Archive for the ‘Search Marketing’ Category
Google+ Local: 7 Vital Things To Know For Optimisation
Our last Google Places themed blog post titled 10 Advanced Google Places optimisation techniques was published just before Google’s announcement of Google+ Local - it’s new platform that integrates Google Places with it’s fledgling social media platform: Google+. As Google + Local is now quite a mature platform, this blog post covers all you need to know about the Google+ Local and more importantly, how to go about optimisation. A lot of the previous optimisation tips still hold true but with the old Google Places ‘Star Review’ engine now retired, there are a number of changes you need to know when optimising your Google+ Local page. Here goes… Read More »
Tory MP – Grant Shapps Confirmed As A Google Spammer
Conservative Co-Chairman, Grant Shapps recently came under fire when it was revealed by the Guardian that his family business sold black hat SEO article spinning software that blatantly breached Google’s code of practice. Article spinning software applications sniff out original content from websites, spin the content around, replace a number words with synonyms and create multiple reiterations of the original content that is then republished to websites specifically created to attract traffic from Google and increase advertising revenue from Google Adsense. Read More »
The Impact of Social Media on Search Rankings is Getting Stronger
I often get excited when new studies and findings reaffirm experiments already carried out by our team here in Fuzz One Media and discussions with other professionals in the SEO industry.
Searchmetrics recently released their SEO Ranking Factors for 2012 Whitepaper that shows a close correlation between the volume of Facebook shares a web page receives and its rankings on Google search (remember Correlation does not imply causation). Their research also came to the conclusion that too many Google AdSense ads on a page are likely to have a negative impact on search visibility on Google search.
Their study utilised a dataset consisting about 300,000 websites and 10,000 low to high volume search terms from Google.com.
According to Searchmetrics’ whitepaper, the top three ranking factors that correlated with successfully ranking higher on Google are:
- Facebook Shares
- Number of Backlinks
- Tweets
10 Advanced Google Places Optimisation Tips and Actions
UPDATE: most of the tips in this blog post are now obsolete because of Google Places migration to Google+ Local. We have written an updated blog post with relevant optimisation tips titled: Google+ Local: 7 Vital Things To Know For Optimisation
So you are probably quite happy with yourself – you have taken the time to list your business (and it’s branches if you have branches) on Google Places. You have probably asked a number of your clients to kindly write reviews about your business on your Google Places page. You buy yourself a pint or a glass of wine (whichever is your preferred poison) for a job well done. Well…wait…you are not quite there yet! With the horrendous amount of competition on Local Search, Here are 10 Ways to take your Google Places page to the next level that’ll make your listings stand out from all your competitors and drive more clicks through to your website:
1. Add More than 10 Business Images
Google is Clamping Down on “Over-Optimized” Sites
SEO blogs & forums alike were buzzing at the later part of last week about Google’s recent shutdown and de-index of a major link building network BuildMyRank.com. Whilst ‘a proportion’ of the SEO world continues to be stunned about this move, I personally remain adamant as I have always been wary about so called ‘link networks’. I’m not sure if you remember how people carried out dodgy SEO with article networks for a couple of years before Google clamped down on them last year with the Panda update. So called ‘SEOs’ would get low quality articles with a 250 word count written for less than $5 from offshore writers and get them spun into 100 different versions using software in a bid to trick Google. They’d then post the 100 different spun articles to so-called ‘article directories’ for backlinks and higher rankings. It did work for a 2 or 3 years but Google deindexed a large number of article directory sites last year with its unpopular ‘Panda’ Update.
Google: We Are Changing How We Evaluate Links
Google just announced 40 changes it has made to its search algorithm. Some of them are sure to raise an eyebrow. Here are the top 3 changes that stand out:
Image Search
More image results are now turning up in general search results, making image optimisation more important.
Location Specific YouTube Suggestions
Google’s also made changes to the way its YouTube suggestions are generated, making them more location-specific.
Link Evaluation
One key change is a shake-up in link evaluation. Google often uses a site’s back link profile to determine it’s authority, quality and search rankings. According to Senior VP Amit Singhal, there have been changes in the way in which links are evaluated, as part of their ongoing policy of rearchitecting or simply turning off various parts of the scoring system to keep things tight and easier to run. What caught my eye was the fact that they’re ditching a link analysis method that they’ve been using for the last decade.
Is Google Really Against SEOs?
In some ways it seems as if Google and SEOs have an antagonistic relationship. Reading comments like those posted by a Google employee at Hacker News could lead you to believe that while Google are trying to give their users valuable, relevant content, SEOs are trying to find loopholes in the system to get bad or irrelevant websites higher than they should be.
The Google employee who goes by the pseudo name of jrockway on Hacker News said:
If the social features are relevant, though, then users are getting a better experience. And that’s a good thing, even if individual pages get less traffic from Google. Instead of being able to SEO the entire Internet, businesses can now only affect the search results for a tiny percentage of users. That’s a good thing because SEO can’t scale, and SEO isn’t good for users or the Internet at large.
7 Premium SEO Tools Worth Paying For
SEO is a lot more complex than most people give it credit for. Many regard it as something akin to voodoo or alchemy. But SEO can be incredibly powerful and lucrative if you have the right tools for the job. That doesn’t mean you have to splurge on every piece of software you come across. Having prowled through the interwebs, trial and premium tested a number of tools out there, I have come up with this selection of MUST HAVE Paid SEO tools you should grab your wallets to purchase when the need arises.
