Recovery After The Penguin Update

Recovery After Penguin?

Published on May 23, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

I'll start this piece by saying that our agency supports algorithm updates such as Panda and Penguin. Every SEO practitioner knows that there is, and has been for a long time, a LOT of black-hat SEO work happening. These updates are improvements to Google's ability to disempower the hacks in our industry - which improves our industry's reputation and increases the value of white-hat SEO companies. Unfortunately, there are some innocent businesses that are going to feel the pain from (presume unknowingly) hiring black-hat SEO hacks. These businesses who hired the black-hat hacks are now frantically seeking answers on how to recover after the Penguin update.

The Reality of Penguin

Penguin essentially nullified a volume of sites, including networks of sites, that were used to deliver super spammy links. There have been quite a number of outsource services which build and maintain sites that exist for the sole purpose of allowing these companies to generate revenue for providing a quantity of inbound links for a fee. This practice has helped to boost the rankings for a huge number of sites, but delivers no real value for the average consumer (web users). Because these sites have been neutralized, any website that had benefitted from these links has now had the benefit removed, thus the ranking drop. Obviously, the extent of your ranking loss is in proportion to the percentage of inbound links that you have coming from these link spam sites.

It is unexpected that the Panda Update will have any impact on local search results, although some people do create links to their Google Places pages. If this is a side problem for your business you should explore types of Google My Business help.

How To Recover

If your site has been hit by Penguin, our theory for recovery after the Penguin update is not too complicated, although the work involved probably will be extensive. Effectively what has happened is that your site has been pushed far back down the line. This means that you will need to spend a great deal of time, and associated costs, to replace the lost black-hat work with white-hat work. Make certain that the new SEO work is in total compliance with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

A Telling Sign

If your site has experienced a significant loss of organic rankings, our recommendation is to check the rankings of your current and past SEO providers. Chances are quite good that the work they did for your site is the same as they did for themselves. SEO companies that have also dropped substantially in rankings are almost certain to be, or have been, black-hat SEO hacks, and they are the cause of your problem - not Google.

Your Choice of SEO Services

Although it should be obvious by now, if you are working with a SEO company whose rankings have plummeted, you should discontinue their services and replace them with a nearby pany that was not negatively impacted by Penguin. Waiting for a Google miracle does no good, so take action now and recover from Penguin and move forward. If you have a relatively new SEO company, the odds are that they are not the cause of your problem, and you should stay with them and see how things go for the next six months or so.

What To Expect

Almost anything is possible. Certainly Google will continually roll out new updates, and rankings will change. It's reasonable to expect that if you have a competent SEO company, that stays current on industry best practices, your site should do well. Obviously, SEO is a very competitive environment so your actual results are always relative to how your own efforts stack up to your competitors. Our advice is that quality always beats quantity, so do the right things, in the right measure, and things will be good.

Why Rich Snippets Matter

How To Use Rich Snippets

Published on May 15, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

The interest in utilizing Rich Snippets is definitely on the rise. A large percentage of web designers and developers have no idea this exists, much less on how to add Rich Snippets to a website. In fact, a vast number of the smaller internet marketing companies do not understand the value of rich snippets, or how to implement this valuable tool for their clients benefit. We believe that all internet marketing companies should be up to speed on this and using it whenever possible.

The bright and beautiful Selena Narayanasamy has created a great visual guide on using Rich Snippets. We think this has a lot of value for people that provide or need professional internet marketing. We are posting this without a formal endorsement of the information as a whole but definitely feel it is worth sharing.

Visual Guide to Rich Snippets on SEOmoz created by BlueGlass Interactive.

Google Ads Display Advertising Model - The 2012 Enhancement

Published onMarch 31, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

The Google Inside AdWords Blog posted an article this past week which introduces substantial enhancements to the display advertising model. The changes that were unveiled are designed to make this advertising option more effective, and much easier to use

Within your Google Adwords dashboard you will now find a new tab, specifically for the Display Network. The new Display Network Tab is an interface built from the ground up to run display campaigns, and will enable you to bid, target and optimize display campaigns all from a single place. Here is an excerpt from the Google blog post:

A Revved-Up Contextual Engine

The contextual engine, which matches ads to pages based on keywords, is at the heart of display-buying through AdWords. We’ve been hard at work behind-the-scenes to give this engine its biggest enhancement ever, the ability to combine the reach of display with the precision of search, using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. This means that you can fine-tune the performance of your contextual campaigns down to individual keyword level, which will help you take the performance of your marketing campaign to a completely new level. It’s now easier for you to extend search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together.

For example, let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a Travel Agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency you might realize that the keyword “Turks and Caicos vacations” is 4 times more profitable than the keyword “caribbean vacations”. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high performing keywords, and be more conservative on “caribbean vacations”.

Giving a Visual Edge

And like the writers of the best fairytales know, sometimes pictures communicate better than words (or numbers). Along with the new Display Network Tab and contextual engine, we’re introducing a way to visualize the reach of your campaigns, and see how that reach is impacted by combining multiple targeting types, such as keywords, placements, topics, interests or remarketing.

These changes are some of our biggest steps to date towards bringing together the science of search advertising with the art of display. We hope they give you some powerful new tools to connect with their customers and deliver engaging and relevant display ads.

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We're excited about this new approach, and will be among the first PPC management agency to leverage this for Ads clients. Check back for our thoughts and comments on the new changes to the Google Ads Display Network interface.

BuildMyRank.com Smashed By Google De-Indexing

Published on March 26, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

The ever-present slugfest between Google and service providers that offer "white-hat SEO link building" to improve organic rankings recorded a solid hit on one of the "better" link builders, BuildMyRank.com.

On March 19, Google deindexed a large majority, almost all of, a blog wheel network which served as the backbone of the link building services offered by BuildMyRank.com. The effect was so pronounced that BuildMyRank.com has opted to cease operations, and amend customer billings. Obviously the net effect includes ranking hits on a multitude of websites that had subscribed to their link building services.

You have to wonder how many customers of BuildMyRank.com will now see their rankings fall, lead generation decline, and ultimately lose sales and layoff workers. You also have to wonder how many hard working people in overseas shops are now looking for work because BuildMyRank is no more. Regardless, the punch has been delivered and the ranking shuffle is underway.

There are rumors that other link building networks may have been tagged. If your website has been affected by this event you will definitely see significant across the board ranking drops, and may (if you use it) find a message in your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard that mentions "unnatural links detected".

There is no doubt that countless companies have outsourced their SEO work, and given very little thought to the process being used, and simply enjoyed the ranking ride. I personally think that Google understands this and will not have any particular dislike for businesses at large. If you're curious as to why all of this matters so much to Google, you may be interested in reading an informative post at Hospitalera's Blog.

If your site has been affected, our recommendation is to brush it off and march forward. It would be a good idea to ask more questions to the next SEO company you hire so you don't waste your internet marketing budget or get ambushed down the road.

We are very curious to see which of these types of services will be hit next, and how it all will play out. If you, or your SEO service provider, is on top of their game this will create some superb opportunities to move up. It is quite obvious that any SEO strategy needs to focus on user value, be based on a wide array of SEO tactics, and be flexible enough to react quickly to market changes. Let's call this, the "Google Spring".

Social Media Use Grows, Facebook Timeline Shines

Social Media Management 2012

Published onMarch 16, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Our clients are continually asking about how to use social media for business, and ask us about current social media trends. New numbers have been released which shows substantial growth in user activity, and suggests that recent social media changes are having a positive impact on usage.

Facebook Timeline

Facebook Timeline is being well received by most users, and is generally perceived as a very positive change, if not a great upgrade. With this change, Facebook is anticipating pushing their 2012 growth up from the 13.4% growth in 2011, after enjoying a 38.6% growth spike in 2010. Additionally, Facebook has introduced major improvements to its advertising platform. Facebook Premium is intended to extend the reach of paid advertising which will in turn increase impressions. Another new feature is Facebook Offers which offers users the opportunity to post special deals. We believe that these new features are designed to position Facebook as a viable local search tool for consumers on the go.

Twitter

Twitter use in 2011 grew by over 31%, and is expected to continue on the path of high usage. Twitter users now total over 465,000,000, with over 175,000,000 tweets per day worldwide. The greatest number of users are located in the United States, Japan and Brazil.

Google+ or Google Plus

Google's new social media site offers a slick interface, and nifty tools to connect with friends, family, acquaintances and associates. The ability to target messages to your "Google Circles" means that you have greater control than Facebook, and the added ability to easily share media content such as videos. We strongly recommend that every business establish a Google+ presence, and integrate the Google+ badge into their website's pages.

Google+ Help, or assistance with any social media sites, is available at affordable rates from a reputable social media management company in Atlanta.

Local Search Citations and Reviews

How To Get Local Search Citations and Reviews

Published onFebruary 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Local Search citations and reviews are critical parts of developing a robust and productive local search presence. While citations and reviews are both very important, each contributes its own value. This post will acquaint you with the differences between, and value of, local search citations and reviews. For more information, or to get started on leveraging the power of local search citations, you should contact an internet marketing comapny that understands local search SEO.

Local Search Reviews

On your business local search page, especially Google Places, people have the opportunity to rate your business and enter review comments. As the volume of reviews grows, your online reputation develops. Ideally your business will have a four to five star rating, with plenty of positive reviews. Reviews can have a strong influence, good or bad, on prospective customers who are considering your business. If you are too busy to do this work you can hire a company that offers Google Places help.

How to get local search reviews

You have some control on getting reviews however it usually takes proactive measures to get positive reviews. Unhappy customers are often al too willing to post a bad review. To get those important positive reviews you need to always ask your customers to post a comment for you. If possible, you can send the customer a thank you email with the request and links to a few of your local search listings. Many people simply won’t take the few minutes to post a review, but over time you will be able to acquire a nice collection of reviews. Having reviews adds life to your local search page but it is preferred that your most recent review is not over two or three months old.

A less than stellar review may make you cringe, but the upside is that it lends a feeling of legitimacy to your overall presence because your reviews are not stacked with five star raves from your friends and family. If you have a problem with negative reviews, especially reviews you believe are unjust, you can engage online reputation management services to improve your situation.

Local Search Citations

Citations are the part of your local search page that includes third party mentions of your business on other local search sites (reviews), articles, news stories, blogs and forums. The value of citations is that Google values citations as a vote of confidence in your business. These "votes" add up, and play an important role in upward ranking of your local search page. The qualities of the citation sources, and the nature of the citations, are more important than the quantity of citations.

Citations are not under your direct control however you can take actions to help acquire these coveted elements of local search marketing. For the sake of expediting receiving value, saving your time, and insuring that things are well done you can hire a local seo company. A local search engine marketing company already knows where to get high quality citations and how to do so. This includes doing citation source checks on your competitors to identify new citation opportunities.

Important citation building factors

When building local search citations it is very important to maintain consistency in the information used to identify your company. The first area is your name, address, and phone number (NAP). For your business name this is as simple as always including or omitting and identifier such as "LLC". When possible it is advantageous to have the citation include a link to your website but this is not a make or break issue. Internet press releases are another great way to control the message and get widespread exposure.

No matter what you do to acquire local search reviews and local search citations, always do things ethically. Hard work and an honest approach will yield positive results that improve local search rankings.

Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft Are Getting Aggressive On Phishing Scams

A new e-mail authentication process expected to have profound impact.

Major e-mail providers, including Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft (Bing) are poised to launch a robust initiative for improving email authentication, thereby making phishing scams more difficult to work. The major search engines have the support of other major sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook – all of whom have to deal with phishing scams around the world. Phishing scams cost consumers billions of dollars each year, and cause substantial problems for legitimate businesses operating online.

It is worth noting that these measures are being done without government direction or mandate, and without any need for suspect legislation such as SOPA.

Google has filed a patent application for a process of using an over-layed image for authenticating sites. The search engines may take the extra measures of disabling links on suspected phishing sites. Google’s extensive wealth of information is a cornerstone in being able to identify phishing websites.

Another proposed method of fighting phishing sites si a new security initiative that would move emailers well forward of traditional SMTP processes. The new process being proposed is called DMARC , an acronym for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.

A DMARC press release includes the following:

". . . The DMARC specification addresses concerns that have traditionally hindered widespread deployment of an authenticated, trusted email ecosystem. Today, email receivers lack a reliable way to know the extent to which an email sender uses standards like SPF and DKIM for authenticating their messages. As a result, providers must rely on complex and imperfect measurements to separate legitimate unauthenticated messages sent by the domain owner from fraudulent phishing messages sent by a scammer.

By introducing a standards-based framework, DMARC has defined a more comprehensive and integrated way for email senders to introduce email authentication technologies into their infrastructure. For example, a sender could set policies to easily request a provider to discard unauthenticated email in order to block phishing attacks. The specification also creates a mechanism for email providers to send detailed reports back to email senders to help catch any gaps in the authentication system. This feedback loop raises the trust level within the email ecosystem and makes it easier to detect and stop phishing attempts. . . "

Any of these improvements will be a huge gain for consumers and service providers. While the problem of phishing scams will not be fully stopped, it will make it much more difficult for current phishing scams to work.