Client Portfolio
Penguin and 52 other Google Updates
May 14th, 2012
April was a busy month for Google. Late last Friday, Google announced on their inside search blog, the 52 updates that have taken place last month including Penguin.
Source: www.deviantart.com, Artist: lunchboxmonkey
What is Penguin?
Penguin was the “over optimisation” penalty that Danny Sullivan first mentioned on Marketing Land at the end of March. Matt Cutts alluded to this update at SXSW in which he said that “Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.” Google is basically targeting spam like many of its updates, but this is just a tweak to Panda which was released on April 24th and has stirred up the SEO community once again.
Who’s affected by Penguin?
Google said the sites that will lose rankings are those that practice keyword stuffing and sites that have unnatural links. Google were already cracking down on this before the update. However sites that have spammy link signals such as paid text links with exact match anchor text, guest posts of bad sites and comment spam are have been affected by Penguin.
What are the 52 updates?
The announcement last Friday clearly detailed the 52 updates Google amended in their algorithm. Some of the other most important changes included Penguin as well as more authorative results, no freshness boost for low quality sites, sub-sitelinks in expanded sitelinks and smoother ranking, for fresh results. The latter update reinforces the point that Google loves fresh content and will deem it more authorative than those sites that just linger on the web and are never updated. Content is king, so make sure you write relevant content on your site.
So what is the next step?
Do not just focus on rankings. Rankings do fluctuate month on month and it is important to look at overall search traffic (ppc and seo) especially with this latest update. Look at the amount of social media shares you have, if you are not using social media yet, you have to start now. When Google launched Panda there was a big backlash, the same is true with Penguin. Some sites have dropped in rankings, while others have increased. There are some sites that have been practicing white hat seo and have been affected, but if this is the case, Matt Cutts has asked webmasters to leave their feedback on a Google Doc form.
Google will always introduce new updates which will affect how sites rank and we cannot predict what works now will work in the future. However, one thing is for certain, if you create good content that is shareable and is interesting, you will achieve higher traffic and appear higher in Google than those sites whose focus is just about rankings.
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation |
Another Google Update – AuthorRank
May 8th, 2012
Google always wants to send through the most relevant search results for its users and they have brought in another factor into the equation – AuthorRank. This is a way of Google linking content on the web to its authors. It is also a way of validating the content and making sure it is a real blog, not one that has been set up to try and get links.
It has been a long time coming
The search engine giant has been hinting at this AuthorRank for more than 3 years. They started with the post about rich snippets where they wanted webmasters to be able to highlight the content on their site. Obviously at this time then, I am sure the concept of AuthorRank was not fully in place. However with the updates that have taken place over the past few years especially with Panda, Google wants to get rid of those sites with poor content.
So what does AuthorRank mean for those in SEO?
Those who are engaging in best practice SEO have already been contacting high authority blogs for some time. These blogs have good quality content and have a dedicated author or group of authors. As Tom Anthony said in his post on SEOmoz, we have to start looking at who we are getting links from not where. Therefore if there is a post written by Rand Fishkin on a blog (not SEOmoz), it will be seen as more authorative than if the post was written by an author who is less known in the industry.
What should you do?
Google+ is tied into AuthorRank. If you do not have a Google+ account, you cannot expect to see your authorship results in Google. Therefore the first step is to set up your own Google and Google+ account. You will then need to link it to your blog or site where you regularly post content using the the rel=author tags. Most importantly, start participating in Google+, share interesting posts, photos and interact with others.
For those who thought Google+ was going to go away, this update clearly proves it is here to stay. Google+ is another social media platform that you have to use to interact with others.
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation |
Key Takeaways from Brighton SEO
May 1st, 2012
Friday the 13th can be unlucky for some but April 13th was the date of the BrightonSEO conference in West Sussex, England. There were speakers from Google, Expedia and other seo agencies who spoke about a variety of topics. The conference opened up with a panel which featured Pierre Far from Google and a representative from Bing.
The topic was “Ask the Engines”.
A heated discussion developed on stage about the fact that Google sometimes penalises sites through no fault of the webmaster. Pierre remained calm and gave the following advice to those who may have been penalised by Google for having bad links:
1) Contact those webmasters who have linked to your site and ask them to remove the link.
2) Be honest, if you have never asked for a link from these spammy sites, tell Google.
3) Send a screenshot to Google of your email to the webmasters.
4) Use webmaster tools to identify the bad links. If they are no longer present and your site is still not ranking, contact to Google.
Pierre was keen to mention that SEO is not a checklist. All signals will come naturally if you have good content which is relevant to the search query. Links to a website is just one signal that Google uses to identify the quality of a site. There are more than 200 factors Google analyses including social signals. Good social signals is the fact that the content is being pushed and shared around. It is more about speed and fluidity rather than the quantity of Facebook likes as there are some companies that buy likes which Google does not count. Pierre also emphasised that Google wants to help sites, not penalise them.
Over the past few years, a number of agencies that specialise in Search engine marketing in Perth have set up in WA. It can be hard to choose the right agency for you. One of the topics at BrightonSEO was about “Maximinsing Your SEO Agencies”, a talk given by James Owen, the SEO Manager of Hotels.com. We at WCR like to work with our clients throughout the duration of an SEO project and follow similar guidelines to what was discussed at Brighton SEO.
1) SEO targeting
We want to make sure we have the target URLs from our clients. We work with our clients to ensure they rank for the keyword important for their business. We also analyse the top 5 competitors of our clients to see what seo practices they are implementing.
2) On page optimsation
It is important to optimise the pages on a client’s site to help them rank for their keywords.
3) Off page optimisation
Link building is one of our specialties. We keep up to date with that is happening in the industry to ensure our clients are achieving the highest possibility of improving their rankings.
4) Reporting
Monthly reporting is a crucial part of our service. We want our clients to clearly see a ROI for using WCR. We ensure that we give a clear picture of results YoY, the number of orders made through natural search, the tracking of average keyword position brand vs non brand and report on the position, the top entry pages.
There has been an increase in the number of people who are interested in seo throughout Australia and there are events such as SMX which take place in Melbourne and Sydney every May. There are not many Perth seo events but there are a couple coming up next month and in October. We will be hosting a Google Analytics event, please visit http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/workshop/google-analytics-course/ for more information.
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation |
Build Links As You Build Relationships
April 16th, 2012
At Search London, Lisa Myers, the CEO of Verve Search spoke about link building and how to get the best links from clients. LinkLove London took place the week previous where link building was also a hot topic. As a Perth SEO agency, we keep up to date with the latest news and events taking place, even if some of them are in London.
Link building is not about buying links and we do not encourage that. It is about building relationships with bloggers and key influencers. The big update from Google last year that shook up the seo world was Panda. It was not, as some people think an algorithm update, it was more of a site quality update. The update affected the links quality of a site. Those websites that had low PageRank and were engaging in bad link building techniques were penalised.
Lisa Myers suggested two ways to build links:
1) Link Analysis and Link Prospecting
Once we have identified the sites, we analyse the anchor text, the number of links to the site and the strength of these links. We also have a look at their other marketing strategies to see whether they would be a good blog to work with.
You may be wondering “How do they find these sites?”, well a lot of it is manual, as blogger outreach cannot be automatic. We use a number of different syntaxes which Lisa also described such as:
Keyword + “blog”
Keywordinurl:”guestposts”
Keywordintitle:“writeforus”
We make sure that the blogs are relevant to the clients’ needs and what we think their visitors will be interested in and searching for. We also look at some of the Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles of the blogs we are targeting.
2) Link Development
We want to build relationships not just links and therefore we want to use the contacts we have built previously. We have a number of bloggers we are in touch with and they are always keen to receive new content. We do tailor the content according to the tone and style of the blog. We also contact partners of clients as they may not have necessarily linked back to the client.
A growing area in seo which is becoming more important is link baiting. This is a piece of digital content (can be a video, post, image) which increases the chance of a client getting more organic links to their site which is the ultimate aim in seo. Infographics are very popular pieces of link bait which if done well, will result in higher visibility. The best thing about link bait is that people will share it and come to you, which is why it is important to have the link bait hosted on your site.
Link building is very important in seo and should be part of an overall seo and marketing strategy to ensure visible results.
Posted in Website Marketing |
Link Love Conference London
April 10th, 2012
As part of the work we deliver for seo services in Perth, we want to bring you the latest news about what is happening in the industry today. Distilled held a fantastic conference in London at the end of March called LinkLove. opened by Rand Fishkin, CEO of seomoz.
The conference emphasised the importance of content creation rather than just building links for the sake of it. Rand Fishkin summarised his 5 reasons:
1. Meeting your Online objectives
Creating good content helps win a greater amount of fans and higher traffic which then leads to better rankings and more referring links. Having great content helps with every one of those channels, draw in bigger and better fans, better rankings, more referring links. By creating content that people want to share, you end up with a stronger social following.
2. Be proud of your work.
When those that have written the content for the blog or article are happy with their work, they will promote it, tweet it and share it. This will lead to more people viewing it and more traffic to the site.
3. Long-term strategies.
Once the content is on a website, it is there for a long time, therefore any interest, tweets, or shares that the content has generated will be visible. Buying links or submitting sites to article directories do not last, they may be live for a few months and when Google releases a new algorithm, they could be lost, and your site will lose the ‘link love’.
4.Content can build links while you sleep.
Seomoz receives thousands of links to their blog from the content that they build, for example their ‘Whiteboard Friday’ sessions and also tweets that the people at seomoz share.
5. Content can build brand loyalty and trust.
By ensuring you have good quality content on your site, you will start to get regular visitors who will then tell their friends and colleagues. They will trust that the content you have is valuable and insightful and will become your brand ambassadors.
These reasons to build great content over just article directory syndication or buying links, may seem very obvious to some, but a few marketing professionals still seem to be focused on the number of links instead of creating good content. It is important to have good content on your own site so that people will come to you regularly for your expertise and information about your industry.
Case Study
Fiskars have a really interesting and interactive blog with hundreds of comments each day. Fiskars is global company producing scissors and cutters and for most people it would be difficult to come up with creative content. However, they have done their research and found out what their customers are interested in and it has paid off. Don’t limit yourself to content about your subject. Find out about topics that are relevant to your audience, and write about thse, as it shows that you have an understanding of their needs.
The best way to get creative content and attraction the most attention is to check out who the influencers are on sites such as followerwonk. See the trending topics through topsy and google and write content which you know the readers are searching for.
Social media is playing an ever-increasing role in SEO. It covers bloggger outreach, twitter interactions, Facebook marketing, and social bookmarking on sites such as Digg and Reddit. However all of this ties back to the content. No one is going to share your content if it is not creative, no one is going to tweet about a post if they do not like it. Jane Copland from Ayima highlighted that if you do link building like everyone else, you do not stand out. You need to get creative with link building and it will help your content get shared through Facebook, Twitter and if it is really good, land of the front page of Digg which can have up to 10,000 hits a day.
Posted in News |
Online April Fool’s Jokes 2012
April 3rd, 2012
The web has long been home to tricksters, and every year when April fool’s Day comes around, there are a swag of online pranks that actually do fool a few people. When giants like Google and Virgin Atlantic are behind the pranks, it’s easy to see how some naïve searchers can be momentarily stunned. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Website Marketing |
Bing Launches “Search Quality Insights” Series
March 14th, 2012
It is not every day that one of the major search engines announces plans to disclose some of its secrets, algorithms and plans for the future. If Bing’s goal was to capture the attention of millions of people around the world, it certainly has with its new blog series entitled Bing Search Quality Insights. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in SERPs |
Finding Treasure with Google Earth
March 12th, 2012
In not-so old Hollywood movies, the protagonist trying to get away from terrorists would ‘hack’ into a government satellite, and scope out the surrounding terrain to plot his escape. Of course nowadays, anyone can check Google Earth or Google Maps to plot a quick escape.
The idea of using these tools to search for ‘treasure’ or in games isn’t new; TerraClues and localiz.me have been around for a few years now, allowing users and participants the chance to create their own scavenger hunt based on Google Maps or Earth clues and trivia. These are forum based games and anyone can join them, the prizes usually being the kudos of finishing first.
Upping the stakes a little, in September last year (2011), author Tim Dedopoulos released a book of 15 cryptic pictorial clues, each with an answer that can be verified or proved using Google Earth. With a prize of €50,000, you can be sure that there is some fierce competition. Alongside some of the clues, are cryptic word puzzles, meant to assist in the interpretation of the pictures, however some become more puzzling on reading them. Once you have solved all 15 of the puzzles using Google Earth, the 15 solutions together will point you to a 16th location, which is the ultimate answer.
Tim Dedopoulos positions himself as the ‘Puzzle master’ and generously gives out additional clues via the Telegraph UK website, and his Twitter feed @dedopoulos), although all of this too, is cryptic and many times, he will not tell you which clue corresponds with which puzzle.
To enter the competition, you need to purchase the book from Amazon, or any good technical or reference bookstore (Retails for about $14 AUD) and download Google Earth. Once you think you have the answer, you can enter here: http://www.jointhetreasurehunt.com – but beware, only one entry allowed per person. This ends on March 31st 2012, so there is still time!
Posted in Google Earth |
Google Plus – How to use it for your business
February 15th, 2012
If you’ve been wondering how to use Google Plus for business online marketing, you aren’t alone. It’s one of the newest social networking sites available and is steadily gaining a market share. While Facebook has its long history of being the number one in social marketing, Google has a wealth of free tools available; Gmail, online calendars, free blogging platforms as well as webmaster tools and Analytics web stats – all of this is available to you with one login. Google is unifying the web. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Social Media |