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Recently, I read an interesting blog post by Barry Adams titled “The Adversarial Relationship between Google and SEO“. He argues that Google’s not an SEO’s friend but rather an adversary and cited quite an interesting patent filing by Google titled ‘Ranking Documents’. If you’re an SEO I’d strongly suggest you take the time to read this document in full. Also, Bill Slawski provides an excellent analysis of how this new approach will affect a page’s rankings.

In layman’s terms, this patent document specifies how Google intends on making rank changes to its search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead of allowing the algorithm to use its ranking factors to decide how documents (or pages) are ranked, Google will randomly initiate a “transition” period between when a rank change happens.

Since Google released the Panda update in February last year, the importance of having high-quality content on your site has increased hugely.

In May 2011, Amit Singhal published a post aimed to help people build better quality websites. One of the most important points to take away from it was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, having good-quality content. Here I’m going to go into detail over some of his points and explain what you really need to do if you want to rank well.

Google’s made some exciting announcements about remarketing.

  1. You can use one AdWords remarketing tag on all pages of your site, and then create as many remarketing audiences as you like from it. The audiences are then defined according to the URL of visited pages.
  2. You can (after “a small edit”) use a Google Analytics tag to make remarketing audiences for a linked AdWords account. This is being rolled out “in waves by the end of the summer”, so keep an eye on your Analytics account for the remarketing option!

Why is this exciting?

Since the introduction of the Penguin update and what some SEOs like to call the BLOOPER algorithm (Back Link Over Optimisation Penalty Exterminates Rankings), it has become more important than ever to ensure your site has as clean a link profile as possible. Historically, most sites would have at least a few dodgy links, but some may have more than others. This has meant that, sadly, a lot of businesses have been caught in the crossfire with Penguin updates. Part of the update appears to look at the type of sites linking to yours, the anchor text diversity of your profile, and the type of links. For example, an over optimised link profile biased to a number of links for certain anchors could trigger a penalty, so could a number of blog-roll links.

This means that the SEO industry needs to make sure it has an up-to-date link removal strategy in case disaster strikes. Below is outlined a brief strategy to get you started on this process. It will get you to consider the different levels of information you should be looking at, show you how to acquire the information you don’t have, and give you a few tips on some removal strategies and reconsideration requests.

Getting Started

The first thing to do is run an extract from all your available sources, such as:

It’s no secret that in today’s modern age, we’ve embraced a “search” based culture. Whether it’s a new artist you’ve heard of, a recipe you’ve read about, or even a news report you’ve just seen on TV; we’ve become more inclined to search about those subjects to find out more information to such a degree that our collective thoughts can actually correspond with what people actively search. As highlighted in the graph below, people tend to aggressively search for the keyword phrase “english premier league” during the month of August corresponding with the cut off date for player transfers:

 

In fact, you could even make educated guesses about who’s going to win a presidential election based on searches; the graph below are for the keyword phrases “Barack Obama” (blue line) and “John McCain” (red line).

Lately, you might have noticed Google’s aggressive and frequent product announcements. With so much going on at Google during the past few weeks such as Google’s Penguin algorithm update, the Google Plus iPhone and Android app redesign, Google’s Knowledge Graph, Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, Google Maps being replaced by Google Plus Local and Google Shopping; it’s become so very hard to keep pace with the changes (or future changes) that are bound to affect SEO and SEM strategies in the near or distant future. Therefore, I thought I’d take a step back and use the Queen’s Jubilee weekend to gauge how all of this will shape your future SEM strategy. Google has always maintained that search is at the heart of everything they do. So it’s safe to assume that all of their major updates, will in some way have an impact on search.

Schema & Authorship: 1 Year Layer

  • Hresume in microformats http://t.co/SnqqVgph or schema job posting http://t.co/2yaFTRTf for positions, interesting!
  • Visit http://t.co/dxbvN0kT to find out when the next Google webmaster tools hangout is
  • Think of rich snippets as rich summaries, it must visible on the landing page.
  • Rich snippets are supposed to be short descriptions of the content on to the page, not a spam tactic
  • Google plus pages for publishers with rel=publishers to the publishers google plus page – ideal for Brands!
  • Authorship – use accurately for authors NOT publishers
  • Recommended tools: AWR and quixapp
  • Recommended tool: seo tools for excel – quickly pull data without being a developer
  • 21% CTR without rich snippet versus 26% CTR with rich snippet in one test
  • SERP Turkey is a b testing tool with SERPs
  • Copy the schema and chuck it into the rich snippet tool by google
  • Schema and micro formats enrich our SERPs (or pollute?)

Yesterday at SMX London was full of information and handy tips on Paid Search and Analytics. There were four sessions:

Here’s our write-up of them.

After a relatively long wait, Google announced today that they have launched an update to their Google Plus iPhone app. As I type this post, my phone seems to be taking its own time in downloading the update which gives me the impression that this particular update is a fairly significant one. In fact, Google seem to almost want the Google plus app to be part of your normal day to day experience by stressing that “we’re not interested in a mobile or social experience that’s just smaller. We’re embracing the sensor-rich smartphone (with its touchable screen and high-density display), and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive”.

The most significant line in their announcement to me, was their justification for the iPhone app upgrade, “today’s new iPhone app is an important step in this direction—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google”. I’m not sure about you, but I feel this is probably the biggest hint Google has publicly dropped of their efforts in moving toward a more  ’social’ and a more ‘mobile-centric’ strategy for their future.

Many speculated for weeks over the launch of Google’s next algorithm update targeting websites that Matt Cutts described as “over optimised”. The new algorithm update is meant to launch in the next few days and according to the Official Google Search Blog, this particular update will affect sites that employ the following “black-hat” tactics:

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Link schemes (paid links, excessive reciprocal linking, links from (and to) spammy or unrelated sites etc.)
  • Article spinning

According to Matt Cutts, the change will go live for all languages at the same time. The update is meant to affect 3.1% of queries in English where “regular users” will notice. This number is relatively small when compared to the effect the original Panda update had on search queries (12% of search queries for regular users).

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