Search Engine Optimization

Guest Blogging for SEO, No Longer will it Please Google?

Finally, what Matt Cutts announced on his personal blog in January 2014 has now become a shocking reality with a guest blogging network been penalized recently by Google. The distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts had already advised the Webmasters to stop guest blogging as a link-building strategy for gaining juice. Similarly, great emphasis was laid on accepting a blog post that is written by someone you can assure in terms of credibility and quality, which is also applicable to a site on which you submit the post. The announcement had already alerted the SEO community but the practical trailer has actually proven the power of the decision taken.

After taking a look at this penalization, I guess most ( paid ) guest blog authors, as well as webmasters accepting such posts, will stop with their work. After all, nobody wishes that their sites get penalized, particularly after passing through the havoc of the former updates of Panda and Penguin. So, does this mean that Google will no longer consider guest posts? Well, this is not going to happen so soon. So, heaving a sigh of relief, let us find out why!

Fall in Quality and Rise in Spam: Motivation to Take Such a Decision!

Well, the only reason here is spamming happening through guest blogging. This clearly conveys that the admired Engineer has no problem with guest blogging but with the way in which it is done. Cutts has already pointed that guest blogging has become a more spam SEO tactic over time. In his personal blog on ‘The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO’, he also revealed an email received wherein the unknown sender offered money for publishing a guest blog post with one or two ‘dofollow’ links in the body. Concisely, the sender intended to purchase links from Cutts, which is a lucid violation of the quality guidelines of Google.

Today we took action on a large guest blog network. A reminder about the spam risks of guest blogging: Matt Cutts – March 19, 2014

The ‘follow’ or ‘dofollow’ link is enviable, as it can pass some authority and PageRank to the destined site to which that anchor tag points. Instead of using it in the right sense, a few guest bloggers have misused the benefit of getting the PageRank. They have caused an excessive influx of low-quality content masked as a guest blog. Not only does this betray the readers but also puts the online credibility of the site owner at risk, who accepts such posts. This is perhaps because a majority of readers expect the site owner to guarantee the quality of its content.

In addition, it has become a much more widespread tactic for the authors to offer money for publishing their blog posts on what they observe as high-quality sites. This allures many owners as an easy way to make money but the reality is that the authors are simply masking paid links in the realm of a guest post whose content is usually of low quality, just stolen, or is least relevant for that site on which it is published.

Alternate Option for SEO? Will it Really Work?

It seems that Google has removed ( paid or sponsored ) guest blogging going out of the SEO world for saving the naive webmasters who are unaware of the spammers’ selfish motives. While this is on the positive side, many may also look upon it as Google’s tactic to move people to its PPC plan that was not used by many because of guest blogging. So now, if we assume that paid guest blogging has gone, then the only option for the webmasters will be to use PPC (Pay per Click) through AdWords. However, the biggest limitation of this tactic is that the search results for a specific searched keyword will show the Google ad-based sites in the initial pages but there will be still no guarantee whether those sites will have quality and relevant content for the readers.

High-Quality Guest Blogging: Still Encouraged?

Apparently, yes! Matt Cutts added more clarification with the additional context in order to calm down the storm in the SEO community. According to Cutts:

A webmaster should accept a guest blog post only if he knows the author well.

– Matt Cutts

He also affirmed that there are yet many good reasons to choose guest blogging, which include branding, exposure, and increased reach. Nobody can deny these reasons, as they were present before Google and that they will continue even in the future. Cutts also accepted that there are truly some incredible, high-quality guest bloggers and that ‘multi-author blogs’ were not under Google’s sharp monitoring eyes. In short, Google does not like guest blogging for the goal of SEO.

In short, guest blogging is still viable for the reasons that Cutts specified, provided it offers high-quality, relevant content with ‘no-follow or social media page links. The only difference will be that one will now think of such posting as readers, not as a link-building source.

How to avoid Getting Your Website Penalized for Using Rich Snippets

The concept of rich snippet spamming is totally intriguing as it looks a lot like the old-fashioned meta-keyword spamming technique. It remains hidden in the website code so the users are not aware of them. However, it seems that the abuse of rich snippets affects the users in terms of search results. Therefore, Google has decided to take serious action against the website that uses this type of Rich Snippets spams black hat strategies. If you are a totally legitimate website, you should be concerned about this issue because if you are reported multiple times, Google might actually block you from showing those snippets for your site. On the other hand, spam reporting is not the best strategy that Google should use, so detecting abuse can be a little bit difficult.

The Usage of Rich Snippets

In case you are not familiar with the rich snippets concept, you have to know that they are used in order to bring an enhancement to the web page results display. These snippets will include images and information like rating, reviews, last update or publishing time, and so on. Google states that the rich snippets have the role, to sum up the page content so that the user can grasp the essence of the page and its relevance in terms of search results. Here is an example of rich snippet underlines by the black boxes.

The information may draw attention to the page and it is likely that the user will click on it more often. The truth is that if you do not know how to use the rich snippets for your own website, you might be missing a chance to attract a lot of organic traffic.

The Rich Snippets Data Types

Depending on what your website contains, you will be able to use a series of snippets. They will be different from one search engine to the next. However, the snippets that are used by Google are the following:

Authors – You can include the name and photo of the author, together with its Google + profile or circles. The Google guideline states that you need a Google + profile that has a decent photo in order to use this snippet.
Products – It is possible to add prices, pictures, or ratings of the products that you advertise. You can get extra guidelines from the Google answer page.
Organizations and businesses – You can add customers’ reviews or locations and some restaurants like to include their price range. Find out more right here!
People – You can insert the contact information, occupation, or significant photos. You can get the needed codes for all the information that you want to insert from here.
Videos – The best snippet for videos is inserting a preview thumbnail that can be accessed right away by the users.
Music – The Google team suggests that you insert links to play the songs or even lyrics in the snippets.
Recipes – Publishing recipes include the photos, rating, required time, and even calorie content.
Events – You get the time and location of the event together with the date. In order to make an interesting appearance, you should check these guidelines.

Setting Rich Snippets for a Website

The secret behind the rich snippets is that you have to implement them in the proper way in the coding of your website. You have to mark the page data so that the search engines will get vital information about the pages that you have. The truth is that this whole process can be a little bit complicated. There is no such thing as an automatic function in the CMS that implements everything right away. So you need to get deeper into the technical knowledge in order to get the markup that you want.

Another crucial thing is that the structured data presents no guarantee of a snippet display in the search engine. However, it does make them possible, but Google will be the one that decides whether to use them or not. Here are the possible formats that you should use:

Microdata – This is a good way to label your content so that it describes a kind of information like events, personal info, reviews, and so on. You can use the code from here.
RDFa – This manner of labeling items or entities is based on a number of properties. In the case of a person, the properties are email address, company, job, address, and name.
Microformats – These are conventions that will describe your product, business, review, event, and so on. Google gives a really good example of such a format.

Quick Tips for Clean Rich Snippet Usage

If you do not want to get penalized for using the rich snippets in the wrong manner, you should follow these quick tips. They are easy to use by any webmaster and you should check all of them.

1. Structured Dashboard – You need to pinpoint the Structure Data menu on your webmaster account. In most cases, it will be under the Search Appearance menu. Make sure that you identify the data types on the website in the form of a list so that there are no technical problems or errors connected to them.

2. Testing tools – There is the possibility to use a testing tool for rich snippets. This will ensure that Google is able to get your structured data like PageMaps, authorship, metadata, and markups with ease. The following data is displayed by this tool:

Extracted markup
Search results preview
Sorting and restricting keys
Authorship information
Meta Tags
Page Map
Rich Snippets

Below you will find an example of what this tool offers for the above-mentioned recipe page.

Four Mishaps to Avoid on your Website

Even if it is tempting to use the power of rich snippets in the wrong way, you have to know that this may cause you permanent damage. So play it clean and avoid these things that might get you penalized.

Usage of hidden content – This aspect is crucial because all your content should be visible for visitors and for the search engines. It is possible that the data used are not seen in the way you want it. However, you should not use CSS coding, display: any, or another type of ways in which you hide the date. This is viewed as spam by Google.
Various markup formats – You need to use only one markup format on a certain page, otherwise, you may experience problems in reading the data.
No matching structure data – You need to make sure that the structure data are in alignment with the page content.
Poor nesting – This is more of a technical problem as the current items contain other alien structure data than the exact type for a specific review. You should read the proper nesting guideline from Google in order to get things right.

Conclusion:

It is true that when you let people give you data that will be included in the search results, like in the case of rich snippets, there is always the prospect of abuse. However, you need to know that these black hat SEO approaches will get you some benefits in the really short term. The search engines will eventually figure things out for your website and penalties are about to come. So before you use the rich snippets in the wrong way, you should wonder if it is worth the risk of penalization after all that hard work.

Google Disavow – A Powerful Tool To Cleanse Websites Of bad Links

SEO or search engine optimization is a very powerful tool with the help of which you can improve the rankings of your website. Of the many ways that help you achieve the same, adding links and backlinks is the best. But more often than not certain links get added to your website which might be considered as bad links by search engines like Google. In order to solve this problem of bad links and help you to remove them, Google has come up with very powerful bad link removal software known as the Google Disavow.

What is Google Disavow?

Getting caught up in link spam is very easy and there are many web mischief-makers who keep adding irrelevant and bad links to popular sites resulting in the website getting a warning message in the Webmasters Tool regarding these. In order to stop Google and other search engines from taking further action against your website in the future, you have to ensure that these spammy links are deleted from your webpage.

Doing this manually takes a lot of time and more often than not, some links tend to be left behind. This is where Google Disavow comes in the picture and allows you to inform Google about the links you want to disavow from your website.

What does Google consider as “unnatural links?”

Unnatural links are those which grossly violate the quality guidelines set down by Google. These links can be part of a paid link scheme or link exchange.

• A link scheme typically uses paid links to manipulate the amount of traffic received by a website thereby increasing its ranking process

• Link exchange deals with the group of websites who have an understanding among themselves to display links and banners of member websites so as to increase the popularity of all the concerned websites.

Buying and selling of links is a common way of increasing the popularity of websites but they violate the SEO quality guidelines set by Google and are hence considered to be illegal.

How to isolate these bad links?

The Webmaster tool has an option that gives information with regards to all the links that have been added to your site along with the date on which they were attached. This will help you not only to find out links which were not uploaded by you but also help you to make a list of the links you want to disavow.

How does Google Disavow work?

In order to take advantage of this powerful tool, you have to visit the new Disavow links page on Google and ask it to overlook these links when accessing your website.

This can be done in the following way

Prepare a list of all the sites and domains you want to disavow and upload it onto the page preceded by a comment relevant to it.
When making the file containing the list, the following points should be kept in mind

1. Comments should be preceded by disavowing or deleting
2. The full URL of the link to be blocked should be given
3. Domain should be succeeded by the sub-domain to ensure the entire domain is blocked

The list prepared has to be uploaded as a file.
This procedure comes to an end when you click on done in the dialog box.

Care must be taken while uploading the list since it can only be edited and reloaded till such time as you do not complete the process. Once you complete the whole process, the links will be disavowed, and thereafter any change you require is a long drawn process.

Search Engine Optimization Training for Marketing Professionals

In this digital age, online business & marketing is growing to be an indispensable element of a company’s marketing strategy. A lot of the corporate companies are making use of the power of web to reach out their targeted customers.

Search Engine Marketing and Online Lead Generation are two of the significant components of online marketing. While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to render search of your business web site fruitful. Without proper SEO, you surely can’t reach mass audiences through popular search engines like by Google, Bing and by Yahoo.

On the other hand, Effective implementation of SEO requires synergy between the IT and the business policymakers. The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Workshop will aid a great deal in creating a bridge to bring the concept and strategies closer.

Objectives of the SEO Workshop

The workshop is aimed at understanding the general concepts of the functioning of search engines and how they rank every single webpages on web. The concepts will help in developing webpages that are search engine friendly and highly ranked by the search engines. It will also help to fetch more Pre qualified traffic & enhance the conversion rate.

Search Engine Optimization Training – Learning Outcomes of the SEO Workshop

1. Fundamentals of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
2. Development of search engine friendly website following effective search optimization strategy.
3. Research & find High Paying keywords for the targeted user base.
4. Research on the competitors and formulate niche specific strategies & Google Analytics
5. Organic Link Building strategies & introduction to algorithm used by Google.
6. Fundamental & Advance SEO self audit & checklists
7. Self-Diagnosis of Technical SEO Issues & their fixes

Who Should Attend?

1, Marketers
2, Brand Managers
3, Web Designers and Developers
4, Webmasters
5, E marketers and Online Media Agency

Event Agenda :

Session 1: ( Open Event )
31/08/2012 – 09.00AM-11.45AM – Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing Fundamentals
11.45AM – 12.30PM – QA & Networking

Session 2: ( Private Event )
31/08/2012 – 2PM-4.30PM – Preparing Effective search optimization strategy to develop search engine friendly website.
04.45PM – 06.15PM – Research and discover profitable High Paying keywords for target market.
06.15PM – 06.45PM – QA & Networking

Session 3: ( Private Event )
01/09/2012 – 09AM-11.45AM – Competitor Research and Niche Research Strategic Plan and Google Analytic
11.45AM – 12.30PM – QA & Networking

Session 4: ( Private Event )
02.00PM – 04.30PM – Organic Link Building strategies and Google Algorithm Introduction
04.45PM – 06.15PM – Basic and Advance Search Engine Optimization Self Audit and Checklists
06.30PM – 07.30PM – Self-Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues and Fixes
07.30 – 07.45PM – QA & Networking

Address

Gateway Institute of Jaffna
Address : #347,Kasthuriar road,Jaffna.
Contact : Mr.Anuraj – 0777769751

by #Sharanyan Sharma

Google Penguin Recovery Tips : Learn how to Optimize your Webpages

Google just added a new update Penguin to their algorithms for their search engines. This update reorders the importance of links and how they are handled. SEO optimization techniques have had very specific guidelines for getting quality links to increase your page rank. However, due to SEO over-optimization by unscrupulous marketers, the new Penguin update was released. It is now essential that you have penguin recovery help to overcome the impact of this update. You can fight back using certain Penguin recovery tips.

In the past, the greater the number of links to your web page, the higher in value it was considered. This gained it a higher ranking. That is true to a point. However, this new update will keep link schemes from enabling a site from using dishonest links to get a higher ranking than it deserves. No longer will ranking be primarily based on the number or even quality of its links. Now, other factors will enter into the algorithm. Penguin recovery techniques include making use of alternative determinants to overcome the impact of this update.

As you know about Google Panda Updates, but this Penguin recovery period for your site can be long or short, depending on the SEO techniques you have been using that are no longer going to be accepted. Though it will take work, analysis of your techniques, and ongoing monitoring of what your site is doing, it can be done following specific Penguin recovery techniques. These are basically just legitimate SEO optimization tips. You may not need to engage each of the tips that follow, but pick the ones that stand to be most beneficial to you.

The first of the Penguin recovery tips is to improve your content. Gone are the days when keywords could just be mentioned in general content that had little to do with the topic. Be sure to have content that is very closely related to the keyword. Also, make sure that the content is the best possible. Make sure that it is quality writing and that it gives valuable information to your reader. This one Penguin recovery hint will do more toward getting your ranking restored than anything else.

Other Penguin recovery tips relate to the links you have. There are some things you can do to improve the quality of those links and improve your ranking. The major one is to improve the focus of your links, making sure their subject matches yours. Bulk link schemes that give you lots of links, but are of poor quality or unrelated content, will no longer work. Even if you have many good links you can still be penalized with the bad links that offset them. Also, make sure that your anchor text is used naturally. These link hints should give you a lot of Penguin recovery help.

Another idea is looking at the big picture, thinking long term, and keeping on top of what is happening with your site. True, you might get a temporary ranking with dishonest practices, but may then lose it.

You should write smaller sites and/or move some of the content to another domain. Don’t practice exact domain matching. That no longer works as a plus. Though the update by Google may seem devastating, and certainly hits smaller businesses more than larger ones, with careful monitoring and following some Penguin recovery tips, it doesn’t have to be the end of your business.

Google Panda Update – Google Search Algorithm Update Rolled out

The 23^rdof February in 2011 can be easily called the black date for many site owners. That day Panda Update started its work and the specialists compare the program with a hurricane that can quickly ruin the years of your labor. Many site owners criticize Panda – and it is easy to understand. The great number of sites lost traffic and traffic means money, as you see. Let’s try to be objective and find out the pros and cons of Google Panda Update.

Pros and Cons of Google Panda Update

Google Panda Update has a complicated algorithm. No one knows exactly the main “ingredient in the recipe” from Google – the principles of its work. But it is known that the new program has so-called “two layers” in its algorithm that help to low the rank of sites with the content of low quality and not interesting design. Thus, theoretically, if you have the design of high quality, easy navigation, many interesting articles, and a reasonable amount of advertisement, and then you can hope to occupy the leading position in the list of Google now.

Among cons the site owners mention such points like the amount of advertisement – who can tell exactly, what does it mean “too much”? Then it’s a pity that such interesting sites like Suite101, Ezine articles, and some others suffered from Google PandaFarmer Updates. The content there is really interesting, but it was written by simple writers and no one can prove that the information about the cancer treatment for example was written by a doctor and thus you can rely on it.

Content Plays an Important Part

The importance of content occupies one of the leading positions now. Google Panda Update is killing the owners of sites with the right and attractive links but without articles full of serious and interesting facts. If you want to be on top or at least not to fall down extremely rapidly, give the panda articles! The page rank of many famous sites fell down because of Google Panda Update.

Feedback from Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts

Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts try to stop the Internet revolution by giving an interview to the site Wired. They opened the mystery of Google Panda Update and told the smallest part of the secret of this system.

Before trying the new program, they sent the letters to many people who owned boxes at Google. They asked several questions that helped to form the standards of quality that lie on basis of Google Panda Update. Thus they asked people if they can write the number of their credit card at the site if they are ready to get the remedy from the side and give it to the child. They also asked, if the advertisement is annoying and what kinds of content are interesting for people. The answers helped to form the main criteria and they formed an algorithm from Panda.

What to Do to Occupy the Leading Position

Thus Google Panda Update will love you if the security of your site is high enough and you can protect your clients who left the credit card number at the site from unauthorized access to that information. If you have interesting and professional articles, if your design is attractive and the usability is easy and fast, the site will be successful. And forget about the great amount of advertisement – or your site will occupy the rightful place at the very end.

To some extent, Google Panda Update is a good idea as many site owners don’t care about their clients and print really boring articles with a lack of useful information. If you want to understand, if the articles at your site are good enough, simply ask yourself a question, if they will be printed in some newspaper or magazine?

Is Panda Update Final Variant?

Google Panda Update touched English sites as well as all the others of different areas and languages. Google Panda farmer Update is not the final variant and in 2012 about 550 modifications will take place. It is good news as maybe such interesting and popular sites like Ezine articles etc will occupy the rightful positions again. But there are people who are waiting for modifications with horror and are afraid that it will ruin their business on the Internet.

Three Important Tips for Choosing Seo Firm

Want to outsource your website promotion to some search engine optimization company? Looking for SEO services, which can make your website into a productive and profit-making business? This is only valid if you choose a professional SEO service.

However there are many new professional companies who are joining this field and ready to give you the best deals. It’s your duty to find out the best professional company. With poor knowledge and little experience, you can find many new professionals entering into this field. Find below 3 important tips which can help you to choose best search engine Optimization Company.

Probe for references:

If you are in direct contact with optimization expert then you should ask for their past work and references. A professional company will surely have something to show you in accordance with past experience. A company which cannot show you their past references is better to get ignore.

Don’t rely on unrealistic guarantees:

While visiting a company you will be assured of many such things to make your doubts clear. Some professionals salivating on your hard earned cash will assure you high ranking within a month or so. They will assure you of many other factors which you have never thought about. Still their promises are good to hear but the said words are not the fact.

So how can you make a difference between a fake and genuine optimization company? If they are assuring you of many factors in amazingly small time period, the just ask them a simple question “What will you offer if the promises are not fulfilled”. When they have nothing to get you in written then it’s a signal to move to another search engine optimization company.

Look for SEO professional who follows the policy of deposit payment:

There are many professionals in this field who will look for 100% upfront payment and if they do not succeed then they will deduct some amount from the advance payout and will refund the rest of it. Thus it becomes vital that you look for company which allows you to deposit partial payment and not total complete payment in upfront. Also make sure that they refund every penny from your deposit.

Choosing the best SEO Company

If you are in doing business in online world then you are more or less concerned with traffic and fastest way to get traffic is by outranking all your competitors. Getting highly ranked is not an easy job even you have large business or have a beautiful website. The sole key to dominate over search engines is Search Engine optimization which certainly helps you to get customers from all over the world.If you do not have time to undergo all processes of optimization then its vital to find an SEO company. Searching such a company is quite easy but probing into the best one is quite hard. Ask yourself the below mentioned question before choosing the one:

Experience in the field:

Experience reveals the fact but it’s not true in SEO world. Consider the quote “The latest the best”. Dynamic in this field will help you grow your business, as time spent in this field is not the basic criteria but what that company has learnt is more important.

Look for their feedback:

Every single company will boost their services but your duty is to look whether they are telling the fact or just flashing from their mind. Contact their past clients and look over the real feedback and then take your decision accordingly.

Getting updated during optimization of your website:

Understand each single step of optimization which that SEO Company will follow for promotion of your website. Make sure that you are getting updated every time a new step is taken and everything is processed with your consent.

Black Hat SEO:

Many SEO companies would be salivating on your hard earned cash and they would assure you quick optimization of your website. Getting highly ranked in month is easy but only through black hat SEO which can get your website banned in search engines. So try to avoid such claims.

Getting monthly reports:

Many renowned companies will provide you with weekly or monthly report through which you can know about current ranking, traffic and conversions.

The skill they use for your business:

There is big difference between your business and business needs. Does that SEO Company knows this thing? A genuine SEO Company will be one which will accomplish different ways to optimize each business.

Looking to increase traffic or visibility of your website in search engines, visit the quality assured SEO Company which provides SEO services, link building, content creation, internet marketing and all other services related to optimization.