Google Places And Local Search Engine Optimization

Listing your business on Google Places is probably the best Local Search Engine Optimization factor you implemented. It is a place where you can enlist your business name, address and Google shall display your business for particular keywords. With Google Places, users are permitted to place a review for your business too! It’s a great way to get popular on local searches and if your actual target for marketing is local.

Well, sometimes, there are businesses that move locations. In such cases, what are business owners to do? Well, Google suggests that you mark your business as closed and open a new one on Google places! This created a lot of debates in the world of Search Engine Optimization. The very first concern was about local places reviews. If a Google Place is marked as closed, all the reviews are lost. With Google places, creating a new business listing means loss of old data. There have been talks about the tag “We’ve Moved” and then changing the address. But no definite news yet – so, let’s wait for further news. Until then this is what we have.

Have Content Techniques for SEO Changed?

Past few years have seen a lot of changes from Google. Lots of changes in terms of quality and lots of changes regarding scraping out the spam. Panda and Penguin updates were the major ones. Has content strategies for SEO changes too? Of course they have.

* Earlier keywords in content mattered more than anything. Today, it’s the user experience that matters the most with content. SEO content is written with readers in mind. Of course this does not mean that keywords have lost their importance – it only means that you must understand how to provide a better reading experience to users without violating any of the Search Engine Optimization best practices and by following all the guidelines provided.

* You should be able to create a perfect blend of number of words and design. Users are going to skim through the content. So don’t waste time writing long stories. Bullet points will definitely help.

* Getting the most important content on the top of the page has always been a good practice, which remains unchanged over the years.

* Eliminating unnatural anchor texts, and too much of it is now a good practice. Make sure that the text is not a keyword “slipped-in” a sentence to gain attention and link to another page.

Not only content, generally all Search Engine Optimization changes from time to time. Although a popular notion amongst all SEO experts is to get the web page to be the best user experience and yet make it readable to search engine bots. That would be a perfect implementation of any strategy.

Findability, Search Behavior and SEO

When you work on a web design, web development or any aspect of a website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) just cannot be ignored. You must keep in mind the various factors of SEO while building a website. We all know that user experience is by far the most important part of a web design. Findability is one important aspect that leads to a great user experience. While you design, hence, make sure that you make the navigation so easy that users can “find” what they are looking for with ease on your website.

Secondly, it is important for every Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professional to study search behaviour before strategizing. It is noted that some searchers search exact keywords and find an exact website, locate the exact service/product that they were looking for and then make a purchase and leave. That is a perfect scenario. But searcher behaviour is more complex than that. Evaluating how users search and why is an important part of SEO. Well, it is not about just ranking well, it is getting the right pages from your website to show up in the search results for the right search terms. Well, that topic can continue to be a very long discussion.

For now, let us all remember that user experience in terms of findability, in terms of searching and getting to the right pages and right results can be achieved by combined efforts of web design, Development and Search Engine Optimization professionals.

There’s More To The Penguin Update

The penguin update – the latest most talked about update in Google’s algorithm has again shook the search engine optimization world. As mentioned previously, this is meant to scrape out web spamming specially things like excessive spammy links, too much of keyword stuffing – that sort of bad SEO practices. Well, there have been a lot of talk about what this update is and how to recover and what if you were falsely hit? Well, the Panda update gets refreshed from time to time, Penguin however does not run continuously. It tags everything that is overly spammy even after the regular spam filter set by Google. Well, with Penguin, your entire site will be affected if anything is found violating norms. About recovering from Penguin, you would know better – did you fall for any link buying scheme? Did you recently check your incoming links? Did you check your webmaster account for any notifications from Google? Even if you have done all the above, recheck your entire site for any bad SEO practices and links and cleanup as much as possible. After a thorough clean up, you shall regain rank automatically. Well, if you still do not see any results, looks like you need to start a new website altogether.

There Is Life Beyond Google!

Well, the term SEO has the name “search engine” in it. And Google is the most popular, most widely used and the most talked about search engine in the world. So much so that when people talk SEO they automatically talk Google. Well, do not depend solely on Google to get your online business some profit! Google does not promise anyone bread and butter. Getting ranked in Google only increases the probability of a higher traffic than the ones that rank lower. Well, after achieving a good rank in Google, you need to ensure that your products and services are comparable too! What a disappointment will it be if you achieve all that traffic and very low – or absolutely no conversions? Of course leading to a non profitable business. This is not directed to scare away all your Search Engine Optimization efforts, but to encourage all online business owners to profit from an excellent ranking and excellent services to result in greater returns on investments. Well, another important factor to be considered here is, your online marketing strategies need to be diversified. You cannot just depend on a ranking to bring you all the success. Increase visibility – with the social media emerging as the largest platform for getting popular, gaining visibility and adding to the credibility that your business holds. Think beyond Google, spread the world about your business, apply legacy marketing techniques, and establish for yourself a “brand”, a name that people trust! That’s what will get you fruitful results.

Link Building –Organic is Good!

Like any one of us, Google does not like to be cheated too! Google does appreciate honest links and quality content. With the recent changes in the algorithms, you can be sure that any kind of dishonesty can be detected and scraped by Google. Search Engine Optimization is getting tough. So as SEO experts and SEO Service India providers, we need to be careful with what type of links we are building. With Search Engine Optimization always remember – anything organic is good! So take a look at your links and check whether they are from irrelevant websites. These websites may be owned by you or your clients, but if the subject matter is not related – don’t link them just to get a link! Recheck your anchor texts too the links going to irrelevant pages or coming from irrelevant pages can be dangerous. When quality sites link to poor quality site – it gets a little suspicious.

Well, it is a known fact that Google’s algorithm is getting smarter and we as SEO experts, need to get smarter too. Organic links are good and legitimate content strategy is good. That’s the way to rank. Well, if you get into the “bad” practices, you shall be punished by Google!

Search Engine Penalties – How Can SEO’s Identify?

If your site has seen a drop in search traffic or rankings very suddenly – which is a very scary scenario, but don’t panic too much. Analyse what went wrong. Generally, if there was a “known” issue, and Google has placed a penalty for your website ranking, you shall definitely be informed about it in Google Web Master Tools. Google does make sure that they post a notification to the website’s Web Master Tools account whenever a penalty for a known issue is applied. Well, if that’s not the case, you can check your website lost rankings due to some recent algorithm changes. It is very important as an SEO expert to keep track of the recent changes in algorithm. Check all the recent news on Google’s official blog and check trusted discussion forums for information. The worst penalty could be a de-indexation. You can easily check that with a “site:”. This is not to scare you, but to discuss the possible reason for a lowered traffic. It is important that your site complies with the Webmaster guidelines published by Google (and other search engines). Being an SEO expert you should be aware of all the recent changes and analyse your website against all the major factors that changed.

Search Quality Highlights – April

The fresh list of changes to Google’s Algorithm is out. Google has published it on their official blog. Here are a few important one’s for us Search Engine Optimization professionals to learn about. The detailed list and description can be read from Google’s blog. More diverse results to categorize paginated documents. More language-relevant navigational results. Country identification for webpages. The bug that handled anchors has been fixed in this update! Search results shall contain diverse domains in the results and not many results from the same domain. Search results shall now contain more organizations from your country. There are also some improvements to local navigational searches. Scoring of search terms are improved. Text from the beginning of your pages will be included in snippets. Also there is an improvement in the snippets generation process. Improvements for the freshness of results Better query interpretation. Improvement for news results and user interface change for breaking news. Local query predictions now improved. Improvements to triggering of public data search feature. Improvements to spell corrections. For long queries, more languages – internationally. Further improvements in safesearch for videos and images. Increase base index size by 15%.——-New index tier. Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. Improvement in the Keyword stuffing classifier • Improved and more authoritative results. • Better HTML5 resource caching for mobile. These are just to name a few changes to Google’s Algorithm. As said earlier, there have been 52 changes last month – April. You can check the entire list on Google’s website. Let us as Search Engine Optimization professionals be aware and make use of these changes to our benefit.

Hit by Penguin or Panda – How will I know?

Search Engine Optimization has always been a world where changes are a constant occurrence. This time – Penguin’ s here. On 24th April, Google rolled out a new algorithm named penguin to eradicate spam. Let me state more clearly – this is not a new feature – web spam feature was always a part of Google’s algorithm. This was officially named Penguin and was targeted to the black hatters. Panda Update on the other hand was meant to target low quality sites. Sites that are not exactly “spam” – but are of low value addition for a user. Well, providing highest quality results for a searcher has been Google’s motto, and the Panda update was rolled out in February 2011 for exactly this purpose. Targeting low quality content – low quality of anything on a website. Well, the Penguin targets paid links, excessive keyword use (stuffing) and such kind of spamming sites. This is exactly how you can detect what you were hit by! Whether it was the penguin or the panda. You do not get a special notification or anything. Make sure all your Search Engine Optimization efforts are the known “good” methods. Do not indulge in spam activities and you shall be fine!