Google Penguin 3.0 is coming and here’s what to do to prepare

Update: Google Penguin 3.0 was launched on October 17th. As predicted, the company confirmed the update would help sites that have cleaned up bad link profiles in response to previous versions of Penguin. Owners of sites that haven’t recovered or have been adversely affected by Penguin 3.0 should follow the steps outlined below.

There is rarely a dull moment in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO). Haven’t you heard? A huge Google algorithm change is on the way. Scary.
Last month, Google said a new Penguin update would likely be launched before the end of the year, and now it looks like it may be here this week.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said at Search Marketing Expo East that Google “may” be launching a Penguin algorithm refresh sometime this week, which he described as “a large rewrite of the algorithm”. Also, Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land believes that this next update will be all good news and that it could make webmaster’s life a bit easier.

Understanding the major implications of these updates is critical to search performance, so today we’ll talk you through the upcoming release of Google’s Penguin 3.0 update, what it is, how it can affect your website and rankings and what you can do to prepare for its release.

What is Penguin 3.0 all about?

Over the past few weeks, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller has been actively discussing:

• The imminent and long-anticipated Penguin update
• Google’s efforts to make its algorithm refreshes rollout quicker
• Helping websites to recover faster from ranking penalties

In a Google Webmaster Central hangout on September 12^th, Mueller confirmed that the new Penguin update would roll out in 2014. In the video he said:

• Google is working on a “solution that generally refreshes faster” specifically talking about Penguin.
• He mentioned that “we are trying to speed things up” around Penguin.
• He also admitted that “our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time”, referring to webmasters’ efforts to clean up the issues around their sites being impacted by Penguin.

As you can probably tell from all the buzz on the web, Penguin 3.0 is expected to be a major update that will hopefully enable Google to run the algorithm more frequently. This would mean that those impacted by an update won’t have to wait too long before seeing a refresh.

In other words, those who have taken measures to clean up their backlink profiles should (in theory) be able to recover more quickly than in the past.

Here’s what Mueller said in a previous Google hangout on September 8:

“That’s something where we’re trying to kind of speed things up because we see that this is a bit of a problem when webmasters want to fix their problems, they actually go and fix these issues but our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time, so that’s something where it makes sense to try to improve the speed of our algorithms overall.”

Can a site recover from ranking penalties without an algorithm refresh?

A day after the September 8 Google+ Hangout, Mueller replied to a post in the Webmaster Central Help Forum, stating that while a Penguin refresh is required for an affected site to recover, it is possible for webmasters to improve their site rankings without a Penguin update.

With Google using over 200 factors in crawling, indexing and ranking, Mueller said that if webmasters do their best to clean up site issues and focus on having a high-quality site rather than on individual factors of individual algorithms they may see changes even before that algorithm or its data is refreshed.

“I know it can be frustrating to not see changes after spending a lot of time to improve things. In the meantime, I’d really recommend not focusing on any specific aspect of an algorithm, and instead making sure that your site is (or becomes) the absolute best of its kind by far,” Mueller recommended.

In the thread, “Has Google ever definitively stated that it is possible to recover from Penguin?“ Mueller replied: “Yes, assuming the issues are resolved in the meantime, with an update of our algorithm or its data, it will no longer be affecting your site.”

That’s also all the more reason for webmasters to welcome this next update with open arms.

The history of Penguin

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Overall, what Google is trying to do is to catch and penalise websites that are trying to rank higher in its search results through:

• Keyword stuffing meaning loading a webpage with the same words or phrases so much that is sounds unnatural
• Low quality backlinks, often generated using automated software
• A large numbers of links optimised using the exact same anchor text
• Excessive link exchange
• Forum comments with links added in the signature
• And various other link schemes.

Penguin focuses on the link-related aspects of this list.

Here’s a timeline of the previous Penguin updates:

• Penguin 1.0 – April 24 2012 (affected 3.1% of searches)
• Penguin 1.2 – May 26 2012 (affected 0.1% of searches)
• Penguin 1.3 – October 5, 2012 (affected 0.3% of searches)
• Penguin 2.0 – May 22, 2013 (affected 2.3% of searches)
• Penguin 2.1  – October 4, 2013 (affected 1% of searches)
• Penguin 3 – October 2014? 

What can you do to clean up your link profile for future updates?

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

So, here are a few things you can do to prevent your site from getting penalised by a future Penguin update:

• Do a thorough link clean-up and remove all unnatural links pointing to your site. When it comes to Penguin, bad links are usually the cause of the penalty so make sure you remove as many bad links as you possibly can and then disavow the rest. Here’s a good article with steps to find and remove unnatural links.
  
  
• Make sure your disavow file is correct. Find out more about disavowing backlinks.
  
  
• Assess the remaining “good” links. Do you still have enough valuable links for your site to rank well or do you need to build some more links? Don’t shy away from link building campaigns, just make sure that this time you build links on high-quality, relevant, authority sites.
  
  
• Other common sense actions to ensure that you have a healthy website. Read this excellent article from Moz with some great advice on how to ensure your site is healthy and how to handle life after an algorithm update, whether it’s Penguin, Panda or any other Google update.
  
  
• Don’t treat an algorithmic penalty as a manual penalty. Keep in mind that there may be other factors that might be preventing your site from ranking well, which may not be linked to an algorithmic penalty like Penguin or Panda. Check out this useful article with the complete list of reasons that may be causing your traffic to drop.

But if you do get hit, what are the signs?

Since this is an algorithmic penalty, if your site has been hit by Penguin, Google will never notify you which means that you will need to check your site’s traffic, among other things including:

• You’re no longer ranking well for that one keyword you should always rank well for – your brand name. When this happens, it’s a clear sing you’ve been hit.
• Your site is dropping from page one to page two or three in Google’s search results although you’ve made no changes whatsoever.
• Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
• You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
• Google Analytics (or any other analytics tool you’re using) is showing a significant drop in organic traffic a few days after a big Google update.

Check out our YouTube video on how to tell if you’ve been penalised by Google:

So, what we recommend is that you monitor your organic traffic closely for at least two weeks after a Penguin update. If your traffic dramatically drops during this time, it’s likely due to the update. Also make sure you keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools notifications to see if you have any manual penalties applied to your website.

If you do discover your site has been penalised, stop what you’re doing and go fix whatever it is that has caused your site to get hit.

What can you do to recover?

If you’ve been penalised by a previous Google update, we’ve got you covered with an in-depth guide on why your site may have been hit and what you can do to recover. This guide walks you through 11 reasons that might have caused your site to get penalised as well as specific steps to follow to help you recover after you’ve been hit.

Penalised by Google?

Check out our comprehensive guide on reasons why you got penalised and ways to recover. Make sure you bookmark it and use it in the event your site gets hit by a future Google penalty.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that there are over 200 factors that influence rankings for a site. It’s not enough to focus on one algorithm and fix those specific issues but instead look at the bigger picture. Search engines reward sites that provide searchers with the most informative, interesting and relevant content for their search queries and with the best user experience.

So while it’s ok to prioritise site optimisation and quickly fix certain issues that may arise, it’s even more important to put your users first and provide them with the best information and website experience they can ask for.

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Panda 4.1-Google’s 27th Panda Update-Is Rolling Out

Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.

Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into next week, before being complete. Google said that depending on location, about 3%-to-5% of search queries will be affected.

Anything different about this latest release? Google says it’s supposed to be more precise and will allow more high-quality small and medium-sized sites to rank better. From the post:

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

New Chance For Some; New Penalty For Others

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.

The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by Panda might get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from Google this week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda Update is likely to blame.

About That Number

Why are we calling it Panda 4.1? Well, Google itself called the last one Panda 4.0 and deemed it a major update. This isn’t as big of a change, so we’re going with Panda 4.1. 

We actually prefer to number these updates in the order that they’ve happened, because trying to determine if something is a “major” or “minor” Panda Update is imprecise and lead to numbering absurdities like having a Panda 3.92 Update.

But since Google called the last one Panda 4.0, we went with that name — and we’ll continue on with the old-fashioned numbering system unless it gets absurd again.

For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates, with some of the major changes called out with their AKA (also known as) names:

1. Panda Update 1, AKA
   Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, AKA
   Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8 AKA
   Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
26. Panda Update 26 AKA
    Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
27. Panda Update 27 AKA
    Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3-5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

The latest update comes four months after the last, which suggests that this might be a new quarterly cycle that we’re on. Panda had been updated on a roughly monthly basis during 2012. In 2013, most of the year saw no update at all.

Of course, there could have been unannounced releases of Panda that have happened. The list above is only for those that have been confirmed by Google.

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Beginner's Guide To Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps To Success

Secret To Winning Web Analytics: 10 Starting Points For A Fabulous Start!

I want to share where in your web analytics data you can find valuable starting points, even without any context about the site / business / priorities. Reports to look at, KPIs to evaluate, inferences to make. Here's what we are going to cover:

Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.

Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.

Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.

Step #4: What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages.

Step #5: What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric.

Step #6: How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds.

Step #7: Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values.

Step #8: Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes.

Step #9: Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization.

Step #10: What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence.

The first time you go through the steps outlined in this guide it might take you more than 120 minutes. But I promise you that with time and experience you'll get better.

The World’s Quickest (Authentic) SEO & Marketing Audit In 12+1 Steps

I am, according to those who know me, a very structured person. In order to function, I have to live by spreadsheets, task lists and processes. Without them, I’m lost. It’s just life. Isn’t everyone like that?

But despite my obsession with structure and process, I don’t like giving clients a one-size-fits-all web marketing campaign. It just doesn’t make sense. Every website is different and has different needs; therefore, the online marketing plan will have to be different as well.

The problem is, you really can’t know what any particular site’s needs are until after you’ve gone through and performed a thorough site audit — and that can take upwards of 5-20 hours depending on the site.

We can’t really give away several hundreds of dollars worth of work each time we get a request for a proposal — but we won’t do cookie-cutter, either. Quite the conundrum!

I’m sure we are not all that different from many other SEOs that will perform a quick assessment of a site in order to provide some specific feedback to the prospect. But we always want to make sure our assessments are meaningful. We don’t want to just say, “Hey, look at us, we know something!” We want to put together a proposal that addresses many of their marketing needs, so they understand that we truly have a grasp of what needs to be done.

Yeah, we could run the site through a couple tools that spit out some basic SEO information, but they can — and likely do – get that from anyone else. Instead, why not put a bit more effort into your initial audits, without breaking the bank on time?

12+1 Website Audit Steps

Below are 12 key SEO/marketing areas to assess — plus a quick PPC review — when drafting a proposal for prospective clients (or for any reason, really). When reviewing each of these areas, you should be able to uncover some definite actionable tasks and get a broader understanding of the site’s overall marketing needs.

1. Keyword Focus

One of the first things to look at is the overall keyword optimization of the site. Some sites have done a decent job writing good title tags and meta descriptions — others, not so much. Look through several pages of the site, glancing at tags, headings and content to see if keywords are a factor on those pages or if the site is pretty much a blank slate requiring some hardcore keyword optimization.

2. Architectural Issues

Next, look at global architectural issues. Things you can look at quickly are broken links (run a tool while you’re doing other assessments), proper heading tag usage, site and page spiderability, duplicate content issues, etc. None of these take too much time and can be assessed pretty quickly. Some of the solutions for these are quick and some aren’t; and undoubtedly, once you start digging deeper you’ll find a lot more issues later.

3. Navigation Issues

Does the navigation make sense for the site? Look to see if it’s too convoluted or maybe even too simplistic. You want visitors to easily find what they are looking for without being overloaded with choices and options. Determine if the navigation needs some tweaking or all-out revamping.

4. Category Page Optimization

Product category pages can have all kinds of problems, from poorly implemented product pagination to a lack of unique content. Look at each of these pages from the perspective of value and determine if a visitor or search engine will find any unique value on the page. You might need to add some content, product filtering options, or better product organization to make the page better for both visitors and search engines alike.

5. Product Page Optimization

Product pages can be tricky. Some searchers might look for a product name, a product number or a specific description of what the product can do. Make sure your product page content addresses each of these types of information searchers. You want to make sure the content of the product pages is largely unique, not just on your site, but across the web, as well. If not, there may be a lot of work ahead of you.

6. Local Optimization: Off-Site

Sites that are local, rather than national, have an entirely different set of criteria to analyze. For local sites, you need to see if they are doing a good job with their citations, maps, listings and other off-page signals. You don’t have to do an exhaustive check; a quick look at some of the main sites that assist with local signals should do.

7. Local Optimization: On-Site

Aside from off-page local signals, you should also look at the on-page optimization of local keywords. This often goes one of two ways: either there is very little local optimization on the page or far too much, with tons of local references crammed into titles, footers and other areas of the site. Assess the changes you’ll need to make, either way, to get the site where it needs to be.

8. Inbound Links

No assessment would be complete without at least looking at the status of the site’s inbound links, though you’ll have to dig a bit to get some information on the quality of the links coming in. It helps to do the same for a competitor or two so you have some basis of comparison. With that, you’re better able to see what needs to be done to compete sufficiently.

9. Internal Linking

Internal linking can be an issue, outside of navigation. Is the site taking advantage of opportunities to link to their own pages within the content of other pages? Rarely does each page of a site stand alone, but instead should be a springboard of driving traffic to the next page or pages based on the mutual relevance of the content.

10. Content Issues

This is a bit more of an in-depth look at the site’s content overall. It’s not about the amount of content, but the quality of the content throughout the site. Assessing the content’s value will help you identify problem pages and determine whether there is a need to establish an overall content strategy.

11. Social Presence

Social presence matters, so jump in and see where the brand stands in the social sphere. Do they have social profiles established? Is there active engagement on those profiles? Is social media being used as an educational tool or as a promotional tool? These things matter a great deal, especially when determining the course of action that needs to be taken.

12. Conversion Optimization Issues

Web marketing is not all about traffic. If you’re getting traffic but not conversions, then it doesn’t matter how good the “SEO” is. Look through the site for obvious conversion and usability issues that need to be fixed or improved. Just about every site can use conversion optimization, it’s more obvious (and urgent) for some sites than others. This assessment helps you determine if your time is better spent here or somewhere else.

Bonus: PPC Issues

The items above primarily deal with website and optimization issues. But if a PPC campaign is running, take a look at that and make sure it was set up and is being executed optimally. Many people don’t believe PPC can be profitable. Most of the time it’s not, but only because of poor management. If there is room for improvement with PPC, you’ll want to know.

It’s Just A Starting Point

Of course, you can spend hours assessing each of these areas, but that’s not the point. A quick 5-10 minute look into each of these areas can give you a wealth of information that you can use to improve the site.

This is the starting point, but as you dive into each of these areas, more opportunities will arise. The point is, you have to start somewhere. This is the most authentic quick SEO and marketing review you can give, without getting lost in the details or in an endless pit of time.

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Google Launches Panda 4.0

It's official. Panda 4.0 has officially hit the Google search results.

The Panda algorithm, which was designed to help boost great-quality content sites while pushing down thin or low-quality content sites in the search results, has always targeted scraper sites and low-quality content sites in order to provide searchers with the best search results possible

Panda 4.0, which Google and Matt Cutts confirmed began rolling out yesterday, has definitely caused some waves in the search results. However, the fact that Panda 4.0 is also hitting at the same time as a refresh of an algorithm targeting spammy queries like payday loans makes it a little bit more difficult for webmasters to sort through the damage.

With the payday loans refresh impacting extremely spammy queries and Panda targeting low-quality content, some webmasters could potentially get hit with both of these or by just one or the other.

While usually people complain about losing rankings, Alan Bleiweiss from AlanBleiweiss.com showed via Twitter that Panda can also bring about some serious improvement to a site's traffic as well.

Prior to Cutts confirming via Twitter that Panda 4.0 hit, there had been plenty of speculation about a change with either Panda or Penguin, although many found it hard to pin down exactly what the change was.

"It was interesting to see the chatter amongst SEOs over the last few days," says Marie Haynes of HIS Web Marketing. "We all knew that something was going on, but there was significant disagreement on exactly what Google was doing. Most of the black hats were saying that it was related to Penguin because they were noticing huge drops in their sites with the spammiest link profiles."

This would have been the changes to the payday loans update, where the goal is to target the spammiest search queries Google sees. There was also plenty of debate on forums and Twitter about whether the shake-up we saw was Panda-related or Penguin-related. And with the payday loans update thrown in there for good measure, it was definitely confusing.

"I was really hoping that this wasn't a Penguin refresh because the majority of the sites that I had done link cleanup on were not seeing any improvement and if Penguin refreshed and none of my clients were seeing ranking increases, then that would not be good," Haynes says. "I was also puzzled because one site that I monitor that has been adversely affected by several Panda updates saw a vast improvement today. It does not have a bad link profile and would not have been affected by a Penguin update. "

"When I heard the announcements that Google had released two algorithms over the last couple of days – payday loans and also a big Panda update, everything made sense. And still, so many of us are waiting for that big Penguin refresh. It wouldn't surprise me if that happens in the next couple of days," she says.

Google has said previously that they try not to throw multiple updates at once or within a very short period of time, so it is interesting that they pushed out two completely unrelated updates – although updates that could both impact some the same sites – within a couple of days.

Releasing two back-to-back updates makes it a lot harder for webmasters to analyze the changes and what specifically was targeted in these updates, and could affect Google's ability to evaluate how well (or not) the two updates worked. It also means webmasters might have a challenge knowing what changes need to be made in order to recover search rankings.

However, Haynes speculated that some of the Panda change might have been to reverse some of the damage done to sites that had great content yet were impacted for other on-page reasons.

"I think it's too early to say what this new iteration of Panda is affecting, but I can tell you that in the case of the site that I saw big improvements on, no cleanup work had been done at all," Haynes says. "It was always in 'Panda flux.'"

She says some Panda refreshes would hit it hard and then occasionally the site would show a slight increase with a refresh.

"This is by far the biggest increase, though," Haynes says. "It really is a good-quality site and I believe that what caused it to be affected by Panda in the first place was a site layout that caused crawlers to get confused. Underneath that confusing layout is a site full of really good content. It may be that Google found ways to see past structural issues and recognize the good content as the structural problems would not affect users, just crawlers. But really, that's a guess."

Panda first blazed onto the scene in February 2011, and was believed to be Google's response to criticism of how well content farms were ranking. Google later announced that they internally called it the big Panda update, after Navneet Panda, the Google engineer who created it.

While there have been many smaller Panda updates and a couple larger ones, each rolled out monthly over a period of 10 days, Google had announced several months ago that Panda would be integrated into the algorithm updates and that the "softer" Panda would be less noticeable. However, that clearly isn't the case with Panda 4.0, which has had a widespread impact, both positively and negatively.

Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz also studied the changes they saw from the latest Panda update, and noticed that eBay got hit particularly hard.

Digging into the May 19th data (and before Google confirmed anything), I noticed that a few keywords seemed to show losses for eBay, and the main eBay sub-domain fell completely out of the "Big 10" (our metric of the ten domains with the most "real estate" in the top 10).

In fact, Meyers notes that eBay's drop was so significant that it dropped from 1 percent of their queries to 0.28 percent. It won't be surprising to hear of more sites who have seen a drop due to Panda 4.0 – especially sites that have been notorious for having low quality content.

We will definitely see more come out in the next few days as webmasters and SEO professionals have a chance to evaluate the changes and what might have caused sites (either their own or competitors) to either rise or fall in Google's search results. And since we're still awaiting a Google Penguin update (Penguin 2.0 launched a year ago this week), I wouldn't be surprised if we see one of those updates coming soon, especially in light of Google releasing both the payday loans and Panda 4.0 so close together.

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Google Provides More Clarity Around Sneaky Redirects Against Their Guidelines

Google announced on their Webmaster blog that they have updated two of their guideline documents to improve the clarity around what sneaky redirects are against Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google has expanded their guidelines to ensure webmasters are aware that using sneaky redirects through mobile site detection and redirection, is not allowed if the content is not the same. An excerpt from Google’s revised guidelines indicate a situation where “desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain,” as not in accordance with Google’s guidelines.

Here are the two new examples Google placed in their sneaky redirects guideline page:

• Search engines shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different
• Desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain

Google also updated the hacked sites page with an content about redirects that reads:

 “Hackers might inject malicious code to your website that redirects some users to harmful or spammy pages. The kind of redirect sometimes depends on referrer, user-agent, or device. For example, clicking a URL in Google search results could redirect you to a suspicious page, but there is no redirect when you visit the same URL directly from a browser.”

Google added a warning at the end of their blog post saying that “with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take manual action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of the search results.”

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What’s new in social media and what is broken

At least quarterly, it’s a good idea to find out what’s no longer working in different parts of digital marketing, particularly in fast-moving areas like social. This week, we’ll talk about what’s no longer working in social media, then we’ll move on to what’s new. And in our next series, we’ll also talk about search.

Before we proceed though, it is worth mentioning that participating in social media without a plan is asking for trouble. Really think about why you’re using social and what you hope to achieve. More visibility? An increase in website visitors? What are they supposed to do when they get to your website? Is your blog connected to your lead capture system?

Read also: 7 steps to elevate your social media presence

Also think about the role of social in your overall online strategy, whether it’s part of branding, marketing or customer service.

1. Blogging

It’s often forgotten that blogs were among the first social media tools – the best we’d had available since the online bulletin board or forum. The ramp-up to slow-down theory of blogging is no longer working. You can’t blog daily for six weeks, then slow down and blog when you “have time” and expect the same results. 

Studies are now showing that ramping up to posting even every other day increases sales. So wake up that dead blog.You can start by asking people who have subscribed via email what they’d like to learn about.

Try doing more shorter, pithier posts, then one in-depth post a week.

2. Twitter

There was a time you could get away with broadcasting links into the general noise of Twitter, and be noticed due to the curiosity factor of Twitter’s firehose, and the fact that Google would pick up your tweets in real time, and even show them in real time on trending searches.

Now, not only has the Twitter firehose been hidden for years now, but Google’s relationship with Twitter has changed – no more real time tweets on hot searches.  

Besides, Twitter was never meant to be a broadcast medium and most people ignore much of what is on their incoming streams, or whittle them down to a manageable level, full of only the people they most want to interact with frequently. Instead of trying to manage my full incoming Twitter stream, 

I look at my Twitter lists, hashtags, and people who I’ve set to mobile notifications first. Most people on Twitter now have a system similar to this or a custom timeline – being followed is no longer enough to get noticed. You must provide value, and shouting “LOOK AT ME AND MY STUFF” isn’t doing it anymore.

Pick some non-competing colleagues (or even the competition if you’re confident) and share their most helpful content 6 to 8 times for every time you talk about yourself. I personally find that I get a lot more attention when I’m ready to talk about myself if I share my community with others.

Screen some Twitter chats related to your topic if you have trouble finding out who these people are.

3. Facebook

Oh #facepalm. Where do I begin with what doesn’t work on Facebook? 

I’m tempted to say “everything”. For Pages, reach is down, because apparently Facebook differs from Twitter in that it either doesn’t see the value, or doesn’t have the capability, to show you everything you or your connections are subscribed to in the the public stream.  

You’ve got to pay to play and even that can give you dismal results. 

Ever since Facebook began to take away some of pages killer features, I haven’t been the fan I once was. It used to be easy to get prospects to opt-in to be contacted outside Facebook, to create posts natively using the Notes app, and many other things personal profiles have been able to do, or still can.  

If you’re using your personal profile for personal interaction, it’s best to keep it that way. But if you’ve been using your profile’s ability to make certain information visible or hidden to certain groups via the refreshed Lists feature, that may be your best bet for visibility of informational posts that aren’t commercially heavy.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn used to have a kick-ass section called LinkedIn Answers. You could get a crazy amount of visibility by logging in once a quarter and answering questions until you were one of the top three in a sub-niche. I used to get very high quality client leads this way.  

Now LinkedIn is letting more people into its Influencers program. Many don’t see the appeal to writing to an audience they already have. However, if you promote your LinkedIn posts as you would any other content marketing item or guest post, you will find that your audience expands outside the contacts you already have.

Test this out by applying to their program – if you’re accepted, test with a reworked blog post if you don’t have any new content on hand.

5. YouTube

Trying to grow your YouTube audience without interaction is much harder than it used to be. In years past, you could get away with just optimizing for search and exposing your videos to your own subscribers or your blog audience. 

Now, the action on your page is part of the criteria for getting ranked, according to my favorite source on video SEO, ReelSEO (get it? Why can’t I think of things like that?) A dead channel is an ignored channel. Get out there and find the active users in your space. Delight them and lure them to your channel.

6. Google+

So here’s a weird one for you – the main thing not working for Google+ is ignoring it. 

If you’ve hated Google+ for years, you had good reason. With lots of abandoned profiles and few of the features that now exist, 2011 was way too early to speculate about its potential.

However adoption among more regular people, business owners, bloggers, and even Android users is making Google+ the place to be, not to mention the ability to leverage additional spots in Google’s universal search rankings, or the personalized rankings of people you’re connected to via the site.

If for no other reason than to get your OWN blog more personalized rankings by being connected to more people than your nearest competition, Google+ is a must if Google search is part of your marketing strategy.

You may hate it, but even though we may hate accounting, we still make sure it gets done. Build out your profile and invest just 5 minutes a day making new connections on Google+ – if you do it right, it’ll be worth your while. 

The takeaway

Sometimes it feels like our social media efforts are failing. And sometimes, this is actually true. The key question to ask isn’t IF there is failing but WHAT is failing. Before you give up, make sure the point of failure isn’t your strategy or technique.

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Google Working On A Softer & Gentler Panda Algorithm To Help Small Businesses

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced at Search Marketing Expo that his search team is working the “next generation” Panda update that would appear to many as being softer.

Cutts explained that this new Panda update should have a direct impact on helping small businesses do better.

One Googler on his team is specifically working on ways to help small web sites and businesses do better in the Google search results. This next generation update to Panda is one specific algorithmic change that should have a positive impact on the smaller businesses.

Matt Cutts didn’t mention when the new update is coming out but rather they are currently working on this update. My feeling is that it is far off from being launched, like maybe in two to three months at best, but that is my gut.

This would not be the first time Google released a softer Panda update. They did a softer update to the Panda algorithm possibly in July of last year.

Now Panda is more of a monthly rolling update and Google is unlikely to confirm future Panda updates.

Learn more about Google Panda updates.

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How Search Marketers Succeed

"How Do I Get Some Success Rolling In Search Engine"

The complicated algorithms of search engines may appear at first glance to be impenetrable. The engines themselves provide little insight into how to achieve better results or garner more traffic. What information on optimization and best practices that the engines themselves do provide is listed below:

SEO INFORMATION FROM GOOGLE WEBMASTER GUIDELINE

Googlers recommend the following to get better rankings in their search engine:

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as cloaking.

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

Use keywords to create descriptive, human friendly URLs. Provide one version of a URL to reach a document, using 301 redirects or the rel="canonical" element to address duplicate content.

SEO INFORMATION FROM BING WEBMASTER GUIDELINE

Bing engineers at Microsoft recommend the following to get better rankings in their search engine:

Ensure a clean, keyword rich URL structure is in place Make sure content is not buried inside rich media (Adobe Flash Player, JavaScript, Ajax) and verify that rich media doesn't hide links from crawlers.

Create keyword-rich content based on research to match what users are searching for. Produce fresh content regularly.

Don’t put the text that you want indexed inside images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo.

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Google’s Matt Cutts Gives SEO Advice For Times When Your Products Go Out Of Stock

Google’s Matt Cutts answered in a video what webmasters and site owners should do about their out of stock products on their e-commerce sites.

Matt Cutts basically said it depends on the size of the e-commerce site. He broke it down into three sizes: small sites with tens of pages, medium sites with thousands of pages and massive sites with hundreds of thousands of pages or more.

Small E-Commerce Sites

Small sites that sell items, such as handmade furniture, that showcase a product that is out of stock should likely link to related products. This way the customer can see that this owner can make or design something as displayed but at the same time, show other products that are currently available in stock that the customer can purchase today.

Of course, it may make sense to add a manufacturing time next to the items that are out of stock.

Medium E-Commerce Sites

The normal, medium sized, e-commerce site, that sells thousands of products, and where some of those products are out of stock. In that case, the site owner should 404 – page not found – the products that are out of stock.

That is unless you know the date that the products will come back in inventory. If you know when the products will come back in inventory, inform the customer on the site and let them choose if they want to order it for later delivery or not.

Otherwise, 404 the page because it can be frustrated for a customer to land on a product page that they cannot buy.

Large E-Commerce Sites

For really large e-commerce sites, with hundreds of thousands of pages, such as Craigslist, you should set the date the page will expire using the meta tag, unavailable_after tag. This way, when the product is added, you can immediately set when that product page will expire based on an auction date or a go-stale date.

This information is treated as a removal request: it will take about a day after the removal date passes for the page to disappear from the search results. Google currently only supports unavailable_after for Google web search results

Here is the video:



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