Technical SEO for Nontechnical People

Technical SEO for Nontechnical People - Asking a nontechnical person to understand technical SEO is like asking an infant to understand Pig Latin.

Many of us didn't understand the difference between client side and server side, HTML and CSS, hell, even coding and programming when we started our careers. But in this tightly integrated industry, you must take the time to learn it.

Fixing even the smallest technical issue could have more benefits than even the best links you build. While you may not be able to personally fix these issues, knowing what to look for and how to fix it – and having a developer handy to implement it – is critical.
So for all my fellow nontechnical people, here are the basics behind what you need to look out for with technical SEO.

Redirects and Status Codes

Looks Like

Whenever someone accesses your page, that page will send a response to the web server saying what's happening. There are a lot or status codes, and Moz's "Response Codes Explained With Pictures" does a way great job explaining each.

Meaning

The basics:

• 200: Hey Google, all good. Page loads just fine.
• 301: Hey Google, I actually permanently relocated that information over here.
• 302: Hey Google, this page is over here for the time being, but it won't stay like that forever.
• 404: Hey Google, this page doesn't exist. Nice try.

What to Use

Screaming Frog will pull a whole list of your URLs and let you know the status code associated with each. I also have our support team pull a list of all URLs on our database and cross-reference so I'm not missing anything.

Keep in Mind

Make sure the front-end and the back-end match. If you're permanently redirecting, the status code needs to be a 301 and not a 302. If not, then you aren't passing any value from Page A to Page B, and Page B will probably never rank.
Additionally, don't redirect everything back to the home page. It should be done on a 1-1 basis.
If the page really doesn't exist, the status code needs to throw up 404, not 200. That's called a soft 404, and it creates confusing signals between Google and your web server.

Canonicals Are Cool

Looks Like

In the source code of Page A, you have < link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page-b">.

Meaning

Hey Google, I know you're on Page A, but that content is actually best read on Page B.

When to Use

Duplicate or near duplicate content, like:

• Duplicate home page URLs
  • www.example.com and www.example.com/default.aspx
• Duplicate paths to the same page
  • www.example.com/news/page-a/ and www.example.com/press/page-a

Keep in Mind

Your canonicaled page is the end all, be all. It's the page that you want indexed by search engines, so that URL also needs to be in your sitemap and internal linking structure. In the example above, users and crawlers will still get to Page A, but Page B is getting all the action.

URLs Aren't Case Sensitive

Looks Like

http://www.example.com/angry-erin-attacks and http://www.example.com/Angry-Erin-Attacks

Meaning

Hey Google, I know you think you're on two different URLs, but it's really just the same content.

What to do

Your developers should be able to implement a site-wide canonical pointing all uppercase URLs to their lowercase counterpoints. That way, duplicate content is fixed and your users aren't having an interrupted experience.

Keep in mind

I like having all my URLs lowercase since it's few people rarely capitalized URLs when they're typing them into a search bar anyway. Plus it keeps in cleaner. You could 301 these, too, but I prefer to limit the number of redirects to keep things as simple as possible.

URL Parameters

Looks Like

http://www.example.com/angry-erin?color=green&size=15&id=12345&print=1

Meaning

Whenever you see a "?" in a URL, that's the start of your URL parameters.
Some parameters give more information about what's on the page making the content change, like signifying a size or a color on an ecommerce site. Other parameters don't change the content at all and are just used for tracking purposes, like saying where the referral came from or this is the print version of the page.
For example:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2299970/Securing-the-Future-of-SEO-Global-Brands-5-Not-Provided-Solutions?utm_content=buffera3518&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

In the above URL, SEW has additional parameters so it knows how many people are going to that article from Twitter. If you remove everything after the "?", the page content will stay the same.

http://www.example.com/catalog/sc-gear/women-39-s-kira-2-0-triclimate.html?variationId=A5L&variationName=BOREALIS%20BLUE

In the above URL, everything after the "?" are additional filters of the same product, in this case, the color. Removing everything after the "?" will still bring you to the jacket, but not in the color that you want.

What to do

URL parameters can cause duplicate content, so you'll need to keep an eye out on what's necessary for the page content and what Google can ignore. In Google Webmaster Tools, you can tell Google how it should read your parameters, but you should implement some canonicals too.

Summary

Even with a basic understanding of what to look for in technical SEO can get you far. So many people today focus too heavily on off-page SEO, but if a site is technically flawed, it won't matter how many links you have or how good your content is.

 source: http://searchenginewatch.com

Is Google Getting Ready to Retire PageRank?

Is Google Getting Ready to Retire PageRank? - If you eagerly watch your PageRank bar to check for any tiny little fluctuation in your site's rank, you've probably noticed that it hardly ever changes. Long gone are the days when we used to see PageRank update on a regular basis, and you could make decisions for link building and site health based on what your PageRank was.

But if you aren't seeing your PageRank change at all, does it mean anything in today's SEO world? This is the topic of a new Google webmaster help video.

Our website is not improving in Google PageRank despite having regular updates and foolproof content authorized by proven editors. What could be the reason for this? Kindly help in sussing out the issue. Thank you.

Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts explained that PageRank isn't something that gets updated frequently. In fact, if you've been working in the SEO industry for at least the past couple years, you can probably only name a handful of times it has been updated. Cutts said:

It's only updated periodically so you know for a while we would update it relatively often, now we'll update it a few times a year. Over time the toolbar PageRank is getting less usage just because recent versions of Internet Explorer don't really let you install toolbars that easily and Chrome doesn't have the toolbar, so over time the PageRank indicator will probably start to go away a little bit. But it's also the case that we only update this information every few months so it does take time in order to show up.

His statement that PageRank will "start to go away a little bit" does bring up the speculation that perhaps we will see PageRank get retired, something many of us have been expecting for a while, simply because it doesn't really get updated, and it isn't one of the signals that we tend to value as highly as we used to (although it is something many of us still check).
Cutts also reminded people that PageRank isn't about the quality content you have on your site, although it can play a role. PageRank is really about the number of links to your site, Cutts said:

So check and make sure that you have a good architecture, that you have a home page with well linked static links going to the individual pages of your site, something like a tree like structure that leads to the individual pages can be good. Make sure that the pages that are really important are just one or two links from your home page so that the PageRank is still relatively high there.

For any site that wants to rank well and get natural links, you need to make sure you do have that great quality content that makes people want to link to you and share with others.

Make sure that a lot of people know about your content to know that high quality content because if a lot of people are linking to your site and those people who are linking to you have high PageRank then you'll be more likely to have higher page rank as well. So it's not just the quality of your content, the quality content is a little bit determining how much people want to link to you and then that will determine your PageRank but PageRank doesn't look at the quality of the text on your site its look at the number of links and the quality of those links and how they point to your website.

So once again, it comes down to creating great content in order to get the good quality links you need to increase your PageRank.




source : http://searchenginewatch.com

How to find backlinks from EDU forums

How to find backlinks from EDU forums - Forums, Discussion boards and Community websites are another easy source to build good quality .edu backlinks. In general, we can find forums and communities using the query:
site:.edu inurl:”forum” “register.php”
All of these forum sites must be created using some type of forum software. Knowing this, we are going to find the website on Google. The most popular script to create a forum or discussion board is vBulletin.


Just like the ‘powered by mediawiki’ phrase we’ve seen in another article, the vbulletin script adds a ‘powered by vbulletin’ tagline on any website built using the platform. Search query to find vbulletin powered .edu websites:
site:.edu “powered by vBulletin”

On a few .edu forums, new registrations are disabled. To sort this out while searching for a forum you may also try searches like site:.edu “powered by vbulletin” “register.php” site:.edu “powered by vbulletin” inurl:”register.php”

The registration process is very simple since you’re using roboform. 80% of the forums require a valid email address to create accounts. Once you confirm your account, go to ‘usercp’. There you can edit your profile and add a website on ‘options’ and place signature links.

Some websites won’t allow signature links—you may come to know this only after you’re done with the registration process. In such cases you can place your link (non-keyword link) on the ‘options’ as ‘your website’. Another important thing is fresh accounts may not be able to drop a signature. (the format is [URL="http://www.yourwebsite.com"]your keyword[/URL]) You may have to wait one or two weeks to place your signature on some of the .edu forums.
You should wait and create your signature on such websites. If the forum has some good discussions, you may participate on one or two threads and drop some replies (even possible to drop your website link and send some traffic if you play intelligently—DO NOT SPAM).

You may also try the following query to find forums where signatures are allowed (can’t be 100% accurate if the forum admin has modified the script) site:.edu “powered by vbulletin” signature Other popular forum software packages are PHPBB, SMF, etc.
Here are the search queries to find .edu forums on other platforms. You may also append the phrase inurl:”register” to get better results. site:.edu “powered by phpbb” site:.edu “powered by SMF” site:.edu “powered by VaultWiki” site:.edu “powered by drupal”


Look at the various screens of link building on forums:

See how the website link and signature link will appear (with your anchor text) once you’re done. You can always find new websites yourself by applying the strategies you’ve just learned. For those who would like to have some of the .edu can buy forum lists already scraped. You can create your own pages, instantly. Make good use of roboform to save your time with the registration process.

If you are interested to have more instant backlinks – we’ve added an One time offer of 100+ .edu backlinks for just 15 cents per link. Find a very good site which sells EDU and Gov backlinks here : Best edu backlinks, or you can buy lots of high page rank links in here  Best 5000 high Pr backlinks.

If you want to fully automated the EDU backlinks for your site you definetely need this software . I am simply in love with it : Instant Backlink Magic. It is a very good deal !!
To get more edu backlinks, a have added a few more search queries to squeeze the big G harder. Backlinks from EDU or GOV sites are always good, because they get a trust factor from Google.

Not everyone can register an EDU or GOV site (yes you can in other countries, but I’m talking about the .edu and .gov ones). That is why Google gives more weight to a link from one of these domains. Go to Google and paste one of the following search strings in there:
Code: site:.edu “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” | “leave a post” | “leave a reply”-”comments off” | -”comments are closed” Code: site:.gov “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” | “leave a post” | “leave a reply”-”comments off” | -”comments are closed”
I will explain what this will do, edu and gov are the same. First it will look for domains with the .edu extension. After that it will see if it uses WordPress. Then it will see if you can leave a comment on the page.

It looks for “leave a comment” OR “leave a post” OR “leave a reply” It will not show results where there is -”comments off” OR -”comments are closed” That is where the minus (-) sign is for. There is much debate about backlinks from relevant content. Will it make a bigger difference? I would say yes, but I can’t prove that.

However, does it really matter? Just make the search string (also called a footprint) a little bit different and you will get related posts to put a comment on. So use this:
Code: site:.edu intitle:mortgage “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” | “leave a post” | “leave a reply”-”comments off” | -”comments are closed”
Then it will find all related Mortgage edu Blogs. I got 10 results, but I will introduce the tilde here. The tilde looks like this ~ So ~mortgage is the keyword. The tilde will force Google to return everything related to mortgage in the eyes off Google.

Now see how many results you get Before you go and open one of these sites to see if you can leave a comment there, be sure to download the NoDofollow plugin.
That is needed, because there isn’t a footprint that is 100% accurate! Also see if they allow HTML tags in your comment, so the <a href=” one. That is needed to link back to your site. If they don’t allow it, use your keyword as your name and that will become the link to your site. Make sure that your comment has some value. Do NOT use, I like your post kind of comments.

That is a sure way to get your comment deleted and all your hard work is gone! When you are done with WordPress, you can replace that with any other blog platform Of course you can use the footprint to find normal blogs, so not edu or gov. Just take out site:.edu and you are done.

Be sure to install the SEOQuake plugin, so you can sort the results from the highest PR. Because when it comes to “normal” Blogs I will always go after the PR2+ ones and leave a comment there.

There are millions of those to be found, just be creative with your keyword use. I have also attached footprints with this package. These are the command strings you must use site:.edu “***********************” site:.gov “***********************” Inside the *****, You must use the text given below

· /board · /board/ · /cgi-bin/forum/ · /cgi-bin/forum/blah.pl · /foren/ · /forum/ · /forum/?fnr= · /forumdisplay.php? · /forumdisplay.php?f= · /forums/ · /index.php?a=register · /index.php?board · /index.php?t= · /index.php?t=thread · /misc.php?action= · /phorum/ · /phpbb/ · /phpbb3/ · /post?id= · /posts/reply/ · /profile.php?id= · /punbb/ · /quicksilver/ · /registermember · /seoboard/ · /sutra · /unb/ · /usebb/ · /user/profile/ · /viscacha/ · /viscacha/register.php · a product of lussumo · act=login&func=register · act=post&forum=19 · act=reg · act=sf · act=st · action=display&thread · add message · add topic · BB code is On · bb-login.php · bbpress topic.php · bbpress/register.php · bbpress/topic.php?id · bbs · bbs/ezboard.cgi · bbs1/ezboard.cgi · board · board/ezboard.cgi · board-4you.de · boardbook.de · bulletin board register · bulletin · cgi-bin/ezboard.cgi · cgi-bin/forum.cgi · cgi-bin/forum/ · comments.php?discussionid= · community/forum.php? · community/index.php · community/register.php · discussion board register · forum By continuing with the sign up process you agree to the above rules and any others that the Administrator · forum I am at least 13 years old. · forum In order to proceed, you must agree with the following rules: · forum mesdiscussions.net · forum new replies · forum new topic · forum post thread · forum register I have read, and agree to abide by the · forum signup · forum To continue with the registration procedure please tell us when you were born. · forum view thread · forum · forum.php?req · forum.php?req=register · forum.php?s= · forumdisplay.php · forums – Registration Agreement · forums new replies · forums new topic · Forums Posting Statistics Newest Member · forums register · forums/show/ · hosted for free by zetaboards · Hot thread with no new posts · If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before · inanchor:ip.board · inanchor:vbulletin · inanchor:yabb · index.php · index.php?a=forum · index.php?a=post&s=topic · index.php?a=register · index.php?a=vtopic · index.php?action=register · index.php?action=registernew · index.php?action=vtopic · index.php?fid · index.php?s= · index.php?t=post&frm_id= · index.php?t=usrinfo · invision · ipb · kostenlose-foren.org · kostenloses-forum.com · list.php · listforums? · lofiversion · login.jbb · login.php · login.php?register=1 · member.php?action= · member.php?action=register · message board register · module=posts&action=insert&forum_id · modules.php · Most Online Today Most Online Ever Forums · new thread forum · new thread · new topic · new_member.jbb · new_topic.jbb? · new_topic.php? · newbb · newbbs/ezboard.cgi · newreply.php? · newreply.php?do=newreply · newthread.php? · newthread.php?do=newthread · onlyfree.de/cgi-bin/forum/ · panel.php?act=register · phorum · phorum/list.php · phorum/posting.php · phorum/register.php · phpbb register forum · phpbb/posting.php?mode=newtopic · phpbb/posting.php?mode=reply · phpbb/profile.php?mode=register · phpbb/viewforum.php? · phpbb3/posting.php?mode=post · phpbb3/posting.php?mode=reply · phpbb3/ucp.php?mode=register · phpbbx.de · plusboard.de · post new topic · post.forum?mode=reply · post.php · post/?type · post/printadd?forum · posting · posting.forum&mode=newtopic · postmessage.aspx · posts/list · powered by bbpress · powered by e-blah forum software · powered by fluxbb · powered by forum software minibb · powered by icebb · powered by invision power board · powered by ip.board · Powered by IP.Board · powered by javabb 0.99 · Powered By MyBB · powered by phpbb · powered by phpbb3 · Powered by PunBB register.php · Powered by PunBB viewforum.php · powered by punbb · powered by quicksilver forums · powered by seo-board · powered by smf 1.1.5 · powered by smf · powered by the unclassified newsboard · powered by ubb.threads · powered by usebb forum software · powered by vbulletin · powered by viscacha · powered by xennobb · powered by xmb · powered by yabb · powered by yaf · powered by: fudforum · profile.forum? · profile.php · proudly powered by bbPress · punbb register forum · punbb/register.php · Quick Reply Quote message in reply? · register forum Please Enter Your Date of Birth · register iam over 13 years of age forum · register.aspx · register.php · reply.jbb · send message · send thread forum · send thread · seoboard/index.php?a=vforum · showthread.php · Similar Threads All times are GMT +1 · siteboard.de · SMF register forum · The Following User Says Thank You to for this post · this forum is powered by phorum · Thread is closed · thread · topic · topic.php?id · ubb · ubb=newpost&board=1 · ubb=postlist · ultimatebb · ultrabb · unboard.de · Users active in past 30 minutes: SMF · vbulletin forum signup · VBulletin forum · vbulletin · vbulletin/register.php · version · View previous topic :: View next topic forums · view topic forum · view_forum.php?id · viewforum.php?id · webmart.de/f.cfm?id= · xtremeservers.at/board/ · yabb · yaf_rules.aspx · yaf_topics · yooco.de · You cannot post new topics in this forum · Powered by wordpress

source:http://5mins.org/

Google Hummingbird Takes Flight: Biggest Change to Search Since Caffeine

Google Hummingbird Takes Flight: Biggest Change to Search Since Caffeine - Google quietly made a huge change to its core search technology in the past month, one that affects about 90 percent of searches worldwide. Calling it Hummingbird, the technological update of Google search is designed to handle more complex queries.

Calling it the culmination of 15 years of work, the news was revealed by Amit Singhal, Google's senior VP, one day before Google officially celebrates its 15th birthday. He spoke at a special press event today in the garage that Susan Wojcicki rented to Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in Menlo Park, California,
"Our algorithm had to go through some fundamental rethinking of how we are going to keep our results relevant," Singhal said.

Beyond announcing that Google search is now be better at understanding concepts, relationships between concepts, and more complex questions, and despite numerous questions from reporters, Google wouldn't give any more details about how Google Hummingbird actually works, according to various reports.
As TechCrunch explained:

The main focus, and something that went repeated many a time, was that the new algorithm allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to parsing searches word-by-word), and to identify and rank answers to those questions from the content they’ve indexed.

Understanding Link-Based Negative SEO

(c) http://searchenginewatch.com/

Understanding Link-Based Negative SEO - Although there are varying ways to destabilize the organic visibility of a website on Google, this article will focus on the most common attack: when a competitor buys and points low-quality links to website to diminish the rankings of the said website by causing it to be filtered or receive a manual action (penalty) from Google.
Let's look at some common features and distinctions of link-based negative SEO attacks, illustrative examples, and preventative steps and ideas for what to do if your site is affected.

Several Key Distinctions

Although negative SEO is a well explored and controversial topic, there is some vagueness about low-quality link buying as a negative SEO tactic. The fact is, low-quality link buying to a competitor actually takes a number of different forms and there are several important distinctions to be aware of. Here are a few:

Buying Low-Quality Links to the Homepage vs. a Subpage

Some aggressive agents will only seek to take down a certain page. In this case they will build the low-quality links to a subpage. Generally speaking, subpages have historically had a greater tolerance for anchor text rich links, so generally more links are built into subpages to try to take them down.

Single Spam Attack vs. Multiple Attacks Over Time:

Often times, spam attacks tend to be in the form of single attacks. A single attack occurs when a large number of low-quality backlinks with a single phrase as an anchor are pointed to a website on one day. However, multiple attacks also occur. These are cases where for about 3 - 6 months, a homepage or subpage gets thousands for backlinks for a single phrase as an anchor.

New Website vs. Established Website

Is your website new and does it have just a few natural backlinks? Or is your website well-established and does it have a healthy backlink profile with thousands of natural links? More established website tend to have more established backlink profiles and are much harder to successfully target with a negative SEO attack than a new website.

Motive for Attack

Taking down a competitor website isn't the only motive for building low-quality links to a website. Occasionally, spammers will build low-quality links to help boost the equity of links pointing to their site from your site.
Negative SEO link attacks that are focused on diminishing the organic search visibility of a website tend to be targeted to the homepage, low-quality backlinks tend to point to the homepage. Conversely, negative SEO link attacks that are targeted for boosting existing links on a page tend to appear deeper on a website, low-quality backlinks tend to point to deeper of a website, often areas where there is user-generated content.

Google's Position on Negative SEO

In the interest of being comprehensive on our discussion of this topic, we would be amiss not discuss Google's position on link-based negative SEO. Google's position on negative SEO is that it is possible, but difficult, according to Matt Cutts, head of the Google webspam team:
Last year, Google revised its official wording about negative SEO, saying "There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index" to "Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index."
Cutts has essentially stated that all the claims of successful negative SEO attacks Google has looked into don't hold up.
So, at minimum, Google grants that it is possible to successfully execute a negative SEO attack. Furthermore, some marketing experts posit that because the Google webspam team has become more aggressive in controlling activities they believe are spam, that it is now easier to execute some types of negative SEO attacks. This is especially true regarding activities that fall under link schemes in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Some Negative SEO Examples

Now let's look at two contrasting examples of negative SEO attacks that were verified by the author, one of which was unsuccessful, and one of which succeeded.

Unsuccessful Attack

This particular attack was on a website that was registered in 1998 and it isn't in a massively competitive niche. This website has a forum on it. A spammer used this forum to do a type of link attack using the site which I am referencing as a site in a link chain.
The spammer added spam forum links with anchor text into new comments on old threads, where moderators are less likely to see them, if anyone was managing the forum to begin with. These comments with anchor text rich links were added to about 20 threads.
After the comments were published, the spammer then built thousands of links to the various spam forum comment pages with pharmaceutical phrases. The particular site that was attacked wasn't about pharmaceuticals.
When I pulled up the anchor text of this particular site, I found that all of the top phrases in the anchor text distribution were for different pharmaceutical phrases. To illustrate, I had to scroll through to the very bottom to see their real links. However, when you look at the traffic of this site, it is very stable.
Why This Attack Didn't Work

• The anchor text sent to the site didn't match the topic of the site at all (this has to do with the intent of the spammer, which was not to spam the site but send backlinks to another pharmaceutical site).
• Before the attack, the website had no anchor text rich links.
• The attack was a one time attack.
• When the webmaster found this attack, they immediately removed the comments and made their forum private, so that all of the links form the comments were no longer indexed.

Successful Attack

This particular site was registered at the very end of 2011 and is in a really competitive niche. The website domain name was also a partial keyword match, which is to say that their domain name include a target keyword but the domain name was not just a keyword.
For link building, this particular site had some directory links with branded anchor text and some article submission also with branded links pointing back to their website. There were also some forum links that pointed back to their site with just URL.
As such, because some of the directories were not the best, they were not in the best link neighborhood. There were also a couple of links that had rich anchor text, however, this number amounted to under 10 linking root domains.
Over the first 7 months of the life of this website, the site was cruising along and building rankings for several long-tail and a few mid-tail phrases. Overall, the site was doing pretty good in terms of number of visitors.
In the summer or early fall of last year, the website traffic from Google organic dropped almost entirely. What was found was that for three straight months prior to getting hit, a competitor was building low-quality anchor text rich links to the homepage of this site. If you look at Majestic SEO link history, you see very few links being built each month followed by a hockey stick jump in number of new links.
Sidebar: Given the reasoning above, I think that some readers may suggest that there is a greater burden of proof on me to prove that the site above was hit beyond a reasonable doubt. I thought about diving into this in greater detail but I chose not to since it is outside of the scope of the intent of my article overall. However, I will say that myself and under peer review were able to identify a direct correlation between the drop and the competitor link building.
Why This Attack Worked

• This site is in a very competitive niche, which Google probably monitors a little bit more closely than the site above.
• This site was very new, it was under a year old at the time that it got hit.
• This site didn't have a strong backlink profile. Although, this site was being very cautious in terms of obvious spam indicators such as anchor text – comparative to the rest of the site in this particular niche – their backlink profile still wasn't in the greatest neighborhood.
• At the time that they were hit, they just built some low-hanging fruit links just to get found. Because they didn't have an established backlink profile, they were very vulnerable to even unsophisticated attacks.

Takeaways From Examples Above

New Websites

If you have a new website, you're vulnerable, especially if you're in a competitive niche.

• Focus heavily on online PR [public relations, not PageRank]and branded link building for at least the first couple months after site launch.
• Make sure to monitor your inbound links at least once a month for the first year of the life of your site. Catching competitor based link attacks early will save you a lot of pain later.
• Avoid low-quality link neighborhoods or any kind of submission based link building, if possible, since sites that will freely link to you will also freely link to any other site, which may not be relevant or may itself use low quality link tactics.

Established Websites

In general, established websites are much safer from negative SEO link attacks.
If you manage an established website or a website that relies heavily on user-generated content, remain aware of how you manage outbound links, even if you automatically wrap out bound links in user generated content in nofollow.

What to do if You've Been Impacted

Although the exact next step for what to do if you have been impacted by a negative SEO link attack varies depending on your unique situations, here are some general recommendations:

Evaluate the Scope of the Hit

• Was the homepage impacted? Were subpages impacted? Or a combination of both?
• Check your traffic in analytics and webmaster tools. Is there any volatility or downturn in traffic?
• Check webmaster tools for an unnatural link warning.

Disavow the Spam Links

Submit disavows for both Google and Bing. Disavow the links from the spam attack.

If You Lost Traffic and Received an Unnatural Link Warning...

You will need to submit a reconsideration request in addition to submitting a disavow.

source: http://searchenginewatch.com/

SEO Best Practices: Setting Up a Blog

SEO Best Practices: Setting Up a Blog - Your blog should be the centerpiece of a larger initiative, one that engages your target audience in a "human" way, with the goal of creating signals that will aid/support what you're trying to achieve with SEO.
One mistake many businesses still make is creating posts that consist of self-promotion with little "meat" to entice anyone to engage with the content, much less share the content (in the hopes that you might earn a link or two, or any "viral" activity to the post, whatsoever).

What Are You Trying to Achieve?

One of the first things you have to consider is – indeed – what you're trying to achieve. How you answer the following questions will guide one of the most important steps that you'll take when setting up a blog:

• Do you have issues with reputation management – i.e., negative brand mentions in the search engine results pages (SERPs)?
• Are you trying to build thought-leadership for your company/brand?
• Are you trying to build a channel to drive deep linking to specific pages of your website?
• Are you trying to build depth of content or develop a tool to target "human queries" for your otherwise "corporate" website?
• Do you want your blog to be non-branded and/or seen as a unique "unbiased" voice in your industry?

Setting Up Your Blog

Once you know you're trying to achieve, you need to consider where the blog resides. Should you use a subdirectory, a subdomain, a completely separate domain, or either WordPress or Blogger? Let's look at all the options.

Blog on a Subdirectory

More often than not, this is how I recommend clients set up a blog. In my opinion (and "yes", SEOs will have varying opinions on this), adding fresh content to the root domain is a good thing. I also believe that having an RSS feed of "latest blog posts" to the home page of the website is a good thing.
I believe that promoting content that resides "on" the website is a good thing because you can earn (deep) links and provide balance to your link profile. And, I believe that having thought-leadership content that is closely associated with your brand (resides, again, on the domain) is a good thing.
Pros:

• Add fresh content to the root domain.
• Add deep links (from other websites)/social signals directly to root domain (assuming that you've promoted this content well).

Cons:

• Won't provide an additional "brand" listing (in most cases) in the SERPs, so doesn't serve well for reputation management.
• No direct ability to get links "from another website/sub-domain".

Blog on a Subdomain

A good case can be made for why you might want to blog on a subdomain.
For example, perhaps you have issues with reputation management (perhaps someone posted to review complaint sites like Ripoff Report, Pissed Consumer, etc.) so you need to occupy additional real estate in the SERPs. By building your blog on a subdomain, you accomplish this by providing the search engines another "official web presence" (the search engines will treat this as a separate entity) for your company, that should rank when folks search your company name.
The nice thing about having a blog on a sub-domain is that it will also piggyback on the authority of your root website (hopefully you already have some authority on your root domain) and posts there can rank, without the need to build up the authority for a new website.
Pros:

• Get an additional brand presence in the SERPs that you control.
• Get links "from another website" (subdomains are treated pretty much as such); Ability to deep-link to specific pages within the root.
• Piggyback on the already "built" (again, making an assumption here) authority of the root domain.
• Can be hosted anywhere. Very important consideration for those on a content management system that does not provide a blogging platform.

Cons:

• Not as much freshness on the domain.
• Content that "hits" (gets good promotion/links) doesn't add as much link value to the root.

Blog on a Separate Domain

Some people like to create a "non-official" blog presence, to have control over a website that isn't directly tied to the brand. They want to have an "unbiased" voice (at least give the appearance of such) and probably use this to occasionally link to their main website.
I typically discourage these types of initiatives, for many reasons – not the least of which is the amount of effort that would need to go into making this new web presence gain any amount of trust/traction or authority.
Pros:

• Can create an "unbiased" resource (that just happens to link to your corporate website, on occasion).
• If the content is good, and it becomes respected in your industry, the blog can gain authority that can then be passed through to your corporate website through "unbiased" linking.

Cons:

• There's a better than average chance that gaining good authority/ability for posts to rank is going to take considerable time.
• Does little to really show thought-leadership for your company.
• If you really do drop links to the corporate website, there's a good chance that it'll be seen for what it is: a paid advertisement, not an official unbiased reference. The backlash from this could be (should be) huge.

Blog on WordPress.com or Blogger

Some pretty large companies have gone this route because – to them – it's the easiest to execute. Mind you, a link from WordPress.com isn't a bad thing, but how does this help with any of the aforementioned reasons why you might want to blog in the first place?
Are you tying in the "thought leadership" to the brand? Are you adding fresh content to the domain? Are you aiding your abilities to provide an additional "official brand presence" to the SERPs? (Perhaps, but you're better off with subdomain).
Pros:

• You could create some very aggressive link building tactics or "test" things without burning the domain.
• You would gain a link that is coming from an authority domain (remember, a quality link profile is about gaining links from many different/authoritative/relevant websites/domains; not many links on one domain)
• Easy. Just about anyone can get engaged and start blogging today.

Cons:

• Limitations as to how you can design/template to fit your brand.
• Any content promoted (linked to) won't provide direct value to your main company website/domain.
• Inability to utilize plugins.
• Cheesy. It is what it is. Not gonna be a great representation for your company.

Summary

Blogging should be a part of any sound marketing plan, nowadays. You need to create engagement and provide the ability for people to share content coming from your company. Face it, very few people are going to feel compelled to share your "service page", much less link to it.
Do blogging for the right reasons, and set it up in the right manner for your needs and you'll realize positive results.
Now that you've addressed best practices for setting up your blog, realize that you're just getting started...

(source:http://searchenginewatch.com/)

Google Webmaster Tools Give Users More Link Data

Google Webmaster Tools Give Users More Link Data - Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts kicked off SES San Francisco this morning by announcing a change to the way Google Webmaster Tools serves backlinks to users. Now, instead of getting a huge list of backlinks in alphabetical order, they are giving a better representation of all the backlinks.
"If I download my backlinks in Webmaster Tools, my list ends at H. If you are Amazon or eBay, you get 000000a.com to 000000c.com," Cutts said.
When Google is serving 100,000 backlinks in Webmaster Tools, it wasn't that useful to users when they could get so many results from a single domain, and there was no way to sort them.
Shortly after the announcement this morning at SES, Google published a blog post detailing the changes:

Based on feedback from the webmaster community, we're improving how we select these backlinks to give sites a fuller picture of their backlink profile. The most significant improvement you'll see is that most of the links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically. You're also more likely to get example links from different top-level domains (TLDs) as well as from different domain names. The new links you see will still be sorted alphabetically.
Starting soon, when you download your data, you'll notice a much broader, more diverse cross-section of links. Site owners looking for insights into who recommends their content will now have a better overview of those links, and those working on cleaning up any bad linking practices will find it easier to see where to spend their time and effort.

This is a great change for webmasters, especially when people are trying to clean up after receiving a bad backlink warning. This was a problem for larger sites, and especially if someone was cleaning up a site that had thousands of low-quality/spammy backlinks pointing to a site.
The change has already gone live, so you can download a better cross-section of your backlinks in Google Webmaster Central right now.

4 Reasons to Spend More on SEO

4 Reasons to Spend More on SEO - Google has made dramatic changes in 2013, with the May 22 Penguin update having the biggest impact for small business websites. After some severe reductions in traffic, some webmasters are at least seeing traffic increases in August due, in part, to a Panda softening from Google.

In response, many webmasters are making big shifts in SEO tactics. While long overdue, this is the right move.

Few businesses are looking to move to lower quality SEO services as they now fear Google more than ever. But small businesses run very close to the margin and traditionally resist increasing the SEO budget, regardless of the consequences. Here are four reasons why small business owners should reconsider.

1. Google Asked You To

While many will dismiss this as PR, Google has clearly communicated that they no longer will tolerate SEO tactics that used to work in 2008. Article spinning, keyword stuffing, excessive bookmarks, reborn domains, paid links, thin content, and duplicate content are all not OK.

Even if you haven't received an unnatural link warning, the writing is on the wall. Quality must increase for continued success in SEO. While this message is clearly self-serving for Google, it's important to respect their power in the industry.

2. Recovering From Google Updates is Expensive

There are plenty of websites that have partially recovered from Penguin downgrades, but each case is different. The level of returning traffic varies.

Technical issues on-site are the easiest to fix and should be addressed quickly using Webmaster Tools as the guide. Duplicate content needs to be removed immediately.

Keyword-stuffed titles need to be edited. Thin content, a favorite among many, should be replaced with real content marketing.

Off-site issues, such as bad link building, are particularly hard to fix. It is very ironic that firms now exist to send "link removal request" emails to other firms who were previously retained to build those links.

Small business needs to stop doing bad link building and embrace content marketing. They need to get creative and experiment with newsjacking.

All of these activities cost money. Smart business owners are thinking toward the future and deciding to spend more on SEO now (via higher quality services) to avoid repeating this activity in 2014.

3. SEO Has Merged With Marketing

Many small business webmasters were using a "set-it-and-forget-it" SEO strategy, believing that they need not worry about SEO after hiring a firm. This violates one of the major tenets of business process outsourcing, which is to outsource process and execution, but maintain strict performance monitoring and accountability.

It isn't surprising that many small businesses are feeling buyer's remorse, wishing they had done greater due-diligence in the vendor selection process and better understood the risks associated with SEO.

It should be clear at this point that SEO is no longer a technical exercise and is rapidly merging with marketing and public relations. Smart CEOs recognize the strategic importance of SEO in our digital world. For this reason, they find ways to amplify SEO in allmarketing activities. Ironically, many companies have SEO opportunities they don't harness.

For example, every employee should maintain a "work" Twitter account and share industry news, blog posts and company specials to help spread content. This type of integrated SEO marketing execution is the future, and will draw more budget dollars.

4. SEO ROI Remains High

The data suggests that SEO is still a great investment. This means that small business shouldn't necessarily shop for the cheapest SEO vendor, but consider the return they can make on their money if they spend more:

• SEO remains a very high ROI activity.
• The cost-per-lead for SEO is still very attractive.
• Google has significantly tightened the requirements for high-quality SEO.
• Integrated marketing strategies have big efficiencies.

Conclusions

All technologies and industries mature, and price-points typically change dramatically along the way. SEO is following the same playbook as most other young industries.

In the last few years we have seen SEO move from infancy to adolescence, with the Google algorithm updates as mileposts. While SEO will become more difficult and expensive to execute, the return on investment remains high for small business. In the end, ROI is more important than the absolute number of a budget line item.

3 Sustainable SEO Tips: Why Recover From Google Updates? Don't Get Hit!

3 Sustainable SEO Tips: Why Recover From Google Updates? Don't Get Hit! - We've all been there at one point or another. Shoot, you may be going through one of the five stages of Google grief right now.
This summer was a tumultuous one for Google algorithm updates. Since the beginning of May, we've gone through seven of them, each varying in severity, but the public outcry has been consistent: A group panics, some remain calm, and the Interwebz explodes with "How to Recover" posts.
Wouldn't you love to be in a place when you laugh in the face of Google algorithm updates? These tactics could help you get there.

1. Focus On Your Branding, Not Your Ranking

Look at the results for "flat screen TV" and tell me what the listings have in common. Do it. I'll wait.
They're all brands.
That's where search engines are going. They're favoring real company stuff over stuffed keywords and one-way links, and you don't have to be a household name to do it. It means doing things like:

• Sponsoring local events and community involvement.
• Giving away content (and maybe the occasional iPad) for free.
• Paying attention to what your users want and giving it to them.

Perhaps the big brands do have it easy, not because they have the household name, but because they were around before everyone started freaking out about links, title tags, and keywords. They were doing things the right way that got them exposure – well, most of them anyway – and when things went online, that did too.

2. Give Users a Good Experience

It's impossible really hard to have a good website that ranks well for a long period of time if it doesn't give your users a good experience. If people like your website, they come back. They share it.
We know Google is making a push where a site's quality is more important than the number of links pointing to it:

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.

While that's still largely subjectively – How exactly do you define "high-quality sites," Google? – and I hate giving guarantees when it comes to search, there's one thing I'll rest my laurels on: Your website will always be "quality" if it gives your users a good experience.
Incorporate user experience consulting into your search and digital engagements. This includes things like:

• User research.
• User testing.
• Split testing.
• Conversion rate optimization.

Visual Website Optimizer is a great tool for split testing because it allows you to make layout styling changes without needing a developer, which, if your agency is like mine, is harder to get your hands on than Google's actual ranking factors. You can also set up usability testing through there if you don't have in-house resources for a full user test.
But this isn't just about giving users a good experience on your website because, before they even make it there, they're likely interacting with you someplace else first. Think about the links they're seeing of yours, how you look in SERPs, your Facepook posts, your graphics, everything: If you were a user, would you click on them?

3. Preserve Your URLs

Outside of breaking news, old URLs will rank the best. While 301s and canonicals are heaven sent for SEO professionals, they strip out a fraction of equity, and in this day and age, even the smallest amount can make a huge difference.
Unless absolutely necessary – like you're dealing with a site architecture that's been picked apart and puzzled together so many times that it's one hot mess – keep your URLs the same. When you add new features to a product or update your service offerings, do it on the same URL.
Apple does this with each new release of the iPad or iPhone. When they launch an update, it goes to /iphone/ or /ipad/; they don't create entirely new URLs for the product they're promoting and instead shuffle the old version to a new URL. This means you're launching a product with some equity already built up.

Summary

Let's be clear: Sustainable SEO is a slow process. There are such things as quick wins – small, easy fixes you can do in the first weeks of a client engagement that prove your worth and show you mean business – but rarely will you see quick results. And that's OK: Since when does anything worthwhile ever come without a lot work?

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner vs. Keyword Tool: SEO & PPC Feature Comparison

Google AdWords Keyword Planner vs. Keyword Tool: SEO & PPC Feature Comparison -
Google's AdWords Keyword Tool enables online marketers to quickly retrieve an overview of the relevancy of single search terms as well as whole product categories and brands, making it an important everyday tool.
However, Google will soon combine the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator into just one new product: the Keyword Planner. Google will also add a new keyword merger function that allows for wrapping and combining keywords.
The Keyword Planner offers both basic functions of Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator in two different types. There will be no program-related barrier as is presently the case with the two tools and it will also be easy to transfer keywords from ideas to estimated traffic and integrate them into the account in a structured way.
With the approaching consolidation of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator into the Keyword Planner, SEO and PPC professionals should become familiar with this new product. What does this change means for keyword research? Here's a comparison of the Keyword Tool and Keyword Planner.

Short Facts (Cheat Sheet)

There are three function types. These differ in terms of the number of available keywords and in terms of whether they actually display keyword ideas.
Google generally describes all keyword displays with keyword ideas and ad group ideas, regardless of whether new recommendations are actually provided. The filters are only partly at your disposal after the first query.

1. Ideas for Looking for Keywords and Ad Groups

It is possible to enter up to 50 keywords, as well as one target site or one product category within the interface to retrieve keywords and keyword ideas. These are then displayed with information regarding search volume, competition, and the average CPC.

2. Enter or Upload Keywords to Learn About Their Performance

In order to retrieve search volume data one can either enter up to 1,000 keywords into the interface or upload up to 10,000 via a CSV. Once this has been done, you then need to choose the option "Get search volume." New keyword suggestions can't be generated here. Search volumes of keywords can only be retrieved through exporting the data.

3. Multiply Keyword Lists

It's possible to enter several lists of keywords as long as the combined total of terms doesn't exceed 1,000.
Some of the functions have changed:

• The local search volume is only displayed for exact queries.
• The local search volume is specifically retrievable for towns and regions, several places and countries can be chosen at the same time.
• The language setting eliminates terms that don't match the chosen language. It serves as a word filter instead of a targeting filter (Google just eliminates the words instead of adjusting their search volumes).
• Keyword lists can be uploaded as CSV files to research the search volume. Separation of end device is dispensed with (fitting to the enhanced campaigns).

According to Google, future ideas as well as estimations will be more tailored to the specific account. This makes more sense for PPC, but for SEO this form of modification seems to be rather disadvantageous.

The 3 Function Types of the Keyword Planner in Detail

Type 1: Search Keywords and Ad Group Ideas

This function allows the user to enter up to 50 keywords, and one target site or one product category to generate keyword ideas. Language and "Google"/"Google and search partners" can be chosen accordingly.
Unfortunately the option "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" is omitted. Consequently the results can only be thematically modified via included or excluded keywords.
Depending on the research, the planner sometimes lists many irrelevant terms. As usual the planner displays the results in the ad group ideas as well as in the keyword ideas. In terms of metrics however only search volume, competition, and CPC are displayed.

Type 2: Enter or Upload Keywords to See How They Perform

Keywords can be checked on their search volume and potential account performance. Here up to 1,000 keywords can be manually entered or a CSV file with up to 10,000 keywords can be uploaded. Also, position and "Google"/"Google and search partners" can be selected.
Language can't be selected in the upload, but is available as a filter after the first output of results. New keyword suggestions aren't displayed by this type; in order to get such results you need to choose type 1.
This type distinguishes between "Get estimates" and "Get search volumes". If "Get search volume" is chosen, search volume, competition and CPC are displayed. If "Get estimates" is chosen, the planner displays estimations concerning possible clicks, impressions, positions, costs, CTR, and CPC of the keywords after the insertion of offer and daily budget.

Type 3: Multiply Keyword Lists

This type represents a wrapper. It is possible to combine two or three keyword lists but the combination is strictly one-directional (A and B = AB, not: AB and BA).
Once combined, the combined list should consist of no more than 1,000 terms; other neither search volume nor estimations can be retrieved. Location and "Google"/"Google and search network" can be chosen, however language cannot be selected in the pre-setting. However it can be adjusted later on. This type generates no new ideas.

Keyword Tool vs. Keyword Planner Functions

To provide an overview, here's a comparison of the functions of the Keyword Tool and Keyword Planner, evaluated from an SEO and a PPC perspective.

Function	Keyword Tool	Keyword Planner	SEO	PPC
Limitation according to country	Selection of a country	Selection of several countries at the same time	/	/
Limitation according to language	Search volume filtered depending on the language queries (number of search volume gets smaller): Language targeting	Take into account only words of this language, foreign terms (partly also Anglicisms) completely fall out of the research: Language word filter
Limitation according to region/city	-	New
End devices	Separation of end devices possible	Separation of end devices are dropped
Matchtype in search volume	Retrieval of search volume possible for widely, exact and word group	Retrieval of search volume only possible for exact
Matchtype in estimations	Retrieval of estimations possible for widely, exact and word group	Retrieval of search volume possible for widely, exact and word group	/	/
Insertion	Insertion of keywords, website and/or category possible	Insertion of keywords, website and/or category possible in type 1; in the other types only insertion of keywords possible	/	/
Include/exclude terms	Stays	Stays	/	/
Research of new keyword ideas	Possible	Possible in type 1	/	/
Improvement of keyword ideas according to conceptual vicinity	Option "Only display ideas very similar to my search terms"	Not possible anymore
Research of new ad groups ideas	Possible	Possible in type 1	/	/
Search volume for display groups ideas	Not mentioned	Summed-up search volume of the keywords central to ad groups (cluster)	/
Display ideas for adults	Possible	Possible	/	/
Filtering of ideas	Possible according to: Search queries (local and global) Competition Ad share CPC	Possible according to: Search queries Competition CPC	/	/
Intermediate storage of keywords	Keyword ideas, ad group ideas	Adding to the plan only in the suggested or given ad groups	/
Export of keyword ideas	One's own keyword ideas, all search results, one's own ad group ideas, bulk download	Download keyword statistics or plan for all individually chosen ad groups (Type 1), additionally segmented after month, for Excel or AdWords Editor	/	/
Adaption of columns	Possible	Omitted	/	/
Information	- Competition - Global search queries - Local search queries - Ad ratio - Google search network - Ratio in search queries - Approximate CPC - Local search trends	- Average search queries (locally consistent with site selection) - Competition - Average CPC - Local Search trends - Selection by Google / Google and search network possible	/	/
Local search trends	Exemplified as column and through export	Only through export
Download of results	Possible (only statistics for search volume)	Download of statistics and traffic estimations possible in one data	/
Retrieval of traffic estimations	-	New	/
Creation of a plan with ad groups and keywords	-	New	/
Fading out keywords already in the account	-	New	/
Upload of keywords in a CSV file	-	New, maximum of 10,000 keywords
Upload of keywords in ad groups (cluster)	Not possible	Possible in type 2
Manual insertion of keywords for one's own ideas	200+ keywords	50 keywords	-
Manual insertion of keywords for search volume	200+ keywords	1,000 keywords	-
Rate time of data	Only current status	Intermediate saving as "plan"
Wrapper	-	New

Advantages

The table shows some of the advantages and in the following paragraph the most interesting ones for SEO and PPC are listed. Local targeting in particular can bring significant improvements.
Not only can different countries be selected as areas but also various regions (e.g., Shreveport, LA) or cities (e.g., New York). This is a vast improvement, particularly for local SEO professionals or locally referring ads. This is very helpful if you want to bundle countries on the basis of language.
The upload of CSV files enables querying of performance data for up to 10,000 keywords (e.g. from pre-combined lists from one's own tools). Also raising the keyword limit to 1,000 in type 2 makes work easier.
By bundling the keywords in ad groups (that is, also in every other possible cluster) you can easily retrieve the search volumes for the respective category, ad group, landing page etc. The integrated wrapper helps in requesting the search volume. Though in this function the Google Keyword Planner replaces single external tools and spares routine pieces of copy and paste work, it doesn't generate any additional ideas (not even with just a few terms).

Disadvantages

For the one part there exists a forfeit concerning functions in the field filter and settings. Statistical data for search volume can only be retrieved for the match type "exact" and not for "phrase" and "broad". Google stated that those had been too inaccurate.
One could possibly solve this problem by retrieving the estimated values for e.g. "expected impressions" that are issued. However, these values strongly depend on the chosen daily budget and the extent of the maximum CPC bid. Like this, only the total number of impressions estimated by Google (depending on the estimated impression share) is displayed.
Global and local search trends, like the results of Google search and the Google search network, can only be retrieved in multiple steps. Furthermore the search volumes for mobile phones and desktop PCs are no longer displayed separately. The data therefore just refers to all devices.
If German is selected in the language settings, English keywords are automatically sorted out and disappear from the list. This means differentiation and the chance for more detailed analysis is lost.
From a usability standpoint, the limiting of keywords to 50 when using type 1 must be stressed. If you want to retrieve 51 keywords you need to start a new query. However, experience of the Keyword Tool has shown that the idea's diversity and quality suffered if too many keywords were entered.
If you want to retrieve more than 50 keywords you should choose type 2 with 1,000 keywords or CSV upload. There mustn't be any special characters in the CSV data since these lead to error messages.
Furthermore, getting used to the tool takes some time and can be a little arduous, since it appears a bit cumbersome. However, if you take your time and deal with the various types and opportunities for keyword research, test various things and try out this and that, you will learn quickly.

Initial Takeaways

When beginning keyword research, working with type 1 is recommended. Good ideas can be easily generated even if they are a little excessive.
In the case of your own combinations or predetermined keywords type 2 and type 3 are especially relevant – also dependent on whether and to which extent you work with combination lists. Type 2 also enables users to retrieve performance data for many keywords via CSV upload.
The Keyword Planner leads directly from keyword research to ad groups and subsequently to the creation of campaigns, offering advantages due to an integrated process – particularly in the field of PPC, the main area of application.
The Keyword Planner is an improvement for beginners and inexperienced users due to the minimized data possibilities. For professionals with more differentiated requirements, hopefully the planner will continue to be refined separately from the regional filters.

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