A while ago I told you the Google Farmer change was coming, but just how big an impact it was going to have I couldn’t have told you back then. Well, since this baby has been in operation for a good couple of weeks now, I can tell you a lot more about how it is affecting search and ecommerce in general.
Massive Changes In Search Results
We knew this massive change to Google’s ranking algorithm would improve query results and wean out websites who reuse content and try to beat the system, what we couldn’t of known is that this change would affect 11.8% of Google queries in the United States.
Google makes about 500 changes to its algorithm per year, some miniscule and others with greater importance, but most with the aim of Read more
For all you DIY SEO’s out there, I have put together a list of 11 useful online tools to help analyse, optimise and compare your website. Why 11 and not 10? Well it was 10 but then I wanted to throw in another. I make no promises, you might not get top ten rankings using only these bits and bobs alone, but used properly, these are some awesome weapons for your SEO armoury. Have fun!
Popular websites are not always the ones optimised at all costs for search engine spiders, but instead those that comprise all the elements required for a successful core story. Take a large percentage of the forums, blogs and business websites that rise in fame, and you will see they all have one thing in common – a compelling ‘core story’. For example, at Mitash, we aren’t just an SEO company; we operate as a digital marketing agency. Because we understand that page features, content, widget placement, tone, branding and design play a massive role in the overall SEO strategy. It isn’t just about backlinks and keywords for us. SEO is so much more than that, and this forms the basis for our core story. Without this understanding and this vision, we might just of ended up another Read more
Your personal profile may end up appearing in a number of places, such as your personal website, trade show/conference info sites, sites where you contribute articles and social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Quite often people miss a great opportunity to optimise their profile and achieve some extra curricular SEO. Most see the personal profile as a mere source of information rather than Read more
Unethical SEO can get you banned from Google, just ask the BMW bosses who hired an SEO company that got them banned for cloaking, a practice that involves showing search bots different content than you show visitors …tut, tut!
But don’t laugh, it could so easily happen to you if you hire the wrong web site optimization firm. Here are some tips on avoiding the spam merchants: Read more
“How do I rank a page highly in Google”? If I had a dollar for every time I was asked this question I would be nearly a billionaire, I am sure. The answer isn’t as difficult as people would have you think, in fact Google tell you, just look at their philosophy statement and the words are clear as day: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”
If you focus your website on user experience then the rankings will come. Now, of course, knowing how to do that isn’t particularly easy, but keeping that philosophy in mind will keep you Read more
If you run an information resource website or even house a blog, the likelihood is that you will have be ‘scrapped’ at one time or another. Scrapping is an increasingly popular practice carried out by content farms and low quality sites intent on stealing good content rather than writing it themselves. This practice saves time and boosts rankings, helping to generate advertising revenue, make affiliate sales and build a popular piece of web real estate. One major issue with scrapping and copying is that these sites can get ahead of you pages in the SERPs even though you wrote the content to begin with. It’s totally unethical and really has a negative affect on honest web business owners. Read more
By the end of this month the Google social search mechanism will be completely rolled out. For those of you that don’t know what this is, let me give you the heads up. It has actually been in test phase for quite some time – the last quarter of 2009 I believe. Now, by social search I don’t mean real time results from random people on Twitter, I mean social search as in connecting you to content created by people in your social circle.
What is Your Social Circle?
Your social circle is people you are connected to through Googlemail, Twitter, people you follow in Google reader, Flickr and other social mediums. Google will now display blog posts, profiles, images and other content from members of your social circle when you conduct a search. Be aware though that you may be shown friends of your Twitter friends or slightly random people you wouldn’t expect to pop up – but this is intentional and will also be related to you in some way. The idea is to broaden your social circle and discover other people with stuff to share that you will genuinely be interested in.
To give you an example of how it works; if you were my friend and connected via twitter, gmail, etc. and you typed in ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, you might see the following:
Why Are Google Introducing Social Search?
Well, believe or not we like to follow each other, I don’t mean on Facebook I mean in reading, buying and browsing trends. For example, if I was buying a new mp3 player I would more than likely want to know what the people in my social circle thought about mp3 players and what brand of player people had been purchasing. One of my social circle may have written a “best mp3 players” blog post, and another may have recently purchased and reviewed an mp3 player on Amazon. This would surely help me to buy with more confidence, and with affiliate marketing and fake reviews making it all but impossible to source honest information, this is great news in terms of reliability. In a roundabout way Google social search is putting control back in the hands of the browser, allowing us to trust content again and operate within search boundaries. Or is it? I mean you can hardly trust friends of friends on Twitter or someone you liked on Flikr. I guess what this really means is, we now need to be extra careful who we ‘socially’ connect with.
As you probably are aware, content is becoming increasingly important to SEO strategy. Gone are the days when stuffing keywords and stringing long invisible phrases together were capable of fooling the search engines into high rankings. Nowadays SEO content writing is an art, and if you want to succeed online in 2011 you need to understand how to write good webpage copy, good articles, good blog posts and even good social media updates. Here are 13 lucky SEO content writing tips to get you started in 2011:
Take time to devise reader grabbing titles and sub-headings.
Pay attention to detail – do thorough research to make sure you look expert not amateur.
Be unique – don’t plagiarise other articles and bring new life to common subject matters. Read more
A little while ago a web designer I hadn’t seen for some time said to me during a conversation about that, “SEO is pretty basic stuff, it’s not hard”. Needless to say I had to correct this very misguided statement, not only because it isn’t true but also to save him from becoming one of those designers who promises a client that they can do design and SEO all in one package – and then fail miserably. On the face of it on-page SEO might seem quite easy, just copy what other successful websites in your sector of industry do, right? If only that were the case, then web designers would be instantly become Read more
A while ago I told you the Google Farmer change was coming, but just how big an impact it was going to have I couldn’t have told you back then. Well, since this baby has been in operation for a good couple of weeks now, I can tell you a lot more about how it is affecting search and ecommerce in general.
Unethical SEO can get you banned from Google, just ask the BMW bosses who hired an SEO company that got them banned for cloaking, a practice that involves showing search bots different content than you show visitors …tut, tut!
