[caption id="attachment_112063" align="alignright" width="205"] Image credit to ShutterStock[/caption] You may see a drop in rankings or traffic and immediately panic. Have I been Panda-slapped? Even now, as we look at the two year anniversary of Google's Panda Update, the likelihood is that you have not. Rankings and traffic fluctuate for many reasons, most of which are not related to penalties from search engines. But, how can you tell? Instead of watching rankings overall, watch categories of keywords. If you separate your keyword categories by topic, you can more easily spot trends t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Algorithm Updates | Google: Panda Update | Google: SEO | Keywords & Content | Panda Update Must-Reads | Panda Update Tips | SEO: Duplicate Content

Looking back at 2012 statistics for smartphone usage & tablet sales figures paints a picture of significant multinational SEO opportunity in 2013. Here are three key SEO opportunities for 2013 and how to take advantage of them.

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(Editor's Note: This is the final article in a 3-part series looking at the aftermath of Google's Panda algorithm update, which launched February 24, 2011. To catch up, please see the first two articles in the series: Google Panda Two Years Later: Losers Still Losing & One Real Recovery and Google Panda Two Years Later: The Real Impact Beyond Rankings & SEO Visibility.) In the two years since Google rolled out the Panda update, many of the "losers" are still losing, and several others have been impacted beyond rankings and SEO. HubPages.com fits both descriptions. Launched in [...]

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Just under three years ago, we reported that 301 redirects don’t pass full PageRank and that you should try to link through a normal link versus using 301 redirects. The truth is, a 301 redirect and a link pass the same amount of PageRank. There is no more dilution of PageRank with a 301 redirect when compared to using a normal link. Matt Cutts squashed this myth that I believe many SEOs thought to be true, today in a video: He said: The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link. So t [...]

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(Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of articles looking at the aftermath of Google's Panda algorithm update, which launched February 24, 2011. To catch up, please see the first article in the series: Google Panda Two Years Later: Losers Still Losing & One Real Recovery.) Google's Panda algorithm update, which launched two years ago, had an enormous impact on the SEO industry and online publishing as a whole. As with any Google algo change, there are winners and losers in its search results. In part one of this series, we looked at the current search visibility of some of P [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: Panda Update | Google: SEO | Panda Update Must-Reads | Panda Update Winners & Losers | Top News

(Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles looking at the aftermath of Google's Panda algorithm update, which launched February 24, 2011.) Two years ago today, Google sent shockwaves through not only the SEO industry, but also through online publishing in general when it launched the Panda algorithm update. It was originally called the "farmer" update because Google's prime target was "content farms," a name used to describe sites that created high-quantities of low-quality content that sometimes ranked highly in Google's search results. Although Google didn't specifically [...]

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A day after warning publishers against advertorials, will Google's search team now have to penalize parts of its own company for running advertorials? Perhaps, and if so, it wouldn't be the first time. It's also another absurd chapter in Google's war on paid links. Google Says: Advertorials, Beware! After news came out yesterday that Google had apparently penalized Interflora for running advertorials -- and also reduced the PageRank values of many UK newspapers that carried these -- Google finally blogged a general warning against such practices. From its post: Please be wary if some [...]

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After penalizing Interflora and UK newspapers, Google has issued a stern warning that selling links on sites that pass PageRank can lead to a penalty in Google. Google specifically called this a "reminder," because in 2007, they clearly went on record that selling paid links can lead to a penalty. Google's Matt Cutts, the head of search spam, specifically called out the techniques believed to have resulted in the penalties leading to the PageRank drop of the UK newspapers and the ranking drop of the huge UK floral company Interflora. Cutts called out advertorials specifically in his warning [...]

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Google has downgraded the Toolbar PageRank scores for several dozen UK operated newspapers and news sites today. It is believed the reason Google has downgraded their PageRank scores is because they were selling links on a massive scale. Google Penalizes Sites Selling Links As you may remember, in October 2007, Google went on record that selling links can hurt your PageRank and rankings in Google. Shortly later, Google went ahead dished out PageRank penalties to many US news sites including sites like the Washington Post, Forbes, Sun Times and dozens of others. This is nothing new. Goo [...]

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The popular UK flower website Interflora seems to have been penalized in Google. They no longer rank for their key terms, such as [flowers], [flower delivery] and related terms -- nor do they rank for their own name [Interflora]. Here is a picture of the search results in Google UK for [Interflora]. As you can see, the number one ranking is not Interflora.co.uk; they are only coming up on the first page right now because they have paid for an AdWords listing. We asked Google to confirm if they have penalized Interflora for any reason, and Google would not comment. They said: We typi [...]

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Is Google pushing Penguin Updates without announcing them? A recent Google video might give that suggestion, but the Google tells us this is not the case. Confusion Over Penguin Refreshes The last time Google has confirmed a refresh or update to the Penguin anti-spam filter was back in October 2012, with Penguin Update 3. That was about 4.5 months ago. In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout with Google's John Mueller, one person asked John about these updates. John replied in a manner that may be interpreted as Penguin is updated on a more regular cycle but not always announced. You can li [...]

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Google's Matt Cutts shared some new statistics in a recent video about the types of notifications Google sends out via Google Webmaster Tools. Google sends approximately "hundreds of thousands" of messages each month to webmasters. The categories of those messages break down as follows: 90% of those messages are black hat related 4% are notifications of content that have little or no value add 3% are hacking notifications 2% are about link buying 1% are about link selling Here is the video: The last time we had an update on the number or categories of types of notifica [...]

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Patrick Altoft posted on Twitter about a new Google rich snippet designed for snow conditions. He searched for [geilo snow report] in Google and up came a rich snippet showing the snow conditions on that mountain. Here is a picture: As you can see, this rich snippet is pulled from the data on onthesnow.com. It contains the snow depth statistics, new snow stats within 24 and 72 hours, the conditions of the snow, the lifts currently open on the mountain, the trails currently open on the mountain and the current weather. It also shows the last time the data was updated on that web page. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Rich Snippets | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video today explaining how a webmaster can locate which links pointing to their website is "unnatural." As you know, Google has been sending unnatural link warnings to Webmasters for about a year now. Webmasters should act when they receive this email; they should remove the unnatural links. What happens if you really do not know which links pointing to your site are unnatural? Google's Matt Cutts gives you two ways to discover these links. (1) You can sort your links to your site within Webmaster Tools by most recent links. (2) [...]

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Google has confirmed the reports of the removal of the "not selected" filter within Google Webmaster Tool's Index Status report. Google's John Mueller said it was removed because it "was causing more confusion than actually helping webmasters with their sites." That may be true, but many webmasters found the data useful. In fact, there were times when John from Google said himself that "not selected" data can be useful in some situations. Here is the comment from Google's John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analysts in Google Zurich. Yep, this was removed on purpose since it was causing [...]

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Over the past week or so, we've been hearing reports of the number of links being reported within Google Webmaster Tools drastically changing from what it was days before the change. Last week, we received some reports of Google increasing the number of links being reported in the tool. This week, we are seeing dozens of reports of the link count dropping significantly. Some suspect Google has a data display issue specifically with reporting on home page links, while others are not sure. Google's John Mueller, who I believe is currently on vacation, responded to the concerns in one Googl [...]

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Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video on YouTube named Why don't you turn off the PageRank feature in the Google Toolbar? It is a very fair question, in fact, a question Matt Cutts brought up himself in about five years ago in 2007. But till this day, we have the Google Toolbar with the PageRank indicator in Internet Explorer browsers and others. Google has downplayed the importance of Toolbar PageRank over the years, in fact removing it from Google Webmaster Tools in October 2009. In the video, Matt said the reason they still have it is not because SEOs use it but rat [...]

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ConstantContact's SinglePlatform division has released the results of a new survey of small businesses (SMBs). The "headline" finding is that nearly half (49 percent) say they've never updated their listings online. The survey polled "more than 350" SMBs. Most small businesses are overwhelmed and confused by even basic online marketing. This is reflected in some of the seemingly contradictory findings of the survey: 50 percent of SMBs have seen listings for their business that are not accurate 70 percent of SMBs say they don’t have the time to manage listings on all of the sites t [...]

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Google has announced a new Panda refresh, making this version number 24. This refresh has a noticeable impact 1.2% of English based queries according to Google. The previous confirmed update was #23 and it impacted 1.3% of English queries on December 21, 2012. Prior to that was a refresh on November 21st that impacted 0.8% of queries. It seems like Google is now rolling out these updates every 4 weeks or so. Last week there were significant reports of a Google update, which Google denied. Here are all the releases so far for Panda: Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of querie [...]

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With the news today that Chrome is moving to secure search, marketers may be wondering about the larger picture of using search data in Web analytics. The searches people do that lead them to a site is valuable data to an organization. What other data source do we have that gives us direct access to our customers' wants and needs? Sure, we can ask them, but customers can lie. Or choose not to answer. By looking at exactly what visitors have searched for, we can learn a lot about who our customers are, what they really want, and if we're providing it to them. Search marketers have valued [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features: Analysis | Google: Analytics | Google: Chrome | Google: Privacy | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | Top News