Net66: Times when Google have penalised THEMSELVES!

Let’s face it companies in the online marketing industry cannot help but have a chuckle between themselves when a big branded company gets penalised by Google. Such as Interflora, BBC and most recently Expedia.

But what some companies don’t know is that there have been times in the past where Google, yes GOOGLE have been left with egg on their face by breaking their own violations. This is not a one off by Google, they have actually been penalised a number of times.

Here are just a couple of occurrences;

Google Chrome Penalisation

One of the biggest no no’s in Google’s books is buying links to achieve a better ranking on their search engine, which brings me to the first occurrence.

The most recent penalisation which occurred to them was back in 2012. During this time Google had just launched their Chrome browser and started a campaign to promote it.

However, this campaign didn’t go as planned. As you may have guessed, Google found themselves buying links as part of their campaign.

The punishment was quite severe for them, this being that they disappeared for the phrase “Google Chrome” for approximately two months!

BADwords

Another product of Google’s which was hit by their algorithm is Google Adwords. This occurred in 2010 and was penalised for breaking their cloaking violations. The help pages within adwords were showing inconsistencies with the robots and what human users could see.

The punishment in this instance was that the rankings lowered for phrases such as “adwords help” and “help with Google adwords”. Although to this very day nobody knows how long this penalty was put in place for.

It just goes to show that the creators of the algorithm cannot beat it. This surely sends a message out to people and companies involved in SEO that there is no easy way to the top of the SERPs.

Posted by Jordan Whitehead

Net66 Video Blog: Google glass and what it means for SEO [Video]

Here is another informative video blog by Net66.

Welcome to Net66.

Today we are going to be talking about Google Glass. What is Google Glass? It is actually a wearable computer that you can put on your head as spectacles. It has a tiny heads up display, a camera and sound capabilities.

Google Glass is especially important for SEO as it will allow people to search for products and services on the move, you could look at a product in a store and search for similar or cheaper products. You might even be able to complete a purchase by simply winking at a product.

Search results will be displayed as in-sole cards which you can then swipe away to move onto the next one. Insole cards are boxes of information that display text in large concise lettering. This means that customers might not really want to browse beyond the top one or two search results.

This also implies that if your business is not ranking in the top one or two positions a Google Glass user might not really want to see it. How will this change SEO?

Well for one, businesses can aim to rank in the top positions for less competitive keywords. In other words it may be better to rank number one for many lesser used keywords than ranking on the first page for more popular keywords.

With Google Glass, audio search may also become more popular as people simply choose to search for things by more impulsive uttering keywords. All this may change SEO as we know it but it all depends on how many people take up Google Glass.

Google Glass is set to arrive in late 2014 and we at Net66 are ready for it. Are you?

Thank You.

Net66: Google Stands Against Russian Anti-Gay Legislation With Logo & Olympic Charter

It’s been widely documented for a while and a lot of companies have taken some stick for it. Today, Russia begin hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. This might seem a bit run of the mill as the olympics are hosted every four years, but Russia have legislation in place that bans gay “propaganda”.

The very loosely termed law could get you arrested if you’re seen to promote homosexuality. Which, in this day and age, is actually quite a popular thing to do with more and more people accepting it.

But Google today made in very clear on where they stand on Gay rights by adding a rainbow (ubiquitous within the gay rights movement) themed logo and a quote from the Olympic Charter. See the image below:

Usually when Google does release its Doodles, they can often restrict which countries the Doodles are displayed to. But this Google Doodle seems to display on all country’s Google home pages. Again, another strong statement from Google.

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Google Launches New Manual Action Penalty

Today Google have launched a new penalty they can impose on your website as a manual action. This is where a member of the webspam team, an actual person, takes a look at your website and applies a penalty. Rather than an algorithmic penalty whereby Google’s algorithm automatically applies penalisations.

It’s being called “Spammy Structured Markup”, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. If Google decide you have incorrectly added structured data to a page as a way to boost your sites performance in the search engines then this penalty will be served to you.

The full description reads as follows:

Spammy structured markup

Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

This follows Google’s recent change to their structured data where they removed 15% of what you could add as structured data. Effectively making structured markup more exclusive.

So if you have structured markup on your website, it will be worth double checking it.

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Google Launch new Doodle for Google Contest!

Google are always updating their web search home page’s logo. There’s been quite a few of them. But now there’s a chance for someone who isn’t a regular doodler to get their image on the front page of Google.

Unfortunately it’s not open to everyone as you have to be a student. Parents and guardians can submit on behalf of their children and there are downloadable “Class Packs” for teachers.

The theme of this competitions is “If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place”.

It is not only the prestige of having your logo design shown to millions of people that the winner of the competition receives. There are other, more valuable, prizes on offer. The winner will receive a $30,000 college scholarship with the student’s school earning a $50,000 Google for Technology grant.

Applicants will be judged by a talented and experienced group of professionals. Here’s the full line up:

> Lemony Snicket, Author.

> Rick Riordan, Author.

> Ron Garan, Astronaut.

> Chris Miller, Director.

> Phil Lord, Director.

The final winner will be announced some time in June.

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: German Link Buyers Beware!

Last week we reported that Google had successfully targeted and brought down a French link network named Buzzea. Matt Cutts tweeted about this to celebrate and there were some pretty interesting follow up tweets.

After the initial Tweet, many people put questions and requests to Matt, and although not all of them were answered, there was one response in particular that raised eyebrows.

@schikowski yup, it’s on our radar.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 29, 2014

As you can see, this clearly gives an indication of what Matt Cutts and the Web Spam team are up to. He further reiterated that point today by releasing another Tweet. Take a look:

A reminder (in German) that paid links that pass PageRank violate our guidelines: http://t.co/u1MpvL7kh4

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 3, 2014

A friendly reminder there from Matt on just what does violate the guidelines. If you are in Germany and if you are purchasing links, I’d recommend getting rid of any you’ve paid for as it looks like the hammer is set to fall on yet another link network.

Blog post by: Greg McVey

Net66 Video Blog: SEO & Social Media [Video]

Take a look at this weeks video blog from Net66. This time we’re discussing SEO & Social Media.

Welcome to Net66.

Today we are going to be talking about social signals and SEO. Social media is a young medium of communication which has quickly established itself as a genuine source of online expression. It is intensely personal, so entities such as tweets and likes can act as strong signals of endorsement from individual personalities.

Twitter and Facebook are the two most prominent social media sites that reference content across the web. Pinterest and Reddit come in a close second. Twitter, meanwhile offers a special pronounced real time discussion about a business’ offerings.

Pinterest also gives brands the chance to showcase their offerings as images, whilst Reddit can offer an impartial, non-promotional review of your product or business. Google + offers its operator Google the most direct access to personal signals imaginable.

Since we know search engines aim to emulate human behaviour to put themselves in your shoes as if you were. It would be very logical to assume that they would also take notice of social signals and incorporate their outputs in search engine rankings.

Indeed, over the years professional SEO practitioners have mentioned a direct correlation between the intensity of social signals and search engine rankings. We at Net66 tend to agree with this hypothesis.

For more information about SEO, keep watching the Net66 channel.

Thank you.

Net66: Should you be Using Article Directories? Matt Cutts has the Answer [Video Blog]

Article directories were once a widely used tactic in SEO and it worked for a short period. Then, as with everything that can help SEO, spammers seized this opportunity and abused it to the point where it is now not advised to be used at all.

Matt Cutts has clarified his position on this with another one of his webmaster videos. The question put to him was:

Links from relevant content in article directories — Seen as good or bad? eg. I link my beauty website from a cosmetic surgery article on say, Ezine? Would you do that?

Not content with a full video about this, Matt also tweeted about this and gave the short answer. No. No you should not use article directories.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Take Down ANOTHER Link Network [Tweet]

So that’s SAPE, Text Link Ads, The Ghost Network and Anglo Rank.

Today they’ve managed to take down a French Link Network named Buzzea. See Matt Cutt’s Tweet from this morning:

Today we're taking action on a French link network that violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea).

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 29, 2014

It’s good to know that many large scale link networks are getting taken down, and rightly so.

In the fallout from the tweet, Matt Cutts was asked by one tweeter to take a look at German link networks. Interesting to note that Matt Cutts said “It’s” on our radar, potentially indicating one network in particular.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google’s Matt Cutts Advises Older Domains on how to Keep Rankings [Video]

Matt Cutts has released another Webmaster Video answering a question put to him but an SEO. The question put to Matt was this:

I have been in business for over 14 years with my domain, and see much newer domains passing me. Any algorithms to protect older domains/sites in business from newer sites with more spam?
eliasseo, New York

Matt Cutts first advice was to ignore the websites with spam. Google are constantly updating their algorithms to remove spam from their search results. You have to think though, the webmaster, eliasseo, will gain nothing from saying spam sites are overtaking him. With Matt Cutts dismissing this out of hand straight away I’d be a little miffed.

Matt does, however, carry on answering eliasseo’s question. He goes on to state that it’s usually the other way round with this. And that most of the time it’s new sites wondering how to bypass the older domains that have built up domain authority.

The advise is, although your domain might be old and powerful, if you haven’t updated your website in a while then that’s going to hurt. Google is contstantly trying to put the user first and if you’ve bee “coasting” on your rankings for some time, and not changing your website for fear of a change to rankings, your site will stagnate and other websites will overtake you.

See the full video below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Doodle Celebrates French Architect

French Architect Eugene Biollet-le-Duc may not be a household name for many of us, as many of don’t pursue the subject of gothic revivals of medieval buildings. But I’m sure some of us do.

If you’re one of the people who doesn’t know him by name, you’ll certainly recognise some of the restorations he completed in life. One such instance being Notre Dame, the famous church in the heart of Paris.

Today Google decided to honour his achievements with a Google Doodle, See the image below:

Net66 Video Blog: What is Ethical SEO?

Check out our latest video blog on the differences between unethical and ethical SEO.

What is the difference between ethical and unethical SEO?

Ethical search engine optimisation is performed while following the guidelines of the major search engines such as Google. This means that content is created that is original, meaningful, and congruent with the website or business purpose.

Additionally, ethical SEO entails that any link building performed must add value to the wider World Wide Web. Links should be a reflection of natural social and business relationships, so they act as votes and endorsements ff website content.

Unethical SEO, meanwhile, could encompass black hat techniques such as link farming, hidden content, or paid links.

Paid links are especially frowned upon by the search engines, as they can hide or obfuscate a website’s true worth on the Web. They can create a false picture of external endorsement, which can confuse search engines and cause artificially inflated rankings.

These practices detract from a meaningful experience on the Web, and websites indulging in them can be penalised by the search engines.

Google algorithmic updates such as Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird can contribute to the filtering of unethically optimised websites, contributing to a higher search experience.

For more information about SEO, keep watching the Net 66 channel. Thank You.

Net66: Google Adwords Cracking down on Bad Adverts

SEO is constantly dogged by headlines highlighting bad practises and it is quite rare that you hear about a bad Adword campaign. I think this has more to do with SEO being a long term achievement that’s slow to recover, rather than a yes or no approval that can be switched on and off.

That’s not to say that bad Adwords practises aren’t highlighted. A recent report from Google showed that they removed 350 million adverts from their systems last year. Here’s a quote from Mike Hochberg who is the Director of Ads Engineering at Google:

We’ve allocated substantial technical, financial, and human resources to stopping bad advertising practices and protecting users on the web. Hundreds of our engineers, policy experts and others have dedicated their careers to this work.

As you can see, they’re taking it seriously and with 350 million ads removed last year, they seem to be doing a good job.

Here’s a list of the worst offenders for Bad Ads:

Counterfeit goods: 14,000 advertisers banned for trying to sell these.
Illegal online pharmacies: 2 million ads removed.
Copyright infringement: 5,000 AdSense accounts disabled for violating copyright.
Tech support scams: 4,000 AdWords accounts removed.
Malware: 400,000 ads disabled from sites hiding malware.
Get rich quick schemes: 10,000 ads disabled for sites promoting these.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Matt Cutts Gives Clear Advice on Guest Blogging, Edits it Later On.

Matt Cutts has long been Google‘s first and foremost outlet for what to do and what not to do in regards to your SEO. Yesterday Matt Cutts published a blog post outlining what can only be described as pretty clear advice on Guest Blogging, particularly the following quote:

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.

Pretty clear right? Well you’d think so as Matt continues along this vein and further discredits the act of guest blogging due to the fact that, as ever, spammers are flooding this practise with low quality guest posts.

This is now and forever will be the case. Look at link directories, now they’re spammy and very low quality, apart from the rare hidden gems. But once they were a great source of links. The same happened for article marketing to a lesser degree, when once you might have decided on running some, this now is a very bad idea.

I think the straw that broke the camels back with Matt was when he received an unsolicited email from someone that just didn’t sit well with him. It wasn’t specific to his blog and was poorly written. AKA spam.

But Matt went on to give further advice after, I suspect, a poor reaction to his blog post. He clarifies further by stating that:

There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.).

I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to “guest blogging” as their link-building strategy

So it seems that guest blogging is still a good idea. All that Matt wanted to point out is that it’s being exploited by spammers, as is pretty much every other SEO technique out there. So why, at first, did he come out to say to definitely stop Guest Blogging?

What do you think?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 Link Building

Transcript:

Welcome to Net66.

Today, Net66 is 10 years old. We’ve come a long way from our humble beginnings as a local web design company to a top ranked SEO agency in central Manchester. This is not just our opinion, if you were to ask Google the top ranked company for “SEO in Manchester”, they would state Net66 as the number one agency for this term on their search engine.

Today, on the 13th January 2014 marks ten years in the SEO industry for Net66 and is also the date we publish our first video blog. I’m Waqar and today we are briefly going to touch upon one of the most important topics in SEO, link building.

Link building is essentially the electronic perception management system on the web and is an integral part for any SEO campaign. Links from high quality websites act as endorsements or votes for your website, causing search engines such as Google to perceive those websites to be endorsing yours.

This can result in higher search engine rankings for your most valuable keywords. Today, Search Engine Optimisation is incomplete without quality perception management on the web.

Now link building is the most effective way to accomplish this. Net66 provides a variety of link building techniques such as guest blog posts, info-graphics, article syndication and much much more. To learn more about link building and what it can do for your business, or for a free website assessment, please feel free to reach out to us.

Thank you.

What is Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm?

Google’s latest major algorithm change has been the release of Hummingbird. This is an algorithm geared more towards conversational search. The release of such programs as Google Now and Apple’s Siri, you can see why Google has released this.

Net66’s SEO technician Waqar takes you through the fundamentals of this algorithm change.

Transcript;

Welcome to Net66. Today, we are going to be talking about Hummingbird.

What is Hummingbird? We are not referring to the bird species of the family trochilidae. We are in fact talking about the Google algorithmic update. We call it hummingbird because it is fast and precise, and it is the biggest change in years to the Google algorithm.

It’s all about making search more natural and more human, think of it as a search engine putting itself into your shoes. It’s all about conversational search, where you can have a human like conversation with search engines.

So instead of searching for “Manchester coffee shop”, you can search “Tell me the best coffee shop in central Manchester”. Synonyms are also given enthesis, coffee house could be substituted for coffee shop.

Hummingbird also places great enthesis on onsite original content on your website, which may have impact in your websites rankings.

Please do get in touch with Net66 to learn about hummingbird, other search engine updates and how you can work with search engines to better market your business.

Thank you.

Net66 Video Blog: Hummingbird and what it means for your business.

Late last year Google released their new Hummingbird algorithm. This was a major change for Google and affected 95% of their search results. This was a major change as a lot of their other updates, mainly panda and penguin, can affect anywhere between 0.1 and 2% of queries.

This has a lot to do with the switch of searches to mobile. As more and more people are using products such as Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Now, voice search is increasing and search patterns are changing. More and more people are searching less for [keyword][area] and are more prone to asking “Where is the nearest [keyword] in [area]?”.

These requests need to be processed differently which is why Goole have released this update. For a more detailed view on Hummingbird see below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey