best practice guidelines, on the whole, will have avoided a hammering from Penguin.
The cases where legitimate sites got downranked are few and far between, and Google has set up the right channels to rectify this. If Google refuses to reinstate a site, chances are, there’s some spam, links or some other ‘black hat’ problems somewhere.
That said, respondents on a handful of search forums have provided examples of spammy, rubbish websites which are now appearing on page one of Google.
One great example is to search “Paypal France”. The first page of results for this search returns no fewer than three websites selling viagra.
Not only are these sites totally unrelated to the search term “Paypal France” – they’re also stuffed with keywords.
In terms of content, it’s nasty. Really nasty.
In fact, these search returns are exactly what Google engineer Matt Cutts said Penguin would whitewash.
Yet, it hasn’t.
Even the page description, displayed directly under the website URL, shows how badly stuffed some of these pages are.
One reads: “During relative of pele’s observing sugar in brazil there was no rheumatoid film viagra paypal france.”
It’d be hard for anyone to argue that this search result:
i) makes any sense
ii) is of any use to anyone, ever
iii) is not blatant, keyword-stuffed spam
iv) should be on page one of Google for any search term other than “examples of ridiculous spammy content”
It’ll be interesting to see how these anomalies iron out in the coming weeks, and whether Google refreshes Penguin so it looks a lot more closely at the factors which might separate a genuine site from a fraud.
If they do, may I suggest this level of closer inspection should henceforth be known as ‘observing sugar in Brazil’?
- Why call the Google algorithm update Penguin?
The last big algorithm change from Google was called Panda. This one was Penguin.
Speculation is rife that Google is following a pattern with its search engine updates.
The obvious bits are: animals (cute ones at that), which begin with a ‘p’, and are black and white.
Guesses for next update name include Panther, and Pigeon (derived from vowel use: pAnda, pEnguin, pIgeon etc…).
On the black and white theme, some have posited that Google is separating ‘white hat’ tactics from ‘black hat’ tactics via the use of bestial metaphor.
I have my own theory behind the name, which takes us back to the ironic flapping of the SEO industry.
Take Google’s ‘average user’ – someone with little knowledge of anything. Google plays to the lowest common denominator.
If you don’t know anything about quantum theory, and you Google it, you’d want something reputable, trustworthy and reliable to return on the front page of the results. The same goes for any search term.
With webspam sites, you might get a top search result which says “Quantum Theory” on the page name, and includes the phrase in the description too. But on closer inspection, a bunch of other, unrelated words are in the description. This is known as keyword stuffing.
Click the link, and you won’t find a repository of sparkling information about relativity, worm holes, or physics. No. You’ll probably get a bunch of bad links, nonsense sentences, and the odd advert for a miracle diet instead.
In search terms, that result is useless.
Now imagine you’re looking for a bird. You’d expect a bird to fly, right?
Only, Penguins can’t fly.
So perhaps, Penguin was designed to root out sites which seem genuine, which look like they are fit for purpose, but, on closer inspection, are actually technically useless. Like a Penguin’s wings.
Or maybe I’ve overcomplicated it.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: Black hat, Google, internet marketing, Keyword stuffing, links, online marketing, Paid Ads, penguin, PPC, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, white hat
Posted in Search Engine News
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Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
Google Adword Rotation
As you may be aware, from next week, Google are changing the way in which AdWords are rotated.
The Rotate AdWords feature has been popular with many PPC account managers due to its ability to allow for testing. The Rotate Ad feature allowed ads to be shown for an indefinite period of time, but the change means that ads will only be shown for 30 days and then the best performing ads will be shown unless edits are made to the ad group. For any PPC account manager handling many client accounts and campaigns, this presents a new set of problems – how to manage and monitor all accounts to ensure that the right ads are being shown when testing has suddenly become that much harder?
From Google’s perspective, displaying higher performing ads is of course the desired end result – more clicks, more revenue. But how will this work for advertisers if there is insufficient data, particularly with long tail, low traffic and niche terms where 30 days is quite simply insufficient to gather enough data to understand (especially in an A/B test) which ad will perform better?
There does not appear to have been an explanation from the Big G precisely how this will benefit advertisers. Yet. Right now, it seems a one sided deal that is not even optional. Had it been optional, it would no doubt have joined the many tools inside the Google account which the vast majority of PPC users are unaware of but which canny, dedicated, expert PPC players would have been able to access.
The is already a backlash to this announcement, and a petition has been started to try to persuade Google to return the required level of control to professional PPC agencies.
How do you feel this affects your business or PPC agency and account managers? Do you think this is a purely monetary decision by Google or is there more to it? We welcome your comments, as always.
Tags: adwords, Google, PPC, rotate
Posted in Blog, Google, Pay Per Click (PPC)
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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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Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
The world of Internet marketing is constantly changing: and the lead player in search marketing, Google, often drives these changes, whether webmasters want them or not.
For the end user, most Google tweaks result in a better search experience: for SEO staff, though, it can be a minefield of checks and changes to maintain ranking.
Google updates have the propensity to panic webmasters. The last big change, the Panda update, was met with alarm and confusion, and a pinch of disappointment. Panda was designed to weed out “poor” content – stuff that Google didn’t see as relevant, well-written, trustworthy, or original content was suddenly wiped out the search results overnight.
For sites with a good search engine optimisation strategy, the change made little difference. For others, who had perhaps built ranking through more questionable means, the game was up.
And this is where the good side of Google’s tweaks are clear: no search user wants to land on a site which claims to give trustworthy advice or information, only to find it’s actually entirely made-up, untrustworthy or stolen copy which is ranking because it’s spammier than a ham sandwich.
Article repository sites felt the pinch of Panda the most – they’d previously enjoyed excellent ranking based on hosting a huge amount of third-party content, covering topics from “How to clean your car engine” to “How to wire a plug”.
The problem was, the volume of third-party content made it virtually impossible to fact-check. And so, whilst a site may have had a percentage of excellent, informative and original content, those third-party pieces which were plagiarised, poorly produced or irrelevant, and uploaded without checks, would have dragged their ranking down.
Panda stepped in to do the user’s job for them: recognise poor quality, spammy results, and hide them.
Now, the game is about to change again – as Google looks to weed out sites which have put search engine optimisation over user optimisation.
Matt Cutts, Google’s spam chief, already revealed algorithm changes were afoot which would be able to tell if a site was “overly optimised” in order to achieve a good Google rank. These sites, Cutts said, would be penalised for “playing the game” instead of providing meaningful, useful content – helping to “level the playing field” for honest sites who struggled to rank against spammy, but less relevant, competitors.
The other thing with Google, though, is that they like surprises: whilst Cutts revealed the update was on the horizon, he didn’t spell out exactly what constituted “over-optimisation”.
Webmasters, then, have been left to fill in the gaps – using their existing knowledge of SEO strategy to separate what might be classed as a gentle SEO tweak to a full-on trick.
It’s likely Google could look at a range of SEO factors – some may be penalised more heavily than others. Spammy articles with unnaturally high keyword density are likely to be downgraded, along with those using repetitive anchor texts, duplicate content or who have created an “unnatural” linkbuilding strategy using inorganic or paid inbound links.
Other things to watch out for, which are likely to come under Google’s scrutiny, include excessive redirects, keyword overuse, mutual link schemes and thin affiliate work.
Google isn’t interested in punishing webmasters: but it does want to ensure that information it provides to search users is pertinent, quality and trustworthy. As long as your website is playing fair, is relevant and has fresh, quality, unique content, the latest tweak should leave your site unscathed.
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Tags: algorithm, duplicate, Google, inbound links, Keyword density, over SEO, over-optimised, overly SEO, Panda, ranking, search engine, SEO, update
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
